STRANGER THINGS: THE COMPLETE SCRIPTS, SEASON 5 Book Is a Collector’s Dream
- Stranger Things: The Complete Scripts, Season 5 is the perfect addition to your collection that will help you relive the final season.
- This book has a forward by the Duffer Brothers that reveals how they came to the show’s conclusion.
- It will release on July 14, but pre-orders are available now.
Stranger Things 5 gave fans a bittersweet ending to a series that captured hearts a decade prior. We literally watched this ensemble of kids grow up on our television screen as they told a powerful story about friendship, love, and heroism. It was indeed like watching a D&D campaign unfold each season. Of course, there are many quotes and epic moments that the Duffer Brothers gave to us, and now you can read through every line and scene with Stranger Things: The Complete Scripts, Season 5.
Random House Worlds/Netflix
This book is the latest and final one in the collection of complete scripts from Random House Worlds for this beloved Netflix series. The blue bracelet on its purple cover is significant as the one that Hopper’s daughter Sara once wore that he passed down to Eleven. It’s a representation of their unbreakable bond and love, which became such a foundation of the series. We don’t know if Eleven is truly alive or not but if she is, we are sure that she keeps this with her to remind her of the found family and friends that she made in Hawkins.
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STRANGER THINGS 5 Is Coming for Blood at Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror NightsStranger Things: The Complete Scripts, Season 5 gives fans a deep behind-the-scenes look at every episode as well as a foreword from the Duffer Brothers. The duo talk about how they knew that the story would end with one last D&D game before Mike and his friends closed the chapter on their childhood. And, while they didn’t foresee Holly’s major role in season five, they did know that she would pick up the D&D mantle with her new friends. Will we get more stories about them in some fashion? Maybe. We’d love to see Delightful Derek again. But, even if we don’t, we can read through that emotional scene as much as we want to with this script book. It’s the perfect addition to a collection, indeed.
Random House Worlds
Stranger Things: The Complete Scripts, Season 5 arrives on July 14, but you can order your copy right now.
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Marco Rubio Forced to Admit Trump’s Iran Deal Is Trash
Peace negotiations between the U.S. and Iran are once again inching along, days after the two countries exchanged strikes. But even top Trump officials aren’t confident in the burgeoning truce.
State Secretary Marco Rubio reportedly told lawmakers during a briefing Monday that the new peace deal wasn’t of the same caliber as the Obama administration’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
California Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove recounted Rubio’s admission while speaking with MeidasTouch’s Pablo Manríquez outside of the Capitol, claiming that Rubio had said the Obama administration’s set-up was a “real agreement with criteria and benchmarks and thresholds.”
“This [memorandum of understanding] is just a signed piece of paper saying we’re going to continue to talk about talking,” Kamlager-Dove said. “So you should ask yourself, a hundred-and-something billion dollars later, ‘What are these people doing with our money and our national security?’”
Kamlager-Dove on Rubio Iran Briefing: I have to say, the highlight—or lowlight—for me was when Secretary Rubio was asked about the difference between this MOU and the JCPOA. And Marco Rubio essentially said the JCPOA, Obama’s nuclear deal, was a real agreement with criteria,… pic.twitter.com/lwrulT9Hma
— Acyn (@Acyn) June 30, 2026The unpopular war has so far cost American taxpayers more than $1 billion per day (the current total is estimated at more than $113.3 billion). It has also sparked a political rejection of MAGA ideology across the U.S. as the American public becomes more and more disillusioned with its increasingly infirm, unstable, and volatile president.
The country’s strained economy has also become a political talking point ahead of a contentious midterm season. The projected military expenses don’t encompass the heightened day-to-day costs for the average American. Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi told CBS News Monday that it’s likely every American household has spent roughly $1,000 more in heightened fuel and food costs since the war began in late February.
But those additional expenses have apparently not affected the White House.
Donald Trump has been remarkably cavalier about the peace negotiations. As the U.S. and Iran prepared Monday to send delegations to Qatar, the president said that the meeting in Doha would be “perhaps important, perhaps not.”
“We’re going to find out, but we’re winning militarily. It’s almost won militarily, I would say,” Trump said.
The envoys include special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law. Vice President JD Vance is leading the operation, though he is not expected to attend the upcoming talks.
ONE PIECE Season 3 Sails to Alabasta in Sneak Peek
- One Piece season three confirms it will take on the beloved Alabasta arc in 2027. We can’t wait for One Piece: The Battle for Alabasta.
- One Piece season three has released a sneak peek.
- The series has also confirmed it has wrapped production on its third season.
One Piece season three was confirmed before One Piece season two ever aired. And that was a wise choice because One Piece season two absolutely crushed it. Now, Netflix has given us a sneak peek at the upcoming season, no doubt knowing that we cannot WAIT for more from the live-action adaptation. In this new look at One Piece season three, Netflix confirms what we already knew. One Piece season three will take on One Piece‘s famed Alabasta arc, bringing together powerful villains, emotional bonds of friendship and family, political intrigue, and a whole lot of adventure. Up until now, One Piece‘s episodes have been focused on island hopping through character backstories and tales. But now, we have our crew, and we’re ready to set sail into one breathtaking plot. Here’s what we know about One Piece season three and its journey into the Alabasta arc.
See you in 2027, Straw Hats! 🏴☠️ The battle of Alabasta is approaching. pic.twitter.com/ciAnbHnB6N
— ONE PIECE(ワンピース) Netflix (@onepiecenetflix) April 7, 2026Netflix reveals, “In this upcoming season, war is coming for Monkey D. Luffy and the Straw Hat crew in the desert kingdom of Alabasta, Princess Vivi’s homeland. A rebellion threatens to tear the nation apart, fueled in secret by one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea, the ruthless Sir Crocodile, and his underground syndicate Baroque Works, who seek to conquer Alabasta for themselves. In a season defined by unbreakable bonds and impossible choices, the Straw Hats must face a brewing civil war and a powerful warlord to save Vivi’s kingdom before it crumbles into the sand. Fans can look forward to formidable new enemies and brand-new worlds where the stakes have never been higher.”
