August 17, 2019

The Daily News Just Hit Trump With a Headline for the Ages

“Fjord to Trump: Drop Dead.”

A sailboat travels through the mountainscapes in East Greenland.Getty

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The Saturday edition of New York’s Daily News elbowed President Donald Trump in the wake of backlash against reports that the president had inquired about the possibility of the United States purchasing Greenland. “Fjord to Trump: Drop Dead,” it read.

The headline was a reference to criticism that members of the governments of Greenland and Denmark directed President Trump’s way on Friday after a report from the Wall Street Journal revealed that the president had hopes of purchasing the European island nation, which is considered a semiautonomous territory.

“Greenland is not for sale and cannot be sold, but Greenland is open for trade and cooperation with other countries—including the United States,” Kim Kielsen, Greenland’s premier, said in a statement according to Danish news agency Ritzau. “I hope it is a joke—to not just buy a country but also its people,” Martin Lidegaard, the chairman of the Danish parliament’s foreign policy committee told the Washington Post.

The president had reportedly been interested in the island because of its vast natural resources—in particular, its anticipated richness in offshore oil resources that will be made available as the country’s vast ice sheets melt due to climate change. He also sees the island, which is the world’s largest, as a strategic national security perch in the northern realms of the Atlantic Ocean.

Greenland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs seized the unexpected spotlight to remind the world of its admirable qualities—like its emphasis on renewable energy and adventure tourism business—with a subtle tweak at the president. “We’re open for business, not for sale,” it tweeted from its official account on Friday.

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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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