The global backlash against the second Donald Trump administration keeps on growing. Canadians have boycotted US-made products, anti–Elon Musk posters have appeared across London amid widespread Tesla protests, and European officials have drastically increased military spending as US support for Ukraine falters. Dominant US tech services may be the next focus.

There are early signs that some European companies and governments are souring on their use of American cloud services provided by the three so-called hyperscalers. Between them, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) host vast swathes of the Internet and keep thousands of businesses running. However, some organizations appear to be reconsidering their use of these companies’ cloud services—including servers, storage, and databases—citing uncertainties around privacy and data access fears under the Trump administration.

“There’s a huge appetite in Europe to de-risk or decouple the over-dependence on US tech companies, because there is a concern that they could be weaponized against European interests,” says Marietje Schaake, a nonresident fellow at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center and a former decadelong member of the European Parliament.

Lawmakers in Texas are seeking to impose harsh criminal penalties on school librarians and teachers who provide award-winning works of literature to students. Identical bills in the Texas Senate and House would make it a crime for librarians and teachers to provide books or learning materials that contain sexually explicit content, punishable by up to 10 years behind bars — whether or not a book has educational or literary merit.

Currently, if someone is charged with providing sexually explicit content to a child, they can argue that the content was provided in pursuit of a scientific, educational, or governmental purpose. SB 412 and HB 267 would remove this affirmative defense. This defense exists because, while some people provide explicit content to children to harm them, books that include sexual content have long been a valuable component of secondary education. Many classic works of literature, including "The Odyssey," "Catcher in the Rye," "Brave New World," and "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest," have sexually explicit scenes.

Under SB 412, which the Texas Senate voted to advance last week and now awaits approval by the House, teachers and librarians would no longer be able to argue that sexually explicit content can serve an educational purpose. Only law enforcement officials and judges would be exempted under the new law. SB 412 also leaves in place an exception if the adult providing the sexually explicit content is married to the child, which is legal in Texas, with a judge’s approval, if the child is at least 16 years old.

Priscilla “Cilla” Lee gave away nearly 50,000 pounds of food last year to her neighbors in San Francisco’s Outer Richmond district.

She has hosted a weekly food pantry from her garage since 2021, stocking it with donations from local food banks, grocery stores, restaurants, bakeries, and anywhere else she can get free food for her community. Every Friday and two Saturdays a month, she hands out food boxes filled with fresh fruit, vegetables, meat, dairy products, and dried goods like beans or rice. She still serves between 40 and 50 families per week, and 25 families come on Wednesdays, when she gives away baked goods donated by a local bakery.

In a recent week, she shared four boxes of bread and pastries and 20 pizzas. She also gave away 120 boxes of mangoes donated by a food bank and trays of papaya salad and spring rolls provided by a caterer.

Lee, 54, began hosting the food pantry out of her garage in 2021, alarmed by the level of food insecurity in her neighborhood during the pandemic. She was inspired to help others by her late mother, who had always tried to give her family, friends, and acquaintances a hand, even during her cancer treatment. Also, Lee was on leave from her airline job, giving her a bit of extra time—and was volunteering with local food banks, which had surplus food. Starting a neighborhood food project just made sense.

As laws banning trans people from sports have proliferated—and become a central pillar of President Trump’s administration—the derby community has stood steadfast in their view that everyone has a place on the derby track. In the hours, days, and weeks after the executive order, the line “You Can Skate With Us” appeared in social media posts by roller derby leagues across the U.S., from the Bradentucky Bombers in Southwest Florida; to South Sound Roller Derby in Lacey, Washington; to Salt City Roller Derby in Syracuse, New York. High Altitude Roller Derby of Flagstaff, Arizona, posted that “Roller Derby is for everyone. Please, come skate with us. You’re safe here.” A coalition of roller derby players in Minnesota penned an open letter condemning attempts to take trans women out of sports. The “You Can Skate With Us” movement went beyond the boundaries of the U.S., with leagues from Canada, Australia, England and Finland rolling in, vowing resistance to the States’ new executive order. As individual leagues weighed in, the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association, the governing body for 400 derby leagues across the world, reaffirmed their policy of allowing “any individual of a marginalized gender” to skate on a WFTDA team “despite the U.S. administration’s newest Executive Order,” and promised resources for teams concerned by the trans sports bans.

A community-organized sport that receives no federal funding, derby should be safe from the Trump administration’s recent executive action. But the sport’s relative isolation doesn’t immunize it against all trans bans. The Long Island Roller Rebels are now in the second year of a lawsuit against Nassau County over a law that bans women’s sports teams from using county facilities if their team includes trans women. Most trans sports bans start in the context of schools or federal funding, but Nassau County’s law includes any sport that uses a park or recreational space—the next step, perhaps, in an ever-evolving landscape of anti-trans laws. “It’s all the more important that an adult league like the Roller Rebels is pushing back on this before it’s normalized,” argues Gabriella Larios, a staff attorney at the New York Civil Liberties Union who is litigating the Roller Rebels’ lawsuit.

