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2026-02-03 02:09:16

Donald Trump announced on Sunday night that the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts will close its doors for two years while it undergoes renovation, following artists calling off performances and ticket sales nosediving.

The cultural institution is scheduled to close on July 4, “in honor of the 250th Anniversary of our Country,” to undergo “Construction, Revitalization, and Complete Rebuilding” and become “the finest Performing Arts Facility of its kind, anywhere in the World,” the president posted on Truth Social. 

But it remains unclear what renovations need to be completed. The Kennedy Center underwent a $250 million expansion in 2019. 

In his announcement, the president stated that “financing is completed, and fully in place.” The One Big Beautiful Bill Act set aside $257 million for “necessary expenses for capital repair, restoration, maintenance backlog, and security structures” for the Kennedy Center—possibly, as he previously stated, to adorn the building with “24 karat gold” similar to his remodeling of the Oval Office.  

Trump noted that his decision will be “totally subject to Board approval”—a Board that he took over after kicking out many Joe Biden appointees, handpicking replacements, and declaring himself chairman last February. 

In December, the president renamed the Kennedy Center “The Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.” As I wrote then, only Congress holds the authority to rename the building. President Lyndon Johnson in 1964 signed a law that designates the arts institution as a “living memorial” to the late President Kennedy.

Members of Kennedy’s family condemned the decision to close the cultural center. The former president’s niece, Maria Shriver, ridiculed Trump Sunday on X, writing a “translation” of his announcement: “It’s best for me to close this center down and rebuild a new center that will bear my name, which will surely get everybody to stop talking about the fact that everybody’s canceling… right?”

“He can change the name, shut the doors, and demolish the building. He can try to kill JFK,” Jack Schlossberg, Kennedy’s grandson, wrote the same night on X. “But JFK is kept alive by us now rising up to remove Donald Trump, bring him to justice, and restore the freedoms generations fought for.”

In a Monday statement, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which has jurisdiction over public buildings, and an ex-officio member of the Kennedy Center Board of Trustees, said Trump’s year-long attempt to “commandeer the Kennedy Center as a clubhouse for his friends and political allies and install leadership who will satisfy his every whim” has led to the destruction of the cultural institution. 

“With his hostile takeover leading to artists’ withdrawals and declining ticket sales, he is covering up his failures by shuttering a national landmark that belongs to the American people,” Whitehouse continued. 

Whitehouse launched an investigation into corruption at the Kennedy Center under Trump-appointed interim president Richard Grenell following the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee obtaining documents revealing millions of dollars in lost revenue and luxury spending. According to Whitehouse’s Monday statement, Grenell has not provided financial transparency, despite public promises to do so.

2026-02-02 20:30:00

This story was originally published by Vox and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Polar bears became the poster child for the peril of climate change for obvious reasons: They hunt seals from the ice, and as fossil fuels warm the planet, the ice where these bears live is melting.

For more than three decades, scientists have been warning that climate change could drive polar bear populations extinct. That message infiltrated the public psyche, perhaps more than any other about the scourge of global warming.

But as scientists are continuing to learn, the reality for these iconic bears is more complicated.

In 2022, scientists published a study showing that polar bears in southeastern Greenland were able to use glacial ice instead of sea ice to hunt, sheltering them from some of the impacts of warming. And a study published late last year revealed some changes in polar bear DNA that may help them adapt to hotter weather.

Now, research in the journal Scientific Reports adds yet another wrinkle of hope for the species. The study, an analysis of hundreds of polar bears in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, found that declining sea ice is not causing polar bears to starve. They actually appeared healthier in the last two decades of the analysis, from 2000 to 2019. The overall population, meanwhile, is either stable or growing, according to Jon Aars, the study’s lead author and a scientist at the Norwegian Polar Institute.

“I was surprised,” Aars told Vox from Svalbard. “I would have predicted that body condition would decline. We see the opposite.”

The new study makes clear that, in other regions, the loss of sea ice from warming is indeed linked to ailing polar bear populations. In Canada’s Western Hudson Bay, for example, researchers have tied melting ice to lower bear survival and a shortage of food, finding that the population has roughly halved since the 1980s. Climate change remains the largest threat to these animals.

