Mother Jones
Nearly three months into 2023, it’s easier to count the states that aren’t considering legislation attacking LBGTQ rights. Around 327 bills proposed this legislative session target queer and trans people across the country, and much of their impact would fall on kids: the nonbinary student afraid of losing their home and family if their school […]
Mother JonesA dozen Democratic state attorneys general have opened a new front in the legal war over mifepristone, the “gold standard” medication used in the majority of all US abortions. In a federal lawsuit filed Thursday, the AGs—from states including Arizona, Illinois, and Washington—accuse the Food and Drug Administration of imposing unnecessarily “onerous” restrictions on mifepristone, which is used […]
Mother JonesAt this moment, there’s only one confirmed Democratic candidate for president in 2024: Marianne Williamson. The self-help author, New Age guru, and spiritual adviser to Oprah Winfrey confirmed her candidacy in a Facebook post on Saturday, writing that she was running for president a second time to “bring an aberrational chapter of our history to a […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The plastic crisis looks like a sperm whale filling up its stomach with bags. It looks like cucumbers and bananas—which have perfectly good skins of their own—wrapped in single-use plastic. But before all that, it looks like a burning train wreck in East Palestine, Ohio. Before […]
Mother JonesCheerios. Fruit of the Loom. Cheetos. What do all these brands have in common? They’ve all relied on the exploited labor of migrant children, according to the New York Times‘ latest investigation. Journalist Hannah Dreier, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2019, pulled back the curtain on the shadow workforce of kids who are forced […]
Mother JonesThe Centers of Disease Control and Prevention are warning public health officials about a significant uptick in stomach infections caused by an antibiotic-resistant strain of bacteria. On Friday, the CDC issued an advisory, saying that they’re monitoring an increase in cases of shigellosis, an illness that can cause diarrhea, fever, and abdominal cramps. Caused by […]
Mother JonesIt’s a sad day for fans of mediocre comic strips. The long-running series Dilbert will be removed from several local and national publications after its creator, Scott Adams, called Black Americans a “hate group” and urged white Americans to “get the fuck away” from them in a recently uploaded YouTube video. On Friday, publications like […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Americans are looking for greener ways to die, and a new wave of deathcare startups are rising to the occasion. After death, bodies are typically handled in one of two ways: embalmed and buried in a casket, or incinerated and […]
Mother JonesIn a speech marking the first anniversary of Russia’s brutal invasion, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday vowed to push for victory and praised Ukrainians for their enduring strength. “Our faith has grown stronger. Our morale has been reinforced. We endured the first day of a full-scale war,” Zelenskyy said in a defiant speech that referred to […]
Mother JonesThe messages left on the group chat are the record of a modern-day exodus. “There is only one way out of Melitopol,” the group chat administrator cautioned on September 20, referring to the Russian-occupied city in southern Ukraine. “There are not any safer routes!!!” Other messages are more personal. “Looking for a spot for a […]
Mother JonesJohn Hagee’s been around. And around. And around. The pastor has been a prominent figure in GOP presidential races for years, with his support sought after by candidates from the Bushes (H. and W.) to Trump—and now Nikki Haley. As the founder of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas (established in 1966), Hagee made a name […]
Mother JonesAfter waking to the sound of explosions on February 24, 2022, the morning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Anastasiya Volkova knew that she and her family had to leave Kyiv. They were visiting the city from their home, an ecovillage, in the Ukrainian countryside two hours south of the capital, far from where the sound […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Joe Biden’s administration has been urged not to sink its own climate goals by approving an unprecedented ramp-up of oil export infrastructure off the Texas coast that could result in planet-heating emissions equivalent to three years of the US’s entire emissions output. […]
Mother JonesOn Thursday prosecutors updated their indictments against former crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, expanding on allegations the feds initially filed in December. Bankman-Fried ran the now-collapsed FTX crypto-trading platform and made a name for himself as a disheveled, casually dressed boy genius. He made no secret of his desire to use his new wealth to support […]
Mother JonesFour months after a Mississippi police officer shot a Black 15-year-old, Jaheim McMillan, in the head outside a Family Dollar store, the state’s Department of Public Safety has released video footage of the encounter, following the state attorney general’s announcement Wednesday that a grand jury found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing by law enforcement. The […]
