June 21, 2016

Illegal Immigrant Tries to Kill Donald Trump!

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An illegal immigrant who is apparently mentally ill tried to grab a policeman’s gun yesterday so that he could shoot Donald Trump. I gather that it was a fairly half-hearted effort, but still: “Illegal Immigrant Tries to Kill Trump”! Where are the headlines? Jim Geraghty comments:

The recent chaos on the Trump campaign, as big a story as it is, shouldn’t cause this event to disappear from the public’s attention. It illuminates the disconcerting fact that once legal temporary immigrants enter the country, the authorities have no real way to keep track of them. And a lot of them take advantage of that fact….We need border security. But even if you completely sealed the southern border, America would still have a significant number of illegal immigrants walking its streets.

Quite so. But forget the media. We all know they’re in thrall to political correctness and won’t print anything that might cast Mexican immigrants in an unfavorable light. But what about Trump? His Twitter feed is empty. Why isn’t he shouting about this from the rooftops? I mean, it totally vindicates his point about building a wall and—

Wait. What? I should read the whole story. Fine. Here’s the BBC:

A British man arrested while trying to grab a policeman’s gun at a Donald Trump rally in Las Vegas has been described in his home town as “a strange one”….Surrey Police said it was “providing family liaison support on behalf of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office”….The BBC understands he lived with his mother Lynne in Dorking, Surrey until about 18 months ago.

Surrey police? Dorking? A British man? What’s that all about?

Ah, I get it. Michael Sandford is white. And he’s from Britain. A wall wouldn’t keep him out. And anyway, Trump’s base doesn’t hate residents of Dorking who overstay their visas. He’s not the right kind of illegal immigrant. So we’ll all ignore him.

POSTSCRIPT: On another note, Geraghty, like many conservatives, complains that we have “no real way to keep track” of visitors who overstay their visas. That’s true. But what exactly do they expect? GPS tracking collars? It’s not as if someone who’s illegally overstaying their visa is going to voluntarily check in at their nearest consulate. And even if we did track them somehow, what good would it do? I’m puzzled by this whole thing.

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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.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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