2025-07-06 01:04:55
Remember when Congress banned TikTok? A bipartisan majority passed a law last year to ban the massively popular social media platform due to the national security implications of its control by the Chinese government. President Joe Biden signed it into law, and in January the Supreme Court upheld the law. And yet, TikTok is still with us. So what happened?
How does a law… not become a law? According to the Trump administration, the president has the authority to nullify laws he doesn’t like. The fate of the TikTok ban hasn’t made national headlines in months among the deluge of other notable anti-democratic Trump administration actions. But in letters obtained this week by the New York Times, the Trump administration is claiming broad powers to simply wipe from the books laws it does not like. The TikTok ban has become Exhibit A.
The TikTok law operated not as an outright ban but by making it illegal to host the app in app stores and cloud and internet services, with punishing fines for companies that disobeyed. But in seeking to overturn the law by fiat, the Trump administration tells companies like Apple and Google that they are off the hook.
Not only was it a promise that the Trump administration would not enforce the law, but that no future administration could. This move is unprecedented.
“Article II of the United States Constitution vests in the President the responsibility over national security and the conduct of foreign policy,” Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote in an April letter to tech companies including Apple, Google, and Amazon. The TikTok law, she continued, does not “infringe upon such core Presidential national security and foreign affairs powers.” In other words, if the president invokes his authority in the realms of national security and foreign affairs, he can nullify a law.
Bondi’s letters informed the tech companies that continuing to host TikTok, despite the plain language of the law, was not illegal. Not only was it a promise that the Trump administration would not enforce the law, but that no future administration could. This move is unprecedented. “Recent past presidents have been aggressive in exercising law enforcement discretion,” Harvard Law School’s Jack Goldsmith told the Times, “but they haven’t suspended the operation of a law entirely or immunized its violation prospectively.”
This isn’t the first time Trump has attempted to thwart or ignore the law. In the past week, his Education Department refused to disburse $7 million in funding for afterschool care programs, English language instruction, and other programs. The money was appropriated by Congress and signed by the president, and its disbursement is required by law. But the Office of Management and Budget, under director Russel Vought, has claimed the power to impound funds. In the case of the missing education money, OMB is investigating whether the funds were being used to further a “radical leftwing agenda.” This isn’t the first time the Trump administration has illegally refused to spend money, and it certainly won’t be the last.
Still, claiming that the president has inherent powers to nullify represents an unprecedented power grab by the Trump administration. If the law can be turned on and off by the president, Congress’ authority is worthless. Today, it’s the TikTok ban and spending requirements. What’s next?
2025-07-05 23:40:19
On the 249 anniversary of the country’s declaration of independence from tyranny, the Trump administration was in court asking a judge to let it send eight men to South Sudan, a war-torn country where they face a significant possibility of torture or death. The government wished to subject these men, and then untold thousands more, to such a fate without the guarantee of due process promised in the Constitution. And on America’s birthday, they got their wish.
A federal judge in Massachusetts declined to halt the deportations. He lay the blame at the feet of seven Supreme Court justices who had allowed the removals to move forward the previous day. The Trump administration had a plane to fly them from a US military base in Djibouti scheduled for 7pm ET on July 4. Presumably, they are now in South Sudan.
The July 4 courtroom drama is the denouement of a months-long battle over the Trump administration’s plan to remove non-citizens to so-called third countries, nations that the immigrants have no ties to. The Massachusetts judge, Brian Murphy, had required the government to provide non-citizens the chance to object to the third country on grounds that they may face torture there before removing them. This kind of due process was in accordance with federal law, international law, and the Constitution. But in late June, the Republican appointed Supreme Court justices allowed the administration’s third-country removals proceed without this due process.
This led to a final showdown on Independence Day over whether some of the key liberties won through the creation of the United States will still endure. In a last-ditch effort to halt their client’s removal to South Sudan, where people are subjected to horrific violence, lawyers for the eight men argued that the removal is an unconstitutional punishment with additional cruelty intended to deter future migration. Further, the eight men had been convicted of felonies and served their sentences. Trump has no additional right to inflict further punishment by removing them to a country where torture likely awaits.
