Mother Jones
Bruce Parker remembers a time when he used to talk to the new Republican Speaker of the House, Rep. Mike Johnson, several times a week. It was the spring of 2015, just weeks before the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, and Johnson—then a freshman representative in the Louisiana state legislature—had proposed a bill forbidding state […]
Mother JonesBruce Parker remembers a time when he used to talk to the new Republican speaker of the House, Rep. Mike Johnson, several times a week. It was the spring of 2015, just weeks before the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, and Johnson—then a freshman representative in the Louisiana state legislature—had proposed a bill forbidding state […]
Mother JonesMike Johnson, the new Republican speaker of the House, has a very dark view of America. He believes that the United States is “a completely amoral society” and that global “sinister” forces have a hold on some of its governmental policies. Immediately after Johnson—a little known congressman from Louisiana whose most notable act to date […]
Mother JonesAfter three weeks of disarray and bitter infighting, House Republicans on Wednesday finally got their act together to perform what historically has been one of the easiest tasks for a majority party: electing a new speaker. The man who secured one of the most powerful perches in US politics is Mike Johnson, a fourth-term Louisiana […]
Mother JonesOn November 8, 2020, the day after the major news networks called the election for Joe Biden, 350 supporters of Donald Trump gathered in Purcellville, Virginia, a town of 9,000 people one hour northwest of Washington, D.C., to protest the results. “The national news media, they can make projections about the election, but they don’t […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Oil and gas producers in Pennsylvania used some 160 million pounds of chemicals that they are not required by law to publicly identify in more than 5,000 gas wells between 2012 and 2022, according to research published on Tuesday. The […]
Mother JonesFormer president Donald Trump abruptly left a New York City courtroom on Wednesday afternoon after Judge Arthur Engoron refused to toss out the $250 million civil fraud case concerning the valuation of his properties. His departure occurred during the cross-examination by Trump’s attorneys of his former fixer Michael Cohen. Cohen was on the witness stand […]
Mother JonesThe Republican frontrunner in North Carolina’s 2024 gubernatorial race made a slew of anti-Semitic comments over the past decade including sharing a quote that has been attributed to Adolf Hitler. The newly unearthed social media posts, first reported by Jewish Insider, also show Mark Richardson, the state’s Letuinent Governor, comparing the tearing down of a Confederate monument to both the Nazis’ first […]
Mother JonesDonald Trump was forced to take the stand in a New York City courtroom on Wednesday to explain why he once again violated a gag order prohibiting him from disparaging courtroom staff. Two weeks ago, Trump posted a message on TruthSocial accusing New York Superior Court Judge Arthur Engoron’s court clerk of being Chuck Schumer’s […]
Mother Jones“Boo!” “Shut up! Shut up!” That’s what a gaggle of House Republicans yelled at a reporter who dared to ask Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) about the 2020 election, just one day before Johnson was officially elected to the speakership, ending weeks of tumult within the fractured party. But Johnson’s elevation on Wednesday has many, including […]
Mother JonesThis story is published in partnership with the Center for Public Integrity, a newsroom that investigates inequality. FLINT, Mich – Civil rights law offers a tool for communities of color trying to stop unequal exposure to pollution. Over and over, people here have tried to make it work. From 1992 to 2015, residents and community […]
Mother JonesAbortion-rights opponents have long said their goal is to end abortion nationwide. So when they succeeded in overturning Roe v. Wade in June 2022, it seemed to be the closest they’d ever come. Yet new data is making it increasingly clear that in the 12 months after the court ended the national right to abortion, […]
Mother JonesMike Johnson is the new speaker of the House. The conservative Louisiana lawmaker—a man described by the New York Times as the “most important architect” of congressional Republicans’ attempt to throw out Joe Biden’s 2020 victory—is now second-in-line to the presidency. It’s a win for MAGA extremists. A win for Donald Trump. A win for […]
Mother JonesThis story is published in partnership with the Center for Public Integrity, a newsroom that investigates inequality. Is your neighborhood choked with pollution or facing other environmental woes that you think are discriminatory? You can write to the US Environmental Protection Agency to request an intervention. But it’s easy to get tripped up. That’s what […]
Mother JonesMuch of the MAGA right seems determined to exploit the Israel-Hamas war to drum up anti-Muslim sentiment and xenophobia. In a newsletter last week, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) claimed she was “swarmed by Hamas protesters” during a rally for Palestinian rights at the Capitol. She then referred to Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) as a […]