Yet, there are 20 distinct polar bear populations around the world, and they all behave slightly differently. Warming is not uniformly killing them.

Perhaps, then, polar bears aren’t the best mascot for the climate crisis—a point some advocates have been making for a while—especially when there are countless other species imperiled by rising temperatures.

Polar bears need fat to survive the harsh Arctic cold; that’s why they eat blubbery seals. Seals, meanwhile, need ice to rest and birth pups. Without that ice, polar bears have a hard time finding and catching them.

Since the late 1970s, the Arctic—the northernmost region of the planet, including parts of Alaska, Canada, Europe, and Russia—has lost more than 27,000 square miles of summer ice. That’s an area larger than the state of West Virginia. Some estimates suggest that the region could be ice-free by the middle of the century, even under optimistic emissions scenarios.

That melting ice is what’s harming polar bear populations in Canada’s Hudson Bay; the Beaufort Sea, located north of Alaska and the Yukon; and Baffin Bay in Greenland. And it’s why they’re listed as threatened under the US Endangered Species Act and the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, a global authority on endangered species.

But the story in Svalbard—an icy archipelago in the Barents Sea, north of Scandinavia—is different.

Between 1992 and 2019, scientists in Svalbard darted hundreds of polar bears from helicopters and measured their bodies. Then they compared those measurements to sea ice conditions, such as the number of ice-free days, and other climate variables.

Remarkably, the number of days with no ice in the region increased by roughly 100 during that period. And yet, as the authors found, the body condition of both male and female polar bears—i.e., how fat and healthy they are—increased from 2000 onward. Female bears were actually in worse condition when the sea ice lasted longer.

Often, the message about polar bears is “100 percent doom,” said Kristin Laidre, a polar bear researcher at the University of Washington, who was not involved in the study. “But that’s not true,” Laidre told me. “There’s variability in how bears are responding. This [research] adds to the variability story.”

If polar bears in Svalbard are healthy, that means they’re finding food. So what are they eating?

One possibility, said Aars, the lead author, is that there may be higher densities of ringed seals, their primary food source, in years with less ice, so they’re easier to catch. Even if polar bears have less time to catch the seals—because there are fewer days with ice—they can put on loads of weight quickly and rely on that for months.

The bears may also be eating other animals on land that don’t require ice. Reindeer on the archipelago are increasing, for example, and Aars says he’s seen bears eat them. Walrus populations are increasing, too. Although polar bears can’t easily kill a walrus, they can scavenge their tusked, fat-filled carcass when walruses die from other causes.

“Bears in Svalbard are potentially changing their diet, and that might account for the increase in body condition,” said John Iacozza, a senior instructor and polar bear expert at the University of Manitoba. That’s a luxury that polar bears elsewhere might not have. “You wouldn’t see the same effect happening in Western Hudson Bay, just because the availability of other species is less,” said Iacozza, who was not involved in the new research.

While the Svalbard bears might be fine for now, researchers still worry about the long-term impacts of warming in the region. “We do think there’s a threshold,” Aars told me. “The difficult part is that we don’t know what it is.”

No other animal has been so closely tied to climate change as the polar bear. It was on the cover of TIME’s 2006 global warming issue. It was featured in Al Gore’s seminal documentary An Inconvenient Truth, which premiered the same year. It was used in funding campaigns for environmental groups. (One year, I even dressed up as a drowning polar bear for Halloween with a friend who went as a melting ice cap.)

The bear’s symbolism is rooted in good science. Those early studies were in places like Canada’s Western Hudson Bay, where these Arctic apex predators were clearly dying from melting sea ice. Media outlets amplified the most sensational conclusions—and they stuck.

That’s partly because the message is simple, Laidre said: Polar bears need ice, and warming is making it disappear. “The relationship between [climate and] an animal that needs a platform to eat is easy to wrap your brain around,” she said.

2026-02-02 05:03:58

A Democrat and union leader won a special election on Saturday to represent a Texas state Senate district that Donald Trump carried by 17 points in 2024. 

GOP Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick called the result, a 57-43 victory for Taylor Rehmet, “a wake-up call for Republicans across Texas” in an early Sunday post on X. Republicans currently hold every statewide elected office in Texas.

