December 5, 2017

Jeff Flake Makes Meaningless Gesture Three Days After Voting for Despised Tax Bill

The Arizona Senator donated $100 to Doug Jones.

Jeff FlakeBill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Newscom

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Arizona Senator Jeff Flake just donated $100 in support of Doug Jones, Alabama’s Democratic candidate for Senate—an implicit rebuke of President Trump, who officially endorsed Jones’s embattled opponent Roy Moore on Monday, and the RNC, which renewed funding for Moore’s campaign Monday evening.

“Country over party,” Flake, a Republican, tweeted Tuesday afternoon. 

Flake has been outspoken in his criticism of Moore, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women. He stated in November that if he were in Alabama, he would “run to the polling place” to vote for a Democrat over Moore. “A Roy Moore victory is no victory for the GOP and the nation,” Flake tweeted on Monday. 

Sen. Flake made the donation just three days after voting for the Republican tax bill, which, as we’ve reported, would overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest Americans and add more than $1 trillion in deficit spending over 10 years. 

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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.

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