Tag: #Import 2025-04-02 22:28

This post includes articles and commentaries written by Margaret Sullivan, Rick Wilson, Mark Follman, Arthur Delaney, Jennifer Bendery, Andrea González-Ramírez, Marshall Cohen, Daniel Dale, Lucas Ropek, Megan Garber, and the United States House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.

Here’s what I’ve found interesting:

• Tim Walz asks JD Vance an important question;
• The US Capitol was a battlefield on January 6, 2021;
• Trump amplifies his hate speech against migrants;
• North Carolina Republican pleads for right-wing lies about Helene recovery to end;
• Don’t fall for the Trump-Vance abortion ban deception;
• Debunking 12 election lies Trump is telling;
• Heritage Foundation trying to identify federal employees to fire;
• Stanislav Petrov, the man who saved the world; and
• Remembering what happened at the January 6, 2021, insurrection.

Here we go. I’m glad you’re here.

#1

JD Vance’s slick performance can’t change the danger of another Trump presidency (Margaret Sullivan, The Guardian, Link to Article)

That, of course, is the real issue – that Trump’s vice-president, after the 2020 election, did the right thing and his boss sided with the people who wanted him hanged for it. The two are done with each other. Vance is a late-coming opportunist.

In the closing minutes of the debate, Walz had his best moment when he challenged his rival with this essential question:

“Trump is still saying he didn’t lose the election. Did he lose the 2020 election?”

Vance tried a non-sequitur comeback: “Did Kamala Harris censor Americans?”

To which Walz shot back: “That is a damning non-answer.”

He was right about that. Trump’s lies and his destructive refusal to peacefully transfer power are the very reason JD Vance was standing on that stage.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Finally.

While Gov. Tim Walz may have started slow, the last 10 minutes of the Vice Presidential debate ended up being the most important of the night.

It is odd that it took Walz—and not a reporter—to point out the obvious and ask the most crucial question of his opponent, Sen. JD Vance: why isn’t Mike Pence here, and who won the 2020 election?

I have argued that any interview where a politician refuses to answer that Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. legitimately won the 2020 election should end at that moment—and then the reporter should follow up with an immediate correction. Media outlets should also stop inviting election deniers to participate in their programs because lying about the election makes it impossible to believe anything else they may say.

There needs to be a cost to lying about our elections. I hope more people see how this was Walz’s best moment in the debate. It should not have taken Walz to ask the question. But at least now we have Vance’s pathetic answer, one that should be an issue every day until this year’s election.

Things I Find Interesting is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider joining for free or becoming a paid subscriber to help me buy the coffee I drink while writing this newsletter.

#2

“Make Them Riot” — The Damning New Details of Trump’s Attempt to Overturn the 2020 Election (Rick Wilson, The Elephant in the Room, Link to Article)

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Rick Wilson reminds us in this video that the United States Capitol grounds were a battleground on January 6, 2021, because former President Donald Trump sent a mob to the building to try to steal the presidency.

I had to pause for a moment to process the fact that Capitol Hill was a battleground. It had not sunk in for me in that way despite sharing a video compilation of the January 6 insurrection on social media and in the last few issues of this newsletter.

Wilson shows us the new security measures that have been put in place because Trump sent a mob of insurrectionists to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election. He describes some of the heroes of that day, including the Senate aides who saved the certificates of election from the terrorists invading the building.

Our national tradition of peaceful transfers of power ended that day. Trump, Vance, and far too many Republicans have been lying about January 6 for so long that it is easy to forget just how shocking and traumatic these events were to our nation.

The US Capitol was a battleground on January 6, 2021. But, unlike in 1814, it was not because of a foreign enemy. I hope voters make Trump and his MAGA supporters pay at the ballot box for their ongoing betrayal of our nation.

#3

Trump Amplifies His Dangerous Hate Speech Against Migrants (Mark Follman, Mother Jones, Link to Article)

For much of 2024, Donald Trump has used demagoguery against migrants to campaign for the White House. In numerous recent speeches and media appearances, he has continued to inveigh about an alleged “invasion” coming across America’s southern border. He has falsely claimed that hordes of violent and “insane” foreigners have been taking over “hundreds” of cities and raping and killing “thousands of Americans.” His repeated vows to deport millions of undocumented immigrants draw roars of approval at his rallies.

Inflaming Americans’ fears about immigration and border security was a hallmark of Trump’s presidency and previous campaigns—and his extreme rhetoric, as I’ve previously reported, has marked spasms of violence, including a horrific mass shooting in 2019 in El Paso, Texas. Earlier this month, he and his running mate, JD Vance, magnified racist lies about Haitian immigrants supposedly stealing and eating pets in Springfield, Ohio—provoking a wave of fear, bomb threats, and major disruption in that community.

Now, in the final weeks of the presidential campaign, Trump’s rhetoric about migrants has grown even darker and more foreboding. In three campaign speeches since Friday, he conjured disturbing images of mayhem and death and spoke of the nation as if it’s on the brink of destruction. With no basis in reality, he blamed this cartoonishly grim portrait of American carnage on his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Sen. JD Vance’s decision to attack his constituents in Springfield, Ohio, is disgusting. But, one can see why Vance would seek Trump’s approval by doubling down on the hate and lies.

This ongoing effort to dehumanize the Haitian migrants, and other immigrants around the country, should set off fascist alarm bells. Earlier this week Trump went further and called Vice President Kamala Harris a murderer over these immigration policies.

As Follman explains, this isn’t Trump speaking off-the-cuff. This rhetoric is in the prepared speeches Trump is reading off a teleprompter. Make no mistake, these statements are not hyperbole. They represent their campaign strategy.

These statements establish a predicate for the atrocities Trump and his advisor, Stephen Miller, intend to implement should Trump win or steal this election.

Also, we could use a little help from the media in taking serious the potential violence the Trump-Vance-Miller immigration plans would create. Displacing 10-20 million people, including US citizens, is not going to go smoothly.

So, CBS, what the frack was your team thinking with this graphic previewing the Vice Presidential debate?

I would have thought by 2024 we would have reached the point where mainstream outlets would agree that ethnic cleansing is not an acceptable housing assistance proposal. This is the kind of idiocy that can result from sanewashing a proposal we should condemn.

#4

North Carolina Republican Pleads To End Right-Wing Conspiracy Theories About Helene Disaster Recovery (Arthur Delaney and Jennifer Bendery, HuffPost, Link to Article)

A Republican senator in the North Carolina legislature has issued a public plea for people to stop spreading conspiracy theories about the disaster recovery efforts in areas ravaged by flooding from Hurricane Helene.

In a Thursday afternoon Facebook post, state Sen. Kevin Corbin, who represents the state’s westernmost area, asked his followers for a favor: “Will you all help STOP this conspiracy theory junk that is floating all over Facebook and the internet about the floods in WNC.”

Corbin listed several examples: “FEMA is stealing money from donations, body bags ordered but government has denied, bodies not being buried, government is controlling the weather from Antarctica, government is trying to get lithium from WNC, stacks of bodies left at hospitals, and on and on and on.”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

It has been impossible to use social media and not see radical right-wing accounts spread these lies about the federal government’s response to Hurricane Helene.

The large accounts spreading these lies include Elon Musk’s on X/Twitter. Musk has turned the social media site into an adjunct to the Trump-Vance campaign and has used his ownership power to ensure all users can see the disinformation he regularly shares.

Spreading lies about disaster relief will lead to unnecessary deaths, injuries, and financial losses. These lies lower the trust in government agencies, which prevents victims from seeking the help they need.

Local Republicans want these lies to stop. I don’t think we will see Trump, Vance, and people like Musk respond responsibly.

Thank you for reading Things I Find Interesting. This post is public, so feel free to share it with your family and friends.

#5

Trump’s National Abortion Ban Deception (Andrea González-Ramírez, The Cut, Link to Article)

On Tuesday night, as Donald Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, got pressed about his support for a national abortion ban on the debate stage, the former president turned to social media to issue an all-caps message. “EVERYONE KNOWS I WOULD NOT SUPPORT A FEDERAL ABORTION BAN, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, AND WOULD, IN FACT, VETO IT, BECAUSE IT IS UP TO THE STATES TO DECIDE BASED ON THE WILL OF THEIR VOTERS (THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE!),” he wrote. “LIKE RONALD REAGAN BEFORE ME, I FULLY SUPPORT THE THREE EXCEPTIONS FOR RAPE, INCEST, AND THE LIFE OF THE MOTHER.”

The post set off a flurry of breathless media coverage characterizing Trump as changing his position on abortion and committing not to outlaw the procedure nationwide. But this is just a rhetorical trick; as writer Jessica Valenti has noted, following the overturn of Roe v. Wade, the anti-abortion movement has repeatedly tried to replace the term abortion ban with national minimum standard or national consensus. Abortion opponents use the word ban to describe legislation with no exceptions for abortion care whatsoever, while they use minimum standard to describe bills that do include what Trump called “the three exceptions.” To the rest of us, they would do the exact same thing: effectively outlaw abortion nationwide.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

This is why Abortion, Every Day’s Jessica Valenti has been warning readers for nearly a year to be careful about how the forced-birth community is using language. Unfortunately, too many political reporters have failed to recognize the lies Trump, Vance, and their surrogates are sharing.

Trump won’t need to veto any laws. He can demand the Department of Justice enforce the 1873 Comstock Act and the FDA withdraw its approval for abortion medications. Those decisions would create a nationwide ban—yes, even in blue states.

Exceptions have been written so vaguely that doctors are uncomfortable risking their careers and freedom to provide necessary medical care. Women have died as a result. The Atlantic’s Sarah Zhang shared how these vague laws impact physicians as they deal with the real-life ramifications of forced-birth extremism.

Trump and Vance understand their forced-birth position is deeply unpopular. So, they have been trying to confuse people about what they intend to do for months. Reporters should not be serving as handmaids in their efforts to mislead voters.

Finally, can we stop listening to the people who for years called abortion supporters hysterical—and worse—for claiming that the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade? Five of the six Justices who voted to overturn Roe were among those who lied during their confirmation hearings with statements about how Roe was settled law. We need to stop giving the benefit of the doubt to the people who worked for decades to strip women of their bodily autonomy.

#6

Fact check: 12 election lies Trump is using to set the stage to dispute a potential 2024 defeat (Marshall Cohen and Daniel Dale, CNN, Link to Article)

Former President Donald Trump has escalated his long-running assault on the integrity of US elections as the 2024 presidential campaign enters its final stretch, using a new series of lies about ballots, vote-counting and the election process to lay the groundwork to challenge a potential defeat in November.

Nonpartisan democracy experts say they’re seeing many of the same warning signs that were blinking red before Election Day four years ago, when Trump flooded the zone with election lies and conspiracy theories that he amplified after losing to Joe Biden. His campaign of deception culminated in the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

“The threats have not abated; they have only increased,” said Lindsay Daniels, a senior director at the nonpartisan Democracy Fund, which works to strengthen US democracy. “We saw a lot of activity in 2020 around peddling false claims and frivolous lawsuits. We are already seeing signs now, stage-setting, that these things may be attempted again.”

Trump has made at least 12 distinct false claims over the last two months that raise baseless doubts about the validity of a potential victory by Vice President Kamala Harris. (Recent polls suggest the race is very close, and Trump could certainly still win.)

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Since Trump is spreading these lies, you can expect to see them in news stories, social media shares, and conversations you may have with MAGA supporters.

But it is perhaps most important to be aware of these lies in case you have friends or family that are confused by the disinformation they may see.

Trump is setting the stage to try to steal this election, just as he did when he instigated the January 6, 2021, insurrection. Now is the time to be prepared to share the truth.

#8

The Heritage Foundation Is Spamming the Government With Thousands of FOIAs (Lucas Ropek, Gizmodo, Link to Article)

The Heritage Foundation, the rightwing think tank behind Project 2025, is spamming the federal government with thousands of Freedom of Information Act Requests, in an apparent effort to identify civil servants that a second Trump administration would deem undesirable, a new report from ProPublica claims.

The information requests were filed on behalf of the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, which its organizers describe as fostering a “government that is responsible and accountable to its citizens.” ProPublica reports that, via an analysis of over 2,000 FOIA requests submitted by members of the Oversight Project, the outlet found that the rightwing think-tank has been barraging agencies like the State Department and the Federal Trade Commission to search for mentions of “hot-button phrases used by individual government workers.” Those topics apparently include phrases like “climate equity,” DEI, and merely “voting.”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Project 2025 is not just about policy planning for the next Republican president. They are also putting together a database of people who have been cleared as loyal to Trump to join his potential Administration.

This is the other side of that story. This is an effort to identify the people who Trump’s team will get rid of to make space for those loyalists.

They are targeting our nonpartisan civil servants. Will enough people use their votes to protect them?

#9

The Man Who Saved the World by Doing Absolutely Nothing (Megan Garber, The Atlantic, Link to Article)

It was September 26, 1983. Stanislav Petrov, a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Air Defence Forces, was on duty at Serpukhov-15, a secret bunker outside Moscow. His job: to monitor Oko, the Soviet Union’s early-warning system for nuclear attack. And then to pass along any alerts to his superiors. It was just after midnight when the alarm bells began sounding. One of the system’s satellites had detected that the United States had launched five ballistic missiles. And they were heading toward the USSR. Electronic maps flashed; bells screamed; reports streamed in. A back-lit red screen flashed the word ‘LAUNCH.’”

That the U.S. would be lobbing missiles toward its Soviet counterpart would not, of course, have been out of the question at that particular point in human history. Three weeks earlier, Russians had shot down a South Korean airliner that had wandered into Soviet air space. NATO had responded with a show of military exercises. The Cold War, even in the early ’80s, continued apace; the threat of nuclear engagement still hovered over the stretch of land and sea that fell between Washington and Moscow.

Petrov, however, had a hunch—“a funny feeling in my gut,” he would later recall—that the alarm ringing through the bunker was a false one. It was an intuition that was based on common sense: The alarm indicated that only five missiles were headed toward the USSR. Had the U.S. actually been launching a nuclear attack, however, Petrov figured, it would be extensive—much more, certainly, than five. Soviet ground radar, meanwhile, had failed to pick up corroborative evidence of incoming missiles—even after several minutes had elapsed. The larger matter, however, was that Petrov didn’t fully trust the accuracy of the Soviet technology when it came to bomb-detection. He would later describe the alert system as “raw.”

But what would you do? You’re alone in a bunker, and alarms are screaming, and lights are flashing, and you have your training, and you have your intuition, and you have two choices: follow protocol or trust your gut. Either way, the world is counting on you to make the right call.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov is indeed a man who saved the world. His decision not to report what proved to be a false alarm prevented a nuclear exchange between the United States and Soviety Union on that day in 1983.

It is, frankly, amazing that our species survived that year. So much was happening and international tensions were as high as they could be short of a conflict.

Yuri Andropov had just taken over the Soviet Union after Leonid Brezhnev’s death in November 1982. As relations soured, U.S. President Ronald Reagan gave his “Evil Empire” speech in March 1983. The Soviet military shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 in September. It was later that month when Lt. Colonel Petrov determined that the country’s early warning system was falsely reporting a massive United States nuclear launch and prevented a near-certain Soviet nuclear launch.

On October 23, the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut was attacked by a bomber, killing 241. The U.S. invaded Grenada on October 25. On November 7, the U.S. and NATO began an extensive war exercise, Able Archer. We subsequently learned how the Soviets believed the exercise was actually part of the preparations for a surprise attack thanks to the double agent Oleg Gordievsky’s efforts to warn his United Kingdom handlers.

The Day After, the famous ABC television movie about a nuclear war and its aftermath aired on November 20.

Thanks to luck and the actions of people like Petrov, we did survive 1983. He is a name worth remembering, particularly in times of crisis.

Watch to Remember What Really Happened During the January 6, 2021, Insurrection

Post-Game Comments

Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:

“Kennedy was particularly haunted by a conversation between two German leaders after the war began. One, a former German chancellor, asked the current chancellor, “How did it all happen?” The latter, who had led his nation into war, replied, “Ah, if only one knew.” Jack told Bobby on Saturday afternoon, as the crisis looked darkest, that he wanted to avoid someone someday writing a comparable The Missiles of October. As President Kennedy recalled later, “If this planet is ever ravaged by nuclear war, if 300 million Americans, Russians, and Europeans are wiped out by a 60-minute nuclear exchange, if the survivors of that devastation can then endure the fire, poison, chaos, and catastrophe, I do not want one of those survivors to ask another, ‘How did it all happen?’ and to receive the incredible reply, ‘Ah, if only one knew.’ ” (Garrett M. Graff, Raven Rock)”

Thank you for reading my newsletter. Let me know what you think about what you’ve read. Send me things you’ve found interesting! You can reply to this email. 

Things I Find Interesting is free and supported voluntarily by its readers. If you liked what you read, please consider buying me some coffee to drink while I’m writing it by becoming a paid subscriber or sponsor.

This post includes articles and commentaries written by Jamison Foser, Andrew Couts, James Powell, Adam Serwer, Christopher Mathias, Brian Klaas, Kavitha Surana, Parker Molloy, Alex Rogers, and the United States House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.

Here’s what I’ve found interesting:

• How the news media privileges Trump-Vance lies;
• Elon Musk is a national security risk;
• Trump calls Jan. 6 rioters “we” during debate;
• Reason Trump-Vance lying about Haitians;
• Trump uses a word with a deep fascist history;
• Trump and the banality of crazy;
• Abortion bans lead to preventable deaths;
• Taylor Swift’s Harris endorsement calls out AI misinformation;
• Leonard Leo’s $1 billion crusade to crush liberal America; and
• Remembering what happened at the January 6, 2021, insurrection.

Here we go. I’m glad you’re here.

#1

How the news media privileges dangerous and hateful Trump-Vance lies (Jamison Foser, Finding Gravity, Link to Article)

­­­When a news report treats the truthfulness of a lie as an open question, it privileges the lie. When a news report devotes more and more prominent space to recounting the lie and the liar’s defense of it than it does making clear that it’s a lie, the article privileges the lie. When a news report focuses on the target of a lie’s struggle to deal with the impact of the lie, the article privileges the lie. And when a news report focuses on the topic of the lie — even if it does a good job of making clear the lie is a lie — it privileges the lie, because it allows the liar to set the topic of conversation, and thus increases the electoral salience of a topic the liar believes is to his benefit.

That’s what the news media has done over the last week. The news media surely affects what people think, but it has a larger and more powerful effect on what people think about. So even as the media has done a better-than-usual job of debunking the Trump-Vance lies, it has privileged those lies by helping Trump and Vance increase the salience of immigration, an issue the Trump-Vance campaign believes helps it.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Avoiding this result is one of the supposed lessons from 2016 that too many members of our media have yet to learn. Instead of holding Trump, Vance, and other Republicans accountable for their lies and misinformation, reporters often fail to highlight who is telling lies while demanding that Democrats respond to them.

Candidates who tell lies are likely to continue to lie once they take office. And, in Trump’s case, we can also point to his horrific record of lies from his first term.

That makes the subject of the lie the story. Foser explains how this dynamic gives the liars the advantage in a campaign. Now, immigration is a top story in this campaign, just as the liars (Trump-Vance) want it. It shouldn’t be this easy for bad-faith actors to get the result they prefer.

Things I Find Interesting is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider joining for free or becoming a paid subscriber to help me buy the coffee I drink while writing this newsletter.

#2

Elon Musk Is a National Security Risk (Andrew Couts, Wired, Link to Article)

Shortly following reports of an apparent second assassination attempt against former US president and 2024 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, Elon Musk decided to speak up.