RELATED ARTICLE
Shocking ONE PIECE Cameo Confirms Long-Time Fan TheoryJoe Tracz and Ian Stokes, ONE PIECE co-showrunners add, “The Alabasta saga is one of the best-loved stories in all of ONE PIECE — and one of our personal favorite arcs — so it’s a huge honor to bring it to life. Season Three builds on everything we’ve done before to tell a war story that’s epic and emotional, spectacular and surprising. We can’t wait for fans to join us in Alabasta, where the stakes are high… and the ducks are big.”
THE DUCKS ARE BIG. We are seated.
Netflix
We don’t want to spoil too much of the Alabasta arc for you—but we do have a character explainer for Sir Crocodile, who will prove to be a most important character in this arc. Additionally, we’ll remind everyone that Xolo Maridueña has been cast as Portgas D. Ace for One Piece season three. And, in short, Ace is basically another important member of Luffy’s found family. Will we see any other members of Luffy’s extended community appear? What about his blood family? We don’t know yet. But we do know that more Baroque Works agents are on the horizon.
RELATED ARTICLE
ONE PIECE’s Baroque Works, Explained (A Spoiler-Free Guide to the Agents and Organization)One Piece season three: The Battle for Alabasta will arrive in 2027. Production on the season is also officially completed.
The cameras have stopped rolling, but the journey is far from over.
ONE PIECE Season 3 has officially wrapped production. 🏴☠️
No further questions about the wall behind us. pic.twitter.com/egBZlkXPg6
Hold onto your sails, kids, this one is going to be EPIC. You can stream seasons one and two of One Piece on Netflix right now.
Originally published on April 8, 2026.
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Your brand deserves its own stage — Side Events at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026
Lumo, Proton’s privacy-focused AI chatbot, gets an upgrade
UK regulator wants Apple and Google to let devs steer clear of app store fees
Remember the right-wing families who moved to Russia? Here’s where they are now.
Last August, we laughed at the travails of a group of Americans who decided MAGA America had become too liberal, packed up their families, and moved to the conservative paradise of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Predictably, things did not go according to plan. Let’s check in on our favorite anti-woke émigrés and see how they’re doing. When we last checked in on the Hare family…
Trump Begins Another White House Renovation Project With No Notice
President Trump is once again building something at the White House without any warning.
Trump is building a new helipad on the White House’s South Lawn, The Washington Post reports, with construction crews already working on the project Monday. The helipad is being built on the lawn’s south portico, near where the presidential helicopter, Marine One, is traditionally kept. A large fence is now blocking off the construction.
The project has not been announced, but is meant to solve the problem of new Sikorsky helicopters built by Lockheed Martin possibly burning the White House lawn due to their exhaust vents. The defense company is reportedly donating $5 million to help pay for the helipad.
Other administrations have refrained from building a permanent helipad on the White House grounds due to concerns of historical preservation, as well as ruining the classical image of presidents boarding Marine One on the grass near the White House.
In his second term, Trump has shown that he has no regard for history or tradition where the White House is concerned, unceremoniously demolishing its East Wing to build a massive ballroom, paving over the Rose Garden and replacing it with a stone patio, and holding a UFC fight on the South Lawn.
Trump can at least argue that this project is operationally necessary. But he’s already done so much damage to the White House in order to push his own gaudy design aesthetic, and because he’s kept his helipad plans under the radar, nobody knows what it’s going to look like.
Trump has repeatedly shown in his second term that if he wants something built a certain way, he won’t listen to any criticism or preserve any history, no matter how tacky his designs. Just look at the hideous mockups of his “triumphal arch.”
Tuesday morning traffic: Highway 9 closures; July 4 parade road closures ahead
Here’s what’s happening on Santa Cruz County roads this morning…
▼︎ new incidents ▼︎ long-term incidents
Road incidents as of 6 a.m. on June 30- Highway 9 is facing closures in both directions at Pool Drive in the San Lorenzo Valley because of bridge work. The closure is expected to end at 5:59 a.m. on July 2.
- A lane on north Highway 9 at Two Bar Road in the San Lorenzo Valley is closed for bridge work. The closure will last until 6:01 a.m. on July 2.
- Alternating lanes are closed on Highway 9 at Riverdale Park in the San Lorenzo Valley because of bridge work. The closure is expected to last until April 30, 2027.
- There is one-way traffic on Highway 9 at Cascade Avenue in the San Lorenzo Valley because of ongoing work. This closure will last until Aug. 31.
- A lane on westbound Highway 152 at Clifford Drive/Ohlone Parkway in Watsonville is closed for asphalt paving. The closure will last until 5:59 a.m. on July 3.
- A section of Coolidge Drive between High Street and Hagar Road in Santa Cruz will be closed to northbound traffic from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. through today to allow county crews to do pavement work.
- Playa Boulevard will be closed between Palma Avenue and Benito Avenue in La Selva Beach on July 4 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. for the annual La Selva Beach Fourth of July Parade.
- Pine Street (between Highway 236 and Harmon Street) and Lomond Street (between Pine Street and Railroad Avenue) in Boulder Creek will be closed for the Boulder Creek Fourth of July Parade.
- Soquel Drive will be closed between State Park Drive and Trout Gulch Road in Aptos on July 4 from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. for the annual Aptos Fourth of July Parade.
Disclosure: Traffic incidents are partially generated by artificial intelligence. We are constantly working to improve the accuracy and quality of our AI-generated content. However, there may still be errors or inaccuracies. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us.
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The Network States of America
“It’s not clear why we need these new cities.”
That’s what I told reporter Sean Morrow in More Perfect Union’s new video on the Network State cult and its bid to replace democratic government with rule by tech billionaires. The piece has already passed 175,000 views in under a day.
We get into Silicon Valley’s strange obsession with building new cities controlled by tech moguls—from Gaza, Greenland and Guantanamo to Próspera and California Forever.
“Wherever you look these days with Trump or with these tech guys, there’s always the idea of a new city that they’re proposing,” I told Morrow. “And it’s not clear why we need these new cities.”
