Let John Oliver Explain the Insane Amount of Power Your Bizarre State Legislature Holds


With the midterm elections finally arriving tomorrow, John Oliver is asking voters to do everyone a solid and pay attention to what’s happening on the local level. Though they often resemble ridiculous shit shows, state houses actually wield an incredible amount of power and affect everything from abortion laws to gun control.

“All those conspiracy theories about a shadow government are actually true,” Oliver explained on the latest Last Week Tonight. “Only it’s not a group of billionaires meeting in a mountain lair in Zurich. It’s a bunch of pasty bureaucrats meeting in a windowless committee room in Lansing, Michigan.”

It’s these “pasty bureaucrats” who are quietly creating legislation all around the country. According to Oliver, while Congress passed only 185 bills this session, state legislatures passed an astounding 24,000. And as Mother Jones reported recently, state legislatures are looking awfully red, with Republicans currently boasting single-party control in both houses of state legislatures in 23 states.

“The senate is likely to remain inactive no matter which party controls it after Tuesday,” Oliver said. “So why all this attention on the national level where almost nothing is happening, when down on the local level everything is happening?”

Great question. Watch below for more.

 

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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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