Trump’s Sister Retires Rather Than Face Ethics Probe
File photo of Donald Trump with his sister Maryanne and brother Robert.Sonia Moskowitz/Globe Photos via ZUMA I almost forgot to write about the stink of scandal now surrounding Donald Trump’s older sister, Maryanne Barry. You may recall that the New York Times published a big story last year about the Trump family business and the…
Activists Couldn’t Get Facebook to Tackle Its Discrimination Problem—Until the Russia Scandal Hit
Mother Jones illustration On April 10, 2018, Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg did something he had managed to avoid in his 14 years at the helm of the tech giant he had built: He testified before Congress. His company had been battered in the preceding months, first by revelations that Russia had used the…
New Government Data Shows Trump Wanted to Close the Wrong Border
A sign marking the US-Canada border.Joe Raedle/Getty In January, with the government shut down over President Donald Trump’s insistence on a border wall, the White House began pushing a new talking point. Seventeen thousand criminals had been arrested at the southern border in the previous year, Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, and former Homeland Security…
How Are You Cutting Down on Plastic Waste?
Katarzyna Bialasiewicz/Getty Images The United States—and the world—is facing a plastics crisis. Experts predict that if we continue using plastics at the current rate without proper disposal, there could be more plastic than fish in the oceans by 2050. The problem has only gotten worse after China stopped accepting contaminated recycling last year. The United…
On the Road with J.S. Ondara
Six years ago, Kenyan folk singer J.S. Ondara left his home country behind to live with an aunt in Minneapolis and pursue his dream of becoming a musician. Though he was wholly unprepared for the windchills of the northern Midwest, he’s been able to channel his experience as a stranger in a strange land into…
Asylum Was Pretty Much Dead Before Trump. Now He’s Trying to Finish the Job.
The US Coast Guard arrives on a Haitian refugee boat in 1992. Haitians intercepted at sea were generally returned to Haiti or detained in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.Jacques Langevin/Getty In October 2013, 368 mostly Eritrean migrants died after their ship sank off the coast of the Italian island of Lampedusa. Italy honored them with honorary citizenship…