Louisiana is not experiencing ordinary political turbulence. We are watching democratic instability unfold in real time.

Within a matter of days, voters across this state have been forced to absorb three major disruptions at once: the dismantling of Black voting representation through the ruling in Louisiana v. Callais; the suspension of congressional primary elections already in progress; and a statewide constitutional amendment that could fundamentally reshape public education in East Baton Rouge Parish and beyond.

The timing could not be more critical. Election Day is May 16. Early voting began Saturday. Absentee ballots have already been distributed. Yet Gov. Jeff Landry’s executive order suspended Louisiana’s closed party congressional primaries after the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the state’s congressional map. 

Voters are now left in a vacuum of information, told that congressional races will still appear on their ballots, but that their votes in these contests won’t count.

That should alarm every person in this state, regardless of party affiliation.

A democracy cannot function when election rules shift after the machinery of voting has already begun moving. This creates confusion and distrust precisely when public confidence is most fragile. 

Black communities, in particular, understand the historical weight of sudden procedural changes in elections. Louisiana does not get to separate this moment from that history.

This erosion of collective representation is not limited to the ballot box. It is also manifesting in the very structure of our local institutions. 

On the May 16 ballot voters are being asked to decide on Constitutional Amendment 2, which would formally recognize the St. George Community School System with independent authority to receive state funding and raise local revenues though taxes.

When coupled with its implementing legislation, the amendment mandates the transfer of public school lands, facilities and assets from the East Baton Rouge Parish School System to the new St. George system by June 30, 2027. Reports indicate that East Baton Rouge schools could lose roughly $100 million if this separation proceeds.

This is bigger than one city, one amendment or one election cycle. This is about fragmentation: the fragmentation of voting rights, public education and, ultimately, public trust. The people most harmed by this fracturing are always the communities with the fewest resources to absorb the blow: Black families, working-class families, disabled residents and children already navigating underfunded schools.

Supporters of these measures frame them as issues of local control or administrative necessity. But language matters less than outcomes. When systems repeatedly reorganize power away from collective accountability and toward isolated control structures, inequity expands. History has shown us this repeatedly.

The most dangerous part is how normalized this chaos is becoming. Louisianans are being conditioned to accept government by disruption. Maps change overnight, elections pause midstream, public assets become bargaining chips. 

That is not healthy governance. That is democratic erosion dressed in procedural language.

The people of Louisiana deserve clarity before elections begin, not after. They deserve stable representation and public institutions designed to serve communities rather than divide them into competing islands of power. Because once citizens begin believing their vote is conditional, their schools are negotiable, and their representation is disposable, democracy itself begins to fracture.

And fractured systems rarely fail equally.

Responding to President Donald Trump’s pressure, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has called a special session to redraw the state’s U.S. House map as the party tries to eliminate the only Democratic-held seat in Memphis.

Lee is calling on state lawmakers to return to the state Capitol on May 5 to pass a new Tennessee U.S. congressional district map, less than two weeks after the state legislature wrapped its annual session.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that no longer requires Tennessee and other southern states to create majority-minority districts in their U.S. House and state legislature district maps.

Tennessee, with a Black population of around 16%, was previously required by the Voting Rights Act to draw at least one of its nine congressional districts as majority-minority, effectively helping Democrats hold on to a Memphis-based seat.

“We owe it to Tennesseans to ensure our congressional districts accurately reflect the will of Tennessee voters,” said Lee in a news release. “After consultation with the Lt. Governor, Speaker of the House, Attorney General, and Secretary of State, I believe the General Assembly has a responsibility to review the map and ensure it remains fair, legal, and defensible.”

Lawmakers need to move fast to change the maps before the 2026 midterm elections, as Tennessee’s Congressional primaries will be held on Aug. 6. The qualifying deadline to run in those elections has already passed, and campaigns are in full swing

Republicans currently hold an 8-1 advantage in congressional seats over Democrats. Tennessee is a Republican stronghold that Trump won with around 64% of the vote in 2024. But if party representation were equally distributed without gerrymandering, Democrats would likely hold two or three of the state’s U.S. House seats.

