Mother Jones
If you’re one of more than 43 million people with student loan debt in the United States, you may soon be forced to start repayments once again. On Wednesday, the House passed a deal to raise the debt ceiling, which includes a provision ending the pandemic-era pause on student loan payments. The agreement now heads to […]
Mother JonesIn Lorena Roman’s new apartment in Watsonville, California, the walls are bare except for a wooden cross. Boxes are stacked in the small kitchen. Some days she can hear the jingle of an ice cream truck driving by the approximately 80-unit apartment complex in Monterey County. On a recent spring morning, Roman, 47, sits on […]
Mother JonesOn a rainy day in late March, a group of American and European public intellectuals gathered in a stone-clad villa in Budapest’s Castle District. They’d been invited by the Danube Institute, a conservative think tank backed by the Hungarian government, to denounce growing threats from the left. The institute’s president, John O’Sullivan, a British octogenarian […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Keely Fisher chose to pursue her Ph.D. at Ohio State University because she wanted to learn about climate change from a world-class faculty. Now one year into her program, she wonders if she belongs here. The problem has nothing […]
Mother JonesRon DeSantis is running for president as the man who took on two magical kingdoms. The first, as my colleague Pema Levy recently documented in a profile for the magazine, is Disney World. The second is Martha’s Vineyard, an island off the coast of Massachusetts that’s a summertime haven for the ultra-wealthy. At a campaign […]
Mother JonesIn a move lauded by safe streets advocates, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration proposed a new rule this morning that would require automatic emergency braking (AEB) on new cars and light trucks. AEB uses sensors to detect objects in a car’s path, like pedestrians or other vehicles, and automatically brakes if the driver fails to […]
Mother JonesGuadalupe de la Cruz, director of the Florida chapter of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), wasn’t surprised when Gov. Ron DeSantis signed one of the most restrictive anti-immigration laws in the country this May. After all, DeSantis already championed legislation banning sanctuary cities in the state and engineered political stunts with flights of migrants from […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Given America’s penchant for gas-guzzling pickup trucks and SUVs, you might be surprised to learn that the country’s gasoline usage is going down, maybe for good. Even though only about 1 percent of cars on the road today are electric, some […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The deal to raise the US debt ceiling will have significant ramifications for the climate and nature, by fast-tracking a controversial gas pipeline in West Virginia and limiting the scope of environmental reviews for future developments, environmentalists have warned. The agreement struck between Joe Biden […]
Mother JonesIf you haven’t ordered your free COVID tests yet, you might want to hurry. US residents are still allowed to order free tests online until 11:59 p.m. PDT on May 31. After that, the federal program will be officially terminated. According to the COVID.gov website, every US household is eligible for up to four at-home testing […]
Mother JonesLast week, Florida Gov. Ronald Dion DeSantis announced his run for president of the United States. In the avalanche of background coverage, one point hasn’t been discussed much: DeSantis’s middle name. “Dion”? According to reporting from NBC News, it’s a tribute to the early rockstar, and Bronx-born heartthrob, Dion DiMucci. When Henry J. Gomez interviewed […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The plastics industry has long hyped recycling, even though it is well aware that it’s been a failure. Worldwide, only 9 percent of plastic waste actually gets recycled. In the United States, the rate is now 5 percent. Most used plastic is landfilled, incinerated, or winds […]
Mother JonesTurkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan won reelection on Sunday, cementing his grip on power. First elected in 2003 as prime minister, Erdogan has reshaped Turkey from its secular moderate democratic system to a more religious and increasingly authoritarian power structure. Erdogan’s rule has complicated Turkey’s relationships with Western leaders—he is currently impeding Sweden’s entrance into […]
Mother JonesPresident Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said this weekend that they had reached a deal in principle to raise the debt ceiling, but as of Sunday afternoon, lawmakers were still waiting to see the text of the deal to be voted on. The agreement reportedly includes a debt ceiling extension through 2025—sparing the […]
