The instances detailed in the reports from the EPA’s inspector general pertain to situations where the employees who were victims of alleged retaliation thought chemicals should be considered more toxic while top officials sought to consider them safer.  In one such case, EPA scientist Sarah Gallagher says she thought the agency should consider the chemical as toxic to fetal development while another official wanted to classify it as a lower-priority body...

One of the seminal moments of presidential debates came in a 1980 tussle between the Republican challenger and the Democrat incumbent. Challenging Jimmy Carter’s record as part of his closing statement , Ronald Reagan asked: “Are you better off than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago?” Last Tuesday, in the very first question of her first presidential debate, Kamala Harris was asked that very thing — are Americans better...

Scores of Jews from around the world are visiting Israel to tour the grounds of the Nova music festival and burned out kibbutzim, bearing witness and reflecting on the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. The trips are shoring up Israel’s tourism industry after the war brought it to an abrupt halt—but critics say the narrow focus on this tragedy pushes the suffering of Gazans to the periphery, even as bombs drop less than 10 miles away from the tourists. Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access...

Iranian hackers stole sensitive information from the Trump campaign earlier this summer and emailed it to individuals affiliated with the Biden campaign, U.S. investigators revealed Wednesday. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI and CISA released a statement saying the emails were sent in June and July and "contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump's campaign."

When immigration opponents make the case for closing the country's borders, one common argument is the costs that immigrants incur. But recent statistics throw cold water on those claims, finding that the foreign-born actually use fewer public health dollars than people born in the U.S. "Immigrant households have much higher use of…Medicaid (42 percent vs. 23 percent)" than native-born households, according to a 2015 report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). "Prior research...

Israeli officials announced Thursday the arrest of an Israeli man whom Iran recruited to carry out assassination plots against top Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The individual was identified as Moti Maman, 73. He was indicted Thursday, after which Shin Bet, Israel’s security agency, and Israeli police revealed it publicly. Maman was arrested after committing security offenses involving his contact with Iran. Maman was smuggled into Iran twice, according to...

Two years after former President Richard M. Nixon launched a war on drugs in 1971, calling substance use the nation’s “public enemy No. 1,” he made a startling admission during a meeting in the Oval Office. Speaking to a small group of aides and advisers at the White House in March 1973, Nixon said he knew that marijuana was “not particularly dangerous.” Nixon, who had publicly argued that curbing drug use globally warranted an “all-out offensive,” also privately expressed unease...

enator John Kennedy has sparked a backlash after he told an Arab American activist to "hide [her] head in a bag" during a hearing about hate crimes. Maya Berry, the founder of the Arab American Institute, appeared before a Senate Judiciary hearing to discuss hate crimes in the country on Tuesday.

Why should humans do anything, if machines can do it better? The answer is crucial to the future of human civilization—and may just lie in religious texts from centuries ago. From the digital (Google searches and Slack chats) to the purely mechanical (washing machines and microwaves), humans use tools nearly constantly to enhance or replace our own labor. Those that save time and effort are easy to appreciate—I have yet to meet someone who misses scrubbing clothes by hand. But the rapid rise of...

Another unwell person sought to kill Donald Trump, according to the FBI and other officials. We should all be grateful that no one was hurt, and that the Secret Service and local law enforcement appear to have done their jobs properly. I’m also grateful to former President Trump for assigning blame for the foiled assassination attempt to Democratic rhetoric, specifically that of “Biden and Harris.” On Monday, he told Fox News Digital, “Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the...