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Mother Jones

Raphael Warnock’s Campaign Strategy: Don’t Mention Herschel Walker—Or His Controversies

When Sen. Raphael Warnock addressed several dozen supporters at Atlanta’s East Point Avenue United Methodist Church on Wednesday night, what he didn’t say spoke more loudly than what he did. Warnock’s speech at this outreach event for Latino voters was full of religious and pro-immigration sentiments. “I am a Senator for all Georgia—no matter what […]

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7 Ways Roger Stone Was Connected to the January 6 Attack

The night before the January 6 attack on Congress, Roger Stone danced on a stage in Washington’s Freedom Plaza to a rap song featuring his own money-raising slogan: “Roger Stone did nothing wrong.” Minutes later, the longtime Trump adviser—clad in a pinstriped suit and tan fedora—declared that the “fight” to keep the defeated president in […]

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Funding Social Security Is a Lot Cheaper Than Coddling Rich Retirees

On Thursday, the Social Security Administration is expected to announce its largest cost of living adjustment for beneficiaries in four decades, an inflation-driven raise of up to 8.7 percent that will take effect in December 2023. That increase would match the average annual COLA from 1975 through 1982, an era of recessions and high inflation. Annual Social […]

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America’s Top Censor—so Far

During his time in the White House, no target provoked as much anger from Donald Trump as the American press. In 2017, he declared, “The press, honestly, is out of control.” In 2019, he called it “truly the enemy of the people.” His reelection campaign sued the Washington Post and the New York Times. Some […]

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Exposing Animal Abuse May Land Canadian Farm Activists in Jail

This story was originally published by Canada’s National Observer and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Amy Soranno could have said she was sorry. She knew that was her last, best shot at avoiding prison for her role in organizing the occupation of the Excelsior hog farm near Abbotsford, British Columbia, on the morning of […]

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Jury Orders Alex Jones to Pay Sandy Hook Families Nearly $1 Billion

Alex Jones and Free Speech Systems, InfoWars’ parent company, have been found liable for Jones’ Sandy Hook lies—to the tune of nearly $1 billion. The conspiracy theorist had spent years claiming that the deadliest elementary school shooting in US history was a “giant hoax” and accusing victims’ family members of being “crisis actors.” (As I’ve reported […]

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How Dr. Oz Boosted an Osteopath Who Became a Top Spreader of Covid Misinformation

In February 2021, as the new vaccines that would tame the Covid pandemic were being released to the general public, an article sourced to an osteopath in Cape Coral, Florida, claimed that the vaccines were “a medical fraud” and did not counter the disease. The shots, it said, “alter your genetic coding, turning you into […]

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Top Chef Challenge 2022: Palatable Jellyfish

This story was originally published by Hakai Magazine and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. On a snowy January morning in 2022, I walk into Duo, an exclusive little restaurant in the heart of the southern Italian town of Lecce, carrying a polystyrene box filled with two frozen plate-sized jellyfish. Antonella Leone, a senior researcher […]

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Big Pharma Is Flooding Puerto Rico With Toxic Waste

In Puerto Rico, cheap labor and generous tax breaks—since 2017, more than $100 billion worth—have made US-based pharmaceutical firms the biggest economic players in town. Drug manufacturers have brought in tens of thousands of jobs, albeit with a tax-break price tag of more than $1 million each. But a new report by the nonprofit Center […]

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Matt DePerno Sought to Foreclose on His Clients’ Property. Now He Wants to Be Michigan’s Top Lawyer.

