May 9, 2012

Checking in With Michele Bachmann…

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) signs a supporter's head.<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/teambachmann/6545315509/sizes/z/in/photostream/">TeamBachmann</a>/Flickr

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On Tuesday morning, newly christened Swiss citizen Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) blasted out the frantic email to her national supporter network, asking for money:

I’m reaching out to you today because I need your support to continue fighting in the U.S. House of Representatives against President Obama’s big government agenda.

A major development has just occurred in my race for the U.S. House of Representatives and I’m asking for your immediate help…

…You see, in retaliation for repeatedly standing up to President Obama on the national stage, liberal judges have redrawn the lines of my Minnesota Congressional District to try and wipe me off of the political map once and for all.

Their bias was so obvious they even gerrymandered my home—where my wonderful husband Marcus and I live—entirely out of my District and placed it into one held by a six-term Democrat incumbent!

Yikes. Also: totally false. The so-called major development that “just occured” actually happened in February, and in the interim period, Bachmann has sent no fewer than four fundraising emails calling attention to said major development. The “liberal judges” tasked with drawing up Minnesota’s new congressional districts were selected by the state’s chief justice, Lorie Gildea, who was appointed to the bench by former Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty. (Just two of the judges on the five-judge redistricting panel were Democratic appointees.)

Although Bachmann sounds deeply hurt that she and Marcus will no longer live in her district, the move actually makes her district more Republican. The redistricting panel swapped Bachmann’s Washington County, a more moderate county that includes suburbs of St. Paul, with a more conservative rural county. (If it makes her feel better, the district still includes Anoka, where she attended high school.) Democrat Jim Graves, the Minneapolis hotel magnate who’s challenging Bachmann this fall, has his hands full.

This isn’t out of the ordinary for Bachmann. As I reported last summer, Bachmann has for years falsely claimed that she was targeted for redistricting by Democrats when she served in the Minnesota state senate. (Then, as now, the redistricting was controlled by a Republican judge, and Bachmann was placed in a conservative-leaning district).

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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.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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