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Mother Jones

Herschel Walker Said He Got Into Law School. That Seems Highly Unlikely.

In 2014, Herschel Walker delivered a speech to a group of National Guard members in Wichita, Kansas about overcoming hardship to build resiliency and achieve success. Walker, now the Republican nominee for US Senate in Georgia, explained how he sought treatment for Dissociative Identity Disorder, formerly called Multiple Personality Disorder, after wanting to kill a […]

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This MAGA PAC Raised Nearly $2 Million Off the Trucker Protests. Where Did All the Money Go?

Alex Phillips was standing one block from the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, when he warned an interviewer that members of Congress who went along with certifying the results of the presidential election would suffer the consequences in the midterms. As President Donald Trump’s speech at the Ellipse echoed from the loudspeakers, he told […]

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Forced Labor, Child Miners, Payment in Drugs—Clean Energy Supply Chain Has Issues

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The Australian clean energy industry has warned of growing evidence linking renewable energy supply chains to modern slavery and urged companies and governments to act to eliminate it. A report by the Clean Energy Council, representing renewable energy companies and solar […]

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Are Police Helicopter Fleets Worth the Money?

This piece was published originally by Capital & Main. Los Angeles’ police and sheriff’s departments have amassed among the largest helicopter units of any local law enforcement agencies in the world, costing city and county residents tens of millions of dollars each year for patrols that disproportionately hover over low income communities of color, according to government records. […]

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Trump’s Dinner Fiasco Was a Win for Fascists Playing the Long Game

The 24-year-old white nationalist Nick Fuentes dined with Donald Trump and Kanye West (who now goes by Ye) at Mar-A-Lago last week. For the last six years, Fuentes has built up a following on Twitter, Twitch, and other social media platforms while touting his support for antisemitism, fascism, and the creation of a white ethnostate. In […]

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Herschel Walker Once Said He Was the Target of Racism. Now He Claims It Doesn’t Exist.

Not too long ago, Herschel Walker said that he had experienced racism, having been stopped and harassed by the police because he was a Black man. And he expressed his fear that police will abuse his son because he’s Black. Yet during his campaign for Senate in Georgia, Walker, the Republican now in a December […]

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“Something Needs to Change or Else We Will All Quit”

It is not news that public schools in the United States are now conflict zones. Across the country, K-12 teachers, school administrators, and counselors have become targets of a right-wing crusade against Critical Race Theory, gender identity, and social-emotional learning. Books are being banned from libraries as conservative extremists have taken over school boards. In a […]

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The Tragedy of the Oxford High School Mass Shooting Deepens

In the year since a mass shooting at Oxford High School in Michigan left four students dead and many others injured and traumatized, questions have loomed about whether the carnage could have been prevented. The most intense media focus has been on the role of the shooter’s parents. They bought a semiautomatic pistol for their […]

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These Scientists Are Looking for “Glacier Blood”

This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Jim Elser scanned the snowfields clinging to the lower slopes of Clements Mountain in Montana’s Glacier National Park. While nearby tourists snapped pictures of soaring rock faces and searched for wildlife, Elser, an ecologist at the University of Montana and the director […]

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Oath Keepers Founder Convicted of Sedition in Capitol Attack

A jury has convicted Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the far-right Oath Keepers militia group, of seditious conspiracy and other crimes, a milestone in the Justice Department’s sprawling investigation into the January 6 attack on Congress. Jurors also convicted Kelly Meggs, the leader of the group’s Florida chapter, of seditious conspiracy. But the same jury […]

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Joe Biden Is Moving to Stop a Rail Strike. Workers Are Upset.

Joe Biden, the Amtrak-obsessed president who has prided himself on being “pro-labor,” is urging Congress to step in and halt a looming railroad strike. This move is a massive change of course for a president known to some as “Union Joe.” In 1992, Biden was one of just six Senators to vote against halting a […]

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An Investigation: Who Is Mitch McConnell Condemning?

One week after Donald Trump entertained an unrepentant antisemite and white nationalist at his Mar-a-Lago residence, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has offered an uncharacteristically harsh assessment of the former president’s hopes for reelection. Or at least that was the implication. “First, let me just say that there is no room in the Republican Party […]

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Blake Masters to Explain Things to the RNC

After dismal predictions for Democrats around the country, the red wave never arrived. Instead, Stop the Steal performed miserably on the ballot. A murderer’s row of extremist candidates preferred by Donald Trump lost. And despite polling noting concerns about inflation and crime, Democrats outperformed expectations. Now, Republicans are attempting to figure out exactly what happened. In […]

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You Can’t Keep the World Out of the World Cup

The political subtext of the 2022 men’s World Cup in Qatar has never been particularly well hidden, because the politics is sort of the point. During every match of the tournament on Fox, ads paid for by the government of Qatar boast of the country’s relationships with American universities and the US armed forces—flexing its […]

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It turns Out Western Voters Care a Lot About Public Lands

This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Ammon Bundy only got 17 percent of the votes in the Idaho governor’s race. Phew, I thought. What a relief. Then: Wait, 100,000 people voted for Ammon Bundy? Yikes! That sorta sums up the 2022 midterm elections: Western voters generally chose pragmatism over ideology, moderation […]

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Buffalo Shooter Pleads Guilty to Hate Crime and Murder Charges

The 19-year-old white man who killed 10 Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, has pleaded guilty to murder, attempted murder, and domestic terrorism motivated by hate, which carry a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole. In May, Payton Gendron, then 18, live-streamed his attack on a supermarket in a predominantly […]

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Mounting Scientific Evidence Rekindles Fracking Health Concerns

This story was originally published by Yale E360 and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Almost 20 years after the adoption of hydraulic fracturing began to supercharge US production of oil and gas, there’s growing evidence of a correlation between the industry’s activities and an array of health problems ranging from childhood cancer and the […]

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How Did a State Known for Its War on Immigrants Approve In-State Tuition for Undocumented Students?

