Mother Jones
This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Last month, Eugene became the first city in Oregon to pass an ordinance requiring new residential buildings to be fossil fuel-free. But the policy may never go into effect—not if the natural gas industry gets its way. Ever since the electrification ordinance passed, […]
Mother JonesWhat if there is nothing to panic about? This week, three conservative school board members in a rural Colorado district threatened to resign because of critical race theory. Not because they fear it. But, instead, because they’re sick of the fear-mongering about it. The three board members in Elizabeth, Colorado (population: 1,675), say that critical […]
Mother JonesOn Thursday, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin appeared on CNN for an education-themed town hall with Jake Tapper, where concerned citizens directly asked the Republican, a likely contender for the party’s presidential nomination, questions on everything from the state’s gun laws to artificial intelligence in classrooms. In typical Youngkin fashion, he tap danced around most of […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The Chinese surveillance balloon seen over Montana in January riled up state legislatures and got them asking the question: How much control should foreign countries have over US land and natural resources? Senate Republicans in Texas answered, “None […]
Mother JonesJoe Biden’s latest budget, not surprisingly, is pretty pie-in-the-sky. Presidential budgets are wish lists, after all, statements of priorities that throw down the gauntlet for the other side. In this case, Biden is daring congressional Republicans—who only seem to be concerned about deficits when a Democrat is in power—to oppose higher taxes on rich families […]
Mother JonesAt a hearing before the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee on Thursday, Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw insisted that he was “deeply sorry” for last month’s train derailment that spilled toxic chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio. But throughout the hearing, he seemed hesitant to commit to measures that could begin to make it right. […]
Mother JonesHow much would it take for you to publicly pledge allegiance to a man you privately loathe? Not just once, but night after night, in a pair of stale khaki pants? Really think about it: How much would it take for you to sell out, knowing full well your own lies convince others to live […]
Mother JonesThe mother of a close friend, probably around the time I was 16, once told me to never put anything in writing. The way she saw it, the permanence of emails, handwritten notes, and text messages always posed a threat: Something could get yanked out of context to hurt you. I found her warning mildly […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Slate and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. If the Norfolk Southern train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, last month had slid off the tracks seven minutes later, it would have been on Dave Anderson’s farm. Echo Valley Farm, where Anderson lives with his wife and six of […]
Mother JonesFor someone who claims not to be anti-union, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) certainly seems to have it out for the president of the Teamsters. On Wednesday, at a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing, Mullin prefaced a diatribe by averring: “I want to make it very clear, I’m not against unions. I’m not […]
Mother JonesTucker Carlson’s disdain for his own viewers, whom he supplies with lies and hateful discourse every weeknight as Fox News’ biggest star, apparently extends to one in particular: Donald Trump. Despite playing a MAGA diehard on television, a message Carlson sent in the lead-up to January 6 reveals his private verdict: “I hate him passionately.” […]
Mother JonesModern conservatives love to own the libs by supporting people who claim they’ve been “canceled.” Yet Kyle Rittenhouse can’t seem to draw a crowd, no matter how many times he gets shut down. In January, Rittenhouse headlined the Rally Against Censorship in Conroe, Texas, an event you’d expect to draw a healthy turnout in a […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Environmental and Indigenous activists rallied outside the White House last Friday, calling on President Joe Biden to reject a major Arctic oil project that has been in development for years. The Biden administration is expected to make a final decision […]
Mother JonesOn a Saturday afternoon in August 2019, South Dakota Republican state Rep. Fred Deutsch sent an email to 18 anti-trans activists, doctors, and lawyers with the text of a bill he planned to introduce that would make it a felony for doctors to give transgender children under 16 gender-affirming medical care. “I have no doubt this […]
Mother JonesPresident Joe Biden on Tuesday announced a proposal to raise taxes on Americans making more than $400,000 annually in order to continue funding Medicare, marking a new front in the White House’s efforts to position itself as a critical safeguard against efforts to cut the program. “The budget I am releasing this week will make the […]
