The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. Importantly, this is a completely non-exhaustive and subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy or discontent. Enjoy. Congratulations on your part-time job! Please report to the nearest grocery store, scan your weekly essentials, move them to the doll-sized bagging area, and prepare to be gaslit by the robot voice insisting that you better place that item in the bagging area. Just to be clear, I already did. At some point in the process, you likely will need to call in reinforcements from a fellow grocery worker—the one with an actual badge. “Help is [allegedly] on the way,” the machine assures you. We have officially nullified the “self” in “self-checkout.” Now, it’s time for a real human interaction—but the two clerks in charge of an area with 20 machines are busy helping everyone else besieged by what I would like to suggest is one of the worst technological “innovations” of the last few decades. (Yes, I understand the competition is stiff: social media or fast fashion, for instance. Those ugly shoes with the individual toes…) The limited staff, theoretically, is there to ensure that you are old enough to buy wine and that you scanned that peanut butter instead of slipping it unobtrusively into your bag. But they’re usually too busy making all the machines shut up and stop flashing lights to have the time to check. At least they’ll get minimum wage for it. Your role as a self-checkout scanner comes with no compensation or benefits. Unless you count the CCTV security footage of yourself from the worst possible angle as a perk, the most you will receive are a cascade of error messages and mounting frustration. As Amanda Mull pointed out in a 2023 Atlantic article, these kiosks initially were advertised as a win-win for grocers and customers: Grocers would be able to cut back and pay fewer cashiers, and customers could avoid long lines. Sure, scanning machines can’t call in sick, and while family emergencies do not interrupt their productivity, plenty of tech outages do. And about all those potential time savings? The opposite is true. Most of us aren’t professional cashiers. We haven’t mastered the mysteries of bar code placements, nor have we memorized produce SKUs. Plus, we can’t check our own IDs. Stacking up a week’s worth of scanned groceries Tetris-style in the tiny space allotted is yet another time suck. Please don’t misunderstand! I would love to contribute to improved employment conditions for overworked, underpaid grocery staff. Plus, it might translate to lower food prices based on lower overhead costs. But it definitely doesn’t seem as though self-service benefits the staff. We’re not freeing up cashiers for cart-return duty, restocking, and general customer service. Instead, there are simply fewer cashiers to deal with the work. Corporations are quick to blame the dearth of employees on talent shortages and pressure for increased wages; they’ll be less likely to mention their market consolidation and year-over-year increases in net profit. According to CBS, 67 percent of shoppers agree that self-checkout systems leave much to be desired. I’d like to start a petition to transfer these machines back to the dystopia from which they came. Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, self-checkout machines are unable to process returns.

The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. Importantly, this is a completely non-exhaustive and subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy or discontent. Enjoy. When I listened to Chase Strangio, the co-director of the ACLU’s LGBT & HIV Project, become the first transgender lawyer to argue in the US Supreme Court, the moment was surreal. Here I was, wearing pajamas about 2,800 miles away from where he was making history.  In United States v. Skrmetti, Strangio argued on behalf of the petitioner that banning medications like puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy for transgender, but not cisgender, youth is a case of sex-based discrimination. Experts argue that the ruling could affect not just trans health care but legal access to birth control, IVF, and abortion.  While the Supreme Court is meant to determine specifically whether sex-based discrimination took place, every step of the case and its arguments was steeped in the question of the treatment and its efficacy. Strangio could not help but embody this argument, writing in a New York Times op-ed, “My presence at the Supreme Court as a transgender lawyer will have been possible because I have had access to the very medical treatment at the center of the case.” > “My presence at the Supreme Court as a transgender lawyer will have been > possible because I have had access to the very medical treatment at the center > of the case.” I can’t pinpoint with certainty the moment I first heard about Strangio. When I was a teen, still donning the pleated skirt of my all-girls school, I didn’t understand why it all felt so deeply uncomfortable. (Spoiler alert: the reason was transness.) I suspect that was around the same time when he was first thrust into the national spotlight as a lawyer in multiple landmark trans rights cases back in 2017. But I can say with certainty that Strangio was the first trans man I knew about specifically. While Laverne Cox and Jazz Jennings were figures I had seen for years, trans men only seemed to exist in an abstract, blurry background. Strangio was in sharp focus every time he spoke about his clients. With that energy, he has always made his height of 5-foot-4 seem imposing.  Born 42 years ago into a Jewish family outside of Boston, he transitioned during law school, embarking on a career amid highly gendered expectations. Ultimately, he wrote, “I found peace in my body, which allowed me to find peace in the world.” Now, he is a father and lives in New York City. Last fall he stood up to make his kid’s school district safer when Moms for Liberty tried to encroach. Raised on the uplifting stories of Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Thurgood Marshall, I was primed by my lawyer mother to find revolutionary attorneys heroic and compelling. That may be part of why I was so taken by Strangio as a teen. But while his lawyering is obviously impressive, the essence of Strangio’s heroism always has been his bravery in being an openly and prominent trans man, and his feeling of personal responsibility in lifting others toward living their truth. A Mother Jones 2017 profile of him does not follow him in court but at a tailor’s fitting with teen client Gavin Grimm. At the time, Grimm, a trans man, was seeking access to the men’s restroom at his high school. He sued his school, and the case nearly made it to the Supreme Court—which was the reason for a visit to the tailors—before it was sent back to a lower court, which ruled in 2020 that the school had violated his constitutional rights. It is no exaggeration to say that Strangio has been involved with pretty much every monumental LGBTQ case of the last decade. He was lead counsel for Chelsea Manning, the WikiLeaks whistleblower who petitioned for access to gender-affirming health care in military custody. He also was counsel in the ACLU’s challenges to North Carolina’s bathroom ban and Trump’s trans military ban. This was Strangio’s first time presenting oral arguments to the Supreme Court, but it wasn’t his first time in the court. He was one of the lawyers involved in the 2018 case, R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes v. EEOC, which led to the historic