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Anna Merlan

Anna Merlan

Vice

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The FAA Head’s Resignation is Another Massive Gift to Elon Musk

In his litany of complaints about the federal government, Elon Musk has reserved special ire for the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates...

16.12.2024 2

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

The Conspiracy World Is Pushing Paranoia About a Post-Inauguration “Plandemic”

In the lead-up to Donald Trump’s second inauguration, professional conspiracy peddlers are hard at work finding ways to gin up panic and...

13.12.2024 9

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

The Onion’s Bid to Buy Infowars Is Rejected in Court

After a grueling hearing that stretched over two days, a federal bankruptcy judge declined to approve the sale of Infowars to Global Tetrahedron, LLC,...

11.12.2024 10

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

Shane Smith Goes Down His Own Personal Rabbit Hole 

Mother Jones illustration; Andy Kropa/Invision/AP For the past month, Vice co-founder and CEO Shane Smith has had a remarkable number of questions,...

06.12.2024 7

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

Who’s Behind One of the Major Accounts Promoting Climate Denialism on X? 

Mother Jones illustration; NOAA/Zuma In 2016, Jarrod Fidden, an Australian entrepreneur living in Ireland, announced that he’d launched a dating...

04.12.2024 4

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

A Super-PAC Backing RFK Offers Paid Access to Him at Mar-a-Lago 

Carol Guzy/Zuma In recent days, an invitation from people affiliated with American Values 2024, a super-PAC that supported Robert F. Kennedy...

27.11.2024 20

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

RFK Jr. Has Made False and Dangerous Claims about AIDS. That Could Become a Global Problem. 

Mother Jones illustration; Lev Radin/Zuma Of the many absurd things Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said over the years—about vaccines, about 5G...

21.11.2024 10

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

Trumpworld Pushes Back Against Dueling Pete Hegseth Controversies  

Pete Hegseth itnerviews Donald Trump in 2017. Weekend Fox News host Pete Hegseth has already been an exceedingly controversial choice as Donald...

16.11.2024 10

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

Alex Jones Is Trying to Halt the Sale of Infowars. Elon Musk’s X Just Got Involved in the Case

Alex Jones speaks outside of the Dirksen building on Capitol Hill in Washington in September 2018. Jose Luis Magana/AP On Thursday afternoon, a...

16.11.2024 20

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

“A Genuine Catastrophe”: Experts React to Trump’s Nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 

Robin Rayne/Zuma Public health experts, physicians, and scientists responded with fury and disgust to the news that Donald Trump will nominate...

15.11.2024 20

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

Infowars Acquired by The Onion, Will Become a Parody of Itself

Dominic Gwinn/Zuma Conspiracy mega-site Infowars, whose founder and main host Alex Jones has become the face of monetized suspicion in America, has...

14.11.2024 3

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

Infowars Is Being Auctioned Off, but Alex Jones Is Not Going Away 

Bob Daemmrich/Zuma The court-ordered auction of conspiracy kingpin Alex Jones’ company Infowars took place on Wednesday. By late morning Texas...

13.11.2024 5

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Reveals Plans to Fire 600 Federal Health Workers

At an event late last week in Arizona, anti-vaccine activist and Donald Trump transition team member Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he’d fire and...

12.11.2024 4

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

Election Conspiracy Theories Are for Everyone

Mother Jones illustration; Getty In the days following Donald Trump’s clear win, conspiracy theories about how votes were tampered with or how...

12.11.2024 4

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

Racist Trolls Celebrated the Election By Texting Black Voters to “Pick Cotton”

Researchers are investigating the source of the messages. Mother Jones illustration The day after Election Day, predominantly Black recipients in...

09.11.2024 50

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Anti-Vaccine Organization Hopes He’ll Take Their Wildest Dreams to the White House

Jen Golbeck/SOPA/Zuma The elites of the anti-vaccine, “medical freedom” world saw the presidential election unfold at a hotel watch party in...