Watch the full video below. Morrow does a great job of explaining the playbook. The more people see what this is and how it works, the harder it is to pull off. Please watch and share!
Nerd Reich Podcast Hits Major MilestoneThe Nerd Reich podcast now has 25,000 subscribers on YouTube. It’s a pretty big milestone for us—especially since I did not really want to start a podcast, much less a video one.
Much praise is due to my producer, R.R. Robbins, whose hard work and expertise make all the difference. Someday we might tell you the true story of how we met and became friends. But only if you’re a paid subscriber.
That’s right. Our 779 paid subscribers make all of this possible. We’re only here because of them, and we’re just getting started. (Thank you!)
Make a billionaire squirm. Become a paid subscriber today. Click here to join.
The Nerd Reich Audiobook is Coming!By popular demand, I’m locked in a dark studio this week to record the audiobook for The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and The War On Democracy. I’m staying hydrated and drinking lots of Throat Coat tea, but I’m already tired of the sound of my own voice.
Pre-orders make a huge difference! So, if you plan to buy the audiobook, please do it this week in honor of my exhausted and struggling vocal cords. Click here for a range of purchase options.
The Bill That Pits House Against Senate Against Big Tech
On Monday night, the House passed a weaker version of the Senate’s Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, aimed at regulating the tech industry and protecting children online. Whether this is a good thing or not depends on whom you ask.
House leaders have taken four years to reach a compromise on their own version of KOSA, which the Senate passed in 2022. The House version, called the Kids Internet and Digital Safety, or KIDS, Act, passed by 267–117 on Monday night.
Representative Frank Pallone Jr., the Democratic co-sponsor of the KIDS Act, lauded it as an example of bipartisan cooperation last week. “This agreement proves Congress can come together to deliver real online protections for our nation’s young people,” he said in a statement.
But Senate Democrats have suggested that they won’t advance the House version. “We’re not going to go with some weak standard,” said Senator Maria Cantwell on Friday. “We are going to go with a law that can be enforced and accountability, and we’re not going with a study, we’re going on with something that holds them accountable.”
Senator Richard Blumenthal, a co-sponsor of KOSA, even suggested that passing the weaker House version could give tech lobbyists ammunition to “exploit the kind of misunderstandings that can occur” between the two chambers and kill provisions they don’t like. “We need to stop this bill in the House and we need to prevent the White House from forming an alliance with Big Tech,” Blumenthal said.
Cantwell, Blumenthal, and their allies say the KIDS Act doesn’t include the strongest parts of KOSA, like the “duty of care” provision, which makes tech companies legally responsible for the well-being of children on their platforms, or the stipulation that KOSA doesn’t preempt states, allowing them to pass stricter measures in the future. The KIDS Act, on the other hand, includes federal preemption language that opponents say could harm states’ ability to enforce tech regulations themselves. In late May, 44 state attorneys general sent a letter to Congress opposing the KIDS Act on the grounds that it would preempt their legislative and legal efforts.
“This bill has no real duty of care. In other words, it has no standard to hold accountable the Big Tech companies that can drive addictive, toxic content through their algorithms and other technologies at children,” Blumenthal said in a press conference on Friday.
On Friday, nearly 100 digital- and kids-safety groups sent a letter to House leadership and the sponsors of the KIDS Act urging them to reject the bill on the grounds that it doesn’t go far enough to protect children from Big Tech. In addition to the “duty of care” issue, the authors noted that the KIDS Act drops the requirement that tech platforms offer a chronological feed rather than an algorithmic, engagement-maximizing one. The authors are also concerned that the KIDS Act defines social media platforms too narrowly, leaving out apps and websites like Roblox, which has exposed some children to sexual and financial exploitation.
But others think both acts are a bad idea—that the provisions in KOSA and KIDS, instead of protecting kids, could harm their ability to engage in free speech and access resources for mental health, addiction, and other social issues. Groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and GLAAD say that measures meant to protect kids could push tech platforms to set age limits and push younger children off of their websites, harming LGBTQ+ kids or others who are looking for community and resources online.
“Maybe by different routes, [the bills] accomplish the same objective,” said Aaron Mackey, the deputy legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “They’ve pushed online services to have legal obligations to police their content and exclude kids from vital places and space.”
Tech companies have pushed against both the House and Senate versions, but have spoken more favorably about the House bill. Zach Lilly, the director of government affairs for NetChoice, a tech industry group, said that the House bill “is a real effort to improve upon the disastrous censorship regime being championed in the Senate.”
After Monday’s House vote, it remains to be seen which bill will ultimately come out on top and head to the president’s desk—and whether the tech lobby will be able to exploit the rift between House and Senate.
Police use of artificial intelligence grows as rules lag behind
Experts warn that AI-powered policing could expand surveillance and amplify bias. By Amanda Watford for Stateline Hundreds of people fill a downtown street for a protest, waving signs and chanting as they march past businesses and government buildings. Overhead, a police drone records video of the crowd. Nearby traffic cameras and license plate readers capture faces…
Sam Reid on How Lestat’s Relationships with Louis and Gabriella Define Him in THE VAMPIRE LESTAT
- The Vampire Lestat’s Sam Reid discusses the complicated relationships between Lestat and his two companions, Louis and Gabriella.
In Interview with the Vampire, Louis de Pointe du Lac took the helm as our vampiric narrator, and we learned of his many convoluted relationships with the Vampires Lestat, Claudia, and Armand. Now, in The Vampire Lestat, Lestat de Lioncourt will take over the telling of the tale. And he brings with him a whole new cast of characters. Without getting too spoilery, for us, having watched the first six episodes of the season, one of the most interesting aspects of the show this time around was looking at Lestat and his two main (current) vampiric companions, Louis and his mother/lover/fledgling Gabriella. But how does Lestat’s relationship with each of these important beings in his life manifest? And how do they impact him? In the lead-up to The Vampire Lestat, Sam Reid gave us some incredibly insightful answers about the complicated swirl of relationships that exists between Louis, Lestat, and Gabriella.