In a video hearing in federal court in Washington, DC on Friday, Judge Randolph Moss was disturbed by the wide latitude the Trump administration claimed to punish individuals through deportation to whatever country it wishes. If an orthodox Jew on route to deportation to Israel angered a DHS agent, Moss asked, could the government instead remove him to a country where he couldn’t practice his religion?
Ultimately, Moss transferred the case to Massachusetts where the litigation over third-country removals had been playing out. There, Judge Murphy declined to halt the flight to South Sudan due to the Supreme Court’s previous orders in the case.
In 1776, drafting the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson zeroed in on an abusive and malleable justice system. He accused the king of depriving colonists of trial by jury and for “transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences.” As my colleagues David Corn and Tim Murphy noted, commemorating the holiday, Trump’s immigration agenda reflects modern shades of these notorious offenses: condemning hundreds—and soon likely many thousands—of immigrants to torture in other countries without the fair processes guaranteed by the Constitution and beyond the protection of the American judicial system.
The United States has rarely lived up to the full promise of its founding documents. This July 4, the Trump administration acted more like the monarchy the colonists overthrew than the revolutionaries demanding freedom.
2025-07-05 21:50:04
The first pilot episode of Reveal exposed how the Department of Veterans Affairs was overprescribing opioids to veterans and contributing to an overdose crisis. Journalist Aaron Glantz explained how he received—surprisingly quickly—a decade’s worth of opioid prescription data from the federal government.
“Sometimes, you have to sue to get the records,” he said. “I have to think that there were some people over there in DC who were as concerned as we were about this.”
Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.After that first show was made, host Al Letson didn’t know what to expect. “We weren’t sure if any public radio stations would even air it,” he said.
Reveal’s VA investigation sparked outrage. Congress held hearings during a government lockdown, and there’s been a sea change in the way veterans are prescribed painkillers. And today, the show is on more than 500 stations.
This week on Reveal, we celebrate our 10-year anniversary with a look back at some of our favorite stories, from investigations into water shortages in drought-prone California to labor abuses in the Dominican Republic. And we interview the journalists behind the reporting to explain what happened after the stories aired.
2025-07-05 18:00:00
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
A generation of scientific talent is at the brink of being lost to overseas competitors by the Trump administration’s dismantling of the National Science Foundation (NSF), with unprecedented political interference at the agency jeopardizing the future of US industries and economic growth, according to a Guardian investigation.
The gold standard peer-reviewed process used by the NSF to support cutting-edge, high-impact science is being undermined by the chaotic cuts to staff, programs and grants, as well as meddling by the so-called department of government efficiency (DOGE), according to multiple current and former NSF employees who spoke with the Guardian.
The scientists warn that Trump’s assault on diversity in science is already eroding the quality of fundamental research funded at the NSF, the premier federal investor in basic science and engineering, which threatens to derail advances in tackling existential threats to food, water and biodiversity in the US.
“The NSF’s gold standard review process has 100 percent been compromised.”
“Before Trump, the review process was based on merit and impact. Now, it’s like rolling the dice because a DOGE person has the final say,” said one current program officer. “There has never in the history of NSF been anything like this. It’s disgusting what we’re being instructed to do.”
Another program officer said: “The exact details of the extra step is opaque but I can say with high confidence that people from DOGE or its proxies are scrutinizing applications with absolutely devastating consequences. The move amounts to the US willingly conceding global supremacy to competitors like China in biological, social and physical sciences. It is a mind-boggling own-goal.”
The NSF, founded in 1950, is the only federal agency that funds fundamental research across all fields of science and engineering, and which over the years has contributed to major breakthroughs in organ transplants, gene technology, AI, smartphones and the internet, extreme weather and other hazard warning systems, American sign language, cybersecurity and even the language app Duolingo.