“And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala 🤔,” Musk, X’s owner, wrote in a now deleted post, in response to another person asking, “Why they want to kill Donald Trump?”

After deleting the post—which could be interpreted as a call to murder President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s Democratic opponent in the US presidential election—Musk indicated that it was merely a joke that fell flat given the context. “Well, one lesson I’ve learned is that just because I say something to a group and they laugh doesn’t mean it’s going to be all that hilarious as a post on 𝕏,” he wrote, adding, “Turns out that jokes are WAY less funny if people don’t know the context and the delivery is plain text.”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I wonder what context would make a joke about assassinating a sitting president and vice president funny, whether spoken or in text. I wonder if the Secret Service will also want to visit the people in the group who laughed at the idea.

These threats would be troubling enough if Musk only owned a failing social network. Musk’s takeover of Twitter ranks among the worst business deals in our nation’s history as many banks and investors have experienced.

However, Musk’s companies also have billions of dollars in defense, satellite internet, and spaceflight contracts. Musk has already limited the use of his Starlink satellite internet service in active military conflict areas.

Can the United States government continue to rely upon someone who demonstrates daily his support for lies and conspiracy theories? What precautions are NASA and our military taking if Musk withholds services because of a political disagreement?

#3

Trump calls Jan. 6 rioters ‘we’ in discussing insurrection at presidential debate (James Powell, USA Today, Link to Article)

Former President Donald Trump embraced the January 6 insurrection during the presidential debate Tuesday, calling rioters at the capitol, “we.”

“It’s a disgrace. But we (referring to the insurrectionists) didn’t do — this group of people that have been treated so badly,” Trump said.

The Republican nominee said that the death of Ashley Babbit at the front doors of the House of Representatives during the attempted overthrow of the 2020 election was a “disgrace” done by an “out of control police officer.”

The police officer was cleared of wrongdoing in August of 2021.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Lawfare Senior Editor Roger Parloff made an excellent point on X/Twitter a few days after the Harris-Trump presidential debate.

In the middle of lying about his role in the January 6, 2021, insurrection, Trump admitted—perhaps inadvertently—who he supported that horrible day.

As this excerpt from the debate transcript demonstrates, Trump used “we” to describe the January 6 insurrectionists. He used the phrase “the other side” to describe everyone else, including law enforcement, Senators, his Vice President, and Members of Congress.  

Supporting an insurrection should have been disqualifying. But Senator Mitch McConnell and many Senate Republicans failed in their moral and Constitutional duty to back up their condemnations of Trump’s actions during the insurrection with votes to convict him during his second impeachment trial.

Voters must do the work now to protect our democracy and the peaceful transfer of power. The stakes are high. And that’s one of the reasons I am sharing a video compilation of the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the conclusion of every issue of this newsletter through the election.

#4

The Real Reason Trump and Vance Are Spreading Lies About Haitians (Adam Serwer, The Atlantic, Link to Article)

Another reason is Trump and Vance appear not to be interested in helping anyone in Springfield, or anywhere else for that matter. Their actions point to a political theory of the election, which is that fearmongering about immigrants, especially Black immigrants, will scare white people into voting for Trump. They also point to an ideological theory of the nation, which is that America belongs to white people, and that the country would be better if it were poorer and weaker, as long as it were also whiter. Trump and Vance have a specific policy agenda for socially engineering the nation through state force to be whiter than it is now: mass deportation, repealing birthright citizenship, and denaturalization of American citizens. This agenda, in addition to being immoral, would wreck the American economy. Republican elected officials in Ohio are defending the Haitians in Springfield because they understand that removing them would have a terrible effect on their town and state—the same terrible effect that Trump’s agenda would have on the country.

Trump’s and Vance’s statements reveal a belief that it would be better to leave dying towns in the Midwest to wither away than revive them and have to share that prosperity with people who are Black, and they seem to be betting that enough American voters in enough swing states agree that it would be better to be broke than integrated. In exchange for these fearful votes, a second Trump administration would proceed to shower tax cuts on the wealthy, raise them on everyone else, slash regulations on big business, and further undermine unions, while towns like Springfield would be left to tumble further into decline.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

U.S. Senator JD Vance (R-Great Replacement Theory) has continued to lie about the situation in Springfield, Ohio, thereby harming people who are not only in our country legally but also happen to be his constituents.

Why would any elected official do this to the people they have promised to serve? Serwer explains how these smears play to the white nationalists and great replacement theory believers who make up the MAGA base.

Serwer notes that the Haitian community in Springfield is doing what Republican politicians claim they want immigrants to do—come here legally, work hard, and be a benefit to the community. But instead of gratitude, they have been subjected to bomb threats, death threats, and hate.

We should be clear that this is just a preview of what we can expect if Trump and Vance win this election.

Thank you for reading Things I Find Interesting. This post is public, so feel free to share it with your family and friends.

#5

Trump’s Alarming Use Of A Word With A Deep Fascist History (Christopher Mathias, HuffPost, Link to Article)

Last weekend, former President Donald Trump posted another anti-immigrant screed to Truth Social. It would have been unremarkable ― at least, graded on the Trumpian curve of extreme xenophobia ― except for one word.

“[We will] return Kamala’s illegal migrants to their home countries (also known as remigration),” he wrote. “I will save our cities and towns in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and all across America.”

Many people might have glossed over his use of “remigration.” White nationalists did not.

“#Remigration has had a massive conceptual career,” Martin Sellner — leader of the Austrian chapter of Generation Identity, a pan-European white supremacist network — tweeted in his native German. “Born in France, popularized in German-speaking countries and now the term of the hour from Sweden to the USA!”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

It is so easy to normalize the horrible things Trump says and writes. That is why I am glad Mathias is asking us to take note of the former president’s use of a word that describes a concept previously reserved to the French and German parts of the white nationalist internet.

Mathias explains how remigration is championed by those who believe in the great replacement theory. That far-right conspiracy theory inspired terrorist attacks across the globe, including the United States.

How did Trump learn about the concept? As Mathias writes, I am sure it isn’t accidental, given how Trump and his campaign are intensifying their dehumanizing rhetoric about non-white immigrants.

We should not gloss over the fact that the nominee of one of our two major political parties regularly uses neo-fascist policy ideas and talking points. This should be a major story. There is nothing normal about it.

#6

Donald Trump and the “Banality of Crazy” (Brian Klaas, The Garden of Forking Paths, Link to Article)

However, as a certified degree-carrying political scientist, it is my duty to try to explain what is happening to you in formal theories dressed up in jargon and fancy, arcane language, so here is my best shot:

The United States has gone batshit insane.

There are, of course, a variety of serious explanations for why we’ve ended up in this unfortunate position. I’ve explained some of them here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, to name but a few.

But I would like to return to one phenomenon that really disturbs me and which is most easily fixable in American politics. It’s a term I coined in a previous essay and I call it: The Banality of Crazy.

Hannah Arendt wrote about the banality of evil, in which ordinary people grew numb to barbaric acts because they became repetitive and routine. I highlight the banality of crazy, in which the American press—and by extension, the voting public—grows numb to the insane behavior and statements of Donald Trump simply because they have become repetitive and routine.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

My thoughts about the previous story focused on how we avoid normalizing Trump. In this article, Klaas explains why the media—and too many voters—can fall into that trap.

Trump and his MAGA supporters do and say outrageous things nearly every day. It is relentless.

So, it is hard not to let a lot of it filter into the political background. But we still must be outraged when Trump and his supporters use neo-fascist rhetoric. Or when he lies about the January 6, 2021, insurrection. Or when—as he just did—Trump brings a 9/11 truther and white nationalist conspiracy theorist to the 9/11 Memorial event.

It may not seem like news because Trump doing something outrageous isn’t new. It’s been an almost daily fact of our lives since he came down that golden escalator in 2015 to announce his presidential run.

But it is still news. It still matters. Trump is hoping we will grow numb to it all. His most ardent supporters are energized by it. Preserving our democracy requires us not to accept it. Those of us disgusted by it must match that energy.

#7

Abortion Bans Have Delayed Emergency Medical Care. In Georgia, Experts Say This Mother’s Death Was Preventable (Kavitha Surana, ProPublica, Link to Article)

In her final hours, Amber Nicole Thurman suffered from a grave infection that her suburban Atlanta hospital was well-equipped to treat.

She’d taken abortion pills and encountered a rare complication; she had not expelled all of the fetal tissue from her body. She showed up at Piedmont Henry Hospital in need of a routine procedure to clear it from her uterus, called a dilation and curettage, or D&C.

But just that summer, her state had made performing the procedure a felony, with few exceptions. Any doctor who violated the new Georgia law could be prosecuted and face up to a decade in prison.

Thurman waited in pain in a hospital bed, worried about what would happen to her 6-year-old son, as doctors monitored her infection spreading, her blood pressure sinking and her organs beginning to fail.

It took 20 hours for doctors to finally operate. By then, it was too late.

Afraid to Seek Care Amid Georgia’s Abortion Ban, She Stayed at Home and Died (Kavitha Surana, ProPublica, Link to Article)

Candi Miller’s health was so fragile, doctors warned having another baby could kill her.

“They said it was going to be more painful and her body may not be able to withstand it,” her sister, Turiya Tomlin-Randall, told ProPublica.

But when the mother of three realized she had unintentionally gotten pregnant in the fall of 2022, Georgia’s new abortion ban gave her no choice. Although it made exceptions for acute, life-threatening emergencies, it didn’t account for chronic conditions, even those known to present lethal risks later in pregnancy.

At 41, Miller had lupus, diabetes and hypertension and didn’t want to wait until the situation became dire. So she avoided doctors and navigated an abortion on her own — a path many health experts feared would increase risks when women in America lost the constitutional right to obtain legal, medically supervised abortions.

Miller ordered abortion pills online, but she did not expel all the fetal tissue and would need a dilation and curettage procedure to clear it from her uterus and stave off sepsis, a grave and painful infection. In many states, this care, known as a D&C, is routine for both abortions and miscarriages. In Georgia, performing it had recently been made a felony, with few exceptions.

Her teenage son watched her suffer for days after she took the pills, bedridden and moaning. In the early hours of Nov. 12, 2022, her husband found her unresponsive in bed, her 3-year-old daughter at her side.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

ProPublica this week shared the stories of two preventable deaths caused by the abortion bans Republicans have enacted since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Amber Nicole Thurman. Candi Miller. Their names need to matter.

Both of them would be alive in a sane state where pregnant people could access medically necessary reproductive health care.

Their deaths demonstrate, as Abortion, Every Day’s Jessica Valenti has argued for months, how phony these so-called exceptions to abortion bans are. Republican legislators have designed the exceptions to be impossible to implement—and made the penalties for breaking the bans so extreme that medical professionals are unwilling to take the risk.

More women have died since the Supreme Court took away the right to reproductive health care. ProPublica found out about these cases through a medical review process that generally takes more than a year to consider a case. We are only at the beginning of this tragic story.

I understand why Republican leaders want to blame the victims or the doctors for the deaths. I see that some extremists are even trying to blame the safe abortion medications (as with many medications, there can be complications, but both of these women could have been saved with routine follow-up care).

We are not required to accept those excuses. And I hope we voters hold these forced-birth extremists to account at the ballot box.

#8

Taylor Swift Turns the Tables on AI Misinformation with Harris Endorsement (Parker Molloy, The Present Age, Link to Article)

…in an Instagram post, Taylor Swift publicly endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz for the 2024 presidential election. After her endorsement of the Biden-Harris ticket in 2020, this doesn’t come as a huge surprise. However, the story behind this endorsement is more complex than it might appear at first glance, combining issues of artificial intelligence, misinformation, and the power of celebrity in the digital age.

…

Swift’s endorsement came just minutes after Harris’s debate with former President Donald Trump, but its roots trace back to an incident last month. Trump had shared a collection of images on his Truth Social platform, including AI-generated pictures of “Swifties for Trump” and an image of Swift herself in Uncle Sam attire, declaring, “Taylor wants YOU to vote for Donald Trump.” Trump’s caption? A simple “I accept!”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I’m sure Trump didn’t think about the ramifications of spreading an AI-produced fake implying Taylor Swift was supporting him. Perhaps he thought it was funny or was trying to trigger the libs.

That was a miscalculation.

I think Swift deserves credit for taking this stand and doing it in such a high-impact way after the debate. It does come with risk, as any public figure who speaks out against Trump understands. She also recently faced terrorist threats during the European leg of her Eras Tour, one of which forced the cancellation in August of three shows in Vienna.

AI has made it so easy to create and distribute fake photos and videos (something I discussed in a newsletter earlier this month). We will inevitably see more fake images and videos during this campaign—but most of the targets won’t have Swift’s public reach to respond or a security team to protect them.

#9

Conservative activist launches $1bn crusade to ‘crush’ liberal America (Alex Rogers, Financial Times, Link to Article)

The conservative activist who led the crusade to overhaul the US legal system is making a $1bn push to “crush liberal dominance” across corporate America and in the country’s news and entertainment sectors.

In a rare interview, Leonard Leo, the architect of the rightward shift on the Supreme Court under Donald Trump, said his non-profit advocacy group, the Marble Freedom Trust, was ready to confront the private sector in addition to the government.

“We need to crush liberal dominance where it’s most insidious, so we’ll direct resources to build talent and capital formation pipelines in the areas of news and entertainment, where leftwing extremism is most evident,” Leo told the Financial Times.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Now that Leonard Leo has secured a Supreme Court supermajority, he’s looking to expand his influence. And he has the money to try.

We are fortunate that people like Leo insist on sharing their plans with us. How will we respond when the organizations funded by Leo’s money attack the institutions he targets?

Democrats let Leo reshape the judicial branch for decades without an effective counter until the Supreme Court and other Federalist Society judges did so much damage. We cannot make that mistake again.

We Must Remember What Really Happened During the January 6, 2021, Insurrection

Post-Game Comments

Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:

“Those who believe they’re right are always more dangerous than those who think they are. You can’t argue with faith.” (Greg Olear, Rough Beast)

Thank you for reading! This post is public, so feel free to share it.

Thank you for reading my newsletter. Let me know what you think about what you’ve read. Send me things you’ve found interesting! You can email me at craigcheslog@substack.com. 

Things I Find Interesting is free and supported voluntarily by its readers. If you liked what you read, please consider buying me some coffee to drink while I’m writing it by becoming a paid subscriber or sponsor.

Here’s what I’ve found interesting as I prepared for the debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump:

• New Harris campaign video highlights former Trump officials who have not endorsed the former president;
• The media should wonder why so many voters perceive Trump as a centrist;
• We should take Trump seriously after he proposed over the weekend the two largest federal arrests of people in our history;
• A chronology of 12 times Trump tried to use the Department of Justice to retaliate against his enemies;
• Why people should stop claiming that Harris’ 2020 campaign was a failure;
• What Harris actually did on immigration and border issues;
• Don’t fall for Trump’s attempts to distance himself from abortion ban proposals;
• Why it is still important to fact-check the lies Trump has repeated for years; and
• Remembering what happened at the January 6, 2021, insurrection.

Here we go. I’m glad you’re here.

#1

Harris trolls Trump on debate day with criticism from inside his administration (Meridith McGraw, Politico, Link to Article)

Kamala Harris is trying to get into Donald Trump’s head before Tuesday’s debate, rolling out a new ad featuring scathing assessments of the former president from some former top officials in his administration.

The ad, titled “The Best People,” and shared first with POLITICO, features clips of media interviews with officials from the Trump administration — including Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, national security adviser John Bolton, and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley — talking about their decision not to endorse their former boss or warning about the dangers he would pose in a second term.

The ad will run nationally on Fox News and in West Palm Beach — home to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort — and Philadelphia media markets on Tuesday, the day he will debate Harris for the first time. It will continue to play throughout the week, according to the Harris campaign.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I have been frustrated by the lack of coverage about the Republicans who are not supporting Trump in this election. It’s quite a list. But even former Vice President Dick Cheney’s decision to vote for Kamala Harris did not merit a place in the New York Times print edition.

How. Is. That. Not. News?!?

So, I am glad the Harris campaign will inject these facts into the conversation on the day of the debate. It is wise to ensure it airs in areas where the former president is most likely to see it.

Some headlines people may call it trolling. I think it is brilliant politics—and I wouldn’t mind if this ad causes the former president to lash out on the debate stage.

Things I Find Interesting is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider joining for free or becoming a paid subscriber to help me buy the coffee I drink while writing this newsletter.

#2

A new poll finding voters think Donald Trump is a centrist should be a wake-up call for the news media (Jamison Foser, Finding Gravity, Link to Article)

There’s a new New York Times/Siena College poll out and I’m not going to write about it because I generally don’t write about polls because the thing 99.999 percent of Americans should be thinking about is not “who is winning” but rather “who should win.” But I do want to briefly address one of the Trump advantages in the poll highlighted by Times chief political analyst Nate Cohn:“He occupies the center. A near majority of voters say Mr. Trump is “not too far” to the left or right on the issues, while only around one-third say he’s “too far to the right.” Nearly half of voters, in contrast, say Ms. Harris is too far to the left; only 41 percent say she’s “not too far either way.””

Of course, Donald Trump does not actually “occupy the center” — what Cohn meant is that Trump is perceived as occupying the center. (At least according to this measure.) This is not an insignificant difference!

So where does that perception come from? It comes, in part, from news companies like the New York Times.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Wait. What?

One of the media’s jobs is to inform the American public about what is happening in our country. The results of this poll show how dramatically the media is failing in this critical role.

How is a candidate who wants to enact a national abortion ban, violently deport 15-20 million people, eliminate most of the nonpartisan civil service, befriend dictators, cut taxes on the rich and corporations, raise tariffs, and become a dictator on day one end up being perceived by voters as holding the political center?

Foser provides several examples that can explain these dynamics. From sanewashing Trump’s rants to focusing only on Trump’s cross-party endorsements, media outlets are leaving a false impression with voters.

It would be great if editors and reporters were to review the results of that poll and reflect on why they are failing to inform the public. I’m not optimistic.

#3

Take him seriously (Mike Allen, Axios AM, Link to Newsletter)

President Trump is now proposing two of the largest-ever federal arrests of people living in America, including U.S. citizens, if he’s re-elected:Trump, on his Truth Social platform last night, threatened to jail adversaries, including Democratic donors. “WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED” in elections of 2020 or 2024, he wrote, “will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences … Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials.”Trump, asked by TIME magazine in April about his plans for the largest deportation of undocumented immigrants in American history, said he has “no choice”: “I don’t believe this is sustainable for a country, what’s happening to us, with probably 15 million and maybe as many as 20 million by the time Biden’s out. Twenty million people, many of them from jails, many of them from prisons, many of them from mental institutions.”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

It seems like “proposing two of the largest-ever federal arrests of people” should be a big deal. This plan doesn’t seem like a centrist one to this political observer.

On top of that, Trump went even further about his deportation plans on Saturday, telling a Wisconsin rally that “Getting them out will be a bloody story.”

Not subtle. Also, we must not assume it’s hyperbole.

Trump has been consistent about his retribution agenda. His advisors have discussed how to use the Insurrection Act as part of the deportation plan and to confront the inevitable protests against it.

The debate seems like a great time to talk about these ideas.

#4

Chronology of a Dozen Times Trump Pushed to Prosecute His Perceived Enemies (Adam Klasfeld and Ryan Goodman, Just Security, Link to Article)

The cascade of election coverage, commentary and speculation about how Donald Trump might use the power of the presidency to retaliate against his perceived political enemies has overlooked important context: Trump has done just that, while he was president, at least a dozen times.

