Darrell Issa Is Retiring, Just Like Everyone Else

A record number of House Republicans have already thrown in the towel.

Charlie Neuman/ZUMA

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Democrats’ path to retaking the House just got a little bit easier. Again. On Wednesday, longtime California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa announced that he would retire from Congress rather than seek re-election this fall. Issa’s departure brings the number of GOP retirements from the House to 30—a record for the party—and comes just two days after another embattled Southern Californian, Rep. Ed Royce, announced his own departure. It is a gift to Democrats who had already put Issa’s district near the top of their list of 2018 targets, and who came within 1,621 votes of toppling the former car-alarm magnate in 2016.

After Trump’s election, progressive activists had made a special target of Issa. They did so both because of his newfound vulnerability—Issa’s affluent suburban district, like others in Orange County and the Atlanta and Houston areas, was one of those places where long-suffering Democrats made substantial gains in 2016—and because his notoriety. Issa cultivated a reputation as a partisan attack dog as chairman of the House oversight committee and took the lead in publicizing Obama-era scandals, such as Fast and Furious. His 49th district has become a hub for “Resistance” groups; just one day before Issa announced he would not seek re-election, a San Diego Indivisible chapter held a retirement party for the congressman outside one of his district offices.

With the retirements of Issa and Royce, two of the so-called “California Seven”—Republican members of Congress from Golden State districts won by Hillary Clinton—have now thrown up a white flag. It’s your move, Dana Rohrabacher.

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We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

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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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