MoJo Wire

Quick hits from the Mother Jones newsroom

  • Republicans Are Now Flipping Out Over Gas Stoves

    January 12, 2023

    Eva Marie Uzcategui/AFP/Getty

    First, they were incandescent lightbulbs. Then, low-flow showerheads. Now, in their seemingly never-ending quest to remove “wokeness” from their appliances, Republicans have set their sights on waging a war on behalf of gas stoves. The brewing battle comes amid reports that the US Consumer Product Safety Commission is considering a ban on the beloved kitchen appliance, citing research linking emissions from gas stoves to a litany of respiratory health conditions, including children’s asthma. But the Republican outrage, which has already launched another culture war, appears to once again distort what’s actually happening. 

    There was Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who on Tuesday tweeted, “Democrats are coming for your kitchen appliances. Their desire to control every aspect of your life knows no bounds—including how you make breakfast. They just can’t help themselves.” Podcaster and professional transphobe Matt Walsh insisted that President Biden would have to pry his gas stove from his “cold, dead hands.” Then we had this strangely ominous tweet from the Oklahoma Libertarian Party:

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis dove into the storm this morning, borrowing from a phrase with pro-slavery sentiments.

    Despite the right’s angry insistence, no such plan for the government to seize gas stoves exists. As I wrote earlier this week as news of a potential ban circulated, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission is considering a ban on new gas stoves and setting emissions standards for them. That’s a far cry from the Republican fiction going around, depicting Biden agents storming peaceful kitchens and leaving giant, gas-stove holes while all you wanted to do was enjoy some pancakes. Any potential ban is an extension of the Biden administration’s efforts to encourage more Americans to go electric after including a rebate of up to $840 in the Inflation Reduction Act for those who wanted to purchase new electric cooking appliances.

    Responding to the predictable GOP ire, the CPSC emphasized that there is no plan to ever confiscate people’s kitchenware. Potential regulations would apply to new products, and going electric would be entirely voluntary.

    Of course, that hasn’t stopped conservatives from crying about governmental overreach. But their faux handwringing has conveniently omitted mention of the increasing evidence pointing to serious health concerns from gas stove emissions. As we’ve reported,  research has shown that gas stoves are hazardous, even when they’re turned off. A new study released earlier this month found about one in eight cases of childhood asthma stem from pollution from gas stoves. But it doesn’t seem like you’ll hear anything about that from Marjorie Taylor Greene.

  • Florida Congresswoman Explains What It’s Like to Be Forced to Carry a “Dead Baby” to Term

    January 11, 2023

    Lynne Sladky/AP

    Until today, Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) had kept the story of her traumatic, pre-Roe pregnancy private. But during a congressional debate on abortion policy, she opened up about being forced to carry a dead baby to term—and warned lawmakers of the deadly consequences of a federal abortion ban.

    Wilson said that she became pregnant, intentionally, shortly after getting married in 1968. At seven months, the fetus stopped moving, but her doctor was prohibited by law from inducing labor. Wilson said she was “forced to carry my dead baby” until she went into labor at eight and a half months.

    “After three days, I left the maternity ward in a wheelchair, empty-handed, no baby,” she said. “We had a small graveside burial for baby boy Wilson, and the doctors were so afraid that I would also have had to have a graveside burial. Do not take us back to the days before Roe v. Wade.”

    Wilson urged lawmakers to consider her story when considering abortion restrictions, now that the right to choose is no longer protected by law.

    “Abortion does not only apply to women who have decided for themselves they’re not ready to have a child,” she said. “Abortion affects women who are at risk of facing medical emergencies, life-altering emergencies and death.”

    Watch Wilson’s testimony here:

  • Tell Us About Coming of Age During #MeToo

    January 10, 2023

    This October marked five years since the #MeToo movement began. At the time, we reflected on the ways we’d been treated at school, at the office, at home. We named abusers. And upon this most recent anniversary, I’ve been thinking specifically about what the movement has meant for those who “grew up” during this period.

    When #MeToo first took off, many reflected on the past. But a younger generation faced a future in which formative milestones would likely be altered by a movement still unraveling before the culture. Their first jobs, college years, early dating ventures all shaped by this cultural phenomenon. They came of age in an era where so many of the past ideas about sex, relationships, and power were changing rapidly.

    That’s how we started a project to report on what it was like to come of age during #MeToo. And we’d love for you, our readers, to help.

    If you are under 30, we want to hear about how the #MeToo movement has impacted your life. Did it affect any of the big decisions you made in the last five years? Have you shifted the language you use to discuss consent, or around what media you consume? Did it change the way you navigated dating or dating apps? Have you reconsidered any personal or professional relationships?

    Let us know by filling out this form.

  • The Case Against a More Cinematic C-SPAN

    January 10, 2023

    Bill Clark/AP

    The internet is in rare agreement: C-SPAN, the famously staid public affairs network, had a banger week.

    Measured in television ratings, that’s indisputable; Americans were apparently riveted by Kevin McCarthy’s marathon humiliation, and who could blame them? But the attendant praise for a C-SPAN gone wild—the direct result of the chaos the network’s cameras were there to film—has convinced some that we should give C-SPAN producers full control over what they’re able to film, allowing the network to create a cinematic event out of turgid committee meetings. The logic appears rooted in several ideas but the main one seems to be that increased transparency is a good thing. Maybe the country wouldn’t be such a divisive shithole if we could see more Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Paul Gossar in conversation, forgetting that the guy once tweeted an anime depicting him killing her. Oh, and the memes. Little vape hits so satisfying, why not make room for more? 

