Mother Jones
On Wednesday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals re-sentenced 64-year-old Randall Mays from capital punishment to life in prison without parole, after a state expert agreed that Mays’ intellectual disabilities made his execution unacceptable. In 2019, a judge halted the state’s plan to execute Mays, who was sentenced to death in 2008 for the killings […]
Mother JonesA federal judge on Friday granted a preliminary injunction that will force New Jersey to redo its controversial ballot design, known as the county-line ballot, a move that could fundamentally alter elections in a state long rife with allegations of political corruption. The ruling is a victory for Rep. Andy Kim, who last month sued […]
Mother JonesIt’s easy to see the glaring hypocrisy of Brian Pritchard, the Republican official in Georgia and outspoken election denier, who was found guilty this week of voting illegally nine times. After all, voter fraud is an enduring conservative boogeyman despite scant evidence that such rampant fraud exists. Yet any schadenfreude that might be derived from […]
Mother JonesToday marks one year since Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was arrested in Russia on what American officials say are false charges of espionage. He has been held in jail ever since. Members of Russia’s Federal Security Service—the country’s intelligence agency, also known as the FSB—detained Gershkovich while he was on a reporting assignment in the […]
Mother JonesJust when you thought “and” meant “and,” and “or” meant “or,” along comes the Supreme Court to deliver the unsettling news: Your grammar is all wrong. This historic toppling of words’ ordinary meaning comes from a recent ruling in which the court dashed the hopes of thousands of criminal defendants seeking reduced prison time. A […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The world’s fossil-fuel producers are on track to nearly quadruple the amount of extracted oil and gas from newly approved projects by the end of this decade, with the US leading the way in a surge of activity that […]
Mother Jonesn the afternoon of January 6, 2021, as election deniers armed with Tasers and tomahawks overran the US Capitol, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) handed his colleague and close friend Eric Swalwell a pen. “Here,” he said to the California Democrat. “Stick this in their neck if they get close to you.” The Marine veteran, who’d […]
Mother Jonesn the afternoon of January 6, 2021, as election deniers armed with Tasers and tomahawks overran the US Capitol, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) handed his colleague and close friend Eric Swalwell a pen. “Here,” he said to the California Democrat. “Stick this in their neck if they get close to you.” The Marine veteran, who’d […]
Mother JonesAt the start of a slickly produced 19-minute YouTube video titled “How T.Rex Arms Got Started,” Lucas Botkin, the company’s 30-year-old founder, runs through an obstacle course. A guitar-heavy soundtrack plays as Botkin, decked out in tactical gear and filtered through overwrought video effects, picks off targets with a variety of handguns and rifles. We […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Flooding could affect one out of every 50 residents in 24 coastal cities in the United States by 2050, a study led by Virginia Tech researchers suggests. The study, published this month in Nature, shows how the combination of land subsidence—in […]
Mother JonesOne month after releasing a line of gilded high-tops for $399, Donald Trump revealed on Tuesday a new item: the Bible. “All Americans need a Bible in their home, and I have many,” the former president explained in a video promoting the country singer Lee Greenwood’s version of a Kim James translation, the “God Bless […]
Mother JonesOn Tuesday, Alabama provided even more evidence of what we already know to be true: Abortion rights win elections. Democrat Marilyn Lands won a special election for an Alabama state House seat, flipping a Republican-held seat by campaigning on abortion rights in the deep-red state that bans abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest. […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In late 2023, 70-year-old birder Peter Kaestner was within striking distance of a goal that had never been accomplished: seeing more than 10,000 different species of birds in the wild. Such a record had previously been unthinkable, but with new technology […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In late 2023, 70-year-old birder Peter Kaestner was within striking distance of a goal that had never been accomplished: seeing more than 10,000 different species of birds in the wild. Such a record had previously been unthinkable, but with new technology […]
Mother JonesNuclear war is a topic few care to think about. We sometimes call it unthinkable. But we need to think carefully, and to talk—particularly with high-ranking foreign officials whose motives we may have reason to distrust, just as they distrust ours—about how we can collectively avoid launching a weapon that would end our civilization. Pulitzer […]
