Author: Kiera Butler

The Christian Groups Fighting Against the Indian Child Welfare Act

Editor’s note: This short piece accompanied “Forever Home” in the March/April 2023 print edition of Mother Jones.  This spring, the US Supreme Court will hear a case that could decide the future of the Indian Child Welfare Act, the 1978 landmark law that strengthened tribes’ rights to keep Native children out of the foster care […]

Meet Ron DeSantis’ New “Public Health Integrity Committee”

Earlier this week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis called for a grand jury to investigate “wrongdoing” on the part of pharmaceutical companies and government officials who promoted Covid-19 vaccines. DeSantis detailed his grand jury plans during a highly-publicized press conference—the kind that has become a trademark of his tenure as governor. During the conference, he also […]

Why Did Florida Divest Billions From BlackRock? A “Woke” Conspiracy Theory.

On December 1, the Florida Treasury announced it would divest $2 billion worth of state funds from the financial services company BlackRock. The firm, Florida chief financial officer Jimmy Patronis alleged, didn’t have its investors’ best interests in mind. “Florida’s Treasury Division is divesting from BlackRock because they have openly stated they’ve got other goals than […]

Hospitals Are Full of Kids Sick With RSV—And Anti-Vaxxers Think It’s a Hoax

Across the country, children’s hospitals are reporting record numbers of admissions—not just from Covid, but also from a host of other seasonal respiratory viruses. Particularly worrisome among these is respiratory syncytial virus, more commonly known as RSV. The illness, which can make breathing difficult for young children and elderly adults, can be fatal, typically killing […]

Polio? Measles? Florida Is Flirting With an Anti-Vaccine Apocalypse

Dr. Mobeen Rathore has spent the better part of his career trying to protect the children in his practice from contracting deadly diseases like measles, whooping cough, and polio. As chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and Immunology at the University of Florida’s College of Medicine, Rathore remembers a time—just a few decades […]

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s District Is Bluer Than You’d Think

Deep in northwest Georgia, in what was once a patchwork of forest and farms, sits Paulding County, a quiet collection of towns that straddle two worlds. Less than an hour’s drive southeast is the sprawl and thrum of Atlanta; just to the north are the state’s mountainous rural communities, where life still moves at a […]

DeSantis Is Slamming Covid Vaccines. Here’s Why.

It wasn’t so long ago that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was publicly singing the praises of Covid vaccines. “If you are vaccinated—fully vaccinated—the chance of you getting seriously ill or dying from Covid is effectively zero,” he said at a July 2021 press conference. “These vaccines are saving lives.” Fast forward a year or so […]

Moms Against Libraries

During a Moms for Liberty summit session called Gender Ideology in Our Schools, a presenter introduced a term I’d never heard before: “rapid-onset gender dysphoria.” She cited the work of a former Brown University physician and researcher named Lisa Littman, who, in a 2018 study published in the journal PLOS One, had argued that the […]