    But there’s a real danger in believing that the C-SPAN we saw last week, while surely more entertaining, offered an authentic glimpse into the inner workings of Congress.

    As my colleague Tim Murphy wrote for the magazine, we live in a post-Trumpian era teeming with shitposters, lawmakers clamoring for virality with a shamelessness that can only be judged as repulsive. C-SPAN was created to undo such media distortion. But, in the blog era, that’s harder to imagine: Everything is fodder for a post. Adults who run our country now obsess over ways to appear in headlines claiming they’ve DESTROYED political foes, whose long game doesn’t extend much further than to create endless content. This sickness consumes many of the stars of the current Republican Party, but Democrats are far from immune. In fact, Democrat Katie Porter emerged last week with what might be the best possible argument against a free-roaming C-SPAN:

    Politics is inherently performative; we all know this. Yet whipping out “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck” in 2023, as if we’re still stuck in the Obama years, exceeds tolerable levels of cringe. Such moments, themselves little prayers hoping to excite a certain corner of the internet, feel intensely out of step with the overwhelming desensitization of being subsumed by nearly a decade of political corniness and mendacity. One easily imagines Porter, days into McCarthy’s struggle and realizing that much of the country is watching, convening with aides to brainstorm tortured content they’d eventually fundraise off of. That’s normal DC brain for you, sure. But why let them commit such corny atrocities under the guise of faux transparency?

    The chance of getting zoomed in on by a C-SPAN camera would also play to some of the worst instincts that animated the very grandstanders responsible for last week’s Republican paralysis. While political observers pondered over what this rowdy group could possibly want by holding the whole thing hostage, consideration of just three of the biggest McCarthy holdouts—Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, Andy Biggs—suddenly rendered all that political guesswork silly. You could pore over the list of concessions and realize that nothing quite matched their singular impulse to chase clout. Be vile because why the hell not? Remain permanently drunk on pursuing endless fights. I’m all for C-SPAN producers enjoying themselves. But a zoomed-in version of Gaetz’s rot is a price too big.

    Of course, not everything we witnessed via C-SPAN last week was contrived. George Santos seemed genuinely lonely, that guy really did almost hit the other guy, and Americans did get a view into political wheeling and dealing. But none of that is enough to warrant the belief that permanent, free-roaming access to floor discussions is true transparency.

    I reject a future marred by a C-SPAN gaze. At least when it’s clout chasing on CNN it’s clear what game is being played.

  • Hakeem Jeffries Just Made History—and Gave a Helluva Speech

    January 7, 2023

    Alex Brandon/AP

    On Saturday, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries made history as the first Black lawmaker to lead a congressional party, making a splash with his first official speech as House Minority leader in the wee hours of the morning.

    “As John Lewis would sometimes remind us on this floor, we may have come over on different ships but we’re all in the same boat now,” said the New York Democrat, referencing the Civil Rights icon and longtime politician while addressing the 118th Congress. While the entire speech was well received, it was the final portion that really struck a chord with people, both in the chamber and online. Adopting a unique alphabetical format, the congressman’s inaugural speech cleverly lists the Democratic Party’s values with a Sesame Street-esque flair. He even made mention of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago scandal, earning a cheer from the audience. 

    “House Democrats,” he said, “will always put American values over autocracy, benevolence over bigotry, the Constitution over the cult, democracy over demagogues, economic opportunity over extremism, freedom over fascism, governing over gaslighting, hopefulness over hatred, inclusion over isolation, justice over judicial overreach, knowledge over kangaroo courts, liberty over limitation, maturity over Mar-a-Lago, normalcy over negativity, opportunity over obstruction, people over politics, quality of life issues over QAnon, reason over racism, substance over slander, triumph over tyranny, understanding over ugliness, voting rights over voter suppression, working families over the well-connected, xenial over xenophobia, ‘yes, we can’ over ‘you can do it,’ and zealous representation over zero-sum confrontation.” 

    You can watch the full speech here. 

  • Here Are the Concessions Kevin McCarthy Had to Make to Become House Speaker

    January 7, 2023

    Alex Brandon/AP

    It’s finally over. After days of negotiations and 14 failed ballots—the most since 1860—Republican Kevin McCarthy was officially elected speaker of the House early Saturday morning. In exchange for the necessary votes to get him elected, the congressman had to beg, barter, and plead with a group of hardline Republicans who held out for a litany of concessions. 

    Since Wednesday, McCarthy and his supporters have been negotiating with several far-right GOPers, including some who have been implicated in Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, as my colleague Dan Friedman previously reported. House members like Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), and Scott Perry (R-Pa.) all held out on their votes, until McCarthy eventually won them over. 

    According to CNN, here’s what the holdouts got from McCarthy in exchange for the speakership:

    • Any member can call for a motion to vacate the speaker’s chair
    • A McCarthy-aligned super-PAC (the Congressional Leadership Fund) agreed to not spend in open Republican primaries in safe seats
    • The House will hold votes on key conservative bills, including a balanced budget amendment, congressional term limits, and border security
    • Efforts to raise the nation’s debt ceiling must be paired with spending cuts
    • Move 12 appropriations bills individually, instead of passing separate bills to fund government operations
    • More Freedom Caucus representation on committees, including the influential House Rules Committee
    • Cap discretionary spending at fiscal year 2022 levels, which would amount to lower levels for defense and domestic programs
    • 72 hours to review bills before they come to floor
    • Give members the ability to offer more amendments on the House floor
    • Create an investigative committee to probe the “weaponization” of the federal government
    • Restore the Holman rule, which can be used to reduce the salary of government officials

  • Watch House Republicans’ Near-Fight on the 14th Vote to Elect McCarthy House Speaker

    January 7, 2023

    Andrew Harnik/AP

    It was late. Everyone was fried. And apparently, some Republicans had finally had enough.

