Mother Jones
Chris Wright, the fracking company CEO who Trump has nominated to lead the Department of Energy and who had previously claimed “there is no climate crisis,” admitted that climate change is a “real issue” during his confirmation hearings on Wednesday. Wright, who runs Liberty Energy and is worth $171 million, was tapped in mid-November by […]
Mother JonesAfter 15 months of unceasing destruction in Gaza following the October 7th attack on Isreal and the death of tens of thousands of Palestinians, Israel and Hamas have reached an agreement on a ceasefire deal. The deal is complex. It depends on a phased release of Israeli hostages held within Gaza as Israeli forces draw […]
Mother JonesThe president-elect—who pushed for an invasion of Mexico during his first term—has spent the month leading up to next week’s inauguration posting about inviting Canada to join the United States, refusing to rule out using military force to coerce Denmark into selling (or giving away) Greenland, and pledging to take back the Panama Canal Zone—which […]
Mother JonesThere are holes in Tennessee Republican Congressman Andy Ogles’ personal story. Some have been relatively harmless fabrications. Ogles claimed to be a scholar of German, Japanese, and Russian and he has repeatedly described himself as an economist. In fact, Ogles took one only one community college course in Elementary Japanese (receiving a B) and one […]
Mother JonesThis story was published in partnership with The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence in America. A version of this story was first published online in July. For decades, McLean Bible Church has served as the place of worship for many of DC’s Republican elite. The sprawling evangelical megachurch in Vienna, Virginia, boasts a […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. People weren’t the only ones fleeing fast-moving flames and hot embers as deadly wildfires burned down entire neighborhoods in Los Angeles beginning on Tuesday night and ongoing as of publication. Footage from NBC LA showed a fawn with singed fur running […]
Mother JonesIt has been a week since Los Angeles’ devastating wildfires began, driven by powerful winds that have made the blazes highly difficult to fight. More than 40,000 acres have already burned, with at least 24 deaths; by comparison, the entirety of Washington, DC, is 43,000 acres. More than 12,300 structures have been destroyed, and at […]
Mother JonesLegislative business in Minnesota’s 2025-2026 state House session began Tuesday at noon Central Time; or perhaps it hasn’t begun at all. It depends whom you ask. The 66 members of the Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL), Minnesota’s affiliate of the national Democratic Party, elected to its lower chamber did not show up; these Democrats argue that work […]
Mother JonesWhen Donald Trump was president the first time, his Department of Education promulgated a set of rules under Title IX that made it harder for sexual assault survivors on school campuses to seek justice—limiting the definition of sexual harassment, for example, and forcing victims into complaint processes that magnified their trauma. Then the Biden Administration […]
Mother JonesAs wildfires continue to burn all around Los Angeles, influencers have emerged to promote sales of their own, highly specific solutions to the crisis. With smoke filling the air of many neighborhoods, the wellness machine has sprung into action, promoting tinctures, detox products, essential oils, parasite cleanses, and even raw milk as “treatments” for its […]
Mother JonesIt took nearly two hours into Pete Hegseth’s confirmation hearing on Tuesday for Democrats to effectively underscore the deeply alarming allegations surrounding the former Fox News host as he attempts to get confirmed as Donald Trump’s Secretary of Defense. But when they finally did, Democrats came out swinging. As for Hegseth, it was his refusal […]
Mother JonesJack Smith‘s final report on Donald’s Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 election doesn’t contain much new information, but what timing it has. Released around 1 a.m. Tuesday—less than a week before Trump’s inauguration—the document takes aim at Trump’s and his lawyers’ contention that the end of Smith’s prosecution amounts to the “complete exoneration” of […]
Mother JonesLast Thursday, as wildfires continued to blaze through Los Angeles, firefighters appeared to be no match for the deadly combination of winds and flames. But one entrepreneur in the LA suburb of El Segundo had an idea. Augustus Doricko, a 24-year-old who runs a geoengineering startup called Rainmaker, announced on X his attention to help. […]
Mother JonesOn July 10, 2020, Terry Tamminen wrote a letter to the board chair of Waterkeeper Alliance, the clean-water group founded and led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to say that he wanted out. Tamminen, a veteran, highly-regarded environmentalist and co-founder and longtime board member of the organization, had become concerned about the outfit’s finances—so worried […]
Mother JonesOn Tuesday morning, the Justice Democrats—the group that helped usher in a wave of progressive candidates during the first Trump presidency—announced they’re actively recruiting candidates to primary centrist Democrats. The PAC, which started in 2017, became known for backing “the Squad” and other left-wing Democratic candidates, some of whom ousted incumbents with decades of experience. […]
