Right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones started the process of liquidating his assets on Friday, taking the initial steps toward paying the $1.5 billion he owes families of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting. Jones runs the popular Infowars media platform, where he repeatedly described the shooting, which killed 20 first-grade students and six teachers, as a “hoax.” Families of victims filed defamation suits against Jones and Infowars, and while Jones eventually conceded in court that the shooting was real, it was too late to save him from legal action. Courts in Texas and Connecticut awarded the families massive damages.

In an effort to avoid payment, Jones and several of his companies declared bankruptcy, and Jones insisted he could never pay the damages.

“I don’t have any money,” Jones said after the billion-dollar judgment. “So, it’s all a big joke.”

But Jones changed his tune on Friday, when his attorneys signaled in court that he is starting the process of liquidating his assets. All told, Jones’ assets could yield as much as $15 million, a relative drop in the bucket toward the full total he owes victims’ families. After splitting the sum and paying administrative and legal fees, the families may not walk away with much money, but they could end up in control of Jones’ broadcast network, website, and social media accounts. That would not only be a financial blow to the conspiracy theorist, but a serious disruption to his operations.

On Tuesday, the US House voted to sanction the International Criminal Court (ICC) in response to the court’s prosecutor seeking an arrest warrant for Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu and another Israeli official. The prosecutor is also calling for arrest warrants for three senior Hamas leaders. But the main concern for politicians was the crackdown on Israel, a close ally. Nearly all of the Republican legislators, and 42 Democrats, supported the ICC sanction measure, which passed by a vote of 247–155.

The bill, which would prohibit any member of the ICC from using US banking networks or entering the country and places restrictions on those who follow the ICC’s ruling, is not likely to make it through the Democart-controlled Senate. But it marks another clash between the United States and international governing bodies since the beginning of Israel’s incursion into Gaza.

The relationship between the ICC and the US has long been complicated. The US was one of seven countries that participated in negotiations leading to the creation of the court. But it also has opted out of the ICC’s judgments. The rulings, which are meant to determine when countries have committed war crimes such as genocide, don’t apply to the US.

This policy, standard for the US over the years—of creating systems to impose laws on others that often do not apply to its own actions—was summed up well in a quote from the recent battle in the House. “The ICC has to be punished,” said House speaker Mike Johnson in a press conference Tuesday morning after the court called for arrest warrants for Israel’s president. “We cannot allow this to stand. If the ICC was allowed to do this and go after the leaders of countries whose actions they disagree with, why would they not come after America?”

Earlier this week, the Biden administration officially announced a long-anticipated border crackdown. The executive action—which relies on the same presidential authority former President Donald Trump invoked to enact an entry ban on travelers from Muslim-majority countries—circumvents a key provision of US law: The legal right to seek asylum, regardless of where or how a person enters the country.

Under Biden’s order, with narrow exceptions, only migrants coming to official ports of entry will qualify for asylum after encounters at the border reach a certain threshold. This may sound wonky. But it is in line with what Biden vowed to try to do as the November election approaches: shut down the border “right now.”

And, still, not even a Democratic president gutting asylum has placated the anti-immigrant fearmongers on the right.

Even before Biden gave his speech about the new border proclamation, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri was live on Fox News calling the measures “mass amnesty” for “illegals.” He was echoed by Stephen Miller, a former senior adviser to Donald Trump and president of the “lawfare” America First Legal group, who wasted no time cherry-picking sections of the executive order and sharing them without context to baselessly claim the new rule gives “fast-pass entry to unlimited numbers of fighting-age” migrants. “This border EO makes mass migration permanent,” Miller wrote on X.

Steve Bannon is going to jail.

US District Judge Carl Nichols—a Trump appointee in Washington, DC—ordered Bannon to start serving a four-month sentence for contempt of Congress by July 1. The ruling comes after the onetime Trump aide’s attempt to appeal his 2022 conviction was rejected by a federal circuit court. Nichols had previously allowed Bannon to remain free pending appeal.

Bannon refused in 2021 to comply with a subpoena from the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on Congress. Bannon, who attempted blow off the panel by asserting “executive privilege,” despite having last served in the White House in 2017, probably would have avoided imprisonment by showing up on the date the panel set his interview and specifying which questions he would refuse to answer.