    On Friday night, toward the end of the 14th (and penultimate) vote to elect Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as House Speaker, McCarthy found himself walking over to Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican who has been one of most outspoken conservative holdouts in the speakership drama. Gaetz had just voted “present” after repeated votes for other non-McCarthy candidates, and some Republicans believed that would be enough to finally hand McCarthy the gavel. But it wasn’t enough; Gaetz needed to have voted for McCarthy for that to happen.

    So McCarthy approached Gaetz, and the two began a dour-looking conversation that involved a few other nearby GOPers. It was yet another sidebar in a week of sidebars.

    And then Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) rolled up on the group, and the vibe shifted quickly:

    Rogers obviously wasn’t pleased with Gaetz’s grandstanding. He also couldn’t have been pleased by North Carolina Republican Richard Hudson, who ended up restraining Rogers by, strangely, grabbing his face and covering his mouth. According to the Washington Post, “Rogers stormed off the House floor and into a cloakroom. He declined to elaborate on the clash, saying, ‘I think it spoke for itself.’”

    Just another night with the Hold Me Back, Bro caucus.

  • For Four Days, C-SPAN Was the Greatest TV Channel in the World

    January 7, 2023

    A Renaissance paintingBill Clark/CQ Roll Call/AP

    12:29 a.m. ET: The House finally voted confirm Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House. It’s been a wild ride.

    As midnight approached on the fourth day of House speaker voting, things were buzzing on C-SPAN.

    The freely accessible channel trained its briefly liberated cameras on Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as he appealed to holdout Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) to take us out of our misery and vote for him. The dialogue is inaudible, but people shout as McCarthy walks down the aisle. McCarthy hears something that grabs his attention, and he turns around defiantly.

    Things got physical:

    Portrait of a defeated man:

    Members began chanting “one more time” when it became clear that the majority had voted against a motion to adjourn. Buckle up for round 15 of voting:

    Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) says what we’re all thinking:

    Here’s a link to the most riveting television on air.

  • Which Has Stricter Entrance Policies: The House of Representatives or Yankee Stadium?

    January 5, 2023

    Mother Jones; Getty; Rob Tringali/Sportschrome/Getty

    Yesterday afternoon, it hit me. As I watched C-SPAN yesterday, waiting for Republicans to get their shit together, I noticed something surprising: a lack of coffee cups in the hands of our nation’s elected representatives. I usually have an iced coffee glued to my palm, like most who hail from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. How could Rep. Ayanna Pressley and her colleagues bear to sit around the chamber for hours without caffeine?

    There is an obvious answer: Drinks and snacks aren’t allowed on the House floor, no matter what Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) says.

    As boredom over Republicans’ infighting set in, I started reading about which items are prohibited from the House floor and from the Capitol as a whole.

    It struck me that the banned item list was not that extensive (especially since one of Republicans’ first orders of business upon retaking the House was to remove the metal detectors at the entrances to the chamber). Specifically, it struck me that the House was laxer than a place that I, like anyone who hails from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, was been born to hate: Yankee Stadium.

    I think that now is a proper time to do something we’ve needed to do for years: Compare the security standards of the hallowed halls of Congress with those of that soulless stadium in the Bronx. Throughout the list, I will first mention the Capitol’s rules and compare them with those of a team that has not won a World Series since 2009. And then I will decide a winner.

    Bags

    • Bags exceeding the size of 18″ wide x 14″ high x 8.5″ deep are not allowed in the Capitol.  At Yankee Stadium, the permitted dimensions are 16″ x 16″ x 8″.
    • The Capitol prohibits “briefcases, backpacks, and suitcases of any size” in the gallery, and presumably on the floor as well. Yankee Stadium bans “hard-sided bags or containers of any size.” I suppose you could bring a backpack to a Yankees game, as long as it’s not carrying any Tupperware.

    Winner: The Capitol. Capacity is important.

    Guns

    • Come on, use your head. Weapons are a no-go at both venues. Well, kind of: The Capitol Police say that firearms, including replica guns and ammunition, are not allowed in the Capitol; other sources say that congresspeople are allowed to have guns in their personal offices, a rule apparently made to accommodate members who wanted to display ceremonial weapons. It remains unclear whether Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), who holds a concealed carry permit, was ever able to sneak her Glock onto the House floor.

    Winner: Everyone.

    Aerosol cans

    • Not allowed in either location, even if it’s just sunscreen or hairspray. Mace and pepper spray? Forget about it.

    Winner: Capitol. You can’t get sunburned in there.

    Snacks

    • You can bring a snack to a ballgame.
    • No snacks during a session of Congress. Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY) learned this the hard way.

    Winner: Stadium of team that got swept by the Astros in 2022.

    Laptops

    • Not allowed in the ballpark or on the floors of the House and Senate, although the late Sen. Michael Enzi’s (R-Wyo.) 1997 request to bring his laptop to the Senate floor caused a lot of people to spend a lot of time deciding that Thomas Jefferson wouldn’t like that very much.

    Winner: Capitol. Members are at least allowed to bring their laptops into the building and leave them in their offices. I once went straight to a game (against the Red Sox, of course) from work, with my laptop in tow. I was denied entry to the stadium and had to pay to rent a locker across the street. (Since we’re here: Another day, I foolishly brought a bouquet to the stadium, for my boyfriend’s college graduation. No flowers allowed. I had to pitch them.)