AMC
Reid shared the following about the relationships that live between Lestat and his two immortal companions, Louis and Gabriella:
How does Lestat’s relationship with Louis and Gabriella define him and bring out different… I mean, yeah, it’s very different, but I think you get the sense that the relationship with Louis is actually … They’re on a level ground. They accept each other for who they are. They go through hell and fight each other, but they come back to each other. They keep recircling each other and there’s a lot of the performative nature, particularly of Lestat is kind of stripped away with Louis because he can’t really hold it up. Whereas Gabriella, it’s different. She’s been there in very formative years and so she has helped build him and kind of build the foundations and the structure that is Lestat. And Lestat has spent his entire life performing and building these characters and these archetypes that are built around the situations that he finds himself in.
And sometimes the suit that Gabriella puts in him in does… He sort of outgrows and doesn’t really fit anymore and Lestat keeps returning to it, because that is unfortunately a very safe space for him, because he’s looking for that maternal acceptance and love. So actually the actor, the rockstar, the Brat Prince, the leader, all of these things, that is the kind of vicarious life that Gabriella’s built for him so she can kind of use that as a conduit to experience it himself. Whereas Louis is different.
They call each other out on their bullshit more often than not and also really hurt each other and the hurt is reciprocated. I think Lestat finds it very hard to hurt Gabriella. He wants to hurt her and also he wants to hate her and she won’t let him. She won’t let him go whereas Louis will let him go and Lestat will let Louis go and they’ll have years where they’re not together and they’ll be like, “Whoa, I lost that one.” And then they come back, he’s like, “No, okay, you grew a little bit. I grew a little bit. Who are we now? We’re still the same people.” Whereas Gabriella won’t ever let Lestat out of her orbit. And just when he thinks, “Okay, I’ve got some time,” she comes right back in. She knows. She’s very clever, but that’s how he learns the great art of manipulation.
In the words of Jacob Anderson, “Come on. He said it all.” And indeed, he did. Reid’s words here really poignantly capture the beauty of the relationship between Louis and Lestat. And why, at base, although they can clash and end up in bitter fights at times, their relationship is never truly over. The fact that they can honestly offer their feelings, even their hurts, to one another, then withdraw to allow each other the time and distance to grow and heal, is superbly beautiful. And we can definitely see it manifest this season in full.
Conversely, in opposition to Lestat and Louis, we can also see what Reid means when he talks about Gabriella never letting Lestat truly loose from her clutches. And how she has these goals and aims that she strives for in The Vampire Lestat, but often tries to enact them through Lestat, by the mechanism of using and manipulating him, rather than building toward them with him.
AMC+
The stark differences between the two relationships truly come to vivid life in The Vampire Lestat this season. And when all three of these vamps are in a room, it’s some of the most riveting subtextual dynamics we’ve ever seen on our screens. Everyone is at the top of their game. And we’re definetly curious to see how the dymanics between Lestat, Louis, and Gabriella continue to unfurl as the story continues.
The Vampire Lestat airs at 9 pm ET/PT on AMC and AMC+. You can also read The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice today as you wait for the next episode of the series to air.
Rotem Rusak is Editor-in-Chief of Nerdist. She is in awe of the beautiful season of TV that is The Vampire Lestat.
This post has affiliate links, which means we may earn advertising money if you buy something. This doesn’t cost you anything extra, we just have to give you the heads up for legal reasons. Click away!
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Trump Team Personally Chose Who Got $500 Million Ballroom Contract
The Trump administration has awarded Clark Construction a $500 million no-bid contract to build the president’s ballroom—even as he has promised multiple times that it would either be privately funded and built at no cost to taxpayers, according to The Washington Post. Records show that the president was personally involved in the contract negotiations.
Competitive bidding is generally required for all federal contracts. However, the Trump administration filed this contract through the Executive Residence, which is exempt from competitive contract rules.
The White House justified the move by stating that under federal law, the president can spend however much on the “care, maintenance, repair, alteration, refurnishing, improvement, air-conditioning, heating, and lighting” of the White House grounds. The Trump administration tried to cite the same law as authority to build the ballroom, but a federal judge rejected it in March. The administration’s no-bid contract, however, has yet to become a legal matter.
White House Office of Administration Director Joshua Fisher noted on the contract that it skipped the typical bidding process because “the disclosure of the executive agency’s needs would compromise the national security.”
Trump has repeatedly said that private donors would foot the whole bill for the ballroom construction, but now it’s clearer than ever that’s not true. “They said: ‘Sir, we’ll do it for nothing. This is the greatest honor,” Trump claimed earlier this year.
High cost of living and commuter demand prompt Santa Cruz’s GO BIKE! program to relaunch with increased e-bike rebate amounts
The City of Santa Cruz’s GO BIKE! Downtown E-Bike Rebate program has long been popular, with 254 e-bikes sold and $134,800 in rebates dispersed over the past five years. And with gas prices hitting a new record high in California this year and e-bike sales skyrocketing, the city has been preparing to meet the continued demand.
Starting Wednesday, the city will relaunch its GO BIKE! program, with the rebate tiers increasing to a $500 base amount and $1,000 for low-income individuals. The program is designed to provide workers with cheaper e-bikes, reduce barriers to biking and encourage more downtown workers to use bikes for transportation.
Claire Gallogly is the principal transportation planner for the City of Santa Cruz and manages the greater GO Santa Cruz Downtown program, which includes the GO BIKE! program. On top of the e-bike rebates, GO also provides things such as free transit passes, BCycle memberships, commute workshops and carpool assistance.
She said the city recognizes that while e-bikes are a more affordable way to get around for many trips than a car, there’s still a large up-front purchase price. As such, she continued, the increase in the rebate amounts reflect what the community is feeling with the increased cost of living.
“Across the board, we have experienced costs going up. People are paying more for gas, groceries, rent, so many things,” Gallogly said. “Rebate has always been a tool to address part of this cost concern.”
People who work within the downtown Santa Cruz parking district are eligible to apply for a rebate, and the program is funded by the downtown parking district’s parking fees. The rebate funds must be spent at Santa Cruz County bike shops, and GO BIKE! is partnering with nine shops across Santa Cruz and Watsonville.
