#inauguration coverage

[tmarshconnors]

Trump 2025 inauguration

I’m not being funny, but whoever penned the script for Sky News during Trump’s inauguration must have been having a laugh! The entire broadcast was a parade of biased drivel, utterly dismissive of the occasion’s significance. It was as though the script was written with a sneer, dripping with disdain for the newly elected president. This wasn’t journalism; it was a poorly veiled hit piece masquerading as news coverage.

What was genuinely pathetic was the sheer lack of objectivity. In what should have been a moment of solemn reportage, the tone was snide, the commentary loaded with thinly-veiled contempt. It’s one thing to have an opinion, but to let it dominate what should be impartial coverage? That’s a dereliction of journalistic duty. Instead of focusing on the historical importance of a peaceful transfer of power, they chose to turn it into a spectacle of derision.

Sky News failed its audience that day by serving up a script that was more suited to a late-night comedy skit than a serious news broadcast. This sort of slanted storytelling erodes public trust in media institutions. It was an absolute joke, but the laugh is on them for squandering an opportunity to uphold journalistic integrity.

[johnnyshrine]

★ 020 // “Birthday Wish”

[wilwheaton]

The crisis part of this is that Trump needs to stop breaking the law. The nonsense of trying to unilaterally shut down whole parts of the government, cancer research and everything else has to stop. The whole Musk operation. No more breaking federal laws. There’s a budget. The President can’t ignore the law. How to make that argument? Musk gave a bunch of kids access to your monthly Social Security check and all your financial data. They can stop anyone’s check at any time. That’s the central message. That has to stop. The larger political message is that Trump is taking away your health care and starting a trade war to jack up your prices all so that he and his billionaire friends can get huge tax cuts. Remember that the clearest poll data we’ve gotten since the inauguration is that “billionaire advisors” are super unpopular and Musk specifically is very unpopular. That’s the outline of the whole message. You’re about to lose a lot of stuff – your health care coverage and a bunch of money to inflation so Elon and Trump and their pals can get a tax cut.

What Are Democrats Supposed to Do?

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

Trump and Markle Timeline

A lot of you have asked, so here we go! Coincidences or karmically linked together? You decide!

I have no skills, knowledge, or talent in astrology or mystic arts, so I have no idea if there's anything in their charts or cards that ties them together. I'm just going by the major events in their timelines and...y'all, it gets a lil' weird, how closely in sync their trajectories are.

Also - there are other similarities in their PR, language/word saladness but I haven't really been tracking those (though I do have some notes from anons on that). My interest has mainly been in the overlapping of events and career milestones that keep happening. I'm listing here only close dates/events where there's an overlap. There are some significant dates in Meghan's timeline where there's no corresponding Trump activity and vice versa; those are omitted.

(Note: This is not a political discussion. This is a timeline recap. Comments will be monitored and deleted if containing political commentary. Reblogs are on but if the reblogs get political, I will be turning them off.)

August 2010: The Beginning

Meghan: Cast in Suits (which isn't actually named Suits yet)

Trump: Gives an interview to Wolf Blitzer/CNN in which he reveals/cements his political alignment with the Republican Party after about 20 years of aligning with the Democrats.

Early 2011: The Stepping Stone to New Careers

Meghan: January 19 - Suits is ordered to series by USA, which gives her steady, regular work for the first time in her career.

Trump: February 10 - Gives a speech at CPAC, which is the first time he's seriously considered for work in US politics.

Springtime 2011: Launching New Careers

Meghan: June 2 - early previews of Suits premiere, June 23 - Suits ordered to series

Trump: May 2 - lampooned at the White House Correspondents Dinner, which is said to be when he decided to dedicate serious resources to politics

August 2011

Meghan: August 16 - Marries Trevor (there are conflicting dates - some sources cite a September wedding, others cite an August wedding. Wikipedia says August 16th so I'm going with that here)

Trump: August 15 - gives major Fox News interview, thought to be is his first significant policy-focused interview.

Summer 2013

Meghan: August - divorces Trevor

Trump: May - first reports of serious research into a 2016 presidential campaign

May 2014: The Stars Start To Line Up

Meghan: Meets and starts dating Cory Vitello

Trump: Gives speech in DC promising to run for election in 2016

2015

Meghan: March 8 - gives UN Women speech, which puts her on the map insofar as a charity platform/signature cause for advocacy.

Trump: June 15 - declares candidacy for President in 2016 race

May 2016

Meghan: May 2 - Meets Harry at Toronto Invictus Games dinner, which is cooked by Cory; they start messing around.

Trump: May 3 - Becomes the presumptive Republican nominee for President

July 2016

Meghan: July 22 - Dumps Cory, making it official with Harry

Trump: July 21 - formally accepts Republican nomination for President

October 2016:

Meghan: October 30 - Camilla Tominey outs relationship with Harry (even though Meghan has been teasing it throughout the month)

Trump: October 28 - Comey announces investigation into Clinton email server, which begins changing the tide of the election to Trump's favor.

November 8, 2016: The Launch

Meghan: KP love shield confirms she's dating Harry, she enters public consciousness

Trump: Wins the presidential election

January 2017

Meghan: January 22 - arrives in India for charity mission, her first major global philanthropy initiative

Trump: January 20 - Inauguration Day, takes office

May 17, 2017: Foundation Starts Cracking

Meghan: Arrives in London for Pippa's wedding, begins trying to take over the PR coverage

Trump: Mueller investigation begins

October 2017: PR Cracks Start to Show

Meghan: October 1 - Toronto IG closing ceremony, where she's spotted working closely with paparazzi for photos of her and Harry

Trump: October 3 - Paper towel incident at Hurricane Maria relief center in Puerto Rico, video footage of which goes viral and criticism is widespread

May 2018

Meghan: May 19 - marries Harry

Trump: May 21 - orders investigation into Mueller probe

May 2019: Buckle Up, Y'all - It's Downhill From Here

Meghan: May 6 - Archie is born

Trump: May 8 - buries the Mueller Report

August 2019

Meghan: Archie scandals and private flights fiasco

Trump: Ukraine whistleblowers start reporting on him

September 2019

Meghan: Gives the "No one asked me if I'm OK" interview and announces several lawsuits

Trump: First impeachment proceedings begin

November 2019

Meghan: Demoted by the BRF

Trump: House impeachment trial starts

December 2019

Meghan: With Archie, moves out of the UK

Trump: House of Representatives levy impeachment charges

January 2020

Meghan: Megxit and Sandringham Summit

Trump: Senate impeachment trial takes place

Spring 2020: Downfall Accelerates

Meghan: Revenge tour is undermined by COVID fears; lockdowns prevent her from capitalizing on Megxit momentum

Trump: Bungles US response and leadership to COVID

November 2020

Meghan: November 25 - publishes NYT oped on her miscarriage

Trump: November 7 - presidential election called for Biden

Early 2021: Semi-Exile

Meghan: Oprah interview followed very quickly by Philip's passing

Trump: January 6th and second impeachment proceedings

Summer 2022: The Comebacks Start

Meghan: Hague Invictus, Platinum Jubilee, Image relaunch, Queen's funeral

Trump: Supports candidates for midterm elections, demonstrating relevance and influence still remains in American politics.

