Mother Jones
This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Kathryn Huff grew up in Bellville, Texas, a city of about 4,200 residents in the rural area west of Houston, and discovered at a young age that she had an aptitude for math. She remembers the moment that she […]
Mother JonesThe New Orleans Police Department on Wednesday pulled a new recruitment video featuring, among many things, rainbows and Big Freedia backup dancers, that had aimed to promote a more diverse workforce after the video instantly attracted a flood of homophobic comments and hate speech. “The immediate reactions were just hate—horrible, slanderous, makes-your-heart-sink type comments, like, […]
Mother JonesTucker Carlson—the Fox News host who has made a wildly successful career out of pushing white nationalism on what is arguably the most racist show on television—is an entertainer, not a reporter. Carlson’s lawyers said as much when he was accused of slander for falsely claiming that Stormy Daniels had extorted President Trump. As NPR […]
Mother JonesOn Friday, a federal judge in Washington, DC sentenced a veteran GOP operative to 18 months in prison for funneling $25,000 from a Russian businessman to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. Jesse Benton, a longtime aide to both Ron and Rand Paul, was convicted in November on six related charges. The court found that he and another GOP […]
Mother JonesThe Torah tells its followers to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth,” so that’s what Lisa Sobel, a devout Jewish woman from Louisville, Kentucky, set out to do. It wasn’t easy. First, she endured three years of infertility. Then, she and her husband embarked on a $50,000 In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) journey, during […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Thousands of employees of the Environmental Protection Agency are lobbying this week for Congress to address staffing issues that they say are limiting their ability to meaningfully carry out the Biden administration’s ambitious climate goals. Leaders of AFGE Council 238, a […]
Mother JonesTesla just realized that testing “self-driving” vehicle technology on public roads isn’t such a good idea, after all. Today, the automaker recalled nearly 363,000 cars equipped with its “Full Self-Driving” technology after a report by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that the Autosteer feature “led to an unreasonable risk to motor vehicle safety […]
Mother JonesWednesday’s confirmation hearing for Daniel Werfel, President Biden’s nominee for IRS commissioner, though not nearly so contentious as it might have been, hinted at partisan battles to come over America’s most beloved federal agency. Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden commenced the hearing by calling out America’s “two-tiered” tax system—one set of rules for most […]
Mother JonesPresident Biden on Thursday, in his most detailed remarks addressing the recent spate of aerial objects that were shot down over North American skies, said that there is no evidence tying the three unidentified objects to foreign surveillance programs. Officials, however, are still working on confirming the exact details of the objects and their provenance. […]
Mother JonesEarlier this month, a train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, triggering a massive fire and forcing everyone within a one-mile radius of the crash to evacuate. To avoid a potential explosion, officials conducted a controlled detonation of five tankers three days later, sending carcinogenic vinyl chloride into the air. Two days later, […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Deep underneath the sodden soils and the berms of snow that now coat California, fuels for fire are waiting to sprout. Grasses and other quick-growing vegetation, spurred by the downpours that saturated the state at the start of the year, […]
Mother JonesIn the fall of 2020, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton faced a mutiny. Seven high-ranking staffers suspected that the state’s chief law-enforcement officer was using the powers of his office to benefit an Austin real-estate developer named Nate Paul, who had given generously to the Republican’s re-election campaign. The staffers put their concerns in writing, […]
Mother JonesToday, I think we’ve seen the entire 2024 Republican presidential primary writ small. Let’s start with specifics and then go broad. This morning, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley announced she is running for president. She did so at a relatively normal rally with a pre-Trumpian tone, a reminder that once a “BYAH” could sink a campaign. And it was so […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. A train carrying hazardous materials heading from Pennsylvania to Illinois derailed in early February, causing a major fire and alarm over a possible imminent explosion. The situation has local people worried, despite reassurances from officials, and has highlighted how vulnerable many […]
