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A top Republican donor said he had paused plans to fund Ron DeSantis’s expected presidential run because of the Florida governor’s “stance on abortion and book banning”.Thomas Peterffy, founder of Interactive Brokers, a digital trading platform, told the Financial Times: “I have put myself on hold. Because of his stance on abortion and book banning … myself, and a bunch of friends, are holding our powder dry.”Peterffy also noted that DeSantis “seems to have lost some momentum”.DeSantis has not declared a run but is widely expected to do so. He is the closest challenger to Donald Trump in polling of the Republican primary field but despite winning re-election in a landslide and signing into law a succession of hard-right policies, he has not closed on the former president.Last week, DeSantis signed a six-week abortion ban. Nationally, Democrats seized on the move, threats to abortion rights having worked to Republicans’ disadvantage in numerous recent elections.DeSantis has also tried to remove books dealing with LGBTQ+ issues from Florida public schools, while other laws have loosened gun rights and targeted Black voters.After Peterffy’s intervention, the New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, a leading voice on Trump and Republican electoral politics, noted: “A major donor finally goes on record with what has been a whisper: donors are getting worried.”But as Haberman also noted, Peterffy still gave himself “a lot of wiggle room to resume with DeSantis without fully breaking from him”.Peterffy said he still supported DeSantis in his fight with Disney, one of the largest employers in Florida, over LGBTQ+ rights.The company has pushed back against DeSantis over a “don’t say gay” law pertaining to the teaching of sexuality and gender in public schools.DeSantis retaliated by attacking Disney’s self-governing powers in the state. The entertainment giant responded, seeking to block the move.Petterfy said: “I think it’s insane that a company would take a stand on gender issues.”Nor did he say he would not support DeSantis at all.“I am more reluctant to back him,” he said. “We are waiting to see who among the primary candidates is most likely to be able to win the general, and then put all of our firepower behind them.” More

Congress can no longer ignore the needs of the working class of this country. At a time of massive and growing income and wealth inequality and record-breaking corporate profits, we must stand up for working families – many of whom are struggling every day to provide a minimal standard of living for their families.One important way to do that is to raise the federal minimum wage to a living wage. In the year 2023, nobody in the US should be forced to work for starvation wages. It should be a basic truism that in the US, the richest country on earth, if you work 40 hours a week you do not live in poverty. Raising the minimum wage is not only the right thing to do morally. It is also good economics. Putting money into the hands of people who will spend it on basic needs is a strong economic stimulant.When over 60% of American workers are now living paycheck to paycheck, when the life expectancy of low-income Americans is in decline, when we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country, we can no longer tolerate a federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, a wage that has not been raised since 2009. Incredibly, the federal minimum wage has lost over 27% of its purchasing power since it was last raised 14 years ago. That is unacceptable. Millions of Americans cannot be allowed to fall further and further behind economically, unable to afford the housing, food, healthcare, childcare and education they desperately need in order to live in health and dignity.Whether they are greeting us at Walmart, serving us hamburgers at McDonald’s, providing childcare for our kids or waiting on our table at a diner in rural America, there are too many Americans trying to survive and raise families on $9, $10 or $12 an hour. It cannot be done. This injustice must end. Low-income workers need a pay raise and the American people want them to get that raise.Poll after poll shows overwhelming support for raising the minimum wage to a living wage. But it’s not just polls. In 2021, the Democratic majority in the US House of Representatives voted to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour. The bad news is that we lacked the votes to pass this legislation through the equally divided Senate. Not only did a $15-an-hour minimum wage bill fail to win the vote of a single Republican in the Senate, eight Democrats voted against it as well.That was then. Now is now. And things are changing. As a result of years of congressional inaction, cities and states all across the country are taking the low-wage crisis into their own hands and raising their minimum wage. Some are doing it through legislative action. Others are doing it through ballot initiatives.Since 2013, the people of 12 states – New Jersey, South Dakota, Arkansas (twice), Alaska, Washington, Maine, Colorado, Arizona, Missouri, Florida, Nevada and Nebraska (twice) – have voted on ballot initiatives to raise their state’s minimum wage. Every single one of these initiatives passed, none with less than 55% of the vote. And these are not just strong “blue