SCOTUS ruling finding that the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s prohibition on sex discrimination in employment extended to discrimination against LGBTQ workers. So it was only natural that when it came time for an attorney to argue the Skrmetti case, he would be selected. As Cecillia Wang, ACLU legal director, said, “Chase Strangio is our nation’s leading legal expert on the rights of transgender people, bar none.” Journalist Evan Urquhart was one of a handful of trans people in the court on December 4, 2024, for the arguments. As he watched, he wrote, “Trans stories, and the lives of ordinary trans people, kept coming back to my mind, as I listened to nine cisgender justices debate with two cis lawyers and Chase Strangio about the finer points of what does and does not constitute a law that makes sex-based classifications.” Those “ordinary trans people” gathered virtually and in person to watch Strangio make history and assess the potential outcome of a case that will have lasting consequences on both transgender and sex-based discrimination. Outside the court, trans people and advocates were bundled tight and practically huddled together to protect themselves against the bitter cold. After the arguments ended, Strangio left the court and told hundreds of trans folks and allies, “I know we have been the subject of relentless and unjustified attack. But here is the thing, we are in it together.” I watched this clip much later, after an exhausting day of reporting and speaking on trans rights. And even though I am proudly out and surrounded and supported by my trans community, my work in covering the attacks on trans rights—much like being a lawyer championing these issues—can be draining.  No matter how the case is resolved—which looks bleak amid a conservative majority—Strangio bravely living his truth remains one of the most powerful aspects of the day in and outside the Supreme Court. “If nothing else, I’ve lived this health care. It has enabled me to stand before them at that lectern,” he told New York magazine before the arguments. “So that is a truth that is undeniable, that will be present in the courtroom, that certainly the other trans people who will be present in the courtroom will understand.”  As we await the assaults on our identity that are sure to come, knowing he’s around offers me the same reassurance as when I was a teenager. Strangio just makes me feel braver. “I love being trans,” he said to the crowd outside the Supreme Court. “I love being with you. And we are going to take care of each other.”

The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. Importantly, this is a completely non-exhaustive and subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy or discontent. Enjoy. Food delivery drivers can be a menace: On scooters or e-bikes, they weave in and out of traffic, run red lights, and terrorize pedestrians on the sidewalks. When they’re in cars, they can make illegal U-turns, block bike lanes, and double-park. Nearly everyone, even delivery drivers, hates delivery drivers. Major cities like New York and Boston have been trying to crack down on the chaos. The city council in Washington, DC, just passed legislation to try to regulate them, and city residents have called for better—let’s make that any—traffic regulation to restore order to the streets. It’s an uphill battle. The delivery companies’ high-powered lobbyists have fought regulation, which is complicated by genuine concerns for the low-income immigrants exploited by the delivery app companies. Rarely discussed in all the furor, however, are the real monsters: the customers! People who frequently use services like DoorDash and Uber Eats are like the single-occupancy commuter on the Beltway, the Amtrak passenger who piles his luggage on the adjacent seat on a crowded train, or the driver who blocks the intersection. They’re exemplars of American individualism, where one person’s immediate gratification comes at the expense of an entire city’s ability to use the crosswalks. Delivery services can be legitimate lifelines for people with disabilities, new parents, the elderly, or people battling an illness. But the couriers clogging the roads and dominating sidewalks today aren’t delivering a week’s worth of groceries. They’re often delivering a single meal to a single person in already-congested urban areas where food offerings are abundant and close at hand. If that all sounds too theoretical, consider that DoorDash enjoys its highest market saturation in San Francisco, a walkable city with more than 13,000 restaurants—one for every 60 or so residents. Food delivery is bad for city traffic and pedestrian safety, but it’s even worse for people doing the deliveries, whose occupation has become deadly. Yet customers seem largely oblivious to the wreckage they cause. In the first quarter of 2024, DoorDash fielded 650 million orders, up 21 percent from the previous year. And what sort of food is so important that it’s worth dispatching a low-paid delivery guy on a dangerous dash through traffic to retrieve it before it gets cold? According to DoorDash’s own data, the top food item it delivered in 2023 was: french fries, followed closely by chicken quesadillas. > “I would be taking a hit with the crackdown on them. I order a lot of Uber > Eats, DoorDash.” Food-delivery dependence can scramble the brain. In June, for instance, the Associated Press interviewed some people in Boston griping about the scourge of delivery drivers. Jaia Samuel, a 25-year-old hospital worker, agreed that delivery drivers on scooters can be dangerous. At the same time, she wasn’t in favor of getting rid of them. “I would be taking a hit with the crackdown on them,” she admitted. “I order a lot of Uber Eats, DoorDash.” People have been ordering takeout Chinese and pizza for decades. But the app-based, on-demand delivery system has made it possible for people to order just about any food item, however small, anytime, anywhere. The use of these services skyrocketed during the pandemic, and over the past two years, the growth of e-bike and scooter delivery has contributed to the roadway pandemonium. During the pandemic, many customers claimed they were helping struggling local restaurants by ordering takeout deliveries, while of course letting the drivers take all the risk of getting sick. Today, people order deliveries of $3 breakfast sandwiches from McDonald’s just because they are too lazy to fry an egg. Indeed, DoorDash, whose revenue has quadrupled since 2020, reports that this year, one customer ordered a 53 cent banana; another dialed up a 10-cent container of McDonald’s creamy ranch, plus a single straw. On-demand food delivery is a habit Americans acquired during the pandemic, and now it’s one they need to break. DoorDash, which accounts for nearly 70 percent of the American food delivery market, unsurprisingly, does not agree. “This story is as wrong as it is offensive,” DoorDash spokesperson Julian Crowley told me in an email. “This out-of-touch and paternalistic critique, which stereotypes people as ignorant or lazy, doesn’t reflect the truth: millions of people—from big cities to small towns—choose DoorDash because it works. It helps them earn on their own terms, grow their business, and spend their time on what they value most.” It’s worth considering that the CEO of DoorDash made $400 million in his 2021 pay package. It seems unlikely that he earned that much money solely from the nation’s sick and disabled who may rely on these services. (DoorDash told me that as many as 50 percent of people with disabilities had used their service to buy something they couldn’t buy themselves. But so did 44 percent of all the other customers.) Data shows that the vast majority of food delivery customers skew young, like the twentysomething finance bro who used to live across the street from me. He got meals delivered almost every single day, and his neighbors grew weary of having to field all the food that got dropped at the wrong address. But wait! If people didn’t Uber Eat, or DoorDash, or Caviar, or Grubhub, or whatever, they’d just congest the roads by driving to get their food, right? Perhaps some would. But it’s more likely that most people would scrounge something out of the fridge or—gasp!