In normal times, much of the NSF budget ($9 billion in 2024/25) is allocated to research institutions after projects undergo a rigorous three-step review process—beginning with the program officer, an expert in the field, who ensures the proposed study fits in with the agency’s priorities. The program officer convenes an expert panel to evaluate the proposal on two statutory criteria—intellectual merit and broader impacts on the nation and people—which under the NSF’s legal mandate includes broadening participation of individuals, institutions, and geographic regions in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics).
Applications from across the country that are greenlighted by the program officer are almost always funded, though may be subject to tweaks after revision by the division director before the grants directorate allocates the budget.
That was before Trump. Now, DOGE personnel can veto any study without explanation, the Guardian has confirmed.
“We are under pressure to only fund proposals that fit the new narrow priorities, even if they did not review as well as others,” said one current program officer. “The NSF’s gold standard review process has 100 percent been compromised.”
Research aimed at addressing the unequal impact of the climate crisis and other environmental hazards is particularly vulnerable, according to several sources. New proposals are also being screened for any direct reference or indirect connection to diversity, equity or inclusion (DEI).
“NSF is being asked to make science racist again—which contradicts evidence that shows that diversity of ideas is good for science and good for innovation. We are missing things when only white males do science,” said one program officer.
In addition to DOGE interfering in new proposals, at least 1,653 active NSF research grants authorized on their merits have so far been abruptly cancelled—abandoned midway through the project, according to Grant Watch, a nonprofit tracker of federal science and health research grants canceled under Trump.
“It has been soul-sucking to see projects that went through the review process being changed or terminated over and over again.”
Multiple NSF scientists who oversee a diverse range of NSF programs described the grant cancellations as “unprecedented,” “arbitrary,” and a “colossal waste of taxpayer money.”
Almost 60 percent of the projects abandoned are in states which voted for Joe Biden in 2024, Guardian analysis found. More than one in nine cancelled grants—12 percent of the total—were at Harvard University, which Trump has particularly targeted since coming to power in January.
In addition, studies deemed to be violating Trump’s executive orders on DEI and environmental justice—regardless of their scientific merit, potential impact or urgency—are being abruptly terminated at particularly high rates.
It’s not uncommon for the NSF and other federal research agencies to shift focus to reflect a new administration’s priorities. Amid mounting evidence on the crucial role of diversity in innovation and science, Biden priorities included increased effort to tackle inequalities across the STEM workforce—and a commitment to target underserved communities most affected by the climate crisis and environmental harms.
Trump’s priorities are AI, quantum information science, nuclear, biotech, and translational research. “It’s normal that a new administration will emphasize some areas, de-emphasize others, and we would gradually transition to new priorities. During the George W. Bush administration there were shenanigans around climate change, but it was nothing like this kind of meddling in the scientific review process. You never just throw proposals in the garbage can,” said one current NSF staffer.
“Our mandate is to advance science and innovation. And we just can’t do that if we’re not thinking about diversifying the STEM workforce. We don’t have enough people or diversity of thought without broadening participation—which is part of the NSF mission mandate,” said a former program officer from the Directorate for Computer and Information Science who recently accepted a buyout.
“It has been soul-sucking to see projects that went through the review process being changed or terminated over and over again,” they added.
The Federal Reserve estimates that government-supported research from the NSF and other agencies has had a return on investment of 150 percent to 300 percent over the past 75 years, meaning US taxpayers have gotten back between $1.50 and $3 for every dollar invested.
Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” includes a 56 percent cut to the current $9 billion NSF budget, as well as a 73 percent reduction in staff and fellowships, with graduate students among the hardest hit.
Last week, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced that it will be moving into the NSF headquarters in Virginia over the course of the next two years. The shock announcement—which did not include any plans on relocating more than 1,800 NSF employees—has triggered speculation that the administration eventually plans to defund the agency entirely.
For now, program officers are also being instructed to return research proposals to scientists and institutions “without review”—regardless of merit and despite having been submitted in response to specific NSF solicitations to address gaps in scientific and engineering knowledge around some of the most pressing concerns in the US. This includes projects that have in fact undergone review, and others which can no longer be processed due to staff and program cuts, according to multiple NSF sources.