    Cell phones

    • It’s 2023. Cell phones are everywhere. You can take them to Yankee Stadium. 
    • People do take them to the House floor, even if they aren’t exactly allowed.

    Winner: Capitol, for the entertainment value of watching congresspeople texting.

    Helmets

    • Helmets are banned at Yankee Stadium. Rode a Citi Bike to the game? Tough luck.
    • Helmets are allowed on the floor of Congress, as far as I can tell—as long as representatives aren’t wearing them on their heads.

    Winner: Stadium of the team A-Rod played for. Oh, by the way, he and Jennifer Lopez broke up. Guess who she married? Ben Affleck. Guess who he roots for? The fucking Sox.

    Hats

    • There is perhaps no place where a hat is more acceptable than a baseball stadium.
    • In Congress, not so much. Once top hats went out of style, Congress banned head coverings. Hoods were banned in 2012. Following the election of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who wears a hijab, the rule was amended to allow religious headwear.

    Winner: Yankee Stadium, where the Red Sox clinched the 2004 American League Championship Series before going on to win the World Series and break the Curse of the Bambino.

    Projectiles

    • Yankee Stadium banned flying discs and beach balls because it hates fun.
    • The House and Senate have different rules, but former Sen. James Inhofe’s (R-Okla) snowball display suggests that projectiles are more acceptable in the Capitol than in the bleachers.

    Winner: Capitol. If I could, I would throw stuff at the baseball team called the New York Yankees.

    Selfie sticks

    • Remember these? They can be pretty obtrusive, so I suppose it makes sense that they’re banned at Yankee Stadium.
    • I can’t find any info on whether they’re allowed on the House floor, but their ban during the pope’s visit to Congress in 2015 suggests that they were at one time allowed.

    Winner: Capitol. I am pro-selfie.

    I reached out to the Capitol Police and the Sergeant at Arms for comment on some of the gray areas. We’ll keep you posted on their response. But for now, the answer is clear: I’d rather sit through three days of inane Speaker votes than ever step foot in Yankee Stadium again.

    Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the state former Sen. James Inhofe represented.

  • Monster of 2022: Cars Parked in Bike Lanes

    January 3, 2023

    Mother Jones; Courtesy of Grace Molteni; Courtesy of Jacob Rosenberg

    The last time I got in a fight was about four years ago in San Francisco. The incident involved me, my bike, and a car. And when I say fight, I mean a stranger shoved me to the ground and I ran away—the bike under me as I hurried like a child riding a stick that’s supposed to be a make-believe horse. 

    It was a moment of mutual road rage. I was headed home from work on a one-way street, plodding along in the bike lane on the right side. As I approached a side street, a car cut in front of me—ostensibly to make a right turn. Annoying, but acceptable. I tried to slow down. The car, however, did not turn; it parked. In the bike lane. I hit the Toyota and flipped over my handlebars. And, in sort of a beautiful bit of timing, as I was about to make my landing, the car moved forward just a bit. At this point, my shoulder, and general head area hit the pavement. Bam, bam. (I was fine.)

    Propelled by a dose of adrenaline and an overwrought sense of justice, I hobbled over to the car’s window. Before I could even begin to berate anyone, someone yelled: “Keep it fucking moving.” Out of the passenger seat, a man emerged (let’s pretend he was big but I don’t remember). He walked over to me and pushed me to the cement. “Uh, what the fuck?” I asked from the less-than-dominant position of the ground. And then I got up and did what I was told: I kept it fucking moving.

    For me, this was all fine if frustrating. Getting pushed? Okay, I’ve been to middle school, we can deal with it. Crashing on my bike? It happens. But the particular indignity of the next part was what has stuck with me.

    After my time on the cement, I started riding home. And even then I still had to dodge many cars parked in the bike lane. It was like having to clean up the mess your bully made after giving you a swirlie. Navigating the often-obstructed bike lane, swerving into the street where car traffic sped along, I had to look behind me into oncoming traffic. (I’ve been told that making eye contact with drivers forces them to acknowledge you’re a real human being and therefore they will be less likely to hit you.)

    The entire time I kept thinking: What if one of these cars smushes me? And what if after it happens, the driver doesn’t even think it’s their fault? Dying is part of life. But to die at another’s hands (as they grip the wheel) without the perpetrator feeling any twinge of guilt?  That is not a just world in which I want to live. Often when I am almost run down by a car while biking, the thing I realize is: That driver thinks I’m being annoying and I think they’re being evil. The yawning gap in emotion bugs me. 

    That disconnect has been on my mind a lot this year after I moved back to New York City.

    Many of my happiest memories here are attached to biking.  When I had little money, as a freelancer after college, my best friend and I had a cherished weekend tradition. I would steal a roommate’s bike, and we would head down from Bushwick to Sunset Park. There, we ate tacos, and then rode to a cafe in Red Hook, sitting near the water, reading books—pausing now and then to talk. It was a cheap and fun way to spend a day.

    We used some bike lanes. But the thrill was in part listening to loud music in our headphones, dodging cars, and dipping in and out of traffic. It felt like a low-level rebellion. Biking did not feel normal. It was not carefree. At the time, I didn’t mind a car parked in a bike lane—all the better reason to get into the street, try to skim past a vehicle stuck in traffic, yell at someone over an Arthur Russell song that seemingly everyone was listening to.

    That doesn’t seem as appealing now. (Even if I do sometimes indulge.) Now, in a landscape with bike lanes, I am flummoxed by how dangerous it feels to use what seems to be the easiest, best form of transportation to get around town. This year, as Gothamist reported, traffic deaths have gone down slightly but the problem is still massive: In 2022, guns were involved in 246 deaths in New York City; there were 247 traffic deaths. (Despite that, the crime narrative that fueled the governor’s race did not exactly hone in on the automobile.)

