September 7, 2017

Trump Takes Tweet Request from Pelosi Over DACA

The unexpected message came just hours after the president cut a deal with Democrats over the debt ceiling.

Bill Clark/ZUMA

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Amid a national uproar over the Trump administration’s announcement ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program this week, President Donald Trump on Thursday appeared to try and reassure the initiative’s 800,000 recipients that they wouldn’t face deportation—at least for the next six months. 

The unexpected tweet came one day after the president insisted he had “no second thoughts” about rolling back the program.

What happened? It turns out, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called up Trump this morning hoping to convince him to send a message of hope to Dreamers. A Democratic aide told the Daily Beast: “Pelosi told her colleagues at a whip meeting this morning that she spoke to Trump this morning via phone and asked him to tweet this to make clear Dreamers won’t be subject to deportation in a six-month window.”

Pelosi’s role in influencing Trump’s tweets came just hours after Trump infuriated Republican leaders by cutting a deal with Democrats over the debt ceiling.

In fact, DACA recipients whose statuses are slated to expire in March do have something to worry about: recipients whose statuses expire in March are required to renew their applications before the October 5 deadline. 

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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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