Rep. Grijalva Just Tested Positive for COVID-19. He Has Some Words for Mask-Refusing GOP Colleagues.

The Arizona congressman announced that he is symptom free—so far.

AP pool photograph

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Following the announcement this week that Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas)—who proudly refused to wear a mask in the halls of Congress—tested positive for COVID-19, other members of Congress acknowledged their concerns about possible infection. 

Today, 72-year-old Rep. Raúl Grijalva, who has represented Arizona since 2003 announced that he has tested positive for the virus. The Democratic congressman didn’t name names, but his statement was pointed in its criticism of his Republican colleagues who “routinely strut around the Capitol without a mask to selfishly make a political statement at the expense of their colleagues, staff and their families.” 

Read his full statement here. This far he is symptom free.

Only yesterday, Grijalva said this about paying attention to science when addressing the pandemic.

 

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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.

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