Every summer, when Lollapalooza comes to Chicago’s Grant Park, there’s a certain energy that comes with it. It sounds like tens of thousands of people are walking slowly across the same patch of grass with food in one hand and a wristband on the other. You can hear the distant thud of bass through the trees. This year, it feels more alive than it has in a while. It’s planned chaos. On Thursday, July 30, 2026, Lollapalooza 2026 opened its gates to a huge crowd. And that was just the first day. The festival lasts for four days, ending on…
Author: Sierra Foster
Sierra Foster
Born in Kansas City, Sierra Foster writes about politics and serves as Senior Editor at kbsd6.com. She was raised paying attention to this city, not just living in it. Sierra has a strong, deep connection to Kansas City, from the neighborhoods east of Troost to the discussions that take place in the city hall halls. Sierra, who is presently enrolled at the University of Kansas to pursue a degree in Political Science, applies the rigor of academic study to her journalism. She writes about politics in Missouri and Kansas as someone who genuinely cares about what happens to the people in these communities—the policies that impact them, the leaders who represent them, and the civic forces influencing their futures—rather than as an outsider watching from a distance. Her editorial coverage encompasses state-level policy, local government, and the national political currents that permeate bi-state regional life. Whether it's a city council vote or a Senate race, she has a special gift for turning complex policy language into writing that feels urgent, relatable, and worthwhile. Sierra seldom sits still off the page. She claims that playing soccer on a regular basis has sharpened her instincts for political reporting because of the sport's teamwork, strategy, and requirement to read a changing game in real time. She's probably somewhere in Kansas City with her friends when she's not writing or on the pitch, discovering new reasons to adore a city she already knows so well.
Being in charge of a legislative body when the president of your own party isn’t sure you’re the right person for the job can make you feel politically alone. These days, John Thune knows how that feels. There was a conversation between the Senate Majority Leader and someone in his office at the Capitol on a Wednesday afternoon. It was more revealing than almost anything said in public. Trump told reporters outside the Oval Office that Thune “has the votes” to end the Senate filibuster. He also made it sound like Thune wasn’t qualified to be leader at all. When…
There is a stretch of coast in northern Morocco, not far from the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, where the Mediterranean Sea looks almost calm in the early morning. At first glance, you might not think that this small body of water is one of the most contested routes in the world. That is, until you see the fences, the patrol boats, and the groups of people walking quietly toward the shore in the dark. That quiet ended on Thursday, July 30. Something very different came in. Over a thousand people rushed across the border from Morocco into Ceuta, overwhelming the…
I find it strange that a climate crisis can start in such a quiet way. There was no big news. There was no warning. There is only warm water slowly building up below the surface of the Pacific Ocean. This sets off a chain of events that will eventually cause streets to flood in Los Angeles, ice storms in Mississippi, and tornadoes along the Gulf Coast in the middle of winter. That’s how things stand at the moment. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has confirmed that El Niño conditions are already present in the tropical Pacific. Now, weather forecasters…
There is a certain kind of arrogance that comes with real intelligence, and Leopold Aschenbrenner has always had a lot of both. He graduated from Columbia as valedictorian when he was 19. He worked at one of the world’s most secret AI labs by the time he was 21. He wrote essays about the coming of artificial general intelligence when he was 23 years old, with all the confidence of someone who had already seen the whole map. All of that moved so quickly, and then July 2026 stopped everything in an instant. At the beginning of this month, Aschenbrenner’s…
On a quiet Wednesday night in Boston, a federal judge didn’t stop one of the most important changes to health policy under Trump. There was no big deal or dramatic moment in court. Just a decision that will hurt millions of low-income Americans who depend on Medicaid to stay insured. Twenty-five states and Washington, D.C. asked Judge Richard J. Stearns, who was appointed by Bill Clinton, to temporarily stop the Trump administration’s Medicaid work requirement rule. He said no. Chronically ill Medicaid patients must show that they are medically too weak to work, volunteer, or do other “community engagement” activities…
When people are treated badly in institutions, they are not necessarily doing it on purpose. Everyone does things the right way. Each person points to the right paragraph in the right file. In the middle, a group of people—in this case, 17 law graduates—end up having to deal with the effects of a crisis that none of them caused. That’s basically what the Brickfields Asia College LPQB lawsuit was about. And on July 28, the High Court threw it out. Brickfields Asia College, which is just called BAC in Malaysian legal education circles, had fought the Legal Profession Qualifying Board’s…
This story almost sounds too much like the plot of a movie. It takes seven years and $45 million to make a WWII movie with Nicolas Cage and Ben Kingsley. The person then brings a copy to Netflix’s main office so that they can look at it, but someone takes it from a desk. Not from the web. That isn’t through a very smart hack. From my desk at work. The Swiss businessman Simon Afram is at the center of the Netflix Nicolas Cage Fortitude lawsuit. This week, he sent Netflix a $105 million complaint after the company admitted that…
It’s almost strange to see an 85-year-old man who used to work as a presidential advisor refuse to answer any questions from a Senate committee over and over again. That was Wednesday in Washington, D.C. Dr. Anthony Fauci was summoned to testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. He used his right under the Fifth Amendment not to testify against himself more than 100 times in the course of three hours. There were more and more questions. No one ever gave the answers. No one chose for Fauci to be there. The committee’s leader, Republican Senator Rand…
Executive orders usually settle into a rhythm by the second year of most administrations. They set policy, direct agencies, and give new instructions to the bureaucracy slowly. That’s not quite how things are going in the White House right now. As of the end of July 2026, President Donald Trump had signed 271 executive orders during his second term. Many of these orders are being fought in federal courts. Not looked over. In dispute. The difference is more important than it looks. Right now, the fight that everyone can see is over voting. In March, Trump signed an order telling…