Tag: Newsletter

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?

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#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)

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Here’s what I’ve found interesting: the media needs to start sharing the full story about Trump, the Texas GOP platform endorses the death penalty for abortion patients, Trump’s social media posts focus on revenge, Senator Dick Durbin needs to start doing his job, a D-Day hero gets recognition after decades of racism, Fontana police psychologically torture a suspect into falsely confessing that he killed a person who was alive, a peek into a far-right group chat, and a Texas school board member changes her mind after reviewing what’s actually in the school curriculum.

#1

Voters still aren’t getting the full story on Trump. Journalists need to fix that ASAP. (Jennifer Schulze, Heartland Signal)

Top secret government documents hidden in his bedroom

Promising to testify but then not testifying in his hush money trial

Amplifying Nazi talk. Again

Threatening a third term. Again

Hinting at a birth control ban. Again

These are just some of the Trump things that happened recently, and none of them got sufficient news coverage. Some Trump stories were completely ignored, while others were given the one-and-done treatment instead of sustained in-depth coverage. A few were just plain wrong. None seem to comprehend the pattern of behavior.

It’s been 9+ years of Trump dominating the country’s politics, and in that time, there has certainly been smart, impactful coverage of his aberrant campaigns and his disastrous presidency. But that is the exception, not the rule.

In fact, I’d argue that the mainstream media coverage of Trump has gotten worse especially in the past year as journalists still try to apply normal reporting practices to an abnormal candidate. When you add in the robust right-wing propaganda efforts by Fox and other extremist media outlets, we find ourselves being practically swallowed whole by lies and disinformation.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Recent polls show that a significant number of American voters believe things that are demonstrably untrue. It even goes beyond the vibecession where voters tell pollsters that the economy is in recession (it’s not), stock markets have fallen (they have recently achieved record highs), and unemployment is near a 50-year high (it’s actually near a 50-year low). We also have recently learned that 17 percent of voters blame Joe Biden for the loss of the constitutional right to abortion (Brian Klaas explains why that’s obviously incorrect). Reporters and editors have been defensive when asked about this disconnect, sometimes saying it isn’t their job to support Biden. That is true—but that’s also not the point. There is a difference between supporting Biden and providing as much coverage of the stock market records as they did when Trump was in office (to take just one example). Informing voters is perhaps the media’s most important job, but several polls demonstrate that too many voters are not perceiving reality. I wish we lived in a world where this failure would lead our elite media to reconsider how they should cover this election.

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#2

Texas GOP Platform Endorses Death Penalty for Abortion Patients (Jessica Valenti, Abortion, Every Day)

We need to talk about Plank 35 in the Texas GOP platform. Because while there’s been lots of coverage about how extremist the state’s Republican convention was, people seem to have missed the fact that delegates adopted a platform that calls for abortion patients to be punished as murderers. In Texas, that could mean the death penalty.

I wish I was exaggerating.

The GOP’s platform demands “equal protection for the preborn,” and for Texas legislation to give fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses “equal protection of the law.”

If you’re a regular reader, you know that “equal protection” is a call for abortion to be treated as homicide, and for abortion patients to be prosecuted as murders. (Remember South Carolina’s Prenatal Equal Protection Act, and Georgia’s Prenatal Equal Protection Act? Both were bills to make abortion punishable as a homicide.)

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

As Valenti explains, we should be treating this plank like the “big fucking deal” it is. Many Republican politicians are claiming to be moderates on reproductive rights, even as they support ideas like this one and refuse to defend the right to access contraception. They are not moderates. They are hoping they can get through this election cycle without answering for their extremism and the Christian nationalist ideology that is its foundation. These rights are on the ballot this November, and only by re-electing Joe Biden will we have the chance to push back against these extreme ideas.

#3

Revenge: analysis of Trump posts shows relentless focus on punishing enemies (David Smith, The Guardian)

A major study of Donald Trump’s social media posts has revealed the scale of the former US president’s ambitions to target Joe Biden, judges and other perceived political enemies if he returns to power.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew), a watchdog organisation, analysed more than 13,000 messages published by Trump on his Truth Social platform and found him vowing revenge, retaliation and retribution against his foes.

The presumptive Republican nominee has threatened to use the federal government to go after Biden during a second Trump administration 25 times since the start of 2023, the study found. These threats include FBI raids, investigations, indictments and even jail time.

He has also threatened or suggested that the FBI and justice department should take action against senators, judges, members of Biden’s family and even non-governmental organisations.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

These threats have grown in their intensity after a jury convicted Trump of felonies. We know that elected officials are scared of defying Trump because of their fears of being the target of a violent reaction. We have seen Trump supporters try to dox the jurors and post violent threats against them, the judge, and the prosecutors. They aren’t being subtle. We must not consider these empty threats. We should be clear about what Trump and his supporters will do if they gain control of the Department of Justice. We should expect that Trump’s rhetoric will become more threatening as we approach election day.

#4

Dick Durbin needs to step up and do his damn job (Noah Berlatsky, Public Notice)

Even though the hearing was conducted in obvious bad faith, it was in some ways successful, at least in the limited sense that Republicans grabbed a lot of headlines and forced Garland to spend a day on the defensive. Virtually every major news outlet [gave] it extensive coverage, ranging from the New York Times to MSNBC to Newsmax.

The hearing meant that for at least a day, everyone talked about whether the DOJ is treating Trump unfairly, rather than about, say, whether Trump should step aside from the GOP presidential nomination given his felony convictions, or whether Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito should recuse himself after an insurrectionist flag was flown over his house.

Congressional oversight hearings give Congress a chance to focus the national conversation on what members want to talk about. It gives them a chance to pressure executive branch officials to adopt congressional priorities, or to explain and potentially embarrass themselves.

In contrast, Democrats in the Senate have been bizarrely reluctant to use hearings to advance their agenda. Dick Durbin, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has refused to hold hearings to investigate egregious evidence of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas receiving gifts from far right billionaires, or to demand answers from Alito about his apparent embrace of the insurrection. Instead, he’s posting weak statements on social media meekly calling for right-wing members of the Court to do a better job policing themselves.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Can we really blame some voters for wondering why they work so hard to get Democrats a majority when their leaders refuse to use the powers it gives them? It is shameful that there have been no hearings about the Supreme Court’s ethical failures. Why hasn’t the Senate asked about Jared Kushner’s two-billion-dollar investment from Saudi Arabia? Or why one of Kushner’s projects in Belgrade will include the creation of a “memorial dedicated to all the victims of NATO aggression?” A Congressional hearing may not directly change the actions of the Supreme Court Justices or Kushner. However, the media coverage it generates will inform more voters about what’s at stake. Plus, voters will see Democrats willing to fight for their values and to protect the Constitution and our democracy. That matters! Having the chairperson’s gavel creates opportunities. I am tired of seeing the Democrats fritter them away.

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#5

The Forgotten Hero of D-Day (Garrett M. Graff, Politico Magazine)

By 10 a.m., small pockets of shell-shocked U.S. troops had rallied and fought their way to the cliffs overlooking Omaha Beach, but the beach behind was a chaotic scene of wounded men and discarded equipment; bodies of the dead and the nearly dead rolled in the surf. As Woodson recounted, “There was a lot of debris and men were drowning all around me. I swam to the shore and crawled on the beach to a cliff out of the range of the machine guns and snipers. I was far from where I was supposed to be, but there wasn’t any other medic around here on Omaha Beach. … I had pulled a tent roll out of the water and so I set up a first-aid station. It was the only one on the beach.”

He’d stay there on the sandy and rocky beach, treating the wounded, for the next 30 hours, working through the day, the night and nearly all of the next day — all while trying to treat his own shrapnel injuries to his groin and back — before he was evacuated himself. Woodson comforted and collected the injured, administered sulfa powder, bandaged wounds, tightened tourniquets, dispensed plasma, removed bullets and even amputated one soldier’s foot. As a historical commission that examined his record later summarized, “For 30 continuous hours while under enemy fire, Woodson cared for more than 200 casualties. Even after being relieved at 4:00 p.m. on 7 June, Woodson gave artificial respiration to three men who had gone underwater during a [landing craft’s] landing attempt. Only then did Woodson seek further treatment.” Over the course of his time on the beach, Woodson almost certainly saved dozens or even scores of lives.

All told, the U.S. suffered around 3,700 casualties at Omaha Beach, including about 800 dead, meaning that if that estimate is approximately accurate, Woodson personally helped treat somewhere around five to seven percent of all U.S. casualties on the bloodiest beach of D-Day.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Corporal Waverly B. Woodson Jr. did not receive the honors he was due for his heroic actions on D-Day because of racism and administrative errors. As Graff explains, “Not a single one of the million-plus Black personnel who served in World War II, many of whom ultimately did serve bravely on the front lines and assumed huge personal risk in combat, received one of the 432 Medals of Honor awarded during the war.” Woodson’s heroism was noted then, but until this past Monday, he had not received any recognition. Finally, the Pentagon announced this week that Woodson will posthumously receive the Distinguished Service Cross, the second-highest medal for combat valor. It’s a step—but more is required to ensure the non-white heroes of the Second World War receive the recognition they deserve. Their families deserve it—and history should demand it. I hope you’ll read Graff’s story to learn more about Woodson and the racism we still need to overcome.

#6

‘Psychologically tortured’: California city pays man nearly $1m after 17-hour police interrogation (Sam Levin, The Guardian)

A California city has agreed to pay $900,000 to a man who was subjected to a 17-hour police interrogation in which officers pressured him to falsely confess to murdering his father, who was alive.

During the 2018 interrogation of Thomas Perez Jr by police in Fontana, a city east of Los Angeles, officers suggested they would have Perez’s dog euthanized as a result of his actions, according to a complaint and footage of the encounter. A judge said the questioning appeared to be “unconstitutional psychological torture”, and the city agreed to settle Perez’s lawsuit for $898,000, his lawyer announced this week.

The extraordinary case of a coerced false confession has sparked widespread outrage, with footage showing Perez in extreme emotional and physical distress, including as officers brought his dog in and said the animal would need to be put down due to “depression” from witnessing a murder that had not actually occurred.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Yes, you read that correctly. Fontana police officers psychologically tortured a person enough to get him to falsely confess to killing someone who was quite alive. Many people do not understand why innocent people would falsely confess to crimes. The Innocence Project explains why in this article. This horrifying story shows what the police can do when they wrongly think they know the story. It should not be legal for the police to lie to a suspect during an interrogation. The officers here should be fired. Writing a check should not make this atrocity go away. Many innocent people have been convicted of crimes they did not commit because they thought they could trust the police enough to help. Talk to an attorney before you make that error.

#7

Off Leash: Inside the Secret, Global, Far-Right Group Chat (Ken Silverstein, The New Republic)

In his book In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin, Erik Larson cites a cable sent to the State Department in June 1933 by a U.S. diplomat posted in Germany that provided a far more candid assessment of the Nazi leadership than the one that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration was then conveying to the public. “With few exceptions, the men who are running this Government are of a mentality that you and I cannot understand,” read the cable, which was written five months after Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor. “Some of them are psychopathic cases and would ordinarily be receiving treatment somewhere.”

I’ve thought about that passage from the cable many times over the past several weeks as I’ve been reading excerpts from a private WhatsApp group chat established last December by Erik Prince, the founder of the military contractor Blackwater and younger brother of Betsy DeVos, the secretary of education during President Donald Trump’s administration, who invited around 650 of his contacts in the United States and around the world to join. Prince, who has a long track record of financing conservative candidates and causes and extensive ties to right-wing regimes around the world, named the group—which currently has around 400 members—“Off Leash,” the same name as the new podcast that he’d launched the month before.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

It is quite revealing to see what far-right supporters will write when they think they are only texting their fellow travelers. I am surprised so many supposedly security-conscious people trusted that no one in a group larger than 600 would leak the conversations. Thankfully for us, a few people did. Silverstein gives us a glimpse into what far-right people from across the world are thinking about current events: “Participants chirpily discussed the desirability of clamping down on democracy to deal with their enemies at home and regime change, bombings, assassinations, and covert action to take care of those abroad.” I don’t think people reading this newsletter will be surprised that such a group would include people who felt this way. However, it is still eye-opening to see who is involved and how they look forward to becoming more powerful worldwide after a Trump victory.

#8

A GOP Texas school board member campaigned against schools indoctrinating kids. Then she read the curriculum. (Jeremy Schwartz, Texas Tribune and ProPublica)

Gore, the co-host of a far-right online talk show, had promised that she would be a strong Republican voice on the nonpartisan school board. Citing “small town, conservative Christian values,” she pledged to inspect educational materials for inappropriate messages about sexuality and race and remove them from every campus in the 7,700-student Granbury Independent School District, an hour southwest of Fort Worth. “Over the years our American Education System has been hijacked by Leftists looking to indoctrinate our kids into the ‘progressive’ way of thinking, and yes, they’ve tried to do this in Granbury ISD,” she wrote in a September 2021 Facebook post, two months before the election. “I cannot sit by and watch their twisted worldview infiltrate Granbury ISD.”

But after taking office and examining hundreds of pages of curriculum, Gore was shocked by what she found — and didn’t find.

The pervasive indoctrination she had railed against simply did not exist. Children were not being sexualized, and she could find no examples of critical race theory, an advanced academic concept that examines systemic racism. She’d examined curriculum related to social-emotional learning, which has come under attack by Christian conservatives who say it encourages children to question gender roles and prioritizes feelings over biblical teachings. Instead, Gore found the materials taught children “how to be a good friend, a good human.”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

This is a remarkable story about someone who believed a narrative about our schools, ran for the school board, and discovered what she thought was false. I have a lot of respect for Courtney Gore’s willingness to follow the evidence. Unfortunately, she found that her allies were not interested in learning the truth. Worse, she would face threats of violence for not following the script. I wish what we see in this story was not such a rare outcome.

Quick Pitches

• Will Someone Please Buy the Donald Trump Movie? (Matthew Belloni, Puck)
  In the last issue of this newsletter, I discussed how a documentary about the January 6 insurrection may have been buried by its distributor. Here’s another movie, that received Oscar buzz at Cannes but still hasn’t found a distributor in the United States. What an interesting election-year trend.
• CHP isn’t supposed to aim less-lethal munitions at protesters’ heads and fire into crowds. It did at UCLA (Sergio Olmos, CalMatters)
  This is a clear-cut abuse of power. If the CHP’s leadership—and our elected officials—can’t prevent these abuses, we need to replace them.
• What’s in a swing? A metrics explainer (Noah Woodward, The Advance Scout)
  Major League Baseball started providing a number of new batting metrics this year. Woodward explains what they mean—and what we don’t understand—and how baseball teams and fans could put them to use.
• Does One Line Fix Google? (Ernie Smith, Tedium)
  Would you like to get search results without all of the junk Google has added to them in recent years? You may want to try the new “web” filter that makes Google search results appear as they did about a decade ago.
• It’s a trap! The economic argument against blowing up the Death Star (Peter Armstrong, CBC News)
  An economist explains why destroying it created a Galactic depression worse than what the United States faced in the 1930s.
• The ‘Sift’ strategy: A four-step method for spotting misinformation (Amanda Ruggeri, BBC News)
  Some tips that I fear are going to be extremely useful this election year.

