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Title: The Unflinching Courage of Taylor Cadle
Runtime: 2:14
Date posted: 2 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/criminal-justice/2024/11/taylor-cadle-polk-county-false-reporting-investigation/

Taylor Cadle told a detective that the inappropriate touching had started when she was 9 years old, shortly after her Cadle’s great uncle and his wife had adopted her. Over time, the abuse escalated.

At 12-years-old, she said her adoptive father assaulted her “anytime he gets the chance,” she said.

But, cops in Polk County, Florida, decided she was the criminal. She was charged with lying to the police and ordered to write her abuser an apology letter.

“I think from the beginning—from our first interview—she had already had her mind made up about me,” Taylor told Mother Jones about the detective who interviewed her. “She made me feel like the monster.”

Justice finally came when she recorded the next assault and proved her innocence.

Taylor is one of...

Title: How Donald Trump Won in Two Words
Runtime: 2:03
Date posted: 2 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/

You have probably heard every imaginable take on why Americans voted to put Donald Trump back in office.

Pundits say toxic masculinity was to blame—and men feeling usurped by women. They’ll say it was the Christian nationalism movement. A surprising shift in Latino voting patterns. Sexism. Racism. Transphobia. Elon Musk. Crypto bros. “Theobros.” Housing prices. Gaza! Propaganda from Fox News and Newsmax. Misinformation on X.

Perhaps it was the cowardice of powerful men like Jeff Bezos and Jamie Dimon. The anti-immigrant frenzy—Trump’s incessant false claims about vicious murderers and rapists and mental patients swarming across the border like locusts. Property crime. Inflation. Interest rates. Lingering malaise from the pandemic. The Democrats’ failure to sell their economic wins. Kamala Harris’ inability to distance herself from an unpopular president.

O...

Title: An Authoritarian Justice Department?
Runtime: 2:31
Date posted: 2 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/

Matt Gaetz, a one-time target of a criminal investigation, picked to head the Justice Department to seek political revenge? "This is how justice works in an authoritarian state," reports David Corn.

After narrowly winning the election, Donald Trump selected a gang of inexperienced extremists for several of his most critical cabinet positions, among them for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, a former Republican congressman who was recently investigated for allegations he engaged in sex trafficking involving a minor.

Now, the Justice Department has brought no charges in that probe. Still, the House Ethics Committee also investigated these accusations and other allegations of Gaetz's wrongdoing, and it has been sitting on its final report with the House Republicans looking to cover up the committee's findings about Gaetz.

So far, the public has not been able to evaluate the seri...

How Mass Deportations Could Destroy America

Title: How Mass Deportations Could Destroy America
Runtime: 2:46
Date posted: 2 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/08/trump-mass-deportation-plan-immigration-border-patrol-ice-dhs-migrants-undocumented/

Trump has consistently made one campaign promise the most prominent: Mass deportation.

"So let me be clear," says Digital Producer @sam.vp, "mass deportations are going to fuck this country up."

In 2016, Trump said he would deport the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the US. Once in office, he ordered sweeping worksite raids, enacted a ban on travelers from Muslim-majority countries, and deliberately separated migrant families, many of whom have yet to be reunited.

But thanks to outside resistance, internal opposition, sanctuary policies, legal guardrails, and sheer ineptitude, the Trump administration removed fewer than 1 million people from the country.

In a second term, Trump has pledged to fulfill his promise and conduct “the largest domestic...

Fox News' Outsized Seat at Trump's Table

Title: Fox News' Outsized Seat at Trump's Table
Runtime: 3:14
Date posted: 2 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/

With Donald Trump set to return as president in January, Fox News once again has an outsized seat at the table—as both his favorite channel and his inner monologue.

One week on from the election, @katmabu recaps five of the Totally Normal and Definitely Not Evil Fox News stories you might have missed.

The list kicks off with “women.” Although a majority of American women, especially Black and brown women, voted for Vice President Kamala Harris, Fox News sent some mixed messages. Host Jesse Watters complained that feminists are "going on a sex strike to punish all the men they’re not sleeping with," while frequent guest Dana Loesch claimed Trump’s victory would chasten women: “Trump also made all these chicks screaming about abortions discover modesty,” she said. “So they’re actually going to be ladies and not out there screwing everything that walks.”
...

Popular things happen when you vote. Here’s the proof.

Title: Popular things happen when you vote. Here’s the proof.
Runtime: 1:49
Date posted: 2 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/

What changes if more people showed up to vote? @GarrisonHayes dug into the numbers.

One answer emerges by comparing Minnesota and Tennessee—two states with vastly different voter turnout rates. Minnesota leads the nation, with nearly 80 percent of eligible voters participating in the 2020 election. With that, Minnesotans have elected leaders who have advanced a popular agenda: universal school meals, free public college tuition, paid family and medical leave, and the restoration of voting rights for formerly incarcerated people. According to polling, each of these proposals is broadly popular nationwide.

