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This Week’s Episode of Reveal: A World War II Incident Nearly Lost to History

It was their first day in battle and the two best friends had just switched places. Bob Fordyce rested while Frank Hartzell crawled down into the shallow foxhole, taking his turn chipping away at the frozen ground. Just then, German artillery fire began falling all around them. With his body plastered to the ground, Hartzell […]

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2024 Set the Stage for Clean Energy on Public Lands

This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In 2021, President Joe Biden signed an executive order on the climate crisis that, among other things, directed the secretary of the Interior to review the potential for clean energy on public lands. Later that year, he set aggressive […]

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Hero of 2024: The Sweet Simplicity of Raffi

The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. Importantly, this is a completely non-exhaustive and subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy or discontent. Enjoy. Forget the YouTube sensations Ms. Rachel or CoComelon: My household still blissfully lounges in the sweet […]

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Hero of 2024: Richard M. Nixon

The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. Importantly, this is a completely non-exhaustive and subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy or discontent. Enjoy. Destroyed by Watergate and vilified for suggesting that presidents are above the law, Richard Nixon died in […]

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Faith Organizations Can Have a Complicated Relationship With Disaster Relief

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. On the second weekend after Hurricane Helene, Swannanoa Christian Church held its first Sunday service since the storm-battered western North Carolina. The sanctuary was piled high with clothes, water, and food, so everyone gathered outdoors. Out in the yard, beneath […]

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2024 Fungus Finds: Toadstool with Teeth and Ghostly Palm

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. From a toadstool with teeth to a vine smelling of marzipan and a flower that has cheated its way out of having to photosynthesize, a weird and wonderful host of new plant and fungus species have been discovered in […]

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Hero of 2024: Pop Music

The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. Importantly, this is a completely non-exhaustive and subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy or discontent. Enjoy. Camo hat, orange letters. The ever-present “Hot to Go!” dance. VMA alien makeout. […]

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Hero of 2024: Charity Music, Which Was Actually Good This Year

The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. Importantly, this is a completely non-exhaustive and subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy or discontent. Enjoy. I have always thought the music-for-charity genre was irredeemably corny. “We Are the World”? Far from “the […]

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Hero of 2024: Ruthie, My Barber

The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. Importantly, this is a completely non-exhaustive and subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy or discontent. Enjoy. For those of us who would be described in HR packets at progressive workplaces as “gender nonconforming” […]

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Monster of 2024: Joe Biden

The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. Importantly, this is a completely non-exhaustive and subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy or discontent. Enjoy. When was the 2024 presidential election really lost? Maybe you’d argue (though I […]

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Bird Flu Is Sweeping Through Zoos

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Dozens of rare animals including tigers, lions, and cheetahs are dying as bird flu infiltrates zoos, with potentially “grave implications” for endangered species, researchers have warned. As a growing number of zoos report animal deaths, scientists are concerned that […]

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Hero of 2024: Dean Phillips, Kind of

The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. Importantly, this is a completely non-exhaustive and subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy or discontent. Enjoy. Dean Phillips is a Democratic congressman from Minnesota. He is quite rich and […]

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Mother Jones

Hero of 2024: Dean Phillips, Kind Of

The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. Importantly, this is a completely non-exhaustive and subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy or discontent. Enjoy. Dean Phillips is a Democratic congressman from Minnesota. He is quite rich and […]

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Meet the Plant Hacker Creating Flowers Never Seen (or Smelled) Before

This story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Sebastian Cocioba’s clapboard house on Long Island doesn’t look much like a cutting-edge plant biology lab. Then you step inside and peer down the hallway to see a small nook with just enough standing room for a single scientist. The workshop is stuffed […]

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Mother Jones

Meet the Plant Hacker Creating Flowers Never Seen (or Smelled) Before

This story was originally published by WIRED and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Sebastian Cocioba’s clapboard house on Long Island doesn’t look much like a cutting-edge plant biology lab. Then you step inside and peer down the hallway to see a small nook with just enough standing room for a single scientist. The workshop is stuffed […]

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Biden Pulled Off a $370 Billion Miracle for the Climate. Where Did the Money Go?

