December 1, 2020

“It’s All Gone Too Far”: A Georgia Election Official Is Fed Up With Violent Threats

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Gabriel Sterling, a top official in the Georgia Secretary of State’s office and a self-proclaimed conservative, is fed up with President Donald Trump’s attempts to undermine the election results—and his refusal to condemn harassment toward election officials.

“It’s all gone too far,” Sterling said at a Tuesday press conference at which he addressed Trump directly.

“Stop inspiring people to step up and commit potential acts of violence,” he said to the outgoing president. “Someone’s gonna get hurt. Someone’s gonna get shot. Someone’s gonna get killed. And it’s not right.”

Georgia has been at the middle of a storm of baseless accusations of voter fraud over the past few weeks. In just the past several days, Trump has tweeted attacks on the state’s Republican governor and called the secretary of state, whom he once praised, an “enemy of the people.”

At the press conference Tuesday, Sterling expressed his anger at the increasingly violent rhetoric used against election workers, including a Trump campaign attorney’s comment that former cybersecurity official Chris Krebs should be “shot.” The straw that broke the camel’s back, Sterling said, was when “a 20-something tech in Gwinnett County today” had “death threats and a noose put out saying he should be hung for treason because he was transferring a report on batches from EMS to a county computer so he could read it.”

Sterling said that he encourages people to exercise their First Amendment rights to free speech and protest, but that he draws the line at death threats and intimidation.

“Mr. President, you have not condemned these actions or this language,” he continued. “This has to stop. We need you to step up, and if you’re going to take a position of leadership, show some.”

Watch the video below:

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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