Mother Jones
When the longtime state representative serving her district in north-central New Mexico retired in early 2020, science educator Anita Gonzales wondered who would replace him. Then she asked herself, “Why not me?” Although she’d occasionally visited the state Capitol in Santa Fe to lobby for issues that mattered to STEM students and teachers, Gonzales didn’t […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. When Deb Haaland was chosen as the secretary of the Interior by President Joe Biden in 2021, she was the first Native American ever to serve in a US Cabinet. It was a seminal moment for tribal […]
Mother JonesOn Friday, the Senate voted to advance a bill that would significantly increase the number of undocumented immigrants subject to mandatory detention and give right-wing judges more power. Most notably, it has done so with help from Democrats who now fear being tagged as weak on immigration enforcement. The Laken Riley Act is named after […]
Mother JonesThis morning President Joe Biden announced that he is commuting the sentences of nearly 2,500 people serving longer prison terms for convictions related to crack cocaine. In doing so, Biden made history and set the record for the most total individual commutations by a president in history at over 4,000. “Today’s clemency action provides relief […]
Mother JonesThe Supreme Court on Friday allowed a ban on TikTok to take effect. Last year, President Joe Biden signed a law that would ban the platform unless its Chinese parent-company, ByteDance, sold it. In handing down its ruling, the court rebuffed an effort by the platform, some of its users, numerous free-speech advocates, and President-elect […]
Mother JonesIn the early days of the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, President Joe Biden took some time to congratulate himself on a job well done. For weeks, his administration had been pursuing a “bear hug” of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: heaping billions in aid on the US ally and insulating it from international […]
Mother JonesAt a Senate committee hearing on Wednesday, Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Environmental Protection Agency, Lee Zeldin, acknowledged climate change is “real” and that greenhouse gasses are making the planet hotter—but stopped short of saying the agency must regulate them. About 90 minutes into the hearing before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public […]
Mother JonesThis story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. As firefighters are battling multiple huge blazes tearing through Los Angeles, California’s prisons have deployed more than 1,000 incarcerated people to battle on the frontlines. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) said that, as of Wednesday morning, 1,116 […]
Mother JonesGovernment employees who report possible malfeasance are almost certain to be targeted by the second Trump administration. Mark Zaid is a lawyer likely to represent some of them; over the past two decades, he has provided legal counsel to a long list of federal employees and intelligence officers, including whistleblowers. His most high-profile whistleblower case, […]
Mother JonesDuring his campaign, incoming president Donald Trump did everything possible to muddy his record on abortion and reproductive healthcare. He flip-flopped on whether he supported outlawing abortion and declined to answer questions on birth control and medication abortion. He bragged about appointing the three Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade but also assured […]
Mother JonesIn 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 […]