Republicans Will Never Allow Guantánamo To Be Closed

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I guess you can add this to the list of President Obama’s executive actions designed to circumvent an unhelpful Republican Congress:

In a series of secret nighttime flights in the last two months, the Obama administration made more progress toward the president’s goal of emptying the military prison at Guantánamo Bay…Now 127 prisoners remain at Guantánamo, down from 680 in 2003, and the Pentagon is ready to release two more groups of prisoners in the next two weeks; officials will not provide a specific number.

President Obama’s goal in the last two years of his presidency is to deplete the Guantánamo prison to the point where it houses 60 to 80 people and keeping it open no longer makes economic sense.

Hmmm. Will Republicans be willing to close Guantánamo if it no longer makes economic sense to keep it open? Color me skeptical. This is a tough-on-terrorism issue, not a budget issue. If I had to guess, I’d say that Republicans would refuse to close Guantánamo if there were even a single prisoner left there. If it becomes a US version of Spandau, well, that’s just fine. Closing it is for appeasing, weak-kneed, liberals, not rock-jawed severe conservatives.

In fact, I could easily see this becoming a stock question during the Republican primaries. “Would you ever close Guantánamo?” The candidates will then take turns trying to top each other with ever more absurdly hawkish answers, the same way they did with immigration in 2012. Like this:

Candidate 1: I will never close Guantánamo. These are the most dangerous people in the world.

Candidate 2: Not only wouldn’t I close it, I’d expand it.

Candidate 3: Expand it and make it more secure. I’d build a moat.

Candidate 4: And an electrified fence.

Candidate 5: I’d take away their Obamacare!

At that, everyone would look admiringly at Candidate 5 and silently give him the victory.

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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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