—pack a lunch or walk to Chipotle, the way they did before 2020. The most compelling evidence for this theory? High school students, better known as the DoorDash generation. I first realized how bad this dynamic had become a few years ago when a delivery guy showed up at my house with a milkshake and a small bag of food. The delivery turned out to be for the 15-year-old next door. According to his parents, he was a star athlete, but apparently he was unable to manage the 350-yard walk to the Shake Shack he’d ordered from. Even worse, though, is how many kids are having meals delivered directly to school every day. DC’s largest public high school doesn’t allow food deliveries. (“DoorDash is for lazy butts,” one student there told me.) But some of the private schools have no such rule. One day this month, I staked out a small, progressive private school in the Northwest section of DC, and one I know well because one of my children went there (and admittedly, occasionally ordered in). The school is surrounded by many walkable food options, not to mention those offered inside the building. But during lunchtime, I clocked one food delivery every four minutes. Only one of those was picked up by a teacher. One thing I hadn’t expected to see: a traffic jam on the school’s quiet, tree-lined street from all the food delivery vehicles that weren’t even going to the school, but instead, to people’s houses. I watched with amazement as a Chick-fil-A car passed by and returned a minute or two later. A Chick-fil-A was a five-minute walk away.  One former student, who sheepishly admits to having been a regular DoorDasher, said there were limits to how much money he’d waste on food deliveries—unlike one classmate. “It’s a new low when you’re delivering Starbucks to school,” he told me. (DoorDash recently established a partnership so customers can order delivery straight from the Starbucks app.) The school’s delivery traffic seemed modest compared with that of a bigger private DC school that also allows students to leave campus at lunchtime. It too is surrounded by walkable lunch spots, but one recent grad told me that her fellow students ordered food deliveries from 7:30 a.m. until 7 at night. What were they ordering? Chick-fil-A and Dunkin’ Donuts mostly, she said, both less than a 10-minute stroll from the school. “I guess people didn’t want to walk,” she suggested. The delivery traffic last year got so bad, she said, that the school had to set up a new security table to handle all the food dropoffs. She said so many students were getting food delivered during carpool that parents couldn’t get into the driveway to drop off or pick up their kids. The school eventually restricted the deliveries to a window between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. (The high school principal confirmed that the school did indeed limit the delivery hours.)    That school has about 500 high school students. If even 10 percent of them are ordering a delivery every day, that could mean an additional 50 vehicles on the road gumming up traffic or terrorizing pedestrians and cyclists, all to bring a Frappuccino to a teenager with too much disposable income. This is not an immigration problem or a traffic enforcement issue or even really the result of corporate greed. It’s a demand problem, which means that the best solution is the most obvious one: Get your own damn food.

The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. Importantly, this is a completely non-exhaustive and subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy or discontent. Enjoy. The appointees for the incoming administration are a mix of woefully uncredentialed and downright dangerous. Several, including the president-elect himself, share another common denominator: They stand accused of sexual misconduct. But this trend is not limited to those who seek to serve Donald Trump. In New York, Andrew Cuomo and Anthony Weiner, two politicos forced to resign over their own sexual misconduct scandals, apparently believe that 2025 is the year they return to the public arena. The positions Cuomo and Weiner reportedly seek? Cuomo is thirsting for the New York City mayorship, a post already engulfed in controversy after the current monster, Eric Adams, was indicted on a slew of federal corruption charges. As for Weiner, he’s registered as a candidate for a New York City Council seat. So is something in the water? What could compel two disreputable men, bona fide sex pests, to believe that they are the leaders New York needs? Cuomo, who has not formally announced his bid to replace Adams, would mark a political comeback for the books following his 2021 resignation as New York governor after a string of damning sexual harassment allegations. A federal Justice Department investigation later concluded that he indeed sexually harassed 13 women who worked for the state. The same report found that Cuomo and his staff frequently retaliated against his accusers. He has since echoed Trumpian talking points, blaming “coup” forces and so-called “cancel culture” for his spectacular demise. (Remember, this is a guy once widely considered as a potential, if not inevitable, contender for Democratic presidential nominee.) Weiner, of course, served 18 months in prison after sending explicit photos to a 15-year-old girl. That investigation into the former New York congressman and ex-husband to Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s longtime aide, led the FBI to stumble upon those Clinton emails; many in Clinton-world blame Weiner for her 2016 presidential collapse. But Weiner’s sordid sexual history goes even further back. He has an extensive record of sending sexually explicit photos, many while married and some of which were sent using the now-infamous alias Carlos Danger. Following his conviction, Weiner was forced to register as a sex offender. The downfalls of these men were never the result of one-off mistakes or fleeting errors of judgment that could justify the case for a second chance. Instead, Cuomo and Weiner—and, perhaps more crucially, their reported interests in returning to government—are symptomatic of what ails many men: a refusal to be held accountable, with barely a concern given to those left hurt. We see this play out all the time. The denials of Gisèle Pelicot’s humanity. The manosphere. “Your body, my choice.” As for the public, most folks are happy to settle into comfy amnesia should the occasion benefit them, whether that’s because the circumstances are entertaining—after all, everyone loves a comeback story—or whatever reason you could explain Trump’s return to power. But perhaps most of all, it’s entitlement. That unshakeable belief in your own promise, no matter how poorly you’ve behaved or how much hurt you’ve imparted. Here’s to hoping New Yorkers reject any efforts to reward such a humiliating delusion.