By contrast, in Tennessee, voter turnout in 2020 was only 59 percent—enabling a very unpopular Republican supermajority to ignore calls for stricter gun control despite widespread support. Instead, they’ve focused on banning diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and enacti...

Trump’s campaign of incitement hits new extremes

Title: Trump’s campaign of incitement hits new extremes
Runtime: 4:41
Date posted: 2 years ago
Description: ► Mother Jones is an independent, nonprofit newsroom. Learn more and get involved: https://www.motherjones.com/about

It was no surprise. Instead, call it the October reveal.

In the final days of the 2024 election, ugly rhetoric from Donald Trump’s campaign drew major national attention when a speaker made a racist joke about Puerto Rico as part of the ex-president’s Oct. 27 rally at Madison Square Garden. The event was an inevitable culmination for the Trump campaign, a six-hour pageant of divisiveness and bigotry that featured multiple speakers launching racist and misogynistic personal attacks on Kamala Harris. It concluded with Trump at the podium delivering the same demagoguery he has used in dozens of rallies this year: painting a wildly exaggerated picture of national decay, promoting baseless conspiracy theories, and stoking fear and anger about an alleged “invasion” of America by murderous migrants.

Such themes have been at the...

Fox News Dudes Are Freaking Out Over Wives Voting

Title: Fox News Dudes Are Freaking Out Over Wives Voting
Runtime: 2:31
Date posted: 2 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/

Dear Jesse Watters: Why would your wife be afraid to tell you what she really thinks? What does that say about you?

The idea that women might vote differently from their husbands made the Fox News star's brain melt live on air this week. Referring to his current wife, Watters, with his trademark smirk, told his colleagues on The Five, “If I found out Emma was going into the voting booth and pulling the lever for Harris, that's the same thing as having an affair.” This comes from a man who admitted to his employer in 2017 that he was in a relationship with a colleague 14 years his junior—reportedly leading to his divorce from his first wife. “What else is she keeping from me?” Jesse mused, prompting guffaws from his fellow panelists.

Beyond hypocrisy, Mother Jones creator @katmabu argues that Watters’ reaction reveals the undercurrent of sexist resentment coursing t...

Title: Project 2025 Is Already Here
Runtime: 7:42
Date posted: 2 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/

If you want a glimpse into what Project 2025's education agenda might look like if implemented nationwide, look no further than Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis has already been leading book-banning, inflaming culture wars over LGBTQ rights, and dismantling comprehensive sex education.

Recent reporting by the Orlando Sentinel revealed that Florida state officials are pressuring some districts to adopt an abstinence-only approach, stripping students of basic knowledge about contraception, anatomy, and human development. Students are being taught abstinence as the sole method of avoiding pregnancy and STDs, and terms like "abuse," "fluids," and "LGBTQ" are absent from classrooms. “Under recent changes to state law,” reports the Associated Press, “it’s now up to the Florida Department of Education to sign off on school districts’ curriculum on reproductive health and disease education...

JD Vance's Connections to a Christian Nationalist Movement

Title: JD Vance's Connections to a Christian Nationalist Movement
Runtime: 3:35
Date posted: 2 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/10/new-apostolic-reformation-christian-nationalism/

Christian nationalists dream of taking over America. This movement is actually doing it.

This is the New Apostolic Reformation, a charismatic evangelical Christian movement led by a loose network of self-appointed prophets and apostles, who claim that God speaks directly to them, often in dreams. And they believe that Christians are called to wage a spiritual battle for control of the US.

In the vanguard of an ascendant Christian nationalist movement, they seek an explicitly Christian command of public schools, social policy, and all levels of the government, including the courts. Some scholars claim that NAR is the fastest-growing spiritual movement in the US. Evangelical writer C. Peter Wagner described it as the most significant shake-up in Protestantism since the Reformation. Its laser focus on starting a spiritua...

To Understand JD Vance, You Need to Meet the "TheoBros"

Title: To Understand JD Vance, You Need to Meet the "TheoBros"
Runtime: 5:29
Date posted: 2 years ago
Description: ► Mother Jones is an independent, nonprofit newsroom. Learn more and get involved: https://www.motherjones.com/about

These extremely online young Christian men want to end the 19th Amendment, restore public flogging, and make America white again.

And they see JD Vance as their path forward.

On July 15, during his big speech at the RNC, Vance portrayed a vision of America that resonated deeply with Trump voters. “America is not just an idea,” he said solemnly. “It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation.”

To many viewers at home, this seemed like the stuff of a boilerplate, patriotic stump speech. But the words “shared history” lit up a far-right evangelical corner of social media.

Vance was embracing one of their most cherished beliefs: America should belong to Christians and, more specifically, white ones.

“The American nation is an actual h...

