HuffPost Celebrates 20 Years Of Groundbreaking Digital-First Journalism
Launched in New York City by Arianna Huffington, Jonah Peretti, Kenneth Lerer, and a team of forward-thinking journalists and technologists, HuffPost helped usher in a new era of digital-first journalism. From its earliest days, the site disrupted the traditional media landscape by centering internet-native content, elevating underrepresented voices, and creating a space for community engagement across a wide range of topics.
Over the past two decades, HuffPost has received widespread recognition for its editorial excellence and impact, including a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting, The National Magazine Award, numerous Webby Awards, and honors from GLAAD and many other journalism and advocacy organizations. With millions of loyal readers, HuffPost continues to play a vital role in helping people make sense of the world and live better lives.
'For 20 years, HuffPost has relentlessly covered the most important, most compelling stories and offered our audience a loud, direct and honest perspective they can't find anywhere else,' said Whitney Snyder, Editor-in-Chief of HuffPost. 'At a time when America's free press and cherished institutions are under attack, we are proud to celebrate our anniversary and are committed to the next 20 years of indispensable, independent reporting.'
Updated HuffPost Logo
To commemorate this milestone, HuffPost is unveiling a refreshed logo and visual identity to reflect the site's fair and fearless reporting since 2005. The updated logo includes white HuffPost text on a darker green background with pink accent colors, with an 'H' logo thumbnail. The branding is a nod to HuffPost's original roots, with darker green, and what the organization stands for: being bold, fearless, and grounded in truth.
HuffPost Helps Day
As part of HuffPost's 20th anniversary, HuffPost is holding the first HuffPost Helps Day on May 9th. A day of community service in New York, California, Washington, DC, and in towns and cities across the country, HuffPost Helps Day will mobilize HuffPost staffers to volunteer in their communities and participate in service activities at local food banks, shelters, animal rescues and meal delivery nonprofits on May 9th and throughout the month.
HuffPost's Most Iconic Moments
HuffPost writers chronicled the most iconic and notable moments in HuffPost's 20 year history – from the site's outspoken support for gay marriage in 2006 to BuzzFeed's acquisition of HuffPost in 2021.
An Oral History of HuffPost Splashes
This oral history charts HuffPost's journey through two decades of defining headlines and fearless homepage splashes, featuring candid recollections from founders, editors and writers about the stories that shaped the site and how they transformed digital journalism.
About HuffPost
HuffPost is an award-winning news organization that publishes original journalism about real stories and real life, spanning politics, lifestyle, entertainment and more. HuffPost reaches an average of 60M monthly global readers to help them navigate the world and has won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, The National Magazine Award, the GLAAD Award, and many others.
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Buzz Feed
4 minutes ago
- Buzz Feed
The Right-Wing Movement Taking Over Public Schools
Across the United States, more parents are growing concerned as they witness a narrow religious ideology gaining influence over their children's public schools. While some argue that inclusive school curricula are threatening their religious freedom, many others are worried that one belief system is being imposed — dictating not only which books are available in classrooms but who gets to be represented in the school experience. The battle over books, especially those centering LGBTQ+ lives and diverse identities, has become a larger conflict about who controls the definition of American childhood and which values shape that narrative. 'The question emerging in the law right now is: Which parents have rights?' Jessica Mason Pieklo, Senior Vice President and Executive Editor of Rewire News Group, told HuffPost. 'We're seeing the conservative legal movement rally around a narrow vision of parental identity, control, and rights, one that doesn't reflect or include all families.' Education, once a shared public good, is increasingly becoming a battleground. And at the center of it is a Supreme Court case that could have far-reaching consequences: Mahmoud v. Taylor, which challenged the inclusion of LGBTQ+ books in a Maryland school district. In Mahmoud v. Taylor, the Supreme Court blocked a Maryland school district's LGBTQ+-inclusive curriculum, ruling it posed a 'very real threat' to the religious beliefs of some parents and supporting their right to opt their children out of such instruction. While the ruling doesn't impose a nationwide ban, it opens the door for local challenges that can limit educators' ability to provide diverse and inclusive education. For parents, this means the fight is about whose voices are heard in their communities. 'This isn't a book ban case,' explains Kelly Jensen, award-winning author and editor at Book Riot. 'It's a case about education and religious rights. None of the books are being banned or pulled from curricula. The real issue is the chilling effect.' Teachers, already working under immense pressure, may now think twice before including LGBTQ+ books in classrooms, even if those books are age-appropriate and affirming. 