Kris Kobach Needs a 24/7 Government Jet

Membership Ticker

Clara Jeffery,
Editor-in-Chief

"You guys were one of the outlets who got singled out to balance the ledger": That's what a former Facebook employee told Monika Bauerlein and me as we dug into recent news that the platform was throttling traffic to certain publishers, including Mother Jones. It's enraging for several reasons, and since it happened during our fall fundraising drive and affects our bottom line, we hope the Mother Jones community will stand up for our fearless journalism and send a message with a donation to support it today.

"You guys were one of the outlets who got singled out to balance the ledger": That's what a former Facebook employee said as we dug into recent news that the platform was throttling traffic to certain publishers, including Mother Jones. It's enraging, and since it happened during our fall fundraising drive, we hope the Mother Jones community will stand up for our fearless journalism and send a message with a donation to support it today.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach on election night, conceding defeat to Democrat Laura Kelly, who crushed him in a state that Trump won by 21 points.Mark Reinstein/ZUMA

For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis, the election, and more, subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.

Everyone’s favorite story from last night is about Kris Kobach’s set of demands before he’d accept a job as Donald Trump’s “immigration czar”:

24/7 access to a government jet! Just in case the czar needs to conduct an emergency visit to the border at 3 am.

But the best part is this bland sentence in the New York Times piece: “The list was described by three people familiar with it.” A lot of people must really have it in for Kobach, since leaking this list would obviously doom his appointment—assuming the demands themselves hadn’t already done it.

Like Ted Cruz, Kobach is truly an odious person who nobody likes. Even his fellow Kansans want nothing to do with him these days. Someone needs to give him a late night gig on Fox News and then the rest of us can forget he ever existed.