Stress Test, from Mother Jones

The Trump administration has slammed the door on asylum seekers in the last year, forcing more than 60,000 migrants to wait upwards of a year in Mexican border cities as their cases moved through US immigration court. But on this latest episode, we take you to New Mexico to meet some of the select few asylum seekers who have defied odds to be admitted to the United States—and who now must face a new set of challenges as they settle into life here. Mother Jones' Fernanda Echavarri and Julia Lurie spend the day with a so-called family navigator from a local direct-services organization called Las Cumbres whose main job is to do "whatever the families need": from driving them around to a clinic to helping them enroll in school. Las Cumbres is a nonprofit that helps families with resources—including mental health services—in a city without the type of support systems that immigrants can find in bigger cities such as Los Angeles, New York City, or Chicago. Many newly arrived immigrants are often preoccupied with trying to find employment and a safe place to live first, before addressing any mental health issues. They've fled dangerous situations and traumatic experiences in their home countries before experiencing the infamous harsh conditions inside US immigration detention facilities. Mental health experts have said it can be difficult to recognize signs of trauma in these communities, not only because trauma shows up differently when they're still in the middle of processing it, but also because they are still in the middle of it with so much stress to handle.

Schools are closing. Workplaces are sending people home. The stock market is going berserk. Conferences and festivals are being cancelled. The coronavirus is already a major disruptive force as the disease spreads. But it didn't stop the Conservative Political Action Convention (CPAC) from hosting more than 19,000 attendees in late February. On March 7th day, organizers announced that one of those attendees had tested positive for the coronavirus. Many CPAC attendees have gone into self-quarantine, including five members of congress. Also under self-imposed distancing is Stephanie Mencimer, a Mother Jones reporter who was covering CPAC. Mencimer joined Jamilah King on the Mother Jones Podcast to talk about her experience, not only of the conference's aftermath, but of the swirl of coronavirus disinformation coming out of the White House. Also on the show: Mother Jones readers and listeners called into the Mother Jones Podcast to tell their coronavirus stories: total lockdown in Milan; cancelled college classes; struggling small businesses; and worries about the most vulnerable people in their communities. Touching stories from you, our listeners: thank you for sharing them.

There are many alternate futures. But what if there were also ... alternate pasts? That's the premise of William Gibson's latest novel, Agency. Gibson is the pioneering science fiction writer who coined the word "cyberspace" and whose 1984 debut novel, The Neuromancer, is the book that inspired The Matrix. In, Agency, the second novel in Gibson's Peripheral trilogy, we've arrived back in 2017, at a fork of the past, called a "stub," in which Trump was never elected and Brexit never happened. In this universe, an app-whisperer named Verity Jane is testing a beta super-AI named Eunice, and crisis communication expert named Wilf Netherton has teamed up with a cop named Ainsley Lowbeer to try to avert nuclear war. In other words, it's a novel that looks unflinchingly at the importance of choice and the complex decision trees that could precipitate, or prevent, the end of the world as we know it. Mother Jones Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery sat down for a conversation with William Gibson at Public Works in San Francisco last January to talk about his new book. They discuss how politics has influenced his writing, how he uses his imagination to predict future realities, and how the real-life climate crisis intersects with his fictional imaginings of the end times.

Our Super Tuesday Mother Jones Podcast special is all about the knock 'em down, drag 'em out battle for the Democratic party! If you're a math nerd, you might be in heaven. But if you thought tonight was going to provide some simple answers, no such luck. Because just as we're releasing this, it's all about the numbers—a bare knuckle-fight for delegates in a race for who will be the Democratic nominee. After a broad field and innumerable debates the race has basically boiled down to two men: former Vice President Joe Biden, and Vermont senator Bernie Sanders So on this week's Mother Jones Podcast, we're counting votes and analyzing the results with our Senior Reporter Tim Murphy, who joins the show from where Bernie's political career began in Burlington, Vermont. Also in the show: Inside Bernie Sander's California ground operation that he hopes will turn out a historic turnout of nonvoters and new voters determined to kick Trump out. Fernanda Echavarri reports from the Coachella Valley, California, where a band of young Latinx activists are knocking on doors, phone-banking, nagging their relatives, and trying to unleash the kind of wave of enthusiasm Bernie touts as his biggest strength. Did these efforts make a difference in the Golden State on Super Tuesday? 

