June 27, 2018

120-Day Travel Ban Is Now 516 Days Old and Counting

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Nancy LeTourneau reminds us today that Donald Trump’s travel ban was always supposed to be temporary:

The administration claimed that the Muslim ban was necessary while they set up their “extreme vetting” system. The 120 days they set out for that to happen was up well over a year ago.

….What’s up with that? This so-called “temporary pause” to allow the secretary of homeland security to make lists and develop procedures for extreme vetting seems to have turned into something more permanent. Did John Kelly and his successor Kirstjen Nielsen fall down on the job? Have they been too busy implementing Trump’s “deport ’em all” and “zero tolerance” policies to get to this one? Or was the idea that the travel ban would be temporary simply another lie among the thousands this administration has told?

Can I go with (d) all of the above? It was a lie, they’re incompetent, and they got distracted. I’m just using Occam’s Razor here, folks.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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