Mother Jones
This year’s floods have been historically intense. The storms that hit Vermont on July 10—delivering more than five inches of rain in a single day and forcing hundreds to evacuate their homes—had a 1 percent chance of occurring annually, leading to a “1-in-100 year” flood. Governor Kathy Hochul called storms that drenched Orange County that same day […]
Mother JonesThe Florida Board of Education’s new standards dictating how Black history will be taught in public schools includes a provision implying that enslaved African-Americans learned skills for “their own personal benefit.” The guidelines, approved on Wednesday, has come under fire from civil rights advocates who’ve called them “a sanitized and dishonest telling of the history […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. John King had lived in Santa Cruz, California, for 20 years when her below-market-rate lease ended during the Covid-19 pandemic and her landlord took the home off the rental market. Between the effects of tech-related gentrification, the pandemic, […]
Mother JonesSometimes, my rage gets the better of me. To bike into downtown Denver, I need to take a left at a dangerous intersection. Despite being labeled as “cyclist friendly” by Google Maps, the crossing has no discernible bike infrastructure. There is a left turn lane but no signal; at rush hour, turning is impossible. So, […]
Mother JonesBy now you’ve seen the scenes of young and middle-aged Americans wearing cargo shorts and Patagonia Baggies Brimmers in front of movie studios holding ironic picket signs, such as “Chat GPT doesn’t have childhood trauma!” As the battle grinds into its 12th week, with no end in sight—and the actors’ union now part of the […]
Mother JonesAs a UC Berkeley graduate, I never thought I’d type these words, but okay: Go Wesleyan! Wesleyan University, a small, elite college in Middletown, Connecticut, costs about $85,000 a year, including room and board and sundries. On Wednesday, it announced that, in the wake of the recent Supreme Court decision ending race-based affirmative action in […]
Mother JonesFor the first time in 63 years, writers and actors are on strike, grinding Hollywood to a halt with a historic double strike. You’ve probably recognized some of the celebrities at the picket line. Jason Sudeikis, Hillary Duff, Kevin Bacon, Bill Nye. These actors, similar to writers on strike, are demanding increased pay and protections from artificial […]
Mother JonesLast Friday, the federal court for Florida’s Southern District issued a groundbreaking ruling: that the state had violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by unnecessarily institutionalizing children with complex health needs, placing them in nursing homes instead of providing community health services. As an outcome of the ruling, which follows a two-week trial in May, […]
Mother JonesThe top federal prosecutor in Manhattan became a key voice Monday in a swelling chorus calling for a federal takeover of Rikers Island—pushing the needle further towards the possibility that a judge could wrest away New York City’s control over its jails. “After eight years of trying every tool in the toolkit,” US Attorney Damian […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Canada’s National Observer and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Opponents are calling out Canada over its role in the development of a controversial telescope on Hawaii’s tallest volcano, Mauna Kea, citing human rights abuses. On July 14, opponents of the Thirty Meter Telescope—including Kahea, a Hawaiian environmental organization; […]
Mother JonesHere is a bit of news involving Democratic presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. that, unlike his antisemitic remarks and the unfortunate soundtrack during one of his appearances, didn’t exactly go viral. Earlier this week, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in a case against a California law that was passed last […]
Mother JonesIt’s raining, again. Days after Vermont was inundated, the skies just can’t let up. After enjoying brief periods of dryish weather, the clouds rolled in and the rain has started anew. Last week, Vermont became the latest casualty of the dire weather that has afflicted many parts of the country this summer. We’ve all read […]
Mother JonesMichigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced on Tuesday that charges have been filed against 16 residents of the state for their roles in a fake elector scheme following the 2020 election. All 16 have been charged with eight felony counts, including forgery and election law forgery. “The false electors’ actions undermined the public’s faith in […]
Mother JonesOnce upon a time, Senator Tim Scott from South Carolina condemned racism. Now, not so much. What happened? The presidential hopeful might be finding it difficult to make headlines in an increasingly crowded Republican primary field, but he’s still hauling in crucial campaign cash. The latest figures, unveiled last week, disclosed that his campaign has […]
Mother JonesRon DeSantis is failing when it comes to grassroots fundraising. The situation has gotten so bad that it’s possible the Florida governor might actually be losing money when it comes to courting small-dollar donors. DeSantis’ team has tried to spin the situation as a positive. In a New York Times piece last week, his advisers argued […]
