Case in point: Last Thursday, it was reported that there were 108,000 layoffs in January—the worst number since the Great Recession. But the stock market also hit 50,000 on Friday. Of course, any president would brag about the latter and play down the former, but Trump went much farther, congratulating himself repeatedly on achieving this […]
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But Project 2025 broke that pattern. For once, conservatives put their entire agenda in writing. Draft executive orders. Implementation timelines. Agency-by-agency restructuring plans. It was the rare case where the “we don’t know what they’ll actually do” excuse simply did not apply. The document was publicly available. So Trump couldn’t do his usual vagueness routine. […]
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The Free Press, the site she soon built in her own image, catered to people who agreed with her and who believed, preposterously, that the Times was too hard on Israel and too soft on trans children. It turns out that many of the people who hold these beliefs are older and quite wealthy. For […]
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We are under no professional obligation to treat with even-handedness the would-be architects of our demise. I suspect that a lot of people were not aware that Project 2025, the authoritarian blueprint for the second Trump administration, laid out a plethora of ideas geared specifically toward destroying the news media; many, like the destruction of […]
Read MoreIndeed, as Kessler noted in his final Fact Check column, fact-checking is in retreat everywhere. Meta ended its fact-checking program shortly before Trump took office; Google threw in the towel six months later, and Trump’s dismantlement of the United States Agency for International Development slashes funding for fact-checkers abroad. Globally, the Duke Reporter’s Lab reported […]
Read More“‘Outrage After ICE Officer Kills US Citizen in Minneapolis,’” Vance said, reading a headline from CNN. “Well, that’s one way to put it—and that is the way that many people in the corporate media have put this attack in the last 24 hours. And I say attack very, very intentionally.” “The way that the media, […]
Read More“‘Outrage After ICE Officer Kills US Citizen in Minneapolis,’” Vance said, reading a headline from CNN. “Well, that’s one way to put it—and that is the way that many people in the corporate media have put this attack in the last 24 hours. And I say attack very, very intentionally.” “The way that the media, […]
Read MoreMeanwhile, Republicans seem to be on the verge of panic. Anxious about midterms, the White House has spent months trying to influence red states to gerrymander their congressional lines to turn more seats in Congress. So far, that pressure campaign has had mixed results. The MAGA leader then went on to suggest that Republicans are […]
Read MoreMeanwhile, Republicans seem to be on the verge of panic. Anxious about midterms, the White House has spent months trying to influence red states to gerrymander their congressional lines to turn more seats in Congress. So far, that pressure campaign has had mixed results. The MAGA leader then went on to suggest that Republicans are […]
Read MoreWhat do you think happens to the next story about immigration enforcement abuses? Or the next investigation into deportation policy? Or any story that might embarrass the White House at an inconvenient time? Some of those stories will still get pitched. Some will still get made. CBS will still do critical coverage of the administration […]
Read MoreThese central truths are being unfortunately concealed by pointless distractions, most recently Trump’s dishonest account of America’s history with Venezuela’s oil industry. (Rodríguez, and others, have handily rebutted Trump’s assertions that Venezuela “stole” America’s oil. What’s more, Chevron, an American company, was still legally exporting Venezuelan oil—at least until Trump imposed the blockade.) Instead, here’s […]
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Beck asks his AI Washington what he thinks America’s biggest problem is. Washington starts to answer in a formal tone about dangers to the republic, but Beck cuts him off. “Could you just dumb it down a little bit?” The AI explains it has 29 documented points to share. Beck interrupts again: “Just speak in […]
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“When can we see that video? When will you release it?” Fox News correspondent Lucas Tomlinson asked Hegseth at the Reagan National Defense Forum. Hegseth was noncommittal. “We’re reviewing it, right now, to make sure, sources, methods—I mean, it’s an ongoing operation—TTPs [tactics, techniques, and procedures]. We’ve got operators out there doing this right now. […]
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It’s been something of a bleak period, watching the press make startling departures from telling the straight story about the Trump administration. TNR contributor Parker Molloy noted that, after Trump responded to the No Kings protest with an AI-generated video depicting him dumping gallons of shit on the protests from a fighter plane, the media […]
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At the crux of the lawsuit is that the Pentagon is engaging in viewpoint discrimination, which is generally forbidden by the First Amendment. Defense Department officials are not required to give out any press credentials at all, nor must they grant access to the Pentagon building itself. The CIA, for obvious reasons, does not have […]
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But that’s just the economics. There’s also morality to think about it, and the moral question is, is it up to the United States of America to decide who should be running another country? Maybe, in certain highly specific situations, like an immediate and severe humanitarian crisis—the slaughter of an ethnic minority, say—the United States, […]
