January 15, 2019

William Barr Is Shaping Up Nicely as Trump’s Attorney General

Tom Williams/Congressional Quarterly/Newscom via ZUMA

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From CNN:

Attorney General nominee William Barr shared a controversial memo last year with nearly all of President Donald Trump’s lawyers concluding that an aspect of special counsel Robert Mueller’s case could be “fatally misconceived,” Barr acknowledged Monday….Barr discussed the memo with Trump prior to his nomination, according to a source familiar with the discussions, and he will pledge in his confirmation testimony that Mueller will be able to “complete his work.” Despite the assurances, Democrats have said they are eager for his testimony.

So Barr tells Trump that Mueller is full of shit, and Trump immediately knows that Barr is his guy. I’m sure no Republicans will object to this, which means Barr will be quickly confirmed and there will be no more of this namby-pamby “doing the right thing” that Jeff Sessions occasionally indulged in. Make America Great Again, baby!

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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