The applications for the rebate program are first-come, first-served starting Wednesday.
Have news that should be in Lookout Briefs? Send your news releases, including contact information, to news@lookoutlocal.com.
MORE LOCAL COVERAGEThe post High cost of living and commuter demand prompt Santa Cruz’s GO BIKE! program to relaunch with increased e-bike rebate amounts appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.
The bulwark
A cartoon by David Horsey. Related | Supreme Court enshrines Trump’s racist BS into law…
Former Microsoft engineer shrinks Notepad down to size
Gaza Is Costing Democratic Incumbents Their Seats
Two years ago, Darializa Avila Chevalier, a 32-year-old sociology graduate student at the City University of New York, was sitting in a tent on Columbia University’s quad as part of the pro-Palestine encampment on its campus. This month, Chevalier, the daughter of a truck driver and a case worker from the Dominican Republic, soundly defeated five-term incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat to become the presumptive next member of Congress for New York’s 13th congressional district, where Columbia sits.
“I kept thinking of all of the folks who have really been let down by a lot of establishment Democrats. I was thinking of my friend Mahmoud [Khalil],” Chevalier said in an interview: the Palestinian campus organizer and recent Columbia masters graduate who became the face of a new, more punitive phase of Donald Trump’s policy of political detainment and deportation when DHS agents kidnapped him from his apartment building last year.
When Khalil was taken, Espaillat sent out a two-sentence statement urging due process: too little, too late, Chevalier said. Khalil was released the same week Zohran Mamdani won New York’s Democratic mayoral primary. A year later, with Mamdani’s backing, Chevalier won her own race alongside a slate of New York candidates who championed the Palestinian cause throughout their campaigns—often in ways that, until very recently, constituted a political third rail.
Those relative outsiders—many backed or recruited by groups like Justice Democrats and the Democratic Socialists of America, new kingmakers like Mamdani, and influencers like Hasan Piker—are notching upset victories against incumbents with decades of experience.
It echoes the wave that brought challengers like New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar to office—and eventually made them icons of the Democrats’ left flank. But those races, close to a decade ago, didn’t feature Israel-Palestine politics in anything like the same way, a door opened in part by Zohran Mamdani’s unusual willingness to engage frankly on the issue, and language, of genocide.
Chevalier’s congressional cohort includes former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who has called Israel’s conduct in Gaza a genocide and beat AIPAC-supported Rep. Dan Goldman by a 30-point margin, as well as New York State Assembly member Claire Valdez, who defeated Brooklyn borough president Antonio Reynoso in a race for the House seat now held by retiring Democratic Rep. Nydia Velázquez, and who regularly joins protests calling for an arms embargo. Both candidates explicitly condemned US military aid to Israel, for decades a bipartisan pillar of US politics, in their campaigns.
“This electoral cycle has truly signified that we can no longer have a progressive-except-for-Palestine dynamic in electoral politics,” said Aber Kawas, a socialist candidate whose June win in a New York State Assembly primary will make her the first Palestinian-American in that body. Pro-Israel money is no longer a boon, Kawas said, but a liability. “The Israeli lobby, AIPAC, they’re still strong influencers in the Democratic Party, but this victory, and the victory of all of our races in this moment is chipping away at that in real substantial ways.”
In June, Army veteran and former combat surgeon Adam Hamawy, won his primary in New Jersey’s suburban, Democratic-leaning 12th congressional district—and he made opposition to AIPAC a cornerstone of his candidacy.
Hamawy, throughout his campaign, talked about his time as a volunteer physician in Gaza, and promised to fight for an arms embargo. “This is what prompted me to run,” Hamawy said to Al Jazeera of his time in Gaza. “I felt I had to go to Washington to fix this myself.”
In Philadelphia in May, self-described democratic socialist Chris Rabb beat two deep-pocketed and well-established candidates to win the Democratic primary for Pennsylvania’s 3rd congressional district. Two years earlier, when Temple University students faced trespassing charges for their participation in encampment protests, Rabb, then a state representative, was one of only a few local elected officials to back the students, calling their charges a “cruel and reckless abuse of power.”
And in a primary taking place Tuesday in Denver, Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old democratic socialist who calls herself a “recovering lawyer,” is running against incumbent Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette, who has held her seat since 1997.
Two years ago, as a new lawyer in New York, Kiros wrote an open letter defending law students who organized for Palestine. “I myself am from the northern region of Ethiopia, where a genocide had also taken place a few years ago,” Kiros, whose parents immigrated to Colorado when she was a baby, said.
Her employer asked her to take the letter down. Kiros refused, was fired, and moved back to Colorado within a week. She took a gig as a barista (“the best job I’ve had”) to make ends meet, and is now running on a familiar progressive platform: Medicare for All, universal childcare, AI regulation, ICE abolition and an arms embargo on Israel. The newcomer is polling well against DeGette, who is in her 15th term: the only available public poll, conducted by the progressive polling firm Data For Progress in June, has Kiros leading by 5 points.
Dark money groups are all in against Kiros, including a trio of super PACs that have spent at least $1.3 million to oppose her in the final weeks of the race, the Colorado Sun reported. Much of that money has gone to attack ads that claim Kiros is from out of town (“I came here in ‘98!” Kiros said) and critical of Democrats (“So are most Democrats.”)
AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying organization which has invested heavily in establishment candidates in many such races, has shifted to a diversity of electoral tactics: promoting spoiler candidates, creating new political action committees with names unrelated to Israel, funneling money through pre-existing but unrelated PACs, running ads that don’t talk about Israel at all.
But those efforts have targeted even mainline progressives who, for example, back the Block the Bombs Act, which would suspend arms shipments to Israel. Efforts to paint such candidates as far-left radicals are hard to maintain when only 13 percent of Democrats expressed positive views of Israel as of March—and by brooking no legitimate political opposition to Israel, AIPAC increasingly compels even mainline progressives to treat its wrath as a given.