states” voting for economic justice. In the recent November 2022 midterm election, two states that voted in Republican governors, Nebraska and Nevada, voted to raise the minimum wage. In 2020, the citizens of Florida, with a Republican governor and two Republican senators, also voted to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.The MIT living wage calculator estimates a living wage as a salary that is adequate enough to support a family without luxuries. For two working adults and one child, a living hourly wage for each adult would be $18.69 in West Virginia, $17.55 in South Carolina, $21.57 in Maryland, $20.01 in Utah and $19.33 in Wisconsin. Even in my own state of Vermont, the living wage is $19.58, more than $6 above the current state minimum wage.But there are many families that do not have two working adults and rely on single moms who are raising their children on their own. In that case, the required living wage is much higher. As an example, a single mother in West Virginia would need to make $33.39 an hour to support herself and one child.So it is not radical to suggest that raising the minimum wage to $17 an hour over a period of several years is the right thing to do. In fact, had my 2015 bill to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour that was indexed to median wages became law, the federal minimum wage this January would be at least $17.40 an hour. And while we deal with the minimum wage, we must also address the scandal of the tipped wage, which has been stuck at an abysmally low $2.13 an hour for more than 30 years thanks, in large part, to the powerful restaurant lobby which has spent millions in campaign contributions and lobbying expenses since 1991 to keep workers in poverty.Together, these two proposals would provide an increase in pay for tens of millions of desperate Americans – disproportionately women and people of color. It would also be a huge boost to single moms. Let us not forget that these are the essential workers who kept the economy going during the worst of the Covid pandemic. At that time we called them heroes and heroines. Well, rhetorical praise is nice. A livable paycheck is better. Let’s do it.
Bernie Sanders is a US senator from Vermont and the chair of the Senate committee on health, education, labor and pensions More

Top Democratic senators across the US are pushing back after a federal judge in Texas decided to block the FDA-approved abortion drug mifepristone.On Sunday, the New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand criticized as an “outrage” Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s decision, which is currently halted until at least Wednesday 19 April by the supreme court.Speaking to CNN, Gillibrand said: “To take away the right to have medicine is an extension of taking away this right to privacy, to say we can’t have medicine sent by doctors by mail to people across the country is further invading into this right to privacy, where the court and government has a right to what’s in your mail, and who you’re talking to and what communications you’re having. It’s an outrage.”She went on to condemn the supreme court, which in June 2022 decided to overturn Roe v Wade, a ruling that declared the constitutional right to an abortion for nearly half a century.Gillibrand said the supreme court’s decision was an “all-out assault on women’s reproductive freedom,” adding: “What we are seeing in these Republican legislatures as well as these very conservative courts is a continuation of that assault.”Similarly, the Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar called Kacsmaryk’s decision “unbelievable”.“What is going to be next? Is that judge going to not like birth control pills? Are we going to have a judge that doesn’t like [cholesterol medication] Lipitor? There’s a reason that Congress gave the FDA the power to make these decisions about safety,” Klobuchar told ABC.“I can tell you who is harmed by this. It’s women that are going to have to take a bus across the country from Texas to Minnesota or to Illinois. That’s the problem right now,” she added, pledging to “aggressively litigate” the ruling if the supreme court decides to uphold it.The Wisconsin senator Tammy Baldwin, meanwhile, said that Kacsmaryk “is not guided by science”.“What we have in Texas is a judge who is not guided by science, but is part of an extreme Republican concerted effort to ban abortion nationwide,” Baldwin told NBC.“We do not need judges, politicians or government telling women about what sort of healthcare they can have. It is an issue that is not only playing out in the court in Texas, but in the state of Florida, with the governor signing a near six-week ban, Idaho forbidding travel out of state for minors, Wisconsin where we’ve gone back to literally 1849. That is the date our criminal abortion ban was passed and that’s 174 years ago,” Baldwin said.Last month, Baldwin and the Connecticut senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, led the introduction of the Women’s Health Protection Act of 2023, which would safeguard abortion rights nationwide and “restore the right to comprehensive reproductive healthcare for millions of Americans”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFollowing Kacsmaryk’s ruling, the justice department and the drug’s manufacturer, Danco Laboratories, asked the supreme court