Their gatherings were like something you’d expect after war, or genocide. Halting voices. Silences. The hush of a confessional. But these weren’t soldiers—they were social workers. They spoke from their homes via the dispassionate confines of a Zoom conference. One woman talked softly about “apprehending” a 2-day-old baby, and recalled crying when she was praised for […]
Category: Mother Jones
It’s Now Clear: “Cop City” Is About Democracy
Last Wednesday, US District Judge Mark Cohen criticized Atlanta officials for refusing to verify over 100,000 petition signatures submitted in the effort to put a police training facility that has become known as “Cop City” up for a vote. Dubbed “Cop City” by Atlanta residents, this proposed $90 million facility would partially raze one of Atlanta’s few […]
Can the Media Meet the Challenge of the GOP’s Bogus Impeachment?
Editor’s note: 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. Plus, David Corn’s American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the […]
The Mainstream Media Still Hasn’t Learned Anything About Covering Donald Trump
“It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS,” then–CBS chairman Les Moonves famously said about Donald Trump during the 2016 election, epitomizing the toxic relationship between the media and Trump—they knew he was an existential threat to democracy, but as long as he boosted their ratings, no amount of coverage […]
New Report: One-Third of States Have an Election Denier Overseeing Elections
The 2022 midterm elections were in many ways a referendum on the future of American democracy, and in key states candidates who spread lies about the 2020 election and could have used their power to overturn future elections lost. In the six major battlegrounds where Donald Trump tried to reverse his defeat, election-denying candidates for […]
Texas Senate Acquits Impeached Attorney General Ken Paxton
When 70 percent of Texas House Republicans voted to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton in May, commentators expressed hope that the scandal-plagued lawyer would finally be held accountable for a multitude of alleged crimes—and perhaps most importantly, by members of his own party, who hold large majorities in the state legislature and who seem to […]
The Race for Romney’s Senate Replacement Looks Like a MAGA-Fest
When Sen. Mitt Romney replaced Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) in 2018, he was continuing a long tradition of relatively moderate Republican senators from Utah who were able to cross the aisle and get things done. (Utah hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1970.) That tradition is likely to end with him. Now that […]
Trump Schools Evangelicals on How to Talk About Abortion
In dueling presidential campaign speeches to Evangelical leaders Friday, former President Donald Trump sounded like the moderate Republican in the room, at least when it came to abortion. At the Family Research Council’s Pray Vote Stand conference in DC, the former president ticked off a long list of his pro-life accomplishments from his time in […]
Javier Zamora’s Fight Against the Pulitzer Prizes—and American Exceptionalism
On Tuesday, the Pulitzer Prize Board expanded the eligibility for the books, drama, and music awards by including artists who are not US citizens. The new policy, which begins in the 2025 cycle, will include “permanent residents of the United States and those who have made the United States their longtime primary home.” Over 2,500 […]
Meet the Democratic-Led DC Consulting Firm With an Offshoot That Tries to Elect Republicans
Rational 360, a high-powered Washington, DC-based strategic communications firm and digital agency, promises to use “innovative” means and a network that extends “deep into the Halls of Congress, the White House, and Fortune 500 boardrooms across the country” to advance the “mission-critical goals” of its clients, a roster of corporations, trade associations, military contractors, policy […]