What follows is a chronological list of specific instances in which the former president in fact used the Department of Justice and other levers of government power — including by directly, publicly or privately, pressuring officials — to target his chosen political adversaries. The record includes several cases in which he apparently succeeded more than might be imagined or remembered.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

While some reporters obsess about interviews and a lack of certainty about policy details, I have been frustrated because people forget that we can look at what Trump and Harris have done in elected office to see how they might govern.

Klasfeld and Goodman put together a timeline of a dozen times when Trump sought to use the government to retaliate. The list includes:

1. Trump asks then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to “unrecuse” himself to investigate and prosecute Hillary Clinton. (Date: Sometime after May 17, 2017 and before July 19, 2017)
2. Trump publicly scolds Justice Department for not investigating Clinton (Date: November 2017)
3. Sessions directs US Attorney for Utah John W. Huber to investigate Hillary Clinton and Uranium One conspiracy (Date: November 2017 to January 2020)
4. Criminal investigation of the Clinton Foundation (Date: On or before January 2018 to January 2021)
5. Criminal investigation and near-prosecution of former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe (Date: March 16, 2018-February 14, 2020)
6. Trump demands investigation into his debunked “Spygate” conspiracy theory (Date: May 20, 2018)
7. Trump privately told White House Counsel he wanted to order the Justice Department to prosecute James Comey and Hillary Clinton (Date: Spring 2018)
8. Trump publicly urges Sessions to investigate a long list of perceived political enemies (Date: Aug. 23, 2018)
9. The Durham investigation: Directed at law enforcement and intelligence officials, as well as Hillary Clinton (Date: April 18, 2019 to May 2023)
10. Trump urges Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to open a criminal investigation of Joe Biden (Date: July 25, 2019)
11. Criminal investigations of Comey (First Date: uncertain — August 2019. Second Date: From at least January 2020 – December 2020/January 2021)
12. Trump threatens to prosecute Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger if he doesn’t overturn his election defeat in Georgia (Date: Jan. 2, 2021)

The article includes more detail about each of these 12 situations. These are real attempts to weaponize the Department of Justice.

It is worth taking the time to review the list. For Trump, retribution is not a hypothetical. And Trump has made clear he will appoint people to carry out his orders. There won’t be so-called “adults in the room” to prevent abuses next time.

Thank you for reading Things I Find Interesting. This post is public, so feel free to share it with your family and friends.

#5

Harris’ 2020 Campaign Was Not a Failure (Noah Berlatsky, Everything Is Horrible, Link to Article)

It’s conventional wisdom among the jaded political press that Kamala Harris’ 2020 primary bid was an embarrassing disaster. Mark Leibovich at the Atlantic provides a recent example of this supposedly self-evident narrative—in an analysis of Harris’ CNN interview Leibovich refers to Harris’ “short-lived and ill-fated presidential campaign of 2019.”

There are a couple of problems with this formulation. First, it’s false. And second, it’s false in a way that glibly advances racist and sexist talking points which paint Harris as incompetent and unworthy.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Too many Democrats are willing to concede that Vice President Harris’ 2020 campaign for president was a failure.

Berlatsky is correct in urging us to stop doing that. As he argues, “The goal of a presidential nomination contest is not to stay in as long as possible. The goal is to advance your career. That can mean that you come out of the nomination as president, ideally. But that’s not the only way to win.”

Harris didn’t win in 2020. However, I agree with Berlatsky that she demonstrated great political savvy by dropping out after she determined there was no viable path to victory. By not attacking Biden for several more months on debate stages, she placed herself in the best position to become his Vice President.

She took a chance. It worked. And now she’s the Democratic nominee for president.

Why are people so quick to assume that’s a failure?

#6

What Kamala Harris did – and didn’t do – on immigration and the border (Toluse Olorunnipa and Maria Sacchetti, The Washington Post, Link to Article)

Two months into his presidency, Joe Biden confronted a political crisis: The number of migrants illegally crossing the southern border into the United States was soaring. So he asked Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the administration’s diplomatic efforts to reduce problems at the border.

That assignment included working with three Central American countries — El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras — to improve living conditions and lower the odds that migrants would leave those countries for reasons including poverty, gang violence and corruption.

But Republicans quickly seized on the apparent diplomatic opportunity for Harris, referring to her as the country’s “border czar” responsible for all issues related to the U.S.-Mexico line. Now, more than three years later, her role is a potential political liability as she runs for president as the Democratic nominee and polls show voters broadly disapprove of the Biden administration’s handling of the border.

Harris, in fact, has never been in charge of the border. The Department of Homeland Security manages migration. Her immigration role for the Biden administration has included boosting U.S. aid to Central America, traveling to the region and discouraging potential migrants from making the dangerous journey to the United States.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

“Harris, in fact, has never been in charge of the border.”

Yeah, I’d like that to be in bold headlines. This fact does not matter how many times Republicans claim otherwise.

It is obvious that Harris is going to need an answer to the GOP’s lies about her border responsibilities. But let’s be clear: Republicans do not get to decide whether she was a border czar.

Moreover, Harris achieved considerable success with the job Biden asked her to do. That’s why we should be aware of what actually happened.

#7

Don’t Fall for the GOP’s Platform Lie (Jessica Valenti, Abortion, Every Day, Link to Article)

A leaked draft of the new Republican party platform says that fetuses have a constitutional right to personhood, a radical stance in a moment when Americans overwhelmingly oppose bans and want abortion to be legal. And despite headlines to the contrary, the GOP’s abortion plank still supports a national ban.

But because political reporters and mainstream news outlets have fallen for a Republican disinformation campaign, the platform’s new language is being covered as a ‘softening’ on abortion rights. 

The stakes are high so I’m not going to mince words: This is about as big of a fuck up as it gets. So let’s get into it.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Given how critical reproductive rights are in this campaign, it is maddening to see reporters and editors fall for the Republican attempts to cover up their extreme views.

Valenti details how the Republican platform’s use of the 14th Amendment is radical. She explains how Trump’s regular stories about late-term and post-birth abortions are lies.

Donald Trump nominated the Supreme Court Justices that were decisive in overturning Roe v. Wade. He took three different positions in 24 hours last week about the abortion rights measure on the Florida ballot. Ultimately, Trump decided after facing a backlash that he would vote to keep Florida’s current six-week ban in place.

That’s not moderate!

There are no post-birth abortions. That would be infanticide. It’s already illegal. When Trump claims it, he’s lying.

As Jason Sattler, known online as LOLGOP, explains, voting for Trump would lead to abortion becoming illegal in all 50 states.

I expect Vice President Harris to clarify these facts during the debate to lay the foundation for the run-in to election day.

#8

Analysis: Trump is still telling lies he told eight years ago (Daniel Dale, CNN, Link to Article)

Trump’s lying is most exceptional in its relentlessness, a never-ending avalanche of wrongness that can bury even the most devoted fact-checkers. But it’s also notable for its repetitiveness. He has found his hits, and he’ll keep playing them no matter how many times they are debunked.

As Trump enters the post-Labor Day sprint of his 2024 campaign for the presidency, his commentary is filled with many of the same false claims he made as president from 2017 to 2021. He’s even repeating some of the false claims he used during his 2016 presidential campaign.

…

Still, I try to match Trump’s tirelessness in lying with my own tirelessness in challenging the lies. The separation of fact from fiction is central to journalists’ role in the democratic process, and there are always citizens out there who are hearing even the stalest of deceptions for the first time.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Daniel Dale has been doing amazing work fact-checking Donald Trump for years. Dale does not hold Trump to a different and easier standard, unlike other fact-checkers.

Trump gish galloped a torrent of lies in his debate with President Biden. I suspect he will try the same with Vice President Harris.

That’s why I found it worthwhile before the debate to review Dale’s list of the lies Trump continues to repeat. I anticipate we will hear some of Trump’s greatest hits. We should be ready to refute them. If Dale isn’t surprised, we shouldn’t be either.

I hope CNN gets Dale in their post-debate coverage much faster than they did in the previous debate. People need to be aware of the lies as soon as possible. After all, reporters keep saying policy details matter—and they should while pundits pass judgment on tonight’s performances.

#9

We Must Remember What Really Happened During the January 6, 2021, Insurrection (January 6 Committee Video Exhibit, Via NBC News)

Post-Game Comments

Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:

“Fascists have always been well acquainted with this recipe for using democracy’s liberties against itself; Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels once declared, “This will always remain one of the best jokes of democracy, that it gave its deadly enemies the means by which it was destroyed.” (Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works)

Thank you for reading! This post is public, so feel free to share it.

Thank you for reading my newsletter. Let me know what you think about what you’ve read. Send me things you’ve found interesting! You can email me at craigcheslog@substack.com. 

Things I Find Interesting is free and supported voluntarily by its readers. If you liked what you read, please consider buying me some coffee to drink while I’m writing it by becoming a paid subscriber or sponsor.

Here’s what I’ve recently found interesting:

• The media needs to stop sanewashing Trump’s speeches;
• Unanswered questions reporters should pursue;
• Right-wing violence is the election story nobody wants to talk about;
• How will we react now that we cannot assume photographs capture reality;
• Trump’s Arlington debacle demonstrates how we will govern;
• The horrifying fascist manifesto endorsed by JD Vance;
• Melissa Ludtke tells her story about fighting to be able to do her job as a baseball writer; and
• We must remember what happened on January 6, 2021.

#1

The Press Response to Trump’s Word Salad Answer on Childcare is Peak Sanewashing (Parker Malloy, The Present Age, Link to Article)

Earlier this week, I wrote an article for The New Republic (and expanded on it in a post here at TPA) about how the media “sanewashes” Trump. If you missed that, I recommend checking it out.

And then yesterday, we were given a perfect example of this.

Moms First CEO and Founder Reshma Saujani asked Trump: “If you win in November, can you commit to prioritizing legislation to make child care affordable, and if so, what specific piece of legislation will you advance?”

It’s an extremely straightforward question with an extremely straightforward answer: “Yes, I will commit to that. This is the specific piece of legislation I support that would do that: [insert specific legislation to be talked about].”

But that’s not how Trump answered. Instead, he gave an incoherent, meandering, nearly two-minute response.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Sanewashing is such a perfect word for this dynamic. Just a few weeks ago, we were led to believe that a presidential candidate’s verbal slip-ups were a national security issue. As you may recall, media coverage of President Joe Biden’s minor gaffes was covered relentlessly and seen as proof that he was too old to seek a second term.

Meanwhile, those same media outlets are transforming the jibberish shared by former President Trump into something coherent, covering up a more serious situation.

Take, for example, Trump’s answer to the childcare question Malloy noted above. Here is a transcript of what Trump actually said.

Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down, and I was, somebody, we had Sen. Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka was so impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, that, because, look, child care is child care. You have to have it — in this country you have to have it.

But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to — but they’ll get used to it very quickly — and it’s not going to stop them from doing business with us, but they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about, including child care, that it’s going to take.

I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time, coupled with the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country, because I have to stay with child care. I want to stay with child care, but those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I’m talking about, including growth, but growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just told you about.

We’re going to be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it’s, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in. We’re going to make this into an incredible [country that can] afford to take care of its people, and then we’ll worry about the rest of the world. Let’s help other people, but we’re going to take care of our country first. This is about America first. It’s about Make America Great Again, we have to do it because right now we’re a failing nation, so we’ll take care of it. Thank you. Very good question. Thank you.

Read that out loud. That answer makes no sense. Given the demand for policy details, one would think this should be a situation worthy of major coverage. Yet here’s how The New York Times’ Michael Gold described it to his readers:

After his speech, Donald Trump was asked how he might address rising child care costs. In a jumbled answer, he said he would prioritize legislation on the issue but offered no specifics and insisted that his other economic policies, including tariffs, would “take care” of child care. “As much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it’s, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in.”

Gold does not help the reader understand what happened. A “jumbled answer” hardly explains what Trump shared with his audience. Gold then takes that word salad and makes it into something that falsely appears coherent.

Malloy offers many other examples of this sanewashing dynamic in her article. It is illuminating to see how much effort reporters are offering to put a sane filter on the former president’s rants.

Most people do not watch these events live. They are relying on what reporters and editors share. They often do not read anything more than the headlines they see in push alerts on their phones or social media posts.

By sanewashing Trump, the media is sharing a false version of this campaign’s reality. Instead of transmitting information, the media is reducing voters’ knowledge about this election.

Given the intense focus on President Biden’s age and mental acuity just a few weeks ago, how can anyone justify not asking the same questions about Trump now?

Why are media outlets willing to sanewash Trump’s speeches while downplaying news that would have resulted in political earthquakes in previous election cycles? How would it look different if reporters, editors, and publishers had declared they were trying to help Trump win?

Things I Find Interesting is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider joining for free or becoming a paid subscriber and helping to buy me some coffee to drink while I write.

#2

James Fallows (@JamesFallows on X/Twitter, August 31, 2024, link to post)

It’s been weeks since Trump promised to release flight records about his (mythical) helo flight with Willie Brown, and threatened to sue NYT for saying it was BS.

It’s been days since he promised to release Arlington video.

He will never do it. (Imagine this from Harris.)

Jamesetta Williams (@jalexa1218 on X/Twitter, August 31, 2024, link to post)

There are simply too many Trump related stories the media has been slow on, while griping about Harris’ interviews: what’s the deal with this $10M from Egypt? What really happened at Arlington Cemetery? What’s in the leaked emails? Where is the analysis of Trump’s mental acuity?

David Folkenflik (@davidfolkenflik on X/Twitter, September 2, 2024, link to post)

After a week, here’s what we’re left with: No video, no exoneration on Trump side. Journalists and lawmakers should push for answers and more materials. If either side – the Trump campaign or the US Army – isn’t telling the truth, that should be known. And knowable.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

The Trump campaign promised to share a video of the incident at the Arlington National Cemetery. Where is it?

The Trump campaign promised to share the flight logs and records of the helicopter flight the former president claimed he had taken with former California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown. Where are they?

We heard about a credible claim that Egypt’s leadership bribed Trump before the 2016 election a few weeks ago. That alleged bribe may have been linked to a loan Trump made to his campaign. (link to Will Bunch article) What media outlets are investigating? Is there new information?

What hit former President Trump during the assassination attempt last month? Trump claims it was a bullet. But that has not been confirmed by independent medical authorities. How do we not know the details of this assassination attempt?

At least three media outlets (Politico, The Washington Post, and The New York Times) have received leaks of emails hacked from the Trump campaign. Given what happened with the emails stolen from Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016, why aren’t we seeing daily updates about what is in the Trump emails? If editors have decided they made a mistake in 2016, why aren’t they sharing that with their readers and viewers? (link to Off Message by Brian Beutler story)

All of these stories are major ones. I am one of the people who is baffled that we do not see aggressive coverage of them. We saw what the media can do to amplify a story with their aggressive coverage of President Biden’s age. What is behind their choice not to provide updates on these?

#3

The Election Story Nobody Wants to Talk About (Rick Perlstein, The American Prospect, link to article)

Rick Perlstein: What are the basic outlines of this story no one wants to talk about?

David Neiwert: We’re once again faced with a situation where a substantial bloc of American politics is talking about committing acts of violence and bringing down the government. We saw this before, in 2020, in the run-up to that election and the aftermath. A lot of us held back; obviously, these guys have a long history of blowing off a lot of steam, talking, and wildly exaggerating their actual ability to carry out a threat. But I think we saw on January 6th, that was probably not the wisest view to take. We should have been paying more attention to what these guys were saying amongst themselves online. And what they’re saying amongst themselves right now is probably disturbing. Because they’re talking about shooting their neighbors.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

There have been repeated efforts to downplay the seriousness of the threat of right-wing domestic terrorism since the Obama Administration withdrew a comprehensive FBI study about the issue in 2009 after facing intense backlash from Republican elected officials and right-wing activists (link to Southern Poverty Law Center article).

Of course, that didn’t stop the right-wing domestic terrorism. It didn’t prevent the murder of reproductive health doctor George Tiller, a neo-Nazi’s attack on the Holocaust Museum, election-deniers attacks against poll workers and election clerks, Q-Anon-related attacks, the January 6, 2021, insurrection against the United States government, among others (link to PBS Newshour story).

Neiwart is an expert on right-wing extremism and tried to warn people about the 2021 insurrection based on what he was reading in radical right-wing internet discussions. So, I take it seriously when he expresses concern that the White House, Congress, law enforcement, and the media are not ready for what we are likely to face during and after the election.

#4

No one’s ready for this: Our basic assumptions about photos capturing reality are about to go up in smoke (Sarah Jeong, The Verge, link to article)

An explosion from the side of an old brick building. A crashed bicycle in a city intersection. A cockroach in a box of takeout. It took less than 10 seconds to create each of these images with the Reimagine tool in the Pixel 9’s Magic Editor. They are crisp. They are in full color. They are high-fidelity. There is no suspicious background blur, no tell-tale sixth finger. These photographs are extraordinarily convincing, and they are all extremely fucking fake. 

Anyone who buys a Pixel 9 — the latest model of Google’s flagship phone, available starting this week — will have access to the easiest, breeziest user interface for top-tier lies, built right into their mobile device. This is all but certain to become the norm, with similar features already available on competing devices and rolling out on others in the near future. When a smartphone “just works,” it’s usually a good thing; here, it’s the entire problem in the first place.

…

This is all about to flip — the default assumption about a photo is about to become that it’s faked, because creating realistic and believable fake photos is now trivial to do. We are not prepared for what happens after.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Oh, I’m not thrilled companies are releasing these A.I. photography tools right before a presidential election. We need to start talking about what it means to our society now that users can fake or modify photos so easily (the article I link to above has some stunning examples).

What does it mean for news coverage, law enforcement, and the justice system now that we must assume a photo is fake until it is proven true? How will we convince people to change an assumption they have been able to hold for their lifetimes?

The technology companies are not going to fix this problem. They will once again release a technology without the safeguards or study something so transformational should have.

Thank you for reading Things I Find Interesting. This post is public so feel free to share it with your family and friends.

#5

Trump’s Arlington Debacle Shows Us How He Will Govern (Dan Moynihan, Can We Still Govern, link to article)

Former President Trump and his entourage went to Arlington National Cemetery. The purpose of the visit was to score political points, portraying the Biden administration as a weak steward of the military. The actual result was somewhat different; a multi-day media embarrassment amidst reports that Trump’s team ignored clear rules about using Arlington for campaign purposes, and shoved aside an official who tried to enforce those rules.

At one level, Arlington is just one more stumble in a campaign that seems to have lost its way. But its more important than that. I see the incident through the lens of governance. From that perspective, Arlington is a small moment that offers a big insight into what a second Trump administration might look like. And its worth paying attention to it precisely because I don’t think we really has a full sense of how a hyper-politicized administration would operate. Frankly, I study this stuff and even I can’t predict all of the ways that a partisan model of presidential administration would seep into every crevice of government. But specific examples like this one force us to imagine what another, more debased, version of American government would look like.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I am appalled by what former President Trump and his staff did at Arlington National Cemetery. To take some of the most sacred space in our nation and abuse it for partisan goals is just another example of Trump’s inability to understand how a non-partisan and civilian-controlled military operates.

But that isn’t surprising given everything we’ve learned about how this man, who avoided Vietnam because of bone spurs, attacked the late Senator John McCain for getting captured (link to article) and, according to former Chief of Staff John Kelly, called soldiers who died in war “suckers and losers” (link to article).

