Mother Jones
Over the weekend, as my colleague Isabela Dias reported, NASA’s lunar capsule made its historic reentry to Earth’s atmosphere at a staggering 32 times the speed of sound. That is, to quote our colleague Abigail Weinberg about space generally, “really fucking cool.” Because the cosmos, you see, is mesmerizing, and this genre of RFC space […]
Mother JonesThis story and brief explainer were originally published by the Guardian and are reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Researchers have reportedly made a breakthrough in the quest to unlock a “near-limitless, safe, clean” source of energy: They got more energy out of a nuclear fusion reaction than they put in. Nuclear fusion involves smashing […]
Mother JonesThe first thing Dr. Curtis Boyd did when he arrived at work one cloudy Monday morning in January was turn on his radio. It was 1973, and Boyd, an ordained Baptist minister, had been providing underground abortions for five years, most recently out of a mountaintop house in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The only people […]
Mother JonesSam Bankman-Fried was set to testify before Congress on Tuesday, but before he could appear, he was arrested in the Bahamas. Not surprisingly, most of the charges he’s facing involve allegations of fraud related to the collapse of FTX, his crypto-trading platform. But a federal indictment unveiled Tuesday also accuses SBF—a prolific political donor who […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The surveillance plane eased off the runway and banked west towards the frontline of one of Brazil’s most dramatic environmental and humanitarian crises. Its objective: a clandestine 75-mile road that illegal mining mafias have carved out of the jungles of Brazil’s […]
Mother JonesOn a cold December morning a decade ago, a suicidal 20-year-old male used an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle to murder 20 first graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The devastation for the victims’ families and the community of Newtown was nearly indescribable. Grief and outrage gripped the nation. The US president wept openly. […]
Mother JonesOn a muggy evening early in the pandemic, Jervis Middleton, an off-duty police officer in Lexington, Kentucky, sat in his cruiser typing determinedly on his phone. The city was tense. One week earlier, a video of white Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin slowly asphyxiating George Floyd had set off national protests, and Middleton and his fellow […]
Mother JonesOn Monday afternoon, Brazil’s Electoral Court officially certified the election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as president, putting the country one step closer to burying any illegitimate challenge to the electoral process ahead of Lula’s inauguration on January 1. In an emotional speech, the three-time president-elect who defeated far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro last October […]
Mother JonesOne of Donald Trump’s main tactics to delay the Justice Department’s Mar-a-Lago investigation was officially killed off on Monday. Following orders from an appeals court, a Trump-appointed judge was forced to formally dismiss the ex-president’s lawsuit demanding a third-party review of the evidence seized at his estate. Less than two weeks ago, the Eleventh Circuit Court […]
Mother JonesIt was six weeks before the November election, and in his snug campaign office in suburban Milwaukee, located in a shopping plaza between a dentist and an acupuncturist, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers scanned the brightly colored maps that hung on the walls. They depicted the tortuously shaped legislative districts drawn in a state regarded as one […]
Mother JonesIt has been nearly 10 months since Russia invaded Ukraine. Horrifying images of people shot in the streets, of mass graves and scorched land, have shown the unprecedented brutality of the Russian Army. More than 100,000 buildings have been destroyed. The peaceful Kyiv suburbs of Bucha, Irpin, and Hostomel, which were, until recently, a haven […]
Mother JonesOn December 1, the Florida Treasury announced it would divest $2 billion worth of state funds from the financial services company BlackRock. The firm, Florida chief financial officer Jimmy Patronis alleged, didn’t have its investors’ best interests in mind. “Florida’s Treasury Division is divesting from BlackRock because they have openly stated they’ve got other goals than […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Conservation groups in the US have hailed a new law that will end what they call the “horrific” practice of keeping big cats such as tigers and lions as pets or as petting zoo amusements. Joe Biden is expected to […]
Mother JonesAfter her release from a Russian penal colony on Thursday, Brittney Griner didn’t want to decompress or relax upon boarding the plane that would bring her back to the United States. “I have been in prison for 10 months now, listening to Russian,” she said, according to Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs Roger Carstens. […]
Mother JonesIn the absence of a World Cup match to watch this Sunday, you might perhaps be interested in another gravitational event to follow: the return of the Orion capsule to Earth. It will mark the end of Artemis I, a mission test to see if NASA can send astronauts back to the moon 50 years […]
