Mother Jones
Would a president who orders one of the country’s most secretive and lethal military units to assassinate his political opponents be protected from criminal prosecution? That’s the question at the heart of an alarming exchange during today’s make-or-break hearing to decide whether Donald Trump should be immune from criminal prosecution over his efforts to overturn […]
Mother JonesEditor’s note: The below article first appeared in 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 Our Land here. I spend a fair bit of […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. When a small Arizona community called Rio Verde Foothills lost its water supply one year ago, forcing locals to skip showers and eat off paper plates, it became a poster child for unwise desert development. The rural neighborhood of about 2,000 people […]
Mother JonesAs the Republican Party falls in line with Donald Trump, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) is continuing to stand by her man, this time by refusing to commit to certifying the November election results. “We will see if this is a legal and valid election,” Stefanik, the fourth-highest-ranking House Republican and chair of the House GOP […]
Mother JonesOn January 8, 2023, a week after Brazil’s former president (turned president again) Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office following the closest presidential election since the end of the country’s over 20-year military dictatorship—begun in 1964 by a coup partially supported by the United States—a mob of supporters of defeated far-right President Jair Bolsonaro […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. A picturesque expanse of water along Florida’s space coast is offering a modicum of hope for the state’s embattled manatees as wildlife officials review whether to restore the beloved sea cows to the endangered species list. The recovery of seagrass, the […]
Mother JonesThe family of Ashli Babbitt, the January 6 rioter who was shot and killed by a Capitol Police Officer during the attack on the U.S. Capitol, is suing the federal government for wrongful death. The lawsuit, which was filed on the three-year anniversary of the storming of the capitol by Trump supporters aiming to stop the […]
Mother JonesDefense Secretary Lloyd Austin spent some time last week in the hospital, a fact that staff failed to mention it to the White House, according to numerous reports. Problematic in any job, Austin oversees the 1.4 million members of the U.S. military and is a key player in almost all of President Joe Biden’s top foreign policy […]
Mother JonesFormer South Carolina governor Nikki Haley is surging at just the right time—armed with tens of millions in donor money, she appears to be leaving Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and his New Right adherents, in the dust. With Iowa GOP voters caucusing for their choice in just eight days Haley’s run is well-timed. But it […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. For the first time in four centuries, it’s good to be a beaver. Long persecuted for their pelts and reviled as pests, the dam-building rodents are today hailed by scientists as ecological saviors. Their ponds and wetlands store water in the […]
Mother JonesIdaho has among the strictest abortion bans in the country. It’s so strict, in fact, that in 2022, the Biden administration sued the state, arguing that it violates a federal law regulating medical emergencies. The legal battle went all the way up to the Supreme Court, which said on Friday that Idaho’s law could go […]
Mother JonesWhen Donald Trump’s lawyers head to the Supreme Court next month, they’ll be making their case to some familiar faces: three justices that Trump appointed. On Friday, the court agreed to hear the ex-president’s appeal of a recent Colorado ruling that Trump, due to his role in fomenting the January 6 attack on the US […]
Mother JonesOn Friday, ahead of the third anniversary of the January 6 Capitol attack, President Joe Biden delivered an impassioned campaign speech on what he framed as an urgent matter: This year, “democracy is on the ballot.” Much of the 30-minute speech—delivered near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and available to watch in full here—stayed true to Biden’s […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by High Country News and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In recent years, climate activists, local communities and states have turned to litigation in search of climate justice. The 2023 United States Congress was the decade’s least productive one, and the federal government’s lack of response to the climate crisis has inspired […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Last year, climate change came into sharp relief for much of the world: The planet experienced its hottest 12-month period in 125,000 years. Flooding events inundated communities from California to East Africa to India. A heat wave in South America caused temperatures […]
Mother JonesOne student has died and four others, as well as an administrator, have been injured in Perry, Iowa early Thursday, in what appears to be the year’s first mass school shooting. The attack, which unfolded at Perry High School just after 7:30 a.m. local time, led to the death of an unnamed sixth-grader, according to […]
Mother JonesRepublicans are standing with Donald Trump in record numbers—and a majority consider him to be a “person of faith,” according to two polls that dropped this week. Republicans today are more likely to be sympathetic to Trump regarding his involvement in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, compared to the week after […]
Mother JonesSpaceX, the space flight company owned by Elon Musk, illegally fired eight employees after they criticized Musk’s social media behavior, a new complaint from the National Labor Relations Board alleges. The complaint stems from a June 2022 open letter that was shared on the company’s internal chat system in which the fired employees called on […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. A change to the federal EV incentive that took effect Monday could widen access for low and middle-income buyers who want to go electric but have been excluded by high prices. The clean vehicle tax credit, which offers up to $7,500 […]
Mother JonesMore Americans are stockpiling abortion pills in case they need them in the future, according to new research published Tuesday. The relatively new practice of requesting a prescription for abortion pills before potentially needing them—known as advance provision—has spiked during two periods of recent uncertainty about the future of abortion access, the study published in JAMA […]
Mother JonesFlorida authorities are trying to determine whether Christian Ziegler, the embattled head of the Florida Republican Party, engaged in “video voyeurism” by filming a sexual encounter with a woman without her consent. The new investigation, which was undertaken based on a police affidavit unsealed earlier this week and obtained by the Florida Trident, is the […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The Kauaʻi ʻōʻō, a small black and yellow bird with glossy feathers and a haunting song, was the last surviving member of the Hawaiian honeyeaters. This year, it was officially declared extinct. The ōʻō was one of 21 species […]
Mother JonesClaudine Gay’s resignation from her post as president of Harvard University is a shocking new twist in the ongoing saga over campus free speech. Gay resigned on Tuesday amid new allegations of plagiarism leveled through an unsigned complaint published in the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative outlet that has long criticized Gay. The news, which was broken […]
Mother JonesWorkers across the country are kicking off the new year with bigger paychecks, thanks to minimum wage increases that took effect yesterday in 22 states and 43 cities and counties, according to a report from the National Employment Law Project. Six of those states—California, Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Washington—now have a minimum wage that […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Slate and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The winter between 1917 and 1918 was a trying one for the gas industry. That year, household gas leaks had reportedly killed more than 300 New Yorkers—due to their own carelessness, the gas companies argued. But not everyone was convinced. […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The women, mostly in their 70s, strode up the mountain with dogged grace. Clacking their hiking poles against sun-cooked rocks, they set sure feet on shaky stones and held hands to cross slippery streams. They knew the heat and strain were […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. For most of July 2019, stifling heat hung over the agricultural fields of California’s Central Valley, as farmworkers like William Salas Jiminez labored under the sun’s searing rays. Temperatures had dipped from 99 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit the […]
Mother JonesAfter more than a year of Gov. Greg Abbott continuously busing as many as 150,000 migrants to US sanctuary cities, leaders in some of these destinations are implementing new measures in an effort to slow down the influx. Mayors in New York, Denver, and Chicago have ordered that bus drivers coordinate migrant arrivals with city […]
Mother JonesAbnormally large waves, some as high as 40 feet, have been pummelling Southern California’s coastal communities since Thursday, plaguing the areas with massive flooding and dangerous rip currents. According to reports from CNN, the extreme conditions have forced beach closures, washed away cars, and flooded seaside businesses and residences. Several of these communities are still […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Dozens of US gas utilities, serving more than 35 million customers, offer builders and contractors incentives to keep fossil fuels in buildings, the Guardian has found. Washington state’s NW Natural offers builders $2,000 for each new single-family home they equip with gas appliances, while Texas’s […]