Post-Game Comments

Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:

“Trump’s disdain for excellence is neither a personal quirk nor an anomaly among autocrats present and past. It is logical: they see the work of government as worthy only of mockery, and so they continue to mock it when they have power.” (Masha Gessen, Surviving Autocracy)

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: Trump’s Unified Reich video, 12 courageous Americans, Democrats need to defend the Trump jury verdict, Alito’s insurrectionist flags, the creation of a fake assassination plot, big tech can’t be trusted with abortion data, a British nurse may be a victim of a false conviction, what happened to the distribution of a January 6 insurrection documentary, and a bridge protest in Jacksonville kicks off Pride Month.

#1

Awful New Info About Trump and “Reich” Video Shows Deep MAGA Sickness (Greg Sargent, The New Republic)

The creator of the “Reich” video has done some of the most virulent work along these lines, the Times demonstrates. And so, when Trump’s social media feed shares a video like this that hails a coming “unified Reich” built on dramatic, far-reaching acts of national purification, it opens a window on a larger phenomenon: this shadow zone where Trump and his leading operatives encourage mass fascistic shitposting and propaganda—and seek to harness the energies released by it.

It’s a key tell that the Republicans alarmed by this kind of politics immediately saw the broader significance of this video’s genesis. As longtime GOP strategists Brian Riedl and Alyssa Farah Griffin pointed out, the video’s very creation—and even the blaming of a Trump staffer for sharing it—only illustrate the existence of a large junior staffer set that’s fluent in online fascistic political language, which Trump and his operatives see as indispensable to their own movement.

Meanwhile, Trump and his leading propagandists are aggressively seeding the discourse with their own fascistic language. In recent months, Trump has described migrants as “poisoning the blood of our country,” invented a new category called “migrant crime,” threatened to root out “vermin” in the government who oppose him, floated terminating parts of the Constitution, and vowed to be “dictator,” albeit only “on day one.”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I know there’s a lot going on at the moment, but I fear we moved past this incident too quickly. We should be alarmed when a presidential candidate decides to post about creating a Reich—especially when he has previously demonstrated a fondness for such rhetoric. We have no reason to believe this was a mistake made by a low-level staffer. Over the years, felon Donald Trump has shown that he is not careless about his social media postings, and he has told audiences that only one other person can post on his accounts. The Trump campaign is pushing the envelope. It is openly working with people who create extreme content. Such rhetoric has no place in a democracy, and we must not let Trump and his supporters minimize the damage they are doing.

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

Trump’s not wrong. The system is broken. Everyday Americans saved us. (Will Bunch, The Philadelphia Inquirer)

One of the things that the Trump trial revealed is how much America has changed in exactly 50 years since Watergate and the resignation of the last thoroughly criminal president, Richard Nixon. That year saw one huge mistake — successor Gerald Ford’s pardon of Nixon, which only boosted the fiction that a president is above the law — but 1974 also showed how back then, the system largely did work. Congress members from both parties probed White House crimes and voted for impeachment. The Supreme Court was unanimous in forcing Nixon to turn over his tapes. Some news outlets, like the Washington Post and CBS, were aggressive in chasing the truth.

In 2024, the system is largely not working. A corrupted, partisan federal judiciary slow-walks Trump’s other cases. Milquetoast newsroom leaders are too afraid of bias allegations to fight for democracy. The Republican Party has become a dangerous cult that uses threats of retribution or even violence to enforce discipline. It took 14 Americans outside of these warped elite circles — Judge Merchan, DA Bragg, and the 12 citizens who served on the jury — to finally put the brakes on a naked Trump’s seemingly unstoppable crime spree.

In a year dominated by cowards, the courage of the Trump jury is remarkable. With their anonymity preserved (so far, anyway), these seven men and five women were able to look at Trump’s behavior and judge him without fear of getting primaried or losing their six-figure salary or all the other craven reasons that prevent our elite watchdogs from doing their job. They were serious about their civic duty and deliberated for 10 hours before declaring what we all have seen with our own eyes.

Donald Trump is a felon.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

We have heard multiple stories about how Republican elected officials have been unwilling to hold Donald Trump accountable because they fear how the felon’s supporters will respond with violence against them. U.S. Senator Mitt Romney went into detail about this dynamic with the author of his biography. Their fear is understandable, but repeatedly giving in to Trump is not consistent with protecting our democracy and our Constitution. So, yes, we should take a moment to thank the jurors who took their responsibility seriously. They did so despite the reasonable fear they could face a violent reaction—especially given how much identifiable information some reporters shared about them. We need to see more of this courage on display this year to turn back this attempt by authoritarians to capture our Republic. Our governmental systems and our political and media elites are not going to save us. Only our votes can do that this November.

#3

Democrats Need To Join The Fight Over The Trump Verdict Now (Brian Beutler, Off Message)

In the almost 48 hours since a New York jury returned its verdict against Donald Trump, many liberals who are normally sanguine about the Democratic Party’s approach to partisan combat have found themselves astonished by what they’ve seen. As their response has taken shape, Democrats have revealed fundamental disunity over how and even whether to exploit the fact that their principal opponent is a convicted felon.

The grand jury returned its indictment over a year ago. The trial has been ongoing for over a month. With all that time to prepare for any combination of outcomes, Democrats seemingly did nothing, and are thus largely paralyzed. No rousing defense of the rule of law. No assertion that 34 felony convictions should be disqualifying for a major-party presidential nominee.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

The late Vince Lombardi has questions. As do I. That there would be a verdict in this case this past week should not have come as a surprise to anyone sentient. Beutler has written often about the Democratic Party’s unwillingness to fight back and, ahem, actually do the politics. Yes, President Biden should be cautious with his statements. But (with a few exceptions), I have to wonder where in the hell the rest of the party’s leadership has been. Republicans are all over the media trying to discredit the jury’s verdict. The pro-felon talking points are on display. Despite what lying U.S. Senator Susan Collins (among others) has said, District Attorney Alvin Bragg did not promise to prosecute Trump during his campaign. The felon Trump is also not the only person Bragg’s office has charged with these offenses. President Biden had nothing to do with this verdict as it was a state matter. These lies will seep into the public’s consciousness unless there are people on the air defending the jury process. A leading Republican think tank is displaying the American flag upside down. Twelve GOP Senators are promising to shut down all policy debates and confirmations. The fight is here despite the evident preference of senior Democrats. And, most importantly, why should voters care that a felon now leads the Republican Party if Democrats are afraid to discuss the issue?

#4

Alito’s Aggrieved Letter to Congress Tips His Hand in the Jan. 6 Cases (Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern, Slate)

On Wednesday, Justice Samuel Alito released a letter dismissing concerns over the New York Times’ reports of insurrectionist flags flying outside his homes. Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin and Sheldon Whitehouse had sought to have Alito recused from any Jan 6.–related cases because of these flags, but the justice has now spurned their requests. His statement, filed on Supreme Court letterhead and overflowing with Alito’s trademark aggrievement, is best interpreted as either an unreconstructed piece of lawless trolling or a meditation on the nature of female autonomy. It will at least clear up one thing: The justice has not been chastened by recent events and will carry forward his nihilistic attitude into the explosive final weeks of this term.

Alito stands accused of flying two controversial flags. The first was an upside-down American flag at the justice’s Virginia house, flown in the days after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, as the court was considering major election-related cases. The second was an “Appeal to Heaven” flag seen last summer over his New Jersey beach house. Both symbols are connected to movements that supported the insurrection, along with authoritarianism and religious extremism. Durbin and Whitehouse, along with a group of Democratic representatives, believe that this apparent support for insurrectionist-flavored ideas requires him to step aside from the term’s Jan. 6 cases.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Is anyone surprised that Justice Alito isn’t going to recuse himself? After lying repeatedly during his confirmation hearings about his respect for precedent, he is now leading the 6-3 conservative Supreme Court majority as it checks off the list of Federalist Society dream outcomes. Alas, this moment of Supreme Court crisis requires more than a series of calm letters from Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-Illinois). Senator Durbin, where is the damn hearing about Supreme Court corruption? Let Alito, Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justice Clarence Thomas refuse to show. Highlight the crisis! Empty chairs can create compelling moments! A hearing now won’t immediately lead to reform, but it would start that conversation and allow people to debate these issues. Our government’s series of checks and balances only works when a branch is willing, you know, to check what the other branches are doing. Democrats have the gavels in the Senate. It is long past time for chairs like Senator Durbin to start using that authority. At a minimum, perhaps he could ask Justice Alito why his wife is the only woman in the country he believes should be able to make decisions.

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

#5

How the right-wing echo chamber constructed a Biden assassination plot against Trump (Matt Gertz, Media Matters)

The story that emerged from the right-wing media echo chamber posits that pro forma language provided to FBI agents before the 2022 search which stated that “law enforcement officers of the Department of Justice may use deadly force when necessary” was actually part of a Biden scheme to assassinate Trump. This is both a horrific accusation to make without evidence and facially absurd for any number of reasons. (Why would the Biden administration issue assassination orders in writing and then conduct the Mar-a-Lago search on a date specifically selected because Trump would be in New York instead?) But it spread quickly from its initiation by a key figure in the right’s January 6 disinformation community, through the ranks of MAGA influencers, to Trump himself, and then to the Fox News airwaves.

By Tuesday night, Trump’s campaign had issued a fundraising email in which the presumptive Republican presidential nominee alleged of the Biden administration, “You know they’re just itching to do the unthinkable … Joe Biden was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger.”

The startlingly quick adoption of an unhinged conspiracy theory shows how the right-wing media apparatus operates, dreaming up convoluted but inflammatory nonsense and bombarding their audience with it. Here’s how it happened.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

The spread of this conspiracy theory provides a clear example of how disinformation spreads through the radical-right media ecosystem. Right-wing activists transformed standard FBI policy into an insane story where the soon-to-be felon was a target of a potential assassination. This process took less than six hours. Gertz takes us through the steps, starting with one activist, going to Truth Social, and ending with the Republican National Committee and Fox News. This kind of lie will have consequences. It will be almost impossible to correct the record here with Trump supporters. I fear some will use this lie as an explanation for why they resorted to political violence.

#6

Big Tech could give this 19th-century antiabortion law an Orwellian facelift (Nicole Gill, Fast Company)

Former President Donald Trump reaffirmed his commitment to criminalize abortion, telling Time last month he would not intervene in decisions to monitor or prosecute pregnant people. Trump’s fervor to limit reproductive freedom is far from surprising—after all, he has repeatedly taken credit for overturning Roe v. Wade. But buried in the wide-ranging interview was a new clue to how he might go about it: the Comstock Act.

The Comstock Act is an 1873 law that bans the mailing of “obscene” materials, including birth control and “instruments” used for abortions. This so-called  “zombie” law has flown under the radar for the past 50 or so years, largely because it was rendered unconstitutional by Roe v. Wade. But in our post-Roe era, antiabortion advocates—including Speaker Mike Johnson, America First Legal, and the Heritage Foundation—are attempting to resurrect Comstock and use it to ban access to medication abortion. Some argue an anti-choice president could go farther and use Comstock to ban abortion outright, nationwide, without a vote from Congress. And while the Biden administration has refused to enforce Comstock, a future president could easily decide the opposite. Trump himself flirted with enforcement of the Comstock Act in his Time interview, noting he would make a statement about the law “in the coming weeks.” 

The threat of Comstock is real and should be taken seriously. But this isn’t just a reproductive rights issue—it’s also about tech accountability. That’s because from emails to search queries to things we buy online, virtually everything we do online is tracked and stored by Big Tech companies. And all of this data is evidence that federal officials can, and will, use to prosecute abortion.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

In previous issues of this newsletter, I discussed why we must take the Comstock Act threat seriously. Gill adds urgency to this conversation by noting how technology companies—not known for protecting our personal data—can make things worse for women. In this article, Gill demonstrates how companies like Google track and retain sensitive location and search data in their servers. Forced-birth advocates are already using this data to build criminal cases regarding abortion services. We need to do more to make sure people who can become pregnant are aware of the risks potentially created by the retention of search, location, and period tracking data. We should anticipate that technology companies will not try to protect their users should felon Donald Trump win this election and revive Comstock Act enforcement.

#7

A British Nurse Was Found Guilty of Killing Seven Babies. Did She Do It? (Rachel Aviv, The New Yorker)

Letby had worked on a struggling neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital, run by the National Health Service, in the West of England, near Wales. The case centered on a cluster of seven deaths, between June, 2015, and June, 2016. All but one of the babies were premature; three of them weighed less than three pounds. No one ever saw Letby harming a child, and the coroner did not find foul play in any of the deaths. (Since her arrest, Letby has not made any public comments, and a court order has prohibited most reporting on her case. To describe her experiences, I drew from more than seven thousand pages of court transcripts, which included police interviews and text messages, and from internal hospital records that were leaked to me.)

The case against her gathered force on the basis of a single diagram shared by the police, which circulated widely in the media. On the vertical axis were twenty-four “suspicious events,” which included the deaths of the seven newborns and seventeen other instances of babies suddenly deteriorating. On the horizontal axis were the names of thirty-eight nurses who had worked on the unit during that time, with X’s next to each suspicious event that occurred when they were on shift. Letby was the only nurse with an uninterrupted line of X’s below her name. She was the “one common denominator,” the “constant malevolent presence when things took a turn for the worse,” one of the prosecutors, Nick Johnson, told the jury in his opening statement. “If you look at the table overall the picture is, we suggest, self-evidently obvious. It’s a process of elimination.”

But the chart didn’t account for any other factors influencing the mortality rate on the unit. Letby had become the country’s most reviled woman—“the unexpected face of evil,” as the British magazine Prospect put it—largely because of that unbroken line. It gave an impression of mathematical clarity and coherence, distracting from another possibility: that there had never been any crimes at all.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

As Aviv explains in an interview with Nieman Lab’s Sarah Scire, it is illegal to read this story in the United Kingdom, even though it raises significant questions about the misuse of data and whether the investigators have fallen prey to confirmation bias and other fallacies. UK media have presented Letby’s guilt as the only obvious conclusion. However, Aviv explains in detail why that may be wrong. It is possible there were no crimes at all, but these tragedies resulted from systemic failures. One of the causes of false convictions is investigators focusing on data that supports their theory while rejecting evidence that tells a different story. Aviv’s research raises serious doubts about the theory supporting Letby’s guilt.

#8

Pleading the 6th (Peter Hamby, Puck)

Filmmakers Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine want to make sure that’s not the case. Their harrowing and (extremely) intense documentary, The Sixth, produced by A24 and Change Content, tells the story of January 6 through six people who lived through the violence, just by showing up for work that day: D.C. Metro police officers Daniel Hodges and Christina Laury, former D.C. police chief Robert Contee III, freelance photographer Mel Cole, former congressional staffer Erica Loewe, and Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin.

