President Donald Trump is blaming “Vandalism” by “Radical Left Lunatics” for some of the struggles of his beloved Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool remodeling project. “Just like three days ago, they destroyed the grass outside of the Pool, they’ve also done everything possible to hurt the inside surface that was just installed,” Trump posted to Truth […]
On Saturday, Iran’s military announced it had closed shipping along the Strait of Hormuz, saying the US violated its deal to end the war by allowing Israel to continue to bomb Lebanon. Iran had just signed on to a preliminary agreement with the US to reopen the strait and allow for safe passage of commercial […]
This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Hidden underground around the world lie 110 quadrillion kilometers of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks—webs of ultrathin threads that, if connected in a single line, would stretch almost a billion times the distance between the Earth and the sun, according to […]
The World Cup is here. For the first time, the tournament is happening in three countries at once: the United States, Mexico, and Canada. It’s bigger than ever, with more teams, more games, more viewers, and more money on the line. Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. This […]
The global NGO Human Rights Watch released a report Thursday alleging widespread human rights violations by the federal government during “Operation Metro Surge,” the massive ICE deployment in Minnesota this past winter in which ICE arbitrarily detained approximately 4,000 immigrants, the vast majority of whom had no domestic convictions, killing two US citizens and injuring, […]
A recent funding notice from the Department of Health and Human Services seems to contain a message for the anti-abortion movement: the administration hasn’t entirely forgotten them. The announcement offers applicants nearly $2 million in grant support to promote embryo adoption—and while the program isn’t new, it’s now couched in the fundamentalist language of fetal […]
A version of the 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. Donald Trump’s war in Iran is one of […]
I first heard the word “intersectionality” during an identity workshop I took in undergrad. Inside our student center, my classmates and I stood under colorful signs naming different aspects of identity—like race, gender, sexuality—as we were asked a series of questions that required us to stand underneath one and talk about how that part of […]
Last week, most of the major news outlets ran the perennial story about how the Social Security fund is set to run out of money—now by 2032—and that benefits will have to be cut substantially unless Congress acts. Okay, so act. It’s stupid that we are being made to worry about a problem that’s solvable, […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It was designed to survive the apocalypse, as humanity’s last testament to its failure. But for a while it seemed the “Earth’s Black Box” hadn’t even survived its own planning process. Now, five years after it was announced to much fanfare, followed […]
The federal government intervened Monday in a Clean Air Act lawsuit in which people in Memphis, Tennessee, and Southaven, Mississippi, are suing Elon Musk’s xAI over the health risks posed by the company’s unpermitted gas turbines. The Department of Justice didn’t intervene on behalf of the people breathing dirty air, though: instead, it submitted an […]
On Thursday, the Department of Justice quietly released a memo pertaining to the landmark 1999 disability civil rights case Olmstead v. L.C., which curtailed states’ power to institutionalize people diagnosed with mental illnesses, and related federal civil rights laws. That precedent, the Trump administration memo argues—in conjunction with federal civil rights and disability rights statutes—increases […]
Many Republicans across the right are bashing interim deal between the US-Iran as an unnecessary surrender.  “This is the worst foreign policy blunder in decades,” Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana wrote in a Wednesday post on X. “Iran’s nuclear ambitions were not curbed, and they have learned that threatening the Strait of Hormuz works.” “Now, […]
The Trump administration is ordering National Park Service employees to wear pins promoting Freedom 250, a semi-private group that the president has used to turn celebrations of the country’s 250th anniversary into what critics call a partisan party for himself. Several NPS employees told me that they were even threatened with professional reprimands if they […]
In April, the National Park Service placed a statue of Caesar Rodney, one of America’s Founding Fathers, in Freedom Plaza, a small park near the White House. That installation drew notice, and criticism, because Rodney, a plantation owner from Delaware who played a key role in crafting the Declaration of Independence, enslaved people—a complication that […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The Trump administration is coming to the defense of Elon Musk in a lawsuit over claims that his artificial intelligence company, xAI, is polluting residential neighborhoods in north Mississippi. The Department of Justice (DOJ) told a federal court late on Monday to throw out […]
In the latest installment of Trump’s campaign against anti-ICE protesters, the Department of Justice has charged 15 Minneapolis-area residents for allegedly interfering with agents during the agency’s occupation of Minneapolis in January and February, Trump-appointed US Attorney Daniel Rosen announced Tuesday. The indictment for felony “conspiracy to impede or injure federal officers” represents DOJ’s latest […]