    For a week, I kept track of how often I had to go into the street because a car was parked in a bike lane. It was astounding. On average I saw one car parked in a bike lane for every 2.5 minutes of biking.

    For Mother Jones, Abigail Weinberg has written “accidents” don’t exist; they are really safety design flaws. Last year, my colleague Tim Murphy chose cars generally as a monster of 2021, noting that there are few consequences for hitting someone with an automobile. What increasingly irks me about cars is their sheer presumption. To think about designing a city around biking, or walking first is considered to not be serious about the world. It is considered the pipe dream of activists. And that arrogant car chauvinism, for me, is most noticeable when I see a vehicle parked in a bike lane. It is as if a driver has said: I will take that too. 

    I often wonder if I will be able to bike in New York City when I am sixty. When will be the last time my friend and I can have that day from Sunset Park to Red Hook? 

    When I see a car in a bike lane, it is not only an annoyance but a reminder that creating a livable city—with the fullest meaning of that phrase—will take more than some paint on the ground. I can’t imagine doing something this casually dangerous for the rest of my life. I can’t imagine not doing it either. 

    As usual, the staff of Mother Jones is rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. Find all of 2o22’s here.

  • Hero of 2022: The James Webb Space Telescope

    December 26, 2022

    Mother Jones; NASA

    Think of Earth as a Kinder Egg, a ball of surprises (plastics) and danger (chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer) that is reduced to shit by human consumption. Of the many universes, PBS tells me, life can only form in a few—and most of those tolerate but don’t encourage it, the way most people aren’t actively trying to kill you, but also don’t want to hang out. We shouldn’t ask too much.

    Still, we one-up the egg time to time: elephants, underwater volcanoes, Indonesian food, Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite, total eclipses, the movie Friday, the five-inning stretch of Dock Ellis’ 1970 Pittsburgh Pirates acid-trip no-hitter when he thought Richard Nixon was umpire, and, latterly, the James Webb Space Telescope.

    The James Webb Space Telescope is the new heavyweight champion of the faraway, the best camera our species has built; Jim, to its friends. Jim makes spectacular the familiar and uncovers new mysteries: it’s already produced NASA’s “deepest and sharpest infrared image” of the universe,” its “most distant known star” (says Space.com), the “first direct image of a planet outside our solar system” (Axios), and, says its own website, “an ‘undiscovered country’ of early galaxies.” 

    It’s even more impressive given that Jim turns one this Christmas, an age-to-accomplishment ratio to impress even the parents for whom nothing you did was good enough. And—unlike many young people—Jim has not only permanently left the house but is now four times more remote than the moon. I’ll run the numbers.

    Weight: 6,170 kilograms, roughly three times the weight of a 1999 Toyota Camry LE.
    Length: 69 feet, or three times the length of a 1999 Toyota Camry LE.
    Cost: $8.8 billion, about 9,500,000 times the current market value of my 1999 Toyota Camry LE due to cosmetic damage to the passenger-side door.
    Value: Revolutionizes astronomy, ushers in new era of space science.

    The main event, obviously, is its infrared eyes. I’ll skip the details because I don’t understand them—I think it’s made of iPhone cameras—but you can see how Jim compares to the iconic Hubble Space Telescope, its predecessor. I bet you remember, if you’ve always needed glasses, the first time you saw-saw a tree. Jim is that, spatially:

    These big leaps change science, but they also change people. Hubble lit up public interest in space science and the cosmos, with breathless news coverage of spacewalk repairs, as if our worth as a species hinged on our ability to photograph nebulae.

    Well, it kind of does. In the age of space billionaires and their cringe-ass fans, Jim reminds us what the stars have always been to human: an orientation, not a destination. Long before anyone thought we could go to space, up was the direction of wonder. Sure, if we don’t destroy ourselves, our kids’ kids’ kids might tour its near reaches. But the point of Yosemite is not that you get to go. The point of a Picasso is not that you can own it. The point of the cosmos is not that you’re in it. If your vision of space exploration is you, on Mars, taking a selfie, you probably also think Wage Theft Jeff’s Fisher Price star-phallus will “increase access to space,” much as hiring more dishwashers at the Waldorf-Astoria technically increases access to luxury hotels.

    You won’t be a space tourist because you live in an economy that’s better at directing resources to boutique star cruises than basic infrastructure. Space tourism, unicorn startups, “sustainable” private jets: these are the spots of mold that spell deeper trouble. If your gospel is that most social goods can be private and profitable—maybe with a bit of new tech that’s always five years away—you get disastrous allocative inefficiencies. They accumulate. They metastasize. Next thing you know, you’re fighting the climate crisis by hawking luxury cars. Or “opening space for everyone” by putting shareholders in free fall for the time it takes to pee. That’s systemic market failure. Nothing trickles down in zero G.

    That’s not lost on the space-drunk rich. It’s not about humanity; it’s about a few humans. The people who build the vanity rockets would, in a heartbeat, buy the Northern Lights for in-home display. Who do they think will own Luna Colony? Themselves.

    Jim is everything they’re not. The JWST feed, publicly funded and freely shared, is there to nourish curiosity. Its mission statement: “We wonder. It’s our nature. How did we get here? Are we alone in the universe? How does the universe work?” Its goal: to “push the boundaries of human knowledge.” It does that, like X-rays or electron microscopes, with new ways of seeing things to see. “When you see Webb go into space,” Jim’s boss, NASA astrophysics chief Eric Smith, said to Smithsonian, “it’s the whole force of human creativity and all kinds of disciplines that push it there.” That is space science. It can yield all the practical, material returns you want, but you know it’s discovery for its own sake because instead of staring at ourselves, or mean-mugging each other, it gets us looking together in the same direction.