A big moment from the VP debate. #timwalz #jdvance #vpdebate

Title: A big moment from the VP debate. #timwalz #jdvance #vpdebate
Runtime: 0:59
Date posted: 2 years ago
Description

just gonna leave this here… #debate #kamalaharris #donaldtrump

Title: just gonna leave this here… #debate #kamalaharris #donaldtrump
Runtime: 0:41
Date posted: 2 years ago
Description

Title: No Trump, Dems Aren’t Executing Babies
Runtime: 5:55
Date posted: 2 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/

In her latest video, Mother Jones video creator @katmabu traces the history of former President Donald Trump’s dangerous lie that some states allow parents to “execute” babies in so-called "post-birth abortions."

“You can look at the governor of West Virginia,” Trump said during last week’s debate, prompting an incredulous head shake from Vice President Kamala Harris. “He said the baby will be born and we will decide what to do with the baby. In other words, we'll execute it.”

Northam, of course, did not say that. Trump wasn’t even correct about his own right-wing smear. His reference was to a wildly out-of-context quote from former Virginia governor Ralph Northam (not West Virginia). Northam’s 2019 radio appearance, in which he explained the tragic medical emergencies that can result in late-term abortions, has since been selectively edited by Republicans and use...

“I’ve seen people on television!” 🙄🙄🙄 #kamalaharris #debate

Title: “I’ve seen people on television!” 🙄🙄🙄 #kamalaharris #debate
Runtime: 0:32
Date posted: 2 years ago
Description

Title: Trump's Deliberate Debate Deluge
Runtime: 2:40
Date posted: 2 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/

After facing off against Donald Trump in June, President Joe Biden explained his poor debate performance in part by telling reporters, “It’s hard to debate a liar.” He had a point—by one estimate, Trump made more than 30 false claims that night, on everything from Roe v. Wade and January 6 to China, taxes, and, depending on who you ask, his own golf game.

In fact, there’s a name for Trump’s apparent tactic: The “Gish Gallop.” The term refers to a rhetorical strategy of, basically, overwhelming your opponent with false or incoherent information. As Robert Talisse, a professor of philosophy and political science at Vanderbilt University and co-author of the book Why We Argue (And How We Should): A Guide to Political Disagreement in an Age of Unreason, describes it, to employ the Gish Gallop is “to paralyze and immobilize the dialectical opponent by just burying him or her in a mor...

Title: Fox News Just Did What?!
Runtime: 3:50
Date posted: 2 years ago
Description: ► Mother Jones is an independent, nonprofit newsroom. Learn more and get involved: https://www.motherjones.com/about

This week, Fox News was in a rare position: Covering its ass live on air.

Host Jesse Watters has a history of making misogynist remarks. But on Monday, he took it too far, apparently, by Fox’s low (low) standards. During a roundtable discussion, he made a vulgar remark about Vice President Kamala Harris, claiming she'd be "paralyzed in the Situation Room while the generals have their way with her."

When even Jeanine Pirro tells you to "take it back," you should know you've crossed the line, and Watters tried to clean up his mess the next day, claiming his comments were being "misconstrued." But his smirk said it all.

Fox News isn't exactly known for issuing apologies or corrections—they paid almost $800 million in a settlement to avoid doing just that when Dominion, a voting machine company, sued Fox over its ra...

Project 2025: You Can Run, but You Can't Hide

Title: Project 2025: You Can Run, but You Can't Hide
Runtime: 2:57
Date posted: 2 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/

Chicago’s raucous festival for Democrats this week serves many purposes: to channel enthusiasm for Vice President Kamala Harris, now at the top of the ticket and hoping to capitalize on momentum; to honor and thank President Joe Biden for passing the torch; and, of course, to attack former President Donald Trump while offering Americans a contrast to his potential second presidency.

Among the many side events and panel discussions programmed this week, a prominent through-line for speeches and appeals by elected officials has been the specter of Project 2025, the conservative manifesto and blueprint for a new Trump administration, spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation.

In the hallways of DNC spaces, delegates carried signs declaring “Fuck Project 2025,” and speakers throughout each night of the televised portions featured speeches deriding the plan as draconian and radical.

America's Youngest Congressman Sounds the Alarm

Title: America's Youngest Congressman Sounds the Alarm
Runtime: 4:59
Date posted: 2 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/

Rep. Maxwell Frost is the youngest US congressman—and every headline and article about him (including ours!) never fails to mention it. Hailed as the first and only (for now) Gen Z Representative, Frost rose from the ranks of activism as the national organizing director for March for Our Lives to Congress, when he was elected to represent central Florida nearly two years ago. He instantly aligned with several big progressive causes, especially ending gun violence, and joined the Congressional Progressive Caucus. He also became an outspoken defender of and campaigner for President Joe Biden. That's come at a cost. More recently, critics singled him out for having betrayed his activist roots, accusing him of not being outspoken enough about the war in Gaza.

Having just won his primary this week, Frost is facing reelection in November and @GarrisonHayeshad the chance to catch up with him in one of t...

