Innholdsfortegnelse for January/February 2021 i Mother Jones

Heading into the November election, Texas Democrats sounded more bullish than they had in decades, and it wasn’t because of Joe Biden. A burgeoning partisan realignment in the state’s sprawling suburbs over the last four years had brought them to the brink of flipping the state House of Representatives. Such a breakthrough would halt 18 years of unchecked conservative control over the nation’s largest red state and give their party a seat at the table when new legislative maps are drawn after the census—a process that has crushed their spirits and disempowered their base for most of the last two decades. Candidates leaned into this message, framing the election as not just about the next two years, but about the next 10. “The only check you have on the Republican…

On the night of March 10, Joe Biden’s campaign staff gathered in the foyer of Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center to celebrate the three primary victories that had all but confirmed their boss would be the Democratic presidential nominee. As they danced awkwardly to the Whitney Houston remix that blared through the speakers, down the street at Biden HQ, a quartet of television screens was broadcasting grim news about the staggering rate of COVID-19 infections and coming death toll. The next day, the World Health Organization would declare the coronavirus a pandemic. Until that point, Biden’s campaign message had focused on big-picture themes: electability, experience, and his pledge to restore America’s “soul.” But it was now clear that the nation’s soul might not be the first thing that needed saving in…

It was still dark when Veronica Perez arrived at Primex Farms, a nut-packing facility in California’s Kern County. Crickets murmured in the almond and pistachio groves stretching for acres in all directions. Once inside the building’s mirrored doors, Perez would usually stand next to other sorters alongside a conveyor belt, picking out blemished pistachios. But on June 25, at 4:30 a.m., Perez didn’t go in. Instead, for the next five hours, she and about 40 of her co-workers formed a picket line. More circled and honked in their cars. They held homemade signs with the names of co-workers who had the coronavirus. One sign in Spanish read, “The wise see danger and leave, but the foolish go on and suffer the consequences.” The employees chanted, “¡Somos esenciales!”: We are essential.…

Let's do a little experiment. I’m going to tell you two stories, and at the end of this article, we’ll come back to them. Here’s the first story: Last year, millions of children in the United States received the vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella—and only a few had a serious reaction to it. Shortly after the injection, about 1 in 4,000 children developed a fever that caused a seizure. About 1 in 40,000 children experienced a blood disorder. Here’s the second story: A baby I’ll call Jayden was developing normally until he received a set of routine vaccinations at 15 months. The next day, he awoke screaming and went into fits of rage. He began to engage in repetitive behaviors. By 18 months, he could no longer recognize his…

Mother Jones reporter BECCA ANDREWS is more than a little obsessed with Southern politics. A Southerner herself, she jumped at the opportunity to cover the Reverend Raphael Warnock’s candidacy for US Senate. Her profile of Warnock (“Keeping the Faith”) examines the role of faith in a pivotal Georgia election that’s headed for a runoff. For the story, she went to church for the first time in years, albeit over Zoom. Trump isn’t an aberration, writes Mother Jones reporter NATHALIE BAPTISTE. If the United States doesn’t root out its long-standing bigotry and create well-functioning democracy, another racist could get into the White House (“The Racist Next Time”). In addition to her columns about politics and race, Baptiste has written about the death penalty, the coronavirus, and the housing crisis. Snooping by…

"This is the day that the Lord has made. We have come to rejoice and be glad in it,” proclaims the Reverend Raphael Warnock during his October 4 sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church. It’s a normal Sunday, with Warnock’s usual opening line, but it’s not really normal. Call it the new normal. The sermon is prerecorded; it plays on the church’s website. Any affirmations of “amen” and “yes, Lord” only emerge within individual living rooms, the underpinning of collective voices replaced by silence. This particular Sunday, the pastor is also celebrating 15 years of preaching at Ebenezer, the historic Black church in Atlanta that was once Martin Luther King Jr.’s congregation. Where ordinarily there would be a joyous celebration, there is instead a six-minute video montage of the past decade…

When Kristen Alden moved to Thousand Oaks, California, two years ago, she joined the local moms’ Facebook group, Moms of Conejo Valley. She figured it’d be a good place to find out about activities for her 7-year-old, and she looked forward to unloading some old clothes, books, and toys to younger kids in the neighborhood. Every once in a while, someone would post something that Alden, an attorney, disagreed with—in particular, she began to notice that a few moms had a habit of sharing anti-vaccine memes. But it was infrequent enough that she just rolled her eyes and ignored it. When the pandemic began, the tone of the posts suddenly changed. The anti-vax moms became louder, and there seemed to be more of them. They began posting rants about how…

On November 3, 76 million Americans said no to Donald Trump and his effort to steer American democracy toward autocracy. As a candidate and as president, Trump had prompted concerns about the fate of democracy within the United States. He had questioned the legitimacy of elections, attacked the free press, called for the arrest of his political opponents, encouraged white supremacists, violated anti-corruption safeguards, implemented nepotism, advocated measures that limit voting, sought more control of the civil service, claimed unbridled executive power, treated the federal government (even the White House grounds) as his own private duchy, and embraced despotic leaders around the world. After the 2020 election was called, Trump branded the results a “fraud,” insisted he had won, and asserted that victory had been stolen from him by left-wing…

If Nikema Williams knew November 13, 2018, would end the way it did, she says she would’ve worn a different outfit. That morning, donning a printed dress, red jacket, heeled boots, and a multistrand pearl set, the Georgia state senator said goodbye to her husband, made plans to pick up their 3-year-old later that afternoon, and headed to the Capitol. It was less than a week after Republican Brian Kemp had declared victory in a hotly contested governor’s race, and Democrat Stacey Abrams was refusing to concede. The legislature was in special session to approve funding for hurricane victims, and by the time the Senate had adjourned, dozens of demonstrators were in the rotunda demanding to “count every vote.” Unlike her friend and mentor Rep. John Lewis, the storied civil…

At four o'clock on a Thursday afternoon, the lobby of Dragonfly Wellness is almost completely full. Clients perch expectantly on the sofas, waiting to be buzzed through the locked door marked PATIENTS ONLY. This might not be an unusual scene elsewhere—medical marijuana is legal in more than 30 states—but this happens to be Salt Lake City, within blocks of both the Utah state Capitol and the main temple of the Mormon Church, which proscribes consuming virtually any substance more potent than Diet Coke. Utah might be the last place you would expect to find any kind of cannabis, but in 2018 Utah voters approved Proposition 2, a ballot measure legalizing medical marijuana, despite huge opposition from the Mormon Church and the conservative state legislature. Two years later, it’s clear that…