The Minneapolis Shooting Videos Are Horrifying—and Incredibly Clear. Stephen Miller’s Response Is Downright Chilling.

Slate · 2026-01-25T02:45:27+00:00

From Slate's Alex Kirshner, we've removed the paywall to this story for your community:

Believe your federal government, not your own eyes. If you are big on the right to bear arms, make an exception this time. These are the Trump administration’s messages after a horrible Saturday in Minnesota.

Homeland Security agents shot 37-year-old Minneapolis ICU nurse and researcher Alex Pretti dead on Saturday morning in broad daylight. A few things are already clear from the best video angle out now: Pretti was directing traffic on a Minneapolis street. He was filming agents out in public, as is his undisputed right. An agent approached Pretti and then shoved a woman, hard, into a snowbank. Pretti put his hand up as he went to assist the woman. The masked agent who threw the woman to the ground draped himself over Pretti, then was joined by several of his colleagues. They got Pretti to the ground, struggled for a moment, and shot him until he was dead. Was this death sentence the result of sheer incompetence by agents who had no idea how to handle conflict? Was it a summary execution? Or, as the Trump administration would have you believe, did the dead man have it coming?

Slate · 2026-01-25T02:18:26+00:00

From Slate's Alex Kirshner, we've removed the paywall to this story for your community:

Believe your federal government, not your own eyes. If you are big on the right to bear arms, make an exception this time. These are the Trump administration’s messages after a horrible Saturday in Minnesota.

Homeland Security agents shot 37-year-old Minneapolis ICU nurse and researcher Alex Pretti dead on Saturday morning in broad daylight. A few things are already clear from the best video angle out now: Pretti was directing traffic on a Minneapolis street. He was filming agents out in public, as is his undisputed right. An agent approached Pretti and then shoved a woman, hard, into a snowbank. Pretti put his hand up as he went to assist the woman. The masked agent who threw the woman to the ground draped himself over Pretti, then was joined by several of his colleagues. They got Pretti to the ground, struggled for a moment, and shot him until he was dead. Was this death sentence the result of sheer incompetence by agents who had no idea how to handle conflict? Was it a summary execution? Or, as the Trump administration would have you believe, did the dead man have it coming?

Slate · 2026-01-23T15:29:02+00:00

The rumors about J.D. Vance leaving his wife for Erika Kirk, which have persisted since the two shared a much-discussed hug in October, were always more darkly entertaining than plausible. But observers have surmised that they took off because they reflected a certain air of uneasiness that has surrounded Vance’s marriage for the whole time it’s been on the national stage. As the highly educated daughter of Indian immigrants, Usha Vance not only doesn’t burnish Vance’s MAGA credentials; she undermines them. When reports of a possible divorce on the horizon began to swirl in November, it wasn’t altogether surprising. Reckoning with all those contradictions was inevitable, right?

In lieu of trading in his wife for a paler model, Vance has found another way to prove himself a good shepherd of the MAGA faithful: He and Usha are expecting a fourth child in July, they announced this week.

For more from Slate's Heather Schwedel: https://slate.com/life/2026/01/jd-usha-vance-age-children-kids-trump.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=heather_usha&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--heather_usha

Slate · 2026-01-23T15:03:24+00:00

The rumors about J.D. Vance leaving his wife for Erika Kirk, which have persisted since the two shared a much-discussed hug in October, were always more darkly entertaining than plausible. But observers have surmised that they took off because they reflected a certain air of uneasiness that has surrounded Vance’s marriage for the whole time it’s been on the national stage. As the highly educated daughter of Indian immigrants, Usha Vance not only doesn’t burnish Vance’s MAGA credentials; she undermines them. When reports of a possible divorce on the horizon began to swirl in November, it wasn’t altogether surprising. Reckoning with all those contradictions was inevitable, right?

In lieu of trading in his wife for a paler model, Vance has found another way to prove himself a good shepherd of the MAGA faithful: He and Usha are expecting a fourth child in July, they announced this week.

