May 21, 2019

Kris Kobach Needs a 24/7 Government Jet

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach on election night, conceding defeat to Democrat Laura Kelly, who crushed him in a state that Trump won by 21 points.Mark Reinstein/ZUMA

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Everyone’s favorite story from last night is about Kris Kobach’s set of demands before he’d accept a job as Donald Trump’s “immigration czar”:

24/7 access to a government jet! Just in case the czar needs to conduct an emergency visit to the border at 3 am.

But the best part is this bland sentence in the New York Times piece: “The list was described by three people familiar with it.” A lot of people must really have it in for Kobach, since leaking this list would obviously doom his appointment—assuming the demands themselves hadn’t already done it.

Like Ted Cruz, Kobach is truly an odious person who nobody likes. Even his fellow Kansans want nothing to do with him these days. Someone needs to give him a late night gig on Fox News and then the rest of us can forget he ever existed.

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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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