The Education of Mitch McConnell

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Would you like to know more about what makes Mitch McConnell tick? Zach Carter and Jason Cherkis have you covered with a Brobdingnagian profile of the Senate minority leader in the Huffington Post today. Here’s a taste:

After 30 years in Washington spent fighting Democrats on nearly every front, McConnell has embraced his persona as the dark lord of Capitol Hill. John Yarmuth, the Democratic Kentucky congressman who as a young Republican had traveled with McConnell organizing college campuses for [Marlow Cook’s Senate campaign in 1968], says the two are no longer on speaking terms. “He won’t talk to me now,” Yarmuth says of McConnell. “I’ve known him for 45 years.”

Recently, Yarmuth says, he ran into the Senate minority leader at a largely empty airport VIP room. McConnell was sitting alone with a newspaper. “I looked straight at him,” Yarmuth says. “I said, ‘Hi, Mitch.’ There wasn’t a muscle in his face that moved. … He just buried his head in the paper.”

McConnell’s life has become an endless campaign.

Marlow Cook is disappointed in his former staffer. “When you go to Washington, you make your record,” says the retired former senator. “Nobody else makes it for you. And the record that he has made, he has to be comfortable with or he wouldn’t be there. … A man makes the reputation he gets. Mitch has to be satisfied. If I were there and I were in that position, I would not be satisfied.”

As it happens, I suspect that this piece exaggerates McConnell’s influence. Does he deliver plenty of pork for Kentucky? Yes, but that’s what senators do. Did he help turn Kentucky into a Republican stronghold? Yes again, but that was happening all over the South in the 70s and 80s. McConnell was part of that movement, but I’m not sure he played a uniquely transformative role.

Nonetheless, if you want to understand the forces that made McConnell McConnell, this isn’t a bad place to start. Put aside a half hour one of these days and dive in.

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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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