This story was originally published by Vox.com and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act stands as the single largest piece of legislation to address climate change in United States history. The IRA contains nearly $370 billion for programs like tax credits for more efficient appliances, building new battery plants, and subsidies for renewable energy. And […]

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Traveling? Download These Reveal Episodes Now for Your Trip

Reveal has been a weekly investigative podcast for nearly 10 years now, so we’ve produced hundreds of hours of investigative journalism over the years designed to inspire, inform, or infuriate you (and occasionally, all three at the same time). We’ve curated some of our favorite Reveal series and serials to take you through your holiday […]

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Hero of 2024: Patrick Stump

The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. Importantly, this is a completely non-exhaustive and subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy or discontent. Enjoy. Modern kids’ songs, the stuff of literal torture, are in lockstep with the […]

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“The Brown Round-Up”: The Racist Chain Letter Terrorizing an Oregon County

Trump’s mass deportation agenda is already taking shape—for a second time—in coastal Oregon. A racist letter reportedly circulating through Lincoln County, which has a population of about 50,000 people and is located on the state’s western coast, encourages residents to surveil and report “brown illegals…who you suspect are here in our country on an illegal […]

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Biden Has Officially Appointed More Judges Than Trump

President Joe Biden has officially surpassed president-elect Donald Trump’s record of judicial appointed to federal courts—by one single judge. On Friday, the Senate Judiciary Committee, tasked with carrying out the confirmations of Biden’s appointees, announced that it had confirmed Biden’s 235th judge—one more than Trump during his term in office, when he blitzed the courts […]

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This Week’s Episode of Reveal: A Whistleblower in New Folsom Prison

When Valentino Rodriguez started his job at a high-security prison in Sacramento, California, informally known as New Folsom, he thought he was entering a brotherhood of correctional officers who hold each other to a high standard of conduct. Five years later, Rodriguez would be found dead in his home. His unexpected passing would raise questions from […]

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Spending Christmas With “Dr. Doom”

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. I was 11 years old the year my older stepsister brought her high school boyfriend home for the first time. It was Thanksgiving 2006, and his Southern manners fit right in as we bantered between mouthfuls of cornbread stuffing, fried okra, […]

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Missouri Judge Blocks Abortion Ban—But Clinics Still Can’t Reopen

Last month, Missourians voted to add the right to abortion until viability into their state constitution—making their state one of ten to enshrine abortion rights since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. But simply having the constitutional right to abortion does not alone change anything on the ground: The courts must enforce this right […]

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The Supreme Court’s Christmas Gift to Religious-Right Lawyers

The Supreme Court agreed last week to hear a case that could pave the way for states to kick Planned Parenthood clinics and affiliated doctors out of their Medicaid programs. The case threatens the ability of the nation’s largest family planning organization to provide their low-income patients with birth control, cancer screenings, and STI testing […]

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Donald Trump and Elon Musk Have Energized the German Far-Right

“So where’s my German friends?” Donald Trump asked a fawning Mar-a-Lago crowd on Election Day, before flashing a grin and a thumbs up for a photo with a group of young men. The German friends in question: Fabrice Ambrosini, a former politician forced to resign after a video surfaced of him doing a Hitler salute; […]

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Hero of 2024: billy woods’ Lyrics About American Empire

The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. Importantly, this is a completely non-exhaustive and subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy or discontent. Enjoy. In the final months of his presidency, Joe Biden visited Angola. He was […]

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What Bird Flu Means for Milk

On Wednesday, California became the first state to issue a declaration of emergency regarding the avian flu (H5N1). That same day, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed the first severe case of the flu in a human on US soil and outbreaks in cow herds were detected in Southern California. Still, the […]

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Our Big Global Problems Are Connected, so Tackle Them Together, Scientists say

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. As global temperatures rise from the burning of fossil fuels, researchers and policymakers have proposed solutions like installing renewable energy, replacing gasoline-powered cars with electric ones, and developing technology to suck carbon out of the air. But these policies often address climate […]

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The Worst, Most Important, Book I Read This Year

On a long flight in the mid-aughts, I decided to read The Case for Israel by Alan Dershowitz. I thought of it like giving myself an assignment, the kind of thing I tended do when I was younger. I wanted to understand an argument I expected to disagree with. But this proved to be a […]

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Elon Musk Applauds the German Neo-Nazi Party

Elon Musk appears to be leaning even further into a full neo-Nazi embrace. Following his social media assault to block a congressional spending bill meant to avoid a government shutdown, the tech billionaire took to X and described the racist, far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as Germany’s last, best hope. “Only the AfD can […]

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