Mother Jones
On Sunday, with less than two months remaining in his presidency, President Biden issued a full and unconditional pardon to his son Hunter, convicted in June on three felony charges related to federal gun crimes and on three felony tax offenses in September. Reactions have been mixed: many have criticized Biden, who argues that his […]
Mother JonesTrump’s picks for taking over the federal government range from the conspiratorial to the absurdly underqualified. But it’s former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, who may take the cake as the president-elect’s most controversial. (He had arguably been tied for that ignominious distinction with former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, […]
Mother JonesLate last month, Donald Trump named Karoline Leavitt as his incoming press secretary, positioning her to become the youngest person ever to hold the job. That’s a big step up. Just two years ago—following a failed congressional campaign—Leavitt was putting her name on a series of op-eds in right-wing publications lauding a fugitive Chinese mogul […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. President-elect Donald Trump’s vow to kill offshore wind energy development “on day one” of his second term is already triggering project slowdowns on the East Coast, but the biggest wind farm proposed in the Gulf of Mexico will likely stay on […]
Mother JonesIn 2016, when Tennessee OBGYN Susan Lacy learned she would be providing gender-affirming care to transgender patients in her new job at a reproductive health clinic in Memphis, she felt out of her depth. But it didn’t take long to realize that hormone treatments for trans folks weren’t so different from those she’d been providing […]
Mother JonesWhat do anti-vaxxers and abortion opponents have in common? They both see an ally in David Weldon, who is now President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to run the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The physician and ex-Florida congressman‘s track record includes introducing legislation that would have stripped the CDC of its authority to conduct research […]
Mother JonesIn the middle of the Thanksgiving holiday stretch, Donald Trump announced what might be his most extreme and controversial appointment yet: Kash Patel for FBI director. There are many reasons why this decision is outrageous. Patel is a MAGA combatant who has fiercely advocated Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. As President-elect Donald Trump puts together a team that will ramp up fossil fuel production in a country that is already pumping out more crude oil than any nation in history, critics are beginning to use a term once reserved […]
Mother JonesPete Hegseth, the Fox News anchor whom Donald Trump has tapped to be his defense secretary, has come under intense scrutiny for his mistreatment of women, including an allegation of rape. One of his critics was, at one time, his own mother. “That is the ugly truth.” In 2018, Penelope Hegseth wrote her son an […]
Mother JonesDemocrats will have the unenviable task of pushing back against a second Trump administration as the minority party across Washington. And in the House of Representatives, some Democrats are openly wondering whether the septuagenarian leader of their caucus on the Judiciary Committee is up to the task. According to the New York Times, a movement […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. On Monday, Senator Debbie Stabenow, a longtime champion of programs that support farmers and increase access to nutritious foods, introduced a new version of the farm bill, a key piece of legislation typically renewed every five years that governs much of how […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. When Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office in January 2023, he inherited environmental protection agencies in shambles and deforestation at a 15-year high. His predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, had dismantled regulations and gutted institutions tasked with enforcing environmental laws. Lula set […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. For decades they have been working underground, establishing mycorrhizal-like networks of commerce and influence, taking root in academia and institutions, and even extending their tendrils into supranational governance. Their goal is to transform the diets of people across the world, to […]
Mother JonesTo Republican lawmakers, the 2024 election results were the mandate they’d been hoping for to justify their attacks on transgender rights. After a historically anti-LGBTQ campaign cycle in which more than $200 million was pumped into anti-trans advertisements, GOP elected officials from Congress to state legislatures are feeling emboldened by Donald Trump’s victory—and moving fast […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. At an upscale sushi bar in New York last week, a smattering of media and policy types chowed down on a menu of sushi rolls, Peking duck tapas, and mushroom salad. But what made this menu unusual was the one ingredient that […]
