Mother Jones: Posts

Mother Jones

Global Millionaires Say Yes to Taxing Extreme Wealth, Poll Finds

Millionaires from around the world support wealth taxes as a way to curb extreme inequality, according to a new poll that was released to coincide with the meeting of the World Economic Forum wrapping up today in Davos, Switzerland. “Davos” has evolved into quite the place to be for the billionaire set, who fly in […]

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Did the Largest Pediatrician Group Miss the Mark on GMOs?

Last month, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued new guidelines for doctors fielding parents’ questions about the risks of foods containing genetically modified ingredients. Given the morass of GMO misinformation on social media, the report was an opportunity for experts to set the records straight on how pediatricians should advise their patients on a very […]

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Famed Climatologist Michael Mann Finally Faces His Detractors in Court

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. A lawsuit first instituted over 10 years ago, brought by an esteemed climate scientist over alleged defamation by a rightwing blogger and an analyst, went to trial this week. The 2012 court case was brought by the University of […]

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A Federal Judge Has Gone to Great Lengths to Make Clear Trump Really Did Rape E. Jean Carroll

District Judge Lewis Kaplan has said it multiple times: Donald Trump raped E. Jean Carroll in 1996. Kaplan wrote it in May 2023, when he presided over one of the trials against Trump. And he reminded jurors of the rape this week, during the latest proceedings in the multi-layered, winding rape and defamation cases brought […]

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California Needs to Keep Funding Sickle Cell Care. Will It?

In June 2019, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the state’s annual budget into law—which that year included around $15 million (of some $215 billion total) to create and fund a statewide network of treatment centers for sickle cell disease, with training for health workers and improved diagnostic screening. Sickle cell disease, a group of rare […]

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Justice Department Finds “Cascading Failures” Contributed to Botched Uvalde Police Response

The police response to the May 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, which killed two teachers and 19 elementary school students at Robb Elementary School, was significantly botched by “cascading failures of leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy, and training,” a damning review from the Justice Department found on Thursday. The long-awaited report detailed systemic failures by […]

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Puerto Rico Is Harnessing Home Solar Rigs to Stabilize Its Power Grid

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Puerto Rico has begun using batteries connected to residents’ rooftop solar panels to provide backup power for its grid, helping prevent blackouts and offering an alternative to fossil fuel-burning peaker plants. It could be the first step toward building one of the […]

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Trump Still Won’t Behave In Court

Donald Trump muttered and snarled his way through a second day in a federal courtroom in New York, where he was to observe the proceedings of the $10 million defamation lawsuit filed against him by writer E. Jean Carroll. As Carroll took the stand and testified how Trump had destroyed her reputation by repeatedly lying about […]

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How the Biden Administration’s Strikes on Houthis Could Violate the Law

Last week, the United States, along with the United Kingdom, launched airstrikes against Houthi militants in Yemen. The Houthis—which have been aligned with Iran and rose in prominence during the ongoing civil war in Yemen—had been repeatedly attacking commercial vessels in the Red Sea. In a statement, President Joe Biden explained the strikes had “endangered US personnel, civilian […]

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From Hairstylist to Jan. 6 Influencer: Meet the Man Helping the GOP Whitewash the Insurrection

At the New Hampshire GOP leadership summit in October, former presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy made a bold promise. If elected, he would pardon participants in the January 6 riot at the US Capitol who he claimed were “targets of politicized federal prosecutions.” The pledge came in response to a question from an audience member with some […]

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Climate Denialism on YouTube Has Evolved Into Something Else

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Imagine if you could walk from your house to anywhere you needed to go in less than 15 minutes: the pharmacy, the bakery, the gym, and then back to the bakery. In a certain, conspiracy-addled corner of the internet, this urban planning […]

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ABC Just Canceled Thursday’s Planned GOP Debate

On Tuesday morning, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said that she’d no longer attend Republican primary debates unless Donald Trump participates—a move that many warned could end the party’s 2024 debates. Less than eight hours later, those chickens have come home to roost: ABC has officially canceled the GOP debate scheduled for Thursday in […]

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Three Migrants Drowned After Texas’s Attempt To Seize Control of the Border

Three migrants drowned in the Rio Grande near the Texas border on Friday night—a tragedy that federal officials say may have been prevented were it not for the state’s attempt to seize control of patrolling the border in pursuit of its anti-immigration goals. CNN reported that Mexico’s National Institute of Migration on Monday identified the […]

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Nikki Haley Says No More Debates Unless Trump is On Stage

You probably didn’t watch the GOP debates, and now you may not have to read headlines about them either. On Tuesday, fresh off a disappointing third place in the Iowa caucuses, Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley put her foot down: The former South Carolina governor said she will no longer be on the debate stage […]

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Startups Aim to Turn Plant Waste Into Concentrated Carbon—and Bury It

This story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In a roundabout way, coal is solar-powered. Millions of years ago, swamp plants soaked up the sun’s energy, eating carbon dioxide in the process. They died, accumulated, and transformed over geologic time into energy-dense rock. This solar-powered fuel, of course, is […]

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Florida Man Facing 91 Criminal Counts Wins Iowa Caucuses

Donald Trump just accomplished something he wasn’t able to do in 2016—he won the Iowa caucuses. Not long after precinct sites opened Monday night, the networks called the first-in-the-nation GOP race for the former president, who appeared to be cruising to a dominant victory over rivals Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley. Trump—who in 2020 tried […]

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Black Activists Began Traveling to Palestine in the 1960s. They Never Stopped.