…

The Sixth is not for the faint-hearted—you can watch the trailer here—but the filmmakers say that’s the point. It isn’t about Trump or Biden. “That day, it wasn’t about what side of the aisle you were on,” Sean Fine told me in a conversation I had with the filmmakers over the weekend. “People were running for their lives.” It’s a horror movie in some ways, hopeful in others. 

The release of the film has been trailed by controversy. The Fines—Oscar-, Emmy-, and Peabody-winning filmmakers—have suggested that A24 and Amazon are limiting the scope of the release after making initial promises about its distribution. (Politico wrote about the dispute earlier this month.) I asked the Fines about A24, what media coverage of January 6 missed, whether the riot was actually an organized conspiracy, and more, in our lightly edited conversation below.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

In this interview, the makers of this vital documentary are doing all they can not to burn bridges, even as they raise questions about the unexpected limits of its distribution. How can the A24 studio run a major publicity program for its Civil War film earlier this year but bury this non-fiction film? As Hamby notes, only five percent of respondents to a recent poll named the insurrection as the thing they remember from the felon Donald Trump’s presidency. We cannot let the end of our national tradition of peaceful transfers of power fall into the memory hole.

#9

Locals Defy DeSantis Pride Light Ban, Light Bridge Up With Flashlights In Jacksonville (Erin Reed, Erin in the Morning)

On Friday night, Jacksonville residents took to the Main Street Bridge to celebrate Pride Month. Just weeks prior, Governor Ron DeSantis’ administration and the Florida Department of Transportation issued an edict banning rainbow-colored lighting on bridges during Pride Month, mandating that all such lighting be replaced with red, white, and blue, the colors of the American flag. Residents, however, were undeterred. They carried flashlights and rainbow gels, took their positions, and proceeded to light up the bridge themselves.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I want to thank these Floridians for demonstrating what a real freedom summer feels like. This was an inspiring protest!

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: Trump once again describes how far he will go, Columbia University student journalists provide a comprehensive report on what they’ve experienced with the campus protests, many Americans who recently purchased guns are open to the idea of political violence, the dangers of Constitutional Sheriffs, a new book reminds us about the forgotten history of Hitler’s establishment enablers, I break Godwin’s Law, Trump is no moderate on abortion, Voyager 1 is back, Brittney Griner tells the story of her Russian detention, and essential Monty Python political analysis.

#1

How Far Trump Would Go (Eric Cortellessa, Time)

What emerged in two interviews with Trump, and conversations with more than a dozen of his closest advisers and confidants, were the outlines of an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world. To carry out a deportation operation designed to remove more than 11 million people from the country, Trump told me, he would be willing to build migrant detention camps and deploy the U.S. military, both at the border and inland. He would let red states monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans. He would, at his personal discretion, withhold funds appropriated by Congress, according to top advisers. He would be willing to fire a U.S. Attorney who doesn’t carry out his order to prosecute someone, breaking with a tradition of independent law enforcement that dates from America’s founding. He is weighing pardons for every one of his supporters accused of attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, more than 800 of whom have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury. He might not come to the aid of an attacked ally in Europe or Asia if he felt that country wasn’t paying enough for its own defense. He would gut the U.S. civil service, deploy the National Guard to American cities as he sees fit, close the White House pandemic-preparedness office, and staff his Administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen. 

Trump remains the same guy, with the same goals and grievances. But in person, if anything, he appears more assertive and confident. “When I first got to Washington, I knew very few people,” he says. “I had to rely on people.” Now he is in charge. The arranged marriage with the timorous Republican Party stalwarts is over; the old guard is vanquished, and the people who remain are his people. Trump would enter a second term backed by a slew of policy shops staffed by loyalists who have drawn up detailed plans in service of his agenda, which would concentrate the powers of the state in the hands of a man whose appetite for power appears all but insatiable. “I don’t think it’s a big mystery what his agenda would be,” says his close adviser Kellyanne Conway. “But I think people will be surprised at the alacrity with which he will take action.”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

We are fortunate that the former president and his top advisors are so open about his potential second-term plans. Trump takes ownership of some of Project 2025’s most alarming ideas in these interviews. Kellyanne Conway’s statement at the end of the excerpt above is as much a threat as a promise. No one can argue that what could happen starting on January 20, 2025, is a surprise. Go back and reread what Trump intends to do. These promises should be significant news. These are the stakes. However, the conversation about what Trump said has already died out just a few days after Time published this article. Why aren’t these promises worthy of the coverage reporters gave to Hillary Clinton’s emails or President Joe Biden’s age? Democrats need to warn voters of Trump’s intentions at every possible opportunity. That is the only way these promises will get the attention of reporters—and voters. 

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

Our Campus. Our Crisis. Inside the encampments and crackdowns that shook American politics. A report by the staff of the Columbia Daily Spectator. (Isabella Ramírez, Amira McKee, Rebecca Massel, Emily Forgash, Noah Bernstein, Sabrina Ticer-Wurr, Apurva Chakravarthy, Esha Karam, Shea Vance, Sarah Huddleston, and Maya Stahl, New York Magazine in collaboration with the Columbia Daily Spectator)

The encampment and the takeover of Hamilton represented a dramatic escalation of months of activism on campus. Since the October 7 attack on Israel and its subsequent war in Gaza, which has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, the school has been the site of intense protests and counterprotests with bitter debates on campus over antisemitism and Islamophobia, genocide, and free speech. Overseeing it all was a new president, Minouche Shafik, whose inauguration had come just three days before 10/7 and who had scarcely begun to acquaint herself with the Columbia community when the campus was thrown into crisis. With national political figures and billionaires agitating for the removal of other Ivy League presidents, Shafik was charged with resolving standoffs among groups with vastly divergent interests: deep-pocketed donors used to getting their way, faculty with the security of tenure, and students who believe Columbia is betraying its legacy as an engine for progress. As the encampment impasse played out, it became clearer than ever that people were living in two different Columbias. As pro-Palestinian protesters built a community of hope and solidarity around their support for Gaza, many pro-Israel students reported feeling unwelcome and organized their own counterprotests on and around campus. Some of the latter group packed their bags and left, while many of the former were hauled off to jail and suspended.

The staff of the Columbia Daily Spectator, the nearly 150-year-old undergraduate newspaper, has been covering every minute of this story. Recently, New York Magazine asked us to create this report, leveraging our intimate knowledge of the university and its people to tell the story from the inside. Our reporters, writers, editors, and photographers polled more than 700 Columbians to better understand what happened, took more than 100 portraits of members of the community, and compiled this oral history of the two weeks that forever changed our university.—Isabella Ramírez, editor-in-chief, Columbia Daily Spectator

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I am glad New York magazine’s leadership gave Columbia’s student journalists the cover story of its latest issue. They have compiled a nuanced and comprehensive report about the student protests and the NYPD’s Columbia administration-approved crackdown. The situation is more complicated than it may initially seem—especially given how Columbia (and other colleges and universities) sell their history of activism to prospective students. The Columbia journalists explain how the protests developed, how students reacted, and how the Columbia administration responded. We get to hear from all aspects of the Columbia community. I believe the Columbia administration failed its students throughout the crisis. They failed to protect their students from anti-semitic and Islamaphobic attacks. Then they compounded the error with their decision to send in the NYPD (who responded, per usual, with excessive force and by spreading lies). This story is an outstanding example of the first rough draft of history that great journalism can create. 

#3

Many Americans who recently bought guns open to political violence, survey finds (Ed Pilkington, The Guardian)

Large numbers of Americans who have bought guns over the past four years or who regularly carry their loaded weapons in public are willing to engage in political violence, even to the extent of shooting a perceived opponent, a new mega-survey has found.

The study of almost 13,000 Americans, drawn from across the US and weighted for demographics, provides alarming evidence of the openness of certain types of gun owners to the idea – and possibly the practice – of violence as a political act.

The risk of violent behavior rose dramatically, the researchers found, with certain subsets of gun owners.

…

About 42% of owners of assault-type rifles said political violence could be justified, rising to 44% of recent gun purchasers, and a staggering 56% of those who always or nearly always carry loaded guns in public.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I am not surprised, yet I am shocked by these poll results. How have we reached the point where this many of our fellow Americans believe they can justify resorting to political violence? This dynamic is exacerbated by former President Donald Trump and his supporters’ ongoing efforts to deny the result of the 2020 election and raise questions in advance of the 2024 election. What do we think a significant number of Trump’s supporters hear when they see someone like Senator Tim Scott refuse to say he will accept the outcome of this year’s election? How will these gun owners react to Trump’s calls for a “bloodbath?” How many more election workers are going to face dangerous situations or worse at a time when 45 percent of them already fear for their safety? The supporters of one of the presidential candidates are being primed to take by force what they may not get at the ballot box. That should worry anyone who would like to see our nation’s democratic experiment continue past its upcoming 250th birthday. 

#4

A sheriff, a felon and a conspiracy theorist walk into a hotel. They’re there for the same conference. (Brandy Zadrozny, NBC News)

A conference for a far-right sheriffs group this week drew a parade of felons, disgraced politicians, election deniers, conspiracy theorists and, in the end, a few sheriffs. 

The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, or CSPOA, met in Las Vegas’ Ahern Luxury Boutique Hotel conference center to publicly counter reports of extremism within the group and set a course for the coming election — one that involves sheriffs’ investigating what they claim, despite a lack of evidence, is rampant voter fraud. 

The group sees sheriffs as the highest authority in the U.S., more powerful than the federal government, and it wants these county officers to form posses to patrol polling places, seize voting machines and investigate the Democrats and foreign nations behind what they claim is a criminal effort to rig the vote by flooding the country with immigrants who vote illegally.  

Critics of the group — including voting rights advocates and extremism researchers — fear the CSPOA’s new focus will amount to interference and legitimize disinformation about U.S. elections.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

This Constitutional Sheriff fantasy is a ticking explosive on our democracy, and Donald Trump is preparing to engage it. Imagine for a moment the chaos that sheriffs will create when their posses are turning voters away from polling sites, and then they seize voting machines. History demonstrates how aspiring authoritarians can take advantage of the uncertainty such chaos creates. Plus, Trump and Stephen Miller are warning us of their intention to weaponize Constitutional Sheriffs as part of their mass immigrant deportation plan, as this article by America’s Voice’s Gabe Ortiz explains. Do you think these rogue law enforcement officers will be careful to ensure they are targeting only undocumented people? Do you believe our Constitutional protections are going to be their priority? 

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 Forgotten History of Hitler’s Establishment Enablers (Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker)

So the historian Timothy W. Ryback’s choice to make his new book, “Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise to Power” (Knopf), an aggressively specific chronicle of a single year, 1932, seems a wise, even an inspired one. Ryback details, week by week, day by day, and sometimes hour by hour, how a country with a functional, if flawed, democratic machinery handed absolute power over to someone who could never claim a majority in an actual election and whom the entire conservative political class regarded as a chaotic clown with a violent following. Ryback shows how major players thought they could find some ulterior advantage in managing him. Each was sure that, after the passing of a brief storm cloud, so obviously overloaded that it had to expend itself, they would emerge in possession of power. The corporate bosses thought that, if you looked past the strutting and the performative antisemitism, you had someone who would protect your money. Communist ideologues thought that, if you peered deeply enough into the strutting and the performative antisemitism, you could spy the pattern of a popular revolution. The decent right thought that he was too obviously deranged to remain in power long, and the decent left, tempered by earlier fights against different enemies, thought that, if they forcibly stuck to the rule of law, then the law would somehow by itself entrap a lawless leader. In a now familiar paradox, the rational forces stuck to magical thinking, while the irrational ones were more logical, parsing the brute equations of power. And so the storm never passed. In a way, it still has not.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I decided to read Takeover after seeing this book review, and Ryback does an excellent job of taking us back to Germany during the pivotal months that led to Hitler’s takeover. It isn’t a comfortable read because we know how the story ends. I gasped and shouted out loud several times at the German establishment politicians as they made the errors in judgment that gave the Nazis the ability to take over the state. They thought they could influence Hitler. They thought the institutions would constrain him. They thought the laws would protect them. As the famous aphorism (likely misattributed to Mark Twain) notes, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” I believe history right now is screaming its warning rhymes at us. Loudly. But will we listen?

#6

Guess Who’s Coming to Elon’s Dinner (Theodore Schleifer, Puck)

On a brisk Friday evening earlier this month, David Sacks and Elon Musk convened a dozen or so of America’s most powerful business leaders for dinner at Sacks’ $23 million, 11,000-square-foot home in the Hollywood Hills. The dinner party, according to people familiar with the intimate gathering, comprised a veritable living room Milken conference: Michael Milken himself was there, in fact, as were billionaires Rupert Murdoch and Peter Thiel. A few government types, including Steven Mnuchin, scored invites. There were also some less politically active titans of industry, such as Uber co-founder and former C.E.O. Travis Kalanick. But all were there as members of a burgeoning anti-Biden brain trust, united by a shared sense of grievance.

The get-together, which hasn’t been previously reported, is the latest evidence of Musk’s growing power beyond Silicon Valley, as he’s evolved from political hobbyist to media owner and conservative icon. As I wrote last week, Musk has told associates that he’s interested in formalizing his running political commentary on Twitter/X into an official endorsement of some sort—either a statement against President Biden, or even something supporting Donald Trump. He has been encouraged to go deeper into politics this cycle by his friends Joe Lonsdale, the venture capitalist, and Steve Wynn, the casino magnate and Trump emissary. 

The Most Feared and Least Known Political Operative in America (Michael Kruse, Politico Magazine)

[Susie] Wiles is not just one of Trump’s senior advisers. She’s his most important adviser. She’s his de facto campaign manager. She has been in essence his chief of staff for the last more than three years. She’s one of the reasons Trump is the GOP’s presumptive nominee and Ron DeSantis is not. She’s one of the reasons Trump’s current operation has been getting credit for being more professional than its fractious, seat-of-the-pants antecedents. And she’s a leading reason Trump has every chance to get elected again — even after his loss of 2020, the insurrection of 2021, his party’s defeats in the midterms of 2022, the criminal indictments of 2023 and the trial (or trials) of 2024. The former president is potentially a future president. And that’s because of him. But it’s also because of her. Trump, of course, is Trump — he can be irritable, he can be impulsive — and this campaign is facing unprecedented stressors and snags. It’s a long six-plus months till Election Day. For now, though, nobody around him is so influential, and nobody around him has been so influential for so long.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

He can help them make more money. They think they can influence him. They think the institutions will constrain him. They think the laws will protect them. Yeah, history sure can rhyme. 

#7

Trump Gives Up the Game (Jessica Valenti, Abortion Every Day)

In an interview with TIME magazine, Donald Trump admits that if reelected, he’d let anti-abortion activists do whatever they want. I wish that was hyperbole. 

Trump, who has been trying to position himself as the ‘reasonable’ Republican on abortion rights, can’t help but give up the game the second a reporter gives him a few minutes to talk. He tells Eric Cortellessa that he’d support states tracking women’s pregnancies and arresting abortion patients, and he refused to commit to vetoing a federal abortion ban. 

How many different times can Trump make clear that he’s an extremist misogynist before people finally take his word for it?

