Mother Jones
Since its founding in 2021, the conservative organization Moms for Liberty has billed itself as a champion for “parents’ rights,” pushing campaigns across the country to ban books and the use of pronouns in schools. Their crusade, as my colleague Kiera Butler has reported, often alleges that educators, specifically in public education, are out to […]
Mother JonesDonald Trump will appear on voters’ ballots in Colorado—and every other state. The Supreme Court sided with the former president on Monday, finding that the 14th Amendment’s prohibition on insurrectionists holding office, known as Section 3, does not allow states to keep Trump from participating in the election. In an unsigned opinion, the court stated […]
Mother JonesWhen Ethan Block heard that Andy Kim was running for Senate, he got to work. Over winter break, the Rutgers University senior launched a campus group to spread the word about the low-profile congressman taking on Bob Mendendez, the longtime Democratic senator who’d just been indicted for allegedly accepting bribes of gold bars and cash-stuffed envelopes. […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Roads, roads, and more roads. The US is continuing to spend billions of dollars on expanding enormous highways rather than fund public transport, with a landmark infrastructure bill lauded by Joe Biden only further accelerating the dominance of […]
Mother JonesGOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley just won the Washington, DC, primary, beating former president Donald Trump by almost 30 points, with nearly 63 percent of the vote. It’s her first success in a primary that has so far been an uphill battle for the former South Carolina governor. Haley made something of a power move […]
Mother JonesOhio Republican J.R. Majewski dropped out (again) on Saturday, after he used a slur for intellectually disabled people on a podcast last week. Majewiski was running for the GOP nomination to fight Democratic incumbent Rep. Marcy Kaptur in November. Kaptur’s seat in Ohio’s Ninth Congressional district is one of just five nationwide where a Democrat […]
Mother JonesFormer president Donald Trump easily swept to victory in a handful of additional Republican caucuses this weekend, looking ever more imperious in his bid for the GOP nomination. But new data from the Associated Press suggests his easy victories are hiding a serious potential problem: Never Trumpers aren’t changing their minds. The AP reported on […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Undark and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It all started when Christopher Mason’s 3-year-old daughter licked a subway pole. Like any parent, he was horrified, but also keenly curious: What types of microbes might be clinging to a metal pipe gripped by countless commuters every day? Mason, a […]
Mother JonesOn Friday, a YouTube Music contractor named Jack Benedict took the podium before Austin’s City Council. He was there to urge the council members to encourage Google to negotiate with the Alphabet Worker’s Union-CWA Local 9009. Instead, mid-testimony, he learned that he and 42 of his colleagues had been laid off. The jaw-dropping moment, captured […]
Mother JonesPhiladelphia Police Detective Philip Nordo was an unusually lone wolf. In the tightly regimented bureaucracy that is big city policing, he was rarely supervised and often worked alone. The upside? He got results. Nordo was known throughout the department for having a hand in efficiently convicting more than 100 people. He was a third generation […]
Mother JonesOn Friday, the U.S. Department of Education announced an investigation into an Oklahoma school district for allegedly failing to respond to reports of sex-based harassment after the death of Nex Benedict, a trans teen who died the day after an altercation with three girls inside a high school bathroom. The DOE dropped the news in […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Your city is a scab on the landscape: sidewalks, roads, parking lots, rooftops—the built environment repels water into sewers and then into the environment. Urban planners have been doing it for centuries, treating stormwater as a nuisance to be diverted away as quickly […]
Mother JonesOn Friday, Walgreens and CVS announced they would begin selling the abortion pill mifepristone in their pharmacies in select states, part of a plan to eventually expand access to about half of US states where abortion is still legal. The announcement is notable ahead of arguments in a Supreme Court case that could further restrict […]
Mother JonesJust a week after saying that “embryos, to me, are babies,” Nikki Haley is now joining other Republicans in suddenly claiming to support IVF access in the wake of rising abortion restrictions and the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling that frozen embryos can now be considered children under state law. “I think there should be federal […]
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. In 1935, Sinclair Lewis published […]