The Republican advantage is even stronger in the state legislature. Republicans control 75% of the state House seats and 81% of the state Senate.

Tennessee Republicans in 2022 were legally able to eliminate a Democratic-held seat in Nashville by splitting it across three congressional districts. This led Democrats to lose the 5th district seat, which the party had held since the end of the 1870s Reconstruction era.

Tennessee U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Republican running for governor this year, shared a photo on social media of a map showing the GOP winning all nine congressional districts by large margins.

The Lookout, using the nonpartisan Dave’s Redistricting, was able to replicate a similar map to the one Blackburn proposed, but not with the same margins she posted. Based on the 2024 Presidential election, Republicans could achieve a 9-0 outcome, essentially cracking Nashville and Memphis, but would shrink their margins in almost every district.

The map created by the Lookout shows nine districts where Republicans won 60% of the vote based on the 2024 Presidential election. But now six districts would have Republican advantages of less than 12 percentage points, compared to the current two.

Blackburn’s map appears to be based on the 2024 presidential election margin, not the Republican percentage of the vote over 50%, which is how nonpartisan organizations like Cook Political Report rate districts.

Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com.

Massachusetts and Rhode Island are considering dropping GLP-1 drugs for obesity treatment from their Medicaid programs, continuing a trend of states that have stopped coverage of these expensive medications. 

Thirteen state Medicaid programs are covering GLP-1 drugs for the treatment of obesity this year, down from 16 last year. 

Medicaid programs in California, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and South Carolina have eliminated coverage of the drugs for weight loss, because the expense strained state budgets. 

In Massachusetts, the governor’s proposed fiscal 2028 budget would not fund the state’s Medicaid program, MassHealth, to cover GLP-1 medications for weight loss alone, though the state would continue covering the drugs for diabetes and other conditions. The legislature is still debating the state budget. 

Rhode Island’s governor also has proposed removing GLP-1 coverage from the state’s Medicaid program for weight loss treatment. 

North Carolina reinstated such coverage in mid-December after having dropped it in October. 

Medicaid programs in Delaware, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin also cover the drugs for obesity treatment, according to KFF, a health policy research group. 

But some states, such as Michigan, have restricted eligibility for these medications to morbidly obesity patients rather than those who are overweight or obese. The move is expected to save the state an estimated $240 million. 

Meanwhile, lawmakers in Louisiana are debating whether to allow Medicaid to cover GLP-1s for obesity treatment if enrollees have another chronic condition, or comorbidity, such as prediabetes, hypertension or cardiovascular disease.  

The medications generally have been too expensive for people without insurance. In February, one of the largest producers of these drugs, Novo Nordisk, announced it would reduce their list prices to $675 per month in 2027. 

Gross spending on Medicaid prescriptions for GLP-1s — for diabetes as well as for weight loss — has increased from around $1 billion in 2019 to almost $9 billion in 2024 as demand for these drugs has risen, according to KFF. 

At the same time almost 40% of adults and a quarter of children with Medicaid have obesity and may benefit from having access to the drugs, according to KFF. 

Stateline reporter Shalina Chatlani can be reached at schatlani@stateline.org.

While the idea of a special tax on millionaires is hotly debated across the country, Maine state Rep. Cheryl Golek characterized her state’s new tax as a modest and reasonable step toward fairness.

That’s because, she said, working- and middle-class households in Maine — including teachers, firefighters and nurses — are paying effective state income tax rates similar to or higher than those of the highest earners.

“Those who benefit the most from our economy do so because of the people, infrastructure and communities that support that success,” said Golek, a Democrat. “Asking for a small additional contribution from the wealthiest in our state is a reasonable and widely supported step toward a fairer system.”

The legislation signed by Democratic Gov. Janet Mills this month will add a 2% tax to households whose income exceeds $1 million per year.

Maine and Washington, which enacted its own law last month, are among the latest Democratic-led states to ask for more tax dollars from the rich as national wealth inequality widens and states face heightened budget pressures. They follow the lead of other states including New Jersey and Massachusetts that have implemented specific taxes for the rich.

