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The Shocking Discovery That Suddenly Made Reparations Deeply Personal for One Woman
40 Acres and a Lie tells the history of an often-misunderstood government program that gave formerly enslaved people land titles, only to take the land back. Read more here and listen to a three-part audio investigation here. Ruth Wilson squinted through her browline glasses at the image of a smudged,...
A Warning Label for Social Media Could Also Save Kids From Gun Violence
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. On Monday, US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy called on Congress to require a warning label for social media platforms. The move is intended to battle a rising crisis of mental illness and suicide among the nation’s youth. Such a label from the top federal authority on public health also has the potential to reduce dangers from a specific trend: the insidious marketing of guns to kids.
A Brutal Heatwave Is About to Wallop Some 265 Million Americans
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Extreme heat has begun to hit the US, delivered by a high-pressure weather pattern that the federal weather prediction center says will be “potentially the longest experienced in decades for some locations.”
Conservative Media Conglomerate Amplifies Misleading Attacks on Biden’s Fitness
This story was originally published on Judd Legum’s Substack, Popular Information, to which you can subscribe here. This month, Sinclair Broadcast Group has flooded a vast network of local news websites with misleading articles suggesting that President Biden is mentally unfit for office. The articles are based on specious social media posts by the Republican National Committee (RNC), which are then repackaged to resemble news reports. The thinly disguised political attacks are then syndicated to dozens of local news websites owned by Sinclair, where they are given the imprimatur of mainstream media brands, including NBC, ABC, and CBS.
If You Want to Understand Trump’s Appeal, Look at John Gotti
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. When people talk about the most consequential elections of their lifetimes, you don’t hear many of them mention Bill Clinton’s race against Ross Perot and President George H.W. Bush in 1992. In When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s, out today, the writer John Ganz finds the early shoots of the Trump era amid the right-wing reshuffling during the first Bush administration. It was an awkward and tumultuous moment in American politics, sandwiched uncomfortably between the mythmaking of the Reagan era and the tabloid boomtimes of Bill Clinton. The book explores the parts of the ‘90s that ‘90s nostalgia leaves out, through the lens of the right-wing figures who never really won anything—until, decades later, their ideas finally broke through.
A New Biden Ad Is Highlighting Trump’s Criminal Conviction
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. In a new advertisement, President Joe Biden is highlighting the fact that his GOP opponent for the presidency is now a convicted felon—a first in American history. The ad begins with somber,...
Blood and Soil
40 Acres and a Lie tells the history of an often-misunderstood government program that gave formerly enslaved people land titles, only to take the land back. Read more revelatory stories here and listen to Reveal’s groundbreaking audio investigation here. This project is a collaboration between the Center for Public Integrity and the Center for Investigative Reporting.
Christian Nationalists Are Opening Private Schools. Taxpayers Are Funding Them.
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. Earlier this month, former President Donald Trump held his first campaign rally as a convicted felon at Dream City Church in Phoenix, Arizona, hosted by the arch-conservative student group Turning Point USA. This wasn’t Trump’s first appearance at Dream City Church; he also held a rally there with Turning Point USA in 2020. For events like this, it’s an ideal venue: A weekly attendance of around 21,000 believers makes this one of the largest churches not just in Arizona but in the nation.
Big Tech’s Energy Needs Are Growing So Fast That Power Grids Can’t Keep Up
This story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Big Tech’s appetite for energy is just about visible from the east coast of Scotland. Some 12 miles out to sea sits a wind farm, where each of the 60 giant turbines has blades roughly the length of an American football field. The utility companies behind the Moray West project had promised the site would be capable of generating enough electricity to power 1.3 million homes once completed. That was before Amazon stepped in.
This Biologist Panned a “Mosquito Eradicator” Product. Its Maker Bit Back.
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. In 2019, Colin Purrington, an evolutionary biologist, was scrolling through the internet when he came across something that would change his life. Purrington, 57, who left a professor position at Swarthmore College in...