to intervene in an attempt to halt the restrictions, which would have limited mifepristone’s use after seven weeks of pregnancy as well as ban mail delivery of the drug. Mifepristone is currently approved until 10 weeks.On Friday, the conservative supreme court justice Samuel Alito temporarily blocked the Texas lower court ruling and instead imposed on to it a five-day stay, allowing the justices more time to decide on their next steps.Alito’s move allows for the country’s most common method of pregnancy termination to remain unchanged until at least the end of Wednesday.Despite nationwide outrage from progressive lawmakers and reproductive rights activists, conservative lawmakers have defended the growing wave of various abortion bans.In an interview on Sunday with NBC, the Republican senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana said reactions to the Texas ruling are “totally alarmist”.“It’s totally alarmist. And by the way, when did the FDA think they could go above the law?” Cassidy said, adding: “Dobbs, I think, was the correct decision,” in reference to the supreme court’s overturning of federal abortion rights last year.Cassidy’s comments come two days after Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, signed into law a six-week abortion ban across the state, which currently has a 15-week ban. More

Senator Lindsey Graham condemned his fellow Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene as “terribly irresponsible” on Sunday, after the far-right congresswoman defended the air national guardsman charged with leaking Pentagon intelligence documents.Speaking on ABC’s This Week show, Graham said the leaks had “done a lot of damage to our standing” and criticized “those who are trying to sugarcoat this on the right”.Taylor Greene, a known conspiracy theorist and election denier who was controversially named to the homeland security committee in January, had suggested on Thursday that Jack Teixeira, an airman in the air national guard who has been charged under the Espionage Act after allegedly leaking hundreds of secret defence documents, had been treated unfairly.“There are military members serving today from Georgia and other places who are less safe because of what this airman did,” Graham told ABC.“There is no justification for this, and for any member of Congress to suggest it’s OK to leak classified information because you agree with the cause is terribly irresponsible and puts America in serious danger.”Teixeira published at least 300 documents, according to reports, to the Discord messaging platform. Some of the documents included details on Ukraine’s defense capabilities, while others pointed to how US intelligence has infiltrated the Russian military and appeared to show US spying on close allies including Ukraine, South Korea and Israel.After Teixeira was arrested at his home in North Dighton, Massachusetts, on Thursday, Taylor Greene said he had been targeted by the government.“Teixeira is white, male, christian, and antiwar. That makes him an enemy to the Biden regime. And he told the truth about troops being on the ground in Ukraine and a lot more,” Greene, a congresswoman from Georgia, said on Twitter.“Ask yourself who is the real enemy? A young low level national guardsmen? Or the administration that is waging war in Ukraine, a non-Nato nation, against nuclear Russia without war powers?”Other rightwing figures have also defended Teixeira, with Tucker Carlson, the influential Fox News host, praising him as someone who “told Americans what’s actually happening in Ukraine”.Asked about Greene’s comments on Sunday, Graham said: “What they’re suggesting will destroy America’s ability to defend itself.”“That it’s OK to release classified information based on your political views. That the ends justify the means. It is not OK. If you’re a member of the military intelligence community and you disagree with American policy and you think you’re going to be OK when it comes to leaking classified information, you’re going to go to jail. It’s one of the most irresponsible statements you can make,” Graham said.He added: “There is no justification for this. And for any member of Congress to suggest it’s OK to leak classified information because you agree with the cause is terribly irresponsible. And puts America in serious danger.”Teixeira was charged in federal court in Boston on Friday with the unauthorized retention and transmission of national defense information, and the unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents.Each charge under the act can carry up to a 10-year prison term, and prosecutors could treat each leaked document as a separate count in his indictment. More

