Mother Jones
After spending days and days giving away the store to secure his new position, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has promised lots of major action starting Monday—and one of the first items on his agenda is gutting the Office of Congressional Ethics. As the epidemic of Congressional stock ownership shows—ethics has never been Congress’ forte. But as one of the […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Hakai Magazine and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The constant thrum of ship engines and other human noises can be a real nuisance for many sea creatures, disrupting their feeding, navigation, and communication. Now a new study shows that ship noise can also kill the mood for amorous crabs. To […]
Mother JonesOn Saturday, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries made history as the first Black lawmaker to lead a congressional party, making a splash with his first official speech as House Minority leader in the wee hours of the morning. “As John Lewis would sometimes remind us on this floor, we may have come over on different ships but […]
Mother JonesIt’s finally over. After days of negotiations and 14 failed ballots—the most since 1860—Republican Kevin McCarthy was officially elected speaker of the House early Saturday morning. In exchange for the necessary votes to get him elected, the congressman had to beg, barter, and plead with a group of hardline Republicans who held out for a […]
Mother JonesIt was late. Everyone was fried. And apparently, some Republicans had finally had enough. On Friday night, toward the end of the 14th (and penultimate) vote to elect Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as House Speaker, McCarthy found himself walking over to Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican who has been one of most outspoken conservative holdouts […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. About one in eight cases of asthma in children in the United States is due to the pollution given off by cooking on gas stoves, new research has found, amid moves by Joe Biden’s administration to consider the regulation, or even […]
Mother Jones12:29 a.m. ET: The House finally voted confirm Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House. It’s been a wild ride. As midnight approached on the fourth day of House speaker voting, things were buzzing on C-SPAN. The freely accessible channel trained its briefly liberated cameras on Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as he appealed to holdout Rep. Matt […]
Mother JonesHouse Republicans are celebrating the anniversary of the January 6 attack by making it clear that they are not, in actual practice, against it. Would-be House Speaker Kevin McCarthy spent Friday morning and preceding days hurling concessions at some of the same far-right members of Congress who helped Donald Trump incite the riot and tried […]
Mother JonesThe 25-year-old documentarian Andrew Callaghan has been pissing off reporters lately. In his new HBO documentary, This Place Rules, Callaghan chronicles the events leading up to January 6, 2021, via dozens of man-on-the-street interviews with outlandish people of all stripes—from MAGA protesters to QAnon believers to self-proclaimed antifa members. In most scenes, Callaghan wears an […]
Mother JonesOn Thursday, President Joe Biden announced new and stricter border enforcement measures that include the expansion of a Trump-era policy to summarily expel migrants and further restrict asylum seekers’ ability to seek protection at the border. In order to “increase security at the border and reduce the number of individuals crossing unlawfully between ports of […]
Mother JonesThe work of photographer Nate Gowdy should be familiar to regular Mother Jones readers, especially those who’ve followed our January 6 reporting. His black-and-white photos captured the chaos as protesters marched from the “Stop the Steal” rally to the explosive swarming of the US Capitol. Gowdy’s new book, Insurrection, is among the first photo books […]
Mother JonesOn the first day of the new Congress, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) delivered one of the nominating speeches for Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who was seeking the House speakership. Jordan bemoaned a “government that has been weaponized” against the American people and called for greater accountability. The next day, during a second round of failed […]
Mother JonesThe video was exceptionally violent even for a pro-Trump meme. With his face superimposed over that of Colin Firth from the 2014 movie Kingsman: The Secret Service, Donald Trump strides through the “Church of Fake News” and plunges a spear into the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). He holds Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) hostage while blasting away […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The world’s first vaccine for honeybees has been approved for use by the US government, raising hopes of a new weapon against diseases that routinely ravage colonies that are relied upon for food pollination. The US Department of Agriculture has […]
Mother JonesTwo years after the January 6 disaster, evidence continues building that numerous extremists went to Washington that day armed with guns, tactical gear, and other weapons. The mass attack on Congress incited by Donald Trump was grisly and devastating: The Capitol Building was damaged and desecrated, scores of law enforcement agents were assaulted, a QAnon […]