Mother JonesThe Republican-controlled Texas House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly on Saturday to impeach Republican Texas attorney general Ken Paxton. Paxton, a conservative star who has made a name as a culture warrior and MAGA firebrand, was impeached on multiple articles including bribery and abuse of public trust. The impeachment vote went through easily—121 to 23—with the […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Writing clean energy policies and implementing them is hard. It takes experts. Those people serve on task forces, stay up late writing policy briefs and fret over the details. In an era when many states are making rapid […]
Mother JonesIn a stunning turn of events, the GOP-controlled Texas House of Representatives voted Saturday to impeach the state’s Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton. In a 121 to 23 vote, with five others absent or abstaining, the state House approved twenty articles of impeachment against Paxton on grounds including bribery, obstruction of justice, and dereliction of […]
Mother JonesHours before announcing his 2024 campaign for the presidency on Wednesday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law allowing him to continue to serve as governor while he pursues the GOP presidential nomination. While that was the headline, the new law contains a series of provisions making it harder to vote in the state, including […]
Mother JonesA South Carolina judge temporarily blocked the state’s new six-week abortion ban on Friday, one day after it was signed by Republican Gov. Henry McMaster. “The status quo should be maintained until the [state] Supreme Court reviews its decision,” said circuit court Judge Clifton Newman. “It’s going to end up there.” The state Supreme Court […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Scientists have discovered more than 5,000 new species living on the seabed in an untouched area of the Pacific Ocean that has been identified as a future hotspot for deep-sea mining, according to a review of the environmental surveys done in the area. […]
Mother JonesNearly two months ago, a pandemic-era policy that prevented states from dropping ineligible people from Medicaid ended. Now, we’re starting to see the fallout. According to a recent New York Times report, hundreds of thousands of low-income people have already lost their health insurance, including those who may still qualify for coverage but appear to […]
Mother JonesEditor’s note: The below article is a preview of the lead item in the next edition of David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial of […]
Mother JonesOn Thursday, a Texas house panel voted to recommend impeachment proceedings for Republican attorney general Ken Paxton. Investigators for the committee concluded that the state’s top law enforcement official broke a number of laws—including felony statutes—by using his office to help a friend and political donor named Nate Paul. (You can read more about the […]
Mother JonesThe movement to counter the Supreme Court’s rightward lurch has come a long way since 2018, when a small but dogged group of progressive advocates began pushing to expand the nine-member court. In Democratic circles, the idea has gained traction, particularly in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning the right to abortion, and […]
Mother JonesWhen Disney announced that the singer and actress Halle Bailey was chosen to play Ariel in the upcoming live-action adaptation of The Little Mermaid, I was uncharacteristically ecstatic. With her angelic voice and magnetic onscreen presence, even I, as a vocal Disney live-action hater, had to admit that Bailey as Ariel was a match made […]
Mother JonesWhen Disney announced that the singer and actress Halle Bailey was chosen to play Ariel in the upcoming live-action adaptation of The Little Mermaid, I was uncharacteristically ecstatic. With her angelic voice and magnetic onscreen presence, even I, as a vocal Disney live-action hater, had to admit that Bailey as Ariel was a match made […]
Mother JonesWhen Disney announced that the singer and actress Halle Bailey was chosen to play Ariel in the upcoming live-action adaptation of The Little Mermaid, I was uncharacteristically ecstatic. With her angelic voice and magnetic onscreen presence, even I, as a vocal Disney live-action hater, had to admit that Bailey as Ariel was a match made […]
Mother JonesOnce a month, Adam Ulbricht hosts a lively podcast called The Bison Insider. Ulbricht, who’s also executive director of the Minnesota Bison Association, discusses weaning calves, the pros and cons of small ranches, and field harvesting. A favorite topic: the rebound of the bison market after a brief Covid slump. Between 2021 to 2022, bison […]
Mother JonesIs the federal government helping companies sell surveillance technology to repressive governments? Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wants to know, but a federal subagency has been cagey about the information. In a letter sent on Saturday, Wyden asked the International Trade Administration (ITA), a subagency of the Department of Commerce, for details about its role in […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The scope of a landmark law to protect America’s waterways has been shrunk by the US Supreme Court, which has sided with an Idaho couple who have waged a long-running legal battle to build a house on wetlands near one of the […]