08.11.2024 8

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

Elon Musk Just Became One of the Most Powerful Men in the World 

Jen Golbeck/SOPA/Zuma There’s no overstating how good election night was for Elon Musk. With Donald Trump’s victory, Musk—already the richest...

06.11.2024 9

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

The Men Who Swallowed Everything

Something unusual happened the other week, when podcasting megastar Joe Rogan sat down with Ohio Senator and Republican vice presidential candidate JD...

05.11.2024 5

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

The FBI Warns of an Election Day Hoax Video Designed to Scare Off Voters

The FBI issued a warning on Election Day about a hoax video that purports to be a news clip relaying a warning from the agency warning of a “high...

05.11.2024 3

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

The Activist Who Accused Pennsylvania Nuns of Voter Fraud Adds a New Allegation

A 2015 peace march attended by members of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie. Sarah Crosby/Erie Times-News/AP Cliff Maloney is the founder of...

05.11.2024 40

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

Video Showing “Haitian Immigrants” Illegally Voting Was Faked By Russian Disinformation Unit, US Says

Customers in a Springfield, Ohio Haitian restaurant. Jessie Wardarski/AP A video purporting to show recently arrived Haitian immigrants illegally...

02.11.2024 60

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

Elon Musk’s Ironic Voter Fraud Obsession

Jen Golbeck/SOPA Images/Zuma In the days leading up to the election, the firehose of lies, half–truths, dumb memes, inflammatory political...

31.10.2024 6

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” Draws Wellness Influencers to MAGA

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks at Trump's Madison Square Garden rally. Mother Jones illustration; Michael M. Santiago/Getty “Don’t you want a...

30.10.2024 4

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

The Person Promoting a Lurid Claim About Tim Walz Vanishes, Leaving the Lie Behind 

Steve Helber/AP Days after helping launch a clearly false claim about vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, a disinformation peddler with a huge...

18.10.2024 5

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

Meet the Conspiracy-Peddling Gossip Blogger Who’s Cast Herself As a Trump-RFK Player

Instagram In 2020, as for so many people, things shifted for Jessica Reed Kraus. A southern-California based lifestyle blogger who got her start...

15.10.2024 4

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

A MAGA Conspiracist is Trying to Launch a Lurid Lie About Tim Walz—and It’s Working.

Angelina Katsanis/TNS/Zuma In recent days, a number of news sites that rely heavily on aggregation have posted stories about Minnesota governor and...

14.10.2024 5

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

The Right’s Lies about Hurricane Helene Hit Like They Were Meant To

FEMA workers in Asheville, North Carolina Madeleine Cook/FEMA/Planet Pix via Zuma The scale and depth of the lies about Hurricane Helene have been...

09.10.2024 6

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

The Eric Adams Indictment Is, Unfortunately, Very Funny

Michael Brochstein/Zuma The news that New York Mayor Eric Adams has been indicted came as a surprise to precisely no one. For one thing, federal...

26.09.2024 4

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

Infowars’ Assets Will Finally Be Auctioned to Benefit Sandy Hook Families

Briana Sanchez/Zuma A Texas bankruptcy judge ruled on Tuesday that a plan to sell the assets of Alex Jones’ company Free Speech Systems, the...

25.09.2024 10

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

Nick Fuentes’ Failed “Groyper War” Against Trump Was a Blatant Attempt at Platform Manipulation 

Supporters of Nick Fuentes wait to hear him speak in Detroit this June. Adam J. Dewey/NurPhoto/AP Nick Fuentes is a white supremacist, an...

23.09.2024 6

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

What Did Lauren Chen Want? 

Mother Jones; X.com The most striking thing about Lauren Chen, in hindsight, is how she managed to be everywhere. Until earlier this month, when...

19.09.2024 4

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

How the Debate Whistleblower Car Crash Conspiracy Went Viral

Gripas Yuri/Abaca/Zuma In the week following the presidential debate, Elon Musk, Bill Ackman, and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor-Greene have all...

