Mother Jones
Manchin Is Considering Leaving the Democratic Party—and He Has an Exit Plan
- Title
- Manchin Is Considering Leaving the Democratic Party—and He Has an Exit Plan
- Date posted
- 2 years ago
- Description
- ► Read the full article at Mother Jones: https://bit.ly/3m10fwc
Today, Mother Jones published an explosive new scoop by our Washington, DC, bureau chief, David Corn: In recent days, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has told associates that he is considering leaving the Democratic Party. He has even prepared a two-point exit plan.
Manchin said he was prepared to bolt earlier this week and even mentioned the possibility to President Joe Biden. But after encouraging conversations with fellow Democrats, he didn’t yet see a reason to take the step. Still, he has informed associates that because he is so out of sync with the Democratic Party, he believes it is likely he will leave the party by November 2022.
A big part of the decision rests with whether Biden and his colleagues on Capitol Hill can agree to his demand to cut the size of the social infrastructure bill. Manchin has said that if this were to happen, he would leave his party and declare hims...
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- "You Better Not F*ck in Texas": Texas abortion ban protest song by Jill Sobule
- Date posted
- 2 years ago
- Description
- Jill Sobule is an acclaimed singer-songwriter who had a few cool hits in the 1990s, including, “I Kissed a Girl.” Her songs are witty, sassy, and, occasionally, heart-breaking. (Check out “Mexican Wrestler.”) From time to time, she gets topical, such as with her wry attack on jingoism, “America Back.” And she recently grabbed her pen and guitar to lash back at the extreme new Texas law banning abortions after six weeks (with no exceptions) and allowing anyone to sue abortion providers and people who assist women obtaining abortions. (On Wednesday, a federal judge blocked implementation of the law.) Here is the world premiere of Sobule’s “You Better Not F*ck in Texas”:
This video originally appeared in "This Land," a newsletter from Mother Jones' Washington DC bureau chief David Corn. About twice a week, David sends an exclusive email that, as you'd expect, covers the news of the day and delivers his no-BS analysis. But it's all the unexpected features—...
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- Robinhood’s design won awards. Now, it’s the problem.
- Date posted
- 3 years ago
- Description
- Mother Jones senior digital producer Mark Helenowski has used the Robinhood trading app since 2015, the year it launched. Like millions of others, he was drawn by the promise of commission-free trades and the lack of account minimums. Also, the design: It was approachable, simple, and fun: Clean-lined, with interactive animations, a modern color palette, and punctuated, at the time, with colorful confetti explosions.
But that award-winning design is part of the reason critics are slamming Robinhood. The company has been on something of a rollercoaster over the past year. In January, the company halted trading on Gamestop stock after it was driven to stratospheric levels by online investors, resulting in headline-grabbing public backlash and a Congressional inquiry. It’s been hit with record-breaking fines from regulatory bodies. In late August, Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler announced that a ban targeting a controversial practice called “payment ...
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- NEW EVIDENCE: Trump Rioters Brought Guns to the Capitol
- Date posted
- 3 years ago
- Description
- ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/
For more than eight months, Republican lawmakers have sought to rewrite the harrowing events of January 6.
They have repeatedly whitewashed the assault on the US Capitol despite copious footage showing mobs of Trump supporters ransacking Congress, assaulting journalists, threatening to kill Vice President Mike Pence, and viciously attacking scores of police officers with chemical spray, fire extinguishers, hockey sticks, and flagpoles.
“It was not an insurrection,” Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia declared at a House hearing in May, suggesting that most participants were engaged in “a normal tourist visit.”
“By and large it was peaceful protest,” said Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin after the May hearings.
This attempted political cover-up has hinged on another specific claim: that no one who stormed the Capitol had guns.
“This didn’t se...
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- The Texas Abortion Ban and Right-wing Vigilantism
- Date posted
- 3 years ago
- Description
- Texas banned abortions after six weeks—when many still don't know they're pregnant. But as reporter Becca Andrews explains, this has not only been a long time coming, it's also part of a larger theme of vigilantism in the Republican party.
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- Title
- How the Supreme Court green-lit Republican attacks on voting rights
- Date posted
- 3 years ago
- Description
- ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/
On June 25, 2013, Chief Justice John Roberts gutted a key section of the Voting Rights Act, ruling that states with a long history of voting discrimination no longer needed to get federal approval for changes to their election procedures.
“Things have changed dramatically” since the law’s enactment in 1965, Roberts wrote in Shelby County v. Holder, implying that there was no reason to think those states would pass discriminatory voting restrictions in the future.
But since that decision—which Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg compared to “throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet”—new voter suppression laws have proliferated across the country. Twenty-six states have enacted new restrictions on voting since the Shelby ruling, according to an analysis by Mother Jones on the eighth anniversary of the decision, based on data provided by the Brenn...
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- REVEALED: The “Dark Money” Playbook for Rigging US Elections
- Date posted
- 3 years ago
- Description
- ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/
Last week, Mother Jones and the watchdog group Documented broke the story of a top conservative dark money group boasting to donors about writing laws restricting access to the ballot in key battleground states such as Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, and Texas.
