This is how they try to silence us 21MAI25

 MOTHER JONES is one of the news organizations that will not be intimidated by NOT MY pres drumpf / trump, NOT MY pres musk, NOT MY vp vance, their neo-nazi, fascist administration or the gop / greed over people-republican party. The current government is committed to fulfilling project 2025's goals including replacing our democratic Republic with an authoritarian theocratic oligarchy and is mobilizing all the politicians, companies and lawyers it can buy to attack not only our independent judicial system but the members of the free press who are committed to save us. PLEASE, if you can, donate to Mother Jones to keep them alive and kicking. No donation is too small so please give what you can ( I am a monthly donor ). Also please share with family, friends and coworkers. 

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WE’VE SURVIVED THEIR ATTACKS BEFORE—AND WILL AGAIN. BUT ONLY WITH YOUR SUPPORT.

The other day I sat onstage at a conference with three journalists from countries farther along the road to losing their democracies than the US: Hungary, Georgia, and Russia. The title of the panel was “The authoritarian’s playbook,” and we were there to talk about what antidemocratic leaders do to the press. There were some pretty grim parts to the conversation (“You should absolutely panic,” one of the journalists told us), but also uplifting ones (“I would like to tell the person I was when I left my country for exile that there is hope,” said another). The biggest takeaway for me was some advice from the Hungarian journalist: “You should do a stress test of your newsroom, find all the points of attack, and the things that you think, ‘eh, they are not going to do that,’ you should prepare for them to do.” Pretty sobering, but also practical advice! We have been doing that here at Mother Jones and our sister radio show Reveal, and I wanted to give you a glimpse behind the scenes. Consider this a report to our owners, because as you know, there is no billionaire or giant corporation that owns Mother Jones. The owners are all of you, who care about independent investigative journalism and want it to survive. And let me just say: The best way to help ensure our survival at this moment is to donate during our crucial membership drive that ends on May 31. Please don’t put it off any longer. Donate Today Here are some of the threats that we’re dealing with. Between Mother Jones and Reveal, we’ve had two huge lawsuits in the past few years—both of them over reporting that was truthful and ultimately validated in court—and lots of smaller, but equally painful ones. Mother Jones was sued by a dark-money Republican billionaire. Reveal was the target of litigation for its 18-month long investigation into US taxpayer dollars given to Planet Aid, a charity connected to an alleged cult. Planet Aid sued The Center for Investigative Reporting, and it took six years of expensive and headache-inducing litigation before we finally won. (If Elon Musk wants to find “waste, fraud, and abuse,” maybe he should read our reporting more often rather than insulting it.) Both these lawsuits meant millions of dollars in legal costs. Some of that came out of our pocket, along with untold hours of staff time—time that would otherwise have gone into journalism. I could swear that the gray in my hair also came in around that time. We were fortunate to have insurance, and lawyers who worked for a reduced fee. But there were plenty of costs—and some surprises, too. In the Mother Jones/VanderSloot case, we discovered that suddenly, insurers wouldn’t cover us anymore, even though we won before going to trial. Of 42 companies we tried, 40 turned us down. The one policy we were offered that we could actually afford had annual premiums that cost 55 percent more and a 600 percent higher deductible. We took it, of course, and I’m glad we did, because in the years that followed, there were three new lawsuits filed against us. “The VanderSloot case was one of the first cases where we saw a plaintiff using litigation as a way of punishing a news organization,” David Snyder, who was one of the lawyers on the case and now runs the California First Amendment Coalition. “It was clearly intended to inflict pain.”

Donald Trump knows this game well. In just the past year, Trump has pursued litigation against ABC, CBS, the Des Moines Register, a pollster (both of those last two for saying Kamala Harris might win Iowa), the book publisher Simon & Schuster (for publishing interviews Bob Woodward did with Trump), and CNN (about its use of the term “the Big Lie”). He’s also threatened to sue the New York Times, the Pulitzer Prize board, and various people who write books about him. His allies, including Elon Musk, Kash Patel, and Pete Hegseth, have also threatened to sue Rachel Maddow, the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and others. There will be more lawsuits from Trump and his allies and anyone else who doesn’t like the press uncovering powerful people’s secrets. We’ll have to defend ourselves and our journalism again, and who knows what it will take this time. Donate Now

Lawsuits are not the only risk we need to gird ourselves for. There are digital attacks, all the time—the standard scammer variety, but creepier stuff as well. For a decade and a half, the US government has been ratcheting up prosecutions of whistleblowers, and now there are more people who want to step forward and report wrongdoing than ever before (isn’t that amazing?). We have to install the digital tools that can keep them, and our reporters, safe, and we have to prepare for potentially being prosecuted if the government doesn’t like what a whistleblower has to say.  Then there are the trolls, jerks, and edgelords who swarm anyone daring to publish stuff they disagree with, especially women and people of color. We have to invest to protect journalists from harassment for reporting the truth, for example by scrubbing their private information off the internet. That costs money too. And then there is, you know, the economy. Trump’s tariffs may or may not tank it completely this year, but any amount of uncertainty is scary when, like Mother Jones and the CIR, you leave it all on the field, budgetarily speaking, every year. We operate without a safety net or financial wiggle room. In an economic slowdown, which is probably the most optimistic scenario for the rest of this year, advertising budgets are one of the first things to go. Advertising makes up only 6 percent of our budget, but a modest decline could easily cost us, say, $200,000—that’s several reporters’ salaries. Foundations account for a smaller share of our budget than they do at most nonprofit news organizations, just 20 percent—but if foundations pull back on giving, as can happen when stock portfolios take a beating (or when, as is happening right now, so many worthy organizations are being decimated by budget cuts) that would tear a painful hole into our newsroom. Radio stations that carry our sister show, Reveal, pay a modest fee for it. Will public-media budget cuts cause them to reconsider? It might! That leaves subscribers and donors. They—you!—have been incredible in standing by Mother Jones over the years, including through past recessions. Will that be true this time? That’s the thing that I keep thinking of when I lie awake at night. I think so, because when has there been a time that Mother Jones’ and Reveal’s investigative reporting has been more needed? But we’re about to find out, because we’re coming to the end of this crucial $150,000 membership drive. If we make it to the goal, it’s a sign that our community is holding strong. If we fall short (and we’re falling short right now!), Houston, we have a problem. Onward, Monika Bauerlein, CEO

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