February 28, 2017

Here Are the Top Ten Republican Accomplishments of 2017 So Far

Win Mcnamee/Pool/CNP via Zuma

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Here are the top ten Republican accomplishments of 2017 so far:

  1. Trump signs executive order on immigration, but it’s so badly drafted it causes chaos around the country and is immediately put on hold by court.
  2. Trump chooses crackpot as National Security Advisor, fires him three weeks after inauguration.
  3. Trump tries to bully China by playing games with One China policy, is forced into humiliating retreat after realizing he’s playing out of his league.
  4. Paul Ryan proposes border adjustment tax to raise $1 trillion, but can’t convince anyone to sign on.
  5. Trump casually green-lights raid on Yemen over dinner, it turns into an epic disaster that kills a SEAL and accomplishes nothing.
  6. Trump blathers about the wall and a 20 percent border tax on Mexico, causing the Mexican president to cancel a planned visit.
  7. Congress goes into recess, but Republicans are embarrassingly forced to cancel town hall events because they’re afraid of facing big crowds opposed to their policies.
  8. Trump continues to claim that crime is skyrocketing; that he won a huge election victory; that his inauguration crowd was immense; that polls showing his unpopularity are fake; and that refugees have wreaked terror on America, despite the fact that these are all easily-checkable lies.
  9. After weeks of confusion on their signature priority, Republicans finally realize that repealing Obamacare isn’t all that easy and basically give up.
  10. Trump proposes spending an extra $54 billion on defense without realizing he can’t do that.

Have either Trump or the Republican Congress done anything yet that’s been both successful and non-routine? Unless I’m forgetting something big, it’s just been one failure after another for the past two months. And that’s not even counting all the day-to-day idiocy coming out of the White House (“enemy of the people,” Sweden, “so-called judge,” Bowling Green massacre, national security confabs at Mar-a-Lago restaurant, etc.).

Help me out here. Am I missing some big success?

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A full one-third of our annual fundraising comes in this month alone. That’s risky, because a strong December means our newsroom is on the beat and reporting at full strength—but a weak one means budget cuts and hard choices ahead.

The December 31 deadline is closing in fast. To reach our $400,000 goal, we need readers who’ve never given before to join the ranks of MoJo donors. And we need our steadfast supporters to give again—any amount today.

Managing an independent, nonprofit newsroom is staggeringly hard. There’s no cushion in our budget—no backup revenue, no corporate safety net. We can’t afford to fall short, and we can’t rely on corporations or deep-pocketed interests to fund the fierce, investigative journalism Mother Jones exists to do.

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