“Our voters cannot take anything for granted,” Patrick continued, calling out low voter turnout in special elections. 

According to the Texas Tribune, Patrick gave $300,000 to the campaign of Rehmet’s opponent, Leigh Wambsganss, through his PAC, Texas Senate Leadership Fund. Trump also posted multiple get-out-the-vote messages on behalf of Wambsganss on Truth Social in the days leading up to the election.  

Rehmet, an Air Force veteran and the leader of his local machinist’s union, spent $242,174—nearly 10 times less than Wambsganss—according to campaign finance reports reviewed by Fort Worth Report. 

“It’s clear as day that this disastrous Republican agenda is hurting working families in Texas and across the country, which is why voters in red, blue, and purple districts are putting their faith in candidates like Taylor Rehmet,” Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement. “This overperformance is a warning sign to Republicans across the country.”

Wambsganss is the chief communications officer for Patriot Mobile, a cell phone company that calls itself “America’s ONLY Christian Conservative Wireless Provider.” Wambsganss and Patriot Mobile have helped Republicans place candidates supporting conservative Christian policies on North Texas school boards. This represents part of the state’s push for book bans and dedicated time for prayer in class. 

Last November, Rehmet earned nearly 48 percent of the vote, just three percentage points shy of an outright election win, leading to Saturday’s runoff. In that election, he ran against two Republicans, who together split 52 percent of the vote. Rehmet’s victory in the run-off was that much more significant because he faced only Wambsganns.

Rehmet’s win adds to the recent record of Democrat victories in statewide elections—including gubernatorial wins in New Jersey and Virginia. 

While Democrats have celebrated Rehmet’s win as a harbinger of what’s to come in this year’s midterms, some political observers have cautioned that the result may not signify a broader Republican reckoning.

2026-02-02 02:43:24

Even in the Trumpian corner of New Jersey, where I chose to witness Melania, the $75 million Amazon-produced film about the first lady, I predicted that I would be watching alone. This is, after all, a historically bad time for theatrical releases, and initial forecasts for Melania‘s opening weekend had been dismal. Yet there they were, at least a dozen attendees at a 10 a.m. screening on a frigid Saturday morning. I appeared to be the only one who required breakfast wine for what was about to unfold.

What flashed across the screen over the next hour and 48 minutes can best be described as an interminable slog of airbrushed nothingness. After all, only so much entertainment can be wrung out of footage of a woman in snakeskin Louboutins traveling from Mar-a-Lago to New York and back again in the lead-up to the inauguration. And yet, for nearly two hours, the film turns on the premise that its subject is some kind of fashion genius, resulting in some of the most stultifying scenes I have ever seen committed to film. What other way is there to describe extended, drawn-out shows of Melania getting fitted for her inauguration wardrobe, only to be followed by scenes of her walking across gilded ballrooms in that very wardrobe? A few other pre-inauguration scenes follow, including a meeting between Melania and Brigitte Macron over Zoom. But they all appear brief, choreographed, and wooden. Throughout, Melania claims to have a leading role in the preparations for her husband’s inauguration, but there is scant evidence of actual decision-making by the first lady.

But Melania is more revelatory in its world-historical vapidness than it might seem. Consider that Melania appears to go out of her way to foreground her journey from Slovenian immigrant to American first lady, a story she says serves as “a reminder of why I respect this nation so deeply.” Similarly, the film gives rare space to the immigrants in Melania’s inner circle, including her chief interior designer, Tham Kannalikham, who opens up about her journey from Laos to now decorating the White House, as well as Melania’s father, who is seen beaming with pride in his American daughter. Absent in Viktor Knavs’ film debut is the context of the “chain migration” pathway through which he and his late wife became US citizens, the very same policy targeted by their son-in-law.

“Everyone should do what they can to protect our individual rights,” Melania says at one point. “Never take them for granted, because in the end, no matter where we come from, we are bound by the same humanity.”