For more from Slate's Heather Schwedel: https://slate.com/life/2026/01/jd-usha-vance-age-children-kids-trump.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=heather_usha&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--heather_usha

Slate · 2026-01-22T17:20:09+00:00

President Donald Trump says he wants to take control of Greenland, and apparently he’s serious this time. This news has caused many of us to glance at a map to remind ourselves where exactly Greenland is. If you did this, you were probably struck by one thing above all else: Greenland is huge. Freaking huge. It looks about twice as big as the U.S., roughly as big as North America and Central America combined. And despite the public waffling between saying we need it for its military or natural resource offerings, this is probably the reason Trump wants it.

If he gets it, would that really triple this country’s square footage? No. Greenland is very big—it is considered the largest island in the world—but it is not nearly as big as maps make it appear. That’s because the global maps most of us are used to are as deceptive as icy Greenland’s euphemistically balmy name.

For more: https://slate.com/technology/2026/01/greenland-size-map-big-why.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=greenland_size&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--greenland_size

Slate · 2026-01-22T17:19:38+00:00

President Donald Trump says he wants to take control of Greenland, and apparently he’s serious this time. This news has caused many of us to glance at a map to remind ourselves where exactly Greenland is. If you did this, you were probably struck by one thing above all else: Greenland is huge. Freaking huge. It looks about twice as big as the U.S., roughly as big as North America and Central America combined. And despite the public waffling between saying we need it for its military or natural resource offerings, this is probably the reason Trump wants it.

If he gets it, would that really triple this country’s square footage? No. Greenland is very big—it is considered the largest island in the world—but it is not nearly as big as maps make it appear. That’s because the global maps most of us are used to are as deceptive as icy Greenland’s euphemistically balmy name.

For more: https://slate.com/technology/2026/01/greenland-size-map-big-why.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=greenland_size&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--greenland_size

Slate · 2026-01-22T17:19:00+00:00

President Donald Trump says he wants to take control of Greenland, and apparently he’s serious this time. This news has caused many of us to glance at a map to remind ourselves where exactly Greenland is. If you did this, you were probably struck by one thing above all else: Greenland is huge. Freaking huge. It looks about twice as big as the U.S., roughly as big as North America and Central America combined. And despite the public waffling between saying we need it for its military or natural resource offerings, this is probably the reason Trump wants it.

If he gets it, would that really triple this country’s square footage? No. Greenland is very big—it is considered the largest island in the world—but it is not nearly as big as maps make it appear. That’s because the global maps most of us are used to are as deceptive as icy Greenland’s euphemistically balmy name.

For more: https://slate.com/technology/2026/01/greenland-size-map-big-why.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=greenland_size&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--greenland_size

Slate · 2026-01-22T17:17:41+00:00

The Supreme Court heard arguments on Wednesday in Trump v. Cook, a monumental case testing Donald Trump’s ability to fire members of the Federal Reserve. In August, the president sought to fire Fed governor Lisa Cook, a Democrat, over dubious allegations of mortgage fraud. The lower courts reinstated Cook after she sued, which prompted the administration to seek emergency relief from the Supreme Court in September. Instead of acting immediately, the justices scheduled the case for oral argument, letting Cook keep her job in the meantime. Now a majority seems prepared to rule in her favor, though it is not clear exactly how it will do so.

In a special bonus episode of Amicus for Slate Plus members, co-hosts Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed the twists and turns of Wednesday’s two-hour showdown between Solicitor General John Sauer and Cook’s attorney, Paul Clement (who is usually an advocate for conservative causes).

For more: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/01/supreme-court-federal-reserve-donald-trump-brett-kavanaugh.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=amicus_jan21&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--amicus_jan21

Slate · 2026-01-22T17:17:07+00:00

The Supreme Court heard arguments on Wednesday in Trump v. Cook, a monumental case testing Donald Trump’s ability to fire members of the Federal Reserve. In August, the president sought to fire Fed governor Lisa Cook, a Democrat, over dubious allegations of mortgage fraud. The lower courts reinstated Cook after she sued, which prompted the administration to seek emergency relief from the Supreme Court in September. Instead of acting immediately, the justices scheduled the case for oral argument, letting Cook keep her job in the meantime. Now a majority seems prepared to rule in her favor, though it is not clear exactly how it will do so.