‘Tis the season of college commencement—and this year, it’s also the time for booing commencement speakers, who have made AI their go-to topic in the face of vocal student opposition. At the University of Central Florida in May, real estate exec Gloria Caulfield was virally booed for boosting AI as a happy “next industrial revolution” […]
Despite yet another round of Trumpian pomp and circumstance around the president’s supposed deal to end the war in Iran, the agreement between the US and Iran’s government looks short on details and long on impracticality.  The two countries are set to officially sign a memorandum of understanding on Friday, which will start the timer […]
Last June, the Supreme Court gave a gift to the fossil fuel industry, whose proceeds have not only lined the pockets of some of the United States’ wealthiest men, but which those men have in turn invested in the creation of a right-wing Supreme Court. In Diamond Alternative Energy v. EPA, seven justices made it […]
This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. A federal judge in South Carolina ruled this week that the Trump administration’s termination of environmental justice grants was “illegal.” The decision dealt a setback to efforts to dismantle a Biden-era program that funded projects addressing environmental and public health challenges […]
A version of the 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. Hooray, Elon Musk is a trillionaire. You catch […]
When Bryan Stevenson moved to Montgomery, Alabama, in the 1980s, the city—one of America’s most prominent slave trading spaces before the Civil War—had dozens of Confederate monuments and memorials, but nothing commemorating slavery. Today, thanks to Stevenson’s efforts, the city looks much different. Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast […]
We tend to treat disability politics as a modern phenomenon, the product of disability civil rights movements in the latter part of the 20th century. It’s not: the long arc of that history, in fact, goes back to the American Revolution, whose new ideas promised some disabled white Americans an unprecedented level of inclusion—and to […]
On Tuesday, the Trump administration announced that it would move two key functions of the Department of Education—disability education oversight and the department’s Office for Civil Rights—to the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice, respectively, in a move that would give HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. oversight over the […]
As the UFC fighters left their locker rooms Sunday night and headed out to the Octagon, they strutted through the Oval Office—a space once so revered that Ronald Reagan wouldn’t enter it unless he was wearing a suit jacket. A select group of spectators had been invited to the White House grounds, and the public […]
This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. For decades, American politicians have been slow to take on climate change and curb carbon dioxide emissions, under the assumption that doing so might pass along costs to their voters. Ironically, their failure to rein in fossil fuel emissions has yielded the […]
Daphy Michel, a 31-year-old Haitian asylum seeker, was found dead of hypothermia at a Pittsburgh bus stop March 2, three days after being released from ICE custody 30 miles from her home. This week, the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s office ruled her death a homicide.  “Ms. Michel was a vulnerable adult, suffering from untreated severe […]
Under a cloudless sky and the blazing Florida sun, about 25 people gathered on a recent Sunday near the entrance of the Pinellas County jail, posting cardboard signs along the grass announcing that “ICE detains people here.” Since last year, residents of this county have come here every weekend to protest the sheriff’s office’s ongoing […]
I had never heard of Josh Hokit until the other week. But the little I quickly learned about the immigrant-bashing, trans-hating Ultimate Fighting Championship fighter was enough to guess, correctly, that Hokit was the man behind the UFC Freedom 250’s most despicable moment on Sunday. “Michelle Obama is a man,” Hokit belted out. “Am I […]
As her older siblings prepare breakfast, 13-year-old Cynthia Perez waits at the kitchen table, not very hungry. “I’m nervous,” she tells her mom’s friend Mariana Blanco, who gently brushes the girl’s long brown hair. “I know you are, love,” Blanco says. “It’s gonna be okay.” It’s a March morning in Palm Beach County, Florida, and […]
This story was originally published by WIRED and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. SpaceX, Elon Musk’s behemoth company that launches rockets and runs data centers, went public on Friday with a target valuation above $1.75 trillion. The move will make Musk, already the richest man in the world, vastly wealthier. A public offering will allow SpaceX to raise even more […]
Update, June 14, 6:10 pm: Trump announced Sunday evening that his deal with Iran “is now complete.” The president wrote on Truth Social: “I hereby fully authorize the toll free opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and, simultaneously herewith, authorize the immediate removal of the United States Naval blockade. Ships of the World, start your […]
While New Yorkers nurse Knicks-championship hangovers in Donald Trump’s hometown, the president is celebrating his 80th birthday tonight by inviting his friends to a party designed to honor himself: a multimillion-dollar cage fight on the White House grounds. The UFC Freedom 250 event is being billed (by its promoters, anyway) as “the most historic sporting […]