In one case, a 256-page proposal by scientists at four public universities to use ancient DNA records to better forecast biodiversity loss as the planet warms was apparently archived without consideration.
“That’s a whole generation of young scientists who see no pathway into the field.”
In an email seen by the Guardian, the NSF told Jacquelyn Gill, a paleoecologist and principal investigator (lead scientist) based at the University of Maine, that all proposals submitted to the Biology Integration Institute program were returned without review. A second email said their specific proposal had been “administratively screened” and the area of proposed study was “inappropriate for NSF funding.”
An estimated 40 percent of animals and 34 percent of plants across the US are currently at risk. The proposed study would have used an emerging technology to extract ancient DNA from lake sediments, ice cores, and cave deposits to better understand which species fared better or worse when the planet naturally warmed thousands of years ago—in order to help model and protect biodiversity in the face of human-made climate change.
Gill told the Guardian the team took great care to avoid any reference to DEI or climate change. The grant would have created much-needed research capacity in the US, which is lagging behind Europe in this field.
“Ancient DNA records allow you to reconstruct entire ecosystems at a very high level. This is a very new and emerging science, and grants like this help catalyze the research and reinvest in US infrastructure and workforce in ways that have huge returns on investments for their local economies. It’s an absolute slap in the face that the proposal was returned without review,” Gill said.
In another example, two academic institutions chosen to receive prestigious $15m grants for translational research—a Trump priority—after a 30-month cross-agency review process led by the engineering directorate and involving hundreds of people will not be honored.
The proposals selected for the award through merit review will be returned without review for being “inappropriate for NSF funding,” the Guardian understands.
“This is complex, very high-impact translation science to achieve sustainability across cities and regions and industries…we’re being instructed to put the principal investigators off, but nothing’s going to get funded because there’s DEI in this program,” said an NSF employee with knowledge of the situation.
Meanwhile scores of other proposals approved on merit by program officers are disappearing into a “black box”—languishing for weeks or months without a decision or explanation, which was leading some to “self-censor,” according to NSF staff.
“It’s either NSF staff self-censoring to make sure they don’t get into trouble, or it is censorship by somebody inserted in the scientific review process from DOGE. Either way it’s a political step, and therefore problematic,” said Anne Marie Schmoltner, a program officer in the chemistry division who retired in February after 30 years in the agency.
In addition to distributing funds to seasoned researchers, the NSF supports students and up-and-coming scientists and engineers through fellowships, research opportunities and grants.
This next generation of talent is being hit particularly hard under Trump, who is attempting to impose sweeping restrictions on visas and travel bans on scores of countries. The proposed 2026 budget includes funding for only 21,400 under- and postgraduate students nationwide—a 75 percent reduction from this year.
Like many scientists across the country, Gill, the paleoecologist, is not accepting new graduate students this fall due to funding uncertainty. “That’s a whole generation of young scientists who see no pathway into the field for them. I cannot stress enough how deeply upsetting and demoralizing these cuts are to a community of people who only ever wanted to solve problems and be of use.”
Yet the NSF student pipeline provides experts for the oil and gas, mining, chemical, big tech and other industries which support Trump, in addition to academic and government-funded agencies.
If we can’t manage our natural resources in a sustainable way, “we will be shooting ourselves in the foot.”
“Industry is working on optimizing what they’re doing right now, whereas NSF is looking 10, 20 years down the road. The US wants a global, robust economy and for that you need innovation, and for innovation you need the fundamental research funded by the NSF,” said Schmoltner.
The NSF declined to comment, referring instead to the agency website last updated in April which states: ‘The principles of merit, competition, equal opportunity and excellence are the bedrock of the NSF mission. NSF continues to review all projects using Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts criteria.’
The sweeping cuts to the NSF come on top of Trump’s dismantling of other key scientific research departments within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Department of Agriculture (USDA) and US Geological Service (USGS).