The idea is gaining traction as lawmakers in at least a dozen states, including Illinois, Minnesota, Rhode Island and Virginia, have proposed new taxes for the wealthiest taxpayers. In California, advocates this week announced they gathered enough signatures for a ballot initiative that would impose a one-time tax on billionaires. But these proposals often stir yearslong battles.

The taxes can take different forms — taxing annual incomes above a certain threshold or taxing capital assets, including high-value stocks and real estate. Earlier this month, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul, both Democrats, proposed a new pied-à-terre tax for homes valued above $5 million when owners have a separate primary residence outside of New York City.

In neighboring New Jersey, those earning over $1 million per year face an income tax top rate of 10.75% in addition to a so-called mansion tax on the sales of high-value homes.

Proponents say these moves can help balance state tax structures that are tilted against lower earners. The left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy says the tax systems of 40 states favor the wealthiest earners. But opponents argue that these measures levy new taxes on business owners, dissuading local investment and encouraging rich residents to move away — especially risky during a time when many other states are slashing taxes.

“When the outlook of our population growth is stagnant and we should be attracting people to Maine, it puts a disincentive to people to call Maine home,” Patrick Woodcock, president and CEO of the Maine State Chamber of Commerce, said during a news conference ahead of the state House vote on the tax.

The rising push to tax the wealthy in liberal states comes as some red states are moving to more regressive tax systems, which put a higher burden on lower earners.

“You increasingly have two poles where you have a larger number of states with fairly low income taxes and a smaller but still significant number of states that have doubled down on high rates, particularly high rates on high earners,” said Jared Walczak, senior fellow at the conservative-leaning Tax Foundation.

He said increasing income taxes pushes wealthy people and employers to low-tax states. Even if individuals don’t directly move because of taxes, they follow businesses to other states, he said.

And some progressives are wary of going too far: California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is opposing the ballot initiative that would impose a one-time 5% tax on those whose net worth exceeds $1 billion. Hochul, who pushed for the new tax on second homes in New York City, has warned that more tax increases on the millionaires and billionaires could hollow out a crucial portion of the state’s tax base.

Walczak said only a handful of in-demand places can afford to impose higher taxes for the same reason that people pay higher rents.

“It’s worth it to a lot of people,” he said. “People are willing to pay very high rent, but there’s a limit. In the same way, they’re willing to pay higher taxes to live in New York, but there is a limit.”

Rising wealth inequality

The gap between the rich and poor has been widening for decades.

Wealth for the bottom fifth of American households has barely moved in recent decades, while the top 0.1% have seen their wealth increase by nearly $40 million each, according to an analysis by the anti-poverty nonprofit Oxfam America.

Between 1980 and 2022, the share of national income going to the top 1% doubled, while the share going to the bottom 50% fell by a third, Oxfam reported.

Recent federal policy changes have only exacerbated the need for progressive state tax changes, said Amber Wallin, executive director of the State Revenue Alliance, which is lobbying for higher taxes for the wealthy across multiple states.

President Donald Trump’s major tax and spending bill, often called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, slashed funds for safety net programs including food stamps and Medicaid. At the same time, it provided tax cuts that largely benefit the wealthy.

“So we know millions will lose access to healthcare, millions will lose food assistance, and states all across the country will see funding cuts for key programs,” she said. “We know that people power a strong economy, not tax cuts for the wealthy, and when the rich pay their fair share of taxes, we all benefit.”

Since Massachusetts voters in 2022 approved a 4% surtax on annual incomes above $1 million, that Fair Share Amendment has provided the commonwealth with $6 billion in transportation and education funding.

But Jim Stergios, executive director at the libertarian-leaning Pioneer Institute, said it’s not just the ultra-wealthy who are paying that tax. People who record a one-time sale of a business or a home can face the tax even if they’re not earning over $1 million every year, he said.

He said the tax is pushing residents out of the state and dampening business investment. Federal data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows Massachusetts lost more than 33,000 residents to other states last year, though Democratic Gov. Maura Healy noted the overall population did increase because of foreign immigration. Stergios noted lawmakers are still facing challenges balancing the state budget even with the new revenue.