    Anyway, check this out.

    As usual, the staff of Mother Jones is rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. Find all of 2022’s here.

  • Did the Royal Family Bless This Deranged, Violent Fantasy Against Meghan Markle?

    December 21, 2022

    Dominic Lipinski/AP

    The problem with men like British tabloid personality Jeremy Clarkson is that they exist solely to piss you off. How else to explain Clarkson’s stunning record of repeated on-air racism, his calls for striking workers to be shot and executed, or his claims that television is obsessed with hiring “Black Muslim lesbians?” 

    So to condemn Clarkson for his latest missive—a deranged Sunday column in which the 62-year-old broadcaster and game show host fantasized about the day that Meghan Markle would be made to “parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant, ‘Shame!’ and throw lumps of excrement at her”—is to play right into Clarkson’s soiled hands. Sure, you could argue that Clarkson’s column, which lazily borrows from that “Game of Thrones” scene, is evidence of exactly the kind of abhorrent racism that Markle has previously said led her to feel suicidally abandoned, and therefore proves what he intends to undermine. But that assumes that men like Clarkson—who despite everything, enjoys a peculiar reverence with the British public—are capable of shame. (The former “Top Gear” presenter claimed on Monday that he’s “horrified” by the backlash, the same state of mind he apparently had when caught using the n-word in a nursery rhyme.) No instead, one imagines Clarkson sitting smugly in a disgusting pub this evening, surrounded by people who lavish him with phrases like “Good on ya mate” for his vile words.

    But what about the woman absurdly referred to in the year 2022 as Queen Camilla? Just days before the column was published, Camilla hosted a private Christmas luncheon that reportedly included Clarkson and another notorious Markle bully, Piers Morgan, as one of her high-profile guests. This lunch took place after another of Camilla’s events during which an honorary member of Buckingham Palace targeted a Black charity worker with repeated racist questions. But while that prompted the swift dismissal of Lady Hussey from her honorary royal duties, so far, there’s been no comment from the royal family following Clarkson’s disturbing column. In fact, many have pointed to a line in Clarkson’s hateful comments that “everyone” in his demographic shares the same hatred for Markle, leading many to speculate that Clarkson may be giving confiding nods to Camilla and the other old British elite who showed up for her fancy lunch. Meanwhile, Morgan—the other British tabloid fixture of a similar age, countenance, and bile—he’s responded to the outrage over Clarkson’s column with classic whataboutism.

    There isn’t any evidence, at least yet, that Camilla approved of Clarkson’s attack in advance. But it’s no small thing that the Queen Consort has appeared in two recent incidents of racism involving the royal family. Who could fault anyone for taking her silence—and the rest of the royal family’s refusal to denounce Clarkson—as tacit approval of something as vile as Clarkson’s op-ed? 

  • Kyrsten Sinema Is Leaving the Democratic Party

    December 9, 2022

    Kent Nishimura/Getty

    Sen. Kyrsten Sinema is leaving the Democratic Party and registering as an independent. Politico has the scoop, which you can decide is either unsurprising or something of a bombshell. The news comes shortly after two key moments for Democrats. This week, Sen. Raphael Warnock won re-election in Georgia, securing the party with a theoretically more powerful advantage in the upper chamber, and Sen. Chuck Schumer was chosen again as majority leader.

    Speaking to Politico, Sinema attempted to downplay the “timing” of her announcement, claiming it was rooted in some recent soul-searching of how she could best champion her core values. 

    “Nothing will change about my values or my behavior,” she added.

    While it’s easy to scoff at Sinema’s reassurances here, in some ways,  they’re less mealy-mouthed than they seem. Because regardless of how you feel about her absolute refusal to end the filibuster (and in doing so, torpedo Democrats’ efforts to protect voting rights); her donations from venture capitalists while killing tax hikes for the Wall Street set; or even that heinous thumbs down, Sinema’s claim that her behavior will not change once she leaves the party would have to mean that she was working in lockstep with Democrats to begin with. Not really her thing.

    As my colleague Tim Murphy wrote in his excellent profile of the Arizona senator, Sinema’s political career has been one giant metamorphosis. She’s gone from the Green Party roots to unlikely Dem powerbroker. She once claimed donations were a form of “bribery;” now she enjoys friendships with the private equity crowd.

    So, when she says that nothing will change about her behavior, Sinema’s likely telling it straight; she won’t stop constantly changing as she sees fit. 

    As of now, it doesn’t appear as though Sinema’s decision to leave Democrats will result in a power-sharing agreement; she told Politico that she intends to keep her committee assignments and won’t caucus with Republicans.

    But as Arizona’s dynamics shift in our post-midterms landscape, we’re almost certain to see the senator keep up with her own head-spinning changes. Just never expect an apology from her.

  • With NYT on Strike, Let’s Revisit “Not the New York Times”

    December 8, 2022

    Picketers, Rupert Murdoch, bellbottoms.AP Photo

    More than 1,100 New York Times employees are striking for 24 hours after more than a year and a half of contract negotiations. But the Times website is still up and running, populated by prewrites, articles written by non-unionized staff, and a couple high-profile scabs. 

    This reminded us of a relic of a famous newspaper strike: Not the New York Times.

    Let’s remember the energy. It’s 1978 in New York. People didn’t have household internet access and were free of the 24-hour news cycle. For updates on current events, they tuned in for the nightly television news, turned on the radio, or picked up a newspaper. That year, for 88 days between August and November, the New York newspaper industry stopped.