In this article, Moynihan explains what this abhorrent behavior demonstrates about how Trump would govern if he wins a second term. We see how Trump treats public servants, celebrates lawbreaking on his behalf, and how the terror his supporters create through their threats protects him from being held accountable.

Like many authoritarians, Trump is not being subtle about what he intends to do and how he intends to do it.

#6

The Horrifying Fascist Manifesto Endorsed By J.D. Vance (Nathan J. Robinson, Current Affairs, link to article)

The book Unhumans, by Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec, is a fascist manifesto. It argues that the “Great Men of History” should take their cues from homicidal dictators like Augusto Pinochet and Francisco Franco, reject reason and democracy, and ruthlessly annihilate the gangs of communist “unhumans” who are currently threatening to destroy the United States. It explicitly advocates “eye for an eye” justice, promising a new McCarthyism complete with blacklists, along with the immediate banning of all teachers’ unions. It is perhaps the most paranoid, hateful, and terrifying book I have ever picked up. (I say this as someone who has read Mein Kampf.) And it comes with a warm and supportive blurb from Ohio senator J.D. Vance, who is currently the Republican party’s vice presidential nominee.

Vance had this to say of Unhumans: “In the past, communists marched in the streets waving red flags. Today, they march through HR [Human Resources], college campuses, and courtrooms to wage lawfare against good, honest people. In Unhumans, Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec reveal their plans and show us what to do to fight back.”

…

Unhumans is both a manifesto and a guide for action. Its central argument, which I will state as dispassionately as possible, is that leftists are not fellow human beings who should be accepted as part of a pluralistic society, but rather “unhumans” bent on destroying the civilized order. Citing the usual parade of 20th century communist dictators (Mao, Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot), Posobiec and Lisec argue that even if it may not look like the contemporary United States is under threat from a communist revolution, we are under threat, besieged by furtive, scheming unhumans who must be rooted out before they can consummate their fiendish plot to commit mass murder. Stopping the unhumans will require shedding commitments to democracy, free speech, reasoned debate, and tolerance of alternate points of view. Instead, they argue, the right should find its role models in Caesar, Joseph McCarthy, and various murderous anti-communist dictators of the 20th century.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Oh yeah, there is nothing weird about this situation. Nope. Nothing at all.

The list of weird and disturbing things JD Vance has said—or has supported—grows with each passing day. It has made more than one person wonder what we are going to learn in October if we are already seeing so much disturbing opposition research about him.

The premise of this book is even more disturbing than Vance’s statements about women and families. As its title suggests, this book seeks to rob anyone who disagrees with this worldview of their humanity. It is one of the first steps in any authoritarian regime’s playbook to eliminate dissent and justify violence.

We are fortunate that they are being so clear about what they intend to do. It gives us a better chance to prevent it.

#7

“To do my job, I had to be there too.” (Melissa Ludtke, Joe Blogs Guest Post, link to article)

I didn’t set out to challenge Major League Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn in the late 1970s, when I was the rare woman covering baseball. Still, I ended up as the named plaintiff in the groundbreaking 1978 court case, Ludtke v. Kuhn, which changed the course of sports history by giving women sportswriters the equal access we needed to interview the ballplayers, manager and coaches in the locker room. That was where male reporters had talked with baseball players for decades.

To do my job, I had to be there too.

In Locker Room Talk: A Woman’s Struggle to Get Inside, I tell what it was like to be a 26-year-old single woman who was mocked and parodied in print and on TV for taking on what the men claimed was my “silly” fight. Back then, the men held all the microphones on the airwaves and typed all the stories about the games men played. So, their views of me prevailed. It didn’t take long for me to know I’d lost my case in the court of public opinion, but within the year, I won in a court of law, and that made all the difference.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I am so glad Joe Posnanski gave Melissa Ludtke the keys to his newsletter to describe her book about a critical moment in journalism.

It may seem remarkable to people today that Commissioner Bowie Kuhn created such a mess by being so awful to Ludtke while she was trying to do her job as a baseball writer. As Posnanski describes in an introduction to Ludtke’s post, though, “It’s truly astonishing how often Bowie Kuhn was on the wrong side of history. But you do have to say this about him: He was never shy about being on the wrong side of history; he was always arrogantly on the wrong side of history.”

I’m glad Ludtke gets this opportunity to tell her story. Her guest post is a great entree into what happened and what it took to win against a bunch of terrible people.

We Must Remember What Really Happened During the January 6, 2021, Insurrection

Post-Game Comments

Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:

“There can be no hopes, dreams, and ideals where there is no shared reality; and there is no political community where there is only the self-obsessed and endlessly self-referential president.” (Masha Gessen, Surviving Autocracy)

Thank you for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Thank you for reading my newsletter. Let me know what you think about what you’ve read. Send me things you’ve found interesting! You can email me at craigcheslog@substack.com. 

Things I Find Interesting is free and supported voluntarily by its readers. If you liked what you read, and only if you can afford to, please consider becoming a paid subscriber or sponsor.

Here’s what I’ve found interesting: Trump once again diminishes Veterans’ sacrifices, the media needs to explain why it is covering the Trump email leak differently than it handled the DNC leak in 2016, where’s the investigation into the credible reports that Egypt bribed Trump, fact-checking lies Republicans share about Gov. Tim Walz, Elon Musk’s $44 billion donation to the GOP, where JD Vance gets his weird techno-authoritarian ideas, Walz may the person to spark a necessary conversation about Supreme Court reform, Trump came closer than we thought to using the Insurrection Act in 2020, and U.S. athletes took advantage of a novel policy idea while in the Olympic Village.

#1

VFW Admonishes Former President for Medal of Honor Remarks (VFW Press Release)

On Thursday, former President Donald Trump spoke at an event where he made some flippant remarks about the Medal of Honor and the heroes who have received it. In the video that has circulated online and in the media, the former president was recognizing Miriam Adelson in the audience who he awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom during his time in office. As he described the medal as the civilian version of the Medal of Honor, he went on to opine that the Medal of Freedom was “much better” than the military’s top award, because those awarded the latter are, in his words, “ … either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead.” He continued by comparing Miriam to MoH recipients saying, “She gets it and she’s a healthy beautiful woman. They are rated equal.”

These asinine comments not only diminish the significance of our nation’s highest award for valor, but also crassly characterizes the sacrifices of those who have risked their lives above and beyond the call of duty.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Oh yes, Trump’s comments do. I think this may be the most degrading statement about Veterans ever made by a major candidate for president. Of course, this isn’t the first time Trump has attacked Veterans since becoming the Republican Party’s leader. In 2015, Trump said that Senator John McCain was “not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” Trump has attacked McCain as recently as January of this year.

In 2016, Trump went after a Gold Star family who dared speak at the Democratic National Convention. In 2018, Trump canceled a trip to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetary in France because he feared his hair would be negatively impacted by the rain. It was during this same trip to commemorate the 100th Anniversary of World War I that Trump called American war dead “suckers” and ”losers.”

The Republican Party has had many chances to hold Trump accountable for these statements. They have refused to do it. So now they own them. And I will accept no lectures about patriotism from those who have failed to hold Trump to account for them.

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#2

Trump Email Hack Is A Moment Of Reckoning For Him—Or The News Media (Brian Beutler, Off Message)

It may be that the individual or entity who’s shopping these emails around will grow tired of waiting and choose to post them online directly. But even before that happens, the public knowledge that multiple, large, professional journalism institutions have possession of these emails flattens the distinction most of the way. Unless Politico, the Washington Post, and the New York Times collude to bury these leaks, they face a very similar collective-action problem: publish quickly or get scooped by the competition.

In other words, those of us who haven’t forgotten how the media conducted itself in 2016 can credibly demand one of two things: Either stories based on these emails should go to press very soon, promoted with the same zeal we saw eight years ago; or the outlets that obtained them should feel an ethical obligation to publish some of the most searching mea culpas in the history of journalism.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Reporters and editors get upset when critics point out the problems with how they cover former President Trump vs. how they cover Democrats. Their feelings get hurt when people point out how the media keeps holding Trump to a much lower standard.

This email leak example is about as obvious as it gets. In 2016, reporters shared the daily drip-drip-drip of emails leaked by Wikileaks after they were stolen from leading Democrats. Heck, we even know John Podesta’s secret for making creamy risotto.

Someone is now sharing stolen emails related to the Trump campaign with reporters. That is a very similar situation. Yet we know little of the details. One of the leaks apparently includes a nearly 300-page opposition research document compiled by the Trump campaign about Vice Presidential nominee JD Vance. Given how bumpy Vance’s first weeks as the VP nominee have been, how can anyone argue that the opposition research report isn’t newsworthy?

They can’t. So Beutler is right. We need either a mea culpa for the media’s “but her emails” obsession in 2016, or we better start seeing similar coverage of these recent Trump emails. Reporters, editors, and producers need to understand how awful it looks for Trump to get the advantage both then and now.

#3

Democracy dies if we drop the case of Trump, Egypt, and $10 million in cash (Will Bunch, The Philadelphia Inquirer)

We know Trump — reluctantly, at the urging of aides — did inject $10 million into his campaign in its final days. The Post said a Trump campaign official later told the FBI the money was structured as a loan that could be repaid to Trump. We now know about the Egyptian withdrawal of nearly $10 million in American cash, in line with the intelligence tip. And we know Trump cozied up to Sisi — largely a U.S. pariah during the Obama administration — and even called him “my favorite dictator” before releasing nearly $1.4 billion in military aid to Egypt that had been held up because of its human rights abuses.

The missing link in the probe was Trump’s bank records, which might have shown receipt of $10 million. But, as the Post chronicled in great detail, the case was handed off in 2019 from the former special counsel, Robert Mueller, who’d chased the tip aggressively, to political appointees in then-Attorney General William Barr’s Justice Department, including Barr himself. The Trump appointees refused to go after Trump’s bank records from 2017 as he became president — even after the evidence of the Egyptian withdrawal that January. And President Joe Biden’s AG Merrick Garland, whose tenure has been marked by his political cowardice, didn’t restart the case before the statute of limitations expired in January 2022.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Yeah, what happened to this story? Bribes of politicians should matter. Bribes by foreign government representatives should matter. Bribes that may have influenced a presidential election result should matter. It also should matter that former Attorney General Bill Barr appears to have meddled in at least three investigations on behalf of former President Trump. Why haven’t Senate Democrats used their majority to hold hearings about this allegation? Where are the editorials? Where are the special reports? Not focusing on this credible allegation is a choice. As Bunch explains, it’s one that’s bad for our democracy.

#4

Fact check: Walz retired from Army National Guard after 24 years to run for Congress (Rochelle Olson, Minnesota Star Tribune)

GOP vice presidential candidate JD Vance claims that the Minnesota governor and Democratic vice presidential candidate bailed as his unit headed to Iraq, but Walz retired before his unit was called up.

A reality check on the ‘Tampon Tim’ meme (Editorial Board, The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Social-media users swiftly took sides as well, and as usual, facts and context were missing, especially from those who see the new law as evidence of a radical Minnesota under Walz’s leadership. But a closer, more informed look at the issue should yield a different conclusion. This is good and necessary policy. Providing free menstrual products is a practical, compassionate remedy to address an under-the-radar reason for student absenteeism. Some families can’t afford menstrual products, and when that happens students stay home instead of going to class, falling behind as they do.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Sometimes, it helps to go to the source. The Minnesota Star Tribune examines the first two Republican attacks against Governor Tim Walz since his selection as Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate. The paper has covered these issues in detail in the past and is in a great position to explain what happened. I was not surprised to see just how outrageous the Republican claims were. We shouldn’t let these lies about Walz’s record stand without a response.

And it would be great if the New York Times would stop helping Republicans by privileging these lies in its coverage. As Jamison Foser explains, “What JD Vance is doing is as disgusting as politics gets. Privileging his lies, as The New York Times has done, is as disgusting as journalism gets.”

Thank you for reading Things I Find Interesting. This post is public so feel free to share it with your family and friends.

#5

The most expensive political ad of all time (Judd Legum, Rebecca Crosby, and Noel Sims, Popular Information)

In 2022, Elon Musk purchased Twitter, one of the world’s largest social networks, for $44 billion. From a financial perspective, it has not worked out well. Over the last two years, the value of Twitter — which Musk renamed X — has plunged. Internal documents reveal that company executives believed it was worth less than half of what Musk paid for it by October 2023. In 2024, Fidelity valued the company at just $12.5 billion.

Musk’s ownership of X, however, gives him full control over its algorithm. According to a report by The Verge, Musk “created a special system” that promotes his posts “to the entire user base.” The new system initially “artificially boosted Musk’s tweets by a factor of 1,000 – a constant score that ensured his tweets rank higher than anyone else’s in the feed.” Musk himself posted a crude mememocking the ubiquity of his posts on the network after the algorithm change. Although the artificial boost to Musk’s posts has been moderated somewhat, Musk continues to dominate the default “For You” feed of nearly everyone who uses X.

In recent weeks, Musk, who officially endorsed former President Donald Trump on July 13, has weaponized his account to flood millions of X users with pro-Trump and anti-Vice President Kamala Harris messages. Over the last month, Musk has published at least 173 posts supporting Trump and his running mate, Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH), or attacking their Democratic opponents.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Does a desire to support far-right political activities explain why Elon Musk has been willing to finance what Pivot podcast co-host Scott Galloway has called “the worst-performing business in history since a change in ownership”?

Musk has promoted Trump (including hosting a bizarre interview with him last week) and doctored videos attacking Harris. He has shared the lie that Democrats are allowing undocumented immigrants to enter the country unchecked so they can vote this fall. For unknown reasons, Twitter has restricted accounts that support the Harris/Walz ticket. What is the value that Musk, the supposedly generational business genius, has gained from turning his $44 billion purchase into a $12.5 billion company in less than two years?

Twitter/X is no longer a town square—it is now the most expensive Republican and far-right campaign storefront ever built. Musk has the right to do all of this as the platform’s owner, but it hardly demonstrates a commitment to free speech and the free exchange of ideas.

#6

Where J.D. Vance Gets His Weird, Terrifying Techno-Authoritarian Ideas (Gil Duran, The New Republic)

Trump’s first campaign was undoubtedly a watershed moment for authoritarianism in American politics, but some thinkers on the right had been laying the groundwork for years, hoping for someone to mainstream their ideas. [Curtis] Yarvin was one of them. Way back in 2012, in a speech on “How to Reboot the US Government,” he said, “If Americans want to change their government, they’re going to have to get over their dictator phobia.” He had also written favorably of slavery and white nationalists in the late 2000s (though he has stated that he is not a white nationalist himself).

Both Thiel and Vance are friends of Yarvin. In The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power, reporter Max Chafkin describes Yarvin as the “house political philosopher” of the “Thielverse,” a term for the people in Thiel’s orbit. In 2013, Thiel invested in Tlön, a software startup co-founded by Yarvin. In 2016, Yarvin attended Thiel’s election night party in San Francisco where, according to Chafkin, champagne flowed once it became clear that Thiel’s investment in Donald Trump would pay off.

…

Vance is a Thiel creation. And like his billionaire benefactor—who once wrote, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible”—Vance embraces a radical ideology hell-bent on destroying government as we know it. And they got these ideas, at least in part, from Yarvin.

Yarvin is the chief thinker behind an obscure but increasingly influential far-right neoreaction, or NRx, movement, that some call the “Dark Enlightenment.” Among other things, it openly promotes dictatorships as superior to democracies and views nations like the United States as outdated software systems. Yarvin seeks to reengineer governments by breaking them up into smaller entities called “patchworks,” which would be controlled by tech corporations.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Democrats have had success noting how weird many MAGA supporters are since Minnesota Governor Tim Walz first said it out loud in an interview last month. It also helps that JD Vance and his supporters continue to say or agree with weird ideas in weird ways. (For example, that the whole purpose of the postmenopausal female is helping to raise children.)

In this article, Duran highlights the person who has inspired some of these thoughts: Curtis Yarvin. Vance and his benefactor Peter Thiel have praised Yarvin and his call for reordering American society. I think Duran’s article helps to explain why Vance is so weird—and why we should be so concerned about what could happen if he becomes Vice President. As Duran notes, Thiel and Vance and their Silicon Valley supporters have money—now they want unchecked power.

#7

The Man to Bring Supreme Court Reform to the Conversation (Dahlia Lithwick, Slate)

In a profound way, Walz is an avatar for someone who is attempting to do effective and lawful state governance and is being thwarted by an imperial Supreme Court, which is exactly what will happen to the Harris administration if court reforms are not enacted. Just as the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority stood in the way of Biden’s emergency COVID management, his air-pollution efforts, his college-loan-forgiveness program, and his emergency-room abortion-care regulations, it will joyfully throw a spanner into the Harris administration’s efforts to expand voting rights, protect LGBTQ+ Americans, and prevent climate crises. One doesn’t need Juris Doctor behind their name to call this out. One need only have had a semester or two of high school civics to understand that this is neither “checking” nor “balancing” as anticipated by the Framers but rather an untouchable juristocracy that travels by charter flight and superyacht.

It’s high time that a prominent nonlawyer take a turn at this critique of the Roberts court, and it’s clear that Walz may succeed where all of us polite eggheads have failed. The Supreme Court supermajority represents a democracy crisis that needs to be discussed at barbecues and high school lunch tables, not just pondered in the stacks at Ivy League law schools. If Walz can initiate and embody that conversation over the next 90 days, in terms that chime with swing voters and undecideds, and in language that is playful and irreverent and goofy, it will be the best thing to happen to a Democratic Party that has avoided the topic of court reform for two decades too long.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Could it take the first non-lawyer to appear on a White House ticket since Jimmy Carter in 1980 to spark the conversation we need about Supreme Court reform? I hope so.

Thanks to Senator Mitch McConnell’s rule-bending and the Federalist Society’s vetting, the Supreme Court has become an openly political entity. Justices accept gifts from billionaires. Others warn darkly that President Biden and Democrats should “be careful” when they dare to propose rules to check and balance the Court. Walz has demonstrated an ability to discuss policy in relatable and understandable ways—as one would expect of a well-regarded teacher.

I look forward to seeing how Walz uses his new platform to help explain the stakes of this election to voters.

#8

DOJ IG Details How Close Trump Came To Invoking Insurrection Act in 2020 (Josh Kovensky, Talking Points Memo)

The Justice Department’s Inspector General detailed how close Donald Trump and then-Attorney General Bill Barr came on June 1 [2020] to invoking the Insurrection Act, which gives the President nearly limitless powers to use the military for domestic law enforcement purposes.

Some FBI officials believed that Trump would invoke the act, and were studying what it would mean for their agency. The D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI Washington Field Office were asked to prepare information showing that civilian law enforcement was incapable of handling the situation, providing the justification for federal troops.

And, the report says, the Office of Legal Counsel and White House attorneys drafted an Insurrection Act proclamation and accompanying executive order for Trump to sign.

The New York Times reported the drafts in 2021, and NBC reported on Trump’s interest in invoking the Act in June 2020. But the Inspector General’s report adds new details and perspective on an episode that looms over the chaotic final year of the Trump administration.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I have no doubt that former President Trump won’t hesitate to invoke the Insurrection Act immediately if he wins this election.

Stephen Miller has discussed using it for the mass deportations he dreams of initiating. Trump has called the military and civilian advisors who prevented him from using the Insurrection Act during the 2020 protests “losers.” Trump has promised to use the military to help conduct domestic law enforcement operations.