“In some cases, we actually draft them for them,” Jessica Anderson, the executive director of Heritage Action for America, a sister organization of the Heritage Foundation, told the foundation’s donors at an April 22 gathering in Tucson, “or we have a sentinel on our behalf give them the model legislation so it has that grassroots, from-the-bottom-up type of vibe.”
Mother Jones released a three-minute excerpt of the most explosive moments from the leaked video, detailing a massive right-wing effort to draft and pass model bills restricting voting access, which Anderson said was intended to “right the wrongs of November.”...
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- Leaked Video: Dark Money Group Is Writing Voter Suppression Laws
- Date posted
- 3 years ago
- Description
- ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/
In a private meeting last month with big-money donors, the head of a top conservative group boasted that her outfit had crafted the new voter suppression law in Georgia and was doing the same with similar bills for Republican state legislators across the country. “In some cases, we actually draft them for them,” she said, “or we have a sentinel on our behalf give them the model legislation so it has that grassroots, from-the-bottom-up type of vibe.”
The Georgia law had “eight key provisions that Heritage recommended,” Jessica Anderson, the executive director of Heritage Action for America, a sister organization of the Heritage Foundation, told the foundation’s donors at an April 22 gathering in Tucson, in a recording obtained by the watchdog group Documented and shared with Mother Jones. Those included policies severely restricting mail ballot drop boxes, preventing election officia...
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- Watch Donald Trump, Jr. Praise Stephanie Winston Wolkoff
- Date posted
- 3 years ago
- Description
- Watch Mother Jones Washington DC Bureau Chief David Corn analyze this newly unearthed tape: https://youtu.be/BtlawSTyfKI
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Mother Jones obtained documents and a video indicating that Donald Trump Jr. apparently made false statements in his sworn testimony in the Trump inauguration scandal lawsuit. Trump Jr. said in sworn testimony he didn’t know and “had no involvement with” the lead producer of his father’s inaugural events. But the tape suggests otherwise.
Read Corn's full investigation, here: https://bit.ly/2Pu2F92
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- Newly Obtained Video Shows Trump Jr. Apparently Contradicting His Own Sworn Testimony
- Date posted
- 3 years ago
- Description
- ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://bit.ly/2Pu2F92
On February 11, Donald Trump Jr. gave a video deposition. He swore to tell the truth. But documents and a video obtained by Mother Jones—and recent legal filings—indicate that his testimony on key points was not accurate.
The matter at hand was a lawsuit filed in 2020 against Donald Trump’s inauguration committee and the Trump Organization by Karl Racine, the attorney general of Washington, DC. The suit claims that the inauguration committee misused charitable funds to enrich the Trump family. Racine has taken depositions from two of Trump’s adult children, Ivanka and Donald Jr., among other officials. Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a top producer for the inauguration committee, was deposed as a lead witness cooperating with the investigation.
One of the clearest instances of Trump Jr. not testifying accurately came when he was asked if he knew Winston Wolkoff. He replied, “I know of...
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- Here's How Oath Keepers "Train" to #Stopantifa
- Date posted
- 3 years ago
- Description
- ► Read the full article at Mother Jones: https://bit.ly/3rmv5yF
Federal prosecutors have charged 10 members of the far-right Oath Keepers with conspiring to storm the US Capitol on January 6 and allege that militia members prepared for the “operation” by “attending or scheduling trainings to learn paramilitary combat tactics.” Video and images reviewed by Mother Jones show that three of the those indicted Oath Keepers attended two “gunfight oriented training” sessions last fall at the Ares Firearms Training Facility in Leesburg, Florida.
Prosecutors have not cited these specific trainings, held before Election Day, on September 20 and October 25, in documents charging Oath Keepers. But the sessions are notable. In the first, an instructor coached the three militia members and others on how to “drop” adversaries by shooting them in the heart, lungs, or head. The instructor, a Florida resident named Andrew Smrecek, who describes himself as a f...
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- FULL: 13-minute Capitol Insurrection Video from Trump's Second Impeachment
- Date posted
- 3 years ago
- Description
- 🎥 WATCH: Our insurrectionist investigation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ79PBr6seQ
🎥 WATCH: Trump Made This Happen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s56aQFykD1E
The second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump kicked off on Tuesday with a powerful, unflinching video montage chronicling the events leading up to the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol attack—and the harrowing violence that ensued once pro-Trump insurrectionists stormed the Capitol building.
The video, presented by Democrats’ lead impeachment manager Jamie Raskin as a straight, “just the facts” play-by-play of the deadly event, was immediately damning, even for those well-acquainted with the most familiar images from the murderous attack. It also included Trump’s remarks encouraging his supporters to take matters into their own hands while he repeated his false claims that the election had been stolen from him. “We love you,” Trump is seen telling the insurrectionist...
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- 13 Accused Capitol Rioters: Trump Incited Us
- Date posted
- 3 years ago
- Description
- ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/
Since Donald Trump left office, most Republicans in Congress have backed away from holding him responsible for inciting the insurrection on January 6. Yet, with Trump’s impeachment trial, Democrats are set to highlight broad evidence of how the former president ignited the mob—some of whose participants said explicitly that Trump motivated them to act.