Prior to the 2020 election, Bannon had touted his knowledge of Trump’s plan to contest the election results, even if he lost. As I reported in 2022, Bannon said in an October 31, 2020, meeting—accurately, it turned out—that Trump would simply declare victory on election night, using the likely appearance of an early lead to assert that his subsequent defeat was due to electoral fraud.

Remember when Trump, as the Republican frontrunner in the 2016 election, claimed that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” and he wouldn’t lose voters?

Well, that bold assertion, which has proven somewhat true among his devout base, may run into some technical issues in New York, where the police department is trying to make it impossible for Trump to even carry a firearm following his guilty conviction in his hush-money case, according to a Wednesday report from CNN.

Citing an anonymous senior police official, CNN reports that the NYPD is trying to revoke Trump’s license to carry a concealed weapon, a move stemming from a federal law barring people with felony convictions from possessing firearms. (New York and Florida also have laws outlawing people with felonies from possessing a gun.)

Trump reportedly has three pistols, two of which were reportedly handed over to the NYPD in March 2023 when he was indicted on criminal charges in the hush-money case. Though his third gun was reportedly legally transferred to Florida at the time, possession of it in the Sunshine State would still be illegal now that Trump is a convicted felon. All of which is to say that if Trump does still have that a gun somewhere within the gilded walls of Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach resort, or any of his other homes… he could be in violation of multiple laws and committing a federal crime, CNN reports.

Is the dream dead? And, if so, who killed it?

On June 15, 2012, President Barack Obama stood in the Rose Garden of the White House to announce a massive change in immigration policy. For years, Congress had been unable to pass legislation to protect from deportation the so-called Dreamers, undocumented youth brought to the United States as children. In 2001, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) first introduced a bill that would have granted them a path to citizenship. But, a decade later, the Dream Act had failed—again.

Obama declared that day he had taken matters into his own hands. His administration put forward an executive action to create a now-famous program: Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). “These are young people who study in our schools, they play in our neighborhoods, they’re friends with our kids, they pledge allegiance to our flag,” Obama, facing pressure over his administration’s harsh immigration enforcement practices, said. (He had begun to be called a moniker that would stick: “deporter in chief.”) “They are Americans in their heart, in their minds, in every single way but one: on paper.” As such, they shouldn’t be expelled from the country or have to live under the “shadow of deportation.”

DACA went on to become a landmark achievement of the Obama presidency—lauded for its seamless logistical implementation led by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, then head of US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and the economic benefits of authorizing eligible beneficiaries to work. Crucially, it gave a lifeline to more than 800,000 young immigrants raised and educated in the United States. DACA was “a temporary stopgap measure,” Obama had said. But its success, for a time, allowed the program’s original sin to be played down. The expectation, Mayorkas told the New York Times recently, “was that DACA would be a bridge to legislation.”

Politicians could assume that change, albeit delayed, would likely someday materialize. Over the past quarter of a century, the issue of Dreamers has enjoyed broad bipartisan support in Congress. It has been included in virtually every immigration negotiation. And the stories of promising undocumented young people have been common on front pages and magazine covers—inspiring a rare kind of solidarity that transcended political divisions. (There was even a Broadway musical.)

For all his efforts to evade transparency and, instead, offer a steady stream of lies, Donald Trump has always been brutally honest about one thing: his penchant for revenge.

This lust has, over the years, taken on a particular kink. When possible, Trump has often enjoyed walking up to a microphone and implying—if not outright saying—that his enemies should be investigated, prosecuted, or arrested by the government he wants to head. These enemies include a seemingly endless list of people, from James Comey to Joe Scarborough.

It’s no surprise that vengeful threats of political prosecution have escalated since Trump’s conviction; he and his allies now appear hellbent on opening investigations into all their perceived enemies. Republicans have made clear political persecution could take place as a key role of government should Trump return to the White House.

With a second term possible, here is an incomplete and running list of everyone we could find that Trump has said should be prosecuted.