Mother JonesTrump is considering Texas Gov. Greg Abbott as a potential running mate, he told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday…even though Abbott has said that he doesn’t want the job. When Hannity asked Trump if Abbott was on his short list during a joint interview with the two politicians in Eagle Pass, Texas—the epicenter […]
Mother JonesTrans teen Nex Benedict died after an altercation in the girl’s bathroom of his public high school in Owasso, Oklahoma a bathroom he was required to use because of the state’s 2023 legislation forcing students at public and charter schools to use bathroom and changing facilities that match their biological, sex rather than their identity. The exact […]
Mother JonesLawyers for E. Jean Carroll are urging the judge in her defamation case against Donald Trump to reject the former president’s last-minute request to avoid paying the $83.3 million Carroll had been awarded as he appeals the ruling. In a new filing on Thursday, Carroll’s lawyers blasted the request, arguing that it amounted to little […]
Mother JonesA few months before the 2012 elections, Todd Akin, the Republicans’ Senate candidate in Missouri, sent his party scrambling when he explained his opposition to abortion even in cases of rape with a now infamous line: “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Republicans […]
Mother JonesThis story was reported by Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action. At a press conference last month, flanked by sheriffs and attorneys, Ohio Attorney General David Yost announced the indictments of two utility executives who allegedly tried to “hijack” state electricity policy for their own corrupt ends by paying […]
Mother JonesWashington state’s largest labor union has followed Michigan voters‘ lead, urging its 50,000 members to vote “uncommitted” rather than for Joe Biden in its March 12 primary. The news, first reported by NBC today, comes as Biden faces growing protests from voters on the left about his support for Israel in its war in Gaza, and concerns about […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Ariana Tibon was in college at the University of Hawaiʻi in 2017 when she saw the photo online: a black-and-white picture of a man holding a baby. The caption said: “Nelson Anjain getting his baby monitored on March 2, 1954, by an […]
Mother JonesTelehealth abortions continue to grow in popularity, even in states where anti-abortion activists try to ban them, according to new data published today. Abortions obtained through virtual providers accounted for 15 to 16 percent of all abortions conducted between July and September of last year—amounting to about 14,000 abortions each month—up from 11 percent of […]
Mother JonesThe Supreme Court on Wednesday paused the federal criminal case against Donald Trump over his efforts to subvert the 2020 election—handing Trump a major victory in his attempt to delay his trial until after the November election. The justices halted the case, brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith in August, while they consider Trump’s claim that […]
Mother JonesIn 2012, voters in Michigan’s Democratic primary had two choices: Barack Obama and uncommitted. In Dearborn, the first city in the United States with an Arab-American majority, 87 percent voted for Obama, while 13 percent went uncommitted. In this year’s primary, which was held Tuesday amid protests of Joe Biden’s response to the war in […]
Mother JonesThe last big thing Mitch McConnell did as the Senate Republican leader will likely be remembered as one of his most consequential—his decision in early 2021 not to hold Donald Trump accountable for the January 6 insurrection. At the time, McConnell was in a unique position to end Trump’s political career. But McConnell, who announced Wednesday […]
Mother JonesOn Monday evening, three activists connected with the effort to stall construction of a vast police training facility just outside of Atlanta were arrested 1,700 miles away in Arizona as organizers target insurance companies connected to the project. Scottsdale Insurance Co., a subsidiary of Nationwide Insurance, is one of the primary insurers of the Atlanta […]
Mother JonesIn ruling that frozen embryos should be legally considered the same as children under a wrongful death law, the Alabama Supreme Court furthered a growing movement hoping to enshrine “fetal personhood”—the idea that a fetus or embryo should have the same rights as a child—into law. In Alabama, one consequence of such a doctrine became […]
Mother JonesOhio Republican Congressional candidate J.R. Majewski considered dropping out of his race (again) after backlash for saying that Democrats, like disabled people participating in the Special Olympics, are “retarded” in a podcast episode that aired earlier this month. Majewski, who apologized after backlash, told Politico that he would consider dropping out if his “comments put me […]
Mother JonesIn a landmark ruling last week, Alabama’s Supreme Court declared that embryos created through in vitro fertilization were children, and therefore subject to the state’s abortion ban. The effects of the ruling are already apparent: Three IVF clinics have paused their services, and it’s unclear whether patients in the state will be able to decide […]