Republicans Finally Cave on Funds for Widespread Testing

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This is, as usual these days, beyond belief:

The Trump administration and congressional leaders closed in Sunday on a $400 billion-plus deal to renew funding for a small business loan program that ran out of money under crushing demand, aiming to pass the agreement into law within days.

….The agreement also would include $75 billion for hospitals and $25 billion for testing, which have been major Democratic demands. Some of the money in the small business program would be directed specifically to rural and minority businesses, according to people familiar with the plan who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe it.

What possible reason could there be for $25 billion in testing to be a “Democratic” demand? The single most unanimous agreement among experts is that we need to vastly increase testing and contact tracing before we start to loosen lockdowns and get back to (sort of) normal life. There’s literally not a single reason this should be a partisan issue.

But it is. For some reason Republicans resisted it for more than a week before caving in. What the hell is wrong with these people?

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

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