Mike Pompeo Is Insulting Our Intelligence

Michael Candelori/Pacific Press via ZUMA

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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo thinks it’s “insulting and ridiculous and frankly ludicrous” that people are questioning the Singapore agreement just because it doesn’t really say anything at all:

He said he was confident that the North Koreans “understand what we’re prepared to do, [the] handful of things we’re not likely to do. . . . I am equally confident they understand that there will be in-depth verification.”

“Not all of that work appeared in the final document,” Pompeo said. “But lots of other places where there were understandings reached, we couldn’t reduce them to writing.” That work, he said, was “beyond what was seen in the final document that will be in the place that we will begin when we return to our conversations.”

Now that’s frankly ludicrous. If you can’t reduce it to writing, it’s meaningless and he knows it. So do all the rest of us. And so do the North Koreans.

At this point, I suppose there’s little reason to keep writing about the Singapore summit. It obviously accomplished nothing, no matter how much Donald Trump tweets otherwise, and there’s nothing left to do except see if Pompeo and his team make any concrete progress in upcoming negotiations. If they do, then all kudos to them. But until then, stop insulting our intelligence.

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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.

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