After allowing the Women’s Marches in 2021, I believe Trump would use the Insurrection Act to put down protests against his second term.

Congress needs to reform the Insurrection Act to prevent these kinds of overreaches. That’s going to require that we elect a President and Congress that don’t want to turn the United States into an authoritarian state.

#9

U.S. Athletes Are Taking Full Advantage of Free Healthcare in Olympic Village (Stephanie Apstein, Sports Illustrated)

Ariana Ramsey won an Olympic bronze medal with the U.S. women’s rugby team here last week. A few days later, something almost as exciting happened: She got a pap smear. For free. 

“Like, what?” she said in a post on TikTok describing her new discovery: The Olympic Village offers free healthcare.

The United States, of course, does not. So in the days following her victory, Ramsey made appointments with the Village gynecologist, dentist and ophthalmologist. According to the Paris 2024 organizing committee, the Village also offers cardiology, orthopedics, physiotherapy, psychology, podiatry and, of course, sports medicine—all at no cost to the athletes. (Paralympic athletes will also have access to dermatology.)

Ramsey came to Paris as a rugby player. She is leaving as a healthcare influencer. More than 135,000 people have watched her initial TikTok, and another of the half-dozen follow-up videos she has made has pulled in more than 570 views. That is fine with her. The more she thinks about it, the more frustrated she is that she’s so astonished by the concept.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Yeah, Americans should be frustrated by how odd it is to be able to get affordable healthcare services. I am glad Ramsey shared her experience so other American athletes could take advantage of the opportunity.

But seriously, if it is this difficult for our elite athletes, imagine what regular Americans face. We can do better.

Post-Game Comments

Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:

“There can be no hopes, dreams, and ideals where there is no shared reality; and there is no political community where there is only the self-obsessed and endlessly self-referential president.” (Masha Gessen, Surviving Autocracy)

Thank you for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Thank you for reading my newsletter. Let me know what you think about what you’ve read. Send me things you’ve found interesting! You can email me at craigcheslog@substack.com. 

Things I Find Interesting is free and supported voluntarily by its readers. If you liked what you read, and only if you can afford to, please consider becoming a paid subscriber or sponsor.

Here’s what I’ve found interesting: honoring Joe Biden’s sacrifice; there has been an open and transparent process to make Kamala Harris the Democratic nominee; a guide to countering the dishonest attacks coming for Harris; reporters were once again fooled by a fake Trump unity pivot; Trump cannot be the sole source of information about his ear injury; JD Vance, Menstrual Surveillance Hawk; remembering reporter Evan Gershkovich after his false conviction in Russia; the Port Chicago 50 sailors are finally exonerated; Congress accidentally legalized weed; and you’ll never believe to whom Donald Trump made a donation in September 2011.

#1

Biden can go down as an American hero — but only if Harris can beat Trump (Will Bunch, The Philadelphia Inquirer)

One of our earliest political legends is the tale of the ancient Roman leader Cincinnatus. It’s believed that in the year 458 B.C., Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, a former senator — considered an old man for his time — was plowing his small farm when a delegation from Rome pleaded with him to return to the capital and put down a popular insurrection and vanquish the city-state’s restive neighbors.

Cincinnatus donned a toga, returned to Rome, crushed the various uprisings in just 15 days, and — mission accomplished — happily surrendered power and went back to his farm. His story is still told, 25 centuries later, as a parable of civic virtue and selflessness.

At 1:46 p.m. on the languid Sunday afternoon of July 21, 2024 — a date now etched in American history — President Joe Biden made his bid to become the American Cincinnatus.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

President Biden became the rare political leader who chose to put the nation ahead of his ambition and relinquish power by choice. As Biden once said about the passage of the Affordable Care and Patient Protection Act, that decision is “a big fucking deal.”

I think one has to go back to George Washington’s two Cincinnatus moments (when he returned to private life rather than demanding political power after resigning as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army in 1783 and when he declined to seek a third presidential term in 1796) to find something comparable in our nation’s history.

While Lyndon Johnson ended his presidential campaign in 1968, the presidential primary process had just begun. Biden had the delegates required to secure the nomination. Only he could stop that process.

The media and many fellow Democrats treated Biden unfairly in the wake of his disastrous debate performance. His first 15 minutes were the worst ever recorded by a presidential or vice presidential candidate in a debate. He then improved but needed to be more. Meanwhile, former President Trump lied and lied and lied, although that apparently doesn’t matter so much since he did it with a loud voice.

Biden’s performance was a legitimate issue. However, pundits and reporters should have covered Trump’s failures with a similar focus. Democrats should have gone on the record with their concerns about Biden rather than providing a death-by-a-thousand-cuts drip of cowardly anonymous comments.

After three weeks of pummelling, Biden faced a horrible choice after a response that was not as vigorous as it had to be to stop the political body blows. He could keep going and likely lose—or serve as the bridge to a new generation of leaders.

It may seem like Biden chose the obvious path, but we didn’t have 3,896 delegates pledged to vote for us on the first Democratic National Convention ballot nor the ego required to seek the nation’s highest office in the first place.

Biden has given Vice President Kamala Harris a real shot at winning this election. I hope everyone who cares about our democracy will honor this BFD sacrifice by fighting hard to support Harris’ campaign.

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#2

AP survey shows Kamala Harris backed by enough delegates to become Democratic nominee (Zeke Miller, Leah Askarinam, Maya Sweedler, and Chad Day, The Associated Press)

Vice President Kamala Harris has secured the support of enough Democratic delegates to become her party’s nominee against RepublicanDonald Trump, according to an Associated Press survey, as top Democrats rallied to her in the aftermath of President Joe Biden’s decision to drop his bid for reelection.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

There is a bunch of social media whining on right now about how the Democrats should have had a process and a fight at the Convention to determine the party’s new nominee.

But let’s be clear: there was an open nomination process to replace President Biden. All of his delegates had the freedom to support the candidate of their choice on the first ballot. Politicians decided of their own free will not to run against her because of their internal calculations.

It’s just that this open Convention did not deteriorate into a contested one. Alas, for our reporter and pundit friends.

Vice President Harris did the work. She called people and earned endorsements. Delegates quickly announced that they supported her succession to the top of the ticket. We call that campaigning in the real world.

Some people seem shocked (and disappointed) that Harris has locked in overwhelming delegate support so quickly. But Democrats had been mulling over this decision for weeks—since the debate. It was not a surprise that they may need to vote for a new nominee. So many were ready to decide quickly.

I know many reporters and pundits wanted a contested Convention so they could enjoy higher ratings and cover some political chaos from their hotel bars. The Democratic Party does not owe the media an episode of chaotic disarray.

#3

A guide to the coming attacks on Kamala Harris (Judd Legum, Popular Information)

Some of the attacks on Harris were predictable. For example, shortly after Biden’s announcement, the Trump campaign blamed Harris for a “migrant crime wave” over the last three years. This was also the centerpiece of Trump’s campaign against Biden, but the “migrant crime wave” does not exist. Violent crime has decreased every year since Biden took office — and is down sharply again in 2024. (The last time violent crime increased was 2020, when Trump was president.) Further, a study of the 14 Texas counties along the border with Mexico by crime analyst Jeff Asher found “no evidence of increasing violent crime along the US border with Mexico.” In fact, border counties “have seen a relatively steady violent crime rate below that of the rest of their state and the nation as a whole.”

Other attacks include those that seem to pop up any time a woman seeks a position of power. The RNC Research X account, which attacks Trump’s opponents on behalf of his campaign and the Republican National Committee, posted a video attacking Harris for being “annoying.” The post features a video of Harris saying a short phrase — “what can be, unburdened by what has been” — in various settings for four minutes. This is only a slight variation of the common complaint that ambitious women are “shrill.”

Other criticisms, however, were more specific to Harris. They will be featured in millions of dollars of campaign advertisements, incorporated into Trump’s stump speech, and discussed frequently on Fox News. Here is a brief guide to some of the attacks that will be used to define Harris in the weeks ahead.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I hope Democrats have learned that they must loudly defend their candidate from unfair charges after what happened to John Kerry in 2004, Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016, and President Biden in 2024.

So now is an excellent time to learn what actually happened so we can immediately counter when Trump or Republicans bring up Jaleel Stallings (he’s a military veteran who was the victim of police brutality), bans on red meat (nope), crimes committed by undocumented people Harris freed (there’s important context where she reformed a program after a mistake), or ending private health insurance (I wish).

The Trump-Vance campaign, the Republican National Committee, and MAGA media are already trying to define Harris with lies about these situations. They have been successful before.

But we know that, too. So we can fight back. Legum has done the background work to explain the real stories. Harris’ supporters need to be quick and relentless in explaining the truth—starting today.

#4

The Pivot That Never Was: How Trump’s ‘Unity’ Speech Fooled the Press Again (Parker Malloy, The Present Age)

The media’s reaction to Trump’s RNC speech presents a troubling picture of journalistic responsibility and the dangers of premature narrative-setting. Perhaps most alarming is the number of newspapers that ran headlines seemingly written before Trump actually delivered his speech, focusing almost exclusively on his calls for unity while ignoring the divisive content that made up the bulk of his remarks.

Consider these headlines from major newspapers:The Detroit News: “Trump: We must heal discord”Pioneer Press: “Trump takes a unity tone”The Dallas Morning News: “Trump emphasizes unity”The Boston Globe: “In a departure, Trump calls for unity, healing in America”

These headlines, and others like them, paint a picture of a dramatically transformed Trump that simply did not match the reality of his speech. They appear to be based more on pre-speech expectations and perhaps early excerpts than on the full content of Trump’s address.

This disconnect between headlines and content raises serious questions about journalistic practices. Are deadlines and the pressure to be first trumping accuracy and comprehensive reporting? Are news outlets so invested in the “pivot” narrative that they’re willing to ignore contradictory evidence?

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

We must not let what happened with the coverage of former President Trump’s nomination acceptance speech get lost in the chaos of all the news that subsequently occurred.

How many times must reporters and editors be fooled by claims that Trump has finally learned his lesson and will pivot toward responsibility? As Taylor Swift wrote in her song Exile: “I think I’ve seen this film before // And I didn’t like the ending.”

Why do so many in the media still give Trump the benefit of the doubt after everything we’ve experienced in the nine years since he drifted down that golden escalator?

The problem is that too many in the media have accepted that what Trump does is (ick) “normal.”

Take, for example, this recent conversation between Zeteo’s Mehdi Hassan and Washington Post Editorial Board member Shadi Hamid.

‘Trump would upend our democracy’: Two former Trump officials react to his unhinged RNC speech

There’s a lot to process, pick apart, and debunk from Donald Trump’s 92-minute-long speech at the Republican National Convention. In the latest episode of Mehdi Unfiltered, Mehdi looks past the more ‘somber’ version of Trump that the world saw at the start of his speech, and unpacks just how concerning the rest of it was.

Zeteo

Hamid: “I don’t think the speech in the RNC that he gave was ‘batshit crazy’. A lot of it was just normal Trump.”

Hasan: “But normal Trump is batshit crazy. This is the mistake you’re making.”

Say it again for the people in the back of the room.

This has been the dyanmic of the Trump political era. He gets away with so much because people expect him to be so batshit crazy.

We don’t have to accept this framing. We don’t have to accept this kind of activity from a major party presidential candidate.

Saving our democracy requires rejecting it.

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#5

Donald Trump cannot be the sole medical source on the ear injury (Jennifer Schulze, Heartland Signal)

Let’s be honest: Trusting Donald Trump about anything, even his own injury, is not a smart move. Trump — who infamously told over 30,473 documented lies during his presidency — should not be the sole medical source on his ear injury.

Yes, his ear was clearly injured. But how?  How was it treated? What are the resulting health issues, if any? Will there be medical follow-ups? Voters deserve answers to these questions so where are the briefings, official statements and medical reports?

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

It has now been 11 days since the assassination attempt against former President Trump, and we still have no official information about his injury.

Where is the medical briefing? Did a bullet hit him, as he claims, or was it glass fragments, as some of the reports suggest? Why did he have such a prominent bandage throughout the Republican National Convention? Did he suffer any additional head or brain injuries as a result?

Donald Trump and Rep. Ronny Jackson (the guy demoted from admiral to captain by the Navy for improper conduct and allowed his medical license to expire) are not credible sources.

A couple of weeks ago, the White House press corps attempted to become experts in Parkinson’s disease diagnosis because of a misinterpretation of the White House visitor logs. Doesn’t the aftermath of injuries suffered by a former president in an assassination attempt demand equal energy?

#6

JD Vance, Menstrual Surveillance Hawk (Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo)

This spring, HHS finalized new regulations under HIPAA to limit law enforcement access to medical records tied to reproductive health. The rule was first proposed in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision as a way to limit the ability of state and local law enforcement agencies to access medical records to stymie or criminalize access to legal reproductive health services, most specifically abortions, but not only abortions. It also applies to contraception and the full range of other endangered reproductive care.

So for instance, consider the ability of a woman from an abortion-ban state to travel to another state to get a legal abortion, or her ability to receive legal abortion drugs through the mail. The news has been filled with proposed or actual laws which would attempt to restrict travel to receive abortions in other states, charge those who travel or criminalize those who might facilitate such travel or facilitate the legal shipment of prescribed abortion drugs through the mail. Of course, local police agencies might simply take it upon themselves to pull records to see who had unexplained disruptions to their menstrual cycles.

Your local sheriff might just want to know.

And so does JD Vance, it turns out.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Folks, I wish that headline were an exaggeration. But we have only begun to scratch the surface of how anti-woman JD Vance is as an elected official.

(Also, yes: JD Vance’s office confirmed that he prefers that we do not use periods for his name. As someone on social media said—and I am so sorry I cannot find the original post to give proper credit—this shows just how extreme Vance is about anything involving a period.)

How is tracking menstrual cycles consistent with a small government or conservative philosophy? Oh, that’s right. It’s not. But it is consistent with Trump’s Project 2025 and Trump’s abortion ban.

Vance and Trump aren’t small government proponents. They aren’t conservatives.

I suspect Vice President Kamala Harris will focus on this insanity between now and election day. I am here for it.

#7

For Years, Evan Gershkovich Saw Those He Knew Convicted and Imprisoned in Russia. Now It Has Happened to Him. (Eliot Brown, Wall Street Journal)

Evan Gershkovich thrived while reporting on Russia. He camped in a forest for days to cover wildfires that were ravaging Siberia, he delved into the opaque world of Vladimir Putin’s wartime decision-making and he watched as dissidents and journalists were increasingly jailed.

Writing on Russia, he tweeted in July 2022 that it had become “a regular practice of watching people you know get locked away for years.”

On Friday, it happened to him.

Evan, falsely accused of espionage, was convicted by a Yekaterinburg court after a brief closed-door trial that the U.S. government has condemned as a sham and sentenced to 16 years in a high-security penal colony. 

It was another blow for the gregarious, energetic, ever-smiling 32-year-old who has devoted much of his career to telling the story of Russia—and has spent more than a year in Russian prisons since he was detained by the security services in March 2023.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

We need to remember that the Putin regime has falsely imprisoned Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.

Former President Donald Trump has on a few occasions stated that Putin will release Gershkovich only to him.

Which is an odd thing to say. And it seems like that should be something worthy of conversation and follow-up by our esteemed members of the political media.

How does Trump know this? Has he made an October Surprise kind of deal with Putin? Has Trump violated the Logan Act by conducting a private foreign policy? Is he making it all up because he figures no one will hold him accountable?

#8

Exonerated: Bay Area leaders react after Navy clears Black sailors convicted in World War II Port Chicago explosion (Katie Lauer, Bay Area News Group)

Hundreds of Black sailors charged with mutiny and disobeying wartime orders in the wake of a deadly explosion at Contra Costa County’s Port Chicago in 1944 have been fully exonerated, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro announced Wednesday.

The decision comes 80 years after the blast that killed 320 sailors and civilians; almost two-thirds of the victims were Black. It clears the names of 258 Black servicemen who were court-martialed, jailed and threatened for refusing to return to work loading munitions in the disaster’s aftermath — citing the dangerous conditions, lack of proper training and segregation of Black sailors who were given hazardous assignments on the naval base, which is tucked along the shores of Suisun Bay.

“The Port Chicago 50, and the hundreds who stood with them, may not be with us today, but their story lives on, a testament to the enduring power of courage and the unwavering pursuit of justice,” Del Toro said in a statement. “They stand as a beacon of hope, forever reminding us that even in the face of overwhelming odds, the fight for what’s right can and will prevail.”

For several community leaders who have pushed for exoneration for decades, the Navy’s decision addresses a historic injustice by restoring equity to the treatment of these men — both on the naval base and in the courtroom.

…

The blast shot a massive fireball into the night sky, sent a shock wave of flying shrapnel that flattened Port Chicago and measured 3.4 on the Richter scale in nearby Berkeley.

While the exact cause of the explosion was never determined, historical records put the blame on Navy leaders for circumventing proper protocol while training the majority of African American sailors to load munitions at Port Chicago.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

The events described here happened less than 10 miles from where I live in the San Francisco East Bay. I’ve been monitoring this situation for several years.

So, I celebrate this exoneration! But yet, it is well past due. I hope it provides some solace to the families of the sailors impacted by one of World War II’s most racist actions.

Future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall tried to defend these sailors from the injustice they faced for demanding the same safety measures as their caucasian colleagues.

No one should have been punished for fighting for their lives. It is a travesty that it took 80 years for the Navy to clear their names.

#9

Congress Accidentally Legalized Weed Six Years Ago (Mike Riggs, The Atlantic)

In fact, neither medical nor recreational marijuana is legal in North Carolina. Technically, we’re getting high on hemp.

This is probably not what Congress had in mind when it passed the Agricultural Improvement Act of 2018, commonly called the 2018 Farm Bill, which made the production of hemp—cannabis’s traditionally nonpsychoactive cousin—legal for the first time in nearly a century. Lawmakers who backed hemp legalization expected the plant to be used for textiles and nonintoxicating supplements, such as CBD oil and shelled hemp seeds (great on an acai bowl). They didn’t realize that, with some chemistry and creativity, hemp can get you just as high as the dankest marijuana plant.

The upshot is that although recreational marijuana use is allowed in only 24 states and Washington, D.C., people anywhere in the U.S. can get intoxicated on hemp-derived THC without breaking federal law. These hemp-based highs are every bit as potent as those derived from the marijuana available in legalization states. I know this because I’ve tried recreational pot in California and Colorado, as well as 11 different hemp-derived intoxicants legally available here in North Carolina. I am not exaggerating when I say that they are indistinguishable in effect. In other words, six years ago, Congress inadvertently legalized weed across the entire United States.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Thank you to Jeff, one of my awesome paid subscribers, for sharing this story. It is the epitome of unintended consequences, in which chemists proved smarter than the lawmakers who drafted the law.

This is one reason we should be troubled by the Supreme Court’s recent decision to overturn the Chevron deference doctrine. The doctrine allowed the executive branch’s scientific experts to make regulatory decisions consistent with the often vague laws passed through legislative sausage-making.

The real-world impacts created by this loophole are harming legalized cannabis markets across the nation. Hemp companies can use banks and credit cards, systems not open to cannabis businesses, given that they are still illegal at the federal level.

I hope we can have a rational conversation about this next year with a new Congress and a new president. A bunch needs to go right, though, to make that possible.

The Closer

Yep! Donald Trump made donations to Kamala Harris during her Attorney General re-election campaign. $6,000 worth. Seems relevant. You can find the confirmation of the donation here on page 3 of the donations summary.

