Yes, Tammy Duckworth’s Ancestors Served in the Revolution. Now She’ll Serve in the Senate.

War hero defeats incumbent Illinois Senator Mark Kirk

Tammy DuckworthHarry E. Walker/TNS/ZUMAPRESS

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Tammy Duckworth won an Illinois Senate seat today, according to ABC News and Huffington Post exit polls. Duckworth will take Republican incumbent Mark Kirk’s seat in a race that will help determine whether Democrats will hold a Senate majority. Duckworth, a veteran who lost both her legs during the Iraq War, is currently serving her second term in Congress, representing Illinois’ 8th district.

Duckworth held a strong lead throughout the race: Illinois typically leans Democratic during presidential elections and Hillary Clinton has consistently been favored to win the state. Donald Trump’s campaign hasn’t helped Kirk, a first-term senator who was one of the first Republican lawmakers to rescind his support for the candidate. Kirk was roundly criticized in the last weeks of the campaign when, during a candidates debate, he questioned Duckworth’s family heritage. Kirk suffered a stroke in 2012, and though he was able to resume office the next year, his health raised concerns among his supporters.

Duckworth previously served as the head of the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs and as the assistant secretary to the Department of Veterans Affairs. During her time in Congress, Duckworth focused on veterans’ issues: She set up a hotline for veterans, helped cut waste in the Department of Defense, and introduced a bill to ensure breast-pumping and nursing stations for women in airports. As a senator, she says she looks forward to taking her work to the next level, with a focus on reducing student loan debt, pushing for criminal justice reform, and growing Illinois’ economy.

For more on Duckworth, read our recent interview and our profile.

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In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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