I've spent years wandering many an inhospitable wasteland, so Atomfall's pleasant post-apocalypse is pretty inviting. They've got tea here. And bakeries. And it's extremely green—not because of radiation storms, but because it's all pastures and woods and verdant hills as far as the eye can see. It'd be a nice place for a ramble, if it weren't for the fire-spewing robots, lethal flora, bandits, cultists and conspiracies.

With its '50s-inspired retro-futuristic setting, Atomfall has needed to contend with the spectre of Fallout since it was first unveiled, but the similarities are only surface deep. That shallowness is probably Atomfall's defining feature: it's chock full of systems and obvious inspirations, but it rarely digs into them and struggles to find anything to set itself apart.

This week, a jury in North Dakota found Greenpeace liable for more than $660 million in damages to Energy Transfer, the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline. It was a monumental verdict that many civil society groups and First Amendment lawyers have warned could chill free speech.

The case stems from the protests that erupted near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in 2016, when Indigenous activists and environmentalists gathered to oppose construction of the pipeline, which crossed the Missouri River close to the reservation. Standing Rock leaders warned that a spill could contaminate their water supply and that construction would disturb sacred lands, and said they had not been properly consulted.

Some of the protests included acts of vandalism and clashes with pipeline company employees and law enforcement, and Energy Transfer accused Greenpeace of providing financial and other support to the people involved. Greenpeace said it played only a minor role in the protests.

The jury ruled against Greenpeace on numerous counts, however, finding it liable for trespass, conspiracy, defamation and other offenses. The case named three Greenpeace entities as defendants, two in the United States and its international umbrella organization.

KUSNETZ: So $660 million is a lot of money, of course, and I’m wondering if you can put that figure in context for readers and tell us what the verdict means for Greenpeace USA and its operations?

RAMAN: It is a very large amount of money for most organizations and individuals, as you can imagine. It’s a fairly small amount of money for Energy Transfer. And the reality is that this case is not really about the money, even though it’s a very large amount. It’s really about the desire to send a message that a powerful company can silence a large environmental organization, and send a message to other organizations, not just environmental groups, other types of groups that are trying to hold power to account, that we will use these tools, strategic litigation against public participation, or SLAPPs, to intimidate you, or silence you, or perhaps even bankrupt you.

KUSNETZ: To press on this again, is this the kind of figure that could bankrupt Greenpeace if it does have to pay?

RAMAN: Well, we are definitely going to appeal. So we’re not at the stage of having to pay. We are going to appeal this, and we are confident in our case and in the facts. So this is the next chapter in this journey, if you will. Yes, but this is a number that far exceeds our annual budget by many times.

In recent weeks [California lawmakers] introduced five bills to address the issue, making predictive pricing based on a customer’s personal information one of the most popular tech policy concerns in the Legislature this session.

Ride-sharing apps, travel companies, and retail giants such as Staples, Target, and reportedly Amazon have engaged in the practice, which can set different prices for customers based on factors including internet browsing data or where they live. In one recent example published by SFGATE, a person in the Bay Area was offered a hotel room for $500 more than people in less affluent areas.

The pricing isn’t based on supply or demand. It’s based on predictions made about your eagerness and desires, said researcher Justin Kloczko. In one recent instance he found that Lyft charged his wife $5 more than him for the same ride. Kloczko works at Consumer Watchdog, an advocacy group that cosponsored one of the bills.

The package of bills proposed by California lawmakers to regulate AI responds to a call by Speaker Robert Rivas following elections last fall to focus on measures to address the cost of living.

• Mexico aims to manufacture its first electric vehicles with almost entirely local components.
• Mexico’s EV market is expected to grow 25%–30% annually over the next five years.
• Budget cuts, limited charging infrastructure, and difficulty sourcing lithium could delay Olinia’s rollout.

Named Olinia, or “to move” in the Nahuatl Indigenous language, they will be the first EVs to be fully engineered and assembled in Mexico. They will be “safe, efficient, sustainable, and within reach for millions of Mexicans,” Roberto Capuano, the director of the project, said during the presentation. The first model will be ready by the time the 2026 World Cup kicks off in Mexico City, and be available to the general public by 2030, he said.

Slated to make EVs with almost entirely Mexican components, the Olinia project is touted as the answer both to the government’s ambitious goal of generating 45% clean electricity by 2030, and the influx of imported Chinese EVs, including BYD and Chery, which now account for nearly a tenth of new cars sold in Mexico.

But Olinia faces a number of challenges, including an inadequate budget, an undeveloped lithium industry that is essential for battery manufacture, and an unreasonable timeline, experts said.

The last thing a metal worker from Liège is expected to do is found a new religion. Yet that is just what Louis-Joseph Antoine did, in Jameppe-sur-Meuse, Belgium, in 1910. Antoinism, his namesake religion, is not nearly as popular today as it was in its early years — but to its latest followers, it remains as current as ever.