November 2022

Meghan: November 21 - Netflix docuseries is announced, given a release date

Trump: November 15 - formally declares candidacy for reelection in 2024

March 2024: Popularity Resurgence

Meghan: March 14 - launches American Riviera Orchard and returns to social media

Trump: March 12 - becomes the presumptive Republican nominee for president

January 2025

Meghan: January 15 - original release date for new Netflix series

Trump: January 20 - Inauguration Day, retakes office

March 4, 2025

Meghan: WLM's actual release date

Trump: First State of the Union speech for second term

[basedhighsenberg]

$10 says this will be used as a false flag to garner support for universalized healthcare.

"Private health insurance companies should have no right to use an algorithm to deny people coverage. That right should only belong to the government"- esque manifesto dropping when the shooter is in custody right before Trump's inauguration.

[sceletaflores]

GIRL FIRST SON PATRICK??? OMFG #NEEDTHAT

aurrrr this is all the west wings fault <///3

maybe you're a senator’s daughter, maybe the speaker of the house's daughter, or or OR maybe you're the vp’s daughter...hear me out okay just walk with me real quick...

president zweig is a close friend of your mother. they went to law school together, they both went on to become very prominent and well respected political figures in new hampshire, they're both credited with drafting the bill responsible for dropping your states poverty rate below eight percent. the lowest in the country.

no one was surprised when the zweig campaign announced your mother as their vice-presidential running mate. no one was surprised when president zweig won the election 303 to 232.

despite your parents being friends, you and patrick weren't that close growing up. he was older than you, six years older. by the time you were freshly enrolled in one of new hampshire's fancy private schools, he was already at the academy. all the way down in florida, a whole twenty two hours away.

you haven't seen each other since his father won the election two years ago, when the two of you awkwardly waltzed together at the inaugural ball after some encouraging from your parents.

now, today is the president's birthday and the white house was hosting his party. it’s the the first time you've been home in nearly two months, you've been spending so much time in new york prepping to start your third year at yale in six weeks.

you haven't seen patrick all day, not even at the dinner held earlier in the day for close friends and family of the president. you weren't entirely shocked that he was missing though. your mom makes sure to dish on all the scandals he's gotten into over the last two years. spreading the hot gossip to you over the phone nearly every time she calls you, but it's nothing you didn't already know.

patrick's face is plastered to trashy "news" websites and magazines almost every week. the media is more than happy report on all the alleged partying, drug use, and girls the first son seems to frequently indulge in. his tennis hardly gets any coverage these days.

you feel bad for patrick, but not bad enough to stopping read about him.

your nursing your second flute of champagne when you feel it. the presence of someone looming behind you, of a pair of eyes zeroing in on you.

"there you are," a deep voice rings out from behind you, along with the sharp click of dress shoes making their way closer to you on the marble floor. "i've been looking for you."

your dress swishes as you turn to face him, the fabric floating around your ankles delicately.

"patrick," you start to greet with a polite smile, but whatever else you were planning on saying gets caught in your throat at the sight of him.

two years doesn't sound like a long time. it's not really a long time, in the grand scheme of things, but goddamn has patrick changed a lot.

he lost all the boyish looks he had before. he grew into his big ears and lanky build. now he's all broad shoulders and toned muscle that you see even through his tailored deep blue suit.

the pictures plastered to the front of magazines do not do him justice. he's fucking hot now. he has the same green eyes and the same curly hair, but there's a depth and intensity to him now, a magnetism that draws you in. the sharp lines of his jaw, his bearded jaw, the way his suit fits him perfectly, the way a faint hint of a smirk plays on his lips.

everything about him exudes a sort of cocky confidence that has heat stirring in your core.

"professor," he nods, bringing his glass to his lips for slow sip of the amber liquid filling it. whiskey, you can smell it. "god, how long has it been? " he asks, slipping his hand in the pocket of his fitted dress pants.

butterflies erupt in your stomach at the old nickname, no one's called you that in years. your own mother doesn't even call you that anymore. you can't believe he remembered. at least all the coke didn't fry his brain.

"two years," you supply helpfully, trying your best to keep your voice steady.

"wow," he drawls, taking a small step towards you. he smells good, like something sharp and lightly spiced. it burns your nose in a good way, not the same way his old abercrombie cologne did. "you're like," he pauses, trailing his eyes over your face, "a grown up now."

you're flustered by the way he's looking at you, warmth rushes to your cheeks embarrassingly. "so are you," you manage to reply, though it comes out a bit breathless. you take a sip of your champagne, trying to be casual. the bubbles tickle your tongue, a faint distraction from the intensity of patrick's presence.

he nods slowly, taking another sip of his whiskey. you watch the way his throat moves as he swallows, the overwhelming urge to trace your tongue along his skin burns hot inside your stomach.

his eyes lazily scan you body, shamelessly getting his greedy fill of the way your dior dress sits pretty on the curves that weren't there the last time he saw you.

he swallows. “you look good,” he says to your tits, pink tongue sliding across his bottom lip enticingly. he flicks his attention up to your face, his eyes dark and predatory, “really fuckin’ good.”

heat floods your whole body, you fight the urge to shift under his heavy gaze. no, you tell yourself strictly, i refuse to be one of those girls.

you're nothing like all the actress/singers/models that bend and break the second patrick looks at them. you're a student on the dean's list at fucking yale, you were your high schools valedictorian, you're–

fifteen minutes later you’re in the white house’s green room with your dress hiked up around your hips and your panties tucked safely away in the breast pocket of patrick’s suit.

he has you perched on top the room’s large oak desk, legs spread obscenely wide to make room for his broad shoulders. a huge, gaudy portrait of alexander hamilton gets a front row seat to patrick zweig on his knees.

your hands twist his dark curls roughly as he practically makes out with your drenched pussy, bumping his nose against your clit each time he laps at you with the flat of his tongue. you can see the way your wetness decorates his face, the light from the chandelier shining off of the slick skin of his cheeks and jaw lewdly.

his beard scratches the inside of your thighs red and raw. his big hands dig into the soft skin of your hips hard, grinding you against his face.