According to our investigation, of the 194 federal criminal cases brought against insurrectionists so far, at least 13 people charged cited Trump explicitly as the reason they marched on the Capitol. At least three suspects who said Trump compelled them to join the siege were seen in video footage amid violent altercations: One who allegedly struck a police officer with a fire extinguisher, another who allegedly struck an officer with a baseball bat, and another who was among a group breaching the Speaker’s Lobby doors just before one pro-Trump...
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- The Coffee Brand Beloved by Domestic Extremists
- Date posted
- 3 years ago
- Description
- ► Read the full article at Mother Jones: https://bit.ly/39Ss1ot
Black Rifle is, at heart, a coffee company. But unlike the vast majority of coffee companies, it markets its beans with a highly militaristic branding that leans on gun-heavy, special-ops themed photoshoots with goofy product placement. Of course, guns and coffee don’t really have a lot in common. A shooting range session might leave you amped like back-to-back espressos, but that’s about it. One is a liquid and the other is a gun. You drink one, and you fire bullets at over 1,000 miles an hour out of the other. They aren’t even strange bedfellows—they are two separate things that Black Rifle Coffee Company has smashed together.
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- Title
- Stop the Steal Organizer Called for “Execution” of Trump’s Foes
- Date posted
- 3 years ago
- Description
- ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/
Weeks before the murderous mob of insurrectionists stormed the US Capitol on January 6 to prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory, a leader of the so-called Stop the Steal movement stood before a crowd of angry Donald Trump loyalists in California and called for the “execution” of those who had supposedly plotted against Trump. Afterward, he posted a video of his demand for blood on YouTube.
On December 12, Trump supporters, ahead of the official counting of electoral votes, staged protests across the country, with the main demonstration in Washington leading to violence, as the Proud Boys rampaged through the district and clashed with Antifa activists. A smaller gathering occurred in Huntington Beach, California. A hundred or so Trump devotees, some waving Trump and “Fuck Biden” flags, assembled at the town’s picturesque pier. The man leading the protest was Alan...
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- Marjorie Taylor Greene: "It's Earned With the Price of Blood"
- Date posted
- 3 years ago
- Description
- 📆 UPDATE: Rep. Greene was shown this video in a hearing in April 2022. Here's how she reacted: https://youtu.be/9F4pGVk6VM4
► Read the full article at Mother Jones: https://bit.ly/3k2J1wn
Evidence continues to emerge that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has over the past several years peddled deranged conspiracy theories and endorsed violence against perceived political enemies.
The latest revelations this week about the newly elected Republican congresswoman included her suggesting in videos and online comments that the Sandy Hook and Parkland mass shootings were hoaxes and promoting claims that Hillary Clinton gruesomely murdered children. Content from Greene’s social media pages uncovered by CNN and others also showed her endorsing calls to execute FBI agents deemed disloyal to President Donald Trump and to target top Democrats, including “a bullet to the head” for Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
On Twitter, Greene called...
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- Watch Amanda Gorman’s Moving Inauguration Poem
- Date posted
- 3 years ago
- Description
- ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/
America's youngest Poet Laureate moved the country during Biden's inauguration. You have to watch.
#AmandaGorman #JoeBiden #Inauguration #Poem
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- In Conversation with Dr. Seema Yasmin
- Date posted
- 3 years ago
- Description
- Join Dr. Seema Yasmin and Mother Jones' Kiera Butler for an important conversation about the viral rumors that plague the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nearly a year since the COVID-19 pandemic transformed our lives, there is still so much more we have to learn about the virus. Meanwhile, misinformation continues to flood our social feeds and personal circles, making it even more challenging to navigate our health and safety.
As we await vaccines, treatments, and improvements in public health leadership, join Emmy Award-winning journalist, epidemiologist, medical doctor, and author of the upcoming book, Viral BS (Jan. 12, 2021), Dr. Seema Yasmin and Mother Jones senior editor Kiera Butler as they discuss why viral rumors about coronavirus are so persistent, how the Biden administration can combat misinformation, and how we can stop the spread of unfounded rumors in our own communities.
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- Student Scientist's Vaccine Video Goes Viral
- Date posted
- 3 years ago
- Description
- ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/
Better science communication can help combat the coronavirus pandemic. But as Mother Jones has reported since the beginning of the outbreak, scientists are frustrated by the lack of coordination and coherence in the Trump Administration’s public health messaging. “The government is missing a huge opportunity in not using social media as a means to get people aligned on COVID messaging,” a microbiologist Jessica Malaty Rivera told us in November. “Science communication just can’t be an afterthought,” said Yale epidemiologist and science messaging expert Saad Omer.
The Trump administration could learn a thing or two from Rob Swanda, a 26-year-old PhD student at Cornell, whose social media talents have earned him overnight science communication stardom.
When Swanda first created his viral video explaining the mRNA technology used in two coronavirus vaccines, he had a smaller...
