He Voted for Trump. Now He’s Running for Congress as a Pro-Pot, Pro-Coal Democrat.
Mother Jones illustration; Mark Helenowski; Getty Images On most nights during the nine-day West Virginia teacher strike last winter, Richard Ojeda could be found at his office in Logan County, gesturing wildly at his iPhone. Ojeda, a 47-year-old ex-Army paratrooper who is rarely seen outside the state Senate chamber in anything other than a tight-fitting…
Trump Promised His Appointees Wouldn’t Become Lobbyists. Guess How That Turned Out.
Getty This story was originally published by ProPublica. Lobbyists who joined the Trump administration and now want to return to their old trade have a problem: President Trump said they can’t. Days after taking office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order requiring every political appointee to sign a pledge as a condition of taking office.…
Donald Trump’s Attacks on the Justice System Are Helping This Ex-Con Coal Baron’s Campaign
On the eighth anniversary of the worst American mine disaster in half a century, Don Blankenship was camped out at a diner in Elizabeth, West Virginia, explaining to an audience of two why his recently completed stint in federal prison made him more appealing to voters. The trip to B-Bopp, a ’40s-themed joint about the…
“We Wouldn’t Need the Suicide Hotline If Dairy Farmers Were Getting Paid What They Deserve”
Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. Brenda Cochran was a self-described “city girl” before she married her husband in 1973. He was a dairy farmer, so she joined him on a small farm in Pennsylvania. They’ve been working together since 1975. Cochran says that if she’d known how difficult dairy farming…
Democrats Recruited Two Sandy Hook Parents to Run for Congress. They Both Decided It Wasn’t Worth It.
Hockley, Barden, and other Sandy Hook parents ask New Jersey lawmakers to limit ammunition magazines to 10 bullets in 2013.Julio Cortez/AP Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. For weeks, western Connecticut residents and national Democrats have been watching and waiting, speculating which of the two parents who lost their sons in the 2012 shooting at…
Texas Democrats Just Got a Huge Boost Thanks to This Court Decision
Eric Gay/AP Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. On Monday, a judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Dallas County Republican Party that would have kicked most Democratic candidates in the Texas county off the ballot. The lawsuit, filed in January, tried to keep 127 Democratic candidates from appearing on the March 6 primary ballot,…