"fuck," he groans, sliding his index finger through the mess of spit he left behind. "god this fucking pussy..." he trails off, holding you apart with his long fingers so he can drag his tongue up your fluttering slit all the way to your pulsing clit. his cherry red lips look fucking filthy wrapped around you as he pushes his finger inside your aching hole.

you bite your lip, trying your best to be quite, to stop the pathetic whiny sounds you're making. you can hear the muffled polite conversation and soft music bleeding through the other side of the wall. you know patrick didn't lock the door, anyone could walk in.

"please," you whine quietly, looking down to find that patrick's already looking at you. his blown out green eyes locked on you like you're an unsuspecting lamb grazing a little too close to the big bad wolf's den.

"please what? keep going? what about everyone out there," he jerks his head in the direction of the ball room, his finger fucks into you faster. "you want the president to find you fucking begging for his sons mouth on your greedy pussy? i bet you do, you fucking slut."

"fuck, please don't stop! god, patrick–"

he leaves with your panties in his pocket. whatever, you'll just have to get them back from him later.

[steveyockey]

I paid $5 to access séamus malekafzali’s latest substack on palestine, here’s the full text,

It is easy to be lulled into a state of complacency, even with military occupation.

Israel’s occupation of Palestine has gone on longer than many of us on Earth have been alive, now going on 75 years. The levels of that deplacement, blockading, and violence have ebbed and flowed over years and decades, but that hand around the neck has always remained, even if how much it constricts has a tendency to loosen and tighten. Over 200 Palestinians have been killed by Israel this year in its occupation. News bulletins of them dying, oftentimes teenagers, come up through the headlines of Palestinian newspapers and channels as often as the weather. These deaths at the hands of Israeli security personnel are not isolated incidents, with soldiers materializing on roadsides and at checkpoints as unfortunate coincidence. They are constant spikes in the waveform of an incessant low-grade hum of humiliation, imprisonment, and destruction that has made daily life a forced agreement to constantly exist on the precipice of death.

This framing is not meant to be a tired retread of the conflict between Israel and Palestine or the nature of the Israeli occupation. This is meant to be a bulwark against the inevitable framing of this latest battle unfolding around Gaza, as it will appear in the Western media in the days to come.

There is a tendency, a deep-set one, to report Israel and Palestine as two countries that are on roughly the same playing field internationally, as you might report on a war that might involve Israel battling against a place like Jordan or Egypt. This kind of coverage obscures how deeply interlocked Israel’s military operations are with the fabric of the Palestinian society.

In the West Bank, settlements and checkpoints have made Palestinian land into a kind of comical archipelago, where in addition to being separated from Gaza by a huge land border, they are also separated from traveling to communities only a stone’s throw away from them without going through significant anguish. In Gaza, while no Israeli soldiers walk the streets, all their land borders are essentially sealed, their ports almost completely blockaded. Israel’s continued occupation has been so pinpoint and precise that its planes have gone as far as bombing bookstores, and its restrictions did not let up even when the COVID-19 pandemic reduced one health organization to carrying only as many tests of the deadly disease as could fit in a car.

This is not a matter of moral justification; one does not need to constantly busy themselves with having to make a full ideological conversion before understanding this. This is a matter of cause and effect.

What is the logical expectation, regardless of politics, ideology, culture, and creed, when a population of people is thrust into conditions that can only be described as an open-air prison, where every individual is a criminal in the eyes of the military occupying power regardless if they pick up a rifle or not, because there is supposedly always the threat that they will one day?

These are the basic conditions that have preceded the initiation of Operation al-Aqsa Storm this morning. As dawn broke on the morning of October 7, only one day after the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, Hamas’ military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, launched a military operation of unprecedented scope in its history. Hamas fighters would not only attempt to enter Israeli territory proper with ground troops, already in of itself an intensely bold action (though not without precedent in the past decade). This operation would be a combined incursion into Israel by both land, sea, and even air. Ground forces would cut the border fence into settlements surrounding Gaza, speedboats would make landings in southern Israel, and fighters from a newly-inaugurated paraglider division would fly over the border fortifications and then further inland.

Threats of an invasion of Israeli territory proper have been a staple of speeches from Hamas and Hezbollah and groups like it for years. There was a long-standing perception by outside observers that it was fanciful. An intentionally lofty piece of propaganda that fires up supporters while the real military wheeling and dealing is done under far more subtle and controlled terms, as with most militant organizations. After all, no Israeli-administered town, the ones occupied in Palestine during the initial 1948 war, had ever been taken in any war against the Jewish state since its creation, even by a combined force of multiple Arab national militaries.

That notion now can no longer exist.

At sunrise, Hamas fired a gigantic barrage of rockets into Israeli territory, a staggering 5,000 in the first wave alone. As Israeli military and police forces were distracted by fires and rocket destruction in residential areas of the country, Palestinian forces in Gaza proceeded to make their primary move.

After the sun rose, Hamas cut through the border fence surrounding Israel and sent both fighters on foot and on motorcycles into Israel. Images released by the group seem to tell a story in frozen figures. Israeli soldiers, strewn dead, caught by surprise, one having even rushed out so quickly that he put on his military gear but no other clothes except his underwear. An even grimmer story could be found in one of the IDF military dormitories, where an entire room full of soldiers had been massacred, only having perhaps seconds earlier gotten the alarm that Hamas had breached the perimeter, many of them seemingly mid-way through getting out of bed.

From there, Hamas made unprecedented move after unprecedented move. Hamas fighters moved as far north into Zikim, built on the former Palestinian village of Hiribya, and moved as far east as Ofakim, built on the former hamlet of Khirbat Futais. The Erez Crossing, for years the only legal border crossing that Israel operated with the Gaza Strip, came under full Palestinian control. Sderot, a city where Israelis had once gathered on couches dragged to high peaks to watch the bombardment of Palestinians, now found themselves facing down Palestinian fighters in their own streets.

An additional shock would come in Israel’s initial response. Amidst cataclysmic scenes like hundreds of ravers in the desert near Gaza fleeing on foot, neither the Israeli president nor the prime minister spoke in those early hours in the morning.