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Thank you for reading my newsletter. Let me know what you think about what you’ve read. Send me things you’ve found interesting! You can email me at craigcheslog@substack.com. 

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Here’s what I’ve found interesting: wait for the evidence and don’t spread conspiracy theories about the assassination attempt, refuse to obey in advance to demands to silence legitimate criticism, how Trump has already pivoted away from unity, remembering why Trump needed a new Vice President, we shouldn’t fall for the GOP’s abortion platform lie, recalling that time J.D. Vance said women shouldn’t leave abusive marriages, People magazine publishes one of the best articles so far about Project 2025, the story of a wrongful conviction made possible by horrific police interrogation tactics, and the U.K. Prime Minister’s nuclear letters of last resort.

#1

Don’t Spread Baseless Conspiracy Theories About The Assassination Attempt (Noah Berlatsky, Everything is Horrible)

As everyone probably knows, Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt [Saturday]. And, to no one’s surprise, social media is not covering itself in glory in the aftermath.

Of course, many on the right are already floating rabid conspiracy theories arguing with no evidence that the shooter was somehow radicalized by Democrats who pointed out (accurately) that Trump is a threat to democracy.

But progressives have not been particularly sober or responsible either. Some commenters are insisting (with little historical evidence, and no polling) that Trump being shot at assures him of victory in November. Even more irresponsibly, many people who should know better are speculating—utterly without evidence, or, I should say, in the face of all the evidence we have so far—that the shooting was a false flag operation, which must have been organized by Trump himself.

The incentives to believe this nonsense are obvious enough. Trump remains a terrifying threat to democracy and an evil man. People do not like to admit that bad things can happen to bad people, because they do not want to sympathize or express any level of concern for bad people who are threatening them. False flag conspiracy theories allow you to turn the victim into the perpetrator, which is a lot more comfortable when the victim is someone as horrible as Trump.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Violence is never acceptable in our political process. I hope former President Donald Trump is recovering well from his injuries. I extend my condolences to the family of the victim who was killed and everyone who has been traumatized by these horrible events.

What happened Saturday night is not a joke. It is another warning of the crisis facing our democracy.

Nothing good is served by speculating about what happened. We need the facts. I am sure the FBI and other law enforcement agencies will do all they can to determine a motive. I anticipate we will learn how a potential assassin could get so close to a presidential candidate with a direct line of sight to take their shot. We need to let the investigation answer some of these questions.

That said, I agree with journalist Jennifer Schulze, who is wondering how it is possible that we still do not have any official word on Trump’s injuries more than 48 hours after the shooting. How are the same media outlets that aggressively (and wrongly) speculated about President Biden’s health last week not asking more questions about what happened on Saturday night? Was Trump hit by a bullet or by glass? What is the delay in determining and publicizing these fundamental facts? Failing to answer these basic questions will lead to more conspiracy theories. We should be demanding answers.

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#2

Rewriting the Rules of Engagement: GOP’s Attempt to Silence Legitimate Criticism (Parker Malloy, The Present Age)

By equating criticism and standard campaign rhetoric with calls for violence, these Republican figures are engaging in a dangerous form of false equivalence. They’re not just misrepresenting their opponents’ words; they’re actively working to reshape the boundaries of acceptable political discourse, chilling legitimate criticism and debate. This is, to put it simply, nonsense.

As Financial Times Associate Editor Edward Luce wrote on X, “Almost any criticism of Trump is already being spun by Maga as an incitement to assassinate him. This is an Orwellian attempt to silence what remains of the effort to stop him from regaining power.”

This is especially rich coming from the party that openly discusses being in the middle of “the second American Revolution,” wear AR-15 pins on the House floor, whose leader mocked the attempt to assassinate Paul Pelosi, and posts videos of Biden tied up in the back of a pickup truck.

North Carolina’s Republican Lieutenant Governor and candidate for governor, Mark Robinson, who just last month went on a hateful rant about how “some folks need killing,” is one of the scheduled speakers at this week’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. For this party to pretend that stating the obvious about Trump’s authoritarian aspirations is incitement to violence, to pretend that they are suddenly “words are violence” people? I don’t buy it.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

In his book On Tyranny, Tim Snyder, an expert in authoritarianism, shared 20 lessons from the 20th Century about defending freedom. His first lesson was, “Do not obey in advance.”

This lesson is one Democrats must remember as we decide how to react to these bad-faith demands from Republicans that President Biden and Democrats must stop talking about what Trump did in his first term and what he plans to do if he wins in November.

As Garbage Day’s Ryan Broderick observed, “So I’m unclear why both mainstream media and Democratic leadership are finding it so hard right now to express what I think is a fairly basic point. Political violence is bad and a second Trump presidency means more of it.”

The first two days of the Republican National Convention have demonstrated that MAGA supporters are not going to stop with their violent and authoritarian rhetoric. They do not get to decide how we respond. Democrats must not stop telling the truth about the stakes of this election. Democrats must not agree in advance to surrender to Trump and to MAGA.

#3

Trump’s Ugly New Post-Shooting Rant Instantly Wrecks His “Unity” Pivot (Greg Sargent, The New Republic)

Only a few hours after that report appeared, Trump uncorked a new rant on Truth Social that left zero doubt that he remains fully committed to the range of positions that make Trump and his movement such a profound threat to democratic stability in this country—the very same ones that have done so much to bring about the “tinder box” that Axios imagines he is now preoccupied with addressing.

This led some to chortle that media predictions of a Trump “pivot”—a stock joke at this point—have imploded yet again. But it should occasion something else too. If media figures are so eager to depict Trump as unifying, then let’s lay down a hard metric: Before such claims are made, the absolute minimum threshold he must clear is fully renouncing the authoritarian designs he is threatening to inflict on this country and its people if reelected president.

…

I propose we go further, by insisting on the following: No calling Trump a “unifier” until he renounces plans to pardon the January 6th rioters and prosecute his opponents, stops casting the application of the law to himself and his movement as inherently corrupt, repudiates his threat to terminate parts of the Constitution, unequivocally commits to accepting the election results, and tells his allies to stop planning to treat any election loss as illegitimate in advance. And that’s just a start.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I wish we lived in a universe where Donald Trump reacted to the assassination attempt against him to seek to unify the country. Alas, such an outcome will remain in the dreams and stories of our nation’s political pundits.

I agree with Sargent that, at a minimum, we should establish some measurable goals to help us determine if Trump is seriously attempting to unify the country. His list is a great start.

There’s also no chance Trump will do any of it. So, can we stop with the unifying dreams and deal with our political reality?

#4

The most important story about Trump’s VP is why he needs a new one (Matt Gertz, Media Matters)

Pence won’t be joining him, however. Indeed, Pence, who maintains that “Trump was wrong” and that the then-president bears responsibility for the insurrection, says he won’t be supporting Trump at all in the general election. 

Pence wouldn’t pretend that Trump won the 2020 election, and he refused to help him remain in power unlawfully, and so he is off the ticket in 2024. And it beggars belief that Trump might pick someone without getting assurances that they would follow through where Pence balked. Journalists understand what’s going on here, and they don’t serve their viewers, listeners, and readers by hiding the ball. 

Indeed, while the contenders have various pluses and minuses, they share two qualities. They all looked at what happened on January 6 and decided they were still willing to take the VP slot, and they’ve all spent the last several months publicly supplicating to Trump by winking at 2020 election denial and pooh-poohing questions of whether they would accept the results of the 2024 race.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I tried brainstorming whether there was a job I’d be willing to take despite knowing my potential boss had encouraged his supporters to murder my predecessor. It’s not the 14th Century, after all, and no duchies appear to be available. Alas.

I realize Trump and the Republicans are working to rewrite the history of the January 6, 2021, insurrection. However, Trump’s need for a new vice presidential candidate is one of the most obvious indications of the national trauma we experienced that day.

Yes, President Grover Cleveland needed a new Vice President when he won his second non-consecutive term. But that was because Cleveland’s first vice president died of a heart attack after just eight months in office—it wasn’t because Thomas Hendricks refused to go along with a plan to stop the peaceful transfer of power. That’s a significant difference.

Senator J.D. Vance has admitted he wouldn’t have certified the 2020 election had he been vice president. Vance will also ensure the implementation of the extremist Project 2025 agenda. Trump learned that he needed personal loyalty to fulfill his commands. Vance has made clear that he will support Trump and not the Constitution. I hope we discuss this situation during this campaign.

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#5

Don’t Fall for the GOP’s Platform Lie (Jessica Valenti, Abortion, Every Day)

A leaked draft of the new Republican party platform says that fetuses have a constitutional right to personhood, a radical stance in a moment when Americans overwhelmingly oppose bans and want abortion to be legal. And despite headlines to the contrary, the GOP’s abortion plank still supports a national ban.

But because political reporters and mainstream news outlets have fallen for a Republican disinformation campaign, the platform’s new language is being covered as a ‘softening’ on abortion rights. 

The stakes are high so I’m not going to mince words: This is about as big of a fuck up as it gets. So let’s get into it.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Argh. Will people really fall for this?

As we’ve discussed before, the Republican Party and Trump’s Project 2025 don’t need to pass a law to enact a nationwide abortion ban. Trump can order the Department of Justice to enforce the Comstock Act, a zombie law that prohibits mailing medical devices used for abortions. Trump could order the FDA to revoke its approval of the abortion drug mifepristone.

Most importantly, the GOP platform calls for giving fetuses equal rights under the 14th Amendment. As Slate’s Susan Rinkunas explained, “The platform’s language embraces the idea that the 14th Amendment protects fetal personhood—an interpretation that would ban abortion nationwide. In fact, it infers that the Constitution already prohibits abortion and that such a ban would spring to life as soon as it’s recognized by the Supreme Court, as University of Texas law professor Liz Sepper noted on Twitter.”

Yeah, let’s be clear: this isn’t an issue Trump/Vance and the Republican Party plan to leave to the states.

This election could come down to whether enough people understand that Trump is trying to obfuscate what he’ll do about abortion if he wins this election. Reporters should know better, but we can’t count on that. We need to do the work and build on the great work Vice President Kamala Harris has been doing on reproductive rights.

#6

“Shift spouses like they change their underwear”: J.D. Vance decried divorce — but now loves Trump (Amanda Marcotte, Salon)

As recently as 2021, the newly announced Republican candidate for vice president, Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, had harsh words for Americans who divorce, including those who did so to leave abusive marriages. Divorcees, Vance argued, are quitters who ruin their children’s lives.

“This is one of the great tricks that I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace, which is the idea that like, ‘Well, OK, these marriages were fundamentally, you know, they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy. And so getting rid of them and making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear, that’s going to make people happier in the long term,” Vance told the audience at Pacifica Christian High School in Southern California.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

The Republican Vice Presidential nominee thinks divorce is too easy, even for women suffering from violence. Isn’t it weird that Vance hasn’t offered any recent criticism about the marital history of the former President whose ticket he just joined?

In this piece, Marcotte explains why this isn’t necessarily hypocritical. After all, as she writes, “It’s an attachment to traditional hierarchies that allow such appalling double standards to flourish.”

In that context, all of this begins to make more sense. The thread that ties so much of MAGA and Christian Nationalism together is, as Marcotte writes, “an allegiance to male domination.”

In that frame, it isn’t hard to see why Republicans want to ban abortion, contraception, and no-fault divorces. The plans are in Project 2025. All of this is at stake in this election.

#7

What Is Project 2025? Inside the Far-Right Plan Threatening Everything from the Word’ Gender’ to Public Education (Kyler Alvord, People)

A sweeping proposal for how Donald Trump should handle a second term in office has sparked concern for its implications on the role of federal government and its calls to eliminate a number of basic human rights.

The 2025 Presidential Transition Project, more commonly known as Project 2025, released a 900-page manifesto last year titled “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.” The policy guidebook — compiled by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation in partnership with more than 100 other conservative organizations — lays out a far-right, Christian nationalist vision for America that would corrode the separation of church and state, replace nonpartisan government employees with Trump loyalists and bolster the president’s authority over independent agencies.

Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, a rumored candidate for Trump’s chief of staff in a second term, promoted his group’s extreme positions during a July interview, saying, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

People magazine publishing one of the best stories about Project 2025 was not on my Campaign 2024 bingo card. But I am here for it.

Alvord puts Project 2025 into a political context, including an explanation of its connection to Christian Nationalism. The story explains the proposals to politicize the civil service, restrict reproductive rights, eliminate protections for LGBTQ+ people, ban an expansive definition of pornography, politicize the Justice Department and FBI, severely limit immigration, empower far-right groups in our schools, and reject climate change action.

The story also includes links so people can dig into the details and see that none of the above is an exaggeration.

This story explains the stakes of this election. I hope many mainstream media outlets learn some lessons from People’s outstanding work.

#8

Pressured by cops, a mom made a false murder confession. Now, her sons can prove she’s innocent (Anita Chabria and Jessica Garrison, Los Angeles Times)

More than a decade later, Dahl would crumble under the relentless questioning of detectives who made false statements about the evidence, and the tricks of her own mind that left her believing that she was involved in the killing — that she was, in fact, the biter whose teeth had sunk into the woman’s back. After a series of manipulative interrogations over a period of years, Dahl falsely confessed that she had participated in the murder.

She told that same false story in court, identifying her ex-boyfriend, Davis, as the killer and sending him away for 16 years to life. She was jailed for four years, before returning home to try to pick up life with her young children.

But she could not escape that terrible image of herself, the consequence of a method of policing that allows detectives to deceive and threaten in pursuit of a confession. And she passed that scar onto her sons, who lived with her addictions and chaos, but still could never quite believe their mother was a killer.

They were right.

In 2020, Davis became the first person in California ever to be exonerated based on genetic genealogy, the use of family trees to track down an identity from unknown DNA samples.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Many people believe they would never admit to a crime they didn’t commit. But people do. It’s one of the most common reasons for wrongful convictions.

This story provides another example of how it can happen and how lives are destroyed because the police, prosecutors, and witnesses focus on getting a conviction rather than finding the truth.

The police should not be able to psychologically torture suspects. They should not be allowed to lie to suspects during interrogations.

Wrongful convictions harm generations of people. They allow those who are actually guilty to escape justice. How do such results serve our society?

#9

Now Keir Starmer Has to Decide If He’d Use Nukes (Brian Klaas, The Atlantic)

The moment Keir Starmer is officially made prime minister of the United Kingdom, he will be given a flurry of briefings, piles of documents, and the urgent business to run the country. Lurking among those papers is a moral land mine.

Starmer will be given a pen and four pieces of paper. On each paper, he must handwrite identical top-secret orders that—hopefully—no other human being will ever see. The previous set of orders, written by outgoing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, will then be destroyed, unopened. These top-secret papers are called the “letters of last resort.”

…

During the Cold War, British authorities constantly feared that London could be wiped out in a surprise nuclear attack by the Soviet Union. If the British government ceased to exist in a blinding flash of atomic light, and everyone in the civilian chain of command was dead, who would have the authority to launch a counterattack? Without the credible threat of a “second strike” in response to a nuclear assault on the capital, Britain lacked a deterrent.

The letters of last resort are the solution to that dilemma: They allow the prime minister to issue orders for a counterattack from beyond the grave. If the submarine captain has reason to believe that London has been destroyed in a nuclear blast (one of the cues is said to be that the BBC has stopped broadcasting), then the captain is to make every attempt to verify that the British government no longer exists. Once satisfied that the worst has indeed taken place, only then may the captain open the two safes, unseal the letters, read their contents, and execute the order from the now-deceased prime minister. Should the United Kingdom release its nuclear arsenal and retaliate—or not?

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Writing these letters is one obligation that immediately emphasizes the burden of taking over the government of the United Kingdom. The campaign is over. The burdens are real.

What choice will a new Prime Minister make for a nearly unthinkable outcome? Imagine what you would write, knowing how much the situation would have deteriorated if the submarine captains needed to open the safe to read these final orders.

The global security situation is unstable. Russian President Vladimir Putin has engaged in nuclear saber-rattling as part of his Ukranian invasion. More countries are considering creating their own nuclear deterrent. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has set its doomsday clock to just 90 seconds to midnight—the closest it has been to the end.

It is a reality of our world. And it is one of the reasons elections matter.

Post-Game Comments

Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:

“Maybe the United States turns into a fascist dictatorship. Maybe Leonard Leo coronates King Donald I at the National Cathedral. Maybe another pandemic, caused by climate change, sweeps through the country, killing off a third the population, and there are no scientists left to make new vaccines. Maybe the Northeast states and the Pacific Coast states secede from the Union, on the grounds that the Constitution does not demand allegiance to a monarch. Maybe there will be an actual second Civil War, like the MAGA trolls have been calling for for years. The New Right doesn’t care. They don’t care. To the neo-reactionaries, any outcome is preferable to the woke society we live in now. As long as the Cathedral—or the Deep State, or the regime, or whatever you want to call it—comes tumbling down, it’s all good, as far as they’re concerned. They don’t care. Let me reiterate: They. Don’t. Care.”—Greg Olear, Rough Beast: Who Donald Trump Really Is, What He’ll Do if Re-Elected, and Why Democracy Must Prevail

Thank you for reading Things I Find Interesting. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Thank you for reading my newsletter. Let me know what you think about what you’ve read. Send me things you’ve found interesting! You can email me at craigcheslog@substack.com. 

Please help me spread the word about this newsletter by sharing this post via email or on the social media network of your choice. And if you haven’t already, please consider signing up for a free or paid subscription. 

Here’s what I’ve found interesting: President Biden’s debate performance was terrible but we need to take a deep breath and stop with the panic, the Philadelphia Inquirer rightly calls on Donald Trump to leave the race, a witty and accessible review of Project 2025, Trump proposes having migrants fight each other for sport, how we could lose reality under Project 2025, a conservative-backed group is making a public list of federal workers it believes won’t be loyal to Trump, the real photo that won an AI image contest, I was wrong about the end of Voyager 1, and Newsmax does a better job than CNN of fact-checking the results of 2020 election.

#1

July 27, 2024 (Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American)

It went on and on, and that was the point. This was not a debate. It was Trump using a technique that actually has a formal name, the Gish gallop, although I suspect he comes by it naturally. It’s a rhetorical technique in which someone throws out a fast string of lies, non-sequiturs, and specious arguments, so many that it is impossible to fact-check or rebut them in the amount of time it took to say them. Trying to figure out how to respond makes the opponent look confused, because they don’t know where to start grappling with the flood that has just hit them.

It is a form of gaslighting, and it is especially effective on someone with a stutter, as Biden has. It is similar to what Trump did to Biden during a debate in 2020. In that case, though, the lack of muting on the mics left Biden simply saying: “Will you shut up, man?” a comment that resonated with the audience. Giving Biden the enforced space to answer by killing the mic of the person not speaking tonight actually made the technique more effective.

There are ways to combat the Gish gallop—by calling it out for what it is, among other ways—but Biden retreated to trying to give the three pieces of evidence that established his own credentials on the point at hand. His command of those points was notable, but the difference between how he sounded at the debate and how he sounded on stage at a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, just an hour afterward suggested that the technique worked on him. 

That’s not ideal, but as Monique Pressley put it, “The proof of Biden’s ability to run the country is the fact that he is running it. Successfully. Not a debate performance against a pathological lying sociopath.”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

President Biden’s performance during the first half hour was the worst of any candidate in the history of presidential and vice presidential debates. It does not make sense to ignore what happened. People have eyes and ears. But we also shouldn’t panic.

Biden is ultimately responsible for what happened. But my goodness, where was his staff? How could they not leak before the debate that Biden had a cold? How could they not set expectations that we would hear a hoarse voice at a minimum?  

