January 28, 2021

AOC to Cruz: You Almost Had Me Murdered

Caroline Brehman/ZUMA

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If you, like me, have been struggling to muster interest in the GameStop news cycle, I’m here to tell you that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has given us a reason to care.

After Ted Cruz attempted to get cute and show some rare agreement with the New York congresswoman by joining her criticism of the trading app Robinhood for blocking certain GameStop trades, Ocasio-Cortez promptly told Cruz to fuck off. While lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have said the move is unfair to rank and file investors, the Texas senator had a prominent role in backing pro-Trump demands to overturn the election, a role that gave succor to the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol. Since the January 6 riot, Ocasio-Cortez has been candid about the trauma she faced, telling followers in an Instagram Live that she thought she “was going to die” in the attack.

In doing so, Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet went beyond one of her trademark social media dunks, deploying a clear directness that offers a stark contrast to the Republican party’s current efforts to obfuscate what they did this month: immediately following a murderous attack on the Capitol, an insurrection their party’s leader had directly incited, a majority of House Republicans, joined by prominent senators like Cruz, went back inside to deliver exactly what the mob wanted.

Keep Ocasio-Cortez’s straightforward account in mind, as Republicans are all but certain to keep misrepresenting the facts of the insurrection throughout Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial.

And with that, feel free to go back and join me in avoiding news about GameStop.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist 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 need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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