Mother JonesOne of my favorite recent documents in American politics is Evan Bayh’s schedules from his last year in office as a Democratic senator from Indiana. In the months following his 2010 announcement that he would retire rather than seek re-election, the Associated Press reported, the man who was almost Barack Obama’s running mate “held more […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Thousands gathered at New Jersey’s Point Pleasant beach on Sunday with a united mission: to pause offshore wind projects in response to recent whale deaths along the New York-New Jersey coast. The gathering unfolded even as officials dispute the notion […]
Mother JonesIn November 2015, Nohemi Gonzalez was a 23-year-old California State University-Long Beach student studying abroad in Paris. That’s when a coordinated series of terrorist shootings and bombings in the city killed 130 people. She was one of them. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks—but Gonzalez’s family charges that the massive search engine Google is also partially […]
Mother JonesIn his seemingly never-ending quest to remove “divisive concepts” from Virginia’s schools, Gov. Glenn Youngkin has taken a page right out of Ron DeSantis’s playbook and called for a review Virginia’s AP African-American studies programs. According to a report this weekend from the Washington Post, Youngkin, a Republican, asked state officials to review the curriculum to […]
Mother JonesEditor’s note: The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter is written by David twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories about politics and media; his unvarnished take on the events of the day; film, book, television, podcast, and music recommendations; interactive audience features; and more. Subscribing costs just $5 a […]
Mother JonesThis piece was originally published by Capital & Main. Over the last few years, as California has introduced stronger regulations on oil and gas drilling aimed at protecting public health, a pattern of events has started to emerge. Here’s how it typically goes: After years of advocacy, environmentalists successfully push for new oil and gas drilling regulations. Then the […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. During his Thursday visit to the site of a fiery train derailment that may have poisoned a small eastern Ohio town with a range of highly toxic chemicals, the Environmental Protection Agency chief, Michael Regan, told residents: “All families need to know […]
Mother JonesAs the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine approaches, assessing the extent of the enormous toll on lives is impossible. Millions of people have been forced from their homes and tens of thousands have been killed, while cities and towns throughout the country have been destroyed. In the midst of the suffering, remarkable […]
Mother JonesAfter weeks of anticipation, the Biden administration has finally followed through with the plan to revive a policy first proposed during the Trump administration. It would make migrants ineligible for asylum in the United States if they don’t first seek protection in countries they passed through on their way. The proposal for the so-called transit […]
Mother JonesFor a group that constantly complains that Democrats enjoy “making everything about race,” the right’s biggest names are suddenly eager to push the narrative that the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, and the Biden administration’s response to the disaster are the result of racism against white people. That’s the big takeaway from Tucker Carlson, […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. American homes in flood zones are overvalued by hundreds of billions of dollars, according to a study published on Thursday in the journal Nature Climate Change. Low-income homeowners in states controlled by Republicans are especially at risk of seeing their home values deflate […]
Mother JonesAfter the recent shooting at the University of Michigan, staff at Vanderbilt University in Nashville sent an email offering support and comfort to students. “In the wake of the Michigan shootings,” it read, referring to the February 13 attack that left three students dead and five injured, “let us come together as a community to […]
Mother JonesA wealthy executive I interviewed for my book a couple of years ago told me that his kids had attended Lakeside Elementary, the same Seattle school where the Gateses, the Bezoses, and other local tech royalty sent their children. “Someone flew a private jet to one of the soccer games,” he said. That “someone” is […]
Mother JonesThe United States has popped a whole bunch of balloons lately. Earlier this month, famously, an American fighter jet took out a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina with a Sidewinder missile. In the weeks to follow, American jets shot down three more objects floating high above the United States and Canada. […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by WIRED and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Years ago, Christopher Kyba was skeptical about astronomy data collected by citizen scientists—after all, it relies on people making naked-eye assessments of the night sky. But when a student wrote to him with a question about measuring the sky’s brightness, he thought […]