August 15, 2017

A Member of Trump’s Diversity Council Wants Steve Bannon Fired

And that’s just the first step.

White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.Michael Kappeler/ZUMA

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One member of President Donald Trump’s National Diversity Council has a message for the president: Fire Steve Bannon.

Javier Palomarez, the president and CEO of the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, said in a press release that condemning white supremacy “should have been a no-brainer” for Trump after a white nationalist rally turned violent in Charlottesville over the weekend. Instead, Palomarez said, Bannon, the White House’s chief strategist, and other members of the administration have used “winks and nods” to win votes from “the most evil elements of our society.” 

On Monday, after widespread criticism from both parties, Trump finally issued what many saw as a reluctant condemnation of white supremacist violence. Palomarez did not say he would resign from the diversity council. On Tuesday, Scott Paul of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, a nonprofit group, became the fourth business leader to resign from Trump’s American Manufacturing Council in the immediate aftermath of the president’s tepid Charlottesville response.

Palomarez made clear that he believes the blame “ultimately resides” with the president. Firing Bannon, he said, is just the first step.

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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.

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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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