What an obscenity to hear this woman employ the language of shared humanity, as the Trump administration kills Americans and systematically kidnaps immigrants and their children. But as galling as they were, the remarks were instructive of both how Melania views her American story and the same anti-immigrant sentiments with which some, in order to prove that they belong here, yank the ladder up from newcomers seeking the same opportunities. Such immigrants, like Melania, cast themselves as the “good immigrant” who came here the “right way.” But the first lady appears to do this despite reports, including our own, that she may have initially been working here without a visa. In other words, she may have violated immigration law. Meanwhile, the immigrants Melania now surrounds herself with, like Tham, are props for that very narrative—with zero mention of her husband’s endless cruelty. But why would there be in a piece of abject propaganda—backed by one of the richest men in the world as he prepares to gut the Washington Post—that many crew members asked not to be credited on?

As a purely cinematic experience, Melania, a ghastly parade of fun-house mirror herstory, will certainly be relegated to the footnotes of her family’s deeper atrocities. I would have asked what my fellow attendees thought, but not even a plastic cup of wine could help wash down the film in its entirety. I left 15 minutes before the credits rolled in, incomplete as they were.

2026-02-02 02:27:03

A peaceful protest in Portland, Oregon, on Saturday broke into chaos as federal agents deployed tear gas on demonstrators—including families with young children. 

Thousands of protesters marched through the city and gathered in the blocks surrounding the Immigration and Customs Enforcement building. According to the Oregonian, just minutes after the crowd arrived at the facility, federal agents launched tear gas, pepper balls, rubber bullets, and flash-bang grenades after some demonstrators approached the security gate. 

Labor leaders from over 20 unions led the march to the ICE building, with many protesters participating as part of the “Labor Against ICE” rally. 

Portland City Councilor Mitch Green wrote in a social media post that he was tear gassed in the crowd: “Federal agents at the ICE facility tear gassed children. We must abolish ICE, DHS, and we must have prosecutions. I expect to see enforcement of our city code prohibiting the use of tear gas.”

Portland’s city code bans selling, furnishing, transporting, carrying, possessing, or using tear gas weapons within the city limits. The code does not apply to “members of the armed forces of the State of Oregon and the United States in the performance of their official duties,” but federal agents are not exempted under the statute.

The Portland Police Bureau posted on X on Saturday night that they closed a major street to prevent drivers from being affected by the tear gas. 

Portland Mayor Keith Wilson released a statement late Saturday night, saying that it was a “peaceful daytime protest” that “posed no danger to federal forces.” 

“To those who continue to work for ICE: Resign. To those who control this facility: Leave,” he continued. “To those who continue to make these sickening decisions, go home, look in a mirror, and ask yourselves why you have gassed children. Ask yourselves why you continue to work for an agency responsible for murders on American streets.”

Wilson said later in the lengthy statement that the city would carry out an ordinance that went into effect in January that imposes financial penalties on facilities where chemical agents are deployed.

The crackdown against protesters in Portland comes one day after a nationwide uprising where hundreds of demonstrations took place across the country to demand federal agents leave American towns and cities.

2026-02-01 20:30:00

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

With an icy white sheet still blanketing much of the Eastern United States after an intense storm this week, it’s hard to imagine a future with less snow at this time of year. 

But over time, climate change has decreased snowpack by as much as 20 percent per decade in parts of the Northern Hemisphere.

This trend is already causing trouble for the Winter Olympics and Paralympics, global events reliant on snow to succeed. In a landmark 2024 study, researchers found that potential host locations are dwindling as temperatures warm. 

Just weeks before this year’s Olympics-Paralympics events kick off in Italy, scientists published a follow-up study analyzing how the games can adapt. The most effective option: shifting when they are held. 

Disappearing snow isn’t just affecting Olympians. Around the world, the warming climate is shortening recreational ski and snowboarding seasons, which could have cascading impacts for the towns that have long relied on this winter economy. 

For more than a century, the Winter Olympics have been held almost every four years in snowy cities across the globe, from the first games in Chamonix, France, to the most recent in Beijing. The Paralympic Games take place in the same location shortly afterward. 

Olympic competitions such as alpine skiing and snowboarding are dependent on consistent snowpack. Rapid levels of warming across the Northern Hemisphere disrupt that. In 2010, Vancouver saw a record-warm January, partially due to the weather phenomenon known as El Niño, and had to drive and fly in enough snow to fill 20 Big Bens for snowboarding and freestyle skiing events, the Christian Science Monitor reports. 