17.09.2024 3

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

Tenet Media Shutters After Being Accused of Taking $10 Million in Covert Kremlin Funding

Mother Jones; Getty A contributor for Tenet Media announced on Twitter Thursday night that the company has abruptly shuttered, one day after the...

06.09.2024 5

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

New Indictment Alleges Conservative Media Company Took Millions of Kremlin Cash

Mother Jones; Getty A federal indictment unsealed on Wednesday alleges that a Tennessee-based media company which played home to several prominent...

05.09.2024 100

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

How Elon Musk is Tying His Love for Trump to His Fight in Brazil

Mother Jones illustration; Jordan Strauss∕AP In an alterna t e universe where you had no access to any source of information beyond Elon...

04.09.2024 20

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

Rootless Masculinity Influencers Are Pivoting to Wildly Antisemitic Claims 

From left: Dan Bilzerian, Nick Fuentes, Sneako, Tristan Tate, and Andrew Tate Mother Jones; Zuma; Wikimedia A number of prominent figures on the...

28.08.2024 9

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

Elon Musk’s Lawyers Quietly Subpoena Public Interest Groups

Mother Jones; Marc Piasecki/Getty Lawyers representing Elon Musk and X, previously known as Twitter, have quietly begun sending subpoenas to a host...

23.08.2024 30

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Admits He Falls for Online Misinformation “All the Time” 

Lev Radin/Zuma Anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign hosted an online panel Wednesday on the future of AI...

15.08.2024 3

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

Elon Musk’s Twitter Space With Donald Trump Was a Dumpster Fire

Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Zuma A heavily publicized Twitter conversation between Elon Musk and Donald Trump on Monday night began with an immediate...

13.08.2024 30

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

Can Elon Musk Really Sue People For Not Wanting to Be Seen With Him?

Mother Jones illustration; Anna Moneymaker/Getty In recent weeks, in his prolific activity on X, the social network he owns, Elon Musk has shared a...

09.08.2024 4

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

The Transphobia Rocking Olympic Boxing Has a Kremlin Connection

Mother Jones illustration; Ciro Fusco/ANSA/Zuma, Yan Linyun/Xinhua/Zuma By the time JK Rowling, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump were falsely referring...

05.08.2024 10

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

Disinformation Peddlers Use Venezuela Chaos to Stoke Fears of Anti-Trump Vote-Rigging

Jimmy Villalta/Zuma The aftermath of Sunday’s elections in Venezuela has been sustained chaos, with both incumbent President Nicolás Maduro and...

31.07.2024 4

Mother Jones

Anna Merlan

Trump’s International Fan Club Descends on Maryland

Since its founding in the 1970s, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) has been a chance to take the temperature of Republican politics....

29.02.2024 6

Foreign Policy

Anna Merlan

FBI Investigating an Insular, Nameless Religious Group Undergoing Sexual Abuse Reckoning

Agents are said to have visited at least one senior member of the group, sources tell VICE News.

21.02.2024 20

Vice

Anna Merlan

Joe Rogan and Bret Weinstein Promote AIDS Denialism to an Audience of Millions 

Weinstein repeated discredited, homophobic theories to Rogan about HIV not being the cause of AIDS, alarming and infuriating public health...

15.02.2024 8

Vice

Anna Merlan

A Longtime Associate of Tim Ballard’s Is Rebuilding Operation Underground Railroad

The organization says it has cut ties with its disgraced founder and CEO. Jeff Frazier, charged with ushering in a new era, has a long and complex...

10.01.2024 10

Vice

Anna Merlan

Hidden Passageway Beneath New York Chabad Building Drives Chaos and Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories

As “tunnelgate” circulates on Twitter, the far right and the broader conspiratorial universe seize on an irresistible combination of words.

10.01.2024 20

Vice

Anna Merlan

Tim Ballard's Most Powerful Friends Are All Denouncing Him

As allies abandon him, the anti-trafficking star’s disgrace appears to have prematurely ended the career of Utah’s attorney general, a close...

12.12.2023 60

Vice

Anna Merlan

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