Mother Jones November/December 2025

  On the Cover Photojournalist VICTOR J. BLUE has reported on conflict zones from Syria to El Salvador. His work documenting raids by Trump’s hyper-militarized ICE, this issue’s focus, brings the war home.   Contributors Whose work in your field is meeting the political moment?   By the Numbers   To see our masthead, visit motherjones.com/about. For questions about your subscription or to make a tax-deductible donation to support our journalism, call (800) 438-6656. To advertise or for other questions, call (415) 321-1700.…

“LYING.” “DISGUSTING.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has made clear what he thinks of journalists and what should happen to us: “sue them and win money,” get them investigated for treason and “taken off the air.” Once he reassuringly noted that “I would never kill them, but I do hate them,” but he’s since clarified that he wouldn’t “mind so much” if someone shot the “fake news.” Ten years ago, some were inclined to shrug this off as hyperbole. Now it is crystal clear that Trump intends to do everything he can to stop journalists from reporting things he doesn’t like, which is most things that are true. The president has banned reporters from press briefings while inviting sycophants and propagandists. He has fantasized about…

IN 2013, venture capitalist Tim Draper launched a “Six Californias” ballot initiative. The upshot was that with some 40 million people, more than the population of the 20 smallest states combined, California was too big, too diverse, to be “efficiently” governed. So why not, Draper argued, break it up into six new “startups,” a.k.a. states? Instead of two senators, we erstwhile “Californians” would get 12. Draper’s scheme was part of a long tradition—since California was admitted to the Union as part of the Compromise of 1850, there have been more than 220 proposals for it to divide or secede—but derided as a Silicon Valley ploy to create a libertarian deregulation zone. (Tellingly, the Bay Area state was to be named “Silicon Valley.”) And aside from the feasibility of making…

RACHEL, AS SHE puts it, is the kind of person who rushes in to help. That’s why she used to work at USAID, and why, just 10 days into President Donald Trump’s second administration, she rented a room in a Washington bar for her former colleagues to gather. That evening, Rachel recalls, they shared drinks and “crazy stories” of wandering into “deserted office buildings with no art on the walls, with empty picture frames, trying to figure out what to do.” Rachel felt compelled to do something to stop Elon Musk’s DOGE from dismantling the agency. That night, she gathered photos like the ones that had once adorned USAID’s walls, showcasing its lifesaving accomplishments, and sent them to others to post online. When Rachel forwarded them to another USAID alum,…

IN JANUARY 2010, the private prison operator now known as CoreCivic announced the closure of a 752-bed facility in Walsenburg, Colorado. At the time, the Huerfano County Correctional Center was the second-largest employer in the county. Its shutdown caused a “major hit” to the economy, said John Galusha, then the county’s administrator. The town estimated a loss of $300,000 in revenue as almost 190 jobs disappeared, helping spike the county unemployment rate to 10.2 percent, above the state average. Without the contract that paid 25 cents a day per inmate into local coffers, Galusha said, “we had a hard time keeping up with the demand from social services.” For the last 15 years, the facility has lain dormant. But that may soon change. Vested with a $45 billion immigration…

YAEL ECKSTEIN is an incredibly effective advocate for Israel. As the president and global CEO of a massive Israel-focused philanthropy, she oversees humanitarian relief, security programs, social services for elderly Holocaust survivors, and Jewish resettlement. On her weekly podcasts, she ties biblical teachings to modern Israel and personal stories from her own life in Jerusalem. At 41, Eckstein, a native of the Chicago suburbs and an Orthodox Jew who now lives in Israel, has enjoyed recognition for her leadership and philanthropic impact, earning a spot on the Jerusalem Post’s “50 Most Influential Jews” four times from 2020 to 2024 and receiving its Humanitarian Award in 2023. That year, her nonprofit brought in $271 million, significantly more than better-known nonprofits like Amnesty International USA, the ACLU Foundation, and Human Rights Watch. By…