Mother Jones
In the week since wildfires began spreading through Los Angeles County, rent prices have skyrocketed as the thousands who have lost their homes try to find new places to live. “We’ve seen businesses and landlords that use increased demand during emergencies to jack up the price,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said at a January […]
Mother JonesWhen Robert F. Kennedy Jr. set out in late 2021 to hawk a conspiracy theory-drenched book attacking Anthony Fauci for his work to limit the spread of infectious diseases, he ran into a problem. Mainstream TV networks weren’t interested, due to Kennedy’s penchant for spreading falsehoods about childhood vaccinations, Covid, and other topics. “Nobody would […]
Mother JonesSince the Los Angeles wildfires broke out on January 7, a strain of online panic has painted the city as functioning a lot like The Purge, the horror movie about a 24-hour period where all crime is legal. Take a purported conversation that former Tinder executive Brian Norgard relayed in a Twitter/X post that’s been […]
Mother JonesPresident Joe Biden is running out of time, and so are federal prisoners awaiting clemency for marijuana-related criminal charges stemming from a tough-on-crime approach he helped promote. That fact is on display, literally, on a website launched by the Last Prisoner Project, one of several advocacy groups that have called on the president to make […]
Mother JonesWashington, DC stands out as a refuge for reproductive rights: Unlike the 20-plus states that have moved to restrict abortion since the US Supreme Court’s June 2022 Dobbs decision, DC has no mandated waiting period for abortion, no parental notification laws, and no limits based on gestational age. But DC is also unique in its […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. As the Los Angeles area fires rage on, tens of thousands of people are left displaced. Those who lost homes to the flames are scrambling to find new or temporary housing, but face a massive barrier: Many listing prices on […]
Mother JonesTwo days before Donald Trump was re-elected president, he told rallygoers that he wouldn’t mind if somebody shot through a crowd of journalists. Some of his supporters laughed a bit, some cheered. It was typical fare. The same weekend, Trump called journalists “monsters” and “horrible, horrible, dishonest people.” In the past, he has cheered a […]
Mother JonesAt her confirmation hearing Wednesday, Pam Bondi probably assured she will become attorney general. She did that, however, by pretending to be an idiot. The former Florida attorney general and lobbyist refused to confirm or deny that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, declined to oppose pardons for violent January 6 attackers, would not say […]
Mother JonesChris 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 […]