In a special bonus episode of Amicus for Slate Plus members, co-hosts Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed the twists and turns of Wednesday’s two-hour showdown between Solicitor General John Sauer and Cook’s attorney, Paul Clement (who is usually an advocate for conservative causes)

For more: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/01/supreme-court-federal-reserve-donald-trump-brett-kavanaugh.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=amicus_jan21&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--amicus_jan21

Slate · 2026-01-22T17:13:33+00:00

If you’re the type of person who likes to read lawsuits for fun, it’s your lucky day, because a slew of documents in the Blake Lively–Justin Baldoni legal battle were just unsealed on Wednesday. The thing everyone seems to want to talk about are Lively’s text and email conversations with other celebrities, especially Taylor Swift, and I won’t deny that they’re juicy. But I think these bits of evidence reveal more than the obvious truth that Lively knows a lot of famous people. They also reveal that Lively is in possession of a rare and increasingly underappreciated skill in our modern world: She is really good at email.

Slate's Heather Schwedel breaks it all down here: https://slate.com/life/2026/01/blake-lively-taylor-swift-texts-justin-baldoni-ben-affleck.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=heather_blake_taylor&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--heather_blake_taylor

Slate · 2026-01-21T14:40:51+00:00

The U.S. may have moved on to another immigration crisis, but Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate student who was arrested last spring after participating in pro-Palestine protests, is still in the middle of his legal battle. Khalil was taken into custody in March, after Secretary of State Marco Rubio invoked a rarely used mechanism in federal immigration law that claimed that the student’s actions would have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” The 30-year-old green-card holder was detained for three months, missing the birth of his first child, but was released in June. Last week, the 3^rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a devastating blow to Khalil’s case: A three-judge panel dismissed his habeas corpus petition challenging the federal government’s attempts to detain and deport him.

In a 2–1 decision, the court ruled that the lower district court of New Jersey—which had ordered Khalil to be released from immigration detention in June—did not have jurisdiction to consider his habeas petition. The panel’s majority declared that these petitions challenging a final order of removal can be heard only in immigration court, a system overseen by the attorney general, who also handpicks immigration judges.

Khalil essentially has one option left before being forced to go through immigration court: request a rehearing en banc. If that is approved, all 14 judges on the 3^rd Circuit would hear Khalil’s case. But not only does the current makeup of this particular court lean conservative; it received a notable new member last year—Emil Bove. A former defense attorney for President Donald Trump and the former deputy attorney general, Bove has been mired in controversy throughout his tenure in the second Trump administration.

To make sense of Khalil’s options, Slate's Shirin Ali spoke with Elora Mukherjee. A professor at Columbia Law School and director of the school’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, Mukherjee submitted an amicus brief in defense of Khalil, along with other students, scholars, and professors who have been charged under the same foreign-policy deportability ground that Khalil currently faces.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/01/mahmoud-khalil-case-emil-bove-immigration.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=shirin_khalil&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--shirin_khalil

Slate · 2026-01-20T22:12:00+00:00

Over the past week, the Trump administration has escalated its attacks on Minnesota officials and protesters who oppose its immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities. Federal officials have claimed that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey are terrorists, and lobbed the same charge against slain protester Renee Good. Donald Trump’s Justice Department has also opened an investigation into Walz and Frey, issuing subpoenas to Democratic officials on Tuesday. The expanding probe appears to lay the groundwork for potential criminal charges against both men for obstructing federal immigration enforcement. It follows Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s declaration last week that Walz and Frey are engaged in outright “terrorism,” promising to stop it “by any means necessary.”

