Mother Jones September/October 2025

On the Cover Designer TYLER COMRIE calls creativity a tool for political change; here, his bright, clear style brings life to Ari Berman’s feature on Donald Trump’s schemes to rig the next election.     Contributors What’s the purpose of media in this 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.…

“AND THEY GET away with the corruption,” read the subject line. I knew it was from Bill Moyers, because launching right into the point was typical when he sent me news clips and ideas, sometimes several times a day, in the waning months of the first Trump administration. They would ding in at 5 a.m. or earlier—that, too, was typical of a man who, then in his mid-80s, showed no sign of slowing from a pace that his longtime producer, Judy Doctoroff, described to me as that of an “overwhelmingly energetic idea machine.” Moyers died in June, at 91. His life had an incredible arc—born to a dirt farmer in Oklahoma, ordained a Baptist minister at 25, LBJ’s right-hand man and present on Air Force One after the Kennedy assassination,…

I WAS TOLD there would be a diamond-encrusted steak. One hot May morning in Las Vegas, I was wandering through an art gallery set up in the Venetian Resort hotel and casino’s cavernous convention hall—where 35,000 cryptocurrency enthusiasts were gathered for the seventh annual bitcoin conference—in search of Rare. Artist Maxfield Mellenbruch had supposedly transformed a hunk of meat into “an exquisite combination of platinum and 216 carats of diamonds and rubies,” according to the conference promoters. “Much like Bitcoin itself, Rare challenges conventional ideas of value, art, and asset.” The piece, appraised at $2.2 million and up for auction, was nowhere to be found among portraits of Pepe the Frog and bitcoin-themed Andy Warhol knockoffs. Instead, the exhibit commanding the most attention was considerably less dazzling: a dingy gray…

DYLAN BRINGUEL isn’t sure what’s worse: enduring what a federal agency identified as a “hostile work environment because of Bringuel’s transgender status” or that same agency abandoning them after committing to hold their employer accountable. The first blow came in August 2022. Bringuel had just begun a housekeeping job at a Holiday Inn Express in Jamestown, New York. During the interview, Bringuel had been upfront about their gender identity and was told it wouldn’t be an issue. But from the start, their manager made it one—calling Bringuel “it” and a “Transformer” and, in a conversation a co-worker documented, blaming Bringuel for “what is wrong with society.” The day after reporting the harassment to supervisors, Bringuel was fired. Bringuel was accustomed to such hostility, even from family members. So when…

“NOW MORE THAN ever, the world needs an honest newsroom.” With these words, the little-known Informing America Foundation was awarded the $250,000 Gregor G. Peterson Prize in “venture philanthropy” last December for its “high-quality journalism.” If few had heard of IAF, hinted the nonprofit’s CEO, Debbie Myers, it was by design. “We stay very much under the radar,” she said, accepting the prize at the 2024 annual summit of the American Legislative Exchange Council, the corporate-funded group that works to advance conservative policies at the state level. IAF’s goal, Myers explained, was to create an “ecosystem” of news. The group boasts of funding a network of thousands of platforms that have quietly shaped public opinion by stoking an array of right-wing conspiracy theories, from the alleged corruption of Joe Biden…

EARLIER THIS SUMMER, Tara McDermott, who’s in charge of policy communications for a New York state solar developer called EmPower Solar, was telling me a woeful tale a lot like others I’d been hearing lately. A customer whom I’ll call Pam had tried to put solar panels on top of her home in Mount Vernon to save money and help the planet. EmPower submitted its first permit application to the city in September 2023 and then went back and forth with them for months as the city asked for revisions, updated proof of insurance, and other documentation from Pam. Eventually, one of McDermott’s colleagues got fed up and reached out to the mayor for assistance—in fact, he drove to City Hall and asked to see her. Upon being told that…