Mother JonesLast month, Fox News reported that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had set his sight on 14 school board members across the state whom he wanted to see defeated in the upcoming 2024 elections for not sufficiently upholding parental rights or protecting students from “woke ideologies.” The “target list” had come together after the governor reportedly […]
Mother JonesAs Yana Ibragimov and her two young children waited at the Lviv train station, it was snowing. This was March 7, 2022, early in the war in Ukraine. Russian troops were advancing. A day earlier, Russian shells had killed refugees like them in Irpin. The family, tired and scared, searched the parking lot for the […]
Mother JonesLast week, a Florida-based medical group called The Wellness Company made a big announcement: It would provide free medical care to those affected by the February train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. Residents, the company said, could simply go to a website to “register to receive free acute virtual care with a licensed doctor or […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Fourteen-year-old Callie Lawson is living with a broken bedroom door perpetually ajar, leaking privacy. A teenager’s nightmare. That’s just one of the many repairs needed for her family’s aging mobile home—repairs that most craftsmen, unaccustomed to working on […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. More than 1,000 “super-emitter” sites gushed the potent greenhouse gas methane into the global atmosphere in 2022, the Guardian can reveal, mostly from oil and gas facilities. The worst single leak spewed the pollution at a rate equivalent to 67 million […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. February marked the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, 12 months of humanitarian, political, and economic crises. Tens of thousands of lives have been lost, millions of people have been displaced, and while the Ukrainian military surprised the world by […]
Mother JonesOn Sunday, President Joe Biden traveled to Selma, Alabama to commemorate the 58th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the violent crackdown on voting rights activists, led by the late John Lewis and Hosea Williams, marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on their way to Montgomery. The brutal attack perpetrated by state troopers on March 7 left Lewis with […]
Mother JonesAbout a month since the disastrous freight train derailment that spilled toxic chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio, another Norfolk Southern train has gone off the tracks. Twenty or so of the 212 cars on a cargo train derailed near Springfield on Saturday evening, but according to a spokesperson with the company, there was no presence of […]
Mother JonesOn Saturday, Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro, who has become a darling of the US far-right, attended the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, DC. After losing his reelection bid last October to three-time president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Bolsonaro self-exiled in Florida, where he has been living the life of a retiree, […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Jutting out of the permafrost on a mountainside on Spitsbergen, in the Svalbard archipelago, the entrance to the world’s “doomsday” seed vault is worthy of any James Bond movie. Surrounded by snow, ice and the occasional polar bear, the facility houses […]
Mother JonesThe Conservative Political Action Conference, the New York Times reported on Saturday, is not what it used to be. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis skipped out on what has for years been the conservative movement’s premier cattle call. Mike Pence will be at a donor retreat instead. Fox News will not be streaming the event, nor […]
Mother JonesDonald Trump has been running for president for more than three months, but it has sometimes been easy to forget. Fox News, which lent him an endless supply of on-air advertising during his last two campaigns, has all but blacklisted him, offering hours of free programming instead to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Although Elon Musk’s […]
Mother JonesEarlier this week, Florida State Sen. Jason Brodeur introduced a bill that would require bloggers to register with the state government when they are paid to write about the governor and other political figures. After registering, bloggers would be forced to file monthly reports listing every one of their posts, how much they were paid […]
Mother JonesLIV Golf advertises itself as “Golf but louder.” Since its debut last year, LIV (which is not an acronym; it’s a Roman numeral) has sought to take over the market from the PGA Tour by playing music over the loudspeakers during tournaments, shooting t-shirts into the crowd, cozying up to Donald Trump, and—mostly—paying famous golfers […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The US Justice Department has sued the two petrochemical giants behind a facility in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” responsible for the nation’s highest cancer-risk rates caused by air pollution—a major lawsuit that seeks to substantially curb the plant’s emissions. Unveiled on […]