Mitch McConnell Doesn’t Seem to Care Where the Babies Are

The Senate majority leader makes as much pretty clear with a lame joke.

On Saturday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was greeted by a group of activists chanting “Vote you out” and “Where are the babies?”—a reference to the Trump administration’s immigration policy that has separated more than 2,000 children from their parents—outside a restaurant parking lot in Louisville, Kentucky.

According to videos of the incident, McConnell left the parking lot without once acknowledging the protesters or responding to their questions. “If the Leader comments on being called a fascist and a supporter of ICE by a small handful of extremist protesters then I will let you know,” McConnell’s spokesman David Popp told the Washington Post after the encounter quickly went viral on social media.

After two days, McConnell finally responded to his “extremist protesters.” The Senate majority leader made it personal with an “MM” sign-off:

McConnell’s belated tweet on Monday attempted to humorously address his critics at home and those who similarly approached his wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, outside the couple’s Washington townhouse last month. That effort comes as the Trump administration struggles to reunite migrant children who have been separated from their families in time to meet a court-ordered deadline.

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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.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

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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