March 27, 2018

Good News and Bad News on the Census

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The relentless drive of Republicans to maintain their gerrymandering edge in elections is truly a wonder. In Pennsylvania they’re outraged that a judge has made district maps only mildly pro-Republican instead of comically pro-Republican. In North Carolina, they’d allow blacks to cast only three-fifths of a vote if they could get away with it. On a national level they’ve tried to sabotage the census, because the people who are hardest to count are mostly Democrats. They’ve finally sort of caved on that—admitting they need more money and giving up on trying to appoint a Census director who thought that North Carolina’s approach to redistricting was just peachy—so now they’ve moved on their latest wheeze: a citizenship question. Their hope is that this will scare people away from filling out the census form, thus reducing the recorded population of Hispanic-heavy states. There’s also a very subtle effect of this on the state level that might help Republicans keep their gerrymandering edge in 2020.

They just never quit. Some of their scams are obvious and some are subtle, but the goal is always the same: to reduce the voting power of anyone who’s likely to lean Democratic. Ladies and gentlemen, this is your 21st century Republican Party.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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