Last month state senator Aisha Wahab introduced SB 403, a historic bill that, if enacted, would make California the first state to ban caste-based discrimination in the US.Practiced for centuries in the Indian subcontinent, caste is an exclusionary system within the Hindu religion that divides people and determines their access to resources. Unlike class, caste is an ascribed status; there’s no mobility to move upwards. Generally, Brahmin communities are in the highest social order, whereas the Dalit community is at the bottom.Because of the fast-growing South Asian diaspora, caste has also manifested as a burning issue in the US. A 2018 survey conducted by Equity Labs – a leading US-based Dalit organization – found that two out of three workers reported facing caste prejudices at their workplace in the US. Several instances of discrimination against Dalit students and employees in elite universities and tech companies like Google with large South Asian populations have exposed the problem.In February, Seattle became the first city in the US and the first jurisdiction outside South Asia to ban caste-based discrimination. And in 2020, Brandeis University became the first university in the US to ban caste-based discrimination, followed by Harvard University, California State University, the University of California, Davis, and Brown University.Wahab, who represents the 10th district of California, which is home to a diverse Asian population, said including caste in the protected category and expanding the understanding of discrimination is essential given how diverse the country is becoming.“It’s not accurate to say that caste-based prejudices don’t exist in the United States,” Wahab said. “Caste is a taboo topic. Although I am not ethnically of the same community, still people have come and told me that ‘What you are doing, nobody in our community has the courage to do so.’”The first Afghan American and Muslim elected to the California state senate, Wahab has received support as well as hostility from community members after introducing the bill. Some people even organized protests against this bill.The Guardian interviewed Wahab about when she became aware of caste biases and what inspired her to write this legislation.The interview has been edited for clarity and length.When did you become aware of the caste biases that exist in South Asian communities?I learned about the caste system through public education. Community members in my district have told me how their parents married different people of different castes and their families weren’t accepting. Thus, they moved to the United States but were still discriminated against in the community surroundings.The truth is caste-based discrimination happens far more than people think and realize, especially considering that the caste system is more than 3,000 years old and is very much ingrained in so many people. I am hearing more about the biases as more people are talking about them. Some people have told me that they would have separate bathrooms at restaurants for people working versus the people owning the restaurants. Because of the caste system people are treated very differently and they are restricted by their families on whom they can marry. These are all the issues that are not talked about in the mainstream media and public.What inspired you to write and introduce this bill to ban caste-based discrimination?My district is largely diverse and hugely populated in the state of California. And a lot of issues regarding caste stemmed in my district. For example the Cisco situation, California State [University] East Bay situation and several other issues. Since more and more people would talk to me about it and explain some of the problems they were having, I just wanted to address this issue through this bill to protect people.Why do you think caste is an American issue now?America is getting more diverse. We are seeing more and more types of discrimination based on things that the United States has historically not had the depth to deal with. To say caste is not an American issue is incorrect. The more diverse the country becomes, the more we are going to see a surge of these kinds of prejudices. And we have already started seeing that. Just take the example of the Google case and several other cases happening in the Bay Area as well as across the country. Why did Seattle feel the need to ban caste-based discrimination? Why is Toronto also doing the same? Why is there such a big movement to tackle this issue? Because it’s happening. So we as policymakers want to be proactive and make sure that all people are protected regardless of where they come from or their background or anything like that.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionYou represent a district from Silicon Valley that is home to a growing South Asian population in the US. How long has caste been talked about as a political issue in this community?There are communities that have no idea what a caste system is. And there are other communities that are bringing this up as to why they are rejected from different opportunities whether it’s housing or jobs. I think caste is in discussion but it is a little taboo to talk about. In the United States most people try to pretend that there’s no caste prejudice here and everyone is living their best lives. But the truth is that people can only live their best lives when they are protected under United States law.What kind of support have you received from the South Asian communities regarding this bill?Every day I receive hundreds of calls and emails about this bill. People from different ethnic communities and different religious backgrounds have reached out to me and extended their support. I want to highlight that I personally feel great that people are finding the courage to speak out against what they have always believed was wrong but were too afraid to talk about. If this bill gives even a handful of people some freedom to live their own life, I will be really happy.You have also received violent threats