Stephanie Mencimer

Washington, D.C.

Staff writer at Mother Jones. Advisory board member Fund for Investigative Journalism. Utah native. Now on Threads. Tips, ideas to [email protected]

Articles

Far-right activist who vowed "retribution" lands role at the FCC

5 days ago | motherjones.com | Stephanie Mencimer

For the past six years, Gavin Wax has held court as the president of the New York Young Republicans Club, a group he helped turn from a small, stodgy establishment outfit into “a vanguard of the Trump movement,” as he said last year. Under his leadership, the club has moved far to the right. It’s hosted events attended by white nationalists, budding foreign authoritarians, and of course, George Santos, whose congressional campaign it endorsed before he became a convicted felon.
Supreme Court Blocks Deportation Flights-For Now

5 days ago | motherjones.com | Stephanie Mencimer

In an early morning decision, the US Supreme Court blocked the Trump administration from attempting to fly another batch of migrants out of the country without due process. The high court’s decision was notable not just for the time it was released—1 a.m. Saturday morning—but because it leapfrogged a lower court that was still considering activity in the case.
Meet the Miami lobbyist who helped Bukele seduce MAGA

1 week ago | motherjones.com | Dan Friedman |Stephanie Mencimer

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. Nayib Bukele is so popular with the US right that his refusal Monday to free a Maryland man with no criminal record mistakenly sent to a supermax prison in a foreign country was greeted by MAGA types as being, basically, badass.
Why is Trump’s New Jersey US attorney headlining a far-right conference?

2 weeks ago | motherjones.com | Stephanie Mencimer

On Friday, March 28, Alina Habba, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, was sworn into office as the interim US attorney for New Jersey. As the state’s top federal prosecutor, she will oversee the work of 170 lawyers responsible for everything from prosecuting terrorism, public corruption, and gang activities to defending federal agencies in court. The high-profile post was once held by such luminaries as US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R).
Trump Declares War on “Frivolous” Lawsuits

1 month ago | motherjones.com | Stephanie Mencimer

Late Friday night, the White House released the latest tranche of Trump executive actions and directives aimed at further kneecapping some of the nation’s most famous lawyers and law firms the president believes are obstructing his agenda or have tangled with him in the past.
While Washington DC Burns, Trump Golfs

1 month ago | motherjones.com | Stephanie Mencimer

It’s been 61 days since President Donald Trump promised that he would end the war in Ukraine on “day one” of his new administration, and the war is still going strong. Shadow president Elon Musk and his DOGE boys are upending Washington, laying waste to federal agencies and deploying law enforcement to break into the nonprofit Institute of Peace. Consumer confidence is in the toilet, inflation is threatening a resurgence, and the country is possibly headed for a self-inflicted recession.
What If Trump is serious about annexing Canada?

1 month ago | motherjones.com | Stephanie Mencimer

President Donald Trump has some strange obsessions: Diet Coke, windmills, water pressure, and more recently, annexing Canada. “The only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished Fifty-First State,” Trump wrote on social media recently, in one of his many comments suggesting that the US will subsume its northern neighbor. The Canadians have not been amused by such rhetoric.
The country’s most famous houseplant is missing. What did Trump do with it?

1 month ago | motherjones.com | Stephanie Mencimer

After the Washington Post ran a front-page photo of President Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu sitting in front of the Oval Office fireplace on February 4, careful reader Thomas M. Sneeringer fired off a letter to the editor. “It appears the fireplace mantel in the Oval Office has been subjected to President Donald Trump’s Midas touch,” he wrote.
How a fantasy oil train may help the Supreme Court gut a major environmental law

Dec 22, 2024 | grist.org | Stephanie Mencimer

This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The state of Utah has come up with its share of boondoggles over the years, but one of the more enduring is the Uinta Basin Railway. The proposed 88-mile rail line would link the oil fields of the remote Uinta Basin region of eastern Utah to national rail lines so that up to 350,000 barrels of waxy crude oil could be transported to refineries on the Gulf Coast.
How a fantasy oil train may help the Supreme Court gut a major environmental law

Dec 18, 2024 | motherjones.com | Stephanie Mencimer

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. The state of Utah has come up with its share of boondoggles over the years, but one of the more enduring is the Uinta Basin Railway. The proposed 88-mile rail line would link the oil fields of the remote Uinta Basin region of eastern Utah to national rail lines so that up to 350,000 barrels of waxy crude oil could be transported to refineries on the Gulf Coast.