What’s Up With the Democratic Republic of the Congo?

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Cecile Richards, the head of Planned Parenthood, is testifying before Congress today, and you can probably guess how that’s going. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) went first and asked about grants made to overseas organizations:

“Do any of these funds go to the Democratic Republic of the Congo?” Chaffetz said early in the back-and-forth.

“Congressman, let me tell you —” Richards said before Chaffetz interrupted her.

“No, no, no. We don’t have time for a big narrative,” Chaffetz said.

“I’m not going to give you a narrative —” Richards said.

“Yes or no,” Chaffetz replied, before Richards gave a more lengthy response.

The “lengthy response” took 16 seconds: Richards said that Planned Parenthood gives money to lots of family planning organizations in Africa, and she’d be happy to provide Chaffetz with a list.

But does anyone know what this was all about? Is there some kind of conservative horror story about the Democratic Republic of the Congo making the rounds? You know, the kind of thing no normal person has ever heard of, but that circulates endlessly in newsletters and email chains? I couldn’t find anything, but maybe I just don’t know where to look.

Anyway, why does Jason Chaffetz care about Planned Parenthood’s grants to the Democratic Republic of the Congo? Does anyone know?

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

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