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For weeks, progressive lawmakers in Congress have been threatening to sink the bipartisan infrastructure bill if they were not given certain guarantees about a larger social spending bill. And for weeks, many of their colleagues thought they were bluffing. They weren’t. And now the fate of President Joe Biden’s agenda hangs in the balance. Progressives claimed victory Thursday night after a planned infrastructure vote was delayed following their united front to oppose the $1 trillion bill without assurances about the fate of the accompanying Democratic spending plan. The move highlighted the growing power of leftwing Democrats, and sent a strong message to the rest of their party: You can’t get one bill without the other. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] “The progressive movement has not had this type of power in Washington since the 1960s,” says Joseph Geevarghese, Executive Director of Our Revolution, a political group that grew out of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders ’ firs...

WASHINGTON — With only hours to spare, President Joe Biden on Thursday evening signed legislation to avoid a partial federal shutdown and keep the government funded through Dec. 3. Congress had passed the bill earlier Thursday. The back-to-back votes by the Senate and then the House averted one crisis, but delays on another continue as the political parties dig in on a dispute over how to raise the government’s borrowing cap before the United States risks a potentially catastrophic default. The House approved the short-term funding measure by a 254-175 vote not long after Senate passage in a 65-35 vote. A large majority of Republicans in both chambers voted against it. The legislation was needed to keep the government running once the current budget year ended at midnight Thursday. Passage will buy lawmakers more time to craft the spending measures that will fund federal agencies and the programs they administer. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] “There’s so much more to ...

The photo made a splash on social media: General Sherman, the majestic 2,000-year-old Californian sequoia tree with a 36-foot circumference, its craggy trunk shining with silvery aluminum foil wrapped all around it to protect from potential wildfires. Like a baked potato in the oven, commenters said. California-based Firezat , which is currently the only company in the U.S. that sells this aluminum wrap to public and private entities at scale, has sold thousands of square feet of the material for the express purpose of structural protection against wildfires—including the piece lovingly wrapped around General Sherman. Firezat’s sales increased 30% each of the last two years as fires become increasingly prominent threats to large swathes of both public and private land, with higher temperature, higher wind speeds and longer fire seasons straining firefighting capabilities, says Firezat CEO and founder Daniel Hirning. Five years ago, about 95% of the company’s business was in s...

When Beck Bennett walked out onto the Saturday Night Live stage in May in a Vin Diesel skull cap, he knew it might be his last time there as a cast member. Bennett was there to anchor the season’s last skit: a spoof of Diesel’s recent AMC commercial , in which he listed an increasingly outlandish list of reasons to go to the movies in a husky growl (“The music … the heavy doors … the pre-show video where you’re on a rollercoaster”). As Bennett delivered his lines to raucous laughter, he saw his wife sitting in the front row and SNL creator Lorne Michaels grinning next to the cue cards—a moment that he says felt prescient. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] “It really felt like the universe was telling me, ‘This is in fact time for you to leave. You’re not gonna do better than this,’” Bennett tells TIME in a phone interview on Wednesday. Earlier this week, SNL announced that Bennett would not be a part of the cast of its 47th season, which begins on Saturday. Bennett, wh...

As Democrats spar over a sweeping bipartisan infrastructure bill and an even bigger budget reconciliation package that includes funding for everything from universal pre-k to free community college, the fate of a historic investment in America’s housing policy hangs in the balance. Earlier this month, the House Financial Services Committee advanced $322 billion in federal spending recommendations on housing investments, including $75 billion in new funds for Housing Choice Vouchers. If that passed, it would mark the most significant investment in housing aid since the Housing Choice Voucher program, the nation’s largest source of rental assistance, was created in 1974. It would result in roughly 750,000 more federal vouchers that low-income Americans can use to underwrite the cost of affordable rental units, and eventually help roughly 1.7 million more people increasing the number of Americans served by roughly one-third , according to a new analysis by the left-leaning Cen...

There’s a telling moment in an early episode of The Problem With Jon Stewart . During a lively discussion on contemporary authoritarianism, Francisco Marquez, a Venezuelan activist and former political prisoner, mentions an event from the host’s Daily Show days . “I remember your march,” he says, referring to Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s jokey Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear , held on the National Mall in 2010. “I think it was against insanity or something along those lines.” In the perfect sarcastic deadpan that is his trademark, Stewart cracks: “Yeah, we won.” It’s a throwaway exchange, but one that captures Jon Stewart’s uncertain place in the culture, six years after leaving a role in which he helped launch so many still-thriving comedy careers and reshape late-night talk shows and political satire for the 21st century. At this point, the pleas for common sense and critical thinking—from politicians, the media and the public at large—that he issued nightly from his ...

Fifty-six days into season 23 of Big Brother , six houseguests held a secret meeting in the bathroom. Secret alliances are nothing new in the CBS reality TV competition, but this one was different. The Cookout was the first major alliance composed solely of Black contestants; the group could never accomplish their mission—to ensure the show’s first-ever Black winner, whichever of the six of them that would turn out to be—if other houseguests were onto them. Hence, the clandestine water closet conference. This scene was just one of many in an unprecedented season of Big Brother , which ended on Sept. 29 with The Cookout’s mission accomplished: Xavier Prather, a Black man, emerged victorious on finale night, taking home $750,000 and making history in a show that has long struggled with racism in its casting, production and interpersonal relationships. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] CBS Xavier Prather, who would go on to become the first Black winner of the long-running...

Disposable e-cigarettes like Puff Bar are now far more popular among teenagers than the pod-based products from once-dominant brand Juul, according to new data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Each year, the CDC and FDA survey thousands of U.S. middle and high school students about their use of tobacco products, including e-cigarettes—which were meant to give adult smokers a less-dangerous alternative to cigarettes, but have in recent years become popular among underage users. The 2021 edition was conducted entirely during the pandemic, meaning some teenagers took the survey at home, instead of in their classrooms as usual. As a result, the report’s authors caution that it shouldn’t be directly compared to previous surveys. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Even with that caveat, the report shows clear shifts in teenage vaping habits during the pandemic. About 11% of high schoolers and 3% of middle schoo...