Bernard (not his real name) is an Antoinist healer, a sort of parish priest for the movement. He is elegant, slightly balding and quick to smile. His pseudonym is not intended to protect his identity, but to preserve the discretion about Antoinism required by his Council. Other Antoinists declined interviews, citing an unwillingness to proselytize. “Recruitment is not part of our statutes, writings, or belief system,” Bernard explained to me. “We do not wish to conquer the world or to tell people how to do better than they already are.” Antoine himself is said to have destroyed 8,000 booklets he had created to spread his word.

This attitude has helped to maintain an aura of mystery around Antoinism. But it may also have stymied its future. The insistence that the secrets and benefits of Antoinism can’t be explained, but must be experienced, does not have the same appeal today as it did at the religion’s inception. At the height of its popularity, Antoinism had 31 temples; today, only 10 are still functioning. For Bernard, the question has become: How to keep alive a faith that speaks to only a few?

Alamogordo is a working-class town. Because of its proximity to three military bases, lots of veterans live here. Like many places in New Mexico, housing costs have skyrocketed and rent is taking up a bigger portion of locals’ paychecks, making family’s food purchases—and particularly the quality of food—dwindle. As a result, 16.5% of Otero County’s population is food insecure, higher than both the state and national averages. In the county, 19% of residents live below the poverty line, including 28% of those under age 18 and 13% of those 65 or older.

Food is often the first thing a family skimps on when facing tough budgets; you can’t pay half the light bill, but you can cut back on groceries.

Courtney also saw that Alamogordo neighborhoods had a lot of empty lots. “I think a lot of people bought here when things were less expensive, and just left the houses when they moved away. Or maybe they left houses to family members who didn’t end up utilizing them,” she says, pointing out that houses frequently catch fire or fall into disrepair, leaving the city to bulldoze them.

Seeing the blight and witnessing the food insecurity around her, Courtney thought: Is there anything more our local government could do to address these needs?

Courtney set out to get the Alamogordo city government to respond. In late 2022, she created a petition asking the city to dedicate empty land for fresh food production and help foot the bill. She started with her friends, asking them to sign on, and then asked her growing Facebook following to do so as well. She tackled the petition drive systematically, the way you might lay out a garden bed.

The first garden is now growing on Maryland Avenue in the Chihuahuita neighborhood—an under-resourced, historically Black and Brown neighborhood just south of downtown Alamogordo. In January 2024, With Many Hands celebrated a ribbon cutting ceremony at the site, and a few weeks later hosted their first community planting day.

Importantly, the group secured a Memorandum of Understanding with the city, allowing them to share expenses like the water bill and other infrastructure needs. They host regular community workdays and open meetings to organize and plan. “We are not a budget line in the parks and recreation budget yet, but hopefully soon,” says Courtney. (Full disclosure: the author is employed by Addition Collective Action Fund, which supports community organizing efforts across the country, including With Many Hands.)

Demographically, Queens has a “majority-minority” population of which nearly half are immigrants. Of all the boroughs in New York City, it also has the largest recent increase in older adult residents. These outcomes reflect both broader historical and recent national trends of increased conservatism among older voters. However, New York City’s progressive and grassroots organizations are seeking to challenge this trend through intergenerational organizing, focusing specifically on labor, housing, and community activism. Many of these efforts began at the start of the pandemic; at their foundation is an earnest commitment by organizers to build meaningful relationships and intentional strategies to make community engagement more accessible and relevant to the lives of their neighbors.

Many politically left-leaning organizations focus their energies and resources on courting Gen Z and millennial stakeholders, rather than integrating an older voting base. Prism spoke to several groups in New York City about engaging older residents by providing tailored services, political education, and opportunities for reciprocal education between youth and elders, among other critical organizing efforts.

CAAAV consists of two primary organizing projects: one working with youth and elders in Manhattan’s Chinatown and another focused on working-class Bengalis in western Queens. Akhtar told Prism that organizing around issues related to housing has proven to be a powerful pathway to engage entire families, with grandparents, in-laws, parents, and children often participating in the same meetings. The goal of this intergenerational organizing is for communities to arrive at a deep investment in solidarity and class alignment.

“We love community as a beautiful thing,” Akhtar said. “But we have clarity that we need more power. We’re trying to win material changes in our society and increase power and decision-making.”

Akhtar underscored the importance of reciprocity and education in building an age-inclusive, culturally inclusive space. This is why CAAAV’s organizing combines theory with practice, emphasizing political education around capitalism to help workers of all ages understand how class shapes their lives. Akhtar told Prism that when discussing strategy, the organization’s older resident organizers often reference history and tactics used by unions they were a part of in their home countries. Meanwhile, youth who are more comfortable strategizing in English tend to thrive in smaller breakout groups and often discuss their experience growing up in multiracial spaces. This dynamic has shaped anti-racist practices within the organization, while also allowing youth to share their experiences with elders who hold real pain regarding their treatment as immigrants in the U.S.

The unique needs of the organization’s member-leaders shape many of CAAAV’s structural investments. The organization provides child care, interpreters, and meals at meetings, and organizers consider the timing, place, and local conditions to maximize attendance.