Mother JonesOn a contentious, crowded day in court, Michael Cohen—Donald Trump’s disgraced former attorney and fixer—took aim at his old boss. It was Trump, and only Trump, who was ultimately responsible for directing his underlings to fraudulently inflate his net worth, Cohen testified Tuesday. As Cohen answered questions from the witness stand, Trump sat just 10 yards away, […]
Mother JonesFormer New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s former right-hand woman, Melissa DeRosa, is out with a new memoir today in which DeRosa, who served as secretary to the governor, doubles down on her former boss’s claims that he never sexually harassed women. That theme comes despite a months-long investigation by the office of the state’s attorney […]
Mother Jones“Politics and hard news are important, I don’t want to imply otherwise.” Hmm—when you hear words like that from a tech executive, you know the next thing is a big, fat “but.” And sure enough: “…But my take is, from a platform’s perspective, any incremental engagement or revenue [these topics] might drive is not at […]
Mother JonesOn Tuesday, 33 states filed a 233-page complaint against Meta and Instagram. The bipartisan lawsuit, in federal district court in California, alleges that Meta knew more about the mental health impacts of Instagram on teenagers—including addiction—than it had publicly acknowledged. According to the complaint, Meta—which owns Instagram, Facebook, and now Threads—”created a business model focused […]
Mother JonesJenna Ellis, a former lawyer for Donald Trump’s campaign, pleaded guilty Tuesday in the sprawling Georgia criminal prosecution surrounding Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Ellis is now the fourth defendant—and third attorney—to plead guilty in the case and agree to testify. Ellis appeared in court in Fulton County, Georgia, on Tuesday and accepted responsibility for […]
Mother JonesSince 2020, firearms have been the leading cause of death for children and teens in America, killing thousands each year. Shootings and threats of gun violence in the nation’s schools have also escalated sharply. These trends are accompanied by another stark and evolving phenomenon: insidious marketing to kids by the gun industry. The promotional tactics […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Former officials in the UN’s farming wing have said they were censored, sabotaged, undermined and victimized for more than a decade after they wrote about the hugely damaging contribution of methane emissions from livestock to global heating. Team members at the […]
Mother JonesDuring the 2012 presidential campaign, when I obtained and posted a secretly recorded video of GOP nominee Mitt Romney deriding 47 percent of Americans as shiftless freeloaders who don’t “take personal responsibility and care for their lives,” I assumed this scoop would have an impact on the election. With President Barack Obama and the Democrats […]
Mother JonesThe United Auto Workers Union is ramping up its unprecedented strike against the nation’s three major automakers and hitting one company where it hurts: pickup trucks. On Monday, in a surprise move from the union, UAW president Shawn Fain announced that more than 6,800 employees are walking off work at a pickup truck production plant […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Christine Louis-Jeune knew she was home when she saw ash falling from the sky and onto her windshield. She hadn’t been back to her central Florida hometown of Belle Glade in six months. She was both exhausted after a six-plus […]
Mother JonesRoshdi Sarraj, a reporter who co-founded a Palestinian media company, was killed Sunday in the Gaza Strip. He was at least the 23rd journalist to die since October 7, among more than 4,000 people killed in the Israel-Hamas war, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Sarraj was killed by an Israeli strike that hit […]
Mother JonesEarlier this year George Santos, the fabulist congressman facing federal fraud charges, took up the cause of exiled Chinese mogul Guo Wengui, a fellow fabulist who is also facing federal fraud charges. Guo, along with Steve Bannon, leads a group called the New Federal State of China, which claims to be dedicated to overthrowing the […]
Mother JonesFormer Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, we learned Thursday, agreed to write a letter of apology to citizens of the state of Georgia for her role in a scheme to illegally access voting records there. The letter, which the Washington Post described as “a terse handwritten note on a legal pad” is part of a plea […]
Mother JonesI create videos about race and history for a living, which results in being inundated with racist comments, dog-whistles, instances of historical revisionism or apologia, and other stupid stuff. Every time I broach the subject of slavery, for example, there it is, the inevitable comment: “What about the Irish slaves in America?” Often, it feels […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The Roman Empire fell more than 1,500 years ago, but its grip on the popular imagination is still strong, as evidenced by a recent trend on TikTok. Women started filming the men in their lives to document their answers to a […]