March 29, 2019

Quote of the Day: The Great Lakes Are Indeed Very Great

The Great Lakes are frozen solid! But under President Trump's leadership they will all be thawed out for the enjoyment of the people. And thanks to Trump's expertise in building things, this thaw will take months, not years.MODIS/NASA/ZUMA Wire/ZUMA

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From President Donald Trump, speaking to the good citizens of Michigan:

I support the Great Lakes. Always have! They are beautiful. They are big, very deep, record deepness, right?

Well, no. Lake Baikal is the deepest lake in the world and Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the US. According to Wikipedia, Lake Superior is the deepest Great Lake, making the list at the 37th deepest lake in the world.

Which is not to say that the Great Lakes aren’t great! They are. And President Trump, as usual, is right to point that out, even if nitpicking naysayers like me are inevitably going to attack him.

And why was Trump talking about his love for the Great Lakes? James Hohmann explains:

In Grand Rapids last night, Trump announced that he’s going to make sure the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative is fully funded. Trump’s budget earlier this month proposed slashing that program, which funds the cleanup of the Great Lakes, by 90 percent — from $300 million to $30 million….During his first year in office, Trump called for eliminating the program entirely.

Apparently this is Trump’s new MO: allow his staff to propose huge budget cuts, and then loudly “override his people” when they turn out to be unpopular. That produces headlines like this one:

Yes indeedy. But remember: the cossacks work for the czar.

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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.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

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