Morning Political Trivia for July 12

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To swing it in Swampland (Washington, that is), you have to know your stuff. With that in mind, Mother Jones’ DC Bureau is launching a new daily feature on MoJo Blog: morning political trivia. We’ll compete every morning in the office, and we’ll give you a chance to try your hand at answering the question in the comments section (no Googling!). Then, every afternoon (Pacific time), we’ll post the answer and heap praise on the commenters who guess correctly.

As your official quizmaster, I’ll be finding the questions and keeping score. If you have a good one, submit it to mojotrivia@gmail.com. I’ll credit you if we use your question (please let us know if you got it from another source).

But you won’t be the only ones pondering each morning’s question. Back in the capital, Mother Jones’ DC correspondents will be struggling mightily to best each other in a never-ending battle royale of trivia. And there will be accountability in this administration. I’ll let you know who got the question right and who got it wrong, be they intern or editor. So you won’t just be getting the answers every afternoon, you’ll be getting a chance to heap scorn on political reporters who don’t know their political trivia. So, with that in mind, we’ll start you out with a doozie (remember, no Googling!):

Name the four state capitals that begin with the same letter as the states they’re in.

—Nick Baumann

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

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