Fox News says the vibes are hyped. Trump says AI-generated. These were the vibes we saw at #dnc2024

Title: Fox News says the vibes are hyped. Trump says AI-generated. These were the vibes we saw at #dnc2024
Runtime: 0:40
Date posted: 2 years ago
Description

How #TamponTim Became MAGA's New Culture War

Title: How #TamponTim Became MAGA's New Culture War
Runtime: 5:27
Date posted: 2 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/

This week, Mother Jones Creator @katmabu tackles the freak-out in conservative media over providing free menstrual products in schools, which has emerged, somehow, as one of the biggest culture wars of the campaign so far.

After Vice President Kamala Harris selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, Republicans dug up his 2023 education bill, which provides free school meals, personal finance classes, and, among many other programs, free tampons and pads in all public school bathrooms. Suddenly, Walz was labeled "Tampon Tim," and talk show hosts began fomenting outrage about the products being dispensed in boys’ bathrooms. While ensuring access to period products for “all menstruating students,” Minnesota’s law does not mandate placing tampons in boys’ bathrooms, and separate investigations by CNN and the New York Times found no schools doing so.

Putting that...

We spent a week with Black Republicans. This is how it went. #streetinterview

Title: We spent a week with Black Republicans. This is how it went. #streetinterview
Runtime: 1:00
Date posted: 2 years ago
Description

Title: I spent a week with Black Republicans
Runtime: 19:58
Date posted: 2 years ago
Description: ► Mother Jones is an independent, nonprofit newsroom. Learn more and get involved: https://www.motherjones.com/about

Just a few (long) weeks ago, President Joe Biden was still running for re-election, grappling with persistently negative national polling. One major concern for Democrats—and a source of surprise and delight for Republicans—was the apparent shift of young Black male voters towards former President Donald Trump. This will-they-won’t-they question dominated the summer, culminating at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee at the end of July: Could Trump make significant inroads into a voting bloc that traditionally supported Democrats?

That narrative shifted dramatically with the entry of Vice President Kamala Harris into the race. Suddenly, a much higher percentage of Black voters told pollsters of their intent to vote, a big increase from July when Biden was still on the ticket.

When the Mother Jones team reported ...

The Trump Campaign Is Doubling Down on a Dangerous Lie

Title: The Trump Campaign Is Doubling Down on a Dangerous Lie
Runtime: 2:12
Date posted: 2 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/08/jd-vance-trump-assassination-attempt-democrats/

Campaigning in Atlanta on August 3, Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance blamed Democrats without any evidence for the recent assassination attempt against Donald Trump.

In his brief remarks introducing the former president at a Georgia State University arena, Vance told the crowd: “They couldn’t beat him politically, so they tried to bankrupt him. They failed at that, so they tried to impeach him. They failed at that, so they tried to put him in prison.” Then, gesturing emphatically, Vance declared: “They even tried to kill him.”

After three weeks of intensive FBI investigation, no evidence has emerged supporting that claim. The motive of the deceased 20-year-old gunman, who was registered as a Republican voter but appears not to have been driven by partisanship or political ideology, remains unknown. ...

Earth Needs a Prosecutor. Kamala Harris Is on the Case.

Title: Earth Needs a Prosecutor. Kamala Harris Is on the Case.
Runtime: 16:42
Date posted: 2 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/08/kamala-harris-climate-crisis-policy-environment/

When it comes to campaign messaging, Kamala Harris’ past as a prosecutor has served as both a strength and a liability. As a first-term senator from California, her rigorous cross-examination during the confirmation hearings of several Trump appointees—including Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt—raised her profile and put her on the political map.

At the same time, during her 2020 bid for the Democratic nomination for president, criminal justice advocates criticized her prosecutorial past. Memes declaring “Kamala is a cop” circulated on social media and were picked up by bad-faith detractors who Harris saw as attempting to “distort” her record. Throughout her campaign, she struggled to reframe her résumé until, finally, ...

Fox News Can't Figure Out What to Do With Tim Walz

Title: Fox News Can't Figure Out What to Do With Tim Walz
Runtime: 3:14
Date posted: 2 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/

Republicans are in full freak-out mode after Vice President Kamala Harris picked Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate.

Kat Abughazaleh argues that Walz's high crime, in the fevered minds of far-right talking heads, is truly unforgivable: Being an astute governor who has enacted a broad range of popular and mainstream policies from universal free school meals to enshrining abortion rights. The gall of the man!

“If you aren't familiar with Walz,” Kat argues in this new video essay, “he's basically what the Republicans cosplay as, and on top of that, he's a remarkably effective governor.”

“For the last two weeks, Republicans have been flailing in their attacks against him,” Kat continues, trying to aim barbs at someone who has the unfortunately bland reputation of being a clean-cut, bipartisan candidate unburdened by major scandals. So conservatives ha...