“So over the long term, it’s not going to have a salutary effect,” he said. “We’re going to continue to have budget problems. We do have budget problems even with this.”

Proponents and opponents of the state’s millionaire’s tax have touted recent IRS data in their arguments: Residents leaving Massachusetts took a total of $4.2 billion in adjusted gross income with them in 2023, the first year of the new tax, Bloomberg reported. Yet the number of residents moving out of Massachusetts who reported income of $200,000 or more fell after the tax was implemented.

“There’s no real evidence of millionaire out-migration. I’m sure there’s some isolated anecdotes, but the actual data don’t show it,” said Phineas Baxandall, director of research and policy analysis at the left-leaning Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center.

He said one piece of evidence that the wealthy remain in Massachusetts are the proceeds of the tax itself, which are funding major priorities including free community college and expanding childcare subsidies for thousands.

“Massachusetts is rightfully fearful of the federal cuts that are happening,” Baxandall said, “but we’ve been able to still move forward with real, transformational investments.”

Multiyear efforts

Though interest in raising taxes on the rich is growing across the country, the idea faces considerable skepticism and often requires years of organizing.

In March, Michigan advocates announced they would suspend their campaign to put on the statewide ballot a 5% tax on individual incomes over $500,000 and joint incomes over $1 million.

“We always knew that we were going to face strong headwinds from billionaires who don’t want to pay their fair share,” Rachelle Crow-Hercher, president of the Invest in MI Kids steering committee, said in a statement to Michigan Advance. That coalition plans to eye the 2028 election cycle instead, she said.

Last week, Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch announced he would drop a push for a new millionaire’s tax as Democrats came up short of the necessary supermajority needed to put the issue on this fall’s ballot.

Welch believes the issue will come before lawmakers again, but after missing a key legislative deadline it won’t be eligible for a statewide vote until 2028. He said it remains popular among voters. Lawmakers proposed using proceeds of a new tax for schools and property tax relief.

“I believe that we should tax the rich and the rich should pay more,” he said. “To those who much is given, much is required.”

Meanwhile, the newly enacted Washington tax faces a lengthy, though expected, court challenge.

The legislation signed last month by Democratic Gov. Bob Ferguson imposes a 9.9% tax on household income above $1 million a year. Opponents argue that income is property and thus must be taxed uniformly because of state constitutional requirements.

In addition to the constitutional concerns, Republican state Rep. Jim Walsh said the new law opens the door for lawmakers to eventually expand income taxes to more households — not just the rich. Instead of raising revenue, he said Democratic lawmakers should focus on cutting spending, noting the state operations budget has more than doubled in the past decade.

“The problem is not the financing mechanism of the state’s operations,” he said. “It’s the rate at which far-left advocates in the legislature have been increasing state government spending in the state. It’s ridiculous.”

To Democratic state Sen. Noel Frame, the legislation brings the state’s regressive tax code more in line with Washington’s progressive politics. With no statewide income tax, sales and property taxes leave lower income earners to cover more of the cost of state services, making Washington’s one of the nation’s most regressive tax systems.

“For all the things that we do that are good, big, bold economic policy — to have the tax code that we have is just an embarrassment, and it’s completely out of line with our values as a state,” Frame said.

Like the push for a $15 minimum wage started in liberal cities and states, Frame expects the millionaire tax movement will spread into more conservative areas.

Already, some conservative states, including Idaho, Indiana and Florida, have made moves to reject some of last year’s federal tax changes that benefit corporations and the wealthy.

“The people are demanding better,” Frame said. “And the more that people understand the deep connection of tax policy to income and wealth inequality, the more engaged they become.”

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org. 

A quarter of immigration arrests since August were labeled by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as “collateral,” a type of arrest and detention that’s been challenged in court as an end run around civil rights.

Public outrage and lawsuits over the arrests may be tamping down the large-scale sweeps that foster them, but tens of thousands were arrested this way between August and early March.

Immigration arrests are usually based on warrants obtained ahead of time, showing either a removal order from immigration court or evidence of a crime or charge that makes the person subject to deportation.

