Mother Jones
Last month, I got an angry email from the Republican Party. I’d just written a snarky blog post about some dubious fundraising solicitations from the House GOP campaign arm—”13X MATCH today only!”—but that wasn’t what they were writing to complain about. No, they were upset I hadn’t responded to an “exit poll” that would apparently […]
Mother JonesA key Iranian official says the Islamic Republic has abolished its notorious morality police. The decision follows more than two months of protests ignited by the death of Masha Amini, the 22-year-old woman who was arrested and reportedly beaten while under police custody after she allegedly violated the country’s Islamic dress laws. The move was announced […]
Mother JonesSNL kicked off its cold open this weekend with a panicked GOP sitting down for an emergency meeting with Herschel Walker, the scandal-plagued Senate candidate in Georgia, as voters head to the polls to determine the last seat in the Senate on Tuesday. The sketch, which included a furrow-browed Mitch McConnell, Marsha Blackburn, and John […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Investigators in Colorado have been left baffled after dozens of cattle inexplicably dropped dead in a remote corner of the state. The mystery has triggered a wave of US press coverage, with the New York Post running a headline claiming: “Cattle […]
Mother JonesOn Friday afternoon, Substack writer Matt Taibbi tweeted what he called “The Twitter Files,” a series of internal documents he says he obtained from sources at the social media company. The documents appear to show internal conversations about Twitter’s decision to block a New York Post story about Hunter Biden from its platform in October […]
Mother JonesThe United States is out of the men’s World Cup. The US team was eliminated from the tournament after getting trounced by the Netherlands 3-1 in Qatar on Saturday, a disappointing loss for hopeful American fans. But for the US women’s team, this World Cup represents a major victory—a cash victory. Under a new labor […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Twitter has proved a cherished forum for climate scientists to share research, as well as for activists seeking to rally action to halt oil pipelines or decry politicians’ failure to cut pollution. But many are now fleeing Twitter due to a surge […]
Mother JonesSo. Much. Prayer. Kicking off debates, woven into speeches, and emanating from pulpits serving as campaign pit stops, God is everywhere in the Senate runoff between Democratic incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock and his Trump-backed challenger Herschel Walker. I grew up in the Southern Bible Belt, and even I’m blown away by the sheer amount of […]
Mother JonesOn Friday, President Joe Biden dropped a tweet that in one fell swoop urged political leaders to condemn antisemitism, white supremacy, and Holocaust denialism. The simple statements, which neatly fit into Twitter’s 280-character limit, came one day after Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, appeared on Alex Jones’ Infowars to openly praise Adolf Hitler […]
Mother JonesManhattan prosecutors on Friday flatly accused Donald Trump of helping executives at his companies commit tax fraud. The allegations came during closing arguments of a trial in which the ex-president’s businesses are charged with allowing key employees to reduce their taxable salaries while simultaneously providing them with off-the-record benefits—like company cars and apartments. For much of the trial, […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It has long been known Ozzy Osbourne has a taste for bats. But now it seems the mammals are also fans of his. Bats greet each other with death metal growls, scientists have discovered, and possess a vocal range which […]
Mother JonesDuring closing arguments on Thursday in the criminal tax fraud case against Donald Trump’s companies, Trump’s attorneys did their best to blame everyone but Trump himself. They told the jury that the alleged fraud was the fault of rogue employees, some of whom had been employed by the Trump family for decades. But after laboring for […]
Mother JonesThe North Atlantic right whale isn’t doing well. There are fewer than 350 of these stocky baleen whales believed to be left in the wild—and the numbers are shrinking. In the last six years, vessel strikes, entanglements in fishing gear, or other unknown causes have killed or injured at least 92 whales, prompting scientists to […]
Mother JonesOn October 3, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West (now Ye) attended Paris fashion week wearing a shirt that said “White Lives Matter.” Three days later, the Twitter account associated with the Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee (ranking member: Jim Jordan) tweeted, “Kanye. Elon. Trump.” When Ye tweeted on October 8 that […]
Mother JonesOn Wednesday, outgoing North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn made a bizarre final speech on the House Floor, jamming at least eight alpha male podcasts worth of toxic masculinity into a minute and twenty-two seconds. “It used to be a rite of passage in this country for young men to be punched in the face when […]
Mother JonesIn 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 […]
Mother JonesAlex 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 […]
Mother JonesThis 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 […]
Mother JonesThis 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. […]
Mother JonesThe 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 […]
Mother JonesNot 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 […]
Mother JonesIt 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 […]
Mother JonesIn 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 […]
Mother JonesThis 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 […]
Mother JonesA 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 […]
Mother JonesJoe 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 […]
Mother JonesOne 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 […]
Mother JonesAfter 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 […]
Mother JonesThe 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 […]
Mother JonesThis 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 […]