Mother Jones
This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Last month, the American Chemistry Council, a petrochemical industry trade group, sent out a newsletter highlighting a major new report on what it presented as a promising solution to the plastic pollution crisis: using “recycled” plastic in construction materials. At first blush, […]
Mother JonesFormer President Donald Trump was indicted in Georgia late on Monday on charges related to his desperate attempts to overturn the 2020 election. The charges, brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, follow an investigation that lasted some two and a half years. The indictment charges Trump with 13 felonies, many centered on allegations […]
Mother JonesIn Georgia, a grand jury handed in criminal charges against Donald Trump for the former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state. The investigation was conducted by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Trump was charged with 13 felonies, including a violation of Georgia’s RICO law. Charges were also unveiled against […]
Mother JonesIn recent months, there have been growing concerns about whether 90-year-old Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who has represented California in the Senate since 1992, can fulfill her congressional duties. No White House judicial nominees were able to be confirmed from February to May of this year, when Senate Republicans blocked an effort to temporarily replace the senator […]
Mother JonesBiden’s Department of Education has granted Baylor University a religious exemption to Title IX provisions that hold schools accountable for sexual harassment against LGBTQ students, despite the university’s troubling history of alleged Title IX violations. The letters requesting and granting the exemption were dated May 1 and July 25, respectively, but didn’t receive widespread attention […]
Mother JonesA healthy climate is included in your constitutional rights, at least if you live in Montana. On Monday, District Court Judge Kathy Seeley sided with the 16 young plaintiffs who sued Montana three years ago, arguing that its pro–fossil fuels legislation violated their right to a safe environment. Seeley ruled in the case, Held v. […]
Mother JonesThe sun was ablaze and the energy was charged. Outside the California State Capitol in early July, people carried colorful signs proclaiming “NO TO SB 403: UNNECESSARY UNJUST LAW, NO PROFILING,” “I HAVE NO CASTE,” and “SB 403 = SYSTEMIC RACISM.” The crowd huddled around two men. Both were immigrants from India. Both had white […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Where private equity investors make acquisitions, bankruptcies tend to follow. Brands from Radio Shack to Toys R Us went under after being bought by these firms, as did the company that made the Instant Pot, and hundreds of local newspapers endured layoffs and reduced coverage. Now, private […]
Mother JonesThe summer of 2023 could be remembered in several ways. Taylor Swift, apocalyptic smoke, record-shattering heat, Trump indictments. But it was also a time when, for a few short weeks starting in July, the world was forced to consider the possibility of a literal cage match between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. It began after the […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The heat expert leading efforts to make America’s hottest city more bearable insists that Phoenix could eventually eradicate heat deaths—despite July’s record-breaking death toll. As many as 300 people may have died during the hottest ever month on record as the temperature in […]
Mother JonesAs Fulton County DA Fani Willis prepares to present the findings of the investigation into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the election this week, CNN reports on text messages directly connecting the former president’s lawyers to a January 2021 voting systems breach. From CNN: Investigators in the Georgia criminal probe have long suspected the breach […]
Mother JonesI did not attend the Iowa State Fair this weekend. But even a thousand miles away from pig pens and Republican presidential candidates, I could feel the utter humiliation of a certain Florida man. That’s the big takeaway from the fairgrounds where Ron DeSantis was repeatedly heckled with pro-Trump chants as he attempted to play the […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Yale E360 and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In 2019, at a meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, delegates from 187 countries approved the first-ever global rules on cross-border shipments of plastic waste. No longer could countries export contaminated, mixed, or unrecyclable plastics without the recipient country’s informed consent. It was […]
Mother JonesLocal law enforcement in Marion, Kansas, seized cell phones, computers, and other material from the office of the Marion County Record, its reporters, and the home of its publisher, according to reporting from the Kansas Reflector, a nonprofit newsroom. Eric Meyer, the Record’s publisher and owner, said the raid came after an anonymous source leaked […]
Mother JonesWith the 80-year-old current president and the oft-indicted former president and GOP hopeful most likely to face him in the general election a mere three years younger, it’s easy to pine for a more youthful option. Gen X would do. A millennial might be better. Unfortunately, the only choice is this guy. Vivek raps to Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” (he told […]
