November 7, 2018

Jeff Sessions’ Long National Nightmare Is Finally Over

Chip Somodevilla/CNP via ZUMA

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I just woke up from one of my dex-induced 3-hour naps to learn that this has been a bad week for people named Sessions. The first to go was Rep. Pete Sessions, son of former FBI director William Sessions, and today it was the turn of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former senator from the great state of Alabama. Both are Eagle Scouts.

So Jeff Sessions has finally been fired. For the nonce, he has been replaced by his chief of staff, Matthew Whitaker. It doesn’t appear that Whitaker was ever an Eagle Scout, but he did play in the Rose Bowl for Iowa. In any case, this will all change whenever Trump gets around to nominating a permanent replacement—unless Trump decides to stick with Whitaker. Whoever it is, I think one thing we can be sure of is that it won’t be someone who will recuse himself from the Russia investigation.

By the way, the Washington Post reported on this three weeks ago:

President Trump talked recently with Jeff Sessions’s own chief of staff about replacing Sessions as attorney general, according to people briefed on the conversation, signaling that the president remains keenly interested in ousting his top law enforcement official….On a long list of indignities that Sessions has endured from his boss, Trump’s discussing replacing him with his own top aide stands out.

I imagine this was fake news at the time, but whaddayaknow? It turned out to be real news after all. Trump just didn’t want to announce it before the election, when it might have pissed off some of his supporters, who were big Jeff Sessions fans.

I wonder who else Trump is itching to fire? Rod Rosenstein maybe? Does anybody have a pool going?

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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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