The Israeli high command, despite the continuous insistence of Palestinian factions that they would one day attempt to take the fight into Israel itself, had become complacent. They, like many observers of Israel-Palestine, believed the occupation they had constructed could go on forever, unburdened by the need to adapt. Israeli soldiers after all were now more used to sniping reporters and unarmed protesters than engaging in military conflict. Entropy was what was propelling the military occupation complex of the Jewish state, not a wholly active effort.

Despite an ungodly amount of Western military equipment, highly advanced anti-aircraft systems programmed to shoot down thousands of rockets, an international reputation for tenacity and strategic knowhow, and multiple victories against Arab nations again and again and again, all of it ended up being useless against a Hamas fighter flying in on a box fan and a parachute.

This failure is two-fold, and both are closely related. One is the expectation that things could go on as before without addressing the root of the issue (that being a military occupation of an entire state), and the other in expectation that those being occupied had no capacity to learn from experience how Israel’s military strategy operates, people who could then going on to capitalize on that knowledge.

There is a fundamental flaw in the perception of Western powers toward the Middle East in general and Arabs in particular that because the groups fighting with Israel or the United States are irregular, bereft of highly professional uniforms and dedicated gigantic military headquarters, that they do not have the same ability to strategize and to confront the forces that are occupying their countries. Flashes of how faulty this thinking is rear their head again and again, from Iraq to Afghanistan and everywhere in-between and around, but still the idea, unspoken as it may be, remains that they are fundamentally unequipped compared to the might they are fighting against. But Hamas has military strategists of its own, ones that understand the asymmetric situation they are dealing with, and ones that understand what the actual capabilities of Israel are, versus what their perception is.

The perception of Israel’s invulnerability versus what has actually been displayed today could not have been more different. Instead of being forced to immediately pull back, in essence making today a raid, Hamas has instead actually contested several Israeli settlements, which are still being fought over at time of this writing many hours after the initial incursion from Gaza began. A single Israeli soldier captured and held in Gaza used to capture the Israeli imagination for years; now there are believed to be not only tens of soldiers captured by Hamas, but tens of Israeli civilians as well, all now being held within the Strip. Hamas has also brought Israeli military vehicles back into the Strip, the novelty of working IDF equipment now under Palestinian control a source of celebration within the territory. Over 100 Israelis are believed to have been killed in the first day of Hamas’ attack, and nearly 1000 injured, a shocking early casualty count in an ongoing conflict where casualties on the Palestinians’ side are usually far more lopsided.

Israel’s response so far to Hamas’ operation has been to escalate rhetorically, with Netanyahu now calling this a war, and escalating its usual military strategy with Gaza, with carpet bombing now on an intense, concentrated scale. At the time of this writing, almost 200 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in only a few hours, with that number expected to rise significantly in the days to come. Already, news has come in of Israeli planes having leveled Gaza’s second-largest building, the Palestine Tower, which housed a plethora of media offices, in scenes reminiscent of Israel’s bombing of another tower block of media offices in 2021 that infamously took out the local bureau of the Associated Press.

As fighting continues into the night in ways never seen before since 1948, the question remains: after all these decades, why now?

The ostensible justifications of what the clincher was that sparked this operation are innumerable, but two appear to be most clearly illuminated: the recent increased activity of far-right Zionists at the al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem (hence the name of the operation itself), but just as well the indications that the Saudi Arabia and Israel may be close to a normalization deal, which would be the largest such development in the Abraham Accords yet. Hezbollah mentioned this operation as being a “message” and a “decisive response” to Arab nations pursuing the idea of normalization with Israel. Still, it is important to recognize that pinning the undertaking of a completely gigantic operation of this scale as just a simple message to Saudi Arabia would be reductive. As the Los Angeles Times’ international correspondent Nabih Bulos says of the matter:

“To pretend that Hamas did this to be a spoiler of KSA-Israel normalization is just downright epic in its navel-gazing nonsense.”

What is important to always return to is that eternally governing line above everything: the low hum of constant occupation, and who has been causing its spikes. Israel’s government, its most far-right in its history, has been on the warpath almost immediately from its inauguration, with figures like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, now thrust to the forefront, doing everything large and small to provoke a Palestinian response. The hope is that the inevitable Palestinian response can mobilize the Israeli society, that it can be swiftly defeated by the Israeli military, and that the Israeli state can use such an opportunity to impose its sovereignty over what little of Palestine governed by Palestinians remains, and perhaps even what lies beyond it.

But that formula relies on the Palestinian side only accepting being provoked, themselves having no strategy of their own outside of firing rockets and yelling on television. Military occupation breeds a feeling of annihilation, but that annihilation is enclosed with it inevitable feelings of rabid and desperate hope, inspiring within irregular groups desires to try things never tried before. These are not always guaranteed to be successful: one may look at Aleppo when rebel groups managed to come together and break the siege on the city in the final stages of the battle, only for it to fall in the months to come anyway. Nevertheless, there is a real perception within Israel, communicated out to the world by its media and by its intelligentsia, that it is a nation on the verge of internal collapse, brought to the precipice by far-right forces it has let fester for decades without envisioning its eventual conclusion.

What does looking at how Israel is faring now communicate to Palestinian factions in Gaza? What do young people in Gaza, who make up 47% of the Strip’s population, imagine might lie ahead for them as they see these events unfold? What does a Hamas fighter imagine might be possible when, as the writer Josef Burton says, he exits a 25 by 7-mile space he’s never left in his entire life?

[mariacallous]

In 1911, voters in Los Angeles founded a newspaper. It was called the Municipal News, and proclaimed itself “Owned by the People.” The backdrop, according to Victor Pickard, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, was growing national dissatisfaction with “commercial excesses such as yellow journalism and propaganda—the ‘clickbait’ and ‘fake news’ ” of the day. (It was also a particularly volatile moment in L.A.: the year before, the L.A. Times building had been blown up by opponents of the publisher’s anti-union activities. Twenty-one people were killed.) The Municipal News could have been a model for something new. It was overseen by citizen volunteers appointed by the mayor, distributed for free, and covered local political issues, such as streetcar fares and tuberculosis testing for cows, in addition to broader topics, like music and fashion. But two years later voters in L.A. opted to get rid of it amid corporate opposition. The L.A. Times cheered its death, writing that it had been “born with pre-natal tendencies to damphoolishness” and become “a convenient dumping ground for the money of the taxpayers.”