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Yes, Trump said that states should track pregnant people. Let that sink in for a second. That’s where we are heading. Trump and his advisors have been clear about the various ways they will seek to implement a national abortion ban. He won’t even need to sign a bill into law (although, despite his protestations, he clearly would). As president, Trump can use the Food and Drug Administration to remove abortion medication from the market. He can order the Department of Justice to enforce the 1873 Comstock Act. His Supreme Court appointees could decide that the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause requires fetuses to have the same protections as people. There are reasons so many Trump supporters try to keep us from taking him literally. But a candidate’s statements and promises should still matter. 

#8

How NASA Repaired Voyager 1 From 15 Billion Miles Away (Stephen Clark, Ars Technica)

In November, Voyager 1 suddenly stopped transmitting its usual stream of data containing information about the spacecraft’s health and measurements from its scientific instruments. Instead, the spacecraft’s datastream was entirely unintelligible. Because the telemetry was unreadable, experts on the ground could not easily tell what went wrong. They hypothesized the source of the problem might be in the memory bank of the FDS.

There was a breakthrough last month when engineers sent up a novel command to “poke” Voyager 1’s FDS to send back a readout of its memory. This readout allowed engineers to pinpoint the location of the problem in the FDS memory. The FDS is responsible for packaging engineering and scientific data for transmission to Earth.

After a few weeks, NASA was ready to uplink a solution to get the FDS to resume packing engineering data.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

It turns out that my tribute to Voyager 1 was premature. Sometimes, I am so glad to be wrong. Remarkably, NASA scientists could diagnose the problem and upload a solution into Voyager 1’s memory despite it taking about 22.5 hours each way to send and receive messages from the spacecraft. I am so excited by these developments. And I look forward to seeing Voyager 1 again send back usable scientific data. 

#9

‘I Will Never Forget Any of It’: Brittney Griner Is Ready to Talk (J Wortham, New York Times Magazine)

On the March afternoon when I met Brittney Griner in Phoenix, the wildflowers were in peak efflorescence, California poppies and violet cones of lupine exploding everywhere. Griner was in bloom too. She was practicing with some local ballers brought in by her W.N.B.A. team, the Mercury, to prepare its players for the start of the season in May. On the court, Griner was loose, confident, trading jokes with the other players between runs. She snatched a pass out of the air, drove it hard in the paint and pulled up to shoot, the ball kissing the net as it sailed through. Everyone, including Nate Tibbetts, the Mercury’s newly hired head coach, who dropped by to watch, erupted in cheers. Griner nodded to herself in quiet satisfaction, keeping her head down as she jogged back to run the play again. 

Less than two years ago, Griner was starting her nine-year sentence in a penal colony in Russia, sewing uniforms for the Russian military and subsisting on spoiled food. She lived for glimpses of the sky, which she could see only through weathered rebar when the guards took prisoners outside. She had never been further from the sport that made her a household name. She could barely get through multiple rounds of horse, her lung capacity shot from smoking so many cigarettes. She rarely got to hear from her wife, Cherelle, or her family and friends, and she had no idea when — or if — she would be coming home.

When, after 10 months in Russia, she was finally released, she jumped back into playing, thinking the routine and familiarity would ground her back in herself and her life. But the transition was rocky.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Brittney Griner’s memoir, Coming Home, is being published this week, and she is now telling the story of her time in Russian prison. She explains how a mistake rushing to pack to make her flight led to her forgetting to remove the cannabis cartridges from her carry-on bag. Griner describes in detail the conditions of her detention and how she struggled after her release. Her story is an important one. I am glad she is now comfortable enough to share it. 

Quick Pitches

• American Autocracy Threat Tracker (Norman L. Eisen, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Siven Watt, Andrew Warren, Jacob Kovacs-Goodman and Francois Barrilleaux, Just Security)
  This is a comprehensive and continually updated tracker of the promises and plans outlined by former President Donald Trump and his supporters.
• 2024 AI Elections Tracker (Rest of World)
  As two billion people in over 50 countries prepare to vote this year, Rest of World is tracking how artificial intelligence is being used to spread misinformation.
• The Town That Kept Its Nuclear Bunker a Secret for Three Decades (Emily Matchar, Smithsonian)
  From 1958-1992, the residents of White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, kept secret the knowledge that their town had a bunker designed to host all of the members of Congress in the event of a nuclear war.
• The Letter of Last Resort (Ned Donovan, Terra Nullius)
  One of the first duties of every new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is to draft the Letter of Last Resort, a series of final instructions for the nation’s four nuclear submarines to follow if the governmental chain of command is destroyed in a nuclear attack. The options are as grim as you might expect in such a situation.
• Americans Throw Away Up to $68 Million in Coins a Year. Here Is Where It All Ends Up. (Oyin Adedoyin, Wall Street Journal)
  It seems like there should be better solutions to this challenge.
• The Bluetooth Viking and the Scattered Bones of King Cnut (Brian Klaas, The Garden of Forking Paths)I didn’t expect the name and logo of this key technology to be connected to Viking history and the English Civil War. But that’s what makes it so interesting.

The Closer

Seeing the responses to this tweet made me feel old. And then I learned that many of my trivia friends were not aware of this reference.

So here are three minutes of amusing political commentary from Monty Python to remedy to close this vital knowledge gap. Enjoy!

Post-Game Comments

Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:

“Authoritarians need the people who will promote the riot or launch the coup. But they also need the people who can use sophisticated legal language, people who can argue that breaking the constitution or twisting the law is the right thing to do.” (Anne Applebaum, Twilight of Democracy)

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: a book explores a nuclear war scenario that could happen today, Arizona exposes what Republicans want for women across the country, Biden should do a primetime address on abortion, Trump asks advisors for battle plans against Mexico, MAGA ties eclipses to conspiracies, what really matters in the 2024 election, understanding the digital threats pregnant people face post-Roe, prosecutors who frame innocent people deserve tougher punishments, five reasons journalists accept being lied to, and sharing the best of Grant Wahl.

#1

Nuclear War: A Scenario (Annie Jacobsen, Dutton Books)

Since the early 1950s, the United States government has spent trillions of dollars preparing to fight a nuclear war, while also refining protocols meant to keep the U.S. government functioning after hundreds of millions of Americans become casualties of an apocalyptic-scale nuclear holocaust.

This scenario—of what the moments after an inbound nuclear missile launch could look like—is based on facts sourced from exclusive interviews with presidential advisors, cabinet members, nuclear weapons engineers, scientists, soldiers, airmen, special operators, Secret Service, emergency management experts, intelligence analysts, civil servants, and others who have worked on these macabre scenarios over decades.

Because the plans for General Nuclear War are among the most classified secrets held by the U.S. government, this book, and the scenario it postulates, takes the reader up to the razor’s edge of what can legally be known. Declassified documents—obfuscated for decades—fill in the details with terrifying clarity. Because the Pentagon is a top target for a strike by America’s nuclear-armed enemies, in the scenario that follows, Washington, D.C., gets hit first—with a 1-megaton thermonuclear bomb. “A Bolt out of the Blue attack against D.C. is what everyone in D.C. fears most,” says former assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical, and biological defense programs Andrew Weber. “Bolt out of the Blue” is how U.S. Nuclear Command and Control refers to an “unwarned large [nuclear] attack.”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

This is one of the most terrifying books I have read—and I urge everyone to join me in witnessing its terror. Jacobsen masterfully describes, minute by minute, what would happen once the United States detects a nuclear weapons launch.

The bottom line: in the realistic scenario Jacobsen outlines, it would only take around 72 minutes from the launch of the first ICBM for civilization to end. And, yeah, it could happen today.

I fear that many people do not see a nuclear war as a likely scenario in 2024. But the increased likelihood of a nuclear exchange is one of the reasons the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has set its Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds to midnight for the past two years. That’s the closest the clock has been set to doomsday since its creation in 1947.

Jacobsen explains how a nuclear war will progress to armageddon once the principle of deterrence has failed. The incentives to use the weapons before they are destroyed overcome any inclination to wait and see or to prevent damage once early warning systems detect the first launches.

The United States, China, and Russia are spending more on nuclear weapons. Other nations, like North Korea, are expanding their capabilities. Iran could have nuclear weapons quickly if its leaders decide to take the last steps made possible by former President Donald Trump’s decision to scuttle the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Legendary Entertainment has optioned the book for a possible movie adaptation. I hope it happens. Our generations could use a The Day After-type of wake-up call.

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#2

Arizona’s Zombie Abortion Ban Is Back. It’s Every State’s Future If Trump Wins. (Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern, Slate)

The next time someone tells you they really worry about abortion rights, but that President Biden is just too old, please gently remind them that Joe Biden is not, in fact 160. That is the age of the law that will soon be sending abortion providers to prison in Arizona if they attempt to assist a victim of rape or incest. If edgy modernity is truly your thing, be afraid of Republican judges who are at war with modernity itself; they will gladly welcome the assistance of pro-choice voters whose apathy facilitates the rollback of women’s equal citizenship. And it’s now abundantly clear that we’re not rolling back the tape to the 1970s or to the 1920s. The project is to set your clocks back to the time when women didn’t even matter enough to have a vote.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Since Republican elected officials know they can’t win at the ballot box, reviving zombie laws banning reproductive health care through the judicial and regulatory processes is now a top forced-birth priority. What the Arizona Supreme Court did is just a first step in this process. If former President Donald Trump wins, he won’t need Congress to create a national ban—yes, even in blue states. The Comstock Act can do the work, and it could also extend to contraception. It will be easier to fight back if Biden is still in the White House. General elections are not about ideological perfection. They are binary choices, and I hope voters prioritize harm reduction if they can’t get excited about re-electing Biden.

#3

Biden should do a primetime address on abortion (Marisa Kabas, The Handbasket)

Despite being given an absolute slam dunk, homerun, touchdown of an electoral issue—as proven by numerous other elections—Biden has yet to definitively own it in a way that feels commensurate with its seriousness. The practicing Catholic president still treats abortion like a relative he was forced to invite to the party. And that needs to change.

Now is the time for Biden to put aside any personal misgivings and focus on the greater good. Now is the time for Biden to draw clear lines that say: “In a second Biden term, abortion will be legal in as much as the country as possible. In a second Trump term, it will be illegal for millions of Americans.” 

The best part about this approach, for Biden at least, is that he doesn’t actually have to modulate his personal views at all. He’ll be able to distinguish himself from Trump just by stating facts backed up by history. Trump has no such history to fall onto, and quite the contrary: Despite his Wednesday assurances that he wouldn’t sign a national abortion ban, no one in their right mind believes him. Abortion access is as safe with Trump as it would be with the ghost of Phyllis Schlafly.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I agree. I want President Biden to be clear about what is at stake. It’s obvious this issue makes him uncomfortable, but that is nothing compared to the lives being placed in jeopardy by Republican abortion bans. As Kabas explains, Donald Trump is doing everything he can to confuse voters about what he will do on this issue if he wins this November. Trump is trying to be a moderate. It would be political malfeasance for Biden and the Democrats to let him get away with that misdirection. Vice President Kamala Harris has done a great job traveling the country talking about these issues, and it should continue to be a priority for her election efforts. But the president needs to lead—especially since voters have demonstrated they are ready to follow on this issue.

#4

Trump Asks Advisers for ‘Battle Plans’ to ‘Attack Mexico’ if Reelected (Asawin Suebsaeng, Adam Rawnsley, Rolling Stone)

“‘Attacking Mexico,’ or whatever you’d like to call it, is something that President Trump has said he wants ‘battle plans’ drawn for,” says one of the sources. “He’s complained about missed opportunities of his first term, and there are a lot of people around him who want fewer missed opportunities in a second Trump presidency.”

Trump lieutenants have briefed him on several options that include unilateral military strikes and troop deployments on a sovereign U.S. partner and neighbor, the sources say. One such proposal that Trump has been briefed on this year is an October white paper from the Center for Renewing America, an increasingly influential think tank staffed largely by Trumpist wonks, MAGA loyalists, and veterans of his administration.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I think the fact that a presumptive party nominee for president is openly discussing plans to conduct unilateral military operations in an allied country should be a bigger deal. And it isn’t just Trump—many leading Republicans have also declared that Trump made a huge mistake by not forcing some kind of military action in Mexico during his first term. They want to try again. We are fortunate they are warning us of their intentions.

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

#5

In MAGA World, Everything Happens for a Reason (Brian Klaas, The Atlantic)

A bridge was felled by a tragic error. Earth’s tectonic plates moved slightly underneath New Jersey. And on Monday, for four minutes, the sun went dark. These are mystifying events with rational explanations. Unfortunately, the MAGA movement has discovered its own hidden truth: that lying to people, coddling mass delusions, and insisting that political enemies are part of a secret plot is an effective strategy that converts ordinary supporters into zealous disciples. The only effective way to break the spell and bring people back to reality will be to disprove their most important prophecy, which takes place at the polls in November.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

The impact of this conspiracy theory dynamic continues to grow more intense. Is it the Biden Administration’s nefarious activities? Is God sending a message? Surely, these weird events are more than a mere coincidence. Klaas explains why it is so hard to counter these theories. After all, evolution gave us brains that try to create patterns, and we love a good story. When everything around us must be a part of a battle between good and evil, people want to believe they are fighting a villain and have the particular information required to be in the good group. Understanding these dynamics helps explain a bunch of what we see in today’s politics.

#6

This is pretty much all that matters (Craig Calcaterra, Cup of Coffee)

There is a view held by some that maybe we need everything to come crashing down in order to, eventually, achieve real progress. That the Democratic Party — which, contrary to Harwood’s words above, is really a center-right party with liberal social tendencies — cannot be reformed or coaxed into taking a more progressive path so only through some Great Reckoning or even via its destruction will we truly have a chance to improve the conditions of existence. I understand that sentiment and, as someone with a degree in political philosophy, I understand its theoretical and historical basis. Yet as a matter of American politics in the year 2024, I reject it as an utter fantasy held only by those who either (a) do not understand political realities and how our system would actually react to such a thing; (b) do not understand history; or (c) would not be the ones who truly suffered if such a thing came to pass and thus desire such an outcome from a place of profound privilege, whether or not they consciously appreciate it.

If Trump wins, the Democratic Party is not gonna see the democratic-socialist light, reject the things we want them to reject, and reform as some sort of progressive vanguard. It’s going to do what parties pushed to the brink of destruction have always done: rebrand and continue doing most of what it has always done but doing its best to co-opt the most popular ideas of the party which destroyed it. In our “Punish Biden” hypothetical, in 21st century America as it actually exists, a reformed-via-electoral-apocalypse Democratic Party would move further to the right and would abandon its most contentious positions and convictions which, by modern political definition, are those positions and convictions which are best-calculated to help or protect the most vulnerable among us. The only lesson our society would realistically choose to learn from Trump prevailing over a humbled and punished Biden is “we need to move to the right and stop supporting things which upset the people who put Trump in office.”

