Elon Musk may be able to control—to some extent—the American government. But on Sunday, German voters showed he does not control theirs. After polls closed Sunday in snap elections sparked by Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s vote of no-confidence in December, early exit polls showed the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party—which Musk has been boosting for […]

Early Saturday morning, President Donald Trump took to Truth Social to make a seemingly unprompted post egging on Elon Musk. “ELON IS DOING A GREAT JOB,” the post says. “BUT I WOULD LIKE TO SEE HIM GET MORE AGGRESSIVE. REMEMBER, WE HAVE A COUNTRY TO SAVE, BUT ULTIMATELY, TO MAKE GREATER THAN EVER BEFORE. MAGA!” […]

This story was originally published by the Canada’s National Observer and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. North America’s largest urban solar power park is set to take shape in Medicine Hat, Alberta., following the sale on Tuesday of a 325 megawatt (MW) project to the prairie city.   The Saamis project, progressed to this point by […]

On Friday, a federal judge partly blocked President Donald Trump’s attempt to root out programs related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, within the government. That includes at least one far-reaching executive order titled, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” in which the president claimed DEI programs are illegal. As my colleague Alex […]

“I was born for this—and I know exactly what I’m doing.” Karcheik Sims-Alvarado, assistant professor of Africana studies at Morehouse College—and the institution’s Director of Public History and Historic Preservation—chairs a task force that’s the first of its kind in the country: one dedicated to the study of reparations. A governmental advisory body in Fulton […]

On Tuesday, leaders at the National Science Foundation reportedly laid off about 170 employees, many via Zoom—an estimated 10 percent of the agency’s workers. One of those workers spoke to Mother Jones, requesting anonymity, about the chaotic and emotional meeting, and what the job losses mean for the $9 billion agency, which is tasked with […]

President Donald Trump is taking aim at the US Postal Service.  According to a Thursday report from the Washington Post‘s Jacob Bogage, the president plans to fire the members of USPS’ board and hand the keys to the agency over to the Department of Commerce. Trump plans to make the move through executive order as […]

On Wednesday afternoon in New York City, it hovered around 30 degrees, the sort of cold outside that makes your face sting. Despite the sub-freezing temperatures, hundreds of PhD students, post-doctoral researchers, and other scholars gathered in the West Village’s Washington Square Park to protest cuts to public research funding and the Trump administration’s crackdown […]

On February 12, Victoria DeLano was fired from her job in the Department of Education‘s Office for Civil Rights, a position she took in late December. Her termination—by phone, without the written notice required by law—came the day after the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” announced that it had terminated around $900 million worth of […]

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Lee Zeldin, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, announced last week that he had uncovered evidence of a massive fraud perpetrated by the Biden administration. In a video posted to social media, the former Republican congressman from New York said […]

At the Conservative Political Action Conference, a new group pushed for President Donald Trump to serve an unconstitutional third term.   The effort, called the Third Term Project, is being led by Shane Trejo, who once co-hosted a neo-Nazi adjacent podcast called “Blood Soil and Liberty.” An episode of the now-deleted show was titled “Tanner Flake […]

It’s hard to imagine a better opportunity to oust an incumbent than the one currently before the Democratic primary candidates challenging New York City Mayor Eric Adams. In the last few weeks, Adams has been engulfed in a growing scandal surrounding the Trump Justice Department’s decision to dismiss his federal corruption charges and the mayor’s […]

In December, Mother Jones published a roundup of seven things Donald Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency could target if Elon Musk and his “Muskrats”—as critics have dubbed them—truly wanted to cut wasteful spending. On January 23, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sent Musk a letter with a long list of additional waste-cutting ideas. Musk will […]

When workers at the United States Agency for International Development got an email earlier this month informing them they were soon to be put on administrative leave, veteran staffers took note of the name and title appended to the bottom—Peter Marocco, a former USAID political appointee now serving both as USAID’s deputy administrator and as […]

When Sam, a third-grade teacher in the greater Boston area, walked into her classroom January 30, about a third of her students were absent. “The sun was beating down so hard and it was reflecting off the desks in the room, and the desks were empty,” Sam remembers. “And I was like—oh my god. This […]

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Green advocacy groups filed two lawsuits against the Trump administration on Wednesday, marking the first environmental legal challenges against the president’s second administration. Both focus on the Trump administration’s moves to open up more of US waters to oil and gas drilling, which […]

There’s been ample evidence over the past few years that abortion bans lead to death and major health risks for pregnant people and babies. Now, a groundbreaking analysis by ProPublica shows just how dire the situation has become in Texas since the state implemented a six-week abortion ban in 2021, followed by an even more […]

Not content with spending more than a quarter of a billion dollars to elect Donald Trump and Republican candidates in 2024 and then taking a wrecking ball to the federal government, Elon Musk is now trying to flip the balance of power on the top court in one of the country’s most important swing states. […]

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Environmentalists were outraged on Wednesday after the Trump administration moved to fast-track fossil fuel projects through the permitting process, with activists describing it as an attempt to sidestep environmental laws that could harm waterways and wetlands. In recent days, the US Army Corps of […]

On Wednesday afternoon, New York City Mayor Eric Adams arrived at a federal courthouse in lower Manhattan for what may be the last hearing in his criminal case. US District Judge Dale Ho heard arguments from Adams’ lawyer and deputy US attorney Emil Bove over the Department of Justice’s request that the bribery and fraud […]