'The silent erasure of books, disappearing from shelves without formal challenges, is as insidious as outright bans,' Jensen warns. The ruling in Mahmoud v. Taylor didn't change the law outright, but it signaled a cultural shift. One where certain religious beliefs are being elevated above others. The uproar over inclusive books in schools isn't a spontaneous, grassroots movement; it's a carefully coordinated effort. 'These book bans are astroturfed,' Pieklo said. 'They don't bubble up organically in a community because there's overwhelming concern that some inappropriate material has been placed there. These are part of a larger advocacy campaign.' Despite the noise, most families support inclusive curricula and occupy a middle ground, favoring opt-out options for personal or religious objections without imposing blanket bans that restrict access for everyone else. According to Pieklo, these efforts to flood schools with opt-outs are part of a broader conservative legal strategy aimed at undermining public education and controlling what students learn, particularly around race, gender, and history. 'This isn't about free speech or parental choice,' she said. 'It's about using the power of the law to try and direct outcomes.' And those outcomes are already changing. The 11th Circuit Court recently upheld a Florida law that prevents teachers from using students' preferred pronouns, mandating that they refer to students only by their sex assigned at birth. The court even ruled that misgendering students is protected speech. The religious justification being used in these cases isn't general, it's specific. 'The ruling essentially says religion is more important than your identity, and not just any religion, but specific types of religious interpretations,' Pieklo explains. In oral arguments for Mahmoud, conservative justices grossly distorted the nature of inclusive books. Justice Neil Gorsuch even described Pride Puppy, a board book about a child attending a Pride parade, as 'a bondage manual for kindergartners.' For many families, the cultural and legal battles over school curricula aren't abstract; they're deeply personal. 'My kids are older now,' Pieklo said, 'but it is very important for me and my family that our children have access to, not just exposure, but access to, books, information, resources, materials that explain not just the world around them but a world they may or may not feel 100% a part of. That helps them understand and navigate shifting understandings of identity.' That sense of wanting children to see and understand the world in its full complexity is shared by other parents across the country. Stephanie, a mother from North Carolina, echoes the importance of broad exposure: 'I'm a Christian and I want my kids to learn about the world as it is, not just through the lens of our faith.' Katie, a public school teacher and parent, said she's horrified by efforts to limit what kids can learn. 'I want my kids to learn as much about the world as they can, and I know I can't teach them everything. I trust that they can handle hearing viewpoints that differ from their own.' That trust in students' ability to think critically is matched by a strong belief in the power of representation. Mindi, a former teacher, reflects on how she would approach things if she were still in the classroom. 'I would have integrated books with secondary characters who identify as LGBTQ — not for 'indoctrination,' but to support my students with other identities. No book bans, ever.' For some, like Denise, a mother in Pennsylvania, the issue goes even deeper — into questions of visibility and belonging. 'I think it's disgusting that LGBTQ+ is being erased from our children's education,' she said. 'These are real people with real and valid ways to love. Taking it out of schools means my kids will always think it's taboo to love who they love.' "We All Lose Something" Underlying all of these perspectives is a shared concern about whose values are shaping what's taught, and whose voices are being silenced. 'When one religious ideology dictates what can be taught, read, or affirmed in public schools, we all lose something,' Pieklo notes. As public schools face funding cuts and increasing pressure, decisions like Mahmoud v. Taylor hand a louder platform to a narrow, often extreme religious agenda that can then shape what every child is allowed to learn, regardless of their own parents' wishes. Though these rulings claim to protect parental rights, some parents feel they frequently silence and disenfranchise those who want their children to see themselves reflected in their education and to understand the rich diversity of the world around them. Megan, a mother of children in public schools, puts it even more bluntly: 'Religion does not belong in schools. I do not enforce or force my beliefs on other people's children. And I'm incredibly not okay with one religion being forced on mine in a 'free' country.' The deeper issue, some parents argue, is the widening gap between well-funded private religious schools and under-resourced public ones. Jensen warns that unless communities push back, this divide will only deepen: 'This ruling might fuel the expansion of voucher programs, pushing public funds toward private religious education,' she said. 'It divides the 'haves' from the 'have-nots.' And it hurts public schools that already struggle for funding.' Megan echoes that concern, pointing to the strain on her children's school, where the teachers' union has had to fight for basics like smaller class sizes and fair pay. 'They deserve help — not funding cuts and more pressure on an already struggling system.'