Commercialism remained the dominant organizing principle of U.S. media. The Red Scare of the subsequent decades, Pickard once told me, locked in a cultural suspicion of government intervention, in the media industry and beyond. There were experiments with public and educational broadcasting, culminating, in the late sixties and early seventies, with the establishment of NPR and PBS. But they came to rely increasingly on private funding, and they still do today.

Critics of public backing for journalism have often argued that it represents a conflict of interest—a case of officials paying the piper to scrutinize their tune—and is vulnerable to the changing whims of politicians, especially if a tyrant comes along. Donald Trump’s new Administration has seemed determined to prove them right. Shortly after Trump’s Inauguration, Brendan Carr, the new chair of the Federal Communications Commission, suggested that NPR and PBS might illegally be airing commercials, and announced a probe; early last month, Trump signed an executive order bluntly demanding that they be defunded, decrying their supposedly radical coverage of everything from reparations to “queer ducks”; then, this week, the Administration sent a so-called rescissions package to Congress, asking lawmakers to repeal public-media funds that they had already approved. Trump has also sought to gut the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which funds news organizations that broadcast overseas, most notably Voice of America. These are very different entities than NPR and PBS—some have roots in the counter-propaganda operations of the Second World War and the Cold War, and all of them are still seen as tools of U.S. soft power—but they are designed to be editorially independent, and often do produce good journalism.

When I reconnected with Pickard recently, he acknowledged that it’s understandable why, “at first glance,” Trump’s attacks appear to be “a perfect enactment of every liberal and libertarian’s worst nightmare for when you allow government to get involved in our media system.” And yet Pickard, who has advocated for greater government support for journalism, doesn’t see this moment in such terms. Indeed, if anything, it’s showing how public media institutions can sometimes stand up more strongly to authoritarians than their commercial counterparts. And below the federal level, a groundswell of state-based initiatives—albeit nothing, yet, to match the ambition of the Los Angeles Municipal News—have started to funnel support to local news, a sector in dire financial crisis, with jobs drying up, news deserts spreading, and private-equity vultures picking over the bones. The Trump era could even come to be remembered not for reinforcing the taboo around greater public investment in media but for catalyzing a move toward more of it.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which would go on to channel federal funds to NPR and PBS, was founded in 1967, under President Lyndon B. Johnson, as part of the Public Broadcasting Act. This was a highly significant piece of legislation. But critics have argued that it didn’t go far enough to insure a sustainable funding stream. In the U.K., for example, TV viewers pay a dedicated annual ��license fee” to fund the BBC; a commission making recommendations for the C.P.B. proposed that it be bankrolled with a somewhat similar levy, on the manufacturers of TV sets, but in the end funding was linked to the regular congressional appropriations process. It was decided that lawmakers would set budgets for NPR and PBS two years ahead of time, to insulate them from immediate political pressure—but two years isn’t a hugely long time, leaving the broadcasters, as Pickard puts it, “always looking over their shoulder, worried about their meagre appropriations being cut off or messed with.” And the meagreness is itself a problem. Today, Congress gives the C.P.B around five hundred million dollars per year, which is less than two dollars per taxpayer. NPR and PBS have to supplement their budgets by soliciting donations and corporate sponsorships, with direct federal funds accounting for just about fifteen per cent at PBS, and a measly one per cent at NPR. This makes the U.S. a sharp outlier among democracies. Pickard argues that describing NPR and PBS as “public media” may be “a misnomer.”

Now that Trump is trying to take away the broadcasters’ federal funding, it could plausibly be argued that their commercial revenue streams are protecting them. But the cuts would nonetheless be painful for NPR and PBS. And for the many local stations that operate in the wider public broadcasting network, and have ties to NPR and PBS, cuts do carry existential stakes. Some stations are much more reliant on direct federal funding, especially in rural areas where commercial media is less viable and where, as a result, public media is perhaps most vital, not only in its news output but in its provision of emergency alerts or educational services, such as connecting local schoolchildren with books and technology.

And Trump’s executive order appears to be blatantly illegal—while critics think that the C.P.B. isn’t as protected from political influence as it could be, Congress did clearly establish the body as a private nonprofit beyond the reach of direct executive meddling. The C.P.B. has refused to enforce the order, and, last week, both NPR and PBS went to court to fight back. (Both suits also cite the First Amendment, which generally forbids the President from retaliating against speech he doesn’t like, be that about queer ducks or anything else.) Congress could claw back the funding. But past attempts to defund NPR and PBS—including in Trump’s first term—have failed, and public media has quite a wide base of support. (People tend to like Big Bird.) A few Republicans in both the House and the Senate—where the Party’s margins are fine—have expressed skepticism about legislating any cuts, though senior Republicans told reporters from NPR that they are confident the bill will pass when it comes up for a vote in the House next week.

More than anything, Trump’s attacks seem intended to demonstrate leverage—that he’ll use the tools available to come after journalism that displeases him. This applies regardless of how the journalism is paid for. Public funding is one potential source of leverage, but that leverage is far from total. Nor is it unique. Trump’s authoritarian designs have often been compared, including by Andrew Marantz in this magazine, to Viktor Orbán’s regime in Hungary. Orbán has gained a large measure of control over the media, but, as Matt Pearce, a former Los Angeles Times reporter who is now director of policy at Rebuild Local News, a public-policy advocacy group, noted to me recently, he did this, in no small part, by making it easier for outside allies to buy up and capture private companies. Nothing on this scale has happened in the U.S. (Yet.) But there have been some worrying signs. Jeff Bezos—the owner of the Washington Post, whose many other business interests are very dependent on the federal government—has interfered with his paper’s opinion pages in ways that have been widely interpreted as sucking up to Trump, and of which Trump has expressed explicit approval.

The most worrisome case is that of Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS, which is currently seeking F.C.C. approval for a merger; Trump has sued CBS News for supposedly defrauding the public in the way it edited an interview with Kamala Harris on “60 Minutes” last year, and, even though the complaint is absurd, CBS is poised to settle, a stance that appears to be linked to the merger. (Paramount has denied this.) Recently, Bill Owens, the executive producer of “60 Minutes,” quit, suggesting that corporate bosses were meddling with the program, which has continued to cover Trump sharply; last week, Lesley Stahl, the veteran “60 Minutes” journalist, told David Remnick on The New Yorker Radio Hour that the majority of the staff saw Owens as “heroic” for standing up to the pressure and viewed his departure as a “punch in the stomach.” The pressure, Stahl added, “makes me question whether any corporation should own a news operation.”