My cellphone’s apps serve as my alarm clock, meteorologist, GPS, and e-reader. FaceTime is the portal to my nieces who live 500 miles away. Chase Mobile is the reason I seldom deposit checks at a physical bank. Hinge has provided me with an overabundance of dating horror stories and—after copious swiping—an incredible partner. Let me declare at the onset, these apps are useful—even pretty good! This screed is not about them. My grievance focuses on every company in the world believing its products either should or must be accessed through a standalone app. Want to buy a single Major League Baseball ticket on your smartphone? Add that app to your already chaotic home screen! Need to charge your electric-powered rental car? Hah! Don’t think that only one app will do. Each of the various charging companies uses a different app. My app annoyance blossomed into sheer disdain after a recent trip through a McDonald’s drive-thru for a medium Diet Coke and a small order of fries—a passing indulgence before RFK Jr. tries to pry them from my salty fingertips. “Will you be using the McDonald’s app for your purchase?” the innocent associate asked on her headset. “No,” I thought to myself, “I’m using the drive-thru for my purchase.” Like a normal person, I used my credit card for the routine transaction. My order tasted just as good—maybe even better—than it would have had I taken the additional step of involving technology. Some of the tens of millions of McDonald’s app users will tell you that the app is useful; by downloading it, they can reap the rewards of 50-cent double cheeseburgers and the occasional free Happy Meal. Here’s where I become the resident buzzkill and remind you, reader, that if a corporation is offering you a product for free, it’s because it appreciates the fact that you are the product. When you download an app and enter your email address, phone number, and physical location, you are effectively gift-wrapping your personal information and handing it over to corporate megalords for exploitation. At best, they’ll use your purchase history and contact information to market to you even more strategically and relentlessly. At worst, they’ll sell it or lose it in a hack. This theft of our information—and our phone storage space—is not just potentially ruinous, it’s also exclusionary. About 10 percent of Americans don’t own smartphones, according to the Pew Research Center. Perhaps they can’t afford one or don’t know how to use the technology. I’d wager that the average unhoused person or grandma on a fixed income needs the app-exclusive coupons more than the upper-middle-class teen with the latest iPhone model. Instead, these folks are charged a premium for ordering burgers the old-fashioned way. In at least some McDonald’s locations, customers may not even be able to see a full menu without downloading the app. The everything-has-an-app culture is exasperating to me and apparently to many others. People wrote to me complaining about apps connected to their ovens, coffee-mug warmers, laundry machines, grocery stores, and even toothbrushes. I’m not a frequent Reddit user but found even more excessive-app gripes there. And amid the grievances, still another piece of evidence for how out of control this all is: On the third webpage I tapped, a prompt popped up, blocked a third of my phone screen, and suggested I download the Reddit app to keep reading. Lord, give me strength. Or maybe a meditation app.

The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. Importantly, this is a completely non-exhaustive and subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy or discontent. Enjoy. There’s a lot that can scare off the newbie fly fisher. First, the gear: the rod and reel, of course, but also the fly line, the leader, the tippet, the waders, the boots, and—above all—the flies, the infinite permutations of size and color and material and hook. Then there’s the cast: a seemingly endless pursuit of the right rhythm, the correct accelerate-to-a-stop, pause, accelerate-to-a-stop that stretches the line out in front of you and lands the fly gently on the water. There’s also learning to read your local streams: Even drifting the right fly at the correct depth won’t matter if nobody’s home. And finally, entomology: You can catch trout without knowing the life cycles and behaviors of mayflies and caddisflies and stoneflies, but you’ll land far more if you know which hatch to match and how. Randy Betz Jr. understands this. He knows you’re confused and frustrated and more than a little intimidated, but he just wants you to net some fish and have a good time on the water. So, in his @flyfishdelawhere videos on TikTok (421,000 followers) and Instagram (91,000), the 45-year-old owner of a spinal implant company from Wilmington, Delaware, is the fishing buddy you never knew you needed, happy to offer some tips and cheer you on, and, more than anything, make fly fishing more friendly and less daunting. “If you want to learn to fly fish, this page is a great page to at least get started,” Betz told me earlier this month. “It’s a great page for someone who says: ‘I wanna get into fly fishing. I don’t know the basics. I don’t know what I should use. I don’t know how to even approach a stream or what rigs to use or what flies to use.’” > Satisfyingly, he caught a trout, and then another, and then another, rainbows > and brookies and brownies and tigers all brought to his net for snapshots and > gentle released back into the water. The first time I saw one of Betz’s Reels, I was deep in a frenzy brought on by my tween son’s almost overnight obsession with largemouth bass. I had never fished growing up, save for the one time as a kid when some guy’s back cast hooked my thumb, but suddenly I was sneaking off to a nearby pond with my spinning gear every chance I got. My Insta Explore page was full of dudes catching bass, pike, and muskies on all manner of lures and soft plastics. Fly fishing—long my father-in-law’s main hobby—was way off my radar. And yet, Betz instantly, erm, reeled me in. There he was streamside, narrating a GoPro-filmed video about why trout like the tailouts of pools and telling you before he cast his exact setup, in case you wanted to try the whole thing at your own river. He flipped over rocks to scope out the bug life, and he talked through the different challenges of streamers, nymphs, and dry flies in a way that made sense…and made it seem kind of fun? And then, satisfyingly, he caught a trout, and then another, and then another, rainbows and brookies and brownies and tigers all brought to his net for snapshots and gentle released back into the water. > View this post on Instagram > > > > > A post shared by Randal Betz Jr (@flyfishdelawhere) So before I knew it, I was fly fishing almost every week during the winter in frigid water, snow piled up on the banks. I got caught in trees and on the bottom and lost countless flies and accidentally snapped my rod (multiple times, actually) but kept going out there as the seasons changed and the action heated up. It wasn’t exactly A River Runs Through It. But as I toured central Connecticut’s streams and rivers—filled with a mix of stocked trout and some holdovers and wild fish, too—I became a bit of a walking cliché: communing with nature, learning on the water, the whole bit. > “You know, anyone that can take something away from one of my videos and use > it to catch fish? There you go, that’s the reason I do it.” I read books and studiously followed the fly shop’s twice-weekly river report and bought more gear and started watching an enormous amount of online fly-fishing content: everything from the grandfatherly ruminations of Orvis OG Tom Rosenbauer to the broseph stylings of @funky_fly_guy to the masterful competence of Troutbitten’s Domenick Swentosky and the clever casting lessons of @troutpsychology. But I kept coming back to Betz. Anytime I got skunked, anytime I was puzzled by new water conditions, I’d scroll through his posts and find something useful, and oddly comforting. Betz, who first picked up a fly rod with his grandfather and later honed his craft as an undergrad at Penn State, says he fishes five to six times a week, often between work appointments and rarely more than two hours at a time. That can yield weeks worth of content—and provoke a flood of comments from followers who just caught their first trout on the fly and wanted to thank him. “You know, anyone that can take something away from one of my videos and use it to catch fish? There you go, that’s the reason I do it,” he told me. I’ve now been out on the water dozens of times this year, and I’ve caught and released dozens of fish. I’m not good (that’s years, maybe decades, away?), but I’m also no longer bad. Thanks to Randy Betz Jr. and my other fly-fishing influencer-instructors, I’ve got an actual chance out there—just in time to fool some stocked Atlantic salmon this month.