The USGS is the research arm of the Department of Interior. Its scientists help solve real-life problems about hazards, natural resources, water, energy, ecosystems, and the impacts of climate and land-use change for tribal governments, the Bureau of Land Management, fish and wildlife services, and the National Parks Service, among other interior agencies.
Trump’s big, beautiful bill cuts the USGS budget by 39 percent. This includes slashing the entire budget for the agency’s ecosystems mission area (EMA), which leads federal research on species & ecosystems and houses the climate adaptation science centers.
EMA scientists figure out how to better protect at-risk species such as bees and wolverines, minimize harmful overgrazing on BLM lands, and prevent invasive carp from reaching the Great Lakes—all vitally important to protect food security in the US as the climate changes.
The EMA has already lost 25 to 30 percent of employees through DOGE-approved layoffs and buyouts, and is now facing termination. “We’ve already lost a lot of institutional memory and new, up-and-coming leaders. [Under Trump’s budget], all science in support of managing our public lands and natural resources [will] be cut,” said one USGS program officer.
“Our economy is driven by natural resources including timber, minerals, and food systems, and if we don’t manage these in a sustainable way, we will be shooting ourselves in the foot.”
Like at the NSF, the USGC’s gold standard peer-review system for research approval and oversight is now at the mercy of DOGE—in this case Tyler Hasson, the former oil executive given sweeping authority by the Interior secretary. According to USGS staff, Hasson’s office accepts or rejects proposals based on two paragraphs of information program officers are permitted to submit, without any dialogue or feedback. “The gold standard scientific review is being interfered with. This is now a political process,” said one USGS scientist.
A spokesperson for the Interior department said: “The claim that science is being ‘politicized’ is categorically false. We reject the narrative that responsible budget reform constitutes an ‘assault on science’. On the contrary, we are empowering American innovation by cutting red tape, reducing bureaucracy and ensuring that the next generation of scientists and engineers can focus on real-world solutions—not endless paperwork or politically motivated research agendas.”
The USGS, office of management and budget and White House did not respond to requests from comment.
2025-07-04 21:37:06
The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.
As the nation celebrates its 249th birthday, it’s hard not to wonder about the future of the American experiment. Two-and-a-half centuries ago, a collection of disparate colonies overcame regional differences to forge a nation. Sure, on slavery, the most divisive issue of the time, they punted. And the mighty rhetoric of freedom and liberty was deployed to the advantage of wealthy male landowners. Nevertheless, despite their differences, they banded together beneath a banner of ideals for a common cause.
These days, the people in charge do not seem keen on bolstering our communality. President Trump and his MAGA cult are propelled more by animus and retribution—let’s crush the libs!—than by a desire to strengthen the bonds among the diverse citizens of this large nation. In a highly symbolic act that did not receive sufficient attention, Trump declined to attend the funeral of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, who had been assassinated by a Trump supporter who opposed abortion rights and gay rights. The day of that memorial ceremony, Trump golfed with Republican leaders and posted on social media, “WHY ARE THE DEMOCRATS ALWAYS ROOTING AGAINST AMERICA???” Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance spends much of his time snarkily trolling progressives and Democrats on social media.
This pair evinces absolutely no interest in bridging gaps, healing wounds—much less in serving as role models of comity and decency. At every opportunity, they choose bombast and insult over discourse and debate. They seek to divide and conquer, and they define their politics by identifying and pummeling enemies. In one conversation I had with Barack Obama when he was president, he remarked, “I am the president of all Americans, including those who did not vote for me. I have to consider what’s best for them, even the ones who don’t like me.” That’s not how Trump and Vance see it.
Trump has no recognition of the public interest, only his own self-interest. Which is how we ended up with the atrocious legislation passed by congressional Republicans this week. As we have heard repeatedly, it gives to the wealthy (handing them huge tax breaks) and robs from the poor (stripping millions of Americans of their health care coverage and slashing food assistance for children). Even Republicans who initially opposed these draconian provisions—including those who represent huge numbers of Medicaid recipients, as well as other constituents who will be severely harmed by this legislation—allowed themselves to be bullied by Trump and his MAGA henchmen into voting for it. The measure is estimated to expand the deficit by $3.3 trillion or so over 10 years (and maybe more). It will pour $100 billion into ICE and border enforcement, bolstering the burgeoning police state that the Trump administration is creating to deport law-abiding and hard-working residents. (For comparison’s sake, the annual FBI budget is $11.4 billion.)
