Mother Jones
This year in New York City, traffic deaths were roughly on a par with shooting deaths. As of Christmas, 246 people were killed with guns in 2022, Gothamist reports, compared with 247 people killed in car crashes. This isn’t unique to New York. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has not yet released full data on 2022 traffic […]
Mother JonesBetween hotels and car rentals, 33-year-old Steven Murray spent more than $1,400 getting his family of seven home to Atlanta after a holiday trip to New York City. That was on top of the $800 they initially spent on Southwest flights, which were canceled. They have yet to see any reimbursement. The $500 rental van […]
Mother JonesThere have been a lot of telling moments in Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter—but the one that stood out to me was not one of the fireballs that tanked revenue or sent employees scrambling for the exits. It was when Musk tweeted simply, “More and more over time, as we hew closer to the truth, […]
Mother JonesGeorge Santos, the Republican congressman-elect who has come under fire for a growing list of inconsistent and false claims about his financial, employment, and familial history, is facing multiple investigations, including an inquiry announced on Wednesday by Long Island prosecutors. “The numerous fabrications and inconsistencies associated with Congressman-Elect Santos are nothing short of stunning,” said […]
Mother JonesThere’s a party going on on Sesame Street. A diverse group of young children is dancing. One muppet is juggling bowling pins. Another announces that there is about to be some live music. Enter three police officers in uniform singing the lyrics, “If you find yourself out in the cold and you don’t have a hand to […]
Mother JonesMerely being responsible for an absolutely terrible movie is no reason to be consigned to the monster category. Were that the case, some ridiculous but weirdly innocent creators would have earned a spot. A quick scan of the ever-reliable Wikipedia includes in its “List of Films Considered the Worst”—a collection, they caution, that can change—such classics as […]
Mother JonesI imagine (hope?) I’m not the only person who momentarily forgets my sister’s phone number when the doctor’s office requests my emergency contact information. Hell, sometimes I even forget my own number when the grocery store clerk asks me to plug it in to claim rewards and fuel points. So thank goodness we don’t have […]
Mother JonesGeorge Santos, the New York Republican who was elected to the House in November, has drawn much attention for his audacious lying. As a candidate, he said he had attended Baruch College. He said he worked for Goldman Sachs. He said he worked for Citigroup. Those were all lies. He claimed Jewish heritage and maintained that his ancestors had […]
Mother JonesThe images have become iconic. A woman sitting on top of a utility box pulls her hair above her head and begins to cut it as a crowd cheers her on. Another spinning around a bonfire, her long hair loose moving with her, throws her hijab into the flames. Teenage girls without their mandatory head […]
Mother JonesThere is a kind of genius in writing the savage review. Sometimes they become assessments of an artist that endure long after the works critiqued have faded from popular memory. The former New York Times chief book critic Michiko Kakutani (once called “the Queen of Mean”) described The Discomfort Zone, a memoir by Jonathan Franzen, as […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. They are gray, rectangular and if you lumped their population of up to 2 billion together they would cover roughly the same area as Connecticut, about 5,500 square miles. Car parking spaces have a monotonous ubiquity in US life, […]
Mother JonesGOP Congressman-Elect George Santos flipped control of New York’s 3rd district in November by touting a long resume of impressive Wall Street and academic accomplishments. He said that he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in economics and finance from New York’s Baruch College in 2010 and that he later spent time at New York University. […]
Mother JonesThe only thing I remember eating during the first months of new parenthood is seaweed. A metric ton of the stuff by way of miyeok guk, a traditional Korean soup whose perks include supposed benefits for breastfeeding. Also commonly referred to as “Korean birthday soup,” it’s normally pretty tasty! But mainlining globs of seaweed, day […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. As the Arctic warms, concern for the plight of Santa’s favorite sleigh pullers is mounting. But in one small corner of the far flung north—Svalbard—Rudolph and his friends are thriving. Warmer temperatures are boosting plant growth and giving Svalbard reindeer more time to […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Yale Environment 360 and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In 2007 an Idaho couple, Mike and Chantell Sackett, bought a building lot across the road from a wetlands complex that drains into a creek and then into Priest Lake, with plans to build a new […]