If Matthew DePerno wins his race to unseat Michigan’s Democratic attorney general in November, he’ll become the state’s top lawyer. He will have a staff of more than 500 people, and his duties will include everything from investigating voter fraud to “protecting consumers and addressing illegal business practices.” But as a practicing attorney, DePerno—a vocal […]

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Prosecutors Cite Mother Jones to Debunk Claim by Oath Keepers’ Founder

Justice Department prosecutors cited Mother Jones on Tuesday in the trial of Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes. The defense had argued that messages Rhodes sent to a woman whom he later claimed was a lawyer for his far-right group were covered by attorney-client privilege. But based partly on my reporting, prosecutors deemed that argument “a ruse.” Rhodes […]

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I Watched the Horrible Tina Peters Documentary Claiming the 2020 Election Was Stolen So You Don’t Have To

At the 59 minute mark of [S]election Code—the Mike Lindell-produced documentary on Tina Peters, the Colorado election official who tried to prove that the 2020 election was stolen—there’s a three shot sequence that has haunted me: an image of a computer uploading files, a Thomas Jefferson quote, and then a closeup of Peters caressing a […]

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The Biden Administration Just Proposed a Rule That Could Change Work for Millions

On Tuesday, the Department of Labor released a new proposal for determining whether independent contractors are employees, according to the New York Times. The measure would be a small but significant lowering of a Trump-era standard that could allow more workers to gain the benefits of employment, like guaranteed minimum wage and overtime. The DOL has the ability to set […]

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Elon Musk Has Tried for Years to Make Nathan Fielder Laugh—and Probably Failed

I no longer find the the overwrought drama over whether Elon Musk will acquire Twitter interesting. The showdown has simply overextended itself, featuring more inexplicable legal jargon with each new development. So, until some sort of resolution emerges, I’ll be ducking every headline dedicated to the billion-dollar saga. Still, I am all in for Musk gossip […]

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The US Government Is Measuring Extreme Heat All Wrong

This story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In the late 1970s, a physicist and textiles engineer in Texas named Robert Steadman published a paper called “The Assessment of Sultriness.” The title reflected an unpleasant sort of steaminess—how temperature and humidity combine to make life hard on the body. […]

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Will the Next Farm Bill Be Climate Friendly? Depends on the Midterms.

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. This year’s midterm elections will decide the direction of a massive legislative package meant to tackle the nation’s agricultural problems. Republican Senate and House members are already vowing they won’t pack it with climate “buzzwords.” Roughly every five years, lawmakers pass The Farm […]

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Nevada GOP Secretary of State Candidate Promises to Make Trump President in 2024

At a rally for Nevada Republican candidates on Saturday, Republican nominee for secretary of state Jim Marchant promised that he and his fellow GOP nominees, if elected next month, would reinstall Donald Trump in the White House in 2024. “We’re gonna fix the whole country and President Trump is gonna be president again,” Marchant promised as Trump stood […]

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Tommy Tuberville Decries Reparations as Payments for “People That Do the Crime”

On Saturday, Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) implied Black Americans were “the people that do the crime” in comments railing against reparations. Speaking at a Donald Trump rally for Republican candidates in Nevada, Tuberville described Democrats as engaged in a battle to take from white people and give to Black people whom he stereotyped as criminals. Democrats […]

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Judge Blocks State Abortion Ban As Attempt “To Completely Eliminate The Rights of Ohio Women”

Ohio’s near-total abortion ban will remain on hold as a challenge to the law proceeds in state court, a judge ruled Friday, allowing abortions up to 20 weeks gestation to proceed. The case, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood last month, has already showcased the harmful effects of Ohio’s abortion ban […]

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Mother Jones

The Underappreciated Tool for Surviving Extreme Weather

This story was originally published by Slate and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Week by week, thanks in large part to climate change, it seems we hear new stories of natural disasters and their horrific effects across the United States: hurricanes slamming Puerto Rico and Florida, droughts in the American Southwest, wildfires scorching the Pacific Northwest as well as punishing heat […]

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Republican Senate Candidate Says Abortion Decisions Belong to “Gentlemen” State Lawmakers

New Hampshire Republican Senate candidate Don Bolduc told supporters last week that abortion decisions “belong” to “gentlemen” in the state legislature. At a Wednesday night town hall in Auburn, Bolduc said, “It belongs to the state. It belongs to these gentlemen right here, who are state legislators representing you. That is the best way I […]