The message to many Americans is this: We will pick your pocket to deport people who work the jobs you’d rather not.
Besides breathtaking cruelty, this bill features an absurd internal logic. Trump claimed that undocumented immigrants must be rounded up for the sake of American prosperity. Yet to pay for this operation, he and his Republican minions will decrease after-tax income for some Americans within the lower 20 percent and snatch health insurance from millions—and cause fiscal instability. Moreover, expelling millions of migrants will likely trigger a labor shortage that will spur a rise in prices. The message to many Americans is this: We will pick your pocket to deport people who work the jobs you’d rather not.
In a much-noticed social media post, Vance declared that the impact of the cuts in Medicaid and nutrition assistance of the bill were “immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions.” As if persecuting immigrants will offset the human suffering this bill yields. Try telling that to a parent whose child goes hungry or an adult child whose parent loses his or her care for dementia. Or a low-income family that will have to get by with several hundred dollars less a year.
The gleeful malice of the past few months has been nauseating. Trump, Elon Musk, and their crew relished demolishing USAID, not pausing for a nanosecond to consider the dire consequences. A new study concludes that from 2001 to 2021 USAID programs prevented 92 million deaths in 133 nations. This included 25 million deaths caused by HIV/AIDS, 11 million from diarrhea diseases, 8 million from malaria, and 5 million from tuberculosis. The study forecasts that the annihilation of USAID will lead to 14 million deaths in the next five years. Yet Trump, Musk, and others have cheered the demise of this agency. How can plutocrats be so mean? The USAID budget last year was a mere 0.3 percent of the total federal budget.
Down the line, Trump and his MAGA band have expressed little concern or empathy for those clobbered by their vengeful policies. They are smashing the scientific research infrastructure of the nation and assaulting universities. They are demonizing public servants. They are eviscerating laws that protect our water and air—the common resources we share—and sacrificing our children’s future by unplugging programs that address climate change. All while recklessly vilifying their fellow Americans who disagree with these moves as enemies of the nation. Hatred is the currency of their realm—and crypto is the currency of their corruption.
This is a far cry from the originators of the union who were forced to overcome differences to achieve independence and place America, with all its ills, on the path to becoming one of the most dynamic forces in human history.
So on July 4, 2025, we can celebrate the imperfect start of our national enterprise, despite the dark turn it has taken. As we do so—and as we contend with the discouraging and disturbing developments of the moment—we ought to keep in mind a fundamental fact: There are more of us than them. More Americans reject the cruelty of Trump’s mass deportation crusade than accept it. More Americans oppose the profoundly unfair billionaires-enriching-Medicaid-slashing-deficit-busting tax-and-spending mega-bill than embrace it. More Americans disdain the Trump presidency than hail it.
The question at hand, all these years after Thomas Jefferson provided the original pitch deck for American democracy, is whether the majority can triumph. Can it overcome institutional barriers, disinformation, and distraction and find a path toward responsible governance that addresses the shared interests and values of the citizenry? We all may have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But it demands great work—eternal vigilance, you might say—to protect that right so we all can put it to good use.
Enjoy your burgers, hot dogs, tofu sausages, and ice cream.
2025-07-04 18:00:00
“And they get away with the corruption,” read the email subject line. I knew it was from Bill Moyers, because launching right into the point was the M.O. 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 the M.O. 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 last week, at 91. You can watch the tribute from his former colleagues at PBS, or read about his accomplishments in the big papers’ obits. It’s 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, key architect of the Great Society and the Peace Corps, and then, for decades, legendary correspondent and host on PBS and CBS, where his interviews and documentaries changed how Americans thought about masculinity, spirituality, economic inequality, pollution, and more. (You can spend days browsing his work (including an interview with Clara Jeffery, MoJo‘s editor in chief, and yours truly, as well as a fantastic two-part conversation with my colleagues David Corn and Kevin Drum, at his website. And be sure to read David’s appreciation of Moyers for a lovely story of what came from that interview!)
