In Voting to Back Marjorie Taylor Greene, the GOP Goes Full Q

Today, House Republicans faced a choice. Most sided with hate and lies.

Caroline Brehman/ZUMA

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In the days leading up to Thursday’s scheduled House vote to remove Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from her congressional committees, reports emerged depicting an excruciating, intra-party war among Republicans over what to do about the freshman Georgia Republican after new media attention highlighted her old social media activity and statements confirming Greene’s rabid support for executing Democrats, for QAnon, and other hate-filled conspiracy theories. Those unhinged views, of course, were known long before Greene entered Congress. But according to journalists on Capitol Hill, the renewed focus on the GOP’s first QAnon member represented an agonizing new crisis for the party. 

But come Thursday afternoon, you could hardly tell. Only eleven Republicans voted for the Democrats’ move to oust Greene from her committees. It was mostly a powerful show of support from some of the GOP’s top officials for someone supposedly ripping their party apart. Despite all the hand-wringing over an existential crisis within the GOP, their votes to protect Greene actually appeared quite a simple task. Still, the resolution passed and Greene was stripped of committee assignments. 

This strong defense of Greene from Republicans was something of a foregone conclusion. The day before, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy declined to use his own authority to sanction Greene, and instead accused Democrats of a power grab targeting one of his colleagues. McCarthy insisted that Greene had apologized for her toxic views in a closed-door meeting, a statement which reportedly prompted Republicans in the room to give her a standing ovation.

Whatever contrition Greene may have signaled in private, she remains defiantly opposed to apologizing in public or to making any disavowal of her past endorsements of political violence and unhinged conspiracies. But for too many Republicans, what she said was enough to convince them that they want QAnon and the violent hate associated with it in their party. They’ll even clap for it.

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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.

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