But collateral arrests can result from street sweeps and raids in which a person is singled out for questioning based on appearance or proximity to someone wanted on a warrant. That person could be taken into custody if agents think they may be subject to deportation and also likely to flee if released.

Labeled for the first time ever, the collateral arrests are reported from August to early March in ICE arrest data obtained by the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by Stateline. In that time there were about 64,000 collateral arrests, a quarter of the 253,000 total arrests by ICE.

About 70% of the collateral arrests were for people with immigration-related crimes or violations alone, compared with 41% for arrests with warrants. Less than 2% of those with collateral arrests were convicted of a violent crime, one-third the rate of other arrests, and only 18% were convicted of any crime, compared with 33% for other arrests.

The collateral arrests contributed to an overall pattern of lower and lower shares of arrests for serious crimes, and more for immigration offenses alone.

Arrests climbed from about 12,000 in January 2025 to more than 40,000 in December, but fell back to 30,000 this February. The share of people with only immigration-related crimes and violations rose to more than half in December and January, the peak months for collateral arrests, and the share of violent criminals fell from 10% to 4% of arrests in that time.

New policy

ICE announced a new policy in January to issue warrants in real time if agents think an immigrant is deportable and “likely to escape,” though that policy faces a court challenge.

Total arrests and collateral arrests have been falling since December, whether because of the new policy or because of cutbacks in the large-scale street sweeps that tend to produce them.

One factor is public outrage over raids sweeping up noncriminals in places like Minneapolis and Chicago, said Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an associate policy analyst for the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.

“The sort of large operations within big cities, as they were occurring, seems to have subsided somewhat,” Putzel-Kavanaugh said. “After the kind of public outcry following Minneapolis, it seems as though, at least for now, that tactic has kind of been paused.”

The Trump administration’s focus on mass deportation opened the way for more collateral street arrests with less investigation, she added.

“If it’s a more targeted arrest, they would take the time to sort of essentially have an investigation. It’s a pretty resource-intensive way that just would not yield the kind of numbers ICE was being told to produce,” she said.

The new policy was filed in court papers in February as a response to a lawsuit over ICE sweeps in the District of Columbia last year, alleging ICE agents “have flooded the streets of the nation’s capital, indiscriminately arresting without warrants and without probable cause District residents whom the agents perceive to be Latino.”

The case resulted in a preliminary injunction in December requiring a halt to warrantless arrests without establishing probable cause that the person is living here illegally and is a flight risk.

One plaintiff in the class-action case, José Escobar Molina, said in the lawsuit that agents in two cars pulled up to him as he approached his work truck on Aug. 21, grabbing him by the arms and legs and handcuffing him without asking any questions. Escobar, 47, said in the court papers that he’s lived in the district for 25 years and has had temporary protected status as a Salvadoran native the whole time. He was held overnight in Virginia before being released.

Other lawsuits are also challenging collateral arrests, such as an incident in Idaho in which agents with warrants for five people ended up arresting 105 immigrants at a Latino community event in October.

In North Carolina, four U.S. citizens and a visa holder sued in February, saying they were arrested in the Charlotte’s Web immigration crackdown in November without warrants, as is typical of collateral arrests.

“I have a lot of fear that this will happen to me again. I was essentially kidnapped based only on the color of my skin. That really weighs on me,” said Yoshi Cuenca Villamar, one of the citizens and a North Carolina native, in a statement announcing the lawsuit. He said he was doing landscaping work Nov. 15 when agents pushed him to the ground and handcuffed him, then held him in a car before releasing him.

One Illinois case that started in the first Trump administration challenged warrantless arrests and traffic stops used as a pretext for immigration arrests. A 2022 settlement required ICE to document “reasonable suspicion” of illegal status before arresting somebody. The case continues since a judge found in February that the new ICE policy of issuing warrants in real time after a detention violates the consent decree.

Shares of collateral arrests

In the months since August where collateral arrests are now labeled, the District of Columbia and Illinois stand out with high shares of collateral arrests. More than half the arrests in the district were collateral, as were 41% of those in Illinois. There were eight states in which at least 30% of arrests were collateral: Alabama, Maryland, West Virginia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Maine and Minnesota.