from groups who are against this bill. What do you have to say about this?We have been hearing the arguments against the bill and some people are conflating religion with the caste movement, which is wrong. This bill is trying to primarily protect people against discrimination. Anybody who is opposed to this bill has some other motive because this bill is to help people. It’s not to cause harm and it will not.Also, it is interesting to me that the groups that tend to speak against this bill, the counterparts of the same religion, same ethnicity, same caste level, actually do support this bill. There are people on both sides of this argument.You have claimed that this bill is a civil rights bill, a workers’ bill, a women’s rights bill and a human rights bill. Can you further elaborate on this?This bill literally allows the people to live their life without the judgment of what caste, family or ancestry they belong to. It will add to the already protected categories of religion, ethnicity and gender. This bill is primarily to expand our law, and to protect our more and more diverse community members. More

In the 18th century, sexting was much more difficult. It had to be conducted by letter, of course, resulting in long delays and messages arriving out of order – particularly if you were on opposite sides of the Atlantic, as John and Abigail Adams were in the late 1770s.Incredibly, we now have a record of their attempts to exchange lewd notes, published this month in Alexandra Petri’s US History: Important American Documents (I Made Up). The Washington Post humor columnist takes us on a tour of centuries of US history, including a first-hand look at the Adamses struggling to confirm how many petticoats and long shirts have been removed at any point in a year-and-a-half-long correspondence, interrupted by concerns over the health of their cows and a particularly lascivious note from Benjamin Franklin.It’s one of dozens of very funny essays stretching from the arrival of Europeans in the Americas to the presidency of Donald Trump. At a time when many elected officials are seeking to rewrite history to make America look better, “why stop at saying slavery was not so bad or Andrew Jackson was a swell guy? Why not actually commit to the principle of the thing and insert all the bizarre documents that you think ought to be there?” Petri writes.“If you’re going to lie about the past, lie big!”Petri works in a huge variety of formats: letters, poetry, scripts, maps. Important early documents include a European’s guide to naming places: (Options: “name of king but put town on the end”, “New [place you just left]”, “your ethnic group, plural, but put ‘boro’ on the end”); a guide to toys for Puritan parents (“There is nothing silly about this putty. It is plain, functional putty that can be used to imprint passages of scripture”); and a more realistic take on the minutemen, titled The Hour Men, because what if you need snacks or misplace your musket?Later we witness the author and women’s rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton trapped in a romcom while planning the landmark Seneca Falls convention, “because whenever a work-oriented woman goes to a small town for any reason, the town tries to seize her and put her in a Hallmark romance”. Stanton knows she “really ought to work on the Declaration of Sentiments,” Petri writes. “But for the first time in her life, she was feeling sentiments rather than just declaring them.”There’s a record of what civil war photographers said to posing troops: “Say: ‘Everyone I love will soon be dead!’ But don’t say it with your mouth, say it with your eyes.’” And there are plenty of literary parodies, including musing on what Edgar Allan Poe’s work would have been like had he just had a good handyman – maybe that telltale heart could have been removed and the House of Usher could have remained standing – and a rewriting of Fahrenheit 451 that dares to ask how, if books are banned, there are still enough being printed for book-burners to have a full-time job.More recent documents include a record of what Nancy Reagan’s psychic began predicting after she realized her words were affecting policy: “A romantic partner continues to be receptive to your influence. Consider urging him to do something about the Aids crisis.”Visual elements feature a blend of Thoreau and a perennially missing man, in the form of “Where’s Walden?”, and a PowerPoint presentation by Nikola Tesla’s friends, concerned that the physicist is in love with a pigeon (which is something he actually admitted to, one of several genuine pieces of history I learned from this book).Petri’s writing is consistently witty and erudite without the slightest hint of pretentiousness, and her tone is generally jovial and upbeat. Most of the book will be accessible to anyone who paid attention in high school history class, though there are a few essays with prerequisites: a spoof of the writer Shirley Jackson, for instance, went over my head despite a dim memory that I was forced to read The Lottery somewhere along the line. As is generally the case with parody, the better you know the original, the funnier it will be.“If you’re going to lie, lie big.” But Petri’s lies spring from vast knowledge of the facts of US history. If you can make the 19th-century debate over monetary policy funny, you’re clearly on to something.