It was also clear that Biden was not just overprepared, but he was overprepared for the wrong kind of debate. He didn’t need to memorize lists of factoids. Anyone who has watched a recent Donald Trump rally knew this debate would not be about policy expertise. Biden needed to be able to call out Donald Trump’s lies—especially after CNN made clear it was not going to let Jake Tapper and Dana Bash handle this fundamental journalist role. As the American Prospect’s David Dayen wrote, “The people who spent a week with Biden at Camp David had a specific duty, which they failed utterly to accomplish.”

Allowing Trump to lie also set up Biden to be a victim of the “Gish gallop” historian Heather Cox Richardson describes in the excerpt I’ve quoted above. It took Biden time to catch up with the cascade of false statements. I’ve experienced this when facing someone screaming false accusations at me. It’s hard to overcome.

After about a half hour, Biden rallied. Thankfully. It was at about that time that Trump began to falter.

But first impressions matter.

I was relieved to see Biden do so well the next day, starting with voter interactions at the Waffle House and an outstanding rally speech. He owned his poor debate performance, reminded his supporters about what is at stake in this election, and once again got up after metaphorically getting knocked down. Biden has made a political career and life out of that.

Biden was pitch-perfect when he said, “I know I’m not a young man. I don’t walk as easy as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to, but I know what I do know — I know how to tell the truth!”

I hope that still matters.

There has been a conversation about whether Democrats should replace Biden as the presidential candidate this year. I’ve been unimpressed by the arguments made by pundits who think a replacement is necessary. A poor performance while ill should not determine presidential campaign strategy—particularly when the alternatives discussed are more unrealistic than an Aaron Sorkin plot.

Critical parts of the Democratic coalition are quite unimpressed with all of the suggestions about replacing the first woman of color to be Vice President with a white man or white woman at the top of the ticket. (Visiting Black Twitter is always worthwhile for a reality check—and don’t overlook how Trump’s debate reference to “black jobs” has hurt him.) Do you think the current post-debate reaction is a crisis? The clusterbleep that would happen if Vice President Kamala Harris were passed over would far exceed it. People also seem to have forgotten that Harris is the only person who could use the millions the Biden-Harris campaign has already raised. Everyone else would start fundraising from zero.

Biden, his family, and his advisors have a difficult decision to make. They need to be sure that the president is up to the challenge. The strategy that led to Biden’s campaign pushing for this debate failed. This election will be too close for another mistake of this magnitude.

Biden had a bad night. However, Trump led an insurrection that prevented a peaceful transfer of power. Trump is a felon. Trump appointed the Supreme Court Justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. Trump failed our country during the pandemic. Trump lied in every answer he gave during the debate. Trump says he wants to help Russia, North Korea, and China be great again. On Sunday Trump reposted on Truth Social an image calling Liz Cheney “guilty of treason” and that she should face a “televised military tribunal.”

We should never accept that kind of rhetoric as normal from a presidential candidate.

Plus, as Stuart Stevens warned on Twitter in answering a question about whether Trump would be pleased or nervous if he were suddenly running against another Democrat: “He’d be relieved. The message from the Democratic Party would be, ‘I guess Trump was right and Biden wasn’t up to it. We’ll give it another shot. Eventually we’ll get it right. And hey, trust us to lead the country.’ It’s madness.”

Sure is. It would be a challenge to build a winning coalition around that perception.

We know Biden can run the country because he has demonstrated it over the past three-and-a-half years. The Biden-Harris ticket needs to win to protect democracies around the world. This debate was a setback. I hope the president has learned a lesson—and that he will once again bounce back from adversity.

So. Let’s take a breath. Campaigns are full of lows and highs. We have work to do. So, as Jimmy Buffett once sang, let’s “breathe in, breathe out, move on.”

Things I Find Interesting is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider joining for free or helping buy me some coffee to drink while I write by becoming a paid subscriber.

#2

To serve his country, Donald Trump should leave the race (Editorial Board, The Philadelphia Inquirer)

President Joe Biden’s debate performance was a disaster. His disjointed responses and dazed look sparked calls for him to drop out of the presidential race.

But lost in the hand wringing was Donald Trump’s usual bombastic litany of lies, hyperbole, bigotry, ignorance, and fear mongering. His performance demonstrated once again that he is a danger to democracy and unfit for office.

In fact, the debate about the debate is misplaced. The only person who should withdraw from the race is Trump.

Trump, 78, has been on the political stage for eight years marked by chaos, corruption, and incivility. Why go back to that?

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

At least one editorial board is willing to ask that question. In this editorial, The Philadelphia Inquirer reviews Trump’s policy failures, his impeachments, and his lying about everything. They conclude that Trump is actually the candidate who needs to step down.

As The Bulwark’s Jill Lawrence also explained, the fact that we are supposed to pretend that the leader of an insurrection designed to overturn the 2020 election is a typical political candidate demonstrates a series of failures by our nation’s institutions. Trump had three opportunities during the debate to agree that he would accept the results of the 2024 election. He refused each time. Shouldn’t that matter?

We must not forget who Donald Trump has proven to be. We must take every opportunity to remind people what actually happened during his first term. The Philadelphia Inquirer does the nation a service by being so blunt in its reminder about what is at stake in this election.

Where are the rest of the pundits and editorial writers? Why do they continue to give Trump a pass?

#3

A Review of Project 2025 (Emily Galvin-Almanza, Twitter via Thread Reader)

You may have heard the term “Project 2025” floating around, and you may even have cracked open the 900+ page document yourself, only to see a lot of kind of bland, policy-wonk text. So let me crack through the policy-speak and tell you WTF is in this document.

This is, um, a long thread. But if you want a lot of info about Project 2025, all in one place, you’ve come to the right place.

This document is what Trump and his team will do if elected. It’s their document, their plan, their platform. So like… it’s not *me* saying what they’ll do, this is *them* saying so.

Shall we dig in? I’ll organize and give you page numbers. I’m going to start with criminal justice stuff (of course) and then we’ll wander through other topics like repro rights (none), discrimination (fine, unless it’s against nuclear power), environmental protection (gone), etc.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Emily Galvin-Almanza, the Founder and Executive Director of Partners for Justice, provides a readable and witty summary of Project 2025. She’s done the challenging reading of the 900-page document, so you don’t have to.

I am frustrated that Project 2025 did not come up in the first presidential debate. Voters need to understand what is in the document and how it would fundamentally transform our nation in ways that do not have popular support.

This tweet thread may be a way to get your family and friends to engage with Project 2025 before the election.

#4

Trump’s new pitch: having migrants fight each other for sport (Steve Benen, MSNBC)

Referring to Dana White, Trump told the audience, “I said, ‘Dana, I have an idea. Why don’t you set up a migrant league of fighters and have your regular league of fighters, and then you have the champion of your league — these are the greatest fighters in the world — fight the champion of the migrants.’ I think the migrant guy might win, that’s how tough they are. He didn’t like that idea too much, but actually, it’s not the worst idea I’ve ever had. No, it’s, these are tough people, these people are tough, and they’re nasty, mean.”

White later confirmed that Trump did, in fact, present the idea to him privately.

Apparently pleased with the crowd’s reaction in Washington, D.C., the Republican spoke at a rally in Philadelphia hours later, at which point he pitched the identical idea.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I want all of the pundits and editorial writers who have so far failed to demand that Donald Trump leave the race to explain why this kind of idea is an acceptable policy proposal. Trump should not get a pass because they expect him to say outrageous things. He means what he says. Stop covering up for him.

I know Trump may be better for their business. The book deals were undoubtedly better when Trump was in office.

But have reporters, editors, and publishers forgotten all of the historical examples demonstrating how autocrats target these professions as they consolidate power? Do they really think they will get a pass because they didn’t treat his policy ideas seriously now?

I probably don’t want to know their answer to that last question.

Thank you for reading Things I Find Interesting. This post is public so feel free to share it with your family and friends.

#5

The Information Regime of Authoritarianism, coming soon to a Federal Agency Near You (Seth Cotlar, Rightlandia)

This post is inspired by this very insightful thread that Dave Roberts posted on ex-Twitter. It opened with a link to an article that used a wide array of government data to establish convincingly that yes, crime rates are indeed very much down recently. Democracies depend on access to reliable information that citizens can use as the basis for our arguments about what problems we face and how we might solve them. To a great extent, Trump 2.0 (as articulated by the folks at Project 2025) is all about dismantling that sort of democratic knowledge/information regime and replacing it with a dystopian and authoritarian version of it in which knowing things about empirical reality with any degree of certainty will be much harder, if not impossible.

Remember how Trump floated the idea that Covid would go away if we just stopped testing for it? People treated that like it was Trump being dumb, but he was actually articulating a quite savvy, authoritarian way of handling information. Want climate change to go away? Just stop measuring it! If you think I’m kidding, that is precisely what the Project 2025 folks have planned for NOAA.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

What happens to our public discourse if there are no independent facts? What will happen to all of the government data we rely upon when Donald Trump implements Schedule F and replaces thousands of civil servants with people who have taken a loyalty oath?

As Roberts explains in the twitter thread Cotlar includes in his post, if Trump implements Project 2025 we will no longer know what is really going on with our government, economy, and society. The post-truth world that exists in social media will become our reality.

If we lose these statistical institutions, rebuilding them will be extremely difficult. I hope we can get enough voters to understand what is at stake.

#6

Conservative-backed group is creating a list of federal workers it suspects could resist Trump plans (Lisa Mascaro, The Associated Press)

From his home office in small-town Kentucky, a seasoned political operative is quietly investigating scores of federal employees suspected of being hostile to the policies of Republican Donald Trump, a highly unusual and potentially chilling effort that dovetails with broader conservative preparationsfor a new White House.

Tom Jones and his American Accountability Foundation are digging into the backgrounds, social media posts and commentary of key high-ranking government employees, starting with the Department of Homeland Security. They’re relying in part on tips from his network of conservative contacts, including workers. In a move that alarms some, they’re preparing to publish the findings online.

With a $100,000 grant from the Heritage Foundation, the goal is to post 100 names of government workers to a website this summer to show a potential new administration who might be standing in the way of a second-term Trump agenda— and ripe for scrutiny, reclassifications, reassignments or firings.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Yeah, the Trump supporters are getting ready to act if their guy takes office. Can you imagine the chilling effect this is going to have on federal workers, even before the implementation of Schedule F? We know that threats of violence follow when Trump supporters post the names of people with whom they disagree. Trump and his supporters learned how appointments can impact policy. They will not make the mistake of hiring people who place truth—or the Constitution—ahead of their loyalty to Donald J. Trump.

#7

Photographer Wins AI Image Contest with Real Picture, Then Gets Disqualified (Alex Greenberger, Art News)

Astray’s winning picture, a photograph of a flamingo whose head appears to be bent into its body, took first place in the AI category of the People’s Vote Award at the 1839 Photography Awards.

This year, the judges had also given Astray’s photograph, titled F L A M I N G O N E, a third-place prize in the AI category. The juried prizes are decided by representatives from the New York Times, the auction house Christie’s, the publishing house Phaidon, and elsewhere.

On his website, Astray wrote that he had deliberately submitted his photograph as a means to advocate for human-made pictures: “With AI-generated content remodelling the digital landscape rapidly while sparking an ever-fiercer debate about its implications for the future of content and the creators behind it – from creatives like artists, journalists, and graphic designers to employees in all sorts of industries – I entered this actual photo into the AI category of 1839 Awards to prove that human-made content has not lost its relevance, that Mother Nature and her human interpreters can still beat the machine, and that creativity and emotion are more than just a string of digits.”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I love this story. I am not sure how many more wins reality will have over artificial intelligence, so I am going to celebrate the heck out of the ones we still get. Besides, that photo is so cool.

#8

NASA says Voyager 1 is fully back online months after it stopped making sense (Wes Davis, The Verge)

Voyager 1, the farthest human-made craft from the Earth, is finally sending back data from all four of its scientific instruments, NASA said this week. That means the agency is once more receiving its readings on plasma waves, magnetic fields, and space-bound particles.

Voyager 1 stopped sending back good data in November, and fixing it was fraught as engineers had to wait 45 hours to hear anything back. In April, the agency got it to start sending back health and status information, then science data from two of its instruments in May.

Now, NASA says Voyager 1, which is over 15 billion miles from Earth, is “conducting normal science operations” and the agency just needs to resync its timekeeping software and do some maintenance on a sparingly-used digital tape recorder.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

This is such a cool story, and I am so impressed with the work these NASA engineers and scientists did to bring Voyager 1 back to life. Sometimes I love being wrong.

And I think we needed some good news in this issue.

The Closer

The caption is funny. Some network suits want to avoid another lawsuit! But also, I wonder if CNN’s leadership really thinks it is good for their network that Newsmax did a better job of telling the truth about the 2020 election results than it did during the presidential debate.

Post-Game Comments

Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the new ones rise.”—Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Thank you for reading Things I Find Interesting. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Thank you for reading my newsletter. Let me know what you think about what you’ve read. Send me things you’ve found interesting! You can email me at craigcheslog@substack.com. 

Please help me spread the word about this newsletter by sharing this post via email or on the social media network of your choice. And if you haven’t already, please consider signing up for a free or paid subscription. 

Here’s what I’ve found interesting: John Oliver explains Project 2025 and what’s at stake in a potential Trump second term, I ask why A24 is burying its January 6 insurrection documentary, Reggie Jackson reminds us about the realities of Jim Crow, conservative politicians push to ban no-fault divorce, Justice Sonia Sotomayor warns us that marriage equality is in danger, what banning abortion travel could look like, and the media is partially responsible for Americans falsely beliving crime rates are rising.

#1

Trump’s Second Term (Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, HBO)

John Oliver discusses Donald Trump’s plans for a second term, why it could be much worse than his first term, and what Trump has in common with a hamster.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Most of our friends, relatives, and voters will refuse to read all 900 pages of Project 2025’s policy proposals for the next Republican president before the election—or ever. I get it. That’s not what summer reading is about. However, they may be willing to watch John Oliver provide a humorous and entertaining explanation of what Donald Trump’s supporters are preparing to do. Oliver reviews Project 2025’s key proposals and the individuals and organizations funding the effort. He explains how Project 2025 would greatly expand the power of the president and demonstrates what is at stake for those who want to see our nation’s democratic experiment continue. There are reasons why John Oliver wins all of the awards. I hope you will watch this episode on YouTube and share it with your friends.

Things I Find Interesting is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider joining for free or helping buy me some coffee to drink while I write by becoming a paid subscriber.

#2

Why is A24 Burying Its January 6 Documentary?

THE SIXTH is a feature documentary produced in collaboration with A24. Directed by Academy Award®, Emmy and Peabody Award-winning filmmakers Andrea Nix Fine and Sean Fine, THE SIXTH takes you inside the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol through six personal accounts and never-before-seen original footage. Featuring Congressman Jamie Raskin, DC Metropolitan Chief of Police Robert J. Contee III, his officers, Daniel Hodges and Christina Laury, photographer Mel D. Cole and Congressional staffer Erica Loewe. Their interwoven experiences share an unflinching account of how race, service and truth defined that pivotal day.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans have been far too successful in rewriting the history of the January 6, 2021, insurrection. Polls indicate that nearly 70 percent of Republicans believe alternate histories about that day’s events—that it was a peaceful protest or federal agents instigated the violence. Trump opens many of his rallies with a musical tribute featuring a choir of prisoners who have been charged with crimes related to the insurrection. I suspect we are going to see Donald Trump lie about January 6 during the presidential debate since he lies about it at his rallies. So, it would be helpful if voters had an easy opportunity to be reminded about what actually happened that day. I’ve previously covered A24’s decision to renege on a widespread free streaming release for this insurrection documentary. Yes, it can be rented or purchased. But that limits how widely it is seen. The documentary’s makers are instead seeking donations and community partners to increase awareness of the movie. This movie is too important to be buried. A24 should face pressure to return to its original distribution plans. I hope you will watch the trailer to be reminded of the violence and fear that the insurrection created as our nation’s streak of peaceful transfers of power ended.

#3

Reggie Jackson, on live TV from Rickwood Field, shares stark stories of racism (C. Trent Rosecrans, The Athletic)

In unsparing terms, Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson talked during a live national television appearance Thursday about the reality of coming up as a young Black ballplayer under Jim Crow. Between sepia-toned features voiced by A-list Hollywood stars on Fox’s pregame coverage of Major League Baseball’s game at historic Rickwood Field, Jackson teared up as he recalled the taunts, racial epithets and threats of violence he faced as a minor leaguer in segregated Birmingham.

“I said I would never want to do it again,” said Jackson, whose comments were uncensored. “I walked into restaurants and they would point at me and say, ‘The n—– can’t eat here.’ I would go to a hotel and they’d say, ‘the n—– can’t stay here.’ We went to Charlie Finley’s country club for a welcome home dinner and they pointed me out with the N-word, ‘he can’t come in here.’ Finley marched the whole team out. … Finally, they let me in there and he said, ‘We’re going to go eat hamburgers. We’ll go where we’re wanted.’”

The game was scheduled as a celebration of the Negro Leagues and its players, with special tributes to Willie Mays, the Hall of Famer and former Birmingham Black Barons outfielder who died Tuesday at age 93. But Jackson’s interview was a reminder of just what he and so many others dealt with not only at Rickwood, but beyond its fences.

“Coming back here is not easy,” Jackson said. “The racism when I played here, the difficulty of going through different places where we traveled — fortunately, I had a manager and I had players on the team that helped me through it — but I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Like many American institutions, Major League Baseball tries to hide some of the ugly truths of its history. So, I am grateful to Reggie Jackson for providing so much truth in his answer during the Fox Sports broadcast of the historic game at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama. What Jackson describes happened in 1967. That’s not ancient history. I was born four years later. I watched Reggie Jackson dominate the American League as a child and teenager. As Cup of Coffee’s Craig Calcaterra writes, “Jackson was not describing life in the Negro Leagues or during the heart of the Jim Crow era. What he described took place twenty years after baseball was integrated, over a decade after de jure segregation was outlawed, three years after the Civil Rights Act was passed, and two years after the Voting Rights Act was passed. It was a time when many who are reading these words were alive, some of whom were adults. Jackson himself was an active major leaguer into the late 1980s yet he faced the sort of bigotry and discrimination that many people in this country tend to casually assume was the stuff of ancient history if, indeed, they even acknowledge it ever happened.” We have seen the Supreme Court remove some of the civil and voting rights protections created during that era. We must not minimize what happened. We must confront it and those who want to return us to that era.

#4

Conservative US lawmakers are pushing for an end to no-fault divorce (Eric Berger, The Guardian)

Some prominent conservative lawmakers and commentators are advocating for ending no-fault divorce, laws that exist in all 50 US states and allow a person to end a marriage without having to prove a spouse did something wrong, like commit adultery or domestic violence.

The socially conservative, and often religious, rightwing opponents of such divorce laws are arguing that the practice deprives people – mostly men – of due process and hurt families, and by extension, society. Republican lawmakers in Louisiana, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Texas have discussed eliminating or increasing restrictions on no-fault marriage laws.