None of this is meant to tell you how to vote. All of us have a bright line issue or two on which we cannot and will not compromise and if Biden has crossed some line in that regard which makes it philosophically or morally untenable for you to support him, I respect that. But if that is the case, or if you are simply displeased with Biden and have notions of lodging a protest vote or not voting at all, I feel it is incumbent on you to explain, with at least a little actual detail, how the consequences of him losing in November are preferable to the alternative. How his losing would make any single thing better either in the short or long term and how it would not make things worse.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Cup of Coffee is one of my favorite newsletters because Calcaterra doesn’t just give me recaps of the previous day’s baseball games and news. That’s why I started following him online years ago. I love them! But what hooked me as a subscriber is what happens after he finishes with the baseball talk and shifts to other subjects. I frequently find his non-baseball analysis incredibly engaging since, despite living in Ohio, he approaches public policy from a skosh to my left. His point here is critical to understand as we enter the general election portion of the 2024 campaign. I heard similar accelerationist arguments from people in 2000 and 2016. But eight years of George W. Bush and four years of Donald Trump didn’t get us any closer to a socialist nirvana (we can start by taking a look at who is on the Supreme Court). General elections are not about our feelings. They are binary choices about where we are headed as a nation. I believe our priority should be doing whatever we can with our ballot to reduce the chances vulnerable people will be harmed.

#7

Two Years Post-Roe: A Better Understanding of Digital Threats (Daly Barnett, Electronic Frontier Foundation)

It’s been a long two years since the Dobbs decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Between May 2022 when the Supreme Court accidentally leaked the draft memo and the following June when the case was decided, there was a mad scramble to figure out what the impacts would be. Besides the obvious perils of stripping away half the country’s right to reproductive healthcare, digital surveillance and mass data collection caused a flurry of concerns. 

Although many activists fighting for reproductive justice had been operating under assumptions of little to no legal protections for some time, the Dobbs decision was for most a sudden and scary revelation. Everyone implicated in that moment somewhat understood the stark difference between pre-Roe 1973 and post-Roe 2022; living under the most sophisticated surveillance apparatus in human history presents a vastly different landscape of threats. Since 2022, some suspicions have been confirmed, new threats have emerged, and overall our risk assessment has grown smarter. Below, we cover the most pressing digital dangers facing people seeking reproductive care, and ways to combat them.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Understanding how the data our computers and phones generate is vital since red-state extremists are seeking to criminalize not just receiving reproductive health care services but also helping someone access them. A forced-birth District Attorney can weaponize a person’s Google search history or the direct messages a relative or friend sends to a person facing a healthcare crisis. Data brokers can share license plate information that could lead to investigations about why a person parked their out-of-state vehicle near a reproductive healthcare center. This article explains these dangers and offers suggestions for how people can protect themselves.

#8

Kansas prosecutor who framed innocent man surrenders law license, will soon be disbarred (Peggy Lowe, KCUR Public Radio)

Terra Morehead, a longtime county and federal prosecutor who helped police frame at least one innocent man, has agreed to surrender her law license and faces disbarment.

Morehead, who became notorious for skirting legal protections for defendants, agreed to surrender her license as part of an agreement with the Kansas Board for Discipline of Attorneys. She is awaiting disbarment from the Kansas Supreme Court, according to court filings.

The documents also show that Morehead, who retired from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Kansas last August, was the subject of a federal investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. The result of that probe is unknown.

Morehead’s conduct came under scrutiny during the exoneration of Lamonte McIntyre, who was convicted in 1994 of a double homicide when he was 17.

McIntyre was freed in 2017 after Wyandotte County District Attorney Mark Dupree said his conviction was a “manifest injustice” and a judge dropped the case. McIntyre sued and was awarded $12.5 million in 2022 by the Unified Government of Kansas City, Kansas, and Wyandotte County for the wrongful conviction.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

A person who falsely accuses another of a crime has committed a terrible act. We should have high expectations that prosecutors will not engage in such injustices and abuse the trust we grant them. So, a prosecutor misusing his or her authority to help convict an innocent person must face more significant consequences than retirement and disbarment. What prosecutor Terra Morehead did to Lamonte McIntyre should outrage all of us. She can’t only face a relative slap on the wrist.

#9

5 reasons journalists accept being lied to (Mark Jacob, Stop the Presses)

Journalists don’t punish liars enough.

Occasionally they push back on live TV, creating a few awkward moments, but by and large, they let liars state their lies and move on. Sometimes the journalists correct the lie later after their audience has absorbed the disinformation. It’s like pouring water on the ashes long after the fire is out.

Confrontation is hard for people – even for journalists. If they make their guests look bad, the guests might never come back on the show. Their press aides might stop providing anonymous quotes or tidbits of information that make the journalists look like they have the inside scoop. 

For this reason and others, some journalists accept being lied to, and consider it a part of their job. They don’t get offended – or at least not offended enough to fight back. They become part of a cynical system. And they come up with all kinds of rationalizations for their failure to vigorously defend the truth.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I’ve previously argued that interviews of any elected official should begin with one question: is Joe Biden the duly elected president of the United States? The interview should end if the answer is anything besides “Yes.” If a person is going to lie about this fact, what else can we trust? I also think that journalists should expose any anonymous source if it turns out they used that protection to lie. Journalists should not accept being the conduit through which politicians launder their deceptions. Jacob, who agrees that journalists don’t punish liars enough, explains why they fail to hold them accountable. It is useful to understand these dynamics—even if they frustrate me daily. 

Quick Pitches

• Coming in June: The Best of Grant Wahl (Céline Gounder, Fútbol with Grant Wahl)
  Grant Wahl died while covering the 2022 Men’s World Cup. He was one of my favorite writers and, for a long while, one of the few American journalists who took men’s and women’s soccer seriously. Gounder, his widow, announced this collection of Wahl’s best writing. I am glad we get to celebrate his legacy.
• Elon Musk’s Worst Predictions and Broken Promises of the Past 15 Years (Matt Novak, Gizmodo)
  Yeah, he was not doing well even before he destroyed my favorite social network.
• Inside the meetings that officially moved the A’s from Oakland to Sacramento (Tim Keown, ESPN)
  I’m glad Oakland leaders finally told A’s owner John Fisher to get lost. I wish MLB owners would let one of the several Bay Area billionaires buy the team from him. We can add this travesty to Commissioner Rob Manfred’s legacy of failure. Perhaps we could get someone who actually enjoys the sport to succeed him at the end of his final term?
• 17 astounding scientific mysteries that researchers can’t yet solve (Brian Resnick, Vox)
  I take comfort in understanding that our scientists are still working to figure out some fundamental questions.
• 5.25-inch floppy disks expected to help run San Francisco trains until 2030 (Scharon Harding, Ars Technica)
  I remember starting my days a few decades ago by patiently trying to load information off of this kind of floppy disk.
• Chocolate Might Never Be the Same (Yasmin Tayag, The Atlantic)
  There have been three consecutive years of poor cocoa harvests in West Africa. Thanks to environmental challenges, some of which are connected to the climate emergency, this shortage may become the new normal.

The Closer

Craig Calcaterra, whom I quoted in today’s lineup, shared an image at the top of one of his recent newsletters that hit a bit close to home. I guess it’s time to get those 10,000 steps.

Post-Game Comments

Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:

“Sport is agony. We agree to suffer endlessly in exchange for the mere possibility of sublime rapture. Sometimes we even get it.”—Joe Posnanski, Why We Love Baseball

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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Today’s Lineup

Here’s what I’ve found interesting: an attack on presidential term limits, Trump’s abortion announcement doesn’t mean shit, the envoy courting the global far right, pro-Russia propaganda in the House, why the media normalizes Trump, facial recognition technology jeopardizes the right to protest, the government isn’t prepared for another insurrection, drone swarms, and a reminder that this isn’t the first time women’s sports has proven popular on television.

#1

Project 2025 reveals its goal: Trump as president for life (Lisa Needham, Public Notice)

Project 2025, the Republican plan to functionally annihilate not just the federal government but democracy as well if Trump wins in November, is an unceasing parade of horrors.

Banning the abortion pill nationwide? Check. Rolling back protections for LGBTQ people? Check. Deporting literally millions of undocumented immigrants? Check. But amid each objectively horrible aim is an even more more insidious one: abolishing the 22nd Amendment, which limits presidents to two terms. It’s an unvarnished, right-out-in-the-open plan to keep Trump in office well past 2028. 

It’s not as if this is genuinely unexpected. By July 2019, Trump had “joked” at least six times about being president for life. Floating that as a possibility, as Peter Tonguette did last week over at The American Conservative, is a great opportunity to show fealty to a candidate who values loyalty over all else. 

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I believe we are fortunate that the former president and his supporters are being so explicit about their plans for a second Trump term. It would be easier to claim that people like me are being alarmist if they relied instead on dog whistles, winks, and nods. That said, I suspect this article is only the opening bid in this conversation. Are you willing to bet that this MAGA Supreme Court—one that has already demonstrated a willingness to work around the plain language of the 14th Amendment—wouldn’t figure out an innovative way to re-interpret the 22nd Amendment? I’m hoping our country doesn’t take that risk.

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#2

Trump’s Abortion Announcement: It doesn’t mean shit (Jessica Valenti, Abortion, Every Day)

The thing that’s most important to know is that this ‘announcement’ doesn’t mean shit—at least, not in terms of how dangerous another Trump presidency would be. Conservatives’ abortion plan for a second Trump administration has never been reliant on a national ban, because they know they might not be able to get the votes. Instead, the focus is on using control of the FDA and the DOJ to implement backdoor bans.

By replacing the head of the FDA, a Trump administration would rescind approval of mifepristone, one of the two medications used to end a pregnancy. With the DOJ, they’d ensure that the Comstock Act, the 19th century zombie law that makes it illegal to ship ‘obscene’ materials, would be used to stop the mailing of abortion medication or supplies. (That’s not a political prediction, by the way—it’s a plan conservatives have explicitly laid out in Project 2025.)

As Jonathan Mitchell, the architect of the Texas abortion ban and a powerful anti-choice activist, said in February, “We don’t need a federal ban when we have Comstock on the books…There’s a smorgasbord of options.”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

When Donald Trump doesn’t claim credit for overturning Roe v. Wade, he tries to confuse voters about what his election would mean for reproductive healthcare rights. He seems to understand how politically toxic strict abortion bans have proven in the past two elections. Valenti explains why we shouldn’t fall for Trumpian misdirection. The substance of Trump’s position is not moderate—even if far too many reporters are falling for his rhetoric. We are fortunate that so many Republicans and forced-birth advocates are talking so much about using control of the FDA and resurrecting the 1873 Comstock Act to make a nationwide ban happen regardless of who controls Congress. Democrats must explain to voters how Trump can use Executive actions to make a ban happen. This needs to be a major focus of the campaign. The filibuster won’t save the blue states from a Trump Department of Justice enforcing the Comstock Act and a Trump Food and Drug Administration withdrawing its approval of abortion medication.  

#3

‘Building an authoritarian axis’: the Trump ‘envoy’ courting the global far right (Robert Tait, The Guardian)

For Donald Trump, he is “my envoy”, the man apparently anointed as the former US president’s roving ambassador while he plots a return to the White House.

To critics, he is seen as “an online pest” and “a national disgrace” – and most importantly, the dark embodiment of what foreign policy in a second Trump administration would look like.

Meet Richard Grenell, vocal tribune of Trump’s America First credo on the international stage and the man hotly tipped to become secretary of state if the presumed Republican nominee beats Joe Biden in November’s presidential election.

A senior executive in the rightwing Newsmax cable channel, Grenell, 57, has crafted a persona as the archetypal Trump man, keen and ever-ready to troll liberals, allies and foreign statesmen in public forums and social media.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

As Robert Tait explains in this article, Richard Grenell is traveling the world and meddling in the nation’s foreign policy on Trump’s behalf. He is sowing confusion among U.S. diplomats. He is making our allies question our national commitments. He is empowering far-right politicians. And, as Joe Cirincione explains, “It looks as though Grenell is trying to build up a developing authoritarian network of rightwing leaders to form this authoritarian axis that Trump might govern by – ranging from Putin to [Viktor] Orbán [prime minister of Hungary] to Erdoğan. All these are anti-democratic forces and use the simple playbook of using democracy to overthrow democracy.” Yeah, I think that’s a result we should strive to avoid. 

#4

Top Republican warns pro-Russia messages are echoed ‘on the House floor’ (Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Abigail Hauslohner, The Washington Post)

Rep. Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio), who chairs the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said Sunday that it was “absolutely true” that some Republican members of Congress were repeating Russian propaganda about the invasion of Ukraine instigated by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Turner did not specify which members he was referring to, but he said he agreed with House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul (R-Tex.), who said in an interview with Puck News last week that Russian propaganda had “infected a good chunk of my party’s base” and suggested that conservative media was to blame.

When asked on Sunday, Turner said he agreed with McCaul’s sentiments.

“We see directly coming from Russia attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages — some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor,” Turner said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Yes, you read that correctly. The Republican Chairs of the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs Committees are now on the record stating that some of their colleagues—and conservative media outlets—are pushing Russian propaganda. Um, it seems like this claim should be a bigger deal? Republican leaders should be asked to provide the American people with more details. Republicans opposing the Ukrainian aid bill’s passage should be asked to explain whether they are sharing Russian propaganda. We must not sweep this under the political rug. Also of note: the Washington Post’s Catherine Belton and Joseph Menn reveal in this story newly discovered Kremlin documents that explain how Russian trolls are seeking to influence Republican House members and right-wing media outlets. It’s working.

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

#5

Why is the Press Making Trump Seem More Normal? (Dan Pfeiffer, The Message Box)

Yes, a presidential candidate [Donald Trump] just accused the sitting President of the United States of delivering the State of the Union address while high on cocaine. I’m guessing that unless you listened to the Friday episode of Pod Save America, most of you are learning this information for the first time. And it’s not because you aren’t avid consumers of news. It’s because the traditional political media decided to ignore this outlandish accusation from a clearly deranged and dishonest man (and the next potential President of the United States). The press is aware of the interview. Hewitt is not a MAGA content creator who operates in the dark corners of the internet. He is — bizarrely and unfortunately — a member of the Washington establishment in good standing. The reporters who cover Trump listened to the interview and many wrote stories about his comments on Israel and Gaza, but they made an editorial decision to bury Trump’s insane accusations.

Clearly, Donald Trump accusing Biden of being a cokehead is not the biggest issue in the election. But I think the incident reveals how the press’s coverage of Trump ends up advantaging him and making Biden’s road to reelection that much steeper.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

So yeah, that happened. Why isn’t Trump’s outrageous claim a bigger story? Pfeiffer helpfully explains some of the dynamics at play. Trump’s constant outrageous statements and Bannonian ability to “flood the zone with shit” have created an environment where reporters downplay his insanity in misguided attempts to appear objective. This is one of the reasons I agree with Rachel Leingang’s recent Guardian analysis that calls on people to watch an entire Trump speech to understand what kind of president he would be in a potential second term. As Leingang writes, “Watching a Trump speech in full better shows what it’s like inside his head: a smorgasbord of falsehoods, personal and professional vendettas, frequent comparisons to other famous people, a couple of handfuls of simple policy ideas, and a lot of non sequiturs that veer into barely intelligible stories.” 