AIPAC’s open support “is becoming a kiss of death to candidates they support in deep-blue districts, and I think that’s abundantly clear through the means in which they have had to operate throughout this cycle, which is through a network of shell PACs and pop-up PACs that obscures their funding,” said Usamah Andrabi, communications director for Justice Democrats, which is backing Kiros, Valdez and Chevalier.
Those who still take the group’s money are being more circumspect about it, even as those that refuse AIPAC cash trumpet their refusal with pride—much as candidates in the wake of Citizens United and the first Bernie Sanders campaign began advertising their rejection of dark money and emphasizing small donations.
“Money in politics is the issue,” Kiros said. “Every single thing that you care about, from social justice to economic justice to environmental justice, all of these things are intertwined with who has the money and the influence to wield power over our government.”
Voters rarely make their decisions based solely or even primarily on foreign policy, but candidates like Chevalier and Kiros have drawn connections between violence in Palestine and affordability at home.
“Our tax dollars are going towards a war machine that is just insatiable,” Chevalier said shortly after her primary win. “And when I hear from folks directly, they want their tax dollars to be coming back home. This is money that we are working hard for, right? We deserve to reap the benefits of it, to be able to use those resources to live dignified lives.”
“Save Our Bacon” Act Would Bar States From Regulating Factory Farm Cruelty
This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
It’s been nearly eight years since Congress reauthorized the farm bill, the massive legislative package that funds programs run by the US Department of Agriculture. What used to be passed roughly every five years, the farm bill touches nearly every aspect of agricultural production in the US. It puts billions toward conservation programs, nutrition assistance, rural development, crop insurance, and climate-smart practices.
But persistent disagreements between lawmakers over these and other programs have stymied the process of passing a new farm bill. The federal government has instead resorted to stop-gap measures and one-year extensions of a small handful of programs.
“The farm bill…should not be a way for large industry groups to overturn the will of voters.”
If farmers were hoping to see a new farm bill this year, they may very well be disappointed—as a new schism between the two houses of Congress was made clear this week, when the Senate agricultural committee released a draft of its farm bill that excluded a law known as the Save Our Bacon Act. The measure was included in the House draft farm bill earlier this year with vocal support by Rep. G.T. Thompson (R-Penn.), who chairs the House agricultural committee.
Save Our Bacon (SOB), would override state and local laws like California’s Prop 12, which bans the sale of pork, chicken, and veal products that come from farms using the most extreme forms of animal confinement, such as gestation crates for hogs. Factory farming operations where animals have the least amount of space to move around result in a lot of manure, which is typically consolidated and stored in lagoons that can pollute the local air and waterways.
Advocacy groups argue laws like Prop 12 are common sense and popular among voters who want to know where their food comes from. There are currently 14 states with similar laws on the books, according to the American Meat Producers Association (AMPA), an industry group that opposes SOB.
“It’s just disappointing that we’re even talking about this because the farm bill should be about supporting sustainable farming and healthy food and food security. It should not be a way for large industry groups to overturn the will of voters,” said Molly Armus, who works on animal agricultural policy at Friends of the Earth, an environmental nonprofit.
Armus notes that transitioning away from extreme confinement of livestock can have positive environmental and climate impacts if producers move toward a pasture-raised system. (Prop 12 only establishes minimum space requirements for animals.) A recent analysis from the USDA found that 27 percent of hog farmers, or 1 in 4, are already Prop 12 compliant—suggesting that the transition away from extreme confinement is underway.
“The industry is completely divided on this.”
“Most hog farmers do not support the Save Our Bacon Act,” said Holly Bice, president of AMPA, which was founded last year in response to an earlier attempt to skirt Prop 12 in a previous draft farm bill. For many hog farmers, Prop 12 has “been an important opportunity for them,” said Bice, because investing in crate-free operations allows producers to sell their products at a premium. “It’s helped them keep their heads above water at a time when consolidation has increasingly driven out farmers,” she said.
However, Brent Hershey, a hog farmer in Pennsylvania and member of AMPA, said the issue of extreme confinement has sparked a “civil war” among pork producers. “The industry is completely divided on this,” he added. Personally, Hershey said, he was reluctant to change the way his operation did things, but after years of receiving negative feedback, he began to see things differently. Today, Hershey’s farm has been crate-free for three years. Passing SOB, he said, would be “devastating” for producers like him who invested time and money into improving their operations.
Experts also argue that passing a farm bill that allows industrial animal agriculture operations to skirt state laws sets a bad precedent for broader environmental and public health goals.
“When you’re doing something that, in a more macro sense, erodes states’ abilities to rollback some of the more harmful aspects of massive commercial agricultural operations, how does that impact any law that could impact agriculture?” said J.W. Glass, senior policy specialist at the Center for Biological Diversity. For example, he added, “How does it impact state laws to restrict the use of pesticides?”
In the Senate, at least for now, it seems like a measure that allows animal agricultural producers to skirt Prop 12 is a nonstarter. “That is why [Boozman] did not put this in his bill. He knew it,” said Sara Amundson, president of the Humane World Action Fund (formerly the Humane Society). “And that’s why it’s critical to keep up the noise on it.”
Still, it’s unclear what happens next—whether the House will fold and exclude SOB from its draft farm bill, or whether, if the two chambers of Congress cannot reconcile their differences on extreme confinement, the gridlock lasts into next year.
Big Tech Is “Fracking” Your Attention. These Activists Are Fighting to Get It Back.
It’s a blisteringly cold Monday night in February, and I’m sitting in an office building in Brooklyn trying to maintain eye contact with a woman I’ve just met. We hold each other’s gazes for several seconds, then I look away. My eyes return to her face, but I avoid her dark eyes, peering from under a ballcap, and instead stare at a spot on her forehead, maintaining the illusion of eye contact without actually holding it. I let my eyes wander and glance at the silhouette of the Manhattan Bridge looming through the nearby windows. My gaze returns to my partner, and we lock eyes again. She adjusts her hat. I give a slight, toothless smile. Her eyes flick away as she straightens her glasses.
Over the next few weeks, I’d find myself in similar situations—staring at something or someone for a prolonged period of time, taking note of where my mind wandered—at a series of evening “Attention Labs” hosted by the Strother School of Radical Attention in Dumbo, Brooklyn.