    When the New York Times, New York Daily News, and the New York Post all shut down production amid a strike, Not the New York Times stepped in to fill the void.

    An early precursor of The Onion, Not the New York Times looked convincingly like the real thing, with articles and ads created by striking newspaper writers and others in the media industry, including Carl Bernstein and Veronica Geng.

    I was unaware of Not the New York Times until Mother Jones editor Marianne Szegedy-Maszak mentioned it (h/t to her), but I was delighted by the “Sprots” (not a sic) section. For whatever reason, the staff at my college—DIII except for fencing, no football team—newspaper called it the same thing.

    You can find a PDF of Not the New York Times here.

    Check it out.

  • Mark Halperin Said He’s Like a Cancel Culture “Refugee.” Now He’s Making Bank at No Labels.

    December 8, 2022

    Gwengoat/Getty

    One of the last in-person events I had the fortune of attending before the pandemic was a “closed door” panel discussion on the excesses of cancel culture, orchestrated by a PR firm and featuring none other than Mark Halperin, a political pundit and Game Change coauthor who had lost his gig as an MSNBC senior political analyst at the crest of the MeToo movement.

    Fourteen women alleged that Halperin had groped them or made unwanted sexual advances during and after his tenure as the political director of ABC News from 1997 to 2007. (Halperin has made vague apologies but disputed several of the allegations, such as slamming a woman into a wall, masturbating in front of another, and pressing an erection through his clothes onto three others.)

    Onstage at the panel discussion, Halperin lamented society’s treatment of The Canceled, likening their experience to that of refugees. “Murderers in our society who get out of prison are afforded an opportunity to go on with some aspect of their life,” he said. “The challenge to a lot of people who are canceled is there’s no mechanism for that, regardless of what they’ve done, regardless of whether they’ve tried to make amends.”

    Was I surprised, then, to read in Politico yesterday that Halperin was the highest paid-employee of the centrist political group No Labels in 2021, earning nearly $260,000 after being hired as a “senior communications adviser”? I shouldn’t have been. After all, it hadn’t taken long for the outcast to find his way. Even before his speaking gig on Cancel Culture, he’d published another book, and appeared on radio shows and podcasts. A few months after the panel, he scored his own weekend show on Newsmax, the right-wing cable network.

    I’m sending best wishes to the staff at No Labels, who seem to be under some duress. Politico reports that co-executive directors Liz Morrison and Margaret White told multiple female employees to dress more modestly after a former member of Congress allegedly touched one of their colleagues inappropriately at a No Labels event. One of the group’s surrogates is former Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.), who resigned a year after being accused of sexual misconduct by a lobbyist, Politico reports. And then there is Mark Halperin. According to the investigation: 

    No Labels said it has never had a complaint about any employees or contractors engaging in sexual harassment at the group. But one employee POLITICO spoke with expressed discomfort at having to work alongside Halperin and two others criticized management’s handling of the situation.

    A former employee said that staffers were told by their bosses they could ask Halperin about the accusations on an introductory Zoom call. The forum became “very weird,” according to a person who was on the call. “What am I going to say to this man?”

    Halperin did not respond to a request for comment.

  • DeSantis Officials Finally Tell Us What “Woke” Means

    December 5, 2022

    Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/Zuma

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, chief warrior in the crusade against “wokeness,” has hurled the word at so many targets as to render it meaningless. Fortunately, some members of DeSantis’ office have opened up about what they consider the definition of the word “woke” to be—and said a lot about their politics, while they were at it.

    The question of the meaning of the word came up during a Florida trial over the potential reinstatement of Democratic State Attorney Andrew Warren, whom DeSantis suspended after Warren signed a pledge not to prosecute abortion seekers or providers. DeSantis argued that Warren’s pledge signaled a failure to perform his duties. A judge is currently deliberating the case.

    During the trial, attorneys for Warren asked DeSantis aides to define “woke.” Per Florida Politics:

    Taryn Fenske, DeSantis’ Communications Director said “woke” was a “slang term for activism…progressive activism” and a general belief in systemic injustices in the country.

    That’s the thing we’re supposed to believe is tearing the country apart. Belief in systemic injustices. There’s more:

    Asked what “woke” means more generally, [Desantis’ General Counsel Ryan] Newman said “it would be the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.”

    Newman added that DeSantis doesn’t believe there are systemic injustices in the U.S. He also emphasized he believed Warren’s “wokeism” led him to sign the pledge not to prosecute abortion crimes, the primary factor that led to his suspension.

    It’s important to remember that Ron DeSantis can’t hide behind the excuse of ignorance or incompetence, as former President Trump often did. Surely, during his undergraduate coursework at Yale or his law studies at Harvard, DeSantis encountered some discussion of redlining, environmental racism, discriminatory policing, or any of the other injustices that might be described as “systemic.” DeSantis knows that these exist, but in denying them, he divorces his actions from historical context and gives himself cover to perform stunts like arresting (mostly Black) Floridians for registering to vote when they didn’t know they had been barred from doing so. If DeSantis says “woke” often and loud enough, he just might be able to distract voters from the retrograde nature of the policies he’s enacted.

  • The House of Windsor Is in Shambles. Yay.

    December 5, 2022

    Ian Vogler/Daily Mirror/AP

    Once adored for their pristine blowouts and dutiful silence in our age of the Kardashians, Kate Middleton and her husband, William Arthur Philip Louis Mountbatten-Windsor, draw jeers these days. Loud, jumbotron-ed boos smack in the middle of their first stateside tour in nearly a decade, a three-day visit that barely registered with bored Americans.

