Ted Cruz, Who Joked Yesterday About Locking Up His Opponent, Renews Call for Civility in Politics

“America is better than this.”

Daisuke Tomita /AP

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After another round of reports of explosives being sent to prominent Democratic figures, Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz issued a statement condemning the attempted bombings and—as he has done with increasing frequency during his tight reelection campaign—calling for a de-escalation of political rhetoric:

“Political disagreements are fine, even healthy, but we should always be civil and respect each other’s humanity,” he tweeted.

A day earlier, Cruz joked about throwing his Democratic opponent, Rep. Beto O’Rourke, in a prison cell with Hillary Clinton. And on Monday, he appeared at a rally in Houston with President Donald Trump, who ran for office in part on the idea of prosecuting his political rival. In his speech, Trump suggested that a group of Central American asylum seekers were a violent mob (if not in fact terrorists) who were sent to the United States by Democrats. Last week, Trump praised Republican Rep. Greg Gianforte for body-slamming a reporter who was trying to ask a question about health care.

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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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