The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. Importantly, this is a completely non-exhaustive and subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy or discontent. Enjoy. I have always thought the music-for-charity genre was irredeemably corny. “We Are the World”? Far from “the greatest gift of all”—sorry! Band Aid’s, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” I hope they don’t know it’s Christmastime at all, because I’m returning this gift. Let’s not even get into that hauntingly bad celebrity cover of “Imagine” from the darkest days of March 2020.  Music for charity is, often, just bad. And it can read as patronizing, frivolous, and a useless effort by out-of-touch celebrities who could help needy masses a lot more by giving money directly to everyone as opposed to donating a song.  But this year, two different albums were different. In 2024, the Charity Compilation was good.  Transa, a Red Hot release from November, is a four-hour, hundred-artist behemoth. Often heavy on the ambient, you should expect tons of reverb, harp, and flute. At its core, the record isn’t so much about being transgender as it is about loving trans people. Sade’s standout hymn to her trans son, “Young Lion,” distills that spirit. (So do the samplers from the New York City Trans Oral History Project included on the album, as does André 3000’s 26-minute instrumental track, with the unwieldy title, “Something Is Happening and I May Not Fully Understand But I’m Happy to Stand for the Understanding.”)  Producer Dust Reid and artist and activist Massima Bell started developing the album in 2021. Since then, things for trans folks in America have gone from bad to worse. Twenty-six states have passed bans on gender-affirming care for young people. Adults are rationing hormones, and some are rushing through legal name and sex changes before President-elect Donald Trump comes to power again. Just last week, a provision banning gender-affirming care for the children of military families passed as part of the National Defense Authorization Act, which caused a friend to text me, baffled, “What does that even have to do with defense?”  It would be naive to suggest that music can do much to solve anti-trans law or even really counteract the reactionary wave we’re now caught up in. Transa won’t stop America from throwing people under the bus. But here’s the reason it’s important: This is good music. And good music matters. It tells the listener, we survived. We are still here, and we are making something beautiful. Another mammoth compilation album released this year proves the same point. Cardinals at the Window, a 10-hour Bandcamp exclusive released 12 days after Hurricane Helene devastated Western North Carolina. The record—well over 100 tracks long, with over 100 artists pitching in—admittedly lacks the sonic cohesiveness of Transa. Instead, it sounds like a jam session among old friends meeting up after the storm passes. Thus far, the album has raised over $340,000 for organizations like Holler Harm Reduction and BeLoved Asheville, bringing tangible help to a region too often neglected. (North Carolina is still very much recovering from Helene: Some survivors are turning to yurts and tents for winter housing after their homes were destroyed.)  Other musical aid efforts this year merit a mention, too. From cramped house shows to sold-out arenas, artists have raised money for the people of Gaza and Sudan—often at a cost to their careers. (One surprise: Macklemore, of “Thrift Shop” fame, has reinvented himself as a protest artist.)  I can’t find a non-trite way to write about how music keeps us human when our worlds collapse around us. But I do know that from now on, I will not be disregarding Charity Compilation Albums. These artists aren’t heroes in the sense of saving lives, really, but I think that those who give us little moments of joy and hope in cataclysmic times deserve hero status, too.