The White House, Carr, and supportive Republicans in Congress have tried to cast Trump’s crusade against NPR and PBS as an expression of “small government” principles, arguing that the modern media marketplace is abundant, and that state funding is fiscally irresponsible. And yet this isn’t true, at least, not at the local level; according to one study, the U.S. has lost more than a third of its newspapers in the past two decades, and more than two hundred counties now have no local news source at all. Craig Aaron, the co-C.E.O. of Free Press, a media-advocacy group, told me that for politicians who “want to do crime and steal, it’s great. But if you want to get reëlected, and you want to have your constituents know what you are doing, it’s a really big problem.” Aaron has heard this sentiment from lawmakers all over the country, he said.

In recent years, various states have passed, or at least considered, a range of measures to support local outlets, including tax breaks, fellowship programs for early-career journalists, and redistributing tech profits to newsrooms. New York, Illinois, and California each enacted one or some of these measures last year; there’s been movement in a similar direction, albeit to differing extents, in Connecticut, Maryland, Kansas, Hawaii, Washington State, and Oregon. (New York, meanwhile, just allocated four million extra dollars to public-radio stations in light of the federal threat.) These are mostly blue states, but such efforts have often had at least some bipartisan backing. And while popular perceptions of national media are sharply polarized, people generally trust their local news sources more—a bit like how “people hate Congress, but they kind of like their own Congressperson,” Pearce told me. Republican lawmakers in Oregon recently opposed a plan that would require Big Tech to pay for journalism that was shared on its platforms, he noted, but then counterproposed a tax-credit program for subscriptions to local news. “You have Republican leaders proposing public subsidies for journalism, out of recognition that there is a local-news crisis,” Pearce said.

Progress in public support for media has a long way to go, and is not linear. State governments have less money than their federal counterparts, and some states have lately proposed cuts to their public broadcasters—red Indiana, but also blue New Jersey, both citing budgetary constraints. California and Google both scaled back their initial contributions under a deal, struck last year, to jointly pump millions of dollars into local news.

The decline of local news, however, has already made it clear that the private sector can’t be trusted to produce it at scale—and the Trump years, marked as they have been by polarized tumult, distrust, and disinformation, have made it clear that what local news offers is more necessary than ever. More broadly, “we’re seeing, spectacularly demonstrated before our eyes, all the limitations of a hyper-commercialized media system, in the ways that they fold so easily, they prematurely obey a would-be autocrat, and also the rise of these media and tech oligarchs,” Pickard told me. “This is what the market produces.” The Trump moment might be one of threat and chaos—but it’s also, as a consequence, one of possibility. Pickard stressed to me that the world’s strongest democracies all spend much more on public media than the U.S., and that any long-term “re-democratization” project must learn this lesson. “It’s hard to imagine any of this happening under Trump,” he said. “But Trump’s not gonna be in power forever.” 

[darkmaga-returns]

The Left has been almost eerily quiet about losing the election, and that’s something that has left a lot of Americans worried about what they might be planning in an attempt to regain control or make life in the White House miserable for Trump. There are lots of paths they could take given the geopolitical drama unfolding around the world, but comments made by Bill Gates have some wondering if a second pandemic could be in the works that could cause major upheaval ahead of Trump’s inauguration – not to mention help Gates make a nice sum of money.

At a recent COP28 meeting, Gates talked a lot about what he termed “Pandemic 2,” referring to a COVID-like event that could take place this year. In fact, he’s been preparing for it, and he stands to make billions of dollars should his “vaccines” for it be pushed on the masses.

He’s mentioned this before, talking about the Operation Warp Speed vaccines released for COVID-19 and how they can be improved upon. He said that for the next pandemic, “we need to make them have a longer duration, more coverage.”

“And we’re going to change, instead of using a needle, to use a little patch,” he added as if the method of delivery will somehow make the idea of injecting yourself with poison more palatable.

Gates has made a big deal about how the world needs to be better prepared for the next pandemic and even wrote a book about the topic entitled How to Prevent the Next Pandemic in 2022. In his book, he complained about America’s lack of preparation for the previous pandemic and listed his recommendations for how the world can handle it better next time around.

Not surprisingly, his suggestions include boosting vaccine research and development, something that has been very profitable for him, along with investing in monitoring diseases and implementing stronger quarantine policies.

It would therefore be very convenient for him if a pandemic were to break out in the next few months.

[crossdreamers]

Wikipedia remains a reliable source of transgender information

In the wake of recent anti-trans legislation by the Trump administration, Wikipedia has emerged as a reliable source of information on transgender topics, Assigned reports.

The online encyclopedia, maintained by a community of volunteers, has played a crucial role in countering disinformation and preserving accurate coverage of transgender history, healthcare, and rights.

As bias-driven disinformation surged from the White House, a trans editor for Wikipedia promptly alerted fellow editors in the LGBTQ+ studies group. This community-driven effort ensures that Wikipedia remains a factual resource amidst the administration's attempts to erase trans rights and dignity.

Wikipedia's editors, including trans and nonbinary individuals, have faced personal attacks and harassment while maintaining the integrity of the platform. Despite these challenges, they continue to provide unbiased and accurate entries.

Notable figures like Elon Musk have also targeted Wikipedia, urging followers to stop donating to the platform. However, the community remains resilient, with editors like "Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist" (YFNS) leading efforts to counteract transphobic vandalism and protect the integrity of articles.

Read the article here.

Wikipedia articles on Trump’s anti-trans executive orders (as of February 7, 2025)

EO 14168, "Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government" (issued on inauguration day, January 20)

EO 14183, "Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness" (issued January 27)

EO 14187, "Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation" (issued January 28)

EO 14201, "Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports" (issued February 5)

[originalleftist]

Ran across a Deppie post on Reddit, claiming Amber Heard's Instagram account had followed JD Vance.

They were of course spinning wild conspiracy theories, claiming it was some plot by her to get to Musk, etc. The usual bullshit.

Still, the basic claim seemed easy enough to fact-check. I logged into Instagram, checked Heard's follow list, and... yup. Vice President Vance.

Well, that was disheartening, to say the least. If she turned out to be yet another white person who went full Nazi, it wouldn't change my opinion of the trial- even bad people have rights, and can be abused, and her OpEd flatly wasn't defamatory by any reasonable definition. But it would have forced me to lower my estimation of her as a person considerably, and stop supporting her work.