This story, however, begins where Moyers’ New York Times obituary ends, after his official retirement in 2015. That’s when I got to know him, though he didn’t seem particularly retired to me. He was reading everything, talking to everyone, charming the socks off people with that soft drawl while also steelily driving them toward where he needed them to go. He talked about journalism as a calling, whose goal was “getting as close as possible to the verifiable truth.”
He also thought hard and strategically about what the truth might accomplish. Once I heard him described as “that curious and very rare blend of idealist-operator,” and that sounded exactly right. He would quote George Bernard Shaw (“It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics”) or the inscription on a 17th-century church: “In the year 1653 when all things Sacred were throughout ye nation, either demolisht or profaned, Sir Robert Shirly, Baronet, Founded this church; Whose singular praise it is, to have done the best things in ye worst times, and hoped them in the most callamitous.” His first executive producer, Jerry Toobin, noted that “In all the years I have worked with him, I have never heard him say anything dumb.”
Moyers had come to the conclusion that his early call to the ministry was “a wrong number,” but he never lost a preacher’s ability to enchant. Moyers had, as Doctoroff puts it, “an expansive view of public affairs, those things that make us human and feel connected with each other,” which led him to make documentaries on poetry, on myth, on addiction (this one featuring his son opening up about his own struggles.) His special on the song “Amazing Grace“ is a love letter to America.
At the Center for Investigative Reporting (now MoJo’s parent organization), filmmaker Steve Talbot worked with Moyers on a 1999 documentary about the politicization of the courts—another topic on which he was ahead of his time—and remembers how surprisingly easy it was to get him in front of Supreme Court Justices Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer. “I soon discovered the reason it was possible to book the interviews was that both Kennedy and Breyer were big admirers of Moyers’ intelligence and journalistic integrity. They wanted to meet and engage with him.”
“Who will show us how corruption is not just episodic but systemic? That capitalism has democracy by the throat because democracy no longer has any balls?”
Former Mother Jones publisher Steve Katz recalls that after his first meeting with Moyers, “as starstruck as I was, I left thinking that what we see of Bill on TV is exactly the same man I met with just now. That, to me, was such an expression of Bill’s authenticity. It also was clear to me that as heartfelt and good a man as he was, he had a clear grasp on the question of power—how to get it, and how to use it.”
In “retirement,” Moyers was running his own media enterprise, producing videos, articles, and documentaries nonstop. He was also the president of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, which made grants to transparency watchdogs, nonprofit journalism, and environmental organizations.
By this time, Moyers had become profoundly disillusioned with the major newsrooms where he had spent much of his career. He’d always been one of the very few voices on national television unapologetically saying the big truths about American society—about injustice, racism, and the capture of politics by moneyed interests. He’d clashed with his network bosses (at one point, he said the changes demanded by CBS executives to his exposé about baby formula had “turned Jaws into ‘Gums’”). Now, as he watched traditional media struggle to grasp the Trump era, the stakes seemed existential.
Thus the “and they get away with the corruption” email he sent me. It was about a New York Times story exposing, two years after the fact, that the 2017 Trump tax bill had been even more of a giveaway to the wealthy than we knew. “Not a single corporation with a news division—the major networks, cable, newspaper chain, etc.—covered it,” Moyers wrote. “A free and independent press? Bah, humbug…. Who will show us how corruption is not just episodic but systemic? That capitalism has democracy by the throat because democracy no longer has any balls?”