Pramila Jayapal, the freshman Democratic congresswoman from Washington, dubbed a" rising star in the Democratic caucus” by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has been fighting for immigrants’ rights since waves of xenophobia swept the nation after 9/11, and is now one of Congress’s leading critics of President Donald Trump’s draconian immigration policies. Following a hectic few months serving on the House Judiciary Committee, championing Bernie Sanders as one of his campaign’s leading surrogates, and pushing Medicare for All legislation in Congress, Jayapal sat down with Mother Jones’ Editor-in Chief Clara Jeffery to discuss the 2020 race, whether or not “Bernie Bros” really exist, Trump’s immigration policy horror show, and so much more.

Listen to this special Friday bonus edition of the Mother Jones Podcast to hear the conversation, recorded on stage in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco earlier this month. 

Remember "Pizzagate"? That far-right fever dream about Hillary Clinton's allies running a pizza parlor child-sex ring turned out to be a precursor to QAnon, a bizarre and sprawling trove of pro-Trump conspiracy theories. Its strains have been mutating and adapting ever since 2017, finding new ways to infect our politics. Mother Jones' disinformation reporter Ali Breland and digital producer Mark Helenowski will take you inside the Trump rallies that served as offline nerve centers for the movement to ask supporters clad in Q-paraphernalia if the conspiracy is still alive and thriving, or has it peaked? They found that this once unmissable presence has faded to a crew of Q-diehards as a decline in the volume of related social media content took hold. But in an election year, QAnon is still shaping Trump's base and could be just one presidential tweet away from roaring back to life stronger than ever. Listen to hear how this far-right mega-conspiracy lives on, and about the danger it poses to an election already steeped in disinformation.

In March 2014, Carol Coronado was a new mother who committed an unthinkable act of violence: She stabbed and killed her three daughters, who were all under the age of three. Coronado's lawyer unsuccessfully argued that she was in the grip of an acute mental illness when she attacked her children. The judge said he thought Coronado was suffering from a mental condition and then sentenced her to three consecutive life terms without parole. In this week’s episode of the Mother Jones Podcast, host Jamilah King is joined by KQED health reporter April Dembosky to talk about her yearlong investigation into a devastating but under-reported condition called postpartum psychosis. The condition afflicts one to two moms out of 1,000 births, but psychiatrists believe that could underestimate the frequency because the symptoms are so easy to miss. Dembosky constructs and analyzes the data behind postpartum psychosis and looks into how the health care and legal systems could better serve women affected by this frightening condition. This radio documentary was first aired on KQED's California Sunday Magazine show earlier this month.

Mother Jones is on the ground in New Hampshire, reporting from the candidates’ after-parties following Sen. Bernie Sanders’ second win in the state’s Democratic primary. Calling in from Sanders’ victory party is senior reporter Tim Murphy, who weighs in on the tight race between the Vermont senator and former South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg. Reporter Russ Choma fills us in on the latest from Buttigieg's celebration, who came in second in New Hampshire following a narrow delegate win over Sanders in last week’s Iowa caucuses. And for the word on Amy Klobuchar’s surprising third-place finish, we’ll hear from politics reporter Kara Voght. Following a chaotic first week of the primary season, Mother Jones’ reporters iron out all the details you need to know as the race for the nomination moves forward.

We're putting the Mother Jones Podcast out early this week to bring you the very latest from the Iowa caucuses. Democratic officials are scrambling to tabulate final results, blaming “inconsistencies” in the reporting data. But precinct-based volunteers running the contest slammed the party’s reporting app and said even calling in on the phones was causing problems. Tim Murphy has been criss-crossing Iowa reporting for Mother Jones, and in this show we'll take you right there, to his car, for his immediate reaction, and to hear what voters are saying. You'll also hear from our voting rights reporter (and Iowa native) Ari Berman, who analyzes what the debacle foretells for voting in America in 2020. And while we wait to assess the actual votes, Micah Cohen, the managing editor of FiveThirtyEight, examines the trends, as election season gets underway.

President Donald Trump’s lawyers have now concluded his impeachment defense on the floor of the Senate. A verdict—probably acquittal—is nigh. Or is it? In these final days and hours of the Trump impeachment saga, new bombshells keep exploding. A leak this week of a draft book manuscript by former National Security Adviser John Bolton's book heightened pressure on the handful of Republican senators able to green-light new evidence, or allow the trial to come to a speedy conclusion. On today’s show, you’ll hear from Mother Jones DC bureau chief David Corn who attempts to answer questions at the center of this week's drama: What does John Bolton know? Will any Republican Senators defect from the party line? What's the deal with Kenneth Starr and Alan Dershowitz? The Trump presidency has been marked by scandal, corruption, and dirty deals. These next few days will determine whether it can survive impeachment intact.