The United States, as a rule, is not very good about pricing in negative costs, in part because the people responsible for those costs get very upset when you try. The federal gas tax—which is supposed to pay for infrastructure repairs necessitated by gas consumption—has not been raised in 31 years, so everyone else has to cover the balance. Gun violence costs in excess of $229 billion a year and the only people who aren’t on the hook for that are the people who make guns. The enormous societal costs of asthma and respiratory ailments are largely shouldered not by the people and corporations who poison the air, but invariably by kids who breathe it in. Inhalers, hospital bills, rent—a lot of things are more expensive here, because of all the other things that are cheap.

This made the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s plan for congestion pricing in Manhattan, which was scheduled to begin later this month—after 17 years of planning, legislating, study, and litigation—something of a miracle. For once, the priorities were in order. New York proposed that the people who contribute to a problem should subsidize the solution. Drivers would pay a $15 toll for entering a “congestion zone” south of 60th Street during peak hours (it’s only $3.75 off-peak). The fees would net the MTA about $1 billion annually, which it would use to finance a $15 billion capital plan. That money would pay for long-needed improvements and upgrades to subways, bus lines, and commuter rail.

If all went according to plan, a significant number of drivers would choose mass transit instead—pushing still more funds into the agency’s coffers, improving air quality, and reducing carbon emissions. It would also ease Manhattan’s notorious gridlock, enhancing commutes for people who really did need to drive. Hence the name.

In a speech last month, Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul evoked images of cars “spewing exhaust” and noted that New York commuters spend an average of 102 hours a year stuck in traffic. “It took a long a time because people feared backlash from drivers set in their ways,” Hochul said, acknowledging the stop-and-go pace of implementation. “But, much like with housing, if we’re serious about making cities more livable, we must get over that.”

Special Counsel Jack Smith is asking the federal judge overseeing the Mar-a-Lago documents case to make clear that former President Donald Trump is prohibited from making false statements that endanger law enforcement officers. Trump and his campaign have recently made several false and inflammatory claims about the FBI that Smith says have put federal agents and officials at risk.

The request came late Friday in the federal case over Trump’s willful retention of classified documents and attempts to obstruct justice after leaving the White House.

In a fundraising email and social media posts earlier in the week, Trump claimed that, when the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago to retrieve classified documents it believed Trump was illegally keeping there, the agents were empowered—and even wanted—to kill him. “BIDEN’S DOJ WAS AUTHORIZED TO SHOOT ME!” a fundraising email stated. “You know they’re just itching to do the unthinkable … Joe Biden was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger.”

This is untrue. The warrant included standard language about use of force that is in fact meant to avoid violence. Further, the FBI took significant steps to avoid a confrontation with Trump, including waiting for him to leave the state to conduct the raid when he and his family would not be on the premises.

As any schoolkid might tell you, US elections are based on a bedrock principle: one person, one vote. Simple as that. Each vote carries the same weight. Yet for much of the country’s history, that hasn’t been the case. At various points, whole classes of people were shut out of voting: enslaved Black Americans, Native Americans, and poor white people. The first time women had the right to vote was in 1919. This week’s episode of Reveal is about a current version of this very old problem.

For this show, host Al Letson does a deep dive with Mother Jones national voting rights correspondent Ari Berman about his new book, Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People—and the Fight to Resist It.

They first discuss America’s early years and examine how the political institutions created by the Founding Fathers were meant to constrain democracy. This system is still alive in the modern era, Berman says, through institutions like the Electoral College and the US Senate, which were designed as checks against the power of the majority. What’s more, Berman argues that the Supreme Court is a product of these two skewed institutions. Then there are newer tactics—like voter suppression and gerrymandering—that are layered on top of this anti-democratic foundation to entrench the power of a conservative white minority.

Louisiana enacted a first-of-its-kind law on Friday, classifying the two drugs used in medication abortions as controlled and dangerous substances. The law prohibits obtaining or possessing misoprostol and mifipristone without a prescription. The new classification will make obtaining a prescription more difficult.

Louisiana already bans abortion with few exceptions. The reclassification of the so-called abortion pills was first introduced as part of an effort to thwart coerced abortions. But this is a stand of anti-abortion misinformation that, as Mother Jones’ Julianne McShane has detailed, is not supported by the facts. Further, a coerced abortion would already be illegal in Louisiana.