Warm weather also threatens the quality of the snow already on the ground, as shown at Russia’s Sochi Olympics and Paralympics in 2014, which saw an uptick in injury rates compared with the previous games as athletes struggled in the slush. 

With this in mind, the International Olympic Committee, which governs the games, recently commissioned a study to determine future climate impacts. Researchers analyzed 93 regions around the world that have previously hosted the Olympic Winter and Paralympic Games to determine whether they’d be “climate-reliable” by the 2050s. Under the most likely emissions scenario, only 52 locations met the criteria for the Olympics and just 22 for the Paralympics, given that it is slightly later in the season, according to their 2024 study.

But there are ways to adapt, according to co-author Daniel Scott, a climate expert at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. In a follow-up study published last week, Scott and his colleagues found that shifting both the Olympic and Paralympic Games to earlier dates could increase the number of climate-suitable host countries, particularly for the Paralympics. 

As I reported last year, experts have called for a similar timing change for the Summer Olympics to reduce the risk of extreme heat, which has harmed both competitors’ and fans’ health in recent years. 

It’s a seemingly simple shift but comes with its own set of complexities. Moving the Winter Olympics up a few weeks would mean the games are happening right after the holiday season. Cities may struggle to secure pre-games housing, ensure there’s sufficient infrastructure, or find volunteers shortly after Christmas. 

Another added nuisance, according to Scott: Television rights. Broadcasters and advertisers pay billions and plan years ahead for the rights to air the Olympics, which provides the financial foundation for the games. Changing the time of the games could disrupt this model, at least in the short term. 

Other experts have pointed out that organizers must reckon with the Olympic Games’ own rampant emissions to secure a future less threatened by climate change. Cities often raze ecosystems to build new facilities, companies use copious amounts of energy to broadcast the competitions, and people travel from around the world in carbon-emitting planes to spectate. 

For the Winter Games specifically, environmentalists are concerned about the growing amount of artificial snow cities must pump out to supplement dwindling natural supplies. In 2022, Beijing made Olympics history as the first host to use artificial snow almost exclusively to support the games. 

It was a mammoth task. China pulled water from key reservoirs to help create a wintry snowscape in a historically dry city. But critics said the effort strained water supplies for local communities, disrupted soil and plant growth, and used large amounts of energy. 

The 2026 Olympics is in a snowier region, the Italian Alps. But still, the International Olympic Committee told the Associated Press it has produced more than 2 million cubic yards of artificial snow for the upcoming games. 

Since the last time Italy’s Cortina d’Ampezzo hosted in 1956, February temperatures have warmed in the area by 6.4 degrees Fahrenheit, according to a recent analysis by the nonprofit Climate Central. 

Environmentalists have pointed to the climate feedback loop this can create: As places pump out more artificial snow, the emissions from this process—if fossil fuels are used—feed the climate change that will reduce future natural snowpack. 

Artificial snow is becoming similarly important for recreational winter sports as temperatures rise. Some resorts have taken to stockpiling snow under giant insulating blankets to keep it from melting during warmer seasons, WIRED reports. But these efforts are costly, and it may soon become untenable for certain regions in the Northern Hemisphere, including some parts of the Northeastern US such as New York and Pennsylvania, to save or make enough snow for a lucrative ski operation. 

Scott told me there will be “winners and losers” as winter resort towns face global warming. “As some of those businesses go out of business, the others are there to pick up market share, if demand stays the same,” he said. 

Though Scott recognizes the energy and water required to produce machine-made snow, he believes the sustainability of snowmaking gets a bit of a bad rep. He noted that up to 90 percent of the water is returned to the same watershed once the snow melts, and the process likely has a lower emissions footprint than traveling farther to ski elsewhere or flying to watch the Olympics. 

Nonetheless, winter sport enthusiasts—professional and amateur—will have to adapt to changing conditions. A survey of Olympic winter athletes and coaches from 20 countries found 90 percent had concerns about how climate change will affect the future of their sport.

“When it comes to the Olympics, you hope you deliver [athletes] the best conditions possible,” Scott said. “These people have trained their whole damn lives for these things.”