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But one of them says: No, Texas A&M is number one. The other three look at him like he’s insane. They reach for their phones, they tap, tap, tap, and they show him the rankings. But he keeps insisting. Those polls are fake. It’s Texas A&M. Everybody says so. The conversation stalls. The liar has […]
Read MoreWhen Epstein’s emails leaked early in the week, Kelly didn’t minimize the story as Fox did, devoting the first 36 minutes of Wednesday’s show to the scandal. She used terms like “kiddie porn” and “barely legal” and “middle finger” and “Democrats are now salivating.” Regarding blame for the Epstein cover-up, she said: “Republicans are fucking […]
Read MorePresumably, it was Muslims among the crowd who cheered when, in his victory speech, the mayor-elect broke into Arabic, referencing the “Little Egypt” section of Astoria, Queens, known for its Muslim population. “We will fight for you because we are you,” Mamdani said. “Or, as we say on Steinway, ana minkum wa alaikum.” (This roughly […]
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But perhaps the most important feature of the media landscape today comes down to money. Specifically, the endless, flowing river of oligarchic monopoly money. Well-functioning media systems have generally included some kind of public constraint or oversight that keeps journalism from veering too far from its fundamental mission of informing the public. This public involvement […]
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This is certainly an “only in America” story, but I do not mean that in the normal, heroic sense. I mean it in the creepy, corporate, it’s-all-about-profit sense. CBS began life in 1927 as a radio network, expanding into television as that medium grew. It had entertainment and news divisions, and later sports; its news […]
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It is The Washington Post’s right, of course, to stand for whatever it and its owner wish it to stand for. If the owner of this magazine woke up tomorrow and decided that Murray Rothbard was right about everything and The New Republic was henceforth going to follow the Cato Institute line on all matters, […]
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Or … almost? As it turns out, Democrats are planning to take on the GOP—in a few weeks, anyway. “House Democrats are plotting to turn the August recess into the opening salvo of the midterms, including through town halls and organizing programs,” reports Politico, as the party is experiencing “renewed bravado after months in the […]
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Democrats don’t do this. When Trump calls Baltimore “rat infested” or posts videos of himself defecating on protesters, there’s no coordinated response. A few members of Congress might tweet about it. Some Democratic voters express outrage online. But there’s no sustained campaign to make it a defining scandal. There are no prime-time speeches on the […]
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Possible 2028 Democratic challengers, per Axios, include Representative Brendan Boyle and former Representative Conor Lamb, who have both been openly critical of the senator, as well as Representative Chris DeLuzio, who has made a name for himself as a progressive economic populist. The response from Fetterman, a man known for his volatile temperament, was bitter. […]
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Possible 2028 Democratic challengers, per Axios, include Representative Brendan Boyle and former Representative Conor Lamb, who have both been openly critical of the senator, as well as Representative Chris DeLuzio, who has made a name for himself as a progressive economic populist. The response from Fetterman, a man known for his volatile temperament, was bitter. […]
Read MoreThird, people in the anti-Trump camp should embrace a certain kind of media criticism. While CBS and the Post are intentionally moving right and are probably fine with losing some anti-Trump consumers, I’m not sure that the rest of the mainstream media is in that same place. They want to appear neutral but not lose […]
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“When authoritarians seize power, it is crucial to recognise courageous defenders of freedom who rise and resist,” the committee continued. In these warnings, it’s hard not to hear echoes of the United States today under Trump—the militarization of American cities, weaponization of government against political opponents, violations of civil liberties, deportation of dissidents, and attacks […]
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“When authoritarians seize power, it is crucial to recognise courageous defenders of freedom who rise and resist,” the committee continued. In these warnings, it’s hard not to hear echoes of the United States today under Trump—the militarization of American cities, weaponization of government against political opponents, violations of civil liberties, deportation of dissidents, and attacks […]
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My more paranoid self says the whole thing’s a conspiracy engineered by Fox News and Newsmax. I’ve long maintained that Fox and Newsmax ought to be investigated by the Federal Trade Commission as elderscams. These aren’t news networks; they’re transmission belts that use moronic agitprop to sort the elderly population for maximum credulity (median viewer […]
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So the coalition of people who defended Kimmel and objected to ABC’s decision was unusually large, powerful, and politically diverse. Even conservatives such as Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul said bluntly that Carr had overreached. Famous actors and actresses rallied behind him, with some threatening not to work with ABC in the future. Democratic […]
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