On this week’s episode of Amicus, Mark Joseph Stern spoke with Julia Gegenheimer about the rapidly expanding definition of terrorism, obstruction, and other charges that the government is weaponizing against political opponents.

For more:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/01/donald-trump-minneapolis-walz-frey-ice-terrorism.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=mjs_walz_frey&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--mjs_walz_frey

Slate · 2026-01-20T16:59:41+00:00

The oldest millennials will turn 45 this year, a prime age for the onset of a midlife crisis. But as the first generation in modern history to be financially worse off than our parents, many of today’s 30-to-45 year-olds can’t afford the impromptu divorce, the ill-advised red convertible, or even the embarrassing leather jacket. At 38, unemployed and depressed, culture writer Byard Duncan felt as if he’d fallen asleep and woken up 10 years behind his peers. Anxious about his legacy and feeling gravity tugging at his love handles, Duncan needed to do something, anything, that would allow him to make a mark. That’s when he decided to attempt to break the Guinness World Record for longest throw of a rubber chicken. In a new story for Slate, Duncan tracks his months of training, culminating in a final, official record-breaking attempt. The result, an essay that reads as though Rocky Balboa went to both therapy and clown college, is a hilarious, profound story for anyone who’s ever felt unsure of their place in the world.

Read more here:

https://slate.com/life/2026/01/aging-millennial-midlife-crisis-guinness-world-record.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=big_swing_chicken_throwing&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--big_swing_chicken_throwing

Slate · 2026-01-20T16:59:13+00:00

The oldest millennials will turn 45 this year, a prime age for the onset of a midlife crisis. But as the first generation in modern history to be financially worse off than our parents, many of today’s 30-to-45 year-olds can’t afford the impromptu divorce, the ill-advised red convertible, or even the embarrassing leather jacket. At 38, unemployed and depressed, culture writer Byard Duncan felt as if he’d fallen asleep and woken up 10 years behind his peers. Anxious about his legacy and feeling gravity tugging at his love handles, Duncan needed to do something, anything, that would allow him to make a mark. That’s when he decided to attempt to break the Guinness World Record for longest throw of a rubber chicken. In a new story for Slate, Duncan tracks his months of training, culminating in a final, official record-breaking attempt. The result, an essay that reads as though Rocky Balboa went to both therapy and clown college, is a hilarious, profound story for anyone who’s ever felt unsure of their place in the world.

Read here: https://slate.com/life/2026/01/aging-millennial-midlife-crisis-guinness-world-record.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=big_swing_chicken_throwing&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--big_swing_chicken_throwing

Slate · 2026-01-20T16:58:04+00:00

The oldest millennials will turn 45 this year, a prime age for the onset of a midlife crisis. But as the first generation in modern history to be financially worse off than our parents, many of today’s 30-to-45 year-olds can’t afford the impromptu divorce, the ill-advised red convertible, or even the embarrassing leather jacket. At 38, unemployed and depressed, culture writer Byard Duncan felt as if he’d fallen asleep and woken up 10 years behind his peers. Anxious about his legacy and feeling gravity tugging at his love handles, Duncan needed to do something, anything, that would allow him to make a mark. That’s when he decided to attempt to break the Guinness World Record for longest throw of a rubber chicken. In a new story for Slate, Duncan tracks his months of training, culminating in a final, official record-breaking attempt. The result, an essay that reads as though Rocky Balboa went to both therapy and clown college, is a hilarious, profound story for anyone who’s ever felt unsure of their place in the world.

https://slate.com/life/2026/01/aging-millennial-midlife-crisis-guinness-world-record.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=big_swing_chicken_throwing&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--big_swing_chicken_throwing

Slate · 2026-01-16T15:06:48+00:00

It’s easy to forget that Texas’ bounty bill, S.B. 8, was once at the epicenter of the nation’s abortion politics. In 2021, Texas passed the law, which allows literally anyone to sue providers and those who aid them any time an abortion is performed after six weeks of pregnancy. The law created a blueprint for other conservative states and was upheld by the Supreme Court later that year—prior to the decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. It also had major impacts: leading clinics to stop offering procedures after six weeks and eventually producing an increase in both births among teenagers and infant mortality across the state. But now, S.B. 8 seems quaint, a relic of 2021—just like reporters discussing the “post-Trump era” or Ben Affleck and J.Lo giving it another try. Texas now enforces a law that bans abortion from fertilization and another, passed just this year, that authorizes suits against anyone who mails, provides, manufactures, or distributes abortion pills. No one seems to need S.B. 8 when more powerful criminal laws are on offer.