Mother JonesThink of Earth as a Kinder Egg, a ball of surprises (plastics) and danger (chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer) that is reduced to shit by human consumption. Of the many universes, PBS tells me, life can only form in a few—and most of those tolerate but don’t encourage it, the way […]
Mother JonesThe day after the Brazilian national team beat Switzerland in the group stage of this year’s World Cup, a handful of players went out for dinner. The group included Arsenal’s Gabriel de Jesus and Real Madrid’s Vinícius Júnior. Ronaldo, Brazil’s former striker and a talismanic figure in football, attended. They chose to eat at Nusr-Et. That […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. I thought it was a blood moon at first. The dark orange glow appeared at dusk on the far side of the shimmering silver band that is the Xingu River. It was just before 8pm, after the parrots had […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. On May 6, 2022, Adam Baz, a resident who lives near El Sereno, a Northeast Los Angeles neighborhood, noticed a freshly cut pile of black walnut wood on the hillside next to his house. The trees are protected […]
Mother JonesLet’s hear it for the girls who are just like other girls. I still don’t entirely “get” Taylor Swift (although Anti-Hero still made my top five in Spotify Wrapped), but I have absolutely, undeniably fallen in love with Swifties. Swifties are punk rock. They couldn’t get tickets to the Eras tour? Looks like Ticketmaster/ LiveNation […]
Mother JonesWhen the Biden administration announced in late summer that they would be cancelling $10,000 of student debt per borrower, Americans had thoughts. Some cried tears of joy on TikTok, others went off online with assorted criticisms: The administration should cancel more debt, or less debt, or tighten relief eligibility, or loosen it, and also deal […]
Mother JonesNearly two years after a pro-Trump mob unleashed a violent attack against the US Capitol, the House committee investigating the events of January 6th has released its final report documenting former president Donald Trump’s lead role in fomenting the mob, as well as his efforts to overthrow democracy. As my colleague David Corn wrote shortly […]
Mother JonesFormer Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who offered dramatic testimony at a January 6 Committee hearing in June, detailed her own lawyer’s efforts to keep her quiet in an explosive deposition made public Thursday. Now he’s taken a leave of absence from his law firm, in a swirl of controversy over ethics violations. According […]
Mother JonesBelow is our list of heroes and monsters from 2022. For the last few years, we’ve taken inventory in this fashion—personal, idiosyncratic, and somehow when assembled a snapshot of yet another unsettled, strange, glorious 12 months. (You can read the full archive here.) At this point, it’s become something of a holiday tradition. As always, our list is […]
Mother JonesThis year was filled with reactionary dorks. In Arizona, Blake Masters tried and failed to larp his way into the Senate by posting creepy videos of himself shooting his many guns. In Manhattan, a dozen-or-so people maybe turned a bit fascist and maybe a bit Catholic and writers tried to figure out why rich kids would […]
Mother JonesNearly one year after Eric Adams was sworn in as New York’s 110th mayor, many of the same questions remain. How does Adams, against a plummeted approval rating and barely alleviated housing affordability crisis, still fit in all that partying? Is he sure about crypto? What’s the deal with those twin dudes? The only general consensus […]
Mother JonesIn September, thousands of inmates in Alabama’s state prisons went on a labor strike, compelled by truly appalling living conditions. The state’s prisons are the deadliest in the country, and a US Department of Justice investigation revealed that Alabama “routinely violates the constitutional rights” of inmates, failing to protect them from homicide and sexual assault, among other abuses. This […]
Mother JonesImagine you are the seventh of eight children born to poor, illiterate farmers in the countryside of northeast Brazil. You spend your early life in a house made of mud and sticks. When you’re seven years old your family sets off for the big city, and you find work as a shoe shiner. As a […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Late last month, New York City posted a job listing for a new “director of rodent mitigation,” a title that was soon slimmed down to “Rat Czar,” to work under the direction of Mayor Eric Adams and his deputy mayor for operations, […]
Mother JonesThe Capital One Café in New York City’s Union Square is hesitant. I suspect that it’s not fully committed to its performance. On Google Maps, it is labeled as a Capitol One Café but the exterior simply reads “Capital One”— no mention of a coffeeshop. When you walk inside it just looks like a Capital […]