Mother Jones Politics

This week, we published an investigation into David Brouillette, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who reportedly killed 25-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine earlier this month. That investigation revealed a long history of alleged violence against Brouillette’s ex-wives and children. “To be honest, I was surprised anyone would give that man a gun,” a former friend said of Brouillette. On July 22, the advocacy group Ohio Immigrant Allian

On July 19, a day after brothers and accused sex traffickers Andrew and Tristan Tate were arrested by US Marshals outside a bare-knuckle boxing match in Miami, Andrew’s X account sent out a tweet. “The UK can try, but it can’t actually stop me from tweeting,” the account wrote, adding a smiley face. The next day, another tweet captioned “Why They Arrested Me” linked to a three-hour conversation with 25-year-old podcaster Jack Neel. The next day, with both Tates in custody, Andrew’

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Just across the road from the waterfront in Brunswick, Semona Holmes lives in a house surrounded by fruit trees, potted flowers, a fish pond, and—when it rains, or the tide is extra high—floodwater. “If you can imagine this entire area here completely flooded,” she explained on her front porch on a recent afternoon. “The flooding would be—we would have, li

Since the US Supreme Court gave the Trump administration the green light to end the Temporary Protected Status designation for Haitians, immigrant rights groups, local government officials, and lawmakers—Republicans and Democrats alike—have been rallying for an extension of the program.  They’ve yet to succeed. A bill to preserve the program until 2029 was rejected Wednesday in the Senate. Another measure, the American Dream and Promise Act, which would provide a pathway to legal status

Truth Social announced last week that it was selling immediate access—or at least as close as possible—to President Donald Trump’s thoughts. For $100,000 a month, anyone will be able to receive almost instantaneous access to Trump’s Truth Social posts through the platform’s API, a very small but significant advantage over following them via the web. The offer is not, however, like many of his other commercial offerings attempting to capitalize on the presidency—this is no chintzy watch or repack

A post appeared in Mercie’s feed. “Protect my community. Patrolling is love.”  Her family had lived in Los Angeles for five generations. She didn’t know what it meant by “patrolling”—immigration raids had been a vague idea until rumors of masked federal agents disrupted her son’s fifth-grade graduation. She sent a message. The reply told her to meet at 5 a.m. in an empty parking lot attached to a derelict shopping center. Within minutes, she was in a stranger’s car, scanning

It was still dark out when Mirsy Maricela Alva López woke up her two children. “Get up,” she said. “We’re leaving.” Her eldest, 14-year-old Briseidy, protested: “Why so early?” Their flight wasn’t for a few hours, but a taxi was coming to the hotel at 6 a.m. to take them to Guatemala City’s La Aurora International Airport. “Remember to bring your things,” Alva López said. The past 11 months of their lives fit into three backpacks of clothes. “Hurry up, son,” she told Ederson, 11, making sure

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Amid a summer of dangerous heat, drought, and floods, a majority of Americans are connecting increasingly severe weather to the climate crisis, new polling shows, despite efforts by President Donald Trump to dismiss global heating as a “con job” and a “hoax.” It’s a sign that attempts to suppress and polarize climate concerns may not be seeing

Earlier this month, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir—possibly the most prominent figure on Israel’s extreme right—canceled a visit to New York amid legal pressure, in a rare moment of accountability for a regime that generally operates with near impunity where the United States is concerned.  Ben-Gvir, who is best known for attempting to build a crocodile moat around one of his prisons, advocating to bring back hanging, starving prisoners, and pushing for Israel to settle Ga

According to President Donald Trump’s Justice Department, you may be a member of a criminal conspiracy if you have done any of the following: worn black to a demonstration, given face masks to protesters, joined a book club, distributed a zine. Recently, federal prosecutors have cited these actions as evidence that activists protesting Trump’s deportation machine are part of an organized criminal enterprise. Call it antifa, domestic terrorism, the radical left—in Trump’s eyes, dissent is never o

On Monday, officials in 25 states and Washington, DC sued Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz over the interim final rule for Medicaid work requirements established by President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The new rule, their lawsuit contends, “will create unnecessary bureaucracy and lead people who are either already working or eligible for an exclusion to lose or be denie

The Supreme Court has issued a raft of recent decisions benefiting Donald Trump. But on Monday, the justices rejected his latest effort to avoid paying E. Jean Carroll millions of dollars a jury awarded her after finding Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation. Carroll had accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s. Carroll successfully sued him in 2023, after he not only denied the allegation—calling it a “hoax” and a “conjob

The Supreme Court on Monday gave the president the authority to remove the leadership of most agencies that Congress had set up to act independently of presidential control. The ruling in Trump v. Slaughter may seem technical, but it represents a radical change in how our American government has functioned since the 1930s and, in some cases, since the founding, by creating agencies that operate with independence from presidential control and the expediency of presidential politics. Rather than a

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled against President Donald Trump’s attempt to remove Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, dealing a setback to Trump’s campaign to take control of monetary policy. The court’s 5-4 decision preserves Cook’s job as she continues to fight her removal, but it is not the final word on Trump’s bid to fire her. The narrow decision almost guarantees that this same dispute will return to the high court soon. The majority opinion by Chief Justice John R

In a surprise victory for voting rights, the Supreme Court on Monday upheld a Mississippi law allowing mail-in ballots to be counted up to five days after Election Day, as long as they had been postmarked by the day of the election. The 5-4 decision by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, which was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s three liberal justices, averts a major election disaster that would have injected chaos into the midterms. Fourteen states have mail-in ba

Pick any Trump-imposed crisis over the last year, and you’ll find prominent Democrats decrying the president’s actions with an all-too-familiar word. California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Trump’s “hypocrisy knows no bounds” after he pardoned fraudsters while throwing “baseless allegations” of “massive fraud” at the Golden State. It was “beyond hypocritical,” California Sen. Alex Padilla said, for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act in Los ­Angeles after provoking an actual insurrection in DC. 

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. When Kekuewa Kikiloi boarded a research vessel to visit the northwestern Hawaiian islands in 2002, he didn’t know what to expect. Kikiloi grew up on O‘ahu, but like a lot of Native Hawaiians, he had never had the opportunity to visit the uninhabited islands and atolls scattered to the west of the main islands.  What he saw changed his life. “There’s n

Donald Trump’s network of family businesses—and network of US government deals with those businesses—is mind-bogglingly wide. A New York Times investigation reveals his sons’ latest venture: tungsten mining in Kazakhstan.  The US government recently cut a massive mining deal for the critical mineral with the government of Kazakhstan, whose leader recently said Donald Trump was “sent by Heaven.” Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr., and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s sons Brandon and Kyl

On Saturday, President Trump nominated Lance Schroyer, a former Oklahoma State Trooper, to serve as the Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. If confirmed, he would become the agency’s first permanent director since 2017. The pick signals a broader push to integrate local and federal law enforcement. Schroyer has 29 years of state law enforcement experience, but his federal resume is thin. A former member of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s security detail, Schr

Meta believes the future is gambling.  As prediction markets surge in popularity, CEO Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly calling for his company to consider partnering with Polymarket and Kalshi, two of the biggest platforms, while he develops a similar in-house app, Arena. According to a Friday report by the New York Times, Zuckerberg wants to design Arena to specifically target 18 to 34-year-olds. Meta also hopes to implement parts of Arena into Facebook and its messaging app, Messenger,