Instead of protecting women, the new law is likely to worsen care. Misoprostol has other important uses outside of abortion care, including for treating miscarriages, ulcers, and inducing labor. “Unfortunately, I think the biggest impact of this law will be on miscarriage care,” Greer Donley, an expert on abortion law at the University of Pittsburgh, posted on X. “Docs aren’t prescribing these meds in LA for abortion b/c of bans, and patients are exempt from prosecution. Docs ARE prescribing miso for miscarriage, and this law will likely chill that care.”

The law will make it harder to prescribe these drugs by requiring doctors to have a special license, and they must now be stored in special facilities that might make them harder for people to obtain, especially in rural areas.

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Eight young people are suing the government of Alaska—the nation’s fastest-warming state—claiming a major new fossil fuel project violates their state constitutional rights.

The state-owned Alaska Gasline Development Corporation has proposed a $38.7 billion gas export project that would roughly triple the state’s greenhouse gas emissions for decades, the lawsuit says. Scientists have long warned that fossil fuel extraction must be swiftly curbed to secure a livable future.

The Alaska LNG Project would involve the construction of a gas treatment plant on the state’s North Slope, an 800-mile pipeline and liquefaction plant on the Kenai Peninsula which would prepare the gas for export to Asia.

In 2017, the exiled Chinese mogul Guo Wengui began to remake himself in America as a dissident celebrity. In media appearances, tweets, and lengthy YouTube videos, Guo launched tirades against Chinese Communist Party corruption. They made him famous among extremely online Chinese emigres and won him prominence as an ally of Steve Bannon and other Trumpworld luminaries.

Guo sold a brand: A mega-rich, Brioni-clad, rule-breaking Bannon buddy leading a “whistleblower movement” with an audacious goal to “take down the CCP” and install his own supposed government-in-waiting in Beijing.

But the truth of Guo’s story is now at issue in the federal courthouse in Manhattan, where he stands trial for fraud and money laundering. In an opening statement Friday, Assistant US Attorney Micah Fergenson previewed evidence he said shows that Guo—who has also used the names Ho Wan Kwok and Miles Guo—stole more than $1 billion from his own ardent fans who invested in scam financial ventures Gou launched in 2020 and 2021.

“Miles Guo ran a simple con on a grand scale,” Fergenson said. “He lived a billionaire’s lifestyle using money he stole from people he tricked and cheated.”

Just a few years ago, maternal mortality was the rare reproductive justice issue that seemed to transcend partisan politics. In late 2018, Republicans and Democrats in Congress even came together to approve $60 million for state maternal mortality review committees (MMRCs) to study why so many American women die from causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. Donald Trump—not exactly famous for his respect toward pregnant women and new mothers in his personal life—signed the bill.

But some Republicans’ enthusiasm for these committees began to wane at around the same time abortion rights advocates began warning that draconian restrictions on reproductive care would only push the shamefully high US maternal mortality rate—the worst among affluent countries—even higher. Nor did conservatives, like Idaho lawmakers, appreciate the policy recommendations that came out of many MMRCs.

Texas, whose record on maternal mortality (and maternal health more broadly) has been an embarrassment since long before Dobbs, has a history of controversial attempts to play down potentially unwelcome findings from its MMRC. After the Dobbs decision, when the state committee was working on its report examining maternal deaths in 2019, Texas officials decided to slow-roll its release until mid-2023—too late for lawmakers to act on its recommendations. “When we bury data, we are dishonorably burying each and every woman that we lost,” one furious committee member told the Texas Tribune. Ultimately, officials released the report three months late, in December 2022. Soon afterward, the Legislature reconfigured the MMRC, increasing its size—but also ejected one of its most outspoken members. 

Now Texas officials have stirred up the biggest furor yet, appointing a leading anti-abortion activist to the panel. Dr. Ingrid Skop, an OB-GYN who practiced in San Antonio for 25 years, will join the MMRC as a community member representing rural areas (even though she is from the seventh-largest city in the US). But she also represents a largely overlooked segment of the anti-abortion movement: researchers who seek to discredit the idea that abortion restrictions are putting women’s lives in danger. To the contrary, Skop and her allies argue that abortions are the real, hidden cause of many maternal deaths—and that abortion restrictions actually save mothers’ lives.