Title: Why the “weird” attack is working
Runtime: 4:06
Date posted: 2 years ago
Description: ► Check out more analysis from Mother Jones's Jacob Rosenberg on how "weird" works: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/08/why-does-weird-work-tim-walz-republican-democrat-2024-election-trump/

In this week’s video for Mother Jones, Kat Abughazaleh@katmabu breaks down the Democrats' latest attack line: calling out Republicans as "weird." The recent embrace of the word “weird” started with potential VP candidate Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, who used it on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" to describe JD Vance, President Trump, and the out-of-touch policies of MAGA types: “These guys are just weird!"

It's getting under the skin of Trump and his allies. While they argue this insult is on par with Hillary Clinton’s infamous “basket of deplorables,” let’s be real: This isn’t about name-calling for its own sake. Who in their right mind wants to eliminate the Department of Education or inspect kids before they play sports? That's just weird. Defunding l...

FACT CHECK: Donald Trump Has Not Been the "Best President" Since Abraham Lincoln

Title: FACT CHECK: Donald Trump Has Not Been the "Best President" Since Abraham Lincoln
Runtime: 1:46
Date posted: 2 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/07/trump-nabj-racist-harris-interview/

I know it's going to come as a complete shock to everyone, but, no, Donald Trump isn't the best president since Abraham Lincoln.

Former President Donald Trump’s appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists’ annual convention on Wednesday shocked audience members and viewers at home alike. Within its opening minutes, the GOP presidential nominee insulted the moderators—three Black women—claiming their opening question was asked in a “horrible manner.” “You don’t even say, hello, how are you?” Trump said, taking clear offense to a question about his record of denigrating Black people.

And then, it just kept going. And going. And going.

But this moment stuck out to me as something so obnoxious and false, that I had to talk about it.

#NABJ #DonaldTrump #AbrahamLincoln #History ...

DEI: The Right's Main (and Very) Racist Attack on Kamala Harris

Title: DEI: The Right's Main (and Very) Racist Attack on Kamala Harris
Runtime: 6:23
Date posted: 2 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/

“You hear ‘DEI,’ and you probably think of your job’s HR department,” explains Kat Abughazaleh. “But for your QAnon uncle, ‘DEI’ is an activation phrase to send the most unhinged memes in the family group chat.”

In her new video for Mother Jones, Kat dives into the right’s obsessive co-opting of the term “DEI”—Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion—to attack Donald Trump’s new 2024 foe, Vice President Kamala Harris:

Kat dissects how this innocuous little acronym became the latest dog whistle for Fox News hosts and elected Republicans, drawing parallels to Nixon’s Southern strategy, which also deployed coded language to appeal to old bigotry.

Earlier attempts to caricature Kamala Harris caught right-wing pundits somewhat flat-footed when compared to their other misogynistic masterpiece: their attacks on Hillary Clinton (a phenomenon documented by ...

Title: Will Becoming the Party of Men Work?
Runtime: 3:32
Date posted: 2 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/07/the-republican-national-convention-was-a-mans-world/

From the UNC fraternity brothers who were honored on Wednesday for preventing, in their words, “a mob” of pro-Palestinian protesters from toppling an American flag on the Chapel Hill campus to famous wrestler Hulk Hogan ripping the shirt from his chest to reveal a TRUMP-VANCE logo in a striking display of machismo, it was men—and ideas on family structure that benefit them—that took center stage.

Take, as a prime example, Trump’s choice of a vice presidential running mate. The week before the convention, his shortlist consisted entirely of people with XY chromosomes: Florida Senator Marco Rubio, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, and Ohio Senator J.D. Vance.

Trump selected Vance: a graduate of Yale Law School, the author of Hillbilly Elegy, a former Never-Trumper, and argua...

Title: How J.D. Vance Can Rile Up Trump's Base
Runtime: 1:59
Date posted: 2 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/07/the-dnc-just-launched-its-first-paid-media-ad-against-jd-vance/

J.D. Vance’s absolutist anti-abortion views appeal to a core part of Donald Trump’s base—and a new ad looks to remind voters that even if the RNC declined to take an official Party position on federal abortion policy, they're still energizing their base by installing extreme choices in some of the highest offices in the country.

On Monday afternoon, Trump announced his selection of Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) to join his 2024 ticket as vice president. Within about 24 hours, the Democratic National Committee had made its selection: the argument it would deploy against Vance in its first paid advertisement to include the new veep pick.

The DNC’s new advertisement—obtained by Mother Jones ahead of its public release—depicts a montage of Trump and Vance’s public comments on abortion, as well as ...

Title: Fox's Kamala Problem
Runtime: 7:18
Date posted: 2 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/

“Cackling,” “ho,” “ditsy,” “bimbo,” “DEI Vice President.”