    “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph?” Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla responded, looking dead serious when asked whether he had met the royal couple during their attendance at a Celtics game. “Oh no, I did not. I’m only familiar with one royal family. I don’t know too much about that one.” 

    The apparent yawns over Kate and William’s visit to Boston came amid more trouble for the royals, including the resignation of a woman called Lady Susan Hussey from Buckingham Palace after Hussey reportedly peppered a Black charity boss with repeated racist questions about where she was from. Then came the double-whammy. Two trailers for the upcoming Netflix doc, “Harry & Meghan,” dropped days apart from each other, prompting the ever-calm Daily Mail  to yell of a “DELIBERATE” effort to ding Kate and William’s tour.

    Meanwhile, the latest season of “The Crown” was boring as hell, and left many wondering whether Charles himself was behind the bizarre choice of Dominic West, far too rugged and handsome for the Charles we know, to play the sympathetic role of a progressive young prince struggling under an old-fashioned monarchy.

    Yeah, things are strange for the House of Windsor these days—and I’m happy to document the mounting mess. After all, the monarchy is an immoral institution that diverts untold millions from the British public while health workers are treated like shit; the notion of a King Charles in 2022 is nothing short of absurd; and as Meghan Markle detailed, is a racist hell hole.

    Will my blogging finally kill off the monarchy? No. But it’ll keep me buzzing as I periodically mumble “down with the monarchy” to myself. There’ll be plenty to ridicule, especially in the lead-up to Charles’ big ass party in May, so watch this space for more.

  • Herschel Walker Gets the SNL Treatment

    December 4, 2022

    Paul Hennessy/ZUMA

    SNL kicked off its cold open this weekend with a panicked GOP sitting down for an emergency meeting with Herschel Walker, the scandal-plagued Senate candidate in Georgia, as voters head to the polls to determine the last seat in the Senate on Tuesday.

    The sketch, which included a furrow-browed Mitch McConnell, Marsha Blackburn, and John Cornyn, saw a clueless Walker confusing simple words—election for an erection, voting by mail for voting by male, and so forth. Meanwhile, Republican leaders went back and forth over what to do with their man before finally deciding it was simply best to keep Walker quiet in the final stretch.

    Those concerns, of course, are very real; Walker did actually confuse “election” for erection during a Fox News interview. Many, including Georgia’s Republican lieutenant governor, have blasted Walker as one of the worst candidates in the GOP’s history.

    The solution on SNL to silence Walker also appears to borrow from reality. In the final days before Tuesday’s election, the former NFL star has been conspicuously quiet in interviews, mostly relying on others to do the talking for him. But it’s hard to see voters falling for that last-ditch strategy after months of absurd, incoherent statements that have come out of Walker’s mouth. (Read my colleague David Corn’s excellent dispatch on why Walker should release his medical records.) Looking at it one way, Kenan Thompson’s portrayal of Walker felt slightly more like a real Senate candidate. At least you were watching a man who knew he was in on the joke.

  • Joe Biden Called Out Antisemitism. Why Can’t Some Republicans?

    December 2, 2022

    Ron Sachs/ ZUMA Press

    On Friday, President Joe Biden dropped a tweet that in one fell swoop urged political leaders to condemn antisemitism, white supremacy, and Holocaust denialism. 

    The simple statements, which neatly fit into Twitter’s 280-character limit, came one day after Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, appeared on Alex Jones’ Infowars to openly praise Adolf Hitler and Nazism. (“I like Hitler” is a direct quote from West.) The appearance was the latest instance of ugly anti-semitism by West since tweeting in October that he was going to go “death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE.” 

    As it so happens, Biden’s message also follows Donald Trump’s dinner with West and the virulent anti-semite, Nick Fuentes. 

    Some Republicans, including Mitch McConnell and Susan Collins, have spoken out against these high-profile acts of antisemitism. But others have either been far too mild in their criticism—or altogether silent. Fox News host Tucker Carlson hasn’t said a peep, despite hosting West on his show three days after West’s “death con” tweet.  The Twitter account for Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee didn’t delete a controversial tweet praising West until yesterday’s Infowars appearance, when apparently the antisemitism became too overt for even the GOP to pretend it wasn’t happening. Others, like Mike Pence, have expressed regret at Trump’s dinner with Fuentes but claimed that the former president was not an anti-semite himself.

    So Biden’s tweet today raises a curious question: If the president can unequivocally denounce antisemitism in a single tweet, why is it so hard for some on the right to do the same? 

  • Madison Cawthorn: Young Men Should Be “Punched in the Face” for Doing Stupid Things

    December 1, 2022

    ZUMA press

    On Wednesday, outgoing North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn made a bizarre final speech on the House floor, jamming at least eight alpha male podcasts worth of toxic masculinity into a minute and 22 seconds. 

    “It used to be a rite of passage in this country for young men to be punched in the face when they did something stupid,” Cawthorn said at the top of his remarks. “Our nation used to believe that there was strength and purpose in taking the hits, learning from your mistakes, and growing through the adversity.” 

    According to Cawthorn, Americans are facing the consequences of a “participation trophy society.” The “nanny state” now controls the once mighty United States. People who identify as “soft metrosexual” are more valuable. The speech was something of a trademark swan song for the North Carolina congressman, who after months of embarrassing self-inflicted scandals, including tossing around claims about sex parties and lawmakers doing cocaine, lost a primary challenge in May.

    So the question arises: Does Cawthorn identify as one of the young men in this country who should be physically assaulted for doing something stupid? Based on this list, it sure might seem so.