Mother JonesSamuel Anthony turns his phone camera around to show me the view from his family home in Sierra Leone. He steps out to a veranda overlooking a carpet of lush green trees dotted with houses that merge with the ocean in the distance. “This is how the majority of people live in Sierra Leone,” Anthony […]
Mother JonesThis article first appeared on The War Horse, an award-winning nonprofit news organization educating the public on military service. Subscribe to their newsletter. A Navy submariner who said she was sexually assaulted multiple times. An Army major who chose to never report her assault. A Marine Corps sexual assault response coordinator who worries she is being discriminated against […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Kristin Crowley was appointed Los Angeles fire chief in 2022 at a time of turmoil in a department consumed by complaints of rampant hazing, harassment, and discrimination among its 3,400-member ranks. She was portrayed by then mayor Eric Garcetti as a stabilizing […]
Mother JonesSamuel Anthony turns his phone camera around to show me the view from his family home in Sierra Leone. He steps out to a veranda overlooking a carpet of lush green trees dotted with houses that merge with the ocean in the distance. “This is how the majority of people live in Sierra Leone,” Anthony […]
Mother JonesIn emergency updates, American Sign Language interpreters are crucial to the safety of Deaf people—close to a million of whom live in the Los Angeles area alone. They’ve also become the latest target of right-wing online influencers like Turning Point USA head Charlie Kirk, who offered a very obnoxious take on his eponymous Charlie Kirk […]
Mother JonesKetan Joshi did not mean to become the manager of all things climate on Bluesky, the fast-growing social media platform that’s trying to compete directly with Twitter. GreenSky was designed to be this overarching, overall thing that encompassed all the communities. I see that emerging through the GreenSky feed, because you see people from very […]
Mother JonesIt wasn’t long ago when a daily glass of wine was considered safe, even healthy. The practice could confer onto someone a sense of sophistication, a realized version of whatever “bon vivant” means. But in recent years, as multiple studies started to dismantle that notion of safety, I tended to mostly ignore what I had […]
Mother JonesIt wasn’t long ago when a daily glass of wine was considered safe, even healthy. The practice could confer onto someone a sense of sophistication, a realized version of whatever “bon vivant” means. But in recent years, as multiple studies started to dismantle that notion of safety, I tended to mostly ignore what I had […]
Mother JonesThe 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. I tend not to get all dewy-eyed about bipartisanship. It was bipartisanship that […]
Mother JonesProject 2025’s stance on the Department of Education is clear: “Federal education policy should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated.” Donald Trump’s imminent presidency has raised concerns among disabled advocates, kids, their parents, and others about the federal government’s role in making sure disabled students get an equitable education. […]
Mother JonesJD Vance is learning what it’s like to be a target of Trump supporters. Chaos in MAGA world ensued after the Vice President-elect told Fox News Sunday host Shannon Bream that not all insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 will receive pardons from Donald Trump. “It’s very simple,” Vance claimed on the […]
Mother JonesWhile Donald Trump rages on Truth Social—sharing memes and baselessly blaming Democratic politicians in California for the devastating LA wildfires—Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) fears he will withhold disaster aid from the state in a bid to score political points. In an interview that aired Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, Newsom told NBC News correspondent […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Atlas Obscura and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Sado Island perches like a butterfly with its wings outstretched just off the curved west coast of Japan. Yet this land mass is better known as the home of another winged creature: the crested ibis, called toki in Japanese. Hop on a shinkansen (a high-speed train) from Tokyo […]
Mother JonesPresident Joe Biden has issued a flurry of pardons during his final days in office, beginning with his grant of clemency to his son Hunter and continuing with a mid-December announcement that he had pardoned or commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 Americans. This week, Biden told reporters that he was still considering issuing preemptive […]
Mother JonesFormer New York City mayor and Trump hanger-on Rudy Giuliani was found in contempt of court on Friday—for the second time in a week. Giuliani faces two different federal lawsuits against him stemming from his comments about a pair of Georgia elections workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, whom he falsely accused of helping rig […]