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New Photos Reveal Squalid, Dangerous Conditions at Rikers Island

Rikers Island, New York City’s main prison complex, has long been scrutinized as a hotbed of chaos and violence. Now, new images published in a recent Gothamist exposé give a startling look at the squalid, dangerous conditions inside the jails. We obtained & published exclusive photos from inside Rikers Island jails, icymi. They were shown […]

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Watch Jon Stewart Calmly Excoriate the Arkansas Attorney General on Anti-Trans Legislation

TV Host Jon Stewart received a flurry of praise on Friday for his unyielding interview with Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, who fought for legislation denying anyone under 18 access to gender-affirming treatments. The law, passed last year, is the subject of a legal challenge by the American Civil Liberties Union. A trial on whether […]

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Trump’s Big Social Media Deal Could Soon Collapse. So What Went Wrong?

Patrick Orlando is trying to get Donald Trump’s attention. With a critical shareholder vote fast approaching, the CEO of the beleaguered Digital World Acquisition Corp.—a so-called SPAC that is supposed to merge with the former president’s social media company—needs all the help he can get. In recent weeks, Orlando has repeatedly tagged Trump on TruthSocial […]

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People Power Can Still Win. Even In Media.

“Ralph who?” my teen asked the other day as I waited on hold to be connected with Ralph Nader. I wasn’t too surprised—it’s been a long time since Nader helped launch the modern consumer advocacy movement, starting with the revelation that the auto industry was cold-bloodedly prioritizing profits ahead of drivers’ lives. Nader was perhaps […]

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A North Carolina Farmer Was Accused of Abusing His Workers. Then Big Tobacco Backed His Election.

This story is a collaboration between The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Mother Jones, and Enlace Latino NC. When the tobacco giant Reynolds American cut a check for Brent Jackson’s political campaign in November 2019, it was well aware of the accusations against the Republican North Carolina state senator. Jackson—dubbed “the only mega-farmer” in the North […]

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Why the Pentagon Is the World’s Biggest Single Greenhouse Gas Emitter

The US military has spent decades cultivating a corrosive environmental legacy around the world. Just last December, about 6,000 people became sick when jet fuel from a World War II-era Navy storage facility reportedly leaked into the drinking water aquifers of Hawaiian residents. Famously, at North Carolina’s Camp Lejeune military base, up to 1 million […]

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Republicans Are Going All In to Convince You Crime Is Out of Control. They Don’t Have Any Proof.

If you’ve watched even a sliver of the campaign ads ahead of the midterms, you’d be forgiven for believing that American cities have turned into cesspools of crime. In a recent ad for New York’s Republican gubernatorial candidate, Rep. Lee Zeldin, a montage of grainy video footage shuffles between images of pedestrians and even children […]

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Lit: President Biden Issues Pardons for Federal Marijuana Possession

On Thursday, President Joe Biden said that he would pardon all prior federal marijuana possession offenses. President Biden announced the change—aimed at remedying the socioeconomic disadvantages that people, particularly Black and brown people, face for convictions of marijuana possession—to “relieve the collateral consequences arising from these convictions.” Since many marijuana possession charges are filed at […]

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Herschel Walker Says the Allegations Against Him are Untrue and He Didn’t Send Anyone Money for an Abortion, But That He Sent Lots of People Money for Lots of Things and It’s Hard to Keep Track, and If the Story Were True It Would Be Nothing to Be Ashamed of Because He Believes in Forgiveness, But He Has Done Nothing to Be Forgiven For, and Is Living Proof That You Can Make Mistakes and Move Forward, Which Is Really What This Campaign Is All About.

On Monday, the Daily Beast reported that Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker—who supports forcing women to carry pregnancies to term with no exceptions, even if doing so could lead to death—once asked a woman he impregnated to get an abortion, and then paid for the procedure. Walker vowed that evening that he would sue […]

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