#6

The changing face of protest. Mass protests used to offer a degree of safety in numbers. Facial recognition technology changes the equation. (Darren Loucaides, Rest of World)

Authorities are often secretive about their use of facial recognition at protests. Often, the people arrested are not told whether the technology has played a role in their detention, even if they suspect it. Over six months, Rest of World spoke to researchers, activists, and people targeted by facial recognition systems around the world to track how this technology is upending protest as we know it. We found evidence of facial recognition tools being used at major protests worldwide, often in a way that clashes with civil liberties. The context may vary by location, but the overall outcome is shared: Facial recognition technology is making the act of protest riskier than ever, putting demonstrators at greater risk of persecution, exacerbating the targeting of minority groups, and changing the way people express dissent. 

Combined with a rise in authoritarianism in many countries, some activists and civil groups even fear that the increased use of facial recognition could mean an end to protest as we know it. “I don’t see [almost] any protest anywhere,” Shivangi Narayan, a sociologist in India who studies digital policing, told Rest of World. “Even a person like me who’s working on government surveillance and policing — I’m wary of who I’m talking to.”

Now, if she knows there will be CCTV surveillance at a particular location, Narayan avoids the area, or covers her face.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Polling data suggests that many people support law enforcement’s use of facial recognition technology. This article examines how quickly authorities use facial recognition for preventative detention or to disrupt protest movements. This story opens with a person detained by Russian police while entering the transit system to ensure she does not go to a protest. We also learn how governments are targeting minorities and trying to use emotion detection to determine whether a protest could turn violent. I suspect the bar on that determination will be quite low to allow the police to act quickly. Our political leaders should be doing more now to regulate facial recognition technology before it leads to law enforcement harassment here. Unfortunately, with a few state exceptions, governments in the United States have demonstrated an inability to address technology’s negative impacts on our society in a timely fashion.

#7

The Government Isn’t Ready for the Violence Trump Might Unleash (Juliette Kayyem, The Atlantic)

Trump could well prevail, polls suggest, but the former president is already making plans to undermine the result should he lose. In 2021, his refusal to admit defeat led to a bloody riot at the Capitol. As a candidate for reelection, Biden has every reason to warn voters about his Republican opponent’s dangerous assault on democratic norms. But as the president of the United States, Biden should also be pushing executive-branch agencies to protect the casting and counting of votes against violent interference and to ward off attempts to interfere with the certification of November’s outcome. He is obliged, in other words, to make sure that, regardless of whether he or Trump wins, the victor will be able to take office peacefully.

The January 6th Committee is best remembered for its damning account of what happened that day, and of the forces that led up to those events. But the committee’s report points to some of the preparations that urgently need to be made. The panel highlighted gaps among federal agencies in their protocols for sharing intelligence about extremism and other domestic threats to our democracy.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

One of my pet peeves is our federal government’s repeated failure to enact fixes to critical problems uncovered after catastrophic events. A few of you know that I can talk for hours about our national inability to implement the Continuity of Government Commission’s recommendations after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. To this day, the United States would not be able to convene the House of Representatives for up to four months if there were a mass casualty event involving its members. (While it is possible to appoint replacement Senators, the Constitution currently only permits special elections to fill House vacancies.) There have been TWO (!) commission reports making recommendations to ensure the Continuity of Congress since September 11, 2001. (Here’s the most recent report, updated to address issues that arose during the pandemic and the 2020 election.) Anyway, let’s return to the subject at hand: since Donald Trump broke the tradition of peaceful transfers of power in 2021, we can no longer assume that these moments will pass without incident. Complacency is no longer an option. So, I would like to see the Biden Administration take public action to implement the recommendations to protect the electoral vote count and inauguration in 2025. The clock is ticking—and the danger is rising. Perhaps a sense of urgency is in order here?

#8

Drone Swarms Are About to Change the Balance of Military Power (Elliot Ackerman and James Stavridis, Wall Street Journal)

The Shahed-model drone that killed three U.S. service members at a remote base in Jordan on Jan. 28 cost around $20,000. It was part of a family of drones built by Shahed Aviation Industries Research Center, an Iranian company run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. A thousand miles away and three days later, on the night of Jan. 31 into the morning of Feb. 1, unmanned maritime drones deployed by Ukraine’s secretive Unit 13 sunk the $70 million Russian warship Ivanovets in the Black Sea. And for the past several months, Houthi proxies have shut down billions of dollars of trade through the Gulf of Aden through similarly inexpensive drone attacks on maritime shipping. Drones have become suddenly ubiquitous on the battlefield—but we are only at the dawn of this new age in warfare.

This would not be the first time that a low-cost technology and a new conception of warfare combined to supplant high-cost technologies based on old ways. History is littered with similar stories.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I recently finished reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2020 book, The Ministry for the Future. The novel takes place in the near future, as the world finally addresses the climate emergency after a series of mass casualty events. One of the book’s plot points examines how the innovative use of drones could put an end to carbon-intensive industries after governments prove too slow to address the challenge. As one example, the novel imagines how an organization could use swarms of drones to force numerous commercial and private airplanes to crash. After this Crash Day, people aren’t willing to purchase tickets to fly, and carbon-free transportation—like airships—becomes a necessity. Anyway, I think we are going to see drones used in remarkable and not-so-obvious ways over the next few years. Drone technology could transform warfare, especially if it could be connected to artificial intelligence. I am sure our military-industrial complex will not be thrilled to see some of their expensive items become obsolete as a result. 

#9

The check-in: It could have always been this way (Lindsay Gibbs, Power Plays)

As I wrote last year, the first NCAA women’s title game in 1982, which saw Louisiana Tech defeat Cheyney State, earned a “7.3 rating and 22 Nielsen share at noon on Sunday, March 28,” per Jack Bogaczyk of the Roanoke Times. For comparison, in 1983, CBS averaged a 7.2 rating for the NBA and a 5.2 rating for NCAA regular-season men’s games.

A staggering 11.84 million people tuned in for the 1983 championship game between USC and Louisiana Tech, according to Sports Media Watch. This was the national television debut of Cheryl Miller and the Women of Troy. In 1986, 11.22 million viewers tuned in to watch the final game of Miller’s college career, USC’s loss to Texas in the final. 

Yes, Clark and Angel Reese are magnetic, groundbreaking forces of nature on and off the court, but you cannot have the conversation about transcendent talents and personalities in women’s college basketball without Miller.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I am thrilled to see the increased interest in women’s sports over the past few years. The NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship Game on Sunday afternoon had a higher rating than the Men’s final on Monday night. We have witnessed record television ratings, paid attendances, and professional franchise values for women’s basketball, soccer, ice hockey, volleyball, and other sports. It is about time—but it didn’t have to take this long. I was glad to see Gibbs remind people that this is not the first time women’s sports generated higher ratings than men’s contests. But, as Gibbs explains, media executives and advertisers didn’t take advantage of the moment. I hope we don’t see the same mistake this time around.

Quick Pitches

• How to spot a manipulated image (Richard Gray, BBC)
  We all need to learn ways to identify misinformation.
• The urban legend that won’t die on this deadly Bay Area highway (Susana Guerrero, Madilynne Medina, SFGate)
  As someone who has traveled Niles Canyon Road, I can see how the ”ghost girl” urban legend could persist. Anyway, drive it with caution.
• People Are Confused Why “Jeff” Is On A List Of Nuclear Superpowers (James Felton, IFL Science)
  When a data mishap and an acronym may make you wonder why a friend has as many nuclear weapons as North Korea.
• A faster spinning Earth may cause timekeepers to subtract a second from world clocks (Seth Borenstein, Associated Press)At least this change shouldn’t be as annoying as springing forward each year.
• White House directs NASA to create time standard for the moon (Joey Roulette and Will Dunham, Reuters)Clocks move at a different rate on the moon because of the different gravitational forces. So this is something we do need to work out before we go there regularly.
• ‘Wi-Fi’ Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means (Matt Novak, Gizmodo)
  When marketing wins in unexpected ways.

Post-Game Comments

Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:

“To be clear, concluding in brief: there is enough for all. So there should be no more people living in poverty. And there should be no more billionaires. Enough should be a human right, a floor below which no one can fall; also a ceiling above which no one can rise. Enough is as good as a feast—or better. Arranging this situation is left as an exercise for the reader.”—Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry for the Future

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. 

Today’s Lineup

Former Vice President Mike Pence’s refusal to endorse Donald Trump should be a bigger story, Jake Tapper writes about C.J. Rice’s exoneration, predicting a bloodbath in context, Project 2025’s connection to Christian Nationalism, staying angry about attacks on reproductive rights, remembering what America was like four years ago, journalist Evan Gershkovich’s year in a Russian prison, and when AI chooses nuclear war.

#1

Mike Pence Should Be the Biggest Story of the 2024 Campaign (Jonathan V. Last, The Bulwark)

No American vice president has ever said that president he served under is unfit to serve. It is the most devastating possible observation from the most credible source in existence. Pence’s refusal to endorse Trump should be part of the context of every single story about this campaign.

Especially because it’s not just Pence.

Trump’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff called him “a wannabe dictator.”

Trump’s secretary of defense called him “a threat to democracy.”

Trump’s national security advisor called him “a danger to the United States.”

Trump’s chief of staff observed that he is “a person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution and the rule of law.”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I fear we are moving past Former Vice President Mike Pence’s refusal to endorse Donald Trump far too quickly. 

It is a huge deal. And we should treat it like one—especially in a political environment where far too many Republican politicians (perhaps out of fear) have bent their knee to Trump despite their previous criticisms of the former president. 

And, as Jonathan Last explains, Pence isn’t the only person who worked in Trump’s Administration who has refused to support him this time. 

I’m not sure why reporters fail to see why this fact is vital context for American voters to understand as they prepare to vote. Can you imagine the uproar if a Democratic Vice President failed to endorse the president with whom they served? 

This situation is unprecedented. Democrats need to repeat this fact again and again and again.  

I don’t agree with Mike Pence on policy, and I am glad he is no longer in elected office. But on January 6, 2021, he served our democracy well—and now he has done so again. That means a bunch in these treacherous times.

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#2

Finally, Justice (Jake Tapper, The Atlantic) 

This morning, on the eighth floor, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office announced that it no longer considers [C.J.] Rice a viable suspect in the shooting for which he had been found guilty. His conviction had already been overturned by a federal court in November, on the grounds that his attorney had been constitutionally deficient. In today’s decision, the D.A.’s office formally dismissed the charges against him. The D.A.’s decision fully exonerates Rice. He is now a free man. He had been imprisoned for more than 12 years.

Rice was the subject of my November 2022 cover story for The Atlantic, “Good Luck, Mr. Rice,” which investigated his trial and the shortcomings of Sandjai Weaver, his court-appointed attorney. The case against Rice was always weak. No physical evidence tied Rice to the shooting for which he was arrested, and the single victim who identified him had told police three times that she didn’t know who had shot her before eventually changing her story. Yet Weaver failed to gather exculpatory evidence and repeatedly missed opportunities to challenge the state’s case against her client. A source with the D.A.’s office told me that Rice’s conviction likely resulted from his representation being so bad.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I was surprised when I saw that CNN anchor Jake Tapper had written a cover story in The Atlantic in November 2022 about the wrongful conviction of C.J Rice 12 years ago. 

But it turns out that Tapper had a close connection to someone with crucial information about the case: a Philadelphia pediatrician who happens to be his father. 

Tapper’s two articles detail how the criminal justice system failed Rice. They demonstrate how getting a conviction is prioritized over getting to the truth. The mistakes are shocking. Do the Sixth Amendment’s protections for criminal defendants matter?

It should not take a CNN anchor having a personal connection to a case to ensure innocent people can have their arguments heard. The goal of our criminal justice system should be to get to the truth—not to preserve convictions on a scorecard. 

As Tapper explains, Rice is now free and is looking toward the future. I wish him all possible success. 

#3

The Bloodbath Candidate (Timothy Snyder, Thinking About)

At a rally in Vandalia, Ohio last Saturday, Trump promised a “bloodbath for the country” if he’s not elected president. 

Then followed a predictable bout of (self-)deception, the claim that Trump’s bloodbath was out of context. Well, everything does have contexts, including bloodbaths. So let’s put Trump’s in context.

…

The people who say that the car context rescues Trump ignore the meaningful contexts: history, Trump, the opening of the rally, what he said in the speech generally. Focusing on the cars has the effect of casting away the fascist overture and rest of the speech, and all of the other contexts. Those who speciously insist that Trump had in mind an automotive bloodbath never mention that he had just celebrated criminals, repeated the big lie, dehumanized people, and followed fascist patterns.

In this sense Trump’s defenders are the one who are taking Trump’s remarks out of context. And, in their more strident forms, the defenses of Trump are not innocent. The apologists suggest that Trump is being unfairly attacked — that he is, once again, as always, the real victim. That sort of claim reinforces the martyrdom narrative. Those who make it are partaking in the spirit of the rally.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

You heard what you heard, and we don’t need to complicate the situation. There is no context in which Trump’s bloodbath comments are benign. 

Timothy Snyder, the author of On Tyranny, clearly explains why Trump can’t hide his fascism behind an automobile tariff policy dispute. The celebration of the January 6 insurrection, the repeating of the big lie, and his dehumanization of immigrants as “not people” provide all the context we need.

As Salon’s Amanda Marcotte writes, “He explicitly said, “It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.” (Emphasis mine.) This is not a double entendre, but a single entendre.”

We must not normalize this. He said what he said. It is not just dangerous rhetoric. It’s an authoritarian promise. These are the stakes. 

#4

Shocking Online Manifesto Reveals Project 2025’s Link to a Coordinated ‘Christian Nationalism Project’ (Jennifer Cohn, Bucks County Beacon)

Approximately 100 right-wing organizations have signed onto Project 2025, an expansive plan for controlling (and in some cases dismantling) federal agencies in the event that Trump or another Republican wins the presidential election this year. Many of these organizations are led by Christian fundamentalist political operatives, suggesting that they may use the plan to force all Americans to submit to their extreme religious beliefs. 

The Bucks County Beacon has just found explosive new evidence that seems to validate this concern.

The Beacon’s discovery follows an earlier report by Politico journalist Heidi Przybyla, which tied the Center for Renewing America (CFRA), an official Project 2025 partner, to an internal memo expressly listing “Christian Nationalism” as a priority for a second Trump term. 

Przybyla further reported that CFRA founder Russ Vought, a Project 2025 co-author, had stated last year on X (formerly Twitter) that he’s “proud” to work with William Wolfe, a former Trump official and Visiting Fellow with CFRA, “on scoping out a sound Christian Nationalism.” In a social media post, Wolfe had called for an end to no-fault divorce and abortion and for reduced access to contraception. (Link to archived tweet.) Wolfe, who has attended Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has also called himself a “Christian Nationalist.”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I am glad so many extremists forget to sanitize their social media profiles until after investigators can get screenshots. Cohn shares an online manifesto edited by Wolfe that once again makes clear what these people are planning should Donald Trump win in November. As the manifesto states: “Christian Nationalism is primarily concerned with the righteous rule of civil authorities, not spiritual matters pertaining to salvation. The desire for a Christian nation is not a distraction from the Gospel but rather an effort to faithfully apply all of Scripture to all of life, including the public square. As such, Christian Nationalism is not just for civil authorities, just as submitting to Christ’s Lordship is not just for civil authorities but for all people.” I am thankful that they are not hiding their true intentions. This document does not describe the kind of nation I want to leave for my children.  

