Two members of Congress have sent a letter to US Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz calling on the agency to justify its actions following an investigation by Mother Jones that found glyphosate—the controversial key ingredient in the herbicide Roundup—was being sprayed in record amounts on public lands. “Given the recent scientific disputes, retracted studies, and […]

A week after polls closed in California’s closely watched open gubernatorial primary last Tuesday—following a slow trickle of votes that fueled unsubstantiated claims of fraud from the president—Democrat Xavier Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton will advance to the November general election, winnowing down a crowded race to succeed two-term Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has […]

Apparently “because of woke,” disparaging a whole community of people based on their nationality and using that sentiment to justify extensive fraud investigations that lead to cutting social services and occupying cities with federal agents is racist. “You’re not allowed to complain about Somalians because that’s racist,” President Donald Trump’s administrator for Medicare and Medicaid, […]

“No way this could have happened,” President Donald Trump wrote on TruthSocial early Monday morning. “Rigged Election!” While he could reasonably have been referring to any number of elections he’s deemed “rigged” over the last decade, in this instance, Trump had turned his bleary eyes to the Los Angeles mayoral race, where a progressive challenger, […]

Before 2023, Danielle was the “workhorse” at her job in the front office of a large dental practice in Puyallup, Washington. “I was only given positive reviews,” she told me. But after doctors found a mass in her uterus and recommended a preventive hysterectomy at age 35, everything changed. The procedure sent her into early […]

Despite reaping billions in the weapons industry as cofounder of the military-tech company Anduril, Trae Stephens says he does not believe that “wartime profiteering is ethical, really, in any way.” That was just one takeaway from an hourlong conversation he had with Gwyneth Paltrow on her Goop podcast last week, during which Stephens held forth […]

A World Cup referee from Somalia confirmed on Tuesday that US border patrol officials denied him entry into the country. “I am very, very disappointed,” Omar Abdulkadir Artan, one of 52 referees chosen in April for the upcoming FIFA Men’s World Cup, told the New York Times. “I’m just simply a referee who’s trying to […]

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. James Hepp is sick of excuses. The 36-year-old farmer manages about 1,600 acres of corn, soy, and small grains in northern Iowa. He keeps a close eye on his bottom line and says he wants to build a business that […]

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Sávio Bortolini Pimentel just missed getting on the roster to represent his national team, Brazil, at the 1994 FIFA World Cup in the United States. At the time, he was a 20-year-old professional player with the Rio de Janeiro […]

The pitch deck from a new investment fund called Affinity Partners was one of the most laughable presentations the potential investors had ever seen. Consisting of 20 black-and-white slides, the PowerPoint resembled something an undergraduate would have put together. It verged on satire—drenched in corporate pabulum, it touted “accelerating transformation through connectivity” and “aligned…

For my upcoming book, United States of Oligarchy, I spent the last few years reporting on the activities of a small group of billionaires who have amassed increasing sway over US politics and policy. Chief among them, of course, is Elon Musk, who used a small fraction of his enormous wealth to put Donald Trump back in the […]

Some Trumpian construction projects go smoothy. In Vietnam, for example, the government has relocated hundreds residents to make room for a $1.5 billion-dollar Trump-branded mega-resort, and that project is well underway. But elsewhere in the world, the first family’s real estate deals don’t always go according to plan. In recent days, Albania has been rocked […]

It’s not unusual for a protest movement to involve absurd-looking symbols. Unions deploy giant rat inflatables to picket companies using non-union labor, people at “No Kings” protests don puffy frog or dinosaur costumes, and Gen Z protesters worldwide can be seen waving a cartoon pirate flag from the show One Piece to symbolize anti-authoritarianism. In […]

Sometime around 1970, Barney Frank called the head of the Boston Redevelopment Authority, all worked up. Back then, Frank was the top aide to Boston Mayor Kevin White. Elected in 1968, White was a reformer, at least at first. And he’d empowered the BRA director, a guy named Hale Champion, to professionalize the agency by […]