Still, it seemed odd- Despite her past relationship with Musk (before he became openly fascist), her politics has been mostly Left-leaning for years, particularly on feminism and LGBTQ rights as well as voting rights. Vance seemed an out-character choice for her to follow.

And then it occurred to me.

A few weeks back I saw a post reminding people to unfollow the official POTUS, VP accounts, etc, because those accounts changed hands after the election. I checked my Facebook, and sure enough, I was unwittingly following the Orange Felon.

Heard followed Vice President Harris on Instagram. It got some mean-spirited media coverage gossiping about Harris not following her back. Sure enough, the Harris account is gone from her follows list. So, assuming she was following the official VP account, it may simply be that Amber Heard hasn't updated her Instagram follows since before Inauguration Day (she posts about twice a year now).

Which feels like a weird thing to know about someone I've never met, but also kind of humanizing, for lack of a better word- the sort of simple mistake that any regular person could make (myself included).

Anyway, this is your reminder for the day that:

a) You should check your social media post-election to make sure you aren't accidentally following Nazis now.

b) Most of what people say about Amber Heard is probably bullshit.

c) It never hurts to dig a little deeper with your fact-checking before jumping to conclusions. I could have just read the Reddit post, or hell just checked her Instagram page, and impulsively denounced her as a turncoat and a Nazi. I probably would have, if it had been someone else I hadn't spent the last three years publicly supporting.

(It also is possible, of course, that she's suddenly decided to follow Vance (and no other notable MAGA figures) for whatever reason. Vance is the top of her follow list, which might suggest a recent follow, but I really don't know how that works if an account you were following before changed hands, and Instagram's algorithm for ranking follows is... obscure. Nor would I put it past Meta to tweak the algorithm to boost Regime accounts, given how hard they've been sucking the Regime's dick lately (try posting the Felon's mugshot to Facebook if you want to see this in action- every time I do, Facebook falsely labels it an AI-generated image.))

[tomorrowusa]

Democrat ousts incumbent Republican in Omaha mayoral race

Omaha Democrat John Ewing Jr. upset Republican incumbent Jean Stothert in the city's election for mayor on Tuesday.

Douglas County, Neb., Treasurer John Ewing Jr. (D) has ousted incumbent Republican Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert in the latest victory for Democrats during President Trump’s second term, Decision Desk HQ projects.  Ewing, who is also a former deputy chief of police for Omaha, will become the city’s first Black mayor. He denied Stothert a chance at an unprecedented fourth consecutive term in office in an election that was officially nonpartisan but featured a Democrat and a Republican facing off against each other.  The city hasn’t had a Democratic mayor since 2013, when then-incumbent Jim Suttle lost his reelection bid for a second term to Stothert, Omaha’s first female mayor, who has enjoyed comfortable electoral victories since then. Her closest race was in 2017, when she won by just less than 6 points.  But Democrats were hopeful about winning the race and electing Ewing. The city of Omaha and the wider 2nd Congressional District it is part of have been considered a “blue dot” where Democrats have found success in recent elections. 

The Blue Dot just got more blue. 🔵

This is the latest election since Trump's inauguration where Republicans were either defeated or suffered significant dropoffs in support.

Democrats notched a major victory in a Wisconsin state Supreme Court race last month in which the liberal candidate comfortably defeated her conservative opponent. Democratic candidates in two strongly Republican-leaning House districts in Florida that same night fell short of winning but made both of their races much closer than would normally be expected.  And the party picked up low-key but still major upset wins in a state Senate district in Iowa in January and a state Senate district in Pennsylvania in March. 

At the New York Times, Mitch Smith provides some background on the area.

Nebraska is dominated by Republicans, but Omaha is politically mixed, with more registered Democrats than Republicans. The city is home to several major businesses, including Union Pacific Railroad and Berkshire Hathaway, and is geographically quite large, with many suburban-feeling subdivisions inside city limits. Among the 40 most populous American cities, Omaha is one of only six with a Republican mayor, according to Ballotpedia. The Omaha area is represented in Congress by a moderate Republican, Representative Don Bacon, who has survived several Democratic attempts to unseat him, including last November by just under 2 points. In that same election, Kamala Harris won the electoral vote in Mr. Bacon’s district by just under 5 points. That congressional district includes suburban and rural areas in addition to Omaha.

Nebraska is unlikely to turn blue outside of the Blue Dot. But a slight but discernible shift seems to be gradually taking place there.

Here's a clip of Mayor-elect Ewing from last night's news coverage.

[dertaglichedan]

Anthony Fauci breaks his silence with bold statement after being PARDONED by Biden over Trump COVID crimes claims

Dr. Anthony Fauci has broken his silence just hours after he was pardoned by outgoing President Joe Biden in one of his last acts as commander-in-chief.

The former head of the National Institute of Allergy Infectious Diseases spoke with CNN's Dana Bash during the network's coverage of President Donald Trump's inauguration to express his gratitude to Biden.

While Fauci said he is 'very appreciative' of the pardon, he once again insisted he did not commit any crimes while overseeing the United States' response to the COVID pandemic.

'As [Biden] said, we did nothing wrong, but the baseless accusations and threats are real for me and my family,' Fauci told Bash.

Trump's base has blamed the 84-year-old doctor for strict COVID-19 restrictions, including social distancing, mask wearing and harsh vaccine mandates that led to members of the armed forces being forcibly discharged. 

Fauci is also accused of lying to Congress about the U.S. sending money to fund gain-of-function research at the laboratory in Wuhan, China, where the virus is thought to have originated and leaked from.

*** Prison

[deadpresidents]

Everyone knows about Lincoln and Garfield and McKinley and Kennedy, the quartet of America Presidents who fell victim to assassination. Even the most casual observers of Presidential history can probably name the four Presidents who were murdered while in office, and many even know the names of the four assassins responsible for their deaths: Booth, Guiteau, Czolgosz, and Oswald.