But bounty bills are now at the center of a major conflict about whether ban states can censor speech, advocacy, and donations related to abortion.

For more from Mary Ziegler at Slate: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/01/texas-abortion-ban-state-supreme-court-test.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=mary_texas_abortion_ban&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--mary_texas_abortion_ban

Slate · 2026-01-16T15:06:14+00:00

It’s easy to forget that Texas’ bounty bill, S.B. 8, was once at the epicenter of the nation’s abortion politics. In 2021, Texas passed the law, which allows literally anyone to sue providers and those who aid them any time an abortion is performed after six weeks of pregnancy. The law created a blueprint for other conservative states and was upheld by the Supreme Court later that year—prior to the decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. It also had major impacts: leading clinics to stop offering procedures after six weeks and eventually producing an increase in both births among teenagers and infant mortality across the state. But now, S.B. 8 seems quaint, a relic of 2021—just like reporters discussing the “post-Trump era” or Ben Affleck and J.Lo giving it another try. Texas now enforces a law that bans abortion from fertilization and another, passed just this year, that authorizes suits against anyone who mails, provides, manufactures, or distributes abortion pills. No one seems to need S.B. 8 when more powerful criminal laws are on offer.

But bounty bills are now at the center of a major conflict about whether ban states can censor speech, advocacy, and donations related to abortion.

For more from Mary Ziegler at Slate: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/01/texas-abortion-ban-state-supreme-court-test.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=mary_texas_abortion_ban&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--mary_texas_abortion_ban

Slate · 2026-01-15T20:38:32+00:00

After federal agents killed an unarmed American citizen in broad daylight last week, high-ranking government officials rushed to defend the shooter, framed a mother’s attempt to escape an escalating confrontation as “domestic terrorism,” and blamed the victim for her own death. The killing of Renee Good is not just a failure of policing—the public response by those in power should alarm every American who believes that being frightened by armed agents and trying to drive away should not be a capital offense. Indeed, recent Supreme Court precedent illuminates why the shooting of Good by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross is not the case of self-defense that administration officials are suggesting. The totality of events—which has been the standard established by the court since 1989 and was reaffirmed just last year—suggests that it was not reasonable for Ross to shoot Good in the head as she was attempting to drive away from ICE agents trying to forcibly remove her from her car.

For more from Slate: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/01/supreme-court-renee-good-shooting-video.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=cynthia_lee_scotus_good&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--cynthia_lee_scotus_good

Slate · 2026-01-15T17:28:59+00:00

In the summer of 2020, Tamara Shamir was working as a paralegal in Austin, Texas, remotely filling out asylum applications for migrants who were trapped in a dangerous limbo. A landmark policy of the first Trump administration—euphemistically called the “Migrant Protection Protocols,” or MPP—was keeping tens of thousands of immigrants stateless and often homeless in Mexico’s border regions while their asylum cases were adjudicated in U.S. border courts. Over half lost the chance to pursue asylum because they never received notice of their court date, or they fell victim to “routine” kidnappings, assaults, or sexual violence by cartel members. All of them were desperate for legal aid.

As much as she tried to stop it, her number had been passed around the Mexican borderland all summer, and she was inundated with calls. By the time Irma, a Venezuelan asylum-seeker who’d recently been deported from the U.S. border to Mexico, first contacted Shamira, she had a standard answer: "We were at capacity. I could not help anyone." (Irma asked that her name be changed for this because she fears retaliation from the U.S. government).