The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. Importantly, this is a completely non-exhaustive and subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy or discontent. Enjoy. Camo hat, orange letters. The ever-present “Hot to Go!” dance. VMA alien makeout. Beyoncé covering Dolly Parton—and Dolly loving it in return. Feuds. Flirting. That shade of green. There was a lot of buzz around pop music over the past year, and our younger colleagues have assured us that it wasn’t all hype. The music, especially the pop music, was legitimately good. Even the numbers back it up. The data shows that 2024 was the year of the “pop star (re)emergence.” But the trend extended to other genres, from country to musical theater and the ’80s power ballads, experiencing a resurgence thanks to their association with pop stardom. The common denominator throughout? Women were at the forefront of all of it: * Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter rocketed to stardom (and brought sapphic energy with them). * Charli XCX turned the internet green. * Only for Ariana Grande to then turn it pink and green. * Beyoncé revolutionized country. We won’t attempt to explain all of the moments. Impossible! But plugged-in colleagues—Sam Van Pykeren and Henry Carnell, Mother Jones’ digital producer and fellow, respectively—take a crack at explaining why pop stars were so compelling and what about the music that kept our team returning. Okay, hello, I am once again your stand-in Old Person (a la our Brat explainer—remember that!?), and I’m here, at the end of the year, to talk about pop. First question: Was it good this year?  Sam Van Pykeren: I mean, I had a good time with this year’s lineup! Dare I even say a great time? Henry Carnell: This was the first time a pop artist has ever been my No. 1 on Spotify Wrapped, which I think says I liked it. Obvious question, Henry. Who was top? Henry: Do you even need to ask? I’m a Gen Z queer person. It was Chappell Roan. Great, as an Old, this gets to one of my key questions. What is a Chappell Roan, and why is it happening in my neighborhood? Henry: Chappell was a breakout pop star—though she makes sure everyone knows she has been working at this for a long time—known for extravagant drag outfits and explicitly gay music. Sam: THE diva, THE moment, a queer woman from Missouri who is arguably making some of the best pop in the game. Henry: Sam’s response is better. Sam: You nailed it with why I think she’s happening in the neighborhood. She’s quickly risen from a general unknown to amassing millions of fans worldwide. Henry: The consensus is that Chappell changed the genre on multiple levels. I’m scared, but go on if you have more to say about Ms. Roan. I am curious how she “changed the game.” Henry: Musically, she imbued new sounds into the genre. She plugged synth, rock, disco, early-2000s punk, ’80s power ballads into the genre kinda all at once. Visually and lyrically, she brought queerness to the forefront. She performs in drag, she sings about queer clubs, explicit sex, and coming of age. And with viral moments around her canceling shows due to mental health, refusing to endorse Kamala Harris due to genocide, and calling out fans for creepy behavior—she has brought a “take no shit” energy that isn’t necessarily new but nevertheless noteworthy. Sam: She was one of my top artists as well, and I had the privilege to be one of the hundreds of thousands who have seen her IRL this year. I think the excitement is warranted! One of the reasons is her dedication to theatricality and unflinching queerness—as Henry notes, the drag is not a gimmick, which can’t be said of many other artists these days. That, coupled with actual live vocal talent, brings an authenticity to her music in an era where we’re all craving more of that. Who else this year for you both brought something to pop music that felt new? Sam: Well, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my No. 1: Beyoncé. Henry: You may sense a trend for me, but Sabrina Carpenter and Billie Eilish. I want to hear Sam’s words on Beyoncé, though. Sam: I mean, she’s Beyoncé. I don’t know if I have anything original or unsaid to add. But Cowboy Carter was a hit for me. I’ve always been a Beyoncé boy, and getting to be alive as she releases these projects and continues to push entire industries with projects like this and Renaissance (another top 10 album of the year for me) just feels like something really nice when the world is really hard. And, coming from a community where country music is hyper-masculinized, associated with racism more than not, and all that, it was nice to be reintroduced to the genre I’ve grown up with through her eyes. Sam: I mean, because of her, I got really into Shaboozey, Tanner Adell, and Linda Martell. Which is what I think is really fun about pop. It’s a gateway into other communities and types of music. Even with Chappell and her queerness! I find even when it seems like the culture is pushing one way, the popularity of people like her and Beyoncé and others reminds me that many, many others in this country feel like I do!  Henry: There is a lot of discourse about pop being superficial. But it is grappling with social and political change more so than other genres. I was thinking a lot this year about how “I Kissed a Girl” (circa 2008, and which Katy Perry has distanced herself from) felt so scandalous at the time. But now we have Billie and Charli singing “Guess.” There is a lot of movement and growth in the space.  Sam: So, sorry to be the millennial in the chat, but “I Kissed a Girl” is a classic. I like that song. Henry: While I get the criticism of the lyrics, there is something undeniable about the impact of that song. Hearing it as a kid created space for the possibility of queerness in the world. Also, it’s a bop. On present-day pop: You have given me a lot of names. I am excited to research these stars. But I want to talk about the other person you mentioned above. What is going on with Sabrina Carpenter? Sam: She’s probably my biggest blindspot. I enjoy her and the hits when they’re played. But I’m not seeking out her entire album. Henry: The quick bio: Sabrina was a Disney star–turned–Mean Girls lead–turned–pop icon. Sabrina’s song “Espresso” was the top-streamed song globally. Though Charli and Chappell have gotten a lot of pop-girl airtime, I actually think there is a strong case that Sabrina is 2024’s Pop Girl of the Year. I think her work is really summed up by her recent Christmas special, which adds lyrical quips to classic Christmas songs alongside skits. She is very clever and silly with her music. Sam: I do think her whole Catholic scandal thing is pretty iconic. Henry: Her response to that scandal—“Jesus was a carpenter”—is so irreverent, but also smart. Her songs are full of those fun turns of phrases. I’ll give the example of “Switch it up like Nintendo” from “Espresso,” too. Sam: Her coming from Mean Girls, it really was the year of musical theater. I feel like that’s a separate hero.  Henry: SO much to say about our girl Ariana and Wicked. I do think the crossover of musical theater with pop feels new, too. It was the year of pop finding harmony with other genres. Sam: With Wicked, but that’s a WHOLE other can of worms. But there is Eternal Sunshine, which wasn’t a top listen of mine until I revisited it after seeing Ari as Glinda. And upon revisiting it, I wish I had given it a second chance sooner! But Chappell is also so musical theater-coded! Henry: I would argue drag is the love child of pop and musical theater. Pop has just gotten more campy. Sam: I think I would agree myself, and the history of the art of theater is dressed in drag. Can I say one thing about Sabrina? Sam: Please. In the supermarket, I heard her sing a lyric that made my brain feel bad. And that was: “(Yes), I know I Mountain Dew it for ya.” My question is: That lyric is not criminal? If so, why is it not against the law? Sam: I mean, “Wiggle Wiggle” by Bob Dylan exists, so I don’t get your point. ;) Moving on. Don’t talk about him. I feel like we’ve talked about the Big Stars: Sabrina, Beyoncé, Ms. Roan, etc. Do we need to say anything about Taylor? Can we skip that this year? Sam: I plead the 5th. Henry: I don’t want Swifties to come at me, but the Eras Tour lasted for over a year. It had a lot of moments already. Briefly, this has been discussed at length. But: Brat. How do you all feel about it after summer has faded and as winter takes hold? (Sam, I don’t care that you live in California, pretend you have weather.) Sam: You’re talking to an original Angel here. Charli is always on repeat, Brat or no! Henry: I was never huge on Brat. I will say that Brat was dampened by it being co-opted by Kamala, as discussed in the previous pub the chat. It is hard for a cultural moment to feel potent when it becomes a marketing strategy. Sam: Glad