Mother JonesDonald Trump announced Tuesday morning that he has been notified by the Department of Justice that he is a criminal target in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the former president’s effort to subvert the 2020 election. If what Trump says is true, it’s a sign that he could be facing indictment over his efforts to retain […]
Mother JonesWest Wendover, Nevada, has long played a special role for residents of my home state of Utah: It’s where they go to sin. Just 122 miles from Salt Lake City, the tiny border outpost offers cheap booze, big casinos, and more recently, legal weed—all the things you can’t find in the land of Zion. But […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It was a brave, if perhaps scientifically obvious, experiment—to convey messages about the unfolding climate crisis via the regular local TV weather forecasts seen by viewers in the conservative heartland of Iowa. It culminated in the meteorologist involved receiving death threats and […]
Mother JonesThree months after Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y) was indicted on 13 criminal counts, House Democrats plan to introduce legislation to formally censure the scandal-ridden New York Republican on Monday. The measure, which follows an unsuccessful effort to expel Santos, is unlikely to pass the GOP-majority House. But a censure would force individual Republicans to go […]
Mother JonesIn May 2019, when Missouri banned abortions at or after eight weeks of pregnancy, abortion-rights advocates decided to put the issue to voters. Under their state constitution, they could hold a referendum on the new law, if they could gather enough signatures by a late-summer deadline. Missourians—not their representatives in the legislature—would be able to […]
Mother JonesNo Labels, the self-professed centrist group that is preparing to possibly run its own presidential candidate in 2024, says it is not a political party. That means it does not have to reveal the donors that have pumped tens of millions of dollars in recent years into its coffers. Parties must disclose their funders; nonprofit […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Mild El Niño climatic conditions brewing in the Pacific Ocean will strengthen throughout the year, with an outside chance of a record-breaking event that will further turbocharge already sweltering temperatures around the globe, scientists have forecast. Last month saw a “weak” […]
Mother JonesSerbian tennis star Novak Djokovic has won 23 Grand Slam tournaments and the past four straight men’s single’s titles at Wimbledon. He hadn’t lost a match on Wimbledon’s center court since 2013—until Sunday, that is, when 20-year-old Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz beat him 6-4 in the fifth set despite having little experience playing on grass. The […]
Mother JonesFlorida Governor Ron DeSantis raised $20 million in the first six weeks of his official campaign for the GOP presidential nomination. He had nearly 100 people on his campaign staff, and yet, he continues to badly trail the front runner, former President Donald Trump. Even in Florida, where DeSantis was reelected in 2022 in a […]
Mother JonesChris Christie made the rounds on the Sunday morning talk shows this weekend, ramping up attacks on former President Donald Trump as he continues his own latest bid for the GOP presidential nomination. The pugnacious former New Jersey governor seized on comments Trump made Saturday night at the Turning Point USA conference in Florida, where […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Yale Environment 360 and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Few people know the deep ocean as intimately as Lisa Levin, an ecologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Not content with doing pure science, Levin, who has participated in more than 40 oceanographic expeditions, co-founded the Deep-Ocean […]
Mother JonesThe grim records keep tumbling: This June was the warmest month on record. This weekend, Death Valley, California, could tie or set the record for the hottest temperature reliably recorded on Earth. In Canada, record-breaking fires continue to burn. “The extreme weather—an increasingly frequent occurrence in our warming climate—is having a major impact on human health, […]
Mother JonesNew York Liberty’s Sabrina Ionescu set WNBA and NBA records Friday during All-Star Weekend’s three-point contest—a feat that basketball legend Steph Curry on Twitter celebrated as “RIDICULOUS!” The 25-year-old point guard landed all but two of 27 possible shots for a total score of 37 out of 40—outscoring Curry’s single-round NBA record of 31 points, and […]
Mother JonesThe conspiracy theorist, anti-vaxxer, and longshot Democratic presidential nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed at an Upper East Side press event this week that COVID-19 may be a genetically engineered bioweapon that was “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people, reports the New York Post. The same press dinner had already gone viral […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Slate‘s Future Tense partnership and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In August 2021, forest range officer Remya Raghavan caught three people carrying wild boar meat in the Wayanad forest of Kerala, a state in southern India. Possessing wild animal meat is a crime under the country’s 1972 Wildlife […]