Kyle Rittenhouse, Killer of Two, Cheers as Supreme Court Rescinds Bump Stock Ban
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. Gun rights activist Kyle Rittenhouse wants you to know that he’s very pleased with the Supreme Court, after the justices on Friday overturned a federal ban on bump stocks—devices that are attached to semi-automatic firearms to make them shoot as quickly as machine guns.
MAGA Youth Activist Charlie Kirk’s Big Conservative Shindig Is Full of Old Folks
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. Turning Point USA, which casts itself as a conservative political youth movement, appears to be aging. Founded in 2012 by Charlie Kirk, then 18, TPUSA quickly won the backing of rich Republican megadonors eager to try to recapture young voters, who overwhelmingly had been supporting Democrats. The group has since become a staple on college campuses, where it decries “cancel culture” and warns students of encroaching socialism, and has been a major player in Trump world.
US Catholic Bishops Finally Apologize for Church’s Role in Harming Kids at Indigenous Boarding Schools
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops, which creates policies for the church in the United States, formally apologized on Friday for the church’s role in traumatizing Native American children at boarding schools until the mid-1900s. It’s “the most direct expression of regret to date” by church officials for forcibly assimilating Indigenous kids into white culture, according to the Washington Post, whose investigative reporters recently documented the widespread sexual abuse by priests and nuns at these schools.
This Week’s Episode of Reveal: 40 Acres and a Lie (Part 1 of 3)
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. Patricia Bailey’s four-bedroom home sits high among the trees in lush Edisto Island, South Carolina. It’s a peaceful place where her body healed from multiple sclerosis. It’s also the source of her generational wealth.
These UK Tourists Are Down for Swimming With Sharks—Would You Be?
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. We have only been waiting in the grey Atlantic swell a few moments when the first flash of metallic blue appears in the water. A blue shark, a few miles from the coast of Penzance in Cornwall, emerges from the depths. It is time to get in the water—but part of my brain rebels.
Citing Health Concerns, Some Jewish New Yorkers Push Back Against Proposed Mask Ban
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. The day after the North Carolina legislature passed a bill restricting the use of masks, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul alarmed disability rights advocates when she announced that she was considering her own mask legislation. In an interview with CNN, Hochul indicated that such an effort to limit the use of face coverings would come in response to masked individuals “threatening or intimidating” Jewish people. Hochul’s proposal followed incidents of intimidation and vandalism, including a widely circulated video of anti-Israel protesters in a New York City subway car chanting, “Raise your hand if you’re a Zionist. This is your chance to get out.”
Fani Willis Appears to Fire Back at Rudy Giuliani’s “Ho” Attack
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. Last Friday, my colleague Stephanie Mencimer had the distinct honor—or misfortune—of witnessing Rudy Giuliani’s apparent attempt to convince the Christian right to help him amid his dire financial troubles. That effort saw Giuliani airing crude, conspiratorial rhetoric before the faithful which at one point, saw Giuliani calling Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney in Donald Trump’s Georgia case, a “ho.”
The Supreme Court Basically Legalizes Machine Guns
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. In 2017, it took a shooter 10 minutes to spray more than 1,000 rounds into a crowd watching a Las Vegas concert. He murdered 58 people and injured 500 more in America’s deadliest mass shooting. He did this with a bump stock, an accessory that, for all intents and purposes, transforms semi-automatic rifles into machine guns. Today, the Supreme Court’s GOP-appointed justices legalized bump stocks. Any gun owner can now possess this weapon of mass carnage.
Biden’s Border Closure Will Leave Migrants Vulnerable to Deadly Heat
This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. With much of the southwest baking under record temperatures, immigrants’ rights advocates worry President Joe Biden’s decision to effectively close the border to asylum seekers for the foreseeable future will endanger lives and further marginalize climate-displaced people seeking refuge in the US.
The Most Under-Covered Story of 2024: Trump and Right-Wing Extremism
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 of Our Land here.
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