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

#5

Stay Mad (Jessica Valenti, Abortion, Every Day)

The war against women is brazen and cruel, but it’s the terror of the ordinary we need to watch out for.

Anti-abortion lawmakers and activists are counting on us being too overwhelmed to stop them from normalizing this madness. They know that being sad, angry and exhausted all the time is difficult—if not impossible—to keep up. They figure if they can keep hitting us with horror after horror, the next time we read a story of a woman going septic we’ll respond with a resigned head-shake rather than energized outrage. 

Talking to women this week, from teenagers to octogenarians, I can see we’re on the precipice. This moment is so hard, for all of us. The truth, though, is that it will need to stay that way.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Valenti makes a vital point in this column. The forced-birth activists and politicians are hoping we get exhausted from all the horrific stories. We must not resign ourselves to this hellscape. We need to stay outraged by what the Supreme Court did when six people who claimed to care about precedent overturned Roe v. Wade. We need to stay outraged by the forced-birth Republican legislators who have enacted laws that place pregnant people in such jeopardy. This situation is not normal. We must never accept it. 

#6

Here’s What Donald Trump’s America Was Actually Like Four Years Ago (Brian Stelter, Vanity Fair)

It’s a catchy line, one Elise Stefanik also dusted off earlier this month. But does Trump really want Americans to remember this time four years ago, when he botched the federal response to the COVID pandemic and put lives at risk? Just scan the headlines from early March 2020. Politico wrote how “Trump’s mismanagement helped fuel coronavirus crisis.” The Washington Post found that Trump’s administration “frittered away” “precious weeks” while the virus was spreading. The New York Times reported that Trump dealt with the crisis “by repeating a string of falsehoods.”

Much of this happened in public view. Remember when Trump predicted COVID would just “disappear”? Remember when he showed up to the CDC headquarters wearing a campaign hat? Remember when he claimed that Google was building a website to help people find COVID tests, and Google didn’t know what he was talking about?

Actually, I didn’t. I had forgotten almost everything I’m about to recount in this story. I have a feeling many others have forgotten too. Maybe it’s a human tendency to block out past trauma, or perhaps it’s more that so much has happened since. In today’s supercharged news cycle, an event can feel dated four days later, never mind four years later. Plus, many people are “tuning out” of politics in 2024, clearly rejecting the rematch of a current and former president.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

While reading Stelter’s article, I was surprised by how many details I had forgotten about what was happening in our country four years ago. There was a lot going on, of course, as we tried to figure out how to navigate the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. So, let’s take Republicans up on their demand that we compare today to what happened four years ago. Let’s remember what could happen if we face another crisis like it with Donald Trump in the White House. I hope many people reading this find it motivating.

#7

A year ago Russia jailed Evan Gershkovich for doing journalism. He’s still there (Margaret Sullivan, The Guardian)

And, tragically, one – Evan Gershkovich, now 32 – is imprisoned in Russia, absurdly charged by the Putin regime with espionage when he was merely doing his job of reporting for the Wall Street Journal’s Moscow bureau. Evan, who was arrested one year ago this month, spends his time in a cell in Lefortovo prison with little human contact and virtually no mobility.

He is the first American journalist to be accused of espionage since the cold war, though Evan certainly is no spy. The Biden administration has called the charges ridiculous.

Journalism is not a crime.

To my knowledge, there’s no immediate prospect for his release. It’s well understood that he is a pawn for Putin, who has suggested that he would swap his freedom for that of a Russian assassin, Vadim Krasikov, jailed in Germany.

Meanwhile, Evan’s life is ticking by.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

While I didn’t remember it until I saw the initial reactions to Evan Gershkovich’s detention in Russia, the first time I noticed him was in 2010 in a Bowdoin College sports information men’s soccer game recap. 

(As a former Bowdoin Sports Information Director, I still keep track of the Polar Bears—especially when postseason competition comes around.)

Now, I try to keep track of any piece of news about his detention. I hope for better news. Gershkovich is in prison today because he dared to practice journalism in Putin’s Russia. We must remember what happened to him and what Gershkovich continues to sacrifice in defense of the free flow of information. 

#8

Automakers Are Sharing Consumers’ Driving Behavior With Insurance Companies (Kashmir Hill, The New York Times)

Kenn Dahl says he has always been a careful driver. The owner of a software company near Seattle, he drives a leased Chevrolet Bolt. He’s never been responsible for an accident.

So Mr. Dahl, 65, was surprised in 2022 when the cost of his car insurance jumped by 21 percent. Quotes from other insurance companies were also high. One insurance agent told him his LexisNexis report was a factor.

LexisNexis is a New York-based global data broker with a “Risk Solutions” division that caters to the auto insurance industry and has traditionally kept tabs on car accidents and tickets. Upon Mr. Dahl’s request, LexisNexis sent him a 258-page “consumer disclosure report,” which it must provide per the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

What it contained stunned him: more than 130 pages detailing each time he or his wife had driven the Bolt over the previous six months. It included the dates of 640 trips, their start and end times, the distance driven and an accounting of any speeding, hard braking or sharp accelerations. The only thing it didn’t have is where they had driven the car.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Our government has failed us by not prohibiting the sharing of this kind of data without consumers opting into the practice. Burying the permission in a several hundred-page privacy policy should not be enough. I have no problem with someone making an informed decision to share their driving information. But the word working hard in that previous sentence is “informed.” This kind of sneaky data sharing happens frequently, and consumers rarely benefit from the practice. You may want to check and see what your car is sharing about you. General Motors just announced that they are going to stop sharing this data. This is an example of journalism mattering.

#9

AI chatbots tend to choose violence and nuclear strikes in wargames (Jeremy Hsu, New Scientist)

In multiple replays of a wargame simulation, OpenAI’s most powerful artificial intelligence chose to launch nuclear attacks. Its explanations for its aggressive approach included “We have it! Let’s use it” and “I just want to have peace in the world.”

These results come at a time when the US military has been testing such chatbots based on a type of AI called a large language model (LLM) to assist with military planning during simulated conflicts, enlisting the expertise of companies such as Palantir and Scale AI. Palantir declined to comment and Scale AI did not respond to requests for comment. Even OpenAI, which once blocked military uses of its AI models, has begun working with the US Department of Defense.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Yeah, I’m concerned—and not just because I watched WarGames and the first three Terminator movies. As one of the experts in the article explains, “Reuel says that unpredictable behaviour and bizarre explanations from the GPT-4 base model are especially concerning because research has shown how easily AI safety guardrails can be bypassed or removed.” Oh yeah, that is one of humanity’s tendencies. In a tense situation, people tend to believe what their screens tell them if they haven’t been trained to be skeptical. We barely avoided a nuclear exchange in September 1983 because a trained human picked up on anomalies in the data he saw (thank you again, Stanislav Petrov). I am not optimistic we can count on an AI algorithm to be so wise.

Quick Pitches

• Great Big List of Beautiful and Useless Words, Vol. 2 (Merriam-Webster)
  I think roorback is one of the words in this list we should start using again.
• NWSL Season Starts Off with a BANG (The Women’s Game, Men in Blazers)
  Former USWNT star Sam Mewis is doing incredible work as the editor-in-chief of this new women’s soccer-focused vertical. Subscribe the newsletter and podcast today!
• Australian farm grows world’s biggest blueberry (Tiffanie Turnbull, BBC News, Sydney)
  The blueberry is one of my favorite foods. I’m not sure I need one the size of a ping-pong ball, though.
• The Best Small-Talk Topic (Gilad Edelman, The Atlantic)
  Talking about the weather is a wonderful idea.
• The myth of your phone’s airplane mode (Maxwell Zeff, Gizmodo)
  It’s been about 20 years since our electronics could impact airplane navigation. But the thing that hasn’t changed is rude people speaking loudly in confined spaces.
• What a Major Solar Storm Could Do to Our Planet (Kathryn Schulz, The New Yorker)
  Our favorite star could take out our communications systems and electrical grid if we don’t do more to harden them.

Post-Game Comments

Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:

“That Trump will be tried for his coup attempt is not a violation of his rights. It is a fulfillment of his rights. It is the grace of the American republic. In other systems, when your coup attempt fails, what follows is not a trial.”—Timothy Snyder on Twitter

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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Today’s Lineup

Thank you to Voyager 1 for decades of amazing science, the opening section of President Biden’s State of the Union message was important, we should listen when MAGA tells us they seek the end of our democracy, another media failure to fact-check a prominent lie, California law enforcement agencies are defying the law about sharing data, a society of right-wing Christian men is preparing for a national divorce, police shouldn’t be permitted to lie during interrogations, and how many times you have to fold a piece of paper to reach the moon.

#1

Voyager 1, First Craft in Interstellar Space, May Have Gone Dark (Orlando Mayorquin, The New York Times)

Voyager 1 discovered active volcanoes, moons and planetary rings, proving along the way that Earth and all of humanity could be squished into a single pixel in a photograph, a “pale blue dot,” as the astronomer Carl Sagan called it. It stretched a four-year mission into the present day, embarking on the deepest journey ever into space.

Now, it may have bid its final farewell to that faraway dot.

Voyager 1, the farthest man-made object in space, hasn’t sent coherent data to Earth since November. NASA has been trying to diagnose what the Voyager mission’s project manager, Suzanne Dodd, called the “most serious issue” the robotic probe has faced since she took the job in 2010.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

This one hurts a bit. Voyager 1 is a remarkable spacecraft. It launched on September 5, 1977—and has exceeded its expected lifespan by decades. It is the first human-made craft to exit the heliosphere and enter interstellar space. For its many accomplishments, the photo Voyager 1 took on February 14, 1990, most captures my imagination. At Carl Sagan’s urging, NASA engineers sent the commands to turn Voyager—then out beyond Neptune, nearly 3.7 billion miles away—towards Earth one final time to take the final photos it would capture before turning off its cameras to conserve power. One of the photos it took is the image leading this newsletter: the Pale Blue Dot. The Earth in the photo is a dot less than a pixel in size about halfway down the orange stripe on the right. As Sagan wrote about the image, “Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us.” Here’s a video of Sagan putting this photo into a cosmic-scale perspective. Thank you, Voyager 1.

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

#2

The First Part Of Joe Biden’s Speech Was SO Important (Brian Beutler, Off Message)

But with Trump unvanquished, and hook-or-crook desperate to return to office, it’s essential that the public not forget his disastrous presidency or the danger he poses to freedom in the U.S. and around the world. And to the extent voters have forgotten they need to be reminded. 

That’s why the first 15 minutes of Biden’s third State of the Union address were so, so important—both as an answer to the discourse of the moment, and for setting the tone of the campaign to come.

…

At the top of the speech, when viewership is highest and reporters form first impressions, he delivered a damning recitation of Trump’s record, the Republican agenda, their joint assault on reproductive rights, and their ongoing effort to sabotage the U.S. and the world order.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

President Biden’s State of the Union address successfully debunked the notion that he is too old to take on the job. And—significantly—he went on offense against MAGA and opponents of our democracy. Biden and the Democrats need to remind voters about what Donald Trump did in his first term—and explain how the transition plans for a Trump second term grow from those authoritarian tendencies. Voters have a stark choice in this election. Will our democracy continue imperfectly, or will Trump become not our 47th president but our first dictator? Will we leave people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, and women to have their rights systemically destroyed on the white Christian nationalist altar? Trump and his MAGA supporters are telling us clearly what they intend. I am glad to see Biden building on his recent speeches about protecting democracy as he ramps up the 2024 campaign.

#3

“Welcome to the End of Democracy.” (Melissa Ryan, Cntl, Alt, Right, Delete)

“Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely.” 

That’s how Jack Posobiec opened his remarks at CPAC. Posobiec continued, “We didn’t get all the way there on January 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it and replace it with this right here,” he said, gesturing to the crowd and holding up his fist.” Posobiec was speaking on a panel with Steve Bannon, whose response to the comment was “Amen.”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

As I wrote, Trump supporters are not being subtle. They are screaming the ideas that used to be dog-whistled. This dynamic is a blessing. It makes it easier for those who wish to defend our democracy to clarify what is at stake. These statements are not hyperbole. They are promises.

#4

It Matters That Mainstream Media Missed Katie Britt’s Lie (Parker Malloy, The Present Age)

[Senator Katie Britt] delivered a prepared address that millions of people saw, built around a massive lie. That’s more than just “misleading.” It’s the type of lie that politicians should be shamed out of office for making and should be treated like a scandal. Instead, it’s just business as usual at the Times.

If they missed this, what else are they missing? Getting beaten to the punch by someone without any of mainstream media’s resources demonstrates a lack of focus on those organizations’ parts and is a failure of basic accountability. By allowing stories to run without calling out the lie, these news organizations are helping Britt misinform the public. She exploited a victim’s story to shape a political narrative around a hot-button issue, and if not for [journalist Jonathan] Katz, she may have gotten away with it.

We shouldn’t have to rely on independent journalists with TikTok accounts and newsletters to catch these lies. That’s the point.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Jonathan Katz is a former Associated Press bureau chief who has broken significant stories—including the UN’s attempted cover-up of its peacekeepers’ role in Haiti’s post-earthquake cholera epidemic in 2010. He has credentials. But, as Katz explains in this TikTok, he didn’t have to work terribly hard to uncover the lie at the heart of Senator Britt’s State of the Union response. Where was the New York Times? The Washington Post? The Associated Press? Why are leading media outlets just accepting what politicians are telling them—especially those who have demonstrated a propensity to lie? This situation is especially troubling as we now begin a political campaign season that will feature disinformation efforts, including the use of artificial intelligence. What is it going to take for information to be checked and double-checked rather than accepted as fact? We need reporters to do better. 

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

#5

Dozens of Rogue California Police Agencies Still Sharing Driver Locations with Anti-Abortion States (Electronic Frontier Foundation)

California Attorney General Rob Bonta should crack down on police agencies that still violate Californians’ privacy by sharing automated license plate reader information with out-of-state government agencies, putting abortion seekers and providers at particular risk, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the state’s American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) affiliates urged in a letter to Bonta today. 

In October 2023, Bonta issued a legal interpretation and guidance clarifying that a 2016 state law, SB 34, prohibits California’s local and state police from sharing information collected from automated license plate readers (ALPR) with out-of-state or federal agencies. However, despite the Attorney General’s definitive stance, dozens of law enforcement agencies have signaled their intent to continue defying the law. 

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

There are at least 35 California police agencies that have told civil liberties organizations that they intend to defy the law and share this license plate information. Law enforcement agencies in forced-birth states could use this data to prosecute pregnant people who come to California for reproductive health care services. Jessica Valenti at Abortion, Every Day, also recently explained how anti-abortion activists can weaponize personal data (for example, through the purchase of location information from data brokers to target people who visit Planned Parenthood clinics). California elected officials—from the state and local levels—need to step in now and demand compliance with the law and stop law enforcement agencies from sharing of this information. 