she’s getting the recognition, the partnerships, the everything! She deserves it, and those who know, know! But I get she’s not for everyone, and I’m ready for her next stuff. I am still a Cooker. I A. G. Cooked. Sam: Those who know, know. My Dad loved Britpop—like a lot. He talked about it a great deal. [Cue confusion as we distinguish Britpop the album from Britpop the genre.] Anyway, can I ask you all about a bigger idea? Something that…you’ll have to give me some leniency here. Henry: I love a big idea. Here’s my issue: When I listen to a lot of pop music, the weight of how it is synthesized to be sold feels heavier and burdensome. In the music itself, I feel like I can literally hear the capitalist machinations, and that makes it irredeemably mid. That’s true for a lot of stuff, but god, it feels prominent in pop music. And so I am curious, for you both, how you feel about how pop music is so marketed and so much about marketing. Does that tinge your experience? Sam: I guess feel that way about everything, so pop music doesn’t feel particularly burdensome over things like reading the news, watching a film/television, even just going about my day. Every piece of our lives has been calculated to sell us something, so I guess it just blends into that noise. Henry: I also think you forget that the artists work in medium knowing the bells, whistles, and scandals accompanied with it. Some pop artists are just bad and bogged down by that stuff. But the best ones, the ones we are talking about, use their skills to activate the marketing to say and do interesting things. Henry: For example, Sabrina’s music video for “Taste” was so over the top in a way that wouldn’t be possible in any other genre. And so clickbaity in many ways. Pulling in [Jenna] Ortega, the horror, the kiss. But it was aware that it was doing all of that. I think there is some inversion of the aforementioned capitalist machine going on, too.  Sam: Pop music, for me, feels like one of the few spaces where artists can still actively grapple with their awareness of such heavy commodification and use it to their advantage. Beyoncé and Chappell are probably the best examples. Henry: I do think part of the reason Chappell soared is because she was intentional about how and when she marketed herself. She has a performance persona that she curates expertly, but she also holds complete creative control over it, as far as I can tell. There is something very authentic about that. Sam: Chappell using this machine to introduce deep queerness into the mainstream… Sam: Beyoncé using it to remind us of country’s roots… Henry: Ultimately, they are performers. They don’t need to be “real.” But they do need to do real things with the performance. If that makes sense. Sam: I see the critique, and I feel it. But I think I’ve only ever known music as an industry to sell us things. That makes sense. Well, we can solve how to take pleasure under capitalism next year—finally. But for now, any artists we missed you want to shout out? (In terms of pop and not the jazz bullshit I listen to, I was actually really charmed by “I LUV IT” by Camila Cabello and Playboi Carti.) Henry: Nemo was the first nonbinary artist to win Eurovision. They are doing some cool and interesting things with genre and pop. They included opera, which I didn’t think I would love and did. Sam: Have to shout out “JOYRIDE” by Kesha, one of my favorite singles of the year, and has me excited for her album next year! I also adored Omar Apollo’s album God Said No and Dua Lipa’s Tame Impala-produced Radical Optimism (the extended versions though!). And I would be amiss to not mention Doechii’s Alligator Bites Never Heal as another album I’ve had on repeat since its release (and so glad to see her get her flowers this year!). Great stuff. Thanks for talking. The only thing left for me to say is everyone should listen to “Saaheem” by SahBabii. See you all next year? Henry: I’ll put it on my queue right now. Happy New Year! Sam: Thanks, old man!

The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. Importantly, this is a completely non-exhaustive and subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy or discontent. Enjoy. Destroyed by Watergate and vilified for suggesting that presidents are above the law, Richard Nixon died in disgrace in 1994. But it turns out, he was right. The 37th president was quietly but resoundingly vindicated by the Supreme Court in its Trump v. United States decision in July, when Chief Justice John Roberts declared that “the President is absolutely immune from criminal prosecution for conduct within his exclusive sphere of constitutional authority.” > “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” For Donald Trump—who was indicted for efforts to steal the 2020 election that were seemingly not part of his official duties—that ruling might not have been enough, had he not been bailed out by his November electoral victory. But Nixon could, and did, claim that his efforts to cover up the Watergate scandal were core parts of his duties. Indeed, on the so-called “smoking gun tape” from June 1972, Nixon told his chief of staff to order the CIA to tell the FBI to back off its investigation into the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters because the probe would compromise national security. That wasn’t really true. But 52 years later, the Roberts court made clear that judges should defer to presidents when their “core” powers are even arguably involved. Based on the justices’ new view of the presidency, Nixon’s infamous justifications would probably have been enough. “Under Trump v. United States, Nixon’s statement would not amount to obstruction of justice because it related to his ‘official’ duties—that is, supervising the FBI and CIA,” legal commentator Jeffrey Toobin wrote in July. Plus, what was the FBI even doing investigating a president for crimes? That may have flown in the 1970s, but these days, the Justice Department has a policy against prosecuting sitting presidents. And Roberts, in his ruling, warned against Justice Department activity that might cause presidents to hesitate from “bold and unhesitating” actions in exercising their vast powers. Fear that they might one day be held accountable for crimes could cause commanders-in-chief to fall prey, Roberts warned, to “undue caution.” Take Nixon. Before Watergate, he exhibited the kind of “vigorous” decision-making that Roberts says leaders untroubled by potential prosecution can engage in. For example, Nixon fearlessly ordered the secret bombing of Cambodia without telling Congress. And he oversaw an extensive campaign of surveillance efforts aimed at suppressing domestic dissent. By using the FBI for much of that surveillance, Nixon availed himself of the immunity that the high court has since revealed presidents enjoy when they engage in “investigative and prosecutorial decision-making”—a “special province of the Executive Branch”—where absolute immunity reigns. As the Watergate scandal mounted, Nixon lost the vigor the Roberts court prescribes. The president was reportedly distracted, drinking heavily, and possibly suicidal. “Please don’t ever tell anyone that I cried and that I was not strong,” a sauced president supposedly told Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1974. He was a man left unable to “boldly and fearlessly carry out his duties”—as the Constitution turns out to demand. Things only got worse for Nixon. After his resignation, during a televised 1977 interview with journalist David Frost, Nixon presciently explained: “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” At the time, this reasoning was treated as a damning admission. Even in 2008, it was so widely accepted that Nixon was wrong that his line served as the climax of the Oscar-nominated film Frost/Nixon. But things change. In January, Trump attorney D. John Sauer gave a “qualified yes” when asked by an appeals court judge if an ex-president would be immune from prosecution, even for having ordered SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political foe. And the argument won! “The president is now a king above the law,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor later said in a dissent. Trump has said he will nominate Sauer as his solicitor general—the Justice Department official generally responsible for arguing before the Supreme Court. Critics have accused Roberts and the other five justices in the majority in Trump v. US of ignoring the intent of the Constitution and inventing the “absolute immunity” doctrine in order to impose an ideological preference for expanded presidential powers—or maybe just to help Trump. But these critics fail to credit Nixon with concocting similar arguments a half-century earlier. Nixon was not a crook; he was ahead of his time. Think he was wrong? Let’s see how Trump’s second term goes.