West Virginia, where there was a “statewide surge” of immigration enforcement in January with state and local cooperation, stands out for its high rate of total arrests as well as a large share of collateral arrests.

ICE labeled 1,300 arrests during Operation Metro Surge as ‘collateral’

For the eight months between August and early March, West Virginia had 1,831 arrests, or 1 in 10 of the state’s noncitizen population as of 2024, the latest data available. That’s by far the largest share in the country, followed by 7% in Wyoming (where truck drivers were targeted for immigration arrests in February) and 4% in Mississippi.

West Virginia Republican Gov. Patrick Morrisey, in a statement, cited the cooperation of state and local agencies with ICE through the 287(g) program that assists with immigration enforcement. He praised ICE, saying “they have removed dangerous illegal immigrants from our communities and made our state safer for families and law-abiding citizens.”

Few of those arrested in the surge were violent criminals, however. More than half of those arrested during the surge were collateral arrests, and only 1% — nine immigrants — had a violent crime conviction, according to the Stateline analysis. More than three-quarters, about 500 people, had only an immigration-related violation or crime.

Judges didn’t always agree that collateral arrests and detentions in the West Virginia surge were legal under the U.S. Constitution. U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin, a Clinton appointee, ordered two detainees released in January. He noted that “similar seizures and detentions are occurring frequently across the country” without any evidence they’re necessary as required by the Constitution.

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.

We knew Jeep’s first American EV was having a tough time, but this is something else. A nearly new Wagoneer S Limited 4xe just sold on Bring a Trailer for $38,500 after covering only 91 miles (147 km). That’s roughly $30,000 below its original sticker, and a sharp reminder that EV depreciation can be brutal.

On paper, the deal looks fantastic. The Wagoneer S packs dual motors, all-wheel drive, and a factory-rated output of 500 hp (507 PS) and 524 lb-ft (710 Nm) of torque. The quoted 294-mile (473 km) range from the 100 kWh battery isn’t amazing, but it’s tolerable, and the tailpipe-free Wagoneer is roomy enough for family duty and loaded with kit, making the auction result look like bargain-hunter gold.

Related: Wagoneer S Lost 93% Of Its Buyers, And Gas Charger Outsold Its Electric Twin 7 To 1

This example was a Limited trim finished in white with Jeep’s Dark Appearance package. The Limited stickered at $67,195 including destination and before options, and this one came with a panoramic roof, heated front seats, heated steering wheel, surround-view cameras, adaptive cruise control, wireless smartphone mirroring, a 12.3-inch touchscreen, and an Alpine nine-speaker audio system.

So it’s not exactly a stripped rental special, even if it is a rung below the 600 hp (608 PS), $72,195 Launch Edition.

So why the huge value crash? Because the Wagoneer S has struggled badly since launch. It arrived when automakers believed premium EV demand in America would keep climbing. Instead, the market cooled, incentives changed, and shoppers became more selective about price, charging access, and brand trust.

No More Tax Credits

The biggest blow came when the $7,500 federal EV tax credit disappeared last September. Before that, Jeep reportedly moved more than 10,000 Wagoneer S models across three quarters with the help of some big discounts. In the two quarters after the credit ended, sales fell to just 613 units.

Jeep’s response has been telling. The brand won’t build a 2026 Wagoneer S at all, instead skipping straight to a 2027 model. Stellantis says the pause will allow upgrades to battery performance, software, capability, and interior quality. It’ll also gain a NACS charging port for easier access to Tesla’s growing Supercharger network.

A better Wagoneer S is coming, but we still think whoever bought this one got an absolute bargain. If he can live with uncertain resale and a model facing reboot status, $38,500 bought him a barely driven 500-hp electric SUV with lots of equipment. That’s hard to ignore, even if the first owner probably wishes they had.

Bring a Trailer

Astronomers have unleashed a powerful new AI tool called RAVEN to comb through data from NASA’s TESS mission—and it’s paying off in a big way. By analyzing millions of stars, the system has confirmed over 100 exoplanets, including 31 brand-new worlds, and identified thousands more promising candidates. What makes this especially exciting is the discovery of rare and extreme planets, like those that whip around their stars in less than a day and others lurking in the mysterious “Neptunian desert,” where planets are thought to be scarce.

