In the early morning, one can hear the birds perched on trees around the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University. Farther off, there are sounds of protest and counterprotest. But inside the camp itself—technically the second camp after the New York Police Department cleared out the first and caused even more national attention to focus […]

A year and a half after Mother Jones exposed how Oklahoma courts were imprisoning mothers for longer than their abusers, state lawmakers passed a bill that could allow some of those mothers’ sentences to be shortened. But this week, Gov. Kevin Stitt vetoed the legislation. In an award-winning investigation in 2022, I told the story […]

The first criminal trial of a former US president is underway, with Donald Trump facing 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to hush-money payments allegedly made in 2016 to cover up an affair he had with adult film star Stormy Daniels. Here’s the latest—the key updates and absurd moments—from the historic trial. Public birthday wishes […]

I became reacquainted with Raffi in the spring of 2020, around my son’s first birthday. These were the early days of the pandemic: People had barely stopped hoarding toilet paper; we’d started going to the car wash for fun. It was on one of these drives that I first burst into tears to Raffi’s “All […]

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The world’s 3,000 billionaires should pay a minimum 2 percent tax on their fast-growing wealth to raise about $313 billion a year for the global fight against poverty, inequality, and global heating, ministers from four leading economies have suggested. In a sign […]

Donald Trump is on trial in Manhattan facing 34 counts of falsifying business records as part of another crime: conspiring to influence the 2016 election. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg argues that, to squelch negative publicity that might hurt Trump’s 2016 campaign, Trump directed the creation of fake records to hide hush-money payments to women […]

On Thursday, the Supreme Court held oral arguments over former President Donald Trump’s claims that he enjoys absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for engaging in what he contends were his official duties while in office. And one justice, Samuel Alito, offered a particularly wild theory about how to preserve American democracy and the rule of […]

The attorney running the Republican National Committee’s “election integrity” effort has been criminally charged by the state of Arizona for her efforts to help Donald Trump steal the 2020 election. This turn of events highlights the Orwellian meaning of the phrase “election integrity,” as used by Trump and the Republican Party: An effort to win […]

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Campus organizers at three universities filed legal complaints on Monday arguing that their schools’ investments in planet-heating fossil fuels are illegal, the Guardian has learned. The students from Columbia University, Tulane University, and the University of Virginia each wrote to the […]

This story was produced by Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action. In 2018, the Akron, Ohio-based utility FirstEnergy donated $2.5 million to a Republican Governors Association-affiliated dark money group backing GOP nominee Mike DeWine in a competitive race for Ohio governor, according to newly released records. The records show […]

When House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) emerged onto the steps of Columbia University’s Low Memorial Library on Wednesday afternoon, he was greeted with a deafening sound: hundreds of booing students. Johnson had just emerged from meetings with Jewish students at the university to discuss what he, other Republicans, and some Democrats allege is rising antisemitism on campuses […]

John Cage, the influential composer and artist, is dead. So it’s technically impossible to know with absolute certainty how he would feel about the pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia University. But the question emerges after New York Times columnist John McWhorter, a music humanities and linguistics professor at Columbia, wrote that he was forced to stop students […]

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that presented the grim reality of the post-Roe v. Wade world the justices have created. Without a constitutional right to abortion, states are forcing women into grave yet preventable health crises by denying them emergency abortion care. And yet, it appeared that less than […]

In a little-noticed court filing earlier this month, federal prosecutors described Steve Bannon as a “co-conspirator” in a massive criminal fraud and racketeering case against a flamboyant, far-right Chinese fugitive, compounding the legal headaches of the former Donald Trump adviser. FBI agents in March 2023 arrested Guo Wengui, a self-styled anti-Chinese government activist Bannon once […]

Last November, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the most powerful pro-Israel lobbying group in Washington, announced a $100 million effort to unseat members of Congress who vocally supported calls for a ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza. AIPAC and its allies have flooded the spring and summer primaries of Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman, and […]

It’s been said so often it’s almost become a cliché: Donald Trump poses a threat to American democracy. But his authoritarian impulses and hate-encouraging demagoguery are far from the only peril for the nation. Conservatives and Republicans for years have been striving on multiple fronts to weaken democracy by suppressing voter rights and pushing for […]

The Supreme Court on Wednesday will consider its third major abortion case in two years—and the third brought with the help of a legal nonprofit attempting to infuse American life with its far-right brand of Christianity. Not only is the group, Alliance Defending Freedom, behind legislation to ban abortion, it is also increasingly representing state […]

The Supreme Court on Thursday will hear arguments over former President Donald Trump’s unprecedented and novel theory that former presidents are immune from criminal prosecution for anything that involved alleged “official acts” while in office. But this long-shot theory was only one component of Trump’s overall legal strategy; his main goal was to delay his […]

Jaelyn was 19 weeks and five days into a much-wanted pregnancy when the cramping began—slowly at first, then in an insistent rhythm that signaled she was in labor. Several excruciating hours later, emergency doctors delivered a heart-wrenching diagnosis. The amniotic sac was protruding from her cervix; her baby was doomed. “There’s nothing we can do,” […]

Eli. Underwood likes the experience of voting in person, but they now have to vote by mail. Underwood went to a Detroit church to cast a ballot in the 2022 general elections, but chronic health conditions meant the two flights of stairs to the basement taxed them badly; living with Long Covid as well, Underwood was […]