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- Lindsey Graham's Hypocrisy: A 5-Act Tragedy
- Date posted
- 3 years ago
- Description
- ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/
South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham used to be dismissive of Donald Trump—like other Republicans who thought Candidate Trump was a flash in the pan, an aberration to be laughed off or ridiculed. In 2015, Graham appeared on the channel he’s called “fake news,” CNN. “There’s only one way to make America great again,” he said. “Tell Donald Trump to go to hell.”
As Trump’s violent mob descended onto the Capitol on January 6, many of Trump’s chief enablers have tried to gaslight their way into back into America’s good graces—including Graham. After Biden’s convincing win in November, 2020, Graham was a strident supporter of Trump’s big lie that there was widespread fraud, and became an outspoken attack dog for the president on cable television. “President Trump should not concede,” Graham said in November, before deploying full-blown “push back” and “fight” ...
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- The culmination of Trumpism: MAGA riots at the Capitol
- Date posted
- 3 years ago
- Description
- ► Read the full article at Mother Jones: https://bit.ly/35iTpJr
"This is what Donald Trump has unleashed upon the United States," writes our D.C. bureau chief David Corn, on a day that has left the nation reeling from a right-wing extremist siege of Congress. "An unprecedented act of domestic terrorism."
The attack on the Capitol, Corn argues, is the culmination of Trumpism, and the GOP must own its grotesque results. This video connects the dots between Trump's lethal acts of incitement across the past four years—reaching all the way back to his inauguration—and the crisis unleashed on Washington D.C. today. It shows how Trump has sown division and whipped up his cultish followers with lies, conspiracy theories, and an endless number of fake bogeymen in the form of Antifa, BLM, and even Republican election officials.
As recently as today, Trump told his supporters that the 2020 election was a grave crime and that Republicans and Democrats ...
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- Here's what $1.7 trillion in student debt looks like
- Date posted
- 3 years ago
- Description
- ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://bit.ly/38x79RV
$1.7 trillion. That’s the amount of outstanding student debt in the United States—for now.
But don’t blink: That number is ballooning even as you read this sentence. Since the Great Recession took hold in 2008, student debt has been among the fastest-growing types of debt for everyday Americans. It's growing faster than mortgages, auto loans, and credit card debt.
The costs will be enormous for any action, or lack thereof, and these unfathomably large figures are anything but human-scale. But we know a thing or two about visualizing extreme sums of money. For a sense of just how much is involved here, and how it compares with other mind-blowing sums—$1 million per day since the birth of Jesus adds up to a measly $737 billion—watch our animation above. It's our largest visualization to date.
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For more award-winning independent reporting, visit ...
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- Watch a Georgia Democrat Takedown a Pro-Trump Voting "Expert"
- Date posted
- 3 years ago
- Description
- ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/
Matt Braynard, a onetime Trump campaign operative, has produced analyses of the 2020 vote in swing states that claim massive amounts of illegal votes were cast. He has testified alongside Rudy Giuliani, as the personal lawyer for Donald Trump's crusades to overturn the election. Braynard’s work has been cited in a number of GOP lawsuits seeking to nullify the election in key states. He has raised nearly $700,000 for his so-called “Voter Integrity Project,” and he has been paid handsomely to serve as an expert witness on voting data in several of the court cases. But on Thursday morning, he and his research were eviscerated by a Georgia state representative during an “elections investigative hearing” mounted by Republicans in the state House of Representatives.
This work has brought in a flood of dollars. Braynard says that the money donated to his project will only be used to cover its ...
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- LIVE Election Special: Biden Wins
- Date posted
- 3 years ago
- Description
- It’s over: Joe Biden is projected to become the 46th President of the United States of America. A fiercely fought election set against a devastating global pandemic ended up producing a historic voter turnout, and a nail-biting count that dragged out for days. Now, Biden, and his barrier-breaking presumptive Vice President, Kamala Harris—the first Black woman, and first woman of Indian descent to hold the position—will take office amid multiple national crises and deep partisan divides. Join Mother Jones journalists for this special livestream event as they discuss the extraordinary circumstances surrounding the 2020 election: a national reckoning on race, nearly a quarter of a million American deaths, and the direct attacks on democracy itself by the sitting president.
Washington Bureau Chief David Corn joins Mother Jones Podcast host Jamilah King to break it all down: What legal challenges might a Biden Administration face from Donald Trump during his lame-duck te...
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- LIVE Election Special: Now We Wait
- Date posted
- 3 years ago
- Description
- The Mother Jones Podcast is going live with our "Day After" election special: You'll hear about how to understand what happened throughout this drag-out fight to 270 electoral votes, and where to look next for clarity in the final count, as the president fumes and threatens to steal the vote.
And we'll talk about the big picture: So, now we wait. This is the scenario that many were worried about: No clear outcome on the last day of voting. Instead, we'll have to wait for days, possibly weeks, depending on how vote counting and court battles play out. This isn't a shocker. The shift to mail-in ballots in many states, due to the pandemic, meant it was unlikely a winner could be declared within hours of polls closing. And though Trump had signaled he might try to claim victory in the midst of uncertainty, responsible folks realized the process would likely move forward and Americans would have to wait. In the coming days, you'll need that resolve. But the team here at Mother ...