Editor’s note: 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 of Our Land here.

Sometimes I’d rather not be right. In January, reacting to Donald Trump affectionately referring to the trio of tyrants Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong Un as “very fine people,” I wrote that two constants in the Trump Era are his affection for murderous authoritarians and Russian efforts to screw with American politics. The former is well-known, the latter, less recognized. Moscow mounted information warfare operations to boost Trump during both the 2016 election—most notably, the hack-and-leak attack in which Russian cyber-operatives swiped Democratic emails and documents and WikiLeaks released them—and the 2020 election, when Russian intelligence operatives spread disinformation about Joe and Hunter Biden and Ukraine. The first op helped the Putin-friendly Trump reach the White House; the second failed to keep him in office, but it had the side-benefit of fueling the House Republicans’ baseless (and now fizzling) impeachment crusade against President Biden. Putin went one for two.

I noted in that Our Land issue: “[I]t’s a good bet that Putin this year will try once again to mess in an American election…[As Putin] continues to commit horrendous war crimes in Ukraine, he has even more reason to clandestinely boost Trump and win the rubber match.” At long last, official warnings have arrived.

Two weeks ago, Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee that Russia remains “the most active foreign threat to our elections.” She noted that the Kremlin’s “goals in such influence operations tend to include eroding trust in US democratic institutions, exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the United States, and degrading Western support to Ukraine.” All of this, obviously, would be to Trump’s benefit. She pointed out that artificial intelligence and deepfakes will presumably be deployed in this effort, and she cited China and Iran as other threats.

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Donald Trump was continuing to ask fossil-fuel executives to fund his presidential campaign on Wednesday, despite scrutiny of his relationship with the industry.

The former president attended a fundraising luncheon at Houston’s Post Oak hotel hosted by three Big Oil executives.

The invitation-only meeting comes a day after the defense rested its case in Trump’s criminal hush-money trial, and a week after Houston was battered by deadly storms. The climate crisis, caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels, has created the conditions for more frequent and severe rainfall and flooding, including in Texas.

Opening statements in the trial of exiled Chinese mogul Guo Wengui are expected Friday with the selection of an anonymous jury consuming the first few days of the proceeding.

US District Court Judge Analisa Torres on Thursday told potential jurors their names would be kept private “to protect all of you from any unwanted attention.” She did not mention that she decided last month to anonymize them due to Guo’s past efforts to disrupt legal proceedings by dispatching his followers to protest outside the homes of legal adversaries and members of their families.

Guo, a former real estate developer once reportedly among China’s richest people, fled to the US in 2015. From a Manhattan penthouse that he bought for more than $67 million, with a reference letter from Tony Blair, he built a sprawling group of organizations he said aimed at deposing China’s Communist Party rulers, and gained a devoted following of tens of thousands of Chinese émigrés. With Steve Bannon, he founded the “New Federal State of China” which claims to be government-in-waiting set to take over governance in Beijing.

Guo has pleaded not guilty to 12 charges, including securities fraud, wire fraud, unlawful monetary transactions and conspiracy, including conspiracy to launder money. Though it is not among the charges against him, prosecutors argued last month that Guo also has used supporters to harass and threaten critics.

Moms for Liberty is on a mission.

The conservative “parents’ rights” group will spend more than $3 million on ads in swing states ahead of the election, according to a Wednesday report in the Associated Press.

Known for stirring the panic about pronoun usage in schools and pioneering book bans across the country, Moms for Liberty plans to target voters in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. They hope to expand to Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania later this year, according to the AP.

Tina Descovich, one of the co-founders of Moms for Liberty, said that their goal is to “activate” their members who do not vote. The group doesn’t endorse specific presidential candidates, but their preferences—for electing right-wing representatives—are clear: The latest ad campaign, the AP reports, will attack President Biden for his recently-enacted Title IX rules that extend safeguards to LGBTQ students.