These are the classy terms right-wing media has used to caricature Kamala Harris over the last four years. Following President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance, the possibility of a Kamala takeover has jumped from a fever-dream conspiracy theory on right-wing airwaves to a real possibility, leaving right-wing media scrambling. As journalist Kat Abughazaleh dissects in her debut video essay for Mother Jones, the usual misogynistic tricks aren’t cutting it—at least when compared to their multi-decade propagandistic masterpiece: Hillary Clinton, Empress Dowager of Evil. Have the usual Fox-type commentators shot themselves in the foot and inadvertently made Kamala even more resilient?

“The national electorate isn’t already primed to turn against her with Pavlovian ease,” Kat explains. “T...

Title: LGBTQ Conversion Therapy Is Back
Runtime: 9:49
Date posted: 2 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/05/conversion-therapy-lgbtq-anti-trans-gay-gender-affirming-care/

The conversion therapists met last November at the south end of the Las Vegas Strip.

Behind the closed doors and drawn blinds of a Hampton Inn conference room, a middle-aged woman wearing white stockings and a Virgin Mary blue dress issued a call to arms to the 20-some people in attendance. “In our current culture, in which children are being indoctrinated with transgender belief from the moment they’re out of the womb, if we are confronted with a gender-confused child, you must help,” declared Michelle Cretella, a board member of the Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity. “We must do something.”

Cretella was delivering a keynote speech at the first in-person conference in four years of the Alliance, which describes itself as a “professional and scientific organization” with ...

The Grab Film Trailer: A Global Thriller from the Center for Investigative Reporting

Title: The Grab Film Trailer: A Global Thriller from the Center for Investigative Reporting
Runtime: 2:01
Date posted: 2 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://thegrabfilm.com

Quietly and seemingly out of sight, governments, private investors, and mercenaries are working to seize food and water resources at the expense of entire populations.

These groups are establishing themselves as the new OPEC—the co-operation of leading oil-producing countries who influence the global oil market—where the future world powers will be those who control food, not oil.

The Grab is a global thriller that combines hard-hitting journalism from The Center for Investigative Reporting with the compelling storytelling of Blackfish director Gabriela Cowperthwaite. Together, they take you around the globe, from China and Russia to the boardrooms of Wall Street, all to reveal one of the world’s biggest and least-known threats.

Available in theaters and on-demand everywhere, starting June 14.
But to find out more, head to thegrabfilm.com.

#MovieTrai...

Title: Lessons From a Mass Shooter's Mother
Runtime: 2:47
Date posted: 3 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/criminal-justice/2024/05/threat-assessment-mass-shooting-elliot-rodger-isla-vista-mother/

A decade has passed, but exhuming Elliot Rodger’s life and ghastly final actions remains fraught. It risks inflicting further pain for the victims’ families and other survivors, and new revelations could feed the kind of infamy many perpetrators seek. The case stands out among the hundreds National Affairs Editor Mark Follman has studied in 12 years of reporting on mass shootings.

To this day it fuels copycat attackers who fixate on misogyny, making it an ongoing subject of news coverage and various academic and security research. It also helped catalyze policy change, in particular the spread of “red flag” laws aimed at keeping guns away from unstable people.

Yet from the start, this tragedy has been wrongly mythologized in the media and academia and poorly understood by the public, its ...

Anti-Israel College Campus Protests Are Happening. Here's Why.

Title: Anti-Israel College Campus Protests Are Happening. Here's Why.
Runtime: 1:36
Date posted: 3 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/

Amid escalating student demonstrations on university campuses across the United States, a growing number of protesters are urging their institutions to divest from Israeli entities as a response to the country’s ongoing war in Gaza. Some students are vowing to take their protest further, promising to not vote for Joe Biden in this November’s election.

While students at Columbia University and other Ivy League campuses are grabbing the most headlines, public schools nationwide are also gearing up for entrenched protests.

So Mother Jones Video Correspondent Garrison Hayes visited one.

He spoke to Josh Rosenberg, a student organizer at the University of Virginia who led a die-in protest on the lawn this past Friday. When asked if he was planning to vote this November, Josh explained that he would vote for down-ballot candidates but would not support Biden unless he chan...

White Supremacy Is Under Threat In America. That Terrifies Republicans.

Title: White Supremacy Is Under Threat In America. That Terrifies Republicans.
Runtime: 2:02
Date posted: 3 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/04/minority-rule-is-threatening-american-democracy-like-never-before/

Donald Trump sure seems to love using the anti-immigrant rhetoric the N*zis perfected. And there is a terrifying point to it all: White supremacy is under threat, and Republicans must protect it by any means necessary.

It's at the heart of a new book by Ari Berman called Minority Rule. And it is a damning picture of how Republicans rely on white supremacy to entrench their rule—even if a majority of Americans disagree with them. Berman explains how it all dates back to the birth of American democracy when the Founding Fathers created political institutions within a system that concentrated power in the hands of an elite, propertied, white male minority. More than 200 years later, the series of compromises the founders made have increasingly vested the majority of political power in the hands of a minority of the p...

He died in a police chase. Then the police vanished.