Mother JonesIn the summer of 2000, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a scion of the Democratic Party dynasty, took time out of his schedule as an environmental attorney to write an op-ed for the New York Times. In the piece, Kennedy hailed consumer advocate Ralph Nader as his “friend and hero,” but he lambasted him for mounting […]
Mother JonesThis article was adapted from Nuclear War: A Scenario, published March 26, 2024, by Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright 2024 by Annie M. Jacobsen. Nuclear war is madness. Were a nuclear weapon to be launched at the United States, including from a rogue nuclear-armed nation […]
Mother JonesOn Tuesday, nine years after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was indicted for securities fraud, and just a few weeks before he was finally set to go on trial, prosecutors struck a deal with the powerful Republican to call the whole thing off. Under the terms of the pre-trial agreement, as reported by Texas Tribune, […]
Mother JonesEarly Tuesday morning, a massive cargo ship struck a structural pillar of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, collapsing the 1.6-mile-long bridge into the Patapsco River. The stunning collapse shut down the Port of Baltimore, one of the country’s busiest, and launched a search for at least six construction workers believed to be missing. Amid the […]
Mother JonesJustice Samuel Alito implied that mifepristone—one of the two drugs used in medication abortion, which the Supreme Court will decide whether or not to restrict in what has been billed as “the biggest abortion case since Dobbs“—may cause “very serious harm.” But there’s just one problem: more than 100 scientific studies show that abortion pills […]
Mother JonesThe Supreme Court on Tuesday heard its most consequential abortion case since it overturned Roe v. Wade nearly two years ago. This time, the question facing the justices was whether to significantly restrict access to mifepristone, a drug commonly used in medication abortions. Though the Republican-appointed majority clearly does not approve of abortion, most of […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In Florida, the effects of climate change are hard to ignore, no matter your politics. It’s the hottest state—Miami spent a record 46 days above a heat index of 100 degrees last summer—and many homes and businesses are clustered along beachfront areas […]
Mother JonesOne Saturday night, I saw a post in a Facebook group for my autoimmune disorder: Thanks to Dr. Brooke Goldner’s vegan smoothie diet, the poster said, she’d been able to stop all medicines for our shared chronic illness. Goldner, a practicing psychiatrist, has garnered a strong social media following, thriving book sales, and business success around […]
Mother JonesAs the Supreme Court prepares for arguments in a wide-ranging case over the FDA’s regulation of mifepristone, it’s hard to fathom what might happen if the abortion pill, which now accounts for 63 percent of abortions in the US, becomes largely unavailable. But then again, for a very long time, it was hard for the […]
Mother JonesDonald Trump received mixed legal news in New York Monday morning, with an appeals court handing the former president an enormous financial break in his civil fraud case. At nearly the same time, however, a different New York judge scheduled an unrelated criminal case against Trump to go to trial next month. The appeals court […]
Mother JonesThe last time lawyers from the Alliance Defending Freedom argued before the Supreme Court, their case was entirely hypothetical. The conservative Christian legal advocacy group—the force behind some of the most important anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ litigation in recent history—was representing a Colorado graphic designer who claimed to be starting a wedding website business, and wanted […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Earlier this month, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals declined to stop the construction of a copper mine in Arizona on land sacred to the San Carlos Apache Tribe as well as other Indigenous nations. Chí’chil Biłdagoteel, also known as Oak Flat, […]
Mother JonesOn March 8, the Republican National Committee gathered for its spring meeting and ushered in big leadership changes. Among those voted into a top spot in the party was Lara Trump—the daughter-in-law of former President Donald Trump—who was elected RNC co-chair. “With Eric by my side, I’ve done things I never imagined possible,” Lara said […]
Mother JonesAxels. Lutzes. Loops. Salchows. For figure skaters and their fans, these maneuvers are just part of the job description. Even young children can do a few twists and jumps and jumping twists. But for the rest of us mere mortals, this fancy footwork defies basic rules of nature and probably physics. How is it possible […]
Mother JonesThis weekend, President Joe Biden signed a $1.2 trillion spending bill to avert a potential government shutdown. The Senate passed the more than 1,000-page bill early Saturday morning, with 74 senators voting in favor and 24, mostly-Republican, senators voting against. In a statement released by the White House on Saturday, Biden said that the “bipartisan […]