Mother Jones
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. From the moment that the biologist Heike Vester presses play, the sound of the static of the fjord fills the room. First comes the constant, steady rumbling of a boat engine. Then, every eight seconds, like a foreboding bass drum, comes […]
Mother JonesThe United States Department of Agriculture will begin mandatory testing of US milk supplies for bird flu. The Friday announcement was a break from the previously voluntary testing program for the bird flu virus known as H5N1. This strain of bird flu was first found in US dairy cattle in March, according to the USDA. […]
Mother JonesIn 1989, Chuck Stuart called 911 on his car phone to report a shooting. He told a dispatcher that he and his wife Carol were leaving a birthing class at a Boston hospital when a man forced him to drive into the mixed-race Mission Hill neighborhood, and shot them both. Carol Stuart would die that […]
Mother JonesThe effort to impeach South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol failed on Saturday morning. Yoon was able to survive because his party, the People Power Party, ultimately opposed impeachment. The impeachment effort came after Yoon set off a political crisis earlier this week in South Korea by declaring martial law. Yoon’s move led to protests […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. At a laboratory in Newark, New Jersey, a gray liquid swirls vigorously inside a reactor the size of a small watermelon. Here, scientists with the mining technology startup Still Bright are using a rare metal, vanadium, to extract a common one, copper, from ores […]
Mother JonesBack in September, amid simmering tensions between South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and the country’s parliament, opposition leader Lee Jae-myung issued a warning: Yoon and his allies were preparing to declare martial law. The claim was roundly dismissed as alarmist, the irresponsible stuff of conspiracy theories—even by some of Lee’s supporters. But the warning […]
Mother JonesFor the past month, Vice co-founder and CEO Shane Smith has had a remarkable number of questions, which he’s posed in a new interview show titled, appropriately, “Shane Smith Has Questions.” The show, which airs on YouTube and on Vice’s cable TV channel, is clearly meant to be a return to form for both Smith […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is one of the Earth’s last intact ecosystems. Vast and little-known, this 19 million-acre expanse along Alaska’s north slope is home to some of the region’s last remaining polar bears, as well as musk oxen, […]
Mother JonesProtesters took to the US Capitol bathrooms across from House Speaker Mike Johnson’s office on Thursday to protest the recently enacted policy banning trans people from accessing bathrooms that align with their gender identity. Just a day after the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that may upend gender-affirming care for children and […]
Mother JonesIn a nearly 300-page report released on Thursday, Amnesty International concluded that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide. “Month after month, Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them,” Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International, said in a statement. […]
Mother JonesAfter contemplating a Tennessee ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors Wednesday, the Supreme Court appears likely to greenlight the prohibition on the theory that nine humble justices are not the best arbiters of complex medical questions. It’s a theory of a modest judiciary that stays in its lane and knows the limits of its […]
Mother JonesThe bird flu’s been around for decades. But this year, concerns have spiked after it jumped to humans and other mammals, leading to at least 58 confirmed cases in the United States among mostly farmworkers. Another, more obvious, cause for worry: The response to the prospective health crisis will soon be under the direction of […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Chris Peterson wasn’t surprised that Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election. But he was surprised by how quickly he and his wife started asking one another: Should we try to have another baby before a possible nationwide abortion ban takes effect? […]
Mother JonesDaniel Espinoza first saw his future wife from across the room at a dim Las Vegas casino. It was New Year’s Eve 2014, and a beautiful woman with big brown eyes and dirty-blond hair was playing slots. Espinoza, a construction worker and party boy who was about to turn 30, sat down next to her. […]
Mother JonesAfter the Supreme Court ruled nine years ago that the Constitution protected same-sex marriage, far-right groups, in need of a new rallying cry, turned their attention to transgender people—in particular, kids. That strategic shift has met with devastating success: In recent years, 24 states have made it illegal for doctors to provide trans youth with […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. A small North Carolina town has launched the nation’s first-ever climate accountability lawsuit against an electric utility. The litigation, filed by officials from Carrboro, North Carolina, on Wednesday morning, accuses Duke Energy of waging a “deception campaign” to obscure the climate dangers of fossil […]
Mother JonesThere is a special relationship between a doting parent and his kid’s in-laws—machatunim in Yiddish, consuegros in Spanish. It doesn’t have a name in English. But, all the same, Donald Trump has elevated this unique extended-familial bond during his time in office. In particular, he has helped his daughters’ husbands’ dads. On Saturday, Trump announced […]
Mother JonesIn 2016, Jarrod Fidden, an Australian entrepreneur living in Ireland, announced that he’d launched a dating app for conspiracy theorists—or, as he put it at the time, for those who engage with “socially inconvenient truths.” The app was written up in dozens of news outlets in multiple languages as a funny curiosity. Fidden himself was […]
Mother JonesIn about two weeks, nearly everyone in this Atlanta conference room will be out of a job. But tonight, on November 5, the Scripps News team has an election to cover. “Nothing goes on the air unless it gets vetted through the control room, okay?” says Brian Donlon, a New Yorker who tempers his gruff […]
Mother JonesFor years, Kash Patel, the MAGA provocateur, conspiracy theory-monger, and seller of pills he claims reverse the effects of Covid vaccines, who Donald Trump has announced as his pick to replace FBI director Chris Wray, has made his mission plain: He wants to crush the supposed Deep State that has conspired against Trump. Last year, […]
Mother JonesOn Tuesday, the Department of Labor filed a proposed rule that could end the subminimum wage for disabled people—beginning the process of closing a loophole that can let companies pay disabled employees less than a dollar per hour. When the federal minimum wage was established in 1938, it included a carveout that would permit companies […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The world’s biggest climate case begins at The Hague in the Netherlands today. Oral arguments will be heard by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which will consider what obligations United Nations member states have under international law to protect the planet from […]
Mother JonesOn 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 […]