December 13, 2016

Here’s the Moment Trump’s Future Secretary of State Received an Award From Putin

“This ushers in a new era of cooperation.”

 

The wait is over: President-elect Donald Trump finally announced his nominee for secretary of state Tuesday morning: Rex Tillerson, ExxonMobil CEO and official “friend” of Russia.

In June 2013, Tillerson and other oil company executives were awarded the Order of Friendship by President Vladimir Putin—a high honor previously bestowed upon a former basketball coach in Ohio and a Russian art collector in Minnesota. Tillerson received the award after signing an agreement in 2011 with OAO Rosneft, a Russian state-owned oil company that gave ExxonMobil and Rosneft access to Russia’s rich Arctic energy resources. (That relationship became more complicated when the United States slapped Russia with sanctions over its annexation of Crimea and interference in Ukraine in 2014.)

Watch Putin announce the award and declare a new period of “full-fledged cooperation” in this video (above), published originally in full by the Kremlin.

 

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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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