At these workshops, attendees explore “radical human attention” through various group activities, which might include studying a piece of music, talking with a partner, or observing the details of their physical surroundings. Whatever form the labs take, they all end with a call to action, inviting participants to join the School of Radical Attention in what it calls the Attention Liberation Movement.
The School of Radical Attention is one of several projects created by a group calling themselves the Friends of Attention, an informal collective of artists, scholars, and activists founded in 2018. Earlier this year, the group published Attensity! A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement, with D. Graham Burnett, Alyssa Loh, and Peter Schmidt credited as co-editors. Attensity! is the latest in a recent boom of literature discussing the attention economy, including Jenny Odell’s 2019 How to Do Nothing and Chris Hayes’ 2025 The Sirens’ Call, among many others.
If you’ve read one of these books, you might have been motivated to change your personal relationship to technology. Maybe you’ve repeatedly deleted then redownloaded social media apps, bought a Brick, or attempted a “digital detox”—only to fall prey once again to the attention-sucking powers of Big Tech. The Friends of Attention aim to remedy that, arguing that to truly reclaim our attention from tech conglomerates, we need more than individual action; we need a collective movement. Attensity! is framed as a political manifesto, full of fiery language and liberal use of capitalization that can occasionally elicit an eye roll. The authors refer to Big Tech as “human frackers.” Just as fracking drills into the earth and extracts hidden oil and natural gas, human fracking “breaks up our deep reserves of attention into smaller and smaller fragments,” selling those fragments for a profit. To fight that, we need to engage collective resistance on par with the modern environmental movement or 19th-century labor activism, the authors argue. “The movement of attentional liberation exists and has a name: ATTENTION ACTIVISM,” they write.
But what exactly is attention activism? To find out, I attended my first Attention Lab this winter, two days after a storm that left Brooklyn covered in about 20 inches of snow. On my walk from the train to the School of Radical Attention, I didn’t know what to expect. I had no idea what “exercises of attention” were, and the heated language of Attensity! made me half fear I was walking into a cult recruitment event. But I was curious. I already felt like my hours spent scrolling had made me less able to recall small details and information like I once had, so if someone was offering a solution, I was willing to listen.
That night, I entered a warmly lit room with a circle of metal chairs filling most of the space and a table stacked with oranges, cookies, tea, and water in the corner. It felt less like a classroom than a cozy basement cafe, with bookshelves lining the walls, art hanging in a makeshift gallery wall, and plants in every available space. No more than a dozen people gathered that night, each drawn to the lab for different reasons. Over the course of the three labs I attended, I met academics and artists, New Yorkers and vacationers, young and old, believers and skeptics. Some were scholars of attention with a wealth of knowledge on the subject, like the anthropology PhD student I met who had flown out to visit the school from California. Others were brand new to the field, like a young guy I saw at two separate labs who had heard about the school from a stranger in a bar and found himself in an Attention Lab only days later. One participant said reading Attensity! had changed her life.
Even the language we use to describe attention commodifies it: We’re conditioned to believe that attention is something to be paid, something owed to another person.
Each lab begins with participants turning to a partner and sharing their definition of attention. At my first one, I explained to my partner that growing up, attention always felt like something demanded from me by my parents and teachers. In school, we were always told to “pay attention,” and over the years, my math teachers frequently left notes about my “careless mistakes” and inattention to detail.
Even the language we use to describe attention commodifies it: We’re conditioned to believe that attention is something to be paid, something owed to another person. This definition of attention, rooted in focus and task completion, is itself indicative of the problem the School of Radical Attention is trying to solve. In a January New York Times op-ed, Schmidt, Burnett, and Loh describe this view as the “narrowest possible” perspective, which treats attention as “something that can be measured in terms of device-engaged, task-oriented productivity, then optimized and operationalized and profitably controlled.” Even our valiant efforts to remedy the problem by trying to improve focus or repair our attention span are a response to this narrow understanding. At work, the hours you spend focusing on a task will help generate profit for your employer; at home, the time you spend watching a movie on a streaming service or reading an article on your phone will be translated into ad dollars for Big Tech.
Attensity! asserts that there’s more to attention than focus and task completion. “Indeed, the WORLDS of human attention are innumerable—genuinely infinite, and full of infinite promise,” they write. I think what the Friends of Attention hope to emphasize is that attention isn’t something that can be quantified—it’s in everything we do. Looking out of the window of a car or bus and daydreaming—that’s attention at work. Taking a walk around your block and stopping to pet a dog or chat with your neighbor—attention. Going through the motions of pulling a shot of espresso—also attention.
When participants begin a practice at an Attention Lab, they receive a card with step-by-step instructions and an accompanying text excerpt or quote from an artist or scholar who inspired it—anyone from bell hooks to Langston Hughes to Yoko Ono or Karl Marx. The eye contact practice I engaged in during my first lab draws inspiration from Marina Abramovic’s 2010 “The Artist Is Present” exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art.
Rather than focus one’s attention inward, like in many forms of meditation, these attention practices direct you to focus on an object or person. There’s actually not much that feels radical about the attention practices themselves, except that you’re taking the time to deliberately direct your attention to new things and to appreciate how other people might experience those practices during the group debriefs that conclude each practice. Quinn Marchman, a facilitator at the school, called this the “ritual of listening” and said that taking the time to hear what other participants experienced is a key component of the Attention Labs.
Like the distinctiveness of our fingerprints or eye color, our attention, too, is unique.
At one Attention Lab I attended, we did an exercise where we wandered through Dumbo alone, picked a spot, and took notes on what we observed. My tiny notebook is filled with notes from this lab, a very literal list of the sights and sounds of the block where I stood. “Overflowing puddles,” “dog poop but no dogs,” and “fake plants.” But in the debrief, others had written flowery, poetic lines describing the East River and the moon and the quietness of the street. Time and time again I learned that, while we each did the same practices, we experienced them differently. The practices manage to tap into each person’s unique interests and skills. Like the distinctiveness of our fingerprints or eye color, our attention, too, is unique. I didn’t notice the way the lights glittered on the water, but I did count the number of people on the street and watched as a puddle spilled over the edge of the sidewalk. Perhaps it’s my journalist’s impulse to compile small facts and details.