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Yahoo
"It's Basically Scientific Racism": Medical Experts Seriously Hate RFK Jr.'s Shocking Claim About Black People And Vaccines
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Health and Human Services secretary, is making changes that threaten the public health system, from telling lies about the childhood vaccine schedule to replacing credible members of a vaccine advisory panel with people known to spread misinformation. Groups like the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have spoken out against these changes, and some major medical associations are even suing Kennedy in response to his changes to the COVID-19 vaccine schedule. Kennedy's attack on vaccines isn't exactly a surprise — he has a history of anti-vaccine remarks, which was a major talking point throughout his Senate confirmation hearings earlier this year. Specifically, his beliefs were front and center during a heated exchange in which Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) brought up a comment that Kennedy once made about vaccinations and the Black community. In 2021, Kennedy had said, 'We should not be giving Black people the same vaccine schedule that's given to whites, because their immune system is better than ours.' Related: Alsobrooks asked Kennedy to explain what he meant by that remark, and he went on to reference a 'series of studies' while saying research shows that 'Blacks need fewer antigens.' (For the record, experts say that this is not true.) 'Right now, how vaccine schedules are tailored is based on things like your age, your exposure risk, if you have other chronic underlying health conditions ― but race isn't one of them, and there isn't research that suggests that it should be,' Joel Bervell, a recent medical graduate and medical myth-buster on social media, told HuffPost. What especially bothered Bervell about Kennedy's exchange with Alsobrooks was the fact that he doubled down on his comment from 2021. Kennedy could have used this as an opportunity to admit that he needs to do more research and understand the vaccine schedule, 'but instead, he defended what he said, which I think, for me, that's where the problem lies in,' Bervell told HuffPost. 'Not necessarily the fact of the misinformation is out there, but the fact that he wasn't willing to at least confront it or admit that onstage.' Below, experts like Bervell share their concerns about Kennedy's statement and how it reflects a larger problematic picture: Kennedy's comment can be considered 'scientific racism,' experts say. Related: 'In medicine, in science, we know that race is a social construct, meaning that you can't look at someone's genes and identify what race they are,' Bervell said. That means differences in vaccine timelines just don't make scientific sense. 'The comment that [Kennedy] made about the vaccine schedule, it's basically scientific racism, which has been debunked,' Dr. Oni Blackstock, a primary care and HIV physician who is the founder and executive director of Health Justice, a racial and health equity consulting company, told HuffPost. 'He's really perpetuating this false belief that Black people are somehow biologically different from white people and, in that way, justifying differential and ultimately unequal treatment for Black people versus white people,' Blackstock added. 'By saying that, he was putting on one of the larger stages in health care this notion that race-based medicine should still exist, when that's actually what many scientists recently have been trying to root out,' Bervell said. Race-based medicine and scientific racism has led to undertreatment of Black patients, dismissal of pain and even death, Blackstock stressed. Both experts pointed to real-life examples of this, like the false belief that Black people have better-functioning kidneys than white people. This made it harder for Black people to get the treatment they needed, like kidney transplants, according to Bervell. And this thought pattern isn't from some faraway time ― a medical equation that reinforced this bias wasn't changed until 2021, Bervell said. What's more, during the 1793 yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia, Black people were believed to be resistant to yellow fever, which was not true and led to high mortality rates among Black people, Blackstock explained. 'The importance of understanding the problem with the myths is that they can literally lead to regulations being written into medicine that treat populations differently just based on race,' Bervell said. 'It can actually change the care that people receive.' While it's easy to look at a particular viewpoint as a one-off, medical racism has real-world consequences that irresponsible comments can make worse. Promoting debunked beliefs 'distracts us from really doing the work that we need to do, which is dismantling systemic racism in health care and ensuring that everyone has equitable access to preventive care and treatments that they need,' Blackstock added. Related: Such stances may lead to more mistrust in the health care system. 'One thing that is also kind of strange about him [Kennedy] is he's someone who for a long time has said that he doesn't support vaccines,' Bervell said. 