10 Fun Facts About Wyoming Senate Candidate Liz Cheney

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Liz Cheney is running for Senate. On Tuesday, the former State Department official and daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney kicked off her primary challenge to Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) with a YouTube video warning that, among other things, President Obama is “working to preemptively disarm America”:

Cheney has never run for elected office, but she’s no stranger to national politics. Here’s a quick primer:

1. She moved to Wyoming last year.

2. She is Darth Vader Dick Cheney’s daughter. (Did we mention that?)

3. She thinks the president isn’t serious about disarming Al Qaeda. It’s a good thing he waited until after he killed Osama bin Laden.

4. Not only that, but she’s convinced he’s doing this because he actually wants to make America weaker: “The president has so effectively diminished American strength abroad that there is no longer a question of whether this was his intent. He is working to pre-emptively disarm the United States.”

5. She thinks it’s “libelous” to call waterboarding “torture.”

6. Her organization, Keep America Safe, referred to lawyers who advocated for the rights of Guantanamo detainees as the “Al Qaeda Seven” and suggested they sympathized with terrorists:

7.

8. She fought the construction of the Park 51 Islamic center in Lower Manhattan, arguing that it would be a victory for terrorists:

9. She defended birthers by explaining that “people are fundamentally uncomfortable and fundamentally I think increasingly uncomfortable with an American president who seems to be afraid to defend America, stand up for what we believe in.”

10. She supported the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. No really.

Wyoming, a state with two working escalators, has two senators in Washington due to the infallibility of the Founding Fathers. The official state dinosaur is the triceratops. In February 2012, legislators in Cheyenne briefly considered building an aircraft carrier to prepare for a societal collapse.

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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.

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