Moyers was acutely aware, sooner than most, that big money was eating away at American democracy. “Ninety-six percent of the people believe it’s important that we reduce the influence of money [in politics],” he said in a 2014 interview. “Yet 91 percent think it’s not likely that its influence will be lessened. Think about that: People know what’s right to do yet don’t think it can or will be done. When the public loses faith in democracy’s ability to solve the problems it has created for itself, the game’s almost over. And I think we are this close to losing democracy to the mercenary class.” He went on to say that “there are people fighting back [and] if it weren’t for them, I would despair. It’s the people who are doing the nonviolent organizing at the grassroots that make me think there’s still hope.”
Watching mainstream media first make Donald Trump a celebrity and then normalize his authoritarianism, Moyers had come to believe that real accountability was going to have to come from the outside—from journalists who were not part of corporate media, and who were focusing on themes that were getting lost in the day-to-day headlines. One of these themes was corruption. He cited an annual survey by Chapman University that for nine years running has found “corrupt politicians” topping the list of Americans’ fears—ahead of “people I love becoming seriously ill,” terrorism, and nuclear weapons.
Corruption was a topic Mother Jones had been focused on since its founding. During the 2016 campaign, our reporters were among the very few digging into the massive conflicts of interest created by Trump’s business interests all over the world. Moyers told me that as part of the Schumann Foundation’s very last round of grant funding, it would support our work on this beat.
To him, it was all about connecting the dots. Again earlier than most, he realized that people were getting lost in a sea of doom-scrolly headlines, and propagandists were weaponizing this information overload. He sent me a column by the New York Times’ Charles Blow, which warned that “Investigations and exposés by the press may dazzle and awe [but] keeping track of all the corruption and grift is exhausting, and maybe that’s the point.”
“Telling people he and his gang are corrupt is no longer news,” he would say. “If you can show them what America is going to look like because of it, they might be moved.”
Bill trusted Mother Jones to do the work of exposing how “corruption is not just episodic, but systemic.” He also trusted us to show that this was not an abstract concept—that it cost all of us, in terms of money, opportunity, and quality of life.
In 2003, just months after US troops marched into Iraq on the strength of government lies, when hope for the power of truth ran pretty low, Moyers gave a speech laying out the history of movements for change in America, and how they have always been intertwined with the power of journalism. He quoted the muckraker Lincoln Steffens, who set out to “slay the dragon of exalting ‘the commercial spirit’ over the goals of patriotism and national prosperity.”
“I am not a scientist,” Steffens had said. “I am a journalist. I did not gather the facts and arrange them patiently for permanent preservation and laboratory analysis…My purpose was…to see if the shameful facts, spread out in all their shame, would not burn through our civic shamelessness and set fire to American pride.”
Moyers believed that “shameful facts, spread out in all their shame,” could still “set fire to American pride”—especially when those facts laid bare how government was being turned into an ATM for the wealthy and connected. One of the last emails he wrote me noted that, “It will probably not surprise you that after four decades covering [big money’s] sabotage of democracy, from that first documentary on political action committees back in the 1970s, I often think of what the historian Plutarch said in his eulogy for the fallen Roman republic: ‘The abuse of buying and selling votes crept in and money began to play an important part in determining elections. Later on, however, this process of corruption spread to the law courts and to the army, and finally, when even the sword became enslaved by the power of gold, the republic was subject to the rule of emperors.’”
“Donald Trump did not come out of nowhere,” Moyers closed. “When he rode into town, it was ripe for plucking.”
Rereading this, in the 23rd week of the second Trump administration, is depressing—but also strangely calming. Moyers knew Trump was not an aberration, but the logical extension of a problem that went back decades. Corruption, he wrote me, is “a condition beyond individual scandals—more a totality of governance, a philosophy that says democracy exists for us to take what we can while we can—to hell with the law, rules, norms and the country. It’s the crime family manifesto of the mafia, affixed to the civic life and public affairs of the nation.”
There are few people who’ve embodied the best of journalism—its ability to cut through BS, its capacity to uplift those who’ve been wronged, its curiosity and burning appetite to tell the stories people need to know—like Bill Moyers. We’ve never needed him more. But the worst way to honor him would be to mope about what we’ve lost. The best—and only—way to pay tribute to him is to go out and do the work.