Contributing Writers

Amy Coney Barrett’s involvement in the court fight over the 2000 presidential election, when she was a member of George W. Bush’s legal team, shows she is willing to bend the law to benefit Republican candidates, says Mother Jones reporter Ari Berman. “That’s what’s so disturbing about Amy Coney Barrett, because that’s exactly what President Trump wants to do right now,” says Berman.

Amid Senate confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett, we look at how conservatives have used dark money to push to seat her on the Supreme Court before the November 3 election, following a decades-long project by conservatives to install right-wing judges across the federal judiciary. “There’s no doubt that what we’re facing is, increasingly, rule by a minority,” says former Senate Judiciary Committee staffer Lisa Graves, executive director of True North Research.

Hundreds protested outside the Senate Monday against the confirmation hearing for President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Amy Coney Barrett. At least 21 were arrested after staging a sit-in to oppose the Senate pushing through Barrett’s nomination in the middle of the presidential election.

The foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan are in Moscow for talks following two weeks of fighting over the disputed territory Nagorno-Karabakh. At least 300 people have already died in what could turn into a wider regional conflagration, with Turkey openly supporting Azerbaijan and Russia backing Armenia. Nagorno-Karabakh lies inside Azerbaijan but is controlled by ethnic Armenians.

As 14 states and more than 130 cities across the U.S. celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day in place of Columbus Day, we go to Arizona, where Indigenous communities are leading resistance against the construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall near a sacred spring inside the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.

Charles Allen, whose father Eugene Allen worked as a butler at the White House for 34 years, says President Trump’s reckless actions following his COVID-19 hospitalization are threatening the health of the domestic staff at the White House. “As my dad used to say, they were the little people that made it possible for the big people to do what they did,” he says.

President Trump’s return to the White House and defiant mask removal despite still being treated for COVID-19 has threatened the health of the mostly older, Black and Brown household staff, says domestic worker advocate Ai-jen Poo, senior adviser to Care in Action. “These are essential workers who have been keeping him and his family safe and caring for them, and he showed a complete and utter disregard for their health and safety,” she says.

The foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan are in Moscow for talks following two weeks of fighting over the disputed territory Nagorno-Karabakh. At least 300 people have already died in what could turn into a wider regional conflagration, with Turkey openly supporting Azerbaijan and Russia backing Armenia. Nagorno-Karabakh lies inside Azerbaijan but is controlled by ethnic Armenians.

As the World Food Programme wins the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts to combat hunger around the world, we speak with Vijay Prashad, director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, who says the United Nations body is doing vital work around the world. “I couldn’t be happier that the World Food Programme won the Nobel Prize for peace, because this hunger pandemic is paralyzing perhaps 2.7 billion people,” he says.

Just months after President Trump tweeted for his supporters to ”LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” the FBI has foiled an alleged plot to kidnap and take hostage Democratic Governor of Michigan Gretchen Whitmer. Authorities arrested six men Thursday involved in the kidnapping plot, and seven others who were said to be planning to storm the state Capitol in Lansing with the intent of starting a civil war.

During Wednesday’s debate, Vice President Mike Pence refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power if Biden wins the election. Instead, he referenced the Trump administration’s legal efforts to restrict mail-in voting. Rev. William Barber says the Republican Party’s voter suppression efforts ahead of the November election, aimed primarily at Black and Brown voters, amount to “surgical racism with surgical precision.

The foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan are in Moscow for talks following two weeks of fighting over the disputed territory Nagorno-Karabakh. At least 300 people have already died in what could turn into a wider regional conflagration, with Turkey openly supporting Azerbaijan and Russia backing Armenia. Nagorno-Karabakh lies inside Azerbaijan but is controlled by ethnic Armenians.

As the World Food Programme wins the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts to combat hunger around the world, we speak with Vijay Prashad, director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, who says the United Nations body is doing vital work around the world. “I couldn’t be happier that the World Food Programme won the Nobel Prize for peace, because this hunger pandemic is paralyzing perhaps 2.7 billion people,” he says.

Just months after President Trump tweeted for his supporters to ”LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” the FBI has foiled an alleged plot to kidnap and take hostage Democratic Governor of Michigan Gretchen Whitmer. Authorities arrested six men Thursday involved in the kidnapping plot, and seven others who were said to be planning to storm the state Capitol in Lansing with the intent of starting a civil war.

During Wednesday’s debate, Vice President Mike Pence refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power if Biden wins the election. Instead, he referenced the Trump administration’s legal efforts to restrict mail-in voting. Rev. William Barber says the Republican Party’s voter suppression efforts ahead of the November election, aimed primarily at Black and Brown voters, amount to “surgical racism with surgical precision.