Rand Paul Slams John McCain Over…MoJo Map?

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.)David Becker/ZumaPress.com

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Last week my colleague Tasneem Raja and I published a map highlighting Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain’s long, loud history of proposing American military interventions in foreign countries. (His 2000 “rogue-state rollback” strategy, for instance, called for American-backed regime change in North Korea, Iraq, and Libya.) Apparently, it struck a nerve with McCain’s colleagues. On Friday, in an interview with Buzzfeed‘s McKay Coppins, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, one of the party’s loudest anti-war voices, highlighted our guide while taking a dig at McCain’s push for military intervention in Syria:

“There was a funny article the other day in Mother Jones—did you see it? About one of my colleagues?” he asked.

He was trying to do the polite, senatorial thing by not mentioning his “colleague” by name. But when his vague prompt was met with a blank look during an interview with BuzzFeed, he scrapped the pretense of diplomacy and charged forward.

“It ranked the different countries on how eager Sen. [John] McCain wanted to be involved [militarily],” he explained, not even attempting to contain his amusement. “So, like, for getting involved in Syria, there’s five Angry McCains. For getting involved in the Sudan, there’s two Angry McCains. And there’s a little picture of him. You know, he was for getting involved to support [former Libyan president Muammar] Gaddafi before he was for overthrowing Gaddafi. He was for supporting [former Egyptian president Hosni] Mubarak before he was for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood before he was for supporting the generals.”

You can read Coppins’ full piece here.

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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.

payment methods

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