Mother Jones
On the spring day last year the Supreme Court announced it would hear a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, Sarah Lipton-Lubet knew immediately how the case would end: the court, stacked with six conservative Justices, would kill the right to abortion. A veteran reproductive rights advocate and lawyer who was consulting for multiple reproductive […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Amazon deforestation has soared ahead of Brazil’s environmentally vital presidential election, with an area almost the size of Greater London lost last month alone. Government satellites show a 562-square-mile area of rainforest was destroyed in September, as environmental criminals raced […]
Mother JonesFeel sympathy for the members of the January 6 House Select Committee. They were handed a task simultaneously easy and arduous: demonstrating to the American public that a president—fully supported by one of the nation’s two main political parties—plotted to overturn election results to remain in office, incited violence to prevent the peaceful transfer of […]
Mother JonesThe congressional committee investigating January 6 on Thursday revealed new evidence that Donald Trump had a preexisting plan to falsely declare victory on election night in 2020—part of a plot to use made-up voting fraud claims in an attempt to retain power. For the second time, the committee played leaked audio first reported by Mother Jones […]
Mother JonesNew York Attorney General Letitia James asked a judge on Thursday to appoint an independent financial monitor to oversee Donald Trump’s finances until her $250 million civil fraud lawsuit against him is resolved. James cited what she said was ongoing evidence of continuing fraud on the part of Trump and his company, including the creation […]
Mother JonesA Florida jury spared Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz the death penalty on Thursday, recommending that he be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The recommendation comes as the result of a three-month sentencing trial to determine whether Cruz would be put to death after he pleaded guilty last year to 17 […]
Mother JonesWhen 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 […]
Mother JonesThe 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 […]
Mother JonesOn 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 […]
Mother JonesDuring 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 […]
Mother JonesThis 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 […]
Mother JonesAlex 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 […]
Mother JonesIn 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 […]
Mother JonesThis 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 […]
Mother JonesIn 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 […]
Mother JonesIf 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 […]
Mother JonesJustice 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 […]
Mother JonesAt 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 […]
Mother JonesOn 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 […]
Mother JonesI 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 […]
Mother JonesThis 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. […]
Mother JonesThis 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 […]
Mother JonesAt 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 […]
Mother JonesOn 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 […]
Mother JonesOhio’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 […]
Mother JonesThis 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 […]
Mother JonesNew 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 […]
Mother JonesRikers 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 […]
Mother JonesTV 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 […]
Mother JonesPatrick 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 […]