Truthdig

“Following Harry” is available on Amazon, Apple and other digital platforms starting Oct.13. For more info see: https://www.followingharry.org/. Born in 1927 in Harlem, Grammy, Tony, Emmy and Oscar award-winner Harry Belafonte grew up in Jamaica and helped popularize Caribbean music in America. His 1956 album “Calypso” – which included Belafonte’s signature song “Day-O (Banana Boat Song)” – hit number one on Billboard’s charts and became the first album by a solo artist to sell a million albums.

Since the Supreme Court handed down its infamous Citizens United ruling in 2010, billionaires have poured ever larger sums into candidates aligned with their interests. They now have American politics in a chokehold: In 2024, the top 300 billionaire donors spent over $3 billion on the federal elections, accounting for nearly 20% of all contributions made that year. By comparison, in 2008, the last election before Citizens United, they accounted for a mere 0.3%.

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here. If there was a year the world began waking up to climate change, it might have been 1988. That June, the NASA climatologist James Hansen testified to Congress that the climate was warming and would continue to do so as long as humans pumped fossil fuel pollution into the atmosphere.

This story was produced by Grist and co-published with StreetsblogMASS. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here. Marvin Martin was in the Four Corners area of Dorchester, Massachusetts, one day when a train sped by on the Fairmount Line into downtown Boston. It was filled with white people, sitting comfortably and reading newspapers. It made him wonder why the commuter line seemed to pass through communities of color without stopping, leaving people in his neighborhood to crowd into buses.

More from Staff Join our newsletter Don't miss out on the latest investigations, art critiques, provocative insights and original reporting from a progressive perspective — delivered straight to your inbox. Comments Now you can personalize your Truthdig experience. To bookmark your favorite articles and follow your favorite authors, please login or create a user profile. Now you can personalize your Truthdig experience.

More from Staff Join our newsletter Don't miss out on the latest investigations, art critiques, provocative insights and original reporting from a progressive perspective — delivered straight to your inbox. Comments Now you can personalize your Truthdig experience. To bookmark your favorite articles and follow your favorite authors, please login or create a user profile. Now you can personalize your Truthdig experience.

More from Staff Join our newsletter Don't miss out on the latest investigations, art critiques, provocative insights and original reporting from a progressive perspective — delivered straight to your inbox. Comments Now you can personalize your Truthdig experience. To bookmark your favorite articles and follow your favorite authors, please login or create a user profile. Now you can personalize your Truthdig experience.

More from Staff Join our newsletter Don't miss out on the latest investigations, art critiques, provocative insights and original reporting from a progressive perspective — delivered straight to your inbox. Comments Now you can personalize your Truthdig experience. To bookmark your favorite articles and follow your favorite authors, please login or create a user profile. Now you can personalize your Truthdig experience.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth thinks God is the U.S. military’s secret weapon. To better utilize this heavenly ally, he’s launching an office designed to provide “first-class religious support” to members of the armed forces. “Our department is, you might say, putting on the full armor of God, because while we wage physical war, we all know the real battle is spiritual,” explained Hegseth last week during his annual State of the Force address in Quantico, Virginia.

This story was originally published by Verite News and KFF Health News. After President Donald Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act more than a year ago, enrollment in the federal food assistance program dropped rapidly across the nation as states enforced new restrictions and prepared to take on more of the costs.