Contributing Writers

In an extended interview, we speak with archeologist David Wengrow, who co-authored the new book “The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity” with the late anthropologist David Graeber. The book examines how Indigenous cultures contributed greatly to what we have come to understand as so-called Western ideas of democracy and equality, but argues these contributions have been erased from history.

Jurors in Charlottesville, Virginia, are hearing closing arguments today in a civil trial that seeks to hold white supremacists accountable for organizing the deadly “Unite the Right” rally there in 2017, and conspiring to commit racially motivated violence. Two of the white supremacists have been defending themselves in the courtroom: Richard Spencer and Christopher Cantwell.

Republican Congressmember Paul Gosar is the first lawmaker to be censured in more than a decade for posting an animated video on social media where he murders Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacks President Biden. The U.S. House of Representatives also voted Tuesday to censure Gosar and strip him of committee assignments. He has refused to apologize and after the vote he retweeted the video.

Activists are criticizing the British government for excluding Western Sahara, occupied by Morocco since 1975, from the U.N. climate summit in Scotland. Meanwhile, Morocco is counting renewable energy developments in Western Sahara towards its own climate pledges. Sahwari activists and the Sahrawi government in exile known as SADR, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, have described this as climate colonialism.

We speak with Jennifer Gosar, the youngest sister of far-right Arizona Congressmember Paul Gosar, who faces censure in a House vote today for posting an animated video on social media that features him murdering Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking President Biden with swords. Gosar will be required to stand in the well of the House while the resolution is read.

Advocates in Oklahoma are rallying outside the barricaded governor’s mansion ahead of the planned Thursday execution of prisoner Julius Jones, who was convicted of a 1999 murder but has maintained his innocence.

Republicans are set to claim the House majority in next year’s midterm elections with help from heavily gerrymandered congressional district maps in states nationwide that could shape politics for the next decade, securing Republican wins even as the party’s popular vote shrinks at the national level, says Mother Jones reporter Ari Berman.

Republicans may retake control of the House next year thanks largely to extreme gerrymandering by Republican state legislators, even as Republican opposition in Congress has impeded critical legislation to combat discriminatory voting practices and eliminate barriers to the ballot. As pressure grows for Democrats to pass two key voting rights bills, activists are holding the last in a series of protests at the White House, where nearly 100 have been arrested since August, including Rev.

We speak with Bishop William Barber of the Poor People’s Campaign, who was one of the Black pastors who visited the trial of the three white men who hunted down and shot dead Ahmaud Arbery, where last week a defense attorney claimed Black pastors sitting with the Arbery family in the courtroom could be “intimidating” for the jury, which is almost all white.

Among the unprecedented moments for Indigenous participation in the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow were the protests to protect the Amazon rainforest, the largest remaining rainforest on the planet, that activists argue is on the brink of ecological collapse.

President Joe Biden’s virtual summit Monday with Chinese President Xi Jinping follows the two countries’ announcement just days earlier they will work together to confront the climate emergency after Xi did not attend the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow. Tension has been mounting between the two superpowers, especially over Taiwan and Hong Kong, with some speculating that a new Cold War is developing.

Humanitarian and economic conditions are rapidly deteriorating in Afghanistan, where the U.N. estimates that more than half of the population suffers from acute hunger. The country has fallen into an economic crisis after the U.S. and other Western countries cut off direct financial assistance to the government following the Taliban takeover in August. Taliban leaders are also unable to access billions of dollars in Afghan national reserves that are held in banks overseas.

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the Santa Cruz massacre in East Timor, when Indonesian troops armed with U.S. M16s fired on a peaceful memorial procession in the Santa Cruz cemetery in Dili, killing more than 270 East Timorese. Indonesia had invaded East Timor in 1975 and maintained a brutal occupation until 1999, when East Timorese voted overwhelmingly for independence in a United Nations referendum.