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- Is there room for Black people in the GOP?
- Date posted
- 3 years ago
- Description
- ► Read the full article at Mother Jones: https://bit.ly/3eaH6SG
Even during more ordinary times, writes Mother Jones reporter Nathalie Baptiste, Black Republicans are often approached like a sideshow within their own party, put on display by their white, uh, confederates as a demonstration of the GOP’s broadmindedness.
Baptiste wanted to understand Black Republican voters. From Candace Owens to Donald Trump, Baptiste quickly summarizes how the Republican party has strayed far from Lincoln, and what it means for the 2020 election. Take a look and give a listen.
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- In Conversation with Congressman Jamie Raskin
- Date posted
- 3 years ago
- Description
- US Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) has been a longtime champion of oversight, accountability, and justice in our country. A former constitutional law professor and member of the Maryland legislature, Raskin serves on the House Judiciary Committee, the Committee on Oversight and Reform, the Committee on House Administration, and the House Committee on Rules. He chairs the Oversight Committee’s subcommittee on civil rights and civil liberties, where he has investigated the Trump administration’s politicization of the census, the infiltration of law enforcement by white supremacists, and the treatment of immigrants at for-profit detention centers. Earlier this month, Raskin and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi introduced legislation to create a bipartisan commission to determine presidential fitness “in the event of physical or psychological incapacity.”
As we near Election Day 2020, join Rep. Jamie Raskin and Mother Jones’ deputy Washington, DC, bureau chief, Daniel Schulman, ...
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- It All Comes Down to This: A Mother Jones Podcast LIVE Event
- Date posted
- 3 years ago
- Description
- Exactly one week before the most important election of our lifetimes, the Mother Jones Podcast team did something it’s never done before: a live show.
Join host Jamilah King for this special livestreamed taping of the award-winning weekly podcast, featuring a cast of Mother Jones specialists telling you exactly what you need to know about this final sprint: the tide of disinformation, threats to your voting rights, what we’re seeing on the ground in battleground states, and the next phase in the fight for America’s future.
With democracy on the line, this is your chance to go inside the Mother Jones virtual newsroom. We’re almost there. It’s now or never.
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- Title
- Sanctuary
- Date posted
- 3 years ago
- Description
- ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/
When ex-Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale was hospitalized last month after alleged threats of self-harm, Fort Lauderdale police confiscated 10 firearms from his home and began a legal process to try to keep those guns away from Pascale for a longer time under Florida's "red flag" law, enacted after the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. Red flag laws like Florida's give authorities varying abilities to temporarily seize guns from someone deemed to be an immediate threat to themselves or others. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have adopted such laws—but not without fierce opposition from gun rights groups.
One such battleground is Colorado, which became the 17th state to enact a red flag law earlier this year, after voters elected Democratic majorities to both houses of the state legislature. In the aftermath, nearly half of the state's count...
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- One Shot One Kill
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- ► RELATED: Listen to the Neal family on a recent episode of the Mother Jones Podcast: https://bit.ly/3lLm5Az
The most meaningful disagreements often happen with the people you love the most—about the things you care the most about. For the Neal family, a family of hunters in rural Tennessee, one mid-hunt conversation unspools into a revealing exploration of what it means to be both a hunter and gun owner in the United States in 2020.
As the exchange between the men—66-year-old patriarch John, and sons Fisher, 36, and Tyler, 33—turns to the Second Amendment, the trip becomes an opportunity for Peabody-nominated filmmaker Nancy Schwartzman to train her lens on how one of America’s most fraught cultural battles, gun control, plays out in a single family.
“In almost all situations, hunting with the semi-automatic is not necessary,” Tyler Neal says in the film, as the family shares a flask and huddles around a fire in their camo hunting g...
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- Protecting Our Vote with Eric Holder and Ari Berman
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- Less than a month away from Election Day 2020, the right to vote is still under attack. From states passing new voter suppression laws to gerrymandering efforts that manipulate district lines, it has become increasingly difficult for voters to exercise their democratic rights. And now there are even more barriers to casting our vote amidst a nationwide pandemic.
Yet a surge in civic action to protect these rights is building momentum, and former US Attorney General Eric Holder is leading the fight against unfair voting maps. Join AG Holder and Mother Jones senior reporter Ari Berman as they discuss the state of voting rights just weeks before Election 2020 and other timely topics including how the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg will affect Supreme Court decisions on voting, the fight over voting rules in key swing states, and how the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting how Americans cast their ballots.
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- Trump Is Airlifted to Hospital after Testing Positive for COVID-19
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- ► Read the full article at Mother Jones: https://bit.ly/30taNbU
President Donald Trump was airlifted to Washington D.C.’s Walter Reed Military Medical Center Friday evening on Marine One after announcing he was sick with COVID-19 just hours earlier. The president’s hospitalization marked an escalation in his medical care, at the end of a day in which White House officials downplayed the severity of his illness by projecting the image of a man still at work,and in control. The White House said that his stay at Walter Reed will last several days. Earlier, the president’s doctor announced that he had received an experimental antibody drug.