Jose Patiño remembers how his mother cried when the acceptance letter from Arizona State University arrived in the mail in late 2006. There it was, the ultimate reward for her son’s hard work and the reason why they had sacrificed so much by leaving Mexico when he was six years old. He had not just […]

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Potential Trump 2024 Challengers Weigh in on His Dinner Meeting With Avowed Anti-Semite

On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, former president Donald Trump hosted the rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, and avowed anti-Semite Nick Fuentes for dinner. It’s unclear what the main course was, but the dessert was heaps of condemnation—from both Republicans and Democrats who are considering challenging Trump in 2024. Fuentes has denied the Holocaust […]

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Congress Won’t Be Able to Ban Assault Weapons Anytime Soon. Sen. Chris Murphy Has Another Idea.

A shooter used an assault-style rifle and handgun to kill five people and injure 25 more at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs on November 19. Three days later, a different shooter used a handgun and multiple magazines to kill six people and injure at least six more at a Chesapeake, Virginia, Walmart. Those are […]

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As RSV Cases Surge, Experts Warn of America’s Worsening ‘Tripledemic’

Respiratory illnesses are sweeping the nation, overwhelming hospitals, causing kids to miss school, and keeping adults home from work. The culprit? Covid. And respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). And the flu. “We’re facing an onslaught of three viruses—Covid, RSV and influenza. All simultaneously,” Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University, recently told NPR. […]

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Is Elon Musk a Ron DeSantis Supporter Now?

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis may have a rich and powerful supporter in his expected presidential campaign: Twitter owner Elon Musk. Or, he might not. Despite reports that Musk would back DeSantis in 2024, the delivery of the message gives pause: Musk announced (if you can call it that) his DeSantis support vaguely with a one-word […]

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Voting Has Begun in Georgia Senate Runoff, Despite GOP Attempt To Stop Saturday Voting

Voters in about two dozen Georgia counties began voting today in the Senate runoff between Democratic incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock and Trump-backed challenger Herschel Walker, despite attempts by the Georgia Republicans to block Saturday voting. The election will determine whether the Senate remains split 50-50 with Democrats in control, or whether Democrats will take a […]

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Donald Trump Dined With White Supremacist Nick Fuentes

On Tuesday, Donald Trump, now a candidate for president, had dinner with the white supremacist influencer Nick Fuentes and the rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, to wide condemnation. Fuentes first gained notoriety for attending the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017. He was one of “very fine people on both […]

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America’s Food-Security Crisis Is a Water-Security Crisis, Too

This story was originally published by the Food & Environment Reporting Network. Deepak Palakshappa became a pediatrician to give poor kids access to good medical care. Still, back in his residency days, the now-associate professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem was shocked to discover that a patient caring for two young […]

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Herschel Walker Has a History of Standing Up For Violent Men

Among the most-discussed aspects of Herschel Walker’s campaign for the US Senate seat in Georgia are the allegations he had episodes of violence and threatening to commit violence—allegations he later dismissed as the side effects of a mental illness known as Dissociative Identity Disorder, from which he now claims he is “healed.” Walker’s ex-wife Cindy Grossman, […]

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Let’s Give Thanks for Nature, Which Is Totally Inspirational

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Over millions of years of evolution, nature has worked out solutions to many problems. Humans have arrived late in the day and pinched them. For example, Velcro was invented after a Swiss engineer marveled at the burdock burrs that got stuck to […]

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Lisa Murkowski Just Beat an All-Out MAGA Attack

Things looked scary at first for Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the GOP senator at the top of Donald Trump’s enemies list. After crushing her opponent in the primary, Murkowski found herself behind Trump-backed Kelly Tshibaka for days after polls closed on November 8th. But by Wednesday night, as the state’s ranked choice voting tabulation concluded, […]

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Sarah Palin Just Lost a 50-Year GOP Seat to Alaska’s First Native Rep

For decades, it’s been unthinkable that Alaska could let a Democrat occupy its only seat in the House of Representatives, which had been held by the late GOP Rep. Don Young since 1972. But in the background, as Americans in the lower 48 were captivated by races in Georgia or Arizona, that’s exactly what’s happened: Alaskans […]

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After Two Mass Shootings, Glenn Youngkin Sure Doesn’t Seem to Want to Say the Word ‘Gun’

In less than 10 days, two mass shootings in two different cities have taken place in Virginia. On November 13, three students at the University of Virginia were killed after a classmate allegedly gunned them down following a field trip. Then on Tuesday, a suspected gunman opened fire inside a Walmart break room, killing at […]

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