Title: He died in a police chase. Then the police vanished.
Runtime: 22:06
Date posted: 3 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/criminal-justice/2024/04/crow-nation-police-accountability-braven-glenn-bia

A high-speed police chase. A 17-year-old Crow boy, dead. The police report? Nowhere to be found. The entire police department? Vanished. The excruciating question that emerged: What happened to Braven Glenn?

Blossom Old Bull was raising her son Braven, a diligent student and passionate basketballer, in the Crow Nation in Montana. On a dark, chilly night in November 2020, a police pursuit began while Braven was driving to meet his girlfriend. Blossom was told her son was speeding and collided with a train, but she had few other details. According to court documents, witnesses say they didn’t see law enforcement offer him medical assistance despite his cries for help. He didn't survive.

Within days, the police department that pursued Braven shuttered, leaving behind no answers, only taped-up windows and locked...

Report: Donald Trump’s Historic Hush-Money Trial Finally Begins

Title: Report: Donald Trump’s Historic Hush-Money Trial Finally Begins
Runtime: 2:16
Date posted: 3 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/04/trump-trial-hush-money-stormy-daniels-manhattan-video/

So, here we are.

The first day of the first criminal trial of a former US president. Can it get more extraordinary than that? “He keeps setting new Guinness Records in terms of unprecedented history,” Mother Jones’ own David Corn explained in a new video outside a Manhattan courtroom where Donald Trump’s trial kicked off this morning.

Which case is this again? Good question. This one alleges that Trump falsified business records related to the hush-money scandal involving Stormy Daniels. As David explained in a curtain-raiser, the trial, though salacious in nature, is a very fitting symbol for Trump’s political rise and should be taken seriously.

“He is a creature of this trashy, celebrity, tabloid culture,” Corn says. “And that’s all going to be on display here in the next couple o...

Minority Rule Is Threatening American Democracy Like Never Before

Title: Minority Rule Is Threatening American Democracy Like Never Before
Runtime: 10:13
Date posted: 3 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/04/minority-rule-is-threatening-american-democracy-like-never-before/

Everyone seems to be talking about saving democracy this year. “American democracy, that’s what the 2024 election is all about,” Joe Biden has emphasized, painting the threat of Donald Trump’s return to power as the central issue in the 2024 campaign. “We have to prove that our model isn’t a relic of history.”

But the crisis facing American democracy is much older and deeper than Trump and it is, indeed, a relic of a very different time in US history.

In a new video companion for Mother Jones, based on my forthcoming book Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People—and the Fight to Resist It, digital producer Sam Van Pykeren explores how the US political system was created to restrain democracy, not protect it. The founders essentially placed a ticking time bomb at the ...

An Incomplete List of Earth's 2024 Climate Disasters

Title: An Incomplete List of Earth's 2024 Climate Disasters
Runtime: 1:28
Date posted: 3 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/

The earth is already breaking all sorts of records this year, and they’re not good ones.

California’s historic rainfall pours down the coast, and residents face over 300 mudslides on top of widespread flash flooding. At the peak of the storm, over 800,000 lost power. Just weeks before, snowfall across the US shattered expectations. In Nashville, residents got their yearly average of snow in less than a day.

And that’s just the tip of the (quickly melting) iceberg.

Since the start of 2024, countless scientific studies have been published with big repercussions for our understanding of climate change and weather events. Mother Jones Editorial Fellow Henry Carnell read through as many as he could and has rounded up some of the most telling.

Find the posts he references right here:
1. https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2024/02/climate-change-sci...

Beyoncé's Beatles Cover Is an Ode to Paul McCartney's True Intentions

Title: Beyoncé's Beatles Cover Is an Ode to Paul McCartney's True Intentions
Runtime: 1:21
Date posted: 3 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/media/2024/03/beyonce-beatles-mccartney-blackbird-cowboy-carter-little-rock/

Beyoncé’s new genre-defying (but country-forward) album Cowboy Carter dropped overnight. The internet is now poring over track choices, hidden meanings, and symbolism to add to Beyonce Lore.

One such choice is the cover of The Beatles’ iconic song “Blackbird”, from the White Album, as the record’s second track. Trust Beyoncé to re-issue a song so redolent with Black history: The song was written about the Black Liberation struggle of the American civil rights movement.

“I was sitting around my acoustic guitar, and I’d heard about the civil rights troubles that were happening in the sixties in Alabama, Mississippi, Little Rock in particular,” McCartney told GQ in 2018. “And I just thought it’d be really good if I could write something that, if it ever reached any of the people going throu...

Elon Musk Is Spreading Centuries-Old Racist Pseudo-Science

Title: Elon Musk Is Spreading Centuries-Old Racist Pseudo-Science
Runtime: 4:21
Date posted: 3 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/03/elon-musk-racist-tweets-science-video/

Racist pseudo-science is making a comeback thanks to Elon Musk. Recently, the tech billionaire has been retweeting prominent race scientist adherents on his platform X (formally known as Twitter), spreading misinformation about racial minorities’ intelligence and physiology to his audience of 176.3 million followers—a dynamic my colleague Garrison Hayes analyzes in his latest video for Mother Jones.