Mother JonesOn Tuesday, President-elect Donald Trump announced that he would nominate Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to lead the National Institutes of Health, a government agency composed of more than 18,000 employees with an annual budget of $47 billion. Bhattacharya, a professor of economics and health policy at Stanford University, has no leadership experience in either government or […]
Mother JonesIn recent days, an invitation from people affiliated with American Values 2024, a super-PAC that supported Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign, has been sent to people in his sphere offering “cocktails and dinner” with Kennedy at Mar-a-Lago. The invitation refers to Kennedy as “incoming secretary, Health & Human services,” although Kennedy has not yet […]
Mother JonesIn August 2015, Donald Trump sat down to talk with then–Fox News host Bill O’Reilly about one of his central campaign promises: the mass deportation of 11 million undocumented immigrants. “Our country is going to hell,” Trump said. “We have to start a process where we take back our country.” O’Reilly found the plan ridiculous. […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The world’s largest cruise line company is responsible for producing more carbon dioxide in Europe than the city of Glasgow, a report has found. An analysis by the Transport and Environment (T&E) campaign group, provided to the Guardian, found Carnival to be […]
Mother JonesWhen Gwen Williams’ mother was dying, taking her to an in-person appointment to get more medicine seemed impossible. So Williams made a telehealth appointment with the doctor—a video call. It was that easy. “Her comfort was paramount,” Williams, who lives in Minnesota, recounts. “My mother wasn’t conscious during the visit, but [the doctor] was able […]
Mother JonesDonald Trump has gotten away with causing a violent attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, as part of scheme to overturn the 2020 election, hiding top secret documents from the federal government, and other alleged crimes. Special counsel Jack Smith on Monday made official what Trump’s election victory made clear, moving to dismiss […]
Mother JonesIn March 2024, Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman and failed presidential candidate whom Donald Trump has tapped to be director of national intelligence, created a political action committee called Defend Freedom, Inc. The group posted a bare-bones website featuring photos of Gabbard and declared it “was organized to elect patriots who will fight to […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Voxx.com and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. India and Pakistan are losing ground to a common deadly enemy. Vast clouds of dense, toxic smog have once again shrouded metropolises in South Asia. Air pollution regularly spikes in November in the subcontinent, but this year’s dirty air has […]
Mother JonesThree weeks after Hurricane Helene hit western North Carolina, Brandi Hand, a marketing and communications writer and based just outside of Asheville, offered some practical advice to her community: In a Facebook post that’s since been shared thousands of times, she wrote, “Find ways to laugh.” “Be gentle.” And, “Get ready for the rest of […]
Mother JonesRep.-elect Sarah McBride (D-Del.) is not taking Rep. Nancy Mace’s (R-S.C.) bait. In her first interview after Mace’s weeklong, social media–fueled campaign—which included nearly 300 posts on X—to ban her from the women’s bathroom in the House of Representatives offices, McBride showed how a member of Congress who is actually interested in governing, not grabbing […]
Mother JonesDonald Trump’s Cabinet appointees are not the only source of controversy in his transition back to the White House. On Thursday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote the Administrator of the General Services Administration (GSA), which manages the functioning of federal agencies, to warn that the Trump transition team has refused to sign memoranda of understanding […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It’s November and it’s unseasonably warm as John John Brown, a Muscogee elder, works to replant peach saplings. “I haven’t had much luck growing them from seed,” he says. The reason, he thinks, is because peaches need lower temperatures. Around him, […]
Mother JonesA growing number of law enforcement authorities and Democratic leaders across the country are speaking out about their plans to thwart one of President-elect Donald Trump’s top immigration priorities: Mass deportation. Taking lessons from the first four years of the Trump era, many have vowed to stand their ground and refuse to cooperate with federal […]
Mother JonesIn the early 1990s, Justin Pourier was a maintenance man at Red Cloud Indian School, a Catholic school on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. One day, he says he stumbled upon small graves in the school’s basement. For nearly 30 years, Pourier would be haunted by what he saw and told no one […]
Mother JonesContinuing the string of MAGA loyalist picks to serve in his administration, President-elect Donald Trump on Friday evening tapped Russell Vought to serve as director of the Office of Management and Budget—again. Vought, a self-avowed Christian Nationalist and key contributor to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 agenda for a conservative presidency, led OMB during Trump’s […]