As the year 2012 wound down, Democrats hopefully eyed what looked to be one of the last opportunities for genuine legislative progress in a divided government. The party had just stomped Republican Mitt Romney at the polls in a post-Occupy campaign that centered on economic inequality. Democrats picked up two seats in the Senate, expanding their majority to 53 and adding Elizabeth Warren to their ranks.

Joe Biden Says He Can Work With the Senate. The Last Time He Tried, Mitch McConnell Picked His Pockets Badly.

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News & Politics

President Donald Trump appears increasingly desperate to deflect questions about the flagrant abuse of power he seems to have committed this summer by withholding aid to Ukraine as he pressed that country’s new president to open an investigation into the false claim that Joe Biden abused his power as vice president to protect his son’s business interests in Ukraine in 2015.

Reporters Should Stop Helping Donald Trump Spread Lies About Joe Biden and Ukraine

At the start of this year, more than 600 environmental groups — including Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and Sunrise Movement — sent a letter to Congress saying they will “vigorously oppose” federal climate legislation that promotes “corporate schemes” like carbon-capture and storage. Congress was not chastened.

The Environmental Left Is Softening on Carbon-Capture Technology. Maybe That’s OK.

The chemical caused lab rats to lose weight. When pregnant rats were exposed to it, their pups lost weight, too, and their pups’ skulls, ribs, and pelvises tended to develop abnormally. The compound, referred to by the number “647-42-7” in Environmental Protection Agency records, also caused discoloration of the teeth, increased liver weights, decreased how much their infants nursed,and lowered the animals’ red blood cell counts.

EPA Allowed Companies to Make 40 New PFAS Chemicals Despite Serious Risks

Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir — On the eve of Eid al-Adha last month, 17-year-old Asrar Khan lay in a vegetative state at Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, a hospital in downtown Srinagar, Kashmir’s largest city. The unconscious teenager was barely hanging on to life, connected to a ventilator and blinded in one eye — the result, his family says, of pellet injuries at the hands of India’s armed forces.

Mourning and Resistance in Kashmir After India Revoked the State’s Special Status

Over a century before we reached the brink of ecological catastrophe, Rabindranath Tagore had a glimpse of where we might be headed. Tagore, an Indian author and cultural reformer who lived during the period of British colonialism, was among the last of a generation able to examine the industrialized world from the outside.

Joe Biden Says He Can Work With the Senate. The Last Time He Tried, Mitch McConnell Picked His Pockets Badly.

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