The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. Importantly, this is a completely non-exhaustive and subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy or discontent. Enjoy. For those of us who would be described in HR packets at progressive workplaces as “gender nonconforming” or “of non-normative gender presentation,” it can sometimes be really hard to get a haircut. The places where one might get one are usually gender-segregated zones, where cisgender people go for what one might call gender-affirming care—that is, cosmetic care toward redeclaring their man- or womanhood. Still, enough gender studies papers have been written about the barbershop as a masculine space and the hair salon as the center of an all-women’s social world. I, frankly, don’t want to get into all of that. But my point here is, in the expensive coastal cities where broke queer and trans people congregate for safety and community, it can be difficult to find an affordable haircut. When I moved to New York City, I was inundated with ads for queer-affirming barbershops. But these were all promoting places where haircuts cost $120—not, for me, a particularly affirming price tag. For a while, I resorted to making my friends cut my hair with drugstore scissors.  Then I met Ruth Boirie. Ruthie’s been cutting hair for 44 years, and she charges a flat rate of $30 cash for haircuts in her small barber-slash-woodshop (yes, woodshop). In late December, she’ll be 77 years old.  Ruthie has seen it all. Once upon a time, she cut hair for $3.50, in a room she rented for $15 a month. Now, she pays just over a thousand dollars per month for her studio, with “RUTHIE’S NEIGHBORHOOD BARBER SHOP—EVERYONE WELCOME” lovingly hand-painted in gold on the window.  I found out about Ruthie through a friend of a friend: She’s been handing out her business cards, adorned with clip art of a palm tree on a beach, at the lesbian bar down the street from her home for decades. She scouts the bar for people who might be in need of her services: “I get my cards every day over there, and…when I see the short haircuts, I say, Do you live in the neighborhood? Well, here’s my card, if you’d ever like to try me out.”  “I want them to feel my heart, you know, when I come in and the way I greet them, and that right away, I open their hearts up from the warmness I give them when I shake their hand, because a lot of barbers don’t do that with them,” Ruthie said in a New York LGBT oral history interview back in 2022. “Every person that comes into my shop, I ask them, ‘What’s your name? How are you doing?’ and I shake their hand.”  > “Every person that comes into my shop, I ask them, ‘What’s your name? How are > you doing?’ and I shake their hand.”  When I walked into Ruthie’s barbershop on a freezing December night, she was cutting the hair of someone she described as an “old lady,” a client she’s been seeing since she opened the store in 1996. She finished up her work—a simple short style, like most of us get there—and ushered me into her chair. I settled in for more or less the same haircut.  Ruthie’s Neighborhood Barber Shop is cluttered with 20 years of knickknacks. Little dolls and vintage action figures in the window entertain the neighborhood children, a few of whom came in out of the cold in their puffer coats for a piece of candy from Ruthie’s bowl as I sat. Even the physical structure of the shop is Ruthie’s own. After each cut, she sweeps hair off the floorboards she laid herself. “I made the benches,” Ruthie told me. “Something to make it look neat enough for people to want to walk in and feel comfortable.” Her haircuts take a long time: She’s obsessively precise, and she’s also certain to take a break anytime someone from the neighborhood stops in. And that’s the thing: Everybody stops in. A man with a bulldog grabs a treat for the dog and says hi to Ruthie; a young dad with a wiggly baby in his arms struggles to wave at Ruthie and keep ahold of the baby at the same time.  Ruthie keeps posters of the neighborhood as it was when she was young, streetcars and all. And she keeps sepia-toned pictures of her mother—elbow-length gloves and a wedding gown, age 23—which she eagerly shows customers. “Hey, Mama,” she asks the portrait sometimes, “how you doing?”   When Ruthie was left with unexpected bills after her mother’s death, the neighborhood banded together to raise enough to get her back on her feet. But now, almost a decade later, that love might not be enough to save the shop. Lately, Ruthie said, the clientele at the bar has changed. Not as many customers have been coming through her door. As she cut my hair, Ruthie told me that, at 77, she’s applying for jobs—using the computer is hard for her, but she’ll fold laundry and keep things neat at a laundromat if they’ll have her. She has a social worker but isn’t sure whether that social worker can help her with much beyond getting EBT.  A younger friend stopped in as Ruthie was adjusting and readjusting her clippers at the back of my head. They asked if they could help Ruthie fill out a job application on Indeed. They struggled to then explain to her what Indeed is—people who are 77 should not need to know that kind of thing. Maybe the laundromat job will call back. Or maybe, as the weather gets warmer, customers will begin lining up at Ruthie’s door again.