Mother JonesThe Department of Justice has elected not to press charges against Rep. Matt Gaetz after a years-long sex-trafficking probe, according to a CNN source familiar with the subject. In late 2020, during the Trump administration, investigators set out to determine whether or not the Florida Republican had violated federal law, examining what the Washington Post described as […]
Mother JonesIn her first public appearance since officially announcing her presidential run, Nikki Haley kept it safe: The former South Carolina governor touted her Indian American identity, declared that America is not racist, and noted that the left’s focus on race is a form of pathetic self-loathing. And, as expected, she declined to mention her former boss […]
Mother JonesAfter more than three decades in office, Sen. Dianne Feinstein announced Tuesday that she will not be running for reelection in 2024. The 89-year-old senator from California, the longest-serving woman in Senate history, said in a press release that she would “accomplish as much for California as [she] can through the end of next year” […]
Mother JonesOn Tuesday, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley announced she was running for president, the way most people do—with a three-minute-long soft-focus announcement video that begins with a few notes from a piano over an aerial shot of the water tower in her hometown. Haley, who served as US ambassador to the United Nations during […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The flames and deadly black smoke that billowed high over a small town on the Ohio and Pennsylvania border Monday were an acute reminder of a type of commonly used plastic with a particularly troublesome environmental and health record. […]
Mother JonesJennifer Crane pulled a fifty-pound tote off the conveyor belt, boxed it up at her station, and pushed it back on the belt to be labeled and shipped. Mindful of her quota—70 packages an hour for up to 11 hours—she grabbed a twenty-pound box and felt pain shoot up her arm. Amazon’s medical team told […]
Mother JonesThis morning, the driver of a U-Haul in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, hit and injured eight people, apparently intentionally, in a stunning example of the use of a motor vehicle to inflict harm. Two people are in critical condition, according to authorities. Video from the scene shows the U-Haul careening onto a sidewalk, nearly hitting a […]
Mother JonesA bunch of the “Make America Great Again” crew watched the Super Bowl on Sunday—and apparently did not approve of what unfolded on their television screens. I’ll let you guess what they took issue with. The complaints started rolling in as Broadway legend and star of “Abbott Elementary,” Sheryl Lee Ralph, performed a rendition of […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In my mid-20s, I undertook the quintessentially Australian rite of passage of moving to London for a few years. Months into my first English winter, I started having dreams about the Australian wilderness. The images were so vivid and […]
Mother JonesIn East Palestine, Ohio residents are unsure of whether or not it’s safe to return to their homes after a train derailment in the area forced officials to do a “controlled release” of vinyl chloride, a “colorless compound that is a human carcinogen and can be deadly if inhaled” into the air to avert an explosion. […]
Mother JonesLate on Saturday evening, the College Board responded to Gov. Ron DeSantis’s wave of attacks on education in Florida accusing the state’s Department of Education of criticizing the Advanced Placement African American studies course, and its use in the state of Florida, as a vehicle for the governors’ far-right politics. The College Board said that it welcomes […]
Mother JonesAh, the Super Bowl is upon us. Like most American news organizations, we are obligated to offer some predictions today, and the time of the game, for easy web traffic. The game is on at 6:30 p.m. eastern time. I think the Philadelphia Eagles linebackers will try to target Kansas City Chief’s go-to tight end […]
Mother JonesRescuers in Turkey and Syria continued to pull survivors from fallen buildings on Saturday, as the death toll from a 7.8 magnitude earthquake reached 25,000. The quake last Monday and its aftershocks led thousands of buildings to collapse in the region, injuring tens of thousands of people and leaving millions homeless during below-freezing temperatures. Turkish […]
Mother JonesMonterrious Harris, 22, was sitting in his car outside his cousin’s apartment in Memphis on January 4 when eight men in black hooded sweatshirts and ski masks allegedly approached the vehicle and ordered him out. “I will shoot you!” one of the men said, according to Harris. “I will shoot you!” Harris put his car […]
Mother JonesOutside a Family Dollar store in Gulfport, Mississippi, a stream of cars enter a parking lot. It is early February, a Saturday, but no one is here to shop. Katrina Mateen, 41, stands with her back toward the store’s entrance, where a cluster of teddy bears, fake flowers, and tea candles sit in the sun. […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Proponents of a “moonshot” idea to deal with global heating have been handed a new, very literal, interpretation by researchers who have proposed firing plumes of moon dust from a gun into space in order to deflect the sun’s rays […]