Trump emerged from the White House around 6:15pm on foot. He waved at reporters and gave a thumbs up, before boarding the helicopter for the short twilight flight, a historic and bracing visual moment for a presidency that has staked out a denialist position on the virus since the start of the pandemic. He didn’t tak...
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- In Conversation with Pastor Mike McBride and Reverend Ben McBride
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- Brothers Pastor Michael McBride and Reverend Ben McBride are national leaders in the movement to reduce gun violence with community-centered and data-driven public health approaches. In Oakland, California, they helped launch a nationally acclaimed strategy that cut shootings in half over several years, not by ramping up arrests, but by investing in social services and connecting young men in street groups with life coaches who grew up in similar neighborhoods. Police departments in cities around the country—from Portland to Chicago to New York—have sent officials to California to observe the model.
Amid a nationwide conversation about police brutality, public safety, and racial justice, and as shootings in many cities spike during the pandemic, join Pastor Mike, Reverend Ben, and Mother Jones reporter Samantha Michaels as they discuss the brothers’ revolutionary work. They’ll talk about how cities can re-envision their public safety systems, what a world without p...
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- REVEALED: Trump’s hidden video deposition in Trump University fraud case
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- 📝 Full analysis on the Trump University deposition: https://www.motherjones.com/deposition
🗣 Full Trump “hot-mic” tape with commentary: https://youtu.be/SqNtc-t0Cr0
📼 Trump deposition "hot-mic” tape highlights: https://youtu.be/fZw228yu0hI
During the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump was burdened with federal lawsuits that accused him and his Trump University of defrauding students who had paid thousands of dollars to learn the supposed secrets of Trump’s financial success. As part of the lawsuit, Trump sat for a contentious six-hour deposition in Trump Tower on December 10, 2015. He subsequently managed to get the court to seal the video recording of the session.
But Mother Jones has now obtained the full video of Trump’s deposition. The written transcript of the session was released in June 2016, but the video version includes several exchanges that likely would have not played well for Trump if they had become public when he was cha...
- Title
- FULL: Breaking down the Trump "hot-mic" tape with David Corn
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- 📼 Highlights from the “hot-mic” tape: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZw228yu0hI
📼🗣 Full “hot-mic” tape with commentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqNtc-t0Cr0
📼🤫 Full “hot-mic” tape without commentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRX0Cz8hvMA
📖 Read the full article at Mother Jones: https://bit.ly/2Z3Rgyg
00:00 Introduction
00:20 Tape begins
02:42 Trump talks about the lawsuit
05:08 Trump University background
06:24 Talking about the judge
07:25 “What about the Spanish thing?”
09:27 Trump’s chances of winning the case
12:18 Talking tactics
16:30 Tom Barrack’s marriage: “Is she beautiful?”
18:35 How strong is the case?
22:14 Trump defends Trump University
23:13 Trump claim: threatening to sue the BBB
27:04 Preparing to continue the deposition
27:56 Outro
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Last week, during the Hatch Act-shatter...
- Title
- Original Hot-Mic Video from Donald Trump’s 2015 Fraud Case Deposition
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- 📼 Highlights from the “hot-mic” tape: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZw228yu0hI
📼🗣 Full “hot-mic” tape with commentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqNtc-t0Cr0
📼🤫 Full “hot-mic” tape without commentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRX0Cz8hvMA
📖 Read the full article at Mother Jones: https://bit.ly/2Z3Rgyg
--
On December 10, 2015, Donald Trump took time off from campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination to spend about seven hours sitting for a videotaped deposition in a lawsuit alleging that he and his Trump University had defrauded people who had spent thousands of dollars to learn the secrets of his financial success. Presumably unbeknown to the future president or his lawyer, Daniel Petrocelli, the camera kept rolling during a break in proceedings. For 13 minutes, Trump and Petrocelli discussed the case, and Trump can be heard boasting that he threatened the Better Business Bureau ...
- Title
- HIGHLIGHTS: Hot-Mic Video of Trump From a Fraud Case Deposition
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- 📼 Highlights from the “hot-mic” tape: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZw228yu0hI
📼🗣 Full “hot-mic” tape with commentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqNtc-t0Cr0
📼🤫 Full “hot-mic” tape without commentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRX0Cz8hvMA
📖 Read the full article at Mother Jones: https://bit.ly/2Z3Rgyg
--
On December 10, 2015, Donald Trump took time off from campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination to spend about seven hours sitting for a videotaped deposition in a lawsuit alleging that he and his Trump University had defrauded people who had spent thousands of dollars to learn the secrets of his financial success. Presumably unbeknown to the future president or his lawyer, Daniel Petrocelli, the camera kept rolling during a break in proceedings. For 13 minutes, Trump and Petrocelli discussed the case, and Trump can be heard boasting that he threatened the Better Business Bureau ...