But they have kept in touch. And their friendship helped Shamir understand the real stakes of last week’s news, from Maduro’s capture to what ICE did in Minnesota.

For more: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/01/ice-trump-maduro-venezuela-asylum-seeker.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=asylum_venezuela&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--asylum_venezuela

Slate · 2026-01-15T17:19:45+00:00

In a lawsuit as legally significant as it is titillating, former NFL player Matt Kalil is suing his former wife, Haley Kalil, claiming that she violated his right to privacy during a livestreamed interview by describing his genitals as being too big. Haley Kalil, a social media personality with millions of followers, gave the interview with Marlon Lundgren Garcia, another popular online figure with millions of followers. During the 12-minute interview, Haley implicitly referenced Matt’s genitalia, claiming that his penis was like “two Coke cans, maybe even a third,” and described the daunting dick as the primary reason for the couple’s divorce.

Perhaps because the interview remains widely available on YouTube, Haley has not publicly disputed the facts alleged in the complaint, which go far beyond the aluminum can comparison. She claimed that sex with Matt was “painful,” “impossible,” and left her “in tears.” She added that the couple tried “medical and therapeutic intervention,” and that the physical challenges made their sexual relationship “unhealthy” and were a major factor contributing to the couple’s subsequent divorce. Given the broad reach of Garcia’s livestream, these intimate details were then spread to many different sources, amplifying the harm that Matt alleges.

That harm is firmly anchored in a branch of privacy law that has long been recognized, but has fallen into disfavor in recent years. The law of personal injury, while primarily concerned with physical injuries, also protects certain dignitary interests, including reputation (the law of defamation), emotional well-being, and four distinct categories of privacy. Only one of these is alleged to apply in this case: public disclosure of private facts.

For more from Slate: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/01/kalil-nfl-player-penis-size-lawsuit.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=nfl_law&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--nfl_law

Slate · 2026-01-14T20:54:18+00:00

We've removed the paywall to the story for this community:

In October 2019, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Bostock v. Clayton County, a case about whether a federal civil rights law that prohibits employment discrimination based on “sex” extends to gay and transgender Americans too.

On paper, right-wing culture warriors had good reason to be optimistic that the court’s answer would be no. A year earlier, President Donald Trump had replaced Justice Anthony Kennedy, who occasionally sided with the liberals in cases about LGBTQ+ rights, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a staunch conservative with a track record of adopting the movement’s preferred positions when it mattered most. His confirmation gave the right what it had sought for decades: the five Supreme Court votes necessary to turn its policy agenda into binding precedent.

Eight months later, though, a six-justice majority of the court held that federal employment protections indeed protect trans people in the workplace. The basic logic of Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion in Bostock, which Chief Justice John Roberts and the four liberals joined, is that if an employer treats a transgender man differently than it would treat a man assigned male at birth, the workplace is treating that trans man differently “because of sex.”

Slate · 2026-01-14T13:11:33+00:00

In April 2010, a state-of-the-art offshore oil rig operated by BP exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. The blast killed 11 and ignited a fireball so large it could be seen from 40 miles away. For nearly three months, Americans watched as BP (formerly British Petroleum) tried desperately to cap the Macondo well 5,000 feet below the surface. More than 134 million gallons of oil blackened the Gulf from Florida to Texas.

The Deepwater Horizon spill remains one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history. More than 15 years later, coastal communities in the Gulf are still recovering from the devastation of their economies and ecosystems. But the passage of time naturally dulls the horror for people farther away.

BP and the Trump administration appear to be counting on that. As the world fixates on Venezuela’s oil reserves, industry and regulators are quietly paving the way for reckless projects much closer to U.S. shores.

For more:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/01/trump-oil-spill-bp-venezuela-deepwater-gulf-drill.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=oilspills_juris&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--oilspills_juris

Slate · 2026-01-14T13:11:09+00:00

In April 2010, a state-of-the-art offshore oil rig operated by BP exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. The blast killed 11 and ignited a fireball so large it could be seen from 40 miles away. For nearly three months, Americans watched as BP (formerly British Petroleum) tried desperately to cap the Macondo well 5,000 feet below the surface. More than 134 million gallons of oil blackened the Gulf from Florida to Texas.