Defenders of the laws, which states started passing a half-century ago, see legislation and arguments to repeal them as the latest effort to restrict women’s rights – following the overturning of Roe v Wade and passage of abortion bans around the country – and say that without such protections, the country would return to an earlier era when women were often trapped in abusive marriages.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I know. This idea seems extreme. For goodness sake, Ronald Reagan—yep, him—approved the nation’s first no-fault divorce law in 1969 as California’s governor. How could Republicans go against him? But they will. And after seeing the Supreme Court overturn the right to abortion, we must be clear about the possibility the movement to end no-fault divorce will succeed if Donald Trump wins the presidential election. This isn’t an overreaction. This effort is related to efforts to ban abortion, contraception, and IVF. Restoring these rights, once they are lost, will take generations. It’s better to fight to preserve them now.

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#5

Sonia Sotomayor Just Sounded a Dire Warning About Marriage Equality (Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern)

The Supreme Court dealt a blow to the fundamental rights of married couples on Friday in an important and ominous immigration case, Department of State v. Muñoz. Justice Amy Coney Barrett held—over the dissent of all three liberals—that American citizens have no constitutional “liberty interest” in living with their foreign spouses, denying them the most basic protections against arbitrary government discrimination. Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s fierce dissent condemned Barrett’s opinion as, among other things, an unsubtle assault on marriage equality for LGBTQ+ Americans.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Oh yeah, Republicans are coming after marriage equality as well. It’s a good thing Californians will have a chance to remove the zombie Proposition 8 language from our Constitution before the Supreme Court can make marriage equality bans possible again.

#6

What Banning Abortion Travel Looks Like (Jessica Valenti, Abortion, Every Day)

I cannot stress enough how important this piece by reporter Candice Norwood at The 19th is. Reporting on a policy briefing from the Prison Policy Initiative (PPI), Norwood writes about what traveling out-of-state for an abortion looks like for someone on parole or probation. The short version is that they need government approval to leave their state—navigating a maze of logistical and financial barriers that make it impossible to get timely care, assuming they can get care at all.

PPI researcher director Wendy Sawyer tells Nowrood they “have to literally go and ask permission from their probation parole officers, or from the court, to cross state lines,” and that “you have to give really detailed information about what your travel plan is.”

In addition to The 19th’s terrific article, I highly recommend reading PPI’s briefitself. It details how even those who get permission to travel will have to deal with serious delays due to fees and logistical coordination. For something like abortion—where how far along you are in pregnancy can determine where you can legally get care or what kind of abortion you can obtain—the difference of a few days means everything.

In effect, this is a travel ban on some of the most vulnerable women in the country. And as is the case with so many other abortion-related issues that disproportionately impact marginalized communities—like criminalization or ‘anti-trafficking’ mandates—what happens to one group today comes for the rest of us tomorrow.

Reading through PPI’s brief and Norwood’s article, I realized that the system in place for those on parole or probation is pretty much exactly how Republicans would implement travel restrictions for any pregnant person: Permission slips and state notifications, bureaucratic red tape that keeps people from getting timely care.

If that sounds like a reach to you, please remember that it was less than a year ago that Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall argued in a legal brief that states have the right to restrict pregnant women’s travel.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Valenti makes a vital point in this edition of her newsletter. Republican forced-birth leaders in red states are trying to figure out how to keep women from leaving their states to get reproductive health care. As Valenti often explains, this is how restrictions and bans are created. They begin incrementally—starting with the most vulnerable—and expand to bans over time. If Donald Trump wins this election, there will be no sanctuary states. He’ll also likely get to appoint young replacements for at least two Supreme Court Justices. These are generational stakes.

#7

Why so many Americans have misconceptions about crime trends (Judd Legum, Popular Information)

According to the latest FBI data, violent crime and property crime are down sharply in 2024. The new data shows substantial drops in every category, including murder (-26.4%), rape (-25.7%), robbery (-17.8%), and property crime (-15.1%). These declines follow steep drops in violent crime and property crime in 2023. 

And yet, according to a recent Gallup poll, “77% [of Americans] believe there is more crime in the U.S. than a year ago.” Why?

There are two key factors. First, high-profile politicians are constantly making false claims about crime rates in the United States…The second factor creating misconceptions about crime is how these comments are covered by major media outlets.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Yes, Republicans are lying about how much crime is happening in our country. But, as Legum notes, far too much of our media coverage is also misleading—especially at the headline level. Headlines repeat the charge without mentioning it is false. We need editors to understand that many people will not read past the headline while reviewing social media or push notifications on their phones. The fact that voters are wrong about what is happening should embarrass reporters and editors, whose job is to inform us about the facts.

Thank you for reading Things I Find Interesting. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Thank you for reading my newsletter. Let me know what you think about what you’ve read. Send me things you’ve found interesting! You can email me at craigcheslog@substack.com. 

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In this edition: Biden the successful oil trader, the Supreme Court doesn’t deserve credit for its abortion medication decision, post-Constitutional is the new MAGA phrase for dictatorship, Missouri sets execution date for an innocent man, discussing Trump’s gibberish, Idaho GOP calls IVF murder, Sam Bankman-Fried’s proposition still on California’s ballot, the threat from fentanyl-laced mail-in ballots, thank you William Anders for Earthrise, and a graduation celebration.

#1

How Joe Biden ‘broke OPEC’ and rewrote the rules for oil trading (Chris Hayes, All in With Chris Hayes)

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, has had massive influence over American politics for six decades. President Biden’s “incredible” oil market trading has broken this influence. Dan Dicker joins Chris Hayes to discuss how Biden got ahead in oil production and what that means for the transition to clean energy.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

My initial reaction to seeing the preview of this story was, “Wait, what?” My frustration that more people did not understand what happened grew with each answer energy analyst Dan Dicker gave to each question Chris Hayes asked. I think this segment is a must-watch (which is why I’ve embedded it above). But, if you prefer, Dicker explained how Biden pulled off this success in his newsletter a few days after the interview. Oil traders saw that the United States was determined to lower the oil price by selling from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and wisely decided they could not win that battle. Prices came back down. After the oil price fell, Biden refilled the reserve at a significant profit. Government intervention worked. So, yeah, this story should be a bigger deal.

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#2

The Supreme Court’s Abortion Pill Ruling Should Satisfy Nobody (Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern, Slate)

If you blink, you might just miss the fact that today’s decision is not a win for reproductive freedom, not an end to attacks on abortion, and not even the end of the road for this particular litigation. It is a status quo decision that allows the FDA to continue to regulate safe drugs and that precludes objectors from running into courts with nothing more than feelings. But a good thing to bear in mind is that although SCOTUS dodged a bullet, the threat to abortion care looms larger than ever. Whether it’s new systemic attacks on in vitro fertilization, overt plans to use Comstock to end abortion rights by way of executive action, state court attacks on reproductive freedom, or a second, less publicized abortion case still pending at the Supreme Court, Thursday wasn’t a triumph for abortion rights; it was a push.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I was frustrated with much of the coverage of the Supreme Court’s decision to throw out an absurd attempt to ban abortion medication. I saw too much punditry about the Supreme Court taking a moderate stance—or even protecting access. As Lithwick and Stern explain, the Supreme Court did not go that far. It rejected a case that never should have seen a courtroom—while also dropping strong hints about how a successful case might work. We should not allow these Justices to claim unfounded legitimacy because of this rare moment of judicial sanity.

#3

The new word for dictatorship just dropped: ‘post-Constitutional.’ You should be alarmed (Will Bunch, The Philadelphia Inquirer)

The vast majority of people who found reporter Beth Reinhard’s eye-opening article on the internet also got a headline that was a lot less wishy-washy: “Trump loyalist pushes ‘post-Constitutional’ vision for second term.” It swaps out the weasel word “muscular” for a term that neither I nor you probably had heard before: “post-Constitutional.” It is the scariest word in America right now.

Simply put, Vought — who’s crafting the details for a wannabe president who is definitely not a detail guy — thinks that a “woke” liberal order has already shattered the 1789 U.S. Constitution written here in Philadelphia, which would liberate Trump to essentially make his own rules if he returns in January. Here’s how Vought himself describes it: “We are living in a post-Constitutional time” — a claim he repeated on X/Twitter just last month. Insiders say the 48-year-old who believes he is on a mission from God could end up chief of staff in a second Trump administration.

“Post-Constitutional” is, of course, just a euphemism for dictatorship.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Donald Trump’s supporters do not plan to repeat the mistakes of his first presidential transition. They have plans this time. We should not let Trump and his MAGA fans get away with obscuring what they hope to do. Bunch correctly notes what “post-Constitutional” actually means. The Washington Post’s Beth Reinhard does a great job laying out what Russ Vought plans to do in the profile to which Bunch is reacting. They are not hiding the ball from us. We should not minimize the danger to our democracy. We must not normalize how extreme these ideas are. A presidential election is not how we amend or replace the Constitution. We need to make sure voters understand the clear choice they have this November.

#4

“That is not justice”: Missouri sets execution date for a man who even prosecutors say is innocent (Nandika Chatterjee, Salon)

The Missouri Supreme Court has set an execution date — September 24th at 6 p.m. —  for defendant Marcellus “Khaliifah” Williams, despite prosecutors insisting that he is completely innocent.

It is not the first time the 55-year-old has faced execution. On two separate occasions, Williams’ execution was halted to conduct further investigation and DNA testing. The results, including DNA on the murder weapon, show no connection between him and the crime.

And now it seems the state’s Republican governor is refusing to free a man who prosecutors say is innocent, setting the stage for him to be put to death for a crime he does not appear to have committed.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Yeah, you read that correctly. It’s an outrage. As the Innocence Project explains, a 2016 DNA test (which was not available when he was convicted) proved that Williams was innocent of this crime. We are now potentially just a few months away from the state of Missouri executing an innocent person because our justice system prioritizes finality over the truth. No court has reviewed this exculpatory DNA evidence—and so Williams continues to face execution. Our justice system should prioritize the truth. People who have been convicted should be able to access improved technology and scientific techniques. It is terrible enough that Williams has remained in jail after the DNA evidence cleared him. Now he once again faces the uncertainty and stress created by having the courts schedule an execution date. What justice is served by executing an innocent person?

Thank you for reading Things I Find Interesting. This post is public so feel free to share it with your family and friends.

#5

Let’s Talk About Trump’s Gibberish (Tom Nichols, The Atlantic)

Sure, it seems funny—Haha! Uncle Don is telling that crazy shark story again!—until we remember that this man wants to return to a position where he would hold America’s secrets, be responsible for the execution of our laws, and preside as the commander in chief of the most powerful military in the world. A moment that seems like oddball humor should, in fact, terrify any American voter, because this behavior in anyone else would be an instant disqualification for any political office, let alone the presidency. (Actually, a delusional, rambling felon known to have owned weapons would likely fail a security check for even a visit to the Oval Office.)

Nor was the Vegas monologue the first time: Trump for years has fallen off one verbal cliff after another, with barely a ripple in the national consciousness. I am not a psychiatrist, and I am not diagnosing Trump with anything. I am, however, a man who has lived on this Earth for more than 60 years, and I know someone who has serious emotional problems when I see them played out in front of me, over and over. The 45th president is a disturbed person. He cannot be trusted with any position of responsibility—and especially not with a nuclear arsenal of more than 1,500 weapons. One wrong move could lead to global incineration.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

If historians exist in the future, there will be animated conversations trying to figure out how someone who rants about the relative benefits of dying by electrocution rather than from a shark bite ended up being one of two people who could be elected president. These weird asides aren’t just Trump being Trump. It’s a serious situation. The job of political candidates is to tell us what they intend to do if elected. The job of reporters and voters is to take those words seriously. What Trump says is not a gaffe. Elected Republicans have made clear they will do whatever Trump demands of them. There are no formal checks and balances on a president’s ability to launch nuclear weapons. Trump should not get a pass because he’s an entertainer. The words he says mean what they mean. We should take those words literally and seriously.

#6

Idaho GOP Platform Calls IVF ‘Murder’ (Jessica Valenti, Abortion, Every Day)

It was just a few weeks ago that I broke the news that the Texas’ GOP platform calls for abortion patients to be punished as murderers, including with the death penalty. Now another state Republican party is going all in on anti-abortion extremism—this time in Idaho. 

Idaho Reports reveals that Republicans have expanded anti-abortion language in the party platform to oppose “the destruction of human embryos.” That’s right, the Idaho GOP is coming out against IVF. But it goes even further than that. The platform actually defines the destruction of embryos—a common part of the IVF process—as murder:

“We oppose all actions which intentionally end an innocent human life, including abortion, the destruction of human embryos, euthanasia, and assisted suicide.”

This section comes after language defining abortion as murder, and calling for “the criminalization of all murders by abortion within the state’s jurisdiction.” Now, that language has been part of the party’s anti-abortion plank for some years, but given that increasing calls for abortion patients to be punished under homicide laws, it’s worth revisiting. 

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it a thousand times again: Republicans are being very explicit about the future they want, the question is whether we’re going to listen to them.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

The forced birth advocates are not resting. They are pushing forward toward their goal of ensuring government-mandated pregnancies are the norm. A narrow conservative religious sect is demanding obedience from all of us. They are coming for IVF. They are coming for contraception. They are coming after the blue states that are doing what they can to be safe havens for reproductive health care. The two parties are not the same on this issue. The two presidential candidates are not the same on this issue. Voters face a clear choice this November. I hope we listen to what Republicans are telling us.

#7

The Last Trace of Sam Bankman-Fried’s Political Ambitions (Jeremy B. White, Politico Magazine)

Only one vestige of Bankman-Fried’s once grandiose plans to reshape American politics endures. This November, voters in his native California are on track to see a proposal on the ballot to fund a major new pandemic prevention program by taxing the rich, which Bankman-Fried helped to launch and bankroll.

At this point, however, it is a zombie ballot initiative. The campaign to sell it to voters has seen its cash on hand dwindle from more than $15 million at its peak to a reported $78 on hand at the end of last year. A fleet of political consultants once on retainer have signed up to work on other campaigns instead. Politicians who lined up to throw their support behind the proposal stopped talking about it after the main benefactor was disgraced.

The rise and fall of the Pandemic Early Detection and Prevention Institute Initiative is a distinctly Californian story — featuring faddish philanthropy, the Silicon Valley boom-and-bust cycle, policy dilletantes, money and a byzantine ballot measure process that can give political issues a life of their own.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Oh yeah, this is a real thing. I hope this part of the story makes it into the inevitable docu-dramas to come about the collapse of FTX. It is the latest example demonstrating how someone can get almost anything they want on the California ballot as long as they have enough cash. That wasn’t what the creators of the initiative system intended. Yes, we should do more to prepare for future pandemics. But was Sam Bankman-Fried’s idea the best one—even before his convictions? How will California voters react when they see this on their ballots this October and November? I imagine this proposition will fail—but that won’t make our pandemic problems disappear. I suspect any political will to deal with the issue before the next crisis is already gone.

#8

Add Fentanyl-Laced Mail-In Ballots To The List Of Threats Election Officials Must Guard Against In The Fall (Khaya Himmelman, Talking Points Memo)

Election officials across the country are learning how to use Narcan, implementing new rules about glove-wearing while opening mail, and figuring out how drug-sniffing dogs will fit into their ballot processing systems ahead of the 2024 election. These new processes are a response to 2020 election threats and yet another stark reminder of the dangerous world election workers now find themselves in.  

“In the past, although people have been aware that there is a possibility of things being mailed to an office it didn’t rise to the level of priority that I think that it has in this moment since it has actually happened,” Tammy Patrick, Chief Executive Officer for Programs of The Election Center told TPM.

In Lane County, as Dawson described, staff now opens mail in a separate room that can be closed off in the event that it contains a dangerous substance. The county has also developed best practices for how to respond if a dangerous substance is found in a mail-in ballot or another form of mail, which involves covering the mail with plastic and identifying where the mail was received from in order to quickly notify the secretary of state’s office and the FBI.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I fear election staff and volunteers will face many dangerous moments as the November election nears. I fear the situation will continue to deteriorate because of a dynamic Aaron Rupar explained on X (the website that used to be known as Twitter). Rupar wrote: “If you don’t watch a lot of right-wing TV, you might not realize that Trump is so popular he can’t possibly lose a fair election and Biden is cowering in despair, constantly on the verge of dropping out. So if/when Trump loses, it’s very easy for these viewers to be convinced that they had it stolen from him. They’re easy marks.” Yep. A bunch of people who watch only right-wing media think Trump is way ahead. How are they going to react if that isn’t the outcome? They aren’t going to blame Trump. They are going to attack officials and volunteers. It seems more likely each day that we are going to witness a tragedy about an election worker because of all the lies and disinformation being shamelessly shared by the Republican Party and conservative media.

#9

William Anders Obituary (Michael Carlson, The Guardian)

It may be that the most famous picture from the US space programme is not the shot of Neil Armstrong landing on the moon, but the image of Earth, seen rising above the moon’s horizon, an image relayed from space on 24 December 1968 by the crew of Apollo 8 – Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders.

It was Anders, who has died aged 90, who snapped the “Earthrise” photograph, which was not part of the mission’s scheduled protocol. And it was he who read first from the Book of Genesis during their live transmission from lunar orbit that Christmas Eve.

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the Earth,” he read. “And the Earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.”

Anders spoke later of the ecological impact of the image, contributing as it did to a shift in perspective articulated by the poet Archibald MacLeish in the New York Times the following day, Christmas Day. The photograph enabled us, MacLeish wrote, “to see the Earth as it truly is, small blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats”.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

It is one of the most important photographs in history. I am glad William Anders was inspired to take it. It was visual evidence of how fragile our place in the universe is. The cosmic jury is still deliberating whether our species learned the lessons it should have learned from it.

Quick Pitches

• Donald Trump had lots of negative opinions about felons. Now he is one (Lois Beckett, The Guardian)
  The problem, though, is not that Donald Trump is getting treated better than others accused or convicted of crimes. The goal should be to treat the accused and convicted more like Trump has been.
• If You’re Attacking Dolly Parton, You’ve Lost The Whole Entire War (Evan Hurst, The Moral High Ground)
  The Federalist doesn’t just provide extreme religious conservative judges.
• It’s Time to Switch to a Privacy Browser (David Nield, Wired)
  Some tips if you’d like to protect more of your data while surfing the web.
• 10 Inventors Who Came to Regret Their Creations (Kenny Hemphill, Mental Floss)
  The list includes the atomic bomb, the AK-47, and Comic Sans.
• The Eras Tour Stage: See the Intricate World-Building of Every Set in Taylor Swift’s Most Ambitious Shows Ever (Katherine McLaughlin, Architectural Digest)
  I enjoyed learning more about how the sets work as one of the people who watches these concerts many weekends via live streams.

The Closer

From the Proud Dad Department: my eldest son, Arik, graduated over the weekend from the University of California, Santa Barbara with High Honors in Computer Science. He also earned the right to be one of the Standard Bearers for the ceremony as one of the five members of his class to finish with a 4.0 GPA. He came into view for me right as he handed the banner to one of his fellow standard bearers after leading the procession.

Post-Game Comments

Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:

“Personally, I vote as if my vote is the deciding ballot. I know it isn’t, of course, but it focuses my mind and makes me take the civic duty of voting seriously. People have given their lives for my right to stand in that booth, and when American democracy is facing a clear and existential threat, their sacrifice deserves something more than the selfish calculations of the Jimmy Clean Hands caucus.”—Tom Nichols (“The Jimmy Clean Hands Election,” The Atlantic)

Thank you for reading Things I Find Interesting. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Thank you for reading my newsletter. Let me know what you think about what you’ve read. Send me things you’ve found interesting! You can email me at craigcheslog@substack.com. 

Please help me spread the word about this newsletter by sharing this post via email or on the social media network of your choice. And if you haven’t already, please consider signing up for a free or paid subscription.