#6

Inside A Secret Society Of Prominent Right-Wing Christian Men Prepping For A ‘National Divorce’ (Josh Kovensky, Talking Points Memo)

A secret, men-only right-wing society with members in influential positions around the country is on a crusade: to recruit a Christian government that will form after the right achieves regime change in the United States, potentially via a “national divorce.” 

It sounds like the stuff of fantasy, but it’s real. The group is called the Society for American Civic Renewal (the acronym is pronounced “sacker” by its members). It is open to new recruits, provided you meet a few criteria: you are male, a “trinitarian” Christian, heterosexual, an “un-hyphenated American,” and can answer questions about Trump, the Republican Party, and Christian Nationalism in the right way. One chapter leader wrote to a prospective member that the group aimed to “secure a future for Christian families.”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

While we had previously heard about the Society for American Civic Renewal in a report from The Guardian, this story provides a significant amount of new information about the group’s mission, membership criteria, and leadership. It is quite a read about how a part of the Christian Nationalist community that is organizing. And, as Kovensky adds, “Who is excluded, in some sense, reveals more about SACR than who is allowed in. The group bans anyone who is not Christian: Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and others. But it goes further than that and bars “non-trinitarian” Christians; Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, Christian Scientists, and others cannot be SACR members.” That is not the kind of country in which I wish to live. These are the stakes. 

#7

Five Facts About Police Deception and Youth You Should Know (Nigel Quiroz, The Innocence Project) 

When people are brought in for questioning by police, they are expected to tell the truth. Most people would assume that goes both ways — that the police must also be truthful during interrogations, but the reality is that the police can lie to you during an interrogation, and it is not uncommon for them to do so.

But why would police lie? During an interrogation, officers may lie about evidence they have to pressure you into confessing to a crime they believe you have committed — even if you are innocent.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

In a country where one is supposedly innocent until proven guilty, it is outrageous that law enforcement can lie during interrogations. Police can falsely tell you that someone else has confessed. Police can falsely tell you that an admission will mean you avoid prison. Police can falsely claim that the investigation clearly shows your guilt even though that investigation is far from complete. As the Innocence Project explains, false confessions are a leading cause of wrongful convictions in the United States—contributing to 29 percent of wrongful convictions. This dynamic is also one of the reasons why attorneys urge their innocent clients not to cooperate with the police during an investigation (a situation I had to experience). This problem is even worse for young people, given their incomplete brain development. California became one of the first few states to ban law enforcement from using deception, false threats, physical harm, and psychologically manipulative tactics against minors when Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 2644 into law in 2022. That was a vital step forward. However, it is not okay for law enforcement to use those tactics against anyone—especially since we know how often they lead to false convictions of innocent people. 

#8

The Biden Deepfake Robocall Is Just the Start of Our AI Election Hell (Tony Ho Tran, The Daily Beast)

“Voters all over New Hampshire seemingly received phone calls from President Joe Biden in the lead-up to the state’s primary on Tuesday. The call—which came from the phone number of a former New Hampshire Democratic Party chair—seemed to urge people not to vote in the upcoming primary and “save their vote” for November’s general election.

“What a bunch of malarkey,” Biden’s voice stated on the call, echoing one of the president’s oft-used chestnuts. It added, “Voting this Tuesday only enables the Republicans in their question to elect Donald Trump Again. Your vote makes a difference in November, not this Tuesday.”

Of course, the phone call and its message never came from Biden, but rather a deepfake powered by artificial intelligence to mimic the president’s voice.”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Using artificial intelligence to facilitate election interference and disinformation will be a constant challenge in 2024. I fear we are not prepared to deal with its ramifications. As Ctrl Alt Right Delete’s Melissa Ryan wrote in reaction to what happened in New Hampshire, “With more than 50 countries holding elections, 2024 is shaping up to be a global shitstorm of election-related disinformation, threats, and online toxicity.” Ryan also notes that with recent newsroom layoffs, fewer reporters are available to report on election disinformation efforts even as the need grows. That’s not great. I hope candidates understand just how much they must focus on exposing and debunking disinformation attempts. Campaigns must be quick and forceful in their efforts to provide accurate information. We have to work diligently to defend the truth. 

#9

How media amnesia becomes GOP amnesty (Mark Jacob, Stop the Presses)

“After the Jan. 6 insurrection but before Donald Trump left office, Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina sent a text to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows:

“Our LAST HOPE is invoking Marshall Law!! PLEASE URGE TO PRESIDENT TO DO SO!!”

Norman wanted Trump to call out the military to prevent the peaceful transfer of power to the duly elected Joe Biden. Even after lives were lost because of the assault on the Capitol, Norman kept pushing for a coup. (And yes, Norman is a sloppy texter who didn’t know how to spell “martial law.”)

This traitorous text is something we ought to remember about Norman. But in the New York Times’ 34 most recent mentions of Norman over more than a year, the Times has referred to the text zero times. Zero. The Times has depicted Norman as just another conservative lawmaker addressing the issues of the day.

This is media amnesia, and it’s helping would-be fascists get away with their treachery as they plot to commit more.”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Mark Jacob is one of several media analysts—including Margaret Sullivan, Jay Rosen, James Fallows, and Dan Froomkin, among others—who have been begging their colleagues to be aware of this dynamic. Jacob provides several other examples demonstrating how damaging these omissions continue to be. I’ve believed for some time that the first question to any elected official should be, “who won the 2020 presidential election.” If the answer is not Joe Biden, the interview should end—because if an elected official will lie in response to this question, how can we trust their answers to any other question? It is not the public’s job to remember these nuances. We need reporters to provide the context so voters can make informed decisions.

Quick Pitches

• Stadiums and arenas are set to collect $18B in property tax breaks over their lifetimes (Neil deMause, Field of Schemes)
  It would be great if politicians would stop giving billionaires lots of money to build something they would do regardless.
• The 1944 CIA guide to sabotaging meetings (Adam Driver, Authentic Communications)
  Yikes. Yeah, this publication is an excellent guide to sabotaging a group’s ability to make progress in a meeting. What’s sad is how many meetings I attend that feature these techniques—perhaps unintentionally? 
• Timeline of the Far Future (Information is Beautiful)
  Here are some reasons you don’t need to stress too much about what may be on your to-do list. “How long until the Sun turns into a black dwarf? How long before the Earth is destroyed? Don’t lose too much sleep over these. Why? Because photosynthesis will not be possible in 800 million years, ending all life. If we’re not annihilated by a colossal asteroid first.”
• American Führerin: The (Potential) Tyranny of Elise Stefanik, VP (Greg Olear, Prevail)This comparison gave me chills—of the bad kind. “In short, Trump needs a Putin to his Yeltsin. Elise Stefanik is Putin.”
• “I Need to Get Back to My Crew”: Amos and Crowd-Sourced Morality (Noah Berlatsky, Everything Is Horrible)I love this show because of the difficult questions it asks viewers to confront. Amos is a complicated character, but his journey to improve is worthy of more conversation. “The Expanse provides some ethical lessons about learning about ethics.”

The Closer

How many times do you have to fold a piece of paper to reach the Moon?

Okay, you have your guess? I suspect it is fewer times than you think.

Here we go: the answer if 42. Yep. Just 42 times. Ethan Sieel at Big Think does all the math for you. Enjoy!

Post-Game Comments

Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:

“It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”—Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot

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. 

Today’s Lineup

We are ninety seconds from midnight, abortion bans are killing pregnant people, the junk science of hair analysis leads to false convictions, companies steal wages from their workers, we must ask if Republicans denounce political violence, why the world is betting against American democracy, the threats created by disinformation, the $6 trillion difference between the parties, Sam Mewis transitions from soccer icon to editor-in-chief, and the size of the U.S. increased last month.

#1

A moment of historic danger: It is still 90 seconds to midnight (Science and Security Board, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)

The members of the Science and Security Board have been deeply worried about the deteriorating state of the world. That is why we set the Doomsday Clock at two minutes to midnight in 2019 and at 100 seconds to midnight in 2022. Last year, we expressed our heightened concern by moving the Clock to 90 seconds to midnight—the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been—in large part because of Russian threats to use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine.

Today, we once again set the Doomsday Clock at 90 seconds to midnight because humanity continues to face an unprecedented level of danger. Our decision should not be taken as a sign that the international security situation has eased. Instead, leaders and citizens around the world should take this statement as a stark warning and respond urgently, as if today were the most dangerous moment in modern history. Because it may well be. 

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists—an organization founded by Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and other University of Chicago scientists who helped develop the first atomic weapons—has a Science and Security Board that resets the Doomsday Clock each year to call attention to how vulnerable we are to a global catastrophe caused by human-made technologies. The clock has been moved 25 times since its debut in 1947—with the furthest from midnight coming at 17 minutes in 1991 with the end of the Cold War. I think we should be alarmed that the Doomsday Clock is now set closer to midnight than it was at any point during that conflict. We are seeing the world’s most significant nuclear powers (the United States, Russia, and China) possibly entering a three-way nuclear arms race. The impacts of the climate emergency continue to intensify. Artificial intelligence advances create various potential dangers—including its use to create disinformation to impact elections, autonomous military weapons, and biological threats. The current international political situation does not make me optimistic about improvements in 2024. But we should be aware of the stakes of being so close to midnight, especially in countries having elections this year.

 

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

#2

How to Report Post-Dobbs Deaths (Jessica Valenti, Abortion, Every Day)

The New Yorker published a heart-breaking piece about Yeniifer Alvarez-Estrada Glick, a 29 year-old woman who died a few weeks after Roe was overturned. In the headline, the magazine asks, “Did An Abortion Ban Cost a Young Texas Woman Her Life?” 

The answer, without a doubt, is yes. So why is it so hard to say so? 

Anyone who works in the abortion rights world knows that bans have killed multiple people since Roe was overturned. The public hasn’t heard their stories, though, because families understandably don’t want their loved ones’ lives and deaths picked apart by reporters and anti-abortion activists. 

It’s only a matter of time, for example, before Republicans and conservative groups claim that Yeni’s death had nothing to do with Texas’ abortion ban. They’ll point to how the young woman could be inconsistent taking her hypertension medication, or the time she missed an appointment with a maternal fetal medicine specialist. They will find a way to blame her.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Valenti has regularly made this point since the six Supreme Court liars Justices overturned Roe. We must not allow Republicans to shift the blame for these deaths from their policies to the victims or healthcare workers. Forced-birth advocates worked for fifty years to get this result. Republican policies have created what are, in effect, death panels for women. They need to own what they have done—and what they plan to do. And I am relieved that President Biden and Vice President Harris are starting to emphasize what’s at stake during the 2024 election.  

#3

How the Junk Science of Hair Analysis Keeps People Behind Bars (Rene Ebersole, Mother Jones)

In courtrooms across America, “scientific evidence” used to imprison people for heinous crimes has been increasingly discredited. Blood-spatter patterns, arson analysis, bite-mark comparisons, even some fingerprint evidence have all turned out to be unreliable.

A quarter of the 3,439 exonerations tracked by the National Registry of Exonerations involved false or misleading forensic evidence.

But these exonerations are only the tip of the iceberg, some experts say. Many more people remain incarcerated despite questions about the forensic analysis of evidence used against them. Cases are not automatically reopened when a field of forensics is questioned or even discredited. That’s true of hair analysis, which has been under scrutiny for decades: Government studies have found that in hundreds of cases, hair analysts from the Federal Bureau of Investigation exaggerated their findings in reports and court testimony. 

A new report by the exoneration registry found 129 cases in which people were falsely convicted at least partly because of flawed hair analysis and testimony. Fifteen of the defendants were sentenced to die. Exonerees lost almost 2,000 years of their lives in prison and cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. And there may be many more people behind bars who were convicted because of bad hair evidence.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Think about the ramifications of the statistics included in the last quoted paragraph from this story—129 false convictions, with 15 including death sentences. This story focuses on how Gerald Delane Murray is struggling to be exonerated three decades after his conviction despite the case against him crumbling. The National Academy of Sciences has warned there is “no scientific support” for using hair comparisons without DNA. Yet courts continue to make it difficult for people convicted based on this junk science to appeal and seek exonerations. Far too many judges and prosecutors believe that defending a conviction is more important than seeking the truth. We must do more to help people seek exoneration upon discovering new evidence or when there are updates to scientific understanding.

#4

The fleecing of America’s hourly workers (Judd Legum and Tesnim Zekeria)

More than 200,000 workers across the country are owed $163.3 million in back pay, according to a website maintained by the Department of Labor (DOL). This is money companies have paid after they were found liable for wage theft violations — like withholding tips from workers — but has not been claimed. Workers who believe they are owed wages can check the DOL website, Worker Owed Wages. Other forms of wage theft include pressuring workers to work off-the-clock, cutting lunch breaks short, deliberately paying below the minimum wage, and failing to pay overtime.

Currently, the largest amount of unclaimed back wages is in food services. More than 36,000 food service workers have yet to claim wages that they are owed, USA Today reports. DOL data reveals that since 2020, investigators have recovered more than $130 million in back wages in the industry. In November 2023, officials ordered Plaza Azteca, an East Coast restaurant chain, to pay “$11.4 million in back wages and liquidated damages for more than 1,000 employees.” According to the DOL, the restaurant was aware of its “legal obligation to pay workers minimum wage and overtime…and yet, willfully disregarded federal law.”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I’ve previously covered how the retail industry created a media frenzy about crime by lying about the number of thefts in their businesses. But there hasn’t been enough coverage of a crime we know happens every day: the theft of wages from workers. Our governments do not have the inspectors or administrative capacity to provide punishments to companies or timely relief to workers. Few states even make wage theft a criminal offense—it’s often a crime subject to minor civil penalties. Abuses of the arbitration process make it so challenging for workers to recover their stolen wages that few even try. The federal and state governments should do more to change this dynamic and protect workers. The owners, executives, and managers should face serious criminal penalties for stealing from their workers. Stealing is stealing. 

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

#5

Reporters should ask Republicans if they renounce political violence (Dan Froomkin, Press Watch)

President Biden spoke out against violence in his first major campaign speech last week: “I’ll say what Donald Trump won’t. Political violence is never, ever acceptable in the United States political system. Never, never, never. It has no place in a democracy. None,” he said.

But that’s hardly going to persuade people on the right.

“Democrats can rail about political violence all they want, but the only way to tamp it down is for Republican leaders to speak out,” Alex Theodoridis, a political science professor at UMass Amherst, said at a Kettering Foundation event on political violence on Tuesday. “They need to hear from elites on their own side that political violence is not OK.”

The absence of that message, Theodoridis said, is a “permission slip” for those “who might engage in criminal and violent behavior.”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Where do Republicans stand on the use of threats of violence against their political adversaries? Trump refuses to denounce the idea—and has directly warned of bedlam if he does not get his way. This should be a campaign issue. We need to hear whether Republicans condone these threats. We know that the fear of what Trump supporters might do kept Representatives and Senators from voting against Trump during his second impeachment. Local elected