- Title
- Progressive Prosecutor Satana Deberry Made History. Now the Real Fight Begins.
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/
When Satana Deberry took the oath of office as district attorney of Durham County, North Carolina, in January 2019, it was a momentous occasion—for the city of Durham, and for her, as a Black woman elected to an office historically held by white men, whose “tough on crime” policies have devastated communities of color for decades. She ran her campaign being vocal about the over-policing of Black and Brown folks, promising sweeping reform. Now, more than a year into office, she faces the complicated realities of seeking to reform a deeply flawed criminal justice system and support a community ravaged by gun violence. She’s learning that implementing change will be harder than she could have anticipated.
Deberry stars in a new short film, "I Am Not Going to Change 400 Years in Four", directed by Angela Tucker and Kristi Jacobson, produced by Chicken and Egg Pictures, and proudly presented b...
- Title
- Watch Trump’s Bizzare, Maskless RNC Opener
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/
President Donald Trump doubled down on xenophobia, disinformation, and condescension to front-line workers across the country in his first appearance during the Monday night broadcast of the Republican National Convention. In a short, stilted clip from the White House, surrounded by seven unmasked people with their hands clasped in front of them, Trump attempted to talk to ordinary people.
“These are my friends,” he said, as one does. “These are the incredible workers who helped us so much with the COVID, we can call it many different things, from China virus, I don’t want to go through all the different names, because some people might get insulted, but that’s the way it is.”
He then asked asking each person to tell “their story,” which mainly meant listing their professions: postal worker, post office custodian, nurse.
“How about you?” he said, turn...
- Title
- Joe Biden's Speech at the 2020 Democratic National Convention
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- Read the full article at Mother Jones: https://bit.ly/31kUvmF
Former vice president Joe Biden headlines the fourth and final night of the 2020 Democratic National Convention on Thursday as he accepts his party’s nomination for president.
Biden’s speech serves as the capstone to this year’s Democratic National Convention. The virtual convention featured impassioned speeches from party powerhouses like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Sen. Bernie Sanders. Biden’s running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, headlined Wednesday evening’s segment of the convention as she made history by accepting the Democratic vice presidential nomination, becoming the first Black woman and first woman of Indian descent to appear on a major party ticket. “We’re at an inflection point,” she said. “The constant chaos leaves us adrift. The incompetence makes us feel afraid. […] We must elect a president who will bring ...
- Title
- That Time Steve Bannon Accused the Clintons of Corruption and Money Laundering
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- ► Read the full article at Mother Jones: https://bit.ly/3ghRLul
Back in the summer of 2016, Steve Bannon interviewed Peter Schweizer on Bannon’s Breitbart News radio show. The two discussed Clinton Cash, the 2015 book that Schweizer wrote about Bill and Hillary Clinton’s foreign financial entanglements. Bannon’s takeaway was simple. The Clintons, he insisted, are corrupt. “The Clinton have sold out their own people for cold cash,” Bannon said. “They are grifters.” He added, baselessly, that the former first couple was running a “money laundering operation.” (Bannon would go on to run the Trump campaign and briefly serve in the Trump White House.)
Fast forward to 2020: Bannon, along with three other individuals, has been charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to commit wire fraud relating to an effort to build a donor-funded wall on the US-Mexico border. According to US Attorney Audrey Strauss, Bannon and the other...
- Title
- Elizabeth Warren's Full Speech at the 2020 Democratic National Convention
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- ► Read the full article at Mother Jones: https://bit.ly/2CJiWjX
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who was once a favorite to win her party’s nomination, used her speech in support of Vice President Joe Biden Wednesday night to highlight a signature issue: childcare.
Noting that families have taken “one gut punch after another” as a result of the pandemic, Warren spoke from the Springfield Early Childhood Education Center, a pre-K and kindergarten facility in Springfield, Mass., which has been closed since March. Framed by self-portraits drawn by children, Warren tied economic issues to childcare, a focus of hers throughout the primary, as documented by my colleague Kara Voght last year.
“Childcare was already hard to find before the pandemic,” she said. “And now, parents are stuck—no idea when schools can safely reopen and even fewer childcare options.” Warren shared her own story with childcare struggles, saying...
- Title
- Kamala Harris' Speech at the 2020 Democratic National Convention
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- Sen. Kamala Harris will accept her party’s nomination for vice president on Wednesday night, in a history-making address during the third night of the 2020 Democratic National Convention.
In doing so, the 55-year-old Californian will become the first Black woman, as well as the first woman of Indian descent, to appear on a major party ticket. Her nomination is just the latest in a number of “firsts” accumulated by the former prosecutor across her decades in public life, as she rose from San Francisco district attorney, to attorney general of California, and then to become the state’s junior senator. In Washington, she’s gained national attention for ruthless interrogations of Trump appointees, exchanges that helped cemented her status as a smart and no-nonsense rising star. Now, having been tapped by Joe Biden to be his running mate, Harris is undertaking a historic run for the White House.
- Title
- Barack Obama's Speech at the 2020 Democratic National Convention
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- Former President Barack Obama will headline the third night of the 2020 Democratic National Convention on Wednesday, delivering a live address from the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia. The choice of location is intended to convey that “our very democracy is at stake” in this election, according to a CNN report.