Mother JonesThe death toll from the Maui wildfire near Lahaina has risen to 80, county officials announced late Friday. Authorities are still searching for missing people and have indicated that the number of fatalities is expected to rise in the coming days. That means the Hawaii fire could soon become the deadliest wildfire in the United […]
Mother JonesIn my latest video, I tackle the controversy surrounding Florida’s teaching standards. These new guidelines, approved last month, sparked an avalanche of criticism by suggesting that enslaved Americans “developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” Although Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis tried to distance himself from the new rules, saying, […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. People buy insurance to protect against unlikely but devastating events, big catastrophes that drive households and businesses to financial ruin and bankruptcy. That makes insurance most people’s first line of defense against climate disasters, which now destroy tens of billions of dollars […]
Mother JonesFires have been raging across Hawaii’s Maui Island since Tuesday night. It is already the second deadliest wildfire in United States history, with 270 structures and 2,000 acres burned, 55 people dead, and 11,000 people without power. More than 11,000 people were evacuated on Wednesday, says Hawaii Department of Transportation director Ed Sniffen. The population of Maui […]
Mother JonesThis piece was originally published by ProPublica. During his three decades on the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas has enjoyed steady access to a lifestyle most Americans can only imagine. A cadre of industry titans and ultrawealthy executives have treated him to far-flung vacations aboard their yachts, ushered him into the premium suites at sporting events […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Joe Biden has said that he has “practically” declared a national emergency on the climate crisis, despite not actually taking that step, vexing climate campaigners. “I’ve already done that,” Biden said when asked if he intends to declare a climate emergency in […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. At least 36 people have died and 30 have been injured in wildfires that have ravaged the historic town of Lahaina in Hawaii, local authorities have said. Officials warned that the death toll in could rise, with the fires still burning […]
Mother JonesThe initial narratives pushed by law enforcement after so-called “officer-involved shootings” or fatal beatings, particularly of Black men, have been found wrong many times over. In January, the Memphis police officers who beat 29-year-old Tyre Nichols to death claimed he’d been combative and reached for one of their guns. Video footage debunked both claims. In 2020, […]
Mother JonesOn a hot afternoon in June, some 700 seated attendees of the annual summit of the conservative parents’ rights group Moms for Liberty bowed their heads in prayer. The Moms had waited in a security line that spanned two floors of the Philadelphia Marriott to get here, and even during this somber moment, the giddiness […]
Mother JonesThis article is a collaboration between Mother Jones and Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit investigative newsroom. Also listen to Reveal’s accompanying podcast, “The Great Arizona Water Grab.” As rural Arizonans face the prospect of wells running dry, foreign firms are sucking up vast amounts of the state’s groundwater to grow hay for Saudi Arabia and other […]
Mother JonesFlorida Gov. Ron DeSantis took a break from his ailing presidential campaign on Wednesday to suspend Monique Worrell, an Orlando-based elected prosecutor. The move was unsurprising: Since winning the state’s top job in 2019, he has sought to make political hay by booting multiple Democrats from office, in contravention of the voters who put them […]
Mother JonesImagine a well-manicured golf course nestled in a valley formed by rolling green, tree-filled mountains. Men of a similar profile, but different ages, dot it: mostly white, often stocky, almost all wearing caps, polos, khaki shorts, and sunglasses—either Oakleys or Costa fishing specs—as they mill from hole to hole. There are women too; fewer of […]
Mother JonesSeventy-eight years ago today, on August 9, 1945, the US military detonated a powerful atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Nagasaki, ultimately killing as many as 90,000 people, nearly all civilians. Yet Nagasaki today might as well be called the “forgotten A-bomb city.” Every August, media and public attention focuses overwhelmingly on Hiroshima, site […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Atlas Obscura and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. At the third meeting of the Moriyama City Firefly Forest Museum’s eight-week Firefly Course, a conservation training program for adults, egg collection begins. Each female Genji firefly, Nipponoluciola cruciata, can lay up to 500 of the caviar-like orbs, carefully depositing them across the mossy banks […]
Mother JonesMark wanted to improve. The pandemic had sent him into an emotional tailspin. Covid coincided with his first heartbreak and an illness that left him bedridden. Even before calls to stay home, Mark rarely left his parents’ house in their small central European town: He spent most days playing video games and watching anime. The […]