Mother JonesYesterday afternoon, it hit me. As I watched C-SPAN yesterday, waiting for Republicans to get their shit together, I noticed something surprising: a lack of coffee cups in the hands of our nation’s elected representatives. I usually have an iced coffee glued to my palm, like most who hail from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. How could Rep. […]
Mother JonesThe spiral of lies disseminated by newly elected Republican Rep. George Santos of New York has made him a political and social pariah and object of relentless scrutiny. Since the New York Times’ December exposé revealed the newcomer essentially manufactured his resumé and biography, the 34-year-old Long Island congressman has become the gift that keeps on giving […]
Mother JonesPresident Joe Biden on Friday, the two-year anniversary of the January 6th attack on the US Capitol, will award Presidential Citizens Medals to twelve individuals, including law enforcement officials who suffered injuries from the violence and election officials who faced pressure to overturn the election. Among the recipients will also be Fulton County, Georgia election […]
Mother JonesTwo years after President Donald Trump incited a mob to storm the US Capitol and halt the certification of the Electoral College results, the January 6 insurrection is still a live wire in American politics. Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes was convicted of seditious conspiracy last month for his role in the riot. Advocates of […]
Mother JonesIn 2021, on San Francisco’s wettest October day on record, an “atmospheric river” dumped a stunning 4.02 inches of rain downtown, causing highways and neighborhoods in the area to flood. Cars were stranded in standing water. And the city’s sewers, which carry both stormwater and sewage, overflowed in the low-lying Marina neighborhood. Officials estimated that […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Europe’s record-breaking warm winter weather has closed ski slopes and forced resorts to open summer trails or shut altogether, as grass and mud replace seasonal snow from Chamonix in France to Innsbruck in Austria. Eight countries across the continent have recorded their […]
Mother JonesIn the last decade or so, a growing number of cities have turned to rain gardens. These shallow, plant-filled ditches can help reduce flooding during storms, which are predicted to get heavier in many parts of the country as the climate changes. Often, rain gardens are part of multi-million-dollar urban development projects. But they can also […]
Mother JonesForget Dylan in ’65. Get ready for the USPS in ’26. Last month, the USPS laid out its plan for increasing the proportion of electric vehicles from the 10 percent it initially promised: By 2028, 45,000 of the 60,000 new purpose-build mail trucks will be electric, as will 21,000 of the 46,000 additional “commercial off-the-shelf” […]
Mother JonesOn January 11, 2021, five days after Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol, CNN published an article titled “Experts Warn That Trump’s ‘Big Lie’ Will Outlast His Presidency.” It quoted Timothy Snyder, a historian who wrote the 2017 bestseller On Tyranny. “The idea that Mr. Biden didn’t win the election is a big lie,” Snyder […]
Mother JonesAs Kevin McCarthy’s humiliating campaign to clinch the House speakership enters its second day, Donald Trump is calling on GOP lawmakers to unite and back the California Republican in an effort to prevent a “giant and embarrassing defeat.” McCarthy would do a “good job,” perhaps even a “great one,” the former president continued, striking a strangely milquetoast […]
Mother JonesIf billionaire Don Foss were still alive, he’d have a big problem on his hands. On Wednesday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a joint lawsuit against Credit Acceptance Corporation (CAC), the Michigan-based “predatory” lender that Foss—who died last year at the age of 78—founded back in the […]
Mother JonesThe first item listed on this week’s House legislative schedule, following the historically chaotic selection of a House Speaker and seating of members—including the scandal-plagued and apparently unpopular freshman George Santos (R-N.Y.)—is consideration of the ill-named Family and Small Business Taxpayer Protection Act. This Republican bill is ill-named because what it actually does is protect […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It has only been a decade since climate activists launched campaigns to get financial institutions and money managers to see that dollars pumped into the fossil fuel industry were a risk to both the planet and investor portfolios. […]
Mother JonesThe 118th Congress opened on Tuesday with dramatic questions. Would Kevin McCarthy suffer a historic, first-in-a-century defeat? If such a humiliating event were to happen—and it did—then how many rounds of voting would it take for a House speaker to finally emerge from the ashes of this political fire. But personally, the most suspenseful moments so […]
Mother JonesThe 118th Congress opened on Tuesday, a historically staid, even boring event that descended into chaos after Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) failed to lock down the votes to become House speaker. The California Republican’s inability to secure the speakership in the first round of voting is a colossal embarrassment for a man who has been […]