January 18, 2017

Bernie Sanders Just Roasted Trump’s Billionaire Pick for Education Secretary

“Do you think that if you were not a multibillionaire…that you would be sitting here today?”


Early on in Betsy DeVos’ confirmation hearing to become President-elect Donald Trump’s education secretary Tuesday afternoon, Sen. Bernie Sanders sized up the wealthy philanthropist and let loose: “Do you think that if you were not a multibillionaire, if your family had not made hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions, that you would be sitting here today?”

As my colleague Andy Kroll wrote in 2014, “the DeVoses sit alongside the Kochs, the Bradleys, and the Coorses as founding members of the modern conservative movement.” And as MoJo‘s Kristina Rizga documented in her new in-depth investigation, Betsy DeVos has been a fervent supporter of the Republican push for charter schools and vouchers—with a particular interest in, as Rizga puts it, “building God’s Kingdom through education.”

Watch DeVos’ confirmation hearing response—and Sanders’ continued grilling about free college education and tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans—below:

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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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