'Apparently, now he's changed his mind, but for a long time he said he hasn't supported vaccines, and then he's also saying that Black people should get a different vaccine schedule. So you have to wonder, what is your goal in saying that if you don't even believe in vaccines?' Bervell said comments like those from Kennedy can sow vaccine hesitancy in the Black population, which is dangerous and can erode trust in evidence-based medicine. It's not the first time that this has happened, either, Blackstock added. In 2021, Kennedy produced a documentary called 'Medical Racism: The New Apartheid,' which Blackstock said promoted misinformation about health and vaccines to the Black community, along with other marginalized groups. 'It's interesting how some of his efforts have been focused on taking advantage of [and] exploiting the mistrust that some in the Black community have around vaccines and the health care system because of structural racism and medical racism,' Blackstock said. With misinformation and scare tactics rampant on social media, misinformation from government leaders will only make it harder to tell what's real and what's fake in medicine. Trust needs to be paramount for health care as an institution, Bervell said. 'The trust is already eroded in health care,' Bervell explained. 'We need to have someone that is going to work with scientists, researchers, doctors that are on the ground seeing these problems every day, not someone that's in an ivory tower watching from above without understanding of what's actually happening on the ground.' Related: Experts say this rhetoric aligns with messaging from Donald Trump. Blackstock stressed that while such false beliefs are very problematic, they track with much of the messaging from Donald Trump and his presidential administration. 'It echoes some of the rhetoric that [Trump] has shared around eugenics and immigrants,' Blackstock said. 'He's talked about immigrants having 'bad genes' or 'poisoning the blood of our country.' It just speaks to this idea of racial purity or genetic purity, and this false idea that certain groups of people are inherently inferior or predisposed to certain behaviors because of their genetics.' And, again, race is a social construct and does not equal genetic differences. 'It's just really shocking that in the year 2025 we are still dealing with these beliefs being propagated that have been around for several centuries that have been used to justify slavery, used to justify inequitable treatment, used to justify forced sterilization,' Blackstock said. Blackstock added that she thinks individuals get away with this kind of rhetoric because people become accustomed to outlandish comments and bad behavior. 'But we need to really flag this and say this is really dangerous and really concerning rhetoric that can have real health implications,' Blackstock said. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. Also in In the News: Also in In the News: Also in In the News: Solve the daily Crossword
Axios
14 hours ago
- Axios
"Injustice": New DOJ book coming from Carol Leonnig, Aaron C. Davis
Carol Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis, both Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporters, will be out Nov. 4 with "Injustice," billed as an investigation of "the subversion of the Justice Department over the last decade," starting with the department's "defensive crouch" in President Trump's first term. Why it matters: "With a plethora of sources deeply embedded in the ranks of three presidencies," says the publisher, Penguin Press, "Leonnig and Davis reveal the daily war secretly waged for the soul of the department, how it has been shredded by propaganda and partisanship." Leonnig announced this week that she's leaving The Post after 26 years and will start in September as a senior investigative correspondent at MSNBC, where she has been a contributor since 2017. She tells Axios that the co-authors' "reporting found key leaders in the Justice Department and FBI shied away from investigating Trump's efforts to overturn the will of voters in 2020, and his refusal to return classified documents he took when leaving the White House in 2021." "Ours is the first book to peer behind the headlines and tell the full, drama-packed story of how this defensive crouch helped prevent Trump from being held accountable, ... and further weakened the law enforcement agency that is an anchor of our democracy," she continued. Zoom in: Leonnig, a five-time Pulitzer winner, is the author of the bestselling " Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service." "We knew we had a book in summer 2023," Leonnig added, "when Aaron and I learned the inside-the-room details of DOJ and FBI fighting over everything from whether to investigate early warnings of violent attacks on Jan. 6 to whether to conduct a surprise raid on Trump's club at Mar-a-Lago." Aaron Davis, who's been on staff at The Post for 17 years, told Axios: "As we reported and wrote over the last two years, the Justice Department clearly experienced great upheaval. Our book, based on interviews with over 200 people, provides a definitive account and lays bare why what is happening inside Justice is critical for every American to understand."