This story was originally published by Yale e360 and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Across the globe, human activities are changing the way our planet smells. In Egypt, increasing temperatures are shrinking yields of aromatic jasmine flowers; in France, extreme drought has reduced the production of fragrant, night-blooming tuberose, a major ingredient in many […]
On Friday night, the AI giant Anthropic said that the US government had ordered it to suspend foreign nationals, including employees, from all use of its most advanced products.  To comply with the Friday directive, the company announced that it disabled access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5, the latest models of Claude, for all […]
On Saturday morning, Kennedy Center officials confirmed that they had removed all signs with President Trump’s name from the building after a federal judge declared the previous day that the signs were unlawful. The officials also stated that they updated their website “to remove all reference to the institution as the ‘Trump Kennedy Center.’” To […]
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche gave a press conference on Thursday to tell reporters about 300,000 supposedly “missing” immigrant children. These were unaccompanied minors who’d crossed the border alone during the Biden administration, before being apprehended by the government and then quickly released to sponsors—typically adult relatives. Mullin and […]
This story was originally published by Canary Media and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Last year, Marie Tai needed a better way to keep her condo cool. Her window air-conditioning units were borderline ineffective, even running at full blast. Summers have been getting more intense in Tai’s Boston neighborhood because of a rapidly warming climate, and […]
Decades before Covid-19, the AIDS epidemic tore through communities in the US and around the world. It has killed some 40 million people and continues to take lives today. But early on, research and public policy focused on AIDS as a gay men’s disease, overlooking other vulnerable groups—including communities of color and women.  Subscribe to […]
Could you count to a trillion? Oh, hell no. I just timed myself counting to 100 as fast as I could. It took 38 seconds. The higher you count, the longer the numbers get, and so the slower the count becomes, but let’s be ridiculously conservative and assume I could maintain that rapid counting pace. […]
When Americans tune into UFC Freedom 250, the series of mixed martial arts fights taking over the White House on President Trump’s 80th birthday this Sunday, one key element of the sport will be missing: female fighters. To the unfamiliar, that might seem unsurprising given the hypermasculine stereotypes that surround MMA. But as Kyle Green, […]
Vilès Dorsainvil has thought a lot about desperation recently. Specifically, what desperation forces people to do, and the tragedy it seems to attract. As a Haitian immigrant and the executive director of the Haitian Support Center in Springfield, Ohio, he has seen a desperate community seeking stability in the United States, only to find that […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown is largely targeting people from the countries most vulnerable to displacement from climate-driven disasters, a Guardian analysis shows. As the Trump administration pushes policies to boost planet-heating fossil fuels, millions of people are being forced to flee their homelands due to […]
Last spring, during a track meet at a Texas high school, 17-year-old Karmelo Anthony stabbed and killed Austin Metcalf, a white student and fellow athlete from a rival school, during an argument. Whether or not Anthony killed Metcalf wasn’t up for discussion: Anthony had admitted his guilt, and there were several witnesses present during the […]
The last major tournament staged by FIFA, the body behind the World Cup, was last summer’s Club World Cup—an international tournament where Donald Trump crashed the trophy presentation at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium, joining the winning team’s celebrations as they lifted the prize.  As my colleague Tim Murphy wrote at the time, autocracies have long […]
An immigration judge has ordered the deportation of Columbia University graduate student Mohsen Mahdawi, who is Palestinian, to Jordan in a legal filing published Wednesday. Mahdawi has been targeted by the Trump administration for his pro-Palestinian activism for more than a year, in a high-profile case that saw him abruptly detained by immigration authorities during […]
With Donald Trump’s pardon of former Indiana Rep. Steve Buyer over the weekend, he has now pardoned at least 11 former GOP politicians, almost all of them on charges of corruption or somehow violating the public trust. Buyer served in Congress from 1993 to 2011, and after leaving office, he promptly went to work as […]
I can’t really say why I decided to cook, or otherwise procure, a dish representing every nation at the World Cup, except that I thought it might be kind of fun, and it seemed like the least I could do. If you have a family, or a roommate, or even a cat, and are planning […]
On Thursday, President Donald Trump said that the US would strike Iran “VERY HARD TONIGHT,” in a bid to “assume total control of their Oil and Gas Markets.” Trump made the statement in a Truth Social post, comparing the effort to the US military kidnapping Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January and taking over the […]