How QAnon Fueled a Hoax About Oprah Being Arrested
Photo by Tom Cooper/Getty Images Seemingly out of nowhere on Tuesday night, an outlandish hoax about Oprah Winfrey getting arrested and Tom Hanks’ coronavirus diagnosis went massively viral only to be debunked by Winfrey herself—all in the period of time when many Americans were asleep. “Just got a phone call that my name is trending.…
“You Can’t Afford to Get Sick”: Why Workers at the Country’s Largest Health Contractor Want a Union
HRAUN/Getty On a snowy day this past December, Logan Stinemetz was driving to his job at a call center in Lawrence, Kansas, where he helps people enroll in health insurance, when he hit black ice and spun into a concrete barrier. The accident left Stinemetz in debilitating pain, made worse by the arthritis and degenerative…
Thanks to Trump, Keystone XL Is Back. The Anti-Pipeline Movement Is Ready.
A water protector wielding Indigenous flags stands before floodlights at the Dakota Access Pipeline construction site on December 31, 2016.Richard Tsong-Taatarii/ZUMA You may remember the Keystone XL pipeline from 2015, when a movement galvanized by the growing threat of climate change successfully pushed President Obama to reject the project. But Keystone XL, which would pump…
Weathercasters Are Talking About Climate Change—and How We Can Solve It
A meteorologist in Victoria, Texas.Matthew Westmoreland/AP This piece was originally published in Grist and appears here as part of our Climate Desk Partnership. For many years, as the science of human-caused climate change grew ever clearer, TV meteorologists avoided discussing the topic on air. Today, many weathercasters bring up climate change regularly. By embracing the…
Warren vs. Sanders: Inside the Progressive Debate Over the Student Debt Crisis
Mother Jones illustration; Getty Last April, the socialist magazine Jacobin had a message for its favorite presidential candidate: “As President, Bernie Sanders Should Cancel All Student Debt.” The secretary of Education, the magazine argued, could wipe out most of the $1.6 trillion in outstanding college loans “with the stroke of a pen.” As his reward,…
How Corporate Lawyers Made It Harder to Punish Companies That Destroy Electronic Evidence
A ProPublica analysis shows the rate at which judges issue penalties for destroying evidence has fallen by more than half.absolut_100/Getty This story was published originally by ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for ProPublica‘s Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox as soon as they…