As a teenager, Rachel Gilmer, a Black and Jewish activist, was recruited to join Young Judaea, a Zionist nonprofit for Jewish youth. “They were offering scholarships to go to summer camp and I’m one of six siblings, so my mom was like, ‘Great, let’s get the kids out of the house.’” When she reached high […]

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To Prevent Climate Chaos, We May Have to Forsake Economic Growth

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. With Earth’s average annual temperature speeding toward 1.5 degrees Celsius faster than expected and global climate policy on a treadmill, an increasing number of researchers say it’s time to consider a “restorative pathway” to avoid the worst ecological and social outcomes of global […]

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Panama Tried to Close a Hated Mine. Not So Fast, Said Foreign Investors.

This story was originally published by Canada’s National Observer and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The battle between a Canadian mining company and Panama over one of the richest copper-gold mines in the Americas is headed to international arbitration—exposing Canada’s double standard when it comes to promoting free trade in the Global South. Late […]

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Far-Right Trump Activist Thinks the Deep State Created the Blizzard in Iowa

In Iowa this weekend, subzero temperatures and blizzard conditions are wreaking havoc on the caucuses, forcing candidates to cancel events and threatening to keep voters home. Uncomfortable and inconvenient conditions are not especially unusual for January in Iowa—but that fact isn’t stopping far-right activist and Trump supporter Laura Loomer from insisting that they are actually […]

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Trump-Appointed Judge Upholds Georgia Runoff System That Curbs Voting Access

A federal judge appointed by Donald Trump on Friday declined to block the state’s system for runoff elections, which was originally designed to dilute Black voting power in the early 1960s and revamped by Republicans in 2021 to dramatically curb ballot access after Democrats won two US Senate elections. As part of a sweeping package […]

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Kansans Voted to Protect Abortion Rights. Republicans Are Still Trying to Ban Them.

In August 2022, Kansans decisively voted to protect reproductive rights, rejecting a proposed constitutional amendment from pro-life groups that said there was no right to abortion in the state. Fifty-nine percent of Kansans voted to safeguard access to abortion, providing an early sign of the unpopularity of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. […]

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The Staggering Carbon Footprint of Israel’s War in Gaza

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The planet-warming emissions generated during the first two months of the war in Gaza were greater than the annual carbon footprint of more than 20 of the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations, new research reveals. The vast majority (over 99 percent) of the […]

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Abbott: Texas Would Shoot Migrants, But Biden “Would Charge Us With Murder”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has told a right-wing radio host that there’s only one tool the state isn’t using to stop migrants from crossing the border into Texas: gun violence, because it would prompt a response from the pesky federal government. “The only thing that we are not doing is we’re not shooting people who […]

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German Reporters Just Unveiled a Far-Right Deportation “Masterplan”

Over the past few years, the far-right has made strides across the world. In Europe alone, Italy has elected a member of the country’s neo-fascist party as head of state, far-right parties have had impressive showings in Finnish and Swedish elections, French President Emmanuel Macron has only won office after tight races with far-right candidates, and […]

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Meet the Operatives Who Profited From January 6

At 4:17 p.m. on January 6, 2021, while rioters battled police inside the Capitol, Kimberly Guilfoyle emailed her banker. Guilfoyle—who was a top official on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign—wanted to know if a $60,000 payment for short speeches that she and Donald Trump Jr., her fiance, gave at the rally preceding the attack had hit […]

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Meet the Black Kingmakers Left Behind after Democrats Killed Their Iowa Caucus

Set along the Cedar River a two hour drive north of Des Moines lies the small city of Waterloo—Iowa’s Blackest town. The river sharply divides its East and West sides, with a quaint city center astride its banks. For several decades, the headliners at the city’s downtown performing arts center’s open-air amphitheater, its high school […]

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Big Oil Launches Propaganda Campaign to Thwart US Energy Transition

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The American oil lobby launched an eight-figure media campaign this week promoting the idea that fossil fuels are “vital” to global energy security, alarming climate experts. “US natural gas and oil play a key role in supplying the world with cleaner, more reliable […]

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Trump Ends His Fraud Trial By Lashing Out at the Judge—Again

Former President Trump ended his $370 million civil fraud trial in a New York City courtroom today the same way he participated in much of it: by lashing out at the judge and violating court orders. “This is a fraud on me,” Trump said of the case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, […]

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As It Formally Accuses Israel of Genocide, South Africa Condemns Netanyahu’s Amalek Reference

Lawyers representing South Africa on Thursday said that Israeli soldiers interpreted a biblical reference made by Benjamin Netanyahu during a November speech to troops as a justification to kill Palestinians. The claim, which specifically called out Netanyahu’s invocation of Amalek as well as footage showing IDF soldiers chanting “wipe off the seed of Amalek,” was […]

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