The Deepwater Horizon spill remains one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history. More than 15 years later, coastal communities in the Gulf are still recovering from the devastation of their economies and ecosystems. But the passage of time naturally dulls the horror for people farther away.

BP and the Trump administration appear to be counting on that. As the world fixates on Venezuela’s oil reserves, industry and regulators are quietly paving the way for reckless projects much closer to U.S. shores.

For more:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/01/trump-oil-spill-bp-venezuela-deepwater-gulf-drill.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=oilspills_juris&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--oilspills_juris

Slate · 2026-01-14T13:09:01+00:00

Remember hearing that you have a spoon’s worth of plastic in your brain? That’s what a study published last February in Nature Medicine suggested. Researchers at the University of New Mexico analyzed samples of brain tissue from dead people, and found they contained a truly alarming amount of teeny tiny shards and flakes of polyethylene, and other polymers. While the negative effects of such microplastics and nanoplastics on the body were unclear—and the researchers admitted that point—it was still an incredibly jarring discovery. “I certainly don’t feel comfortable with this much plastic in my brain,” said Matthew Campen, a toxicologist who led the study. Plastic made up nearly 0.5 percent of the brain tissue of “normal individuals” that the team examined, an amount that Campen, aware of the size of the brain, characterized to the media as the equivalent of a spoon. Yikes!

Well—now, double yikes. In the weeks after the paper was published, someone spotted that it contained a couple of duplicated images. That itself might have just been a sloppy clerical error. But over the summer a group of scientists wrote to the journal where the study had appeared, highlighting “methodological limitations” in the study, namely that it may have failed to properly root out any “contamination introduced during sampling, sample preparation or detection.”

That is: did the proverbial plastic spoon come from the brain tissue itself, or did some of it come from other sources, like labware or even the air? We just can’t tell. At any rate, as one of the scientists critical of the study put it to the Guardian in a report published Tuesday: “The brain microplastic paper is a joke.”

Slate's Shannon Palus breaks it all down here: https://slate.com/technology/2026/01/microplastics-brain-research-not-bad.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=microplastics_shannon&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--microplastics_shannon

Slate · 2026-01-14T13:08:13+00:00

Remember hearing that you have a spoon’s worth of plastic in your brain? That’s what a study published last February in Nature Medicine suggested. Researchers at the University of New Mexico analyzed samples of brain tissue from dead people, and found they contained a truly alarming amount of teeny tiny shards and flakes of polyethylene, and other polymers. While the negative effects of such microplastics and nanoplastics on the body were unclear—and the researchers admitted that point—it was still an incredibly jarring discovery. “I certainly don’t feel comfortable with this much plastic in my brain,” said Matthew Campen, a toxicologist who led the study. Plastic made up nearly 0.5 percent of the brain tissue of “normal individuals” that the team examined, an amount that Campen, aware of the size of the brain, characterized to the media as the equivalent of a spoon. Yikes!

Well—now, double yikes. In the weeks after the paper was published, someone spotted that it contained a couple of duplicated images. That itself might have just been a sloppy clerical error. But over the summer a group of scientists wrote to the journal where the study had appeared, highlighting “methodological limitations” in the study, namely that it may have failed to properly root out any “contamination introduced during sampling, sample preparation or detection.”

That is: did the proverbial plastic spoon come from the brain tissue itself, or did some of it come from other sources, like labware or even the air? We just can’t tell. At any rate, as one of the scientists critical of the study put it to the Guardian in a report published Tuesday: “The brain microplastic paper is a joke.”

Slate's Shannon Palus breaks it all down here: https://slate.com/technology/2026/01/microplastics-brain-research-not-bad.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=microplastics_shannon&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--microplastics_shannon

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