GLP-1 drugs like semaglutide—best known for treating diabetes and driving weight loss under the brand names Ozempic and Wegovy—may also deliver a surprising mental health boost. In a massive study tracking nearly 100,000 people over more than a decade, researchers found that these medications were linked to significantly fewer psychiatric hospital visits and sick days.

A new analysis of the “Boltzmann brain” paradox suggests our memories and sense of reality could, in theory, be random illusions born from cosmic chaos. By uncovering circular reasoning in how physicists think about time and entropy, the study raises fresh doubts about what we can truly know about the past.

Physicists are rethinking one of quantum mechanics’ biggest puzzles: how fuzzy possibilities become definite reality. New research suggests that spontaneous “collapse” processes—possibly linked to gravity—could subtly blur time itself. This wouldn’t affect clocks we use today, but it reveals a hidden limit to how precise time can ever be. The findings open a new path toward uniting quantum physics with gravity.

Drugs designed to clear amyloid beta from the brain—once seen as a promising path to slowing Alzheimer’s—may not actually help patients in any meaningful way, according to a major review of over 20,000 participants. Even more concerning, they may increase the risk of brain swelling and bleeding, sometimes without obvious symptoms.

Coffee doesn’t just energize—it actively reshapes the gut and mind. Researchers found that both caffeinated and decaf coffee altered gut bacteria in ways linked to better mood and lower stress. Decaf even improved learning and memory, while caffeine boosted focus and reduced anxiety. Together, they show coffee works through multiple pathways beyond just caffeine.

A new kind of memory device may finally solve the problem of overheating and battery drain in electronics. By shrinking components to an extreme scale and redesigning their structure, researchers found a way to reduce energy loss instead of increasing it. The result is a tiny memory unit that improves as it gets smaller—something once thought impossible. This could pave the way for ultra-efficient smartphones, wearables, and AI systems.

A hidden force may be quietly shaping how you feel—and you’d never even know it. Infrasound, an ultra-low-frequency vibration below the range of human hearing, is everywhere from traffic to old buildings. In a small experiment, people exposed to it became more irritable, less engaged, and even showed higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol—despite having no idea it was present. The findings suggest our bodies can “sense” these vibrations without conscious awareness, potentially explaining eerie sensations in places like basements or supposedly haunted buildings.

Long before humans spread across the globe, a deadly disease may have quietly shaped where our ancestors lived—and even how we evolved. New research reveals that malaria didn’t just threaten early human survival; it actively pushed populations away from high-risk regions across Africa, fragmenting groups over tens of thousands of years. This separation influenced how different populations met, mixed, and exchanged genes, helping shape the genetic diversity we see today.

Evolution seems to follow a script more often than expected. Researchers found that distantly related butterflies and moths have reused the same pair of genes for over 120 million years to produce strikingly similar warning colors. Rather than altering the genes themselves, evolution modifies how they’re switched on and off. This discovery hints that life may evolve in more predictable ways than previously believed.

A bizarre rainforest insect is rewriting what scientists thought they knew about camouflage. A katydid spotted glowing hot pink in Panama stunned researchers when it slowly transformed into green in just 11 days, perfectly mirroring the life cycle of tropical leaves that emerge pink before maturing. What once seemed like a rare genetic oddity now appears to be a clever survival trick, allowing the insect to blend in as its leafy surroundings change.

The brain’s memory center may begin life more like a crowded web than an empty canvas. Researchers discovered that early neural networks in the hippocampus are dense and seemingly random, then become more organized by shedding connections over time. This pruning process creates a faster, more efficient system for linking experiences and forming memories. It challenges the idea that the brain starts from scratch.

Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz provided details to lawmakers Thursday on employees affected by the closure of its regional office in Milwaukee, as well as President Donald Trump’s budget that cuts 75 percent of the agency's funding.

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Wisconsin lost thousands of manufacturing jobs in 2025, driven in part by an aging workforce and hesitancy to expand hiring in an uncertain economy. 

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