Israel on Saturday ordered hundreds of thousands in Rafah to evacuate immediately as Israeli military forces prepared to expand further into Gaza’s southernmost city amid a devastating humanitarian crisis. The warning, which arrived in the form of dropped leaflets, came despite a rare threat from President Biden this week that he would withhold certain weapons if Israel advanced further into Rafah. 

At least 300,000 people affected as further areas across #GazaStrip receive new evacuation orders today, both towards central #Rafah in the south AND #Jabalia in north #Gaza@UNRWA estimates 150,000 people have now fled #Rafah since Monday, looking for safety where there's none. pic.twitter.com/9UNfo6b0rW

— UNRWA (@UNRWA) May 11, 2024

More than half of Gaza’s population have fled to Rafah since the start of Israel’s military operations in the north, pushing the densely populated city, which also serves as a critical passageway for transporting aid into Gaza, to a “breaking point.” Now facing an imminent ground invasion, as well as vows by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to fight “with our fingernails” if the US follows through on its threat to cut off certain weapons, displaced Palestinians are forced to flee once again. To where, it’s exceedingly unclear, as Gaza’s north has already been decimated by months of bombing.

“The bombing and shelling is incessant,” Bridget Rochios, a certified nurse-midwife from California volunteering at Rafah’s last maternity hospital, told Mother Jones this week. “And there’s nowhere else to go.” Rochios described scenes of horror where basic medical supplies such as gloves and scissors are nearly gone; doctors are forced to use razors to remove umbilical cords; and the lives of 50 newborns in the intensive care unit hang in the balance.

It seems like such a simple idea: a day to honor the women who bring life into the world. But  how do we square the ideal of celebrating and supporting mothers with the reality of how lawmakers and courts have acted to undermine maternal health and rights in the post-Dobbs era? Or make sense of all the money Americans spend annually on this one day—a purported $33.5 billion in 2024, according to the National Federation of Retailers, including $7 billion on jewelry and $3.2 billion on flowers—when so many mothers can’t afford food, housing, or health care? 

Anna Jarvis, who launched the Mother’s Day movement in 1908 in honor of her own remarkable mother, would have had very complicated feelings about what the day has become, says Katharine Lane Antolini, associate professor of American history at West Virginia Wesleyan College and author of Memorializing Motherhood: Anna Jarvis and the Struggle for Control of Mother’s Day. Jarvis’s vision was childlike in its sentimentality, Antolini says: “To her, this was supposed to be the one day out of the year when you were just grateful for your mother.” But there was nothing sentimental about the way she fought to preserve that vision, whether she was battling the floral industry, Big Candy, or well-intentioned maternal health charities and the powerful people who supported them. I spoke with Antolini from her campus office in Buckhannon, West Virginia, about 40 minutes from the International Mother’s Day Shrine and Jarvis’s childhood home.

How did the idea of a day to honor mothers become such a focus of Anna Jarvis’ life?

The story of Mother’s Day really goes back to her mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, who was a well-known social activist and community organizer during her time. They lived in the part of Virginia that split off during the Civil War to become West Virginia, part of the Union. Mrs. Jarvis had 13 children, only four of whom lived to adulthood. Anna, who was born in 1864, was the oldest surviving daughter. She never married or had children. She was never a mother herself. And that, I think, is an important part of her story.

In the 1850s, before Anna was born, it was very common for mothers in this part of Appalachia to die in childbirth and for babies to die. Poor sanitation was a major cause of death. Mrs. Jarvis organized what she called Mothers’ Day Work Clubs, where women would come together to educate themselves on issues of sanitation: what to do with sewage, where to put your outhouse so it wouldn’t contaminate your water supply or the milk from your cows. If there was a mini epidemic, they would help quarantine a family, bring them food, and help care for the sick. Mrs. Jarvis believed in a proactive kind of motherhood—in the book, I refer to it as “social motherhood,” where being a mother does not just mean taking care of your own children. You are caring for your community of children. By the time of the Civil War, these clubs were so well known that, according to local legend, a Union colonel asked Mrs. Jarvis if she could help the Union camps stop the outbreaks of disease that were killing so many soldiers. So, according to the story, Mrs. Jarvis organized mothers to help care for and stop the spread of diseases in the camps.