Alexandra Petri’s US History: Important American Documents I Made Up is published in the US by WW Norton More

Feinstein’s feminist farceHere’s a controversial opinion: when you’re no longer capable of doing your extremely important job you should gracefully step away from your extremely important job. I know that may not sound controversial on the surface, but it appears to be quite the topic of debate in Washington DC. It certainly seems to be a contentious issue for Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker, who recently hit back at calls for the 89-year-old Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein to resign over her health.Feinstein is the oldest sitting US senator (narrowly beating out spring chicken Chuck Grassley who is a few months younger) and there have been concerns about her cognitive health for a while now. Her physical health has also become an issue: Feinstein has been absent from the Senate since February, when she was diagnosed with shingles. She’s missed 60 of the Senate’s 82 votes so far this session. Her absence from the judiciary committee, on which the Democrats hold a one-seat majority, has stopped the Democrats from advancing federal judges for confirmation. Which is a big deal because these judges get lifetime appointments.On Wednesday, multiple Democrats, led by Representative Ro Khanna, called for Feinstein to resign, saying she could no longer fulfil her duties. Not everyone agrees. “I don’t know what political agendas are at work that are going after Senator Feinstein in that way,” Pelosi told reporters on Wednesday. “I’ve never seen them go after a man who was sick in the Senate in that way.”Norma Torres, another California Democrat, also argued that calls for Feinstein to quit were sexist. “When women age or get sick, the men are quick to push them aside,” she tweeted. “When men age or get sick, they get a promotion.”Do female politicians face unfair double standards and increased scrutiny? Of course they do! But cynically weaponizing the very real sexism that women in politics face to defend Feinstein’s stubborn decision to cling to power is appalling. Feminism isn’t about individual women climbing up the corporate ladder, it’s about working for equal rights. Feinstein represents 40 million Americans and her decisions affect millions more: there is nothing remotely feminist about Feinstein putting her ego above the greater good, particularly at such a critical moment for women’s rights in the US. It’s just selfish.I can understand why Feinstein doesn’t want to resign, don’t get me wrong. Being in government seems to have been very lucrative for her. She’s worth at least $58m. How did she get so rich in public service? Well, Feinstein’s husband was an investment banker and the pair have been incredibly lucky in the stock market. It’s almost like they’ve got access to inside information. Feinstein, for example, sold off a huge amount of shares just before the stock market collapsed at the beginning of the pandemic. The pair faced scrutiny over their stock trades but have denied doing anything wrong. Pelosi and her husband have faced similar scrutiny.Feinstein, to be fair, has now responded to criticism about her long absence from work. On Wednesday, following calls for her resignation Feinstein said that she’d asked the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, to allow another Democratic senator to take her place on the judiciary committee until she’s fit to return to work. That’s a good solution for now but Feinstein, who is due to step down in 2025, should think about resigning altogether: she can certainly afford retirement. Real leadership, as Jacinda Ardern has demonstrated, isn’t about staying in power as long as possible, but knowing when it’s time to step aside. It’s way past time for Feinstein to cede some space and make way for fresh leadership.Women are earning more money, but still doing the bulk of the houseworkMen still tend to be the primary breadwinner in heterosexual marriages, but the number of women who earn as much as or significantly more than their husband has roughly tripled over the past 50 years. In 29% of US marriages, spouses earn the same amount. And in 16% of heterosexual marriages women earn more. But despite growing equality in the workplace, women are still doing more of the housework and caregiving while men spend more time relaxing, a new report by Pew Research Center has found.Rupert Murdoch reportedly divorced Jerry Hall by emailHall, the billionaire’s fourth wife, was waiting to meet her husband at their home when she received a curt message saying: “we have certainly had some good times, but I have much to do.”Spanish woman emerges after spending 500 days living alone in caveShe has now broken the world record for the longest time a person has spent alone in a cave. Quite the achievement.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThere’s still a lot we don’t know about menstruationA review of scientific papers has found there are about 400 studies on menstrual effluent compared with more than 15,000 for semen or sperm. The New Yorker looks at two fascinating new books around menstruation and how “the stigma surrounding menstruation may have had severe consequences for research into reproductive health.”83% of US journalists who cover sport are menPew Research has some interesting (and depressing) statistics on the way in which US journalists’ beats vary according to demographics. Men are more likely to cover sports (83%), political news (60%) and news about science and technology (58%). Women are more likely to cover health, education and families. Meanwhile 76% of all reporting journalists surveyed said that they are white, while 8% are Hispanic, 6% are Black and 3% are Asian. Just 5% of US journalists who cover politics are Black.The week in pawtriarchyShe’s reportedly a “bit of a diva” and “small like a ball”: meet Pearl, the world’s shortest chihuahua. She’s just a bit bigger than a dollar bill and has earned a spot in the Guinness World Records after a vet used a special dog-measuring wicket to verify her size. What a gem.
This article was amended on 15 April 2023. An earlier version wrote about Feinstein’s husband in the present tense. He died in 2022. More