Obama will join other party powerhouses like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton, and Sen. Kamala Harris, who will officially accept her party’s nomination for vice president. The former president’s speech comes after an impassioned address by his wife, Michelle, on Monday night, during which the former first lady assailed the current occupant of the White House as reckless and desperately unqualified. “Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country,” she said. “He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him...
- Title
- Dr. Jill Biden's Full Speech at the 2020 Democratic National Convention
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/
Jill Biden got personal at the Democratic National Convention tonight, shortly after her husband accepted his party’s nomination for president.
Speaking from an empty classroom, Biden noted, “So many classrooms are quiet right now. The playgrounds are still. But if you listen closely, you can hear the sparks of change in the air.” She spoke about how she and Joe Biden met and recalled their grief after their son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015 at age 46, and how she felt four days after the funeral, when she saw her husband stand in front of a mirror in a suit, putting his shoulders back and taking a deep breath before heading out to work at the White House. “There are times when I couldn’t imagine how he did it—how he put one foot in front of the other and kept going. But I’ve always understood why he did it,” she said.
Echoing a theme that other speakers had raise...
- Title
- Michelle Obama's Speech at the 2020 Democratic National Convention
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- Former First Lady Michelle Obama anchored the first night of the 2020 Democratic National Convention on Monday night, kicking off a week that will culminate in the party’s nomination of Former Vice President Joe Biden for president. Obama called Biden “a profoundly decent man guided by his faith” and praised his ability to tackle the multiple crises besetting America, while taking direct aim at the current occupant of the White House as their root cause. “Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country,” she said. “He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment.”
The first night of the convention introduced the American public to an unprecedented all-virtual format due to the coronavirus pandemic. But, even without balloon-drops and a roaring crowd, the multi-day program still promises to contain a high-wattage roster of Democratic powerhouses, including former presidents Ba...
- Title
- We Visualized Billionaire Wealth Gains During the Pandemic
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- ► Read the full article at Mother Jones: https://bit.ly/31IMeaO
The richest 0.00019 percent of the US population grew their collective wealth by an estimated $685 billion so far during the coronavirus pandemic.
President Donald Trump thinks he is delivering the average American a winning hand right now—despite a cratering economy, mass unemployment, and no clear plan to fight the cause of all this calamity, the coronavirus. At a Monday afternoon press conference at the White House, Trump went so far as to say that “carpenters and policemen and farmers”—millions of ordinary Americans—”are the ones that benefit by having a good stock market, probably more than anybody else.”
Probably more than anyone else? That’s absurd on its face (only 55 percent of Americans report owning stocks, a number that correlates with higher household income, among other things.) But it’s even more disconnected from reality when you collect the receip...
- Title
- Mother Jones in Conversation with Rep. Barbara Lee
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- Longtime California representative and progressive powerhouse Barbara Lee has built a career as a champion of the people. Throughout her 30 years in public service, the former Congressional Black Caucus chair has taken tough and just stances—standing up as the only member of Congress to vote against the post-9/11 war authorization, serving as a check on the corruption of the Trump administration, defending her home district against baseless political attacks, and recently pushing to create a racial healing commission.
Join Rep. Barbara Lee and Mother Jones’ Jamilah King as they discuss the 2020 election, protest movements and their demands for racial equity, COVID-19 and how it’s affecting our most vulnerable communities, and her hopes for the future of American democracy.
Please note: Live events like this used to bring in ticket revenue to help fund Mother Jones' journalism. But since we can't do that anymore, we'd be grateful if you could add on a don...
- Title
- Trump Twists Coronavirus Realities by Slamming Fauci, CNN, China, and Democrats
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/
On Monday, President Donald Trump pulled out all the old stops to defend his inability to control the coronavirus: delegitimizing public health experts, denouncing the media, and vilifying Democrats.
After signing an executive order limiting US government agencies’ use of foreign labor, Trump began extolling the virtues of hydroxychloroquine, the antimalarial drug that has not been proven to improve outcomes in patients with COVID-19. When a reporter countered that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the administration’s foremost infectious disease specialist, has said the drug doesn’t work, Trump replied, “I don’t agree with Fauci on everything.” Earlier in the day, Trump lashed out against Dr. Deborah Birx, apparently for accurately noting that the coronavirus is “extraordinarily widespread” in the country and for warning against reopening schools in areas with high infection rates.
...
- Title
- Jim Jordan is Ranting Again 🙄
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/
Jim Jordan is Jim Jordan-ing again.
The Ohio Republican, during his turn at Friday’s House special select committee hearing investigating the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, shouted over Dr. Anthony Fauci, attempted to trap the country’s top expert on infectious diseases into bogusly attacking the ongoing protests against police brutality, and grandstanded to an audience of one, Donald Trump. It was a typical performance from Jordan, a yeller.
Fauci, demonstrating an impressive level of patience, refused to bite.
#JimJordan #Coronavirus #Trump #Protests #Fauci
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