At the School’s Attention Labs, facilitators compare the work of attention activism to a house fire—a dire situation in which there are different roles with different priorities working together to put out the fire. “There are some people that are carrying out all the furniture. There are some people that have water and they’re putting out the fire. And there are some people that are on the phone calling 911,” Jahony Germosen, the partnerships coordinator at the School of Radical Attention, explains. “We think that the attention activism movement is exactly like this.”
The Friends of Attention identify the many different skills and talents needed to make attention activism work. In Attensity!, they argue that there’s room for everyone in attention activism because we all have distinct attention practices that we’re already doing. For example, rappers, poets, and stand-up comics—all people with unusually close attention to language—are “BARDS and RECITERS.” Meanwhile, people with a knack for bringing others together for shared experiences—dinner parties, game nights, etc.—are “GATHERERS.” It might sound a little cheesy, but the book captures something I felt intuitively at the labs I attended—that we all have something different to offer and learn when it comes to attention.
I realized the School of Radical Attention is right about at least one thing: it feels good not to have to do this work alone.
After reading the book and attending a few labs, I’ll admit that there’s something that feels slightly woo woo about this whole thing. One minute you’re staring deeply into a stranger’s eyes, then you’re staring at your hand and trying to “feel” it, and eventually you’ll find yourself listening to the same song four times in a row, searching for new details and feelings.
The latter exercise is part of a lab called “Deep Listening,” modeled after the work of composer Pauline Oliveros. The first time the facilitator played the song we were supposed to just listen. The second time we were to recall what we noticed the first time, the third time was to discover new things, and the final time we attempted hearing but “not listening.” By the third listen, hearing the tinny sound of the music, I found myself thinking about my middle school band class, remembering how it felt to practice a new piece of music until I’d committed it to memory. I imagined counting myself in and joining my classmates in an arrangement of the Pirates of the Caribbean theme song. Perhaps counterintuitively for a group so focused on collective action, the Attention Labs often offer a space for introspection. But I think what’s gained through that introspection is a longing for a community to share it with. During the Deep Listening exercise, one attendee remarked that the music helped decrease the noise in her head, to which several other people sounded off in agreement. “This exercise made me think of listening to my favorite albums,” another participant said. “Did anyone else feel that way?” Not everyone did, but they started peppering him with questions, trying to understand what he meant, or sharing how their experiences were different. When someone mentioned that the sound of the train rumbling outside the window distracted them from listening, a chorus of people piped up, detailing the sound of the train and identifying other distracting noises. It was in these moments I realized the School of Radical Attention is right about at least one thing: it feels good not to have to do this work alone.
But I also left the labs pretty unsure of what to do next. The School of Radical Attention offers plenty of ways to stay involved in its attention activism: you can take online courses, participate in “sidewalk studies” in public spaces across the city, study the texts from its suggested reading lists, or even follow its toolkit for starting an “attention sanctuary” in your own community. The ideas the school is presenting are valuable, but it seems like a stretch to argue that sitting in a room listening to a piece of music four times is activism—especially when there are sections of Attensity! that situate the authors’ project among the work of suffragists and civil rights marchers. (“These are disputes about human dignity—about the fullness of what people are and what they deserve,” the Friends of Attention write. “Attention Activism stakes a claim for human dignity.”)
I asked the school’s co-founder about this—doesn’t this all feel a bit abstract, I wondered, at a time when anti-ICE and pro-Palestine protesters are organizing for real political change? Schmidt, one of the co-founders, acknowledged that, because attention is hard to “nail down,” attention activism is different from how we think of activism otherwise. The school isn’t lobbying for antitrust laws that limit the power of the tech companies they call human frackers, or protesting AI data centers, or helping organize tech workers. Instead, they are pushing for cultural change, which Schmidt explained is about involving people and creating community. “The laws of a country cannot push through the people of a country,” he said. “You can’t have laws that protect something if you don’t have people who want to protect it.”
It’s the early stages of the movement, so Schmidt said this is the kind of work that needs to happen now to regulate the tech industry later. The school wants to model its work after other successful social movements which often have a pre-existing community and shared language that allows them to flourish. Schmidt said there’s no equivalent to that with attention activism, so creating the attention liberation movement will require building a shared language for the problem, a shared understanding of attention, and a community who cares about it all. That can happen through the school’s programming—which is being offered in New York City, across the US, and even across the globe.
I didn’t leave the School of Radical Attention newly fired up to take down Big Tech, but I did leave it feeling eager to connect with others who wanted to reclaim control of their attention.
Still, I ask if this isn’t a little like treating the symptom and not the cause. Schmidt resisted that characterization; the labs aren’t about “self-help” or having a group therapy session, he said. He makes what is a repeated distinction at the school and in Attensity!, which is that it’s not about fighting to improve our attention spans, but to enrich our understanding of attention in general. In this way, this work is about getting people on the same page, showing that attention is bigger than we think, and that the human frackers’ power is detrimental to humanity.
It doesn’t mean the School of Radical Attention might not eventually get into policy work or forms of activism that we’re more familiar with, but for now the work is about building community organizing to create a “critical consciousness around attention” in our culture.
I didn’t leave the School of Radical Attention newly fired up to take down Big Tech, but I did leave it feeling eager to connect with others who wanted to reclaim control of their attention, and with a more nuanced understanding of the many forms attention can take. That might not feel like much at a time when Meta is marketing discreet wearable tech and Google is training AI with your search data, but it’s a step in the right direction.
In the broader attention activism landscape, the School of Radical Attention’s work is more about hope, Schmidt told me. “Right now, with like four dudes in this AI arms race that’s just very destructive and hubristic and depressing, it’s just very easy to despair,” he said. “And the real spirit of all this for me, and what makes all the people who come here so wonderful is, we’re not exactly optimists, but I feel there’s a lot of hope.”