There have also been quite a few (in)famous unsuccessful assassination attempts, where Presidents barely escaped with their lives, that many Americans are familiar with, including (but not limited to):

•Richard Lawrence's miraculously unlucky double misfire on the steps of the U.S. Capitol in 1835 which left Andrew Jackson unharmed but resulted in Lawrence -- who would be found not guilty by reason of insanity -- getting viciously pummeled by the cane-wielding President Jackson until Davy Crockett intervened to save the would-be assassin from the 67-year-old President. •The shooting of former President Theodore Roosevelt in Milwaukee as he sought another term in the White House during the 1912 Presidential election. Despite being shot in the chest, Roosevelt decided to go ahead and deliver his campaign speech before being taken to the hospital where doctors discovered that the bullet lodged inside of TR had first passed through a case for his eyeglasses and the thick pages of his speech in his jacket's pocket, lessening the damage from the gunshot. •The attempted assassination of President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt in Miami in February 1933, just seventeen days in before FDR's Inauguration, which wounded four people and killed Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak. •The ill-fated 1950 attempt by Puerto Rican nationalists to storm Blair House (the temporary Presidential residence during the renovation of the White House) and kill President Harry S. Truman as he was napping. Truman was not hurt, but a White House Police Officer and one of the two assassins were killed during the wild shootout. •President Gerald Ford's trouble with two California women who separately tried to kill him in Sacramento and then San Francisco just two weeks apart in September 1975. •The shocking shooting of President Ronald Reagan in broad daylight from just a few yards away as he exited the Washington Hilton following a speech in March 1981, which left four people wounded and very nearly killed the 70-year-old Reagan just two months into his Presidency.

But what is amazing is that, in this age of instant information and the constant regurgitation of media coverage via the 24-hour news cycle, very few Americans know that there is a man sitting in prison in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia for attempting to assassinate President George W. Bush. What even less Americans realize is how close Vladimir Arutyunian actually came to accomplishing his task.

On May 10, 2005, President Bush spoke to a large crowd at an outdoor rally in Tbilisi, Georgia. In one of the photos at the top of this post, Bush is seen speaking from the stage in Tbilisi. The other photo is of Arutyunian holding a plaid handkerchief close to his chest. Wrapped in that handkerchief was a live hand grenade.

As President Bush spoke, nearby sat his wife, Laura, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, and the Dutch-born First Lady of Georgia, Sandra Roelofs. They had no idea that, during the speech, Arutyunian tossed his handkerchief-wrapped grenade towards the stage. The grenade landed just 61 feet away from President Bush, well within range of causing serious injury, if not death.

Of course, the grenade did not explode. At first, it was thought to be a dud, but upon closer inspection it was discovered that the only reason the grenade didn't explode was because Arutyunian's handkerchief -- used to conceal the explosive as he stood in the crowd -- was wrapped too tightly around the grenade, preventing the firing pin from deploying. A Georgian security official noticed the grenade, grabbed it quickly and disposed of it as Arutyunian disappeared into the massive crowd and President Bush continued speaking.

After Bush's speech was over and once it was recognized that the President had only narrowly escaped a legitimate attempted assassination, Georgian police worked closely with the United States Secret Service, the FBI, and the U.S. Justice Department to investigate the assassination attempt and find the would-be assassin who seemingly melted into Tbilisi after his brazen, albeit unsuccessful attempt on Bush's life. Using DNA evidence and tips from informants, the Georgian police ultimately tracked down Arutyunian two months later. When they went to arrest Arutyunian, a gunfight broke out and Arutyunian killed Zurab Kvlividze, a top counterterrorism official with Georgia's Interior Ministry. Arutyunian was wounded before finally being captured with the assistance of Georgian Special Forces.

The Georgians tried Arutyunian on the murder of the police officer, as well as the attempted assassinations of President Bush and President Saakshvili. Arutyunian was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole. A federal grand jury in the United States also indicted Arutyunian on the federal charge of the attempted assassination of the President of the United States, which is a felony. The U.S., however, has not attempted nor has any potential plans to extradite the failed assassin from Georgia, and Arutyunian will almost certainly spend the rest of his life in a Georgian prison.

[incomplete-dead-media-collector]

There is currently a worldwide protest over the US presidency that many US tiktokers aren't getting coverage on. It is being covered on some news sites but Tiktok's news suppression is no surprise to me.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.indiatoday.in/amp/world/us-news/story/worldwide-protests-mark-donald-trumps-inauguration-day-glbs-2668262-2025-01-21

https://apnews.com/article/germany-afd-protests-farright-elections-b318328d080b026424137653513e37ac

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/gallery/2025/jan/20/anti-trump-protests-photos

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jennifer Rubin at The Contrarian:

Corporate and billionaire owners of major media outlets have betrayed their audiences’ loyalty and sabotaged journalism’s sacred mission — defending, protecting and advancing democracy. The Washington Post’s billionaire owner and enlisted management are among the offenders. They have undercut the values central to The Post’s mission and that of all journalism: integrity, courage, and independence. I cannot justify remaining at The Post. Jeff Bezos and his fellow billionaires accommodate and enable the most acute threat to American democracy—Donald Trump—at a time when a vibrant free press is more essential than ever to our democracy’s survival and capacity to thrive. I therefore have resigned from The Post, effective today. In doing so, I join a throng of veteran journalists so distressed over The Post’s management they felt compelled to resign. The decay and compromised principles of corporate and billionaire-owned media underscore the urgent need for alternatives. Americans are eager for innovative and independent journalism that offers lively, unflinching coverage free from cant, conflicts of interest and moral equivocation. Which is why I am so thrilled to simultaneously announce this new outlet, The Contrarian: Not Owned by Anybody. The Contrarian will offer daily columns, weekly features, podcasts and social media from me and fellow pro-democracy contrarians, many of whom have decamped from corporate media, others who were never a part of it. I am launching this endeavor with my cofounder, Norm Eisen. Founding contributors will include Joyce Vance, Andy Borowitz, Laurence Tribe, Katie Phang, George Conway, Olivia Julianna, Harry Litman (who recently resigned from the LA Times for reasons similar to mine for leaving the Post), and Asha Rangappa, among many other brilliant voices. We will provide fearless and distinctive reported opinion and cultural commentary without phony balance, euphemisms or gamified political punditry.

The need for upstart outlets has never been more acute. The contradiction between, on the one hand, the journalistic obligation to hold the powerful accountable and, on the other, the financial interests of billionaire moguls and corporate conglomerates could not be starker. The Post’s own headline last month warned: “Trump signals plans to use all levers of power against the media; Press freedom advocates say they fear that the second Trump administration will ramp up pressure on journalists, in keeping with the president-elect’s combative rhetoric.” And yet The Post’s owner quashed a presidential endorsement for Trump’s opponent, forked over $1M for Trump’s inauguration through Amazon, and publicly lauded Trump’s agenda.

Jennifer Rubin resigned from The Washington Post to co-found The Contrarian. The new outlet will feature great and incisive reporting on the issues of the day without the MAGA or bothsiderist media spin.