X, and before it Twitter, has a long-held reputation for being a breeding ground for white supremacy. Dating as far back as the 2016 election, these extremists have used the app to sow seeds of misinformation and spread racism.

Garrison zeroes in on a specific phenomenon: Musk is amplifying users who will incorporate cherry-picked data and misleading graphs into their argument as to why people of European descent are biologically su...

The Supreme Court Abortion Pill Case Is Based on Imaginary Patients and Shoddy Science

Title: The Supreme Court Abortion Pill Case Is Based on Imaginary Patients and Shoddy Science
Runtime: 2:08
Date posted: 3 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/

On Tuesday, another ADF lawsuit will be heard at the Supreme Court. And once again, the case rests on a hypothetical: A member of a small anti-abortion doctors’ coalition might one day have to care for a patient suffering a rare and severe complication from an FDA-approved abortion pill that the American Medical Association considers as safe as Tylenol. Perhaps, the case speculates, that doctor might be forced to administer that patient an emergency abortion, violating their anti-abortion convictions.

This lawsuit—known as FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine—aims to limit the availability of mifepristone, the first pill in the two-drug regimen commonly used in medication abortions. ADF, on behalf of the anti-abortion doctors, accuses the FDA of “betraying women and girls” when it approved mifepristone 23 years ago by overlooking potentially harmful side effects and by later making ...

The Foreign Policy Crash Course on Yemen and the Houthis You Need

Title: The Foreign Policy Crash Course on Yemen and the Houthis You Need
Runtime: 14:14
Date posted: 3 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/

The Biden administration says that it has being trying to prevent the ongoing war in Gaza from spreading to other parts of the region.

Yet despite these efforts, Israel’s massive bombing campaign, which has claimed tens of thousands of civilian lives, has spurred fighting in northern Israel between Lebanon-based Hezbollah and Israel, attacks from Iran at targets in Syria, Iraq, and Pakistan, and assaults on shipping in the Red Sea from Houthi forces in Yemen. The latter has led to US strikes against Houthi military targets within Yemen.

Once again, the United States is involved in warfare in a country little-known within America. And it may be hard for many Americans to evaluate whether the Biden administration raids are an appropriate and effective response.

So Mother Jones Washington DC Bureau Chief David Corn invited Matt Duss, the executive vice president of the Cen...

The Endangered Species Act Is Under Attack. Can It Be Saved?

Title: The Endangered Species Act Is Under Attack. Can It Be Saved?
Runtime: 1:17
Date posted: 3 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/endangered

Fifty years ago this month, President Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act into law. “Nothing is more priceless and more worthy of preservation than the rich array of animal life with which our country has been blessed,” he proclaimed. The law has since helped dozens of at-risk species fully recover, including the humpback whale, bald eagle, brown pelican, and peregrine falcon, and prevented extinction for 99 percent of all species listed.

This hasn’t simply benefited those animals and plants. At the core of the effort was the desire to preserve the Earth’s living resources for the benefit of humans. “If a species, ecosystem, or ecological process, is destroyed,” Lee Talbot, one of the ESA’s co-authors and a leading environmentalist, wrote in 1980, “future generations will be denied its use.” Some 40 percent of all medicines prescribed in the United States, ...

America Promises Equality for Disabled Students. It’s Failing.

Title: America Promises Equality for Disabled Students. It’s Failing.
Runtime: 1:02
Date posted: 3 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/

There are 7.2 million students with disabilities in the United States. This package explores how our country’s education system underserves them—and the fight to change that.

You can check out our package of in-depth reporting right here: www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/12/america-promises-equality-for-disabled-students-its-failing

#Disability #Investigation #Journalism

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Hidden History: Henry Ford Perfected the Mass Production of Cars—and Antisemitism

Title: Hidden History: Henry Ford Perfected the Mass Production of Cars—and Antisemitism
Runtime: 2:54
Date posted: 3 years ago
Description: ► For more, visit Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/

Henry Ford may be known for revolutionizing the automobile industry, but there’s another thing he mass produced: Antisemitism.

At least that’s what my colleague Dan Schulman explains in his new book The Money Kings: The Epic Story of the Jewish Immigrants Who Transformed Wall Street and Shaped Modern America. The book tells the Gilded Age-saga of a collection of German-Jewish financial dynasties—including the families who founded Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers—who profoundly influenced the 20th century. At the heart of the story is Jacob Schiff, a renowned financier and philanthropist who rivaled J.P. Morgan as the leading investment banker of that era. Though Schiff is not well remembered today, his legacy can be found in many aspects of modern life, including in the thriving Jewish community that his philanthropy helped to nurture.

There was also a tragic aspect of the s...