March 2, 2016

Ted Cruz Pulls Off Wins in Texas and Oklahoma

The home-state senator will likely share delegates with Trump, while Rubio may be shut out.

CQ Roll Call via AP Images

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Ted Cruz defied Donald Trump’s rolling victory party, pulling off a win in his home state of Texas, networks are projecting now. The win was not totally unexpected, but it was crucial for Cruz, who desperately needed a victory in a Southern state. Cruz still trails Trump badly in the delegate count, but at least he was able to show that he could hold his own state against the Trump juggernaut.

The big question may be how well Trump and Rubio do. A candidate must win at least 20 percent of the vote to qualify for any chunk of the Lone Star State’s 155 delegates—the big prize of Super Tuesday. Trump will almost certainly make that threshold, but at the moment Rubio is hovering just below 20 percent, meaning that Cruz and Trump could share all the delegates.

UPDATE, March 1, Tuesday, 9:15 p.m. ET: Multiple networks are calling Oklahoma for Cruz, too, giving him a second win on a night that’s otherwise belonged largely to Trump.

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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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