This story was originally published by Yale Environment 360 and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Maxing out at around 200 tons, the blue whale is not only the largest animal on the planet, it is also the largest animal ever to exist. These creatures become so massive by eating a diet comprised almost […]

Scott Pelley spent 37 years at CBS News, only to be fired last week after coming into conflict with Free Press founder Bari Weiss, who took control of the network last October. In a New York Times sit-down interview with Lulu Garcia-Navarro published Sunday, Pelley said Weiss personally interfered with the network’s coverage of the […]

Early Saturday morning, a woman whose husband is detained at ICE’s Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey, drove nearly two hours to visit him. She was turned away at the gate. GEO Group—the multibillion-dollar ICE contractor that runs Delaney Hall—had cancelled family visitation for the day. She sat on a curb, cried, and drove home. Throughout […]

In a perplexing speech Saturday commemorating the World War II D-Day landings in Normandy, France, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth called for European leaders to combat what he implied was a second, modern D-Day—in which European countries were being “stormed by different dangerous ideologies” accompanied by “boats and men.” The original D-Day was the Allied […]

Every single one of the 599 refugees the US admitted last month was a white South African, according to data from the State Department’s Bureau of Population released Friday. In fact, so was every other refugee admitted this year. Since October 1, 2025, the US has accepted 6,668 refugees. Of those, 6,665 were white South […]

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Irrefutable proof of what Spanish researchers and wildlife experts had long suspected, and long feared, finally presented itself in the form of a grainy video that was shot on a minuscule island in the Balearics in April 2024. Ribboning its way […]

Every week, a group of men in their late 60s meets at the Corner Cafe in Elizabethtown, North Carolina. One important reason for these meetups is to discuss what’s going on in their community. Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. Local news has virtually dried up in their […]

This story was originally published by The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence in America. Sign up for its newsletters here. Last December, the Department of Justice opened a new office in its Civil Rights Division called the Second Amendment Section. The goal of the office, as previously reported by Mother Jones and The […]

While watching Madonna’s recent Times Square takeover—sponsored by the gay “dating” app Grindr—it struck me. And I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Something about Madonna’s performance made me immediately think of Nancy Pelosi. (Do with that what you will.) Both women are legendary trailblazers in their own right, foundational to their respective worlds, and yet […]

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. There has justifiably been much attention paid to […]

This story was originally published by Canary Media and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Is Frito-Lay categorically refusing to buy potatoes grown on farmland that has hosted solar installations? No, the company says. That hasn’t stopped lawmakers in Michigan and Pennsylvania from spreading the false claim about one of the biggest purchasers of potatoes […]

Far-right podcaster Candace Owens made a surprise trip to Russia this week, where she spoke on a panel at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), a Davos-style event meant to build relationships between Russia and other world powers. Owens, who initially claimed that she was only taking a family vacation, used her trip to […]

OpenAI and its chatbot ChatGPT’s “success has not been earned; the rise of OpenAI is attributable to a web of deceit and the exploitation of users (including Floridians), leveraging their data and safety to boost OpenAI’s market value at unacceptable costs.” Earlier this week, Florida, a state led by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ right-wing, pro-business administration, […]

We’re less than a week away from the first match of the FIFA Men’s World Cup, with tensions mounting over the United States’ role as one of the host countries, and it remains to be seen just how the Department of Homeland Security will respond to what it deems threats—or how active ICE will be […]

Maybe I’m leaning too much into The Discourse, but here’s this mind-boggling thing happening on the internet with the internet’s latest supervillian. Mackenzie Shirilla is the—star? protagonist?—of a new documentary on Netflix about a deadly 2022 car wreck that claimed the lives of her boyfriend Dominic Russo and his friend Davion Flanagan. Shirilla, the driver, […]

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The Trump administration plans to dismantle a $368 million deep-sea observation system that has for more than a decade provided crucial data on ocean systems and climate change. In a notice, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced that it had “initiated descoping of the…