Mother JonesThe third episode of Netflix’s new six-part documentary about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, opens with a November 2017 formal interview the then royal couple gave BBC News about their engagement. As they begin to describe the proposal, it quickly cuts to an equally well-produced but more recent sit-down interview with […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Hakai Magazine and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It’s low tide in Bodega Bay, north of San Francisco, California, and Hannah Hensel is squishing through thick mud, on the hunt for clams. The hinged mollusks are everywhere, burrowed into the sediment, filtering seawater to feed on plankton. […]
Mother JonesFirst, it was Belgium. Then it was Spain. Today, it was Portugal. Morocco has defeated yet another European soccer powerhouse to become the first African and Arab nation to advance to the semifinals in World Cup history. The final score was 1-0 with the only goal coming off a leaping header from Youssef En-Nesyri late […]
Mother JonesThe Justice Department announced on Friday that Nicholas Ochs, the founder of the Hawaii Proud Boys chapter, was sentenced to four years in prison for his role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. Nicholas DeCarlo, who was photographed at the Capitol with Ochs, was also sentenced to four years. Both men had […]
Mother JonesKari Lake is still trying to win the election she lost. Her latest move is a conspiratorial 70-page lawsuit filed in Arizona on Friday in which the former local news anchor asks that she be declared the victor of last month’s gubernatorial election because of unsupported allegations of voter fraud. Lake’s lawsuit in state court argues […]
Mother JonesMy mother gave me her brown eyes, sense of humor, and an intrinsic need to show up at any Christmas-themed event with a box of homemade cookies weighing several pounds, at least. My mother also passed on her Judaism to me, but this is not, as you might think, in conflict with our Christmas cookie […]
Mother JonesOn the evening of October 24, 2020, a guy who goes by the name Wenyang tweeted a picture of Hunter Biden. Hunter was facing a mirror in what looked like a hotel room, with his penis exposed. Within an hour, Joe Biden’s presidential campaign asked Twitter to take down the post. We know this because journalist […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Yale E360 and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Carroll Muffett began wondering in 2008 when the world’s biggest oil companies had first understood the science of climate change and their product’s role in causing it. A lawyer then working as a consultant to environmental groups, he started researching the […]
Mother JonesWorkers at an electric vehicle battery manufacturing plant in Ohio voted Friday to join the United Automobile Workers union, a milestone in the auto industry’s transition from producing gas to electric cars. The vote at Ultium Cells—a joint venture between General Motors and a South Korean battery manufacturer—was 710 to 16, according to the union. The […]
Mother JonesKyrsten Sinema is back where she started. On Friday, the Arizona senator announced that she was leaving the Democratic Party, but would keep her committee appointments and not caucus with the Republicans. Twenty years after Sinema lost a race for state legislature as an independent, she is once again a party of one. On a […]
Mother JonesSen. Kyrsten Sinema is leaving the Democratic Party and registering as an independent. Politico has the scoop, which you can decide is either unsurprising or something of a bombshell. The news comes shortly after two key moments for Democrats. This week, Sen. Raphael Warnock won re-election in Georgia, securing the party with a theoretically more […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Hakai Magazine and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Bernie sniffs the disembodied wing, picks it up in his jaws, and runs away. Four years after we adopted him, our dog’s recall is generally a point of pride. A sharp blast on a pea whistle helps when his mind […]
Mother JonesThe day after Donald Trump, a former president and the leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, called for the “termination” of provisions of the US Constitution governing elections and essentially demanded that he be declared the “rightful winner” of the 2020 election, neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post ran […]
Mother JonesFor the first two years of the pandemic, there was such a thing as a free lunch—for public school kids, at least. To blunt a spike in hunger caused by job losses and school closures, the federal government made school meals free, even available as “grab and go,” for virtually all children. But Republicans blocked […]
Mother JonesMore than 1,100 New York Times employees are striking for 24 hours after more than a year and a half of contract negotiations. But the Times website is still up and running, populated by prewrites, articles written by non-unionized staff, and a couple high-profile scabs. This reminded us of a relic of a famous newspaper strike: […]