The staff of Mother Jones is rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year .

This is a completely non-exhaustive and subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy or discontent.

One of the heroes is New Yorker staff writer Amanda Petrusich , whose husband died suddenly in 2022 .

LZ Granderson lost her husband, Bret , in June 2013 .

She says she struggled to be honest about her grief because not being honest felt antithetical to the work of grief.

LZ: Grief is a universal experience, but we're all so ill-equipped to navigate it alone.

Both motherhood and grief are also invisible burdens, a weight you carry that no one else sees.

Taking care of a baby alone through that early period of grief was by far the hardest thing I have ever done.

The act of caregiving is profound and life-changing work, even if the culture does not necessarily frame it that way.

President-elect Donald Trump will inherit an auto industry that has been greatly diminished in recent years .

Stellantis (the parent company of Dodge , Chrysler , Jeep , and Ram) reported a 48 percent profit decline in the first half of 2024 , followed by a 27 percent drop in the third quarter .

The emerging Chinese auto industry poses an existential threat not only to the U.S. but also to Europe , Japan , and South Korea’s automakers, workers, and independence.

The next president should appoint an “auto czar’ who reports directly to him and has authority to coordinate with each of the agencies involved.

We're building the conduit for the thermodynamic god that created us. We are not the same." The man behind Based Beff Jezos was unmasked in Forbes magazine last December as Guillaume Verdon , a Google quantum computing engineer-turned-co-founder of the AI startup Extropic.

He joins us today to talk about effective accelerationism, the politics of AI , and what his company is doing to make sure that Artificial General Intelligence arrives quickly.

In a December 16 Instagram post, Ernest Carter shared a video of a Coca-Cola delivery truck that he claimed was found "full of kids" The truck and the police depicted were actually outside a mall in Davenport , Iowa , where the local police association was running a toy donation drive.

A police spokesperson said the video depicted "no criminal investigation" and reports about child trafficking were "false" and "fake news".

School massacres are rare, but school violence can also be traced back to school fights that students record on their cellphones and post on social media.

Schools began moving toward bans roughly a decade ago , and there’s been legislative momentum behind the drive to wrest back control of classrooms from distracted students.

Massachusetts launched a $1.3 million pilot that provided one-year grants to school districts for the 2023-2024 school year .

"dumb" phones that allow a person to make calls and send and receive texts, minus sophisticated software features or internet access, are a poor antidote to safety concerns that worry students, parents, and staff.

Deciding whether a smart or a dumb phone is a better defense against a school shooter spotlights the perversity of contemporary America ’s comfort with violence.

This is a full time position with the nonprofit Global Investigative Journalism Network .

Applicants must have a solid understanding of investigative and data journalism, and strong skills in managing social media.

GIJN is an association of 251 member organizations in 95 countries dedicated to spreading and advancing investigative journalism around the world.

Donald Trump's allies plan to revive infrastructure planning from his first administration.

Julian Zelizer : It's likely to mean reduced funding for public transit, increased investment in autonomous vehicles.

Zelizer says the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 appears to be a manifesto for the American conservative agenda in the age of Trump .

Public transit provided more than 7 billion trips in 2023 , Center for American Progress director says.

Adie Tomer , a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution , said that the plans spelled out in Project 2025 were “easy to write” but will be difficult to sell to Congress .

Israel has long been at the forefront of counter-drone technology due to its unique security needs, says Aaron Kaplowitz .

He says the U.S. must deploy more robust detection, tracking and mitigation technologies, especially around critical infrastructure and sensitive sites.

Israel has honed cutting-edge technological advances during its ongoing war, he says.

The U.K. would be wise to tap Israel ’s battle-tested drone defenses for a modern defense, he writes.

Hannah Hiatt is the latest social media influencer to face a CPS investigation.

She posted a video of her toddler-aged son flinching in a box of ice cream mochi last month .

Angry internet users claimed the clip was proof of child abuse.

It remains unclear whether she will be charged with any wrongdoing.

Judge Doughty : Suit stems from Defendants ' alleged participation in censoring Plaintiffs' speech on social media.

Plaintiffs allege that Defendants were active participants, if not architects, of a vast censorship scheme.

The court didn't agree with plaintiffs that they had conclusively established that the federal court in Louisiana had personal jurisdiction over defendants.

Aspen is alleged to have a "coordinating role in the EIP/VP's censorship activities challenged herein" Plaintiffs attach emails supportive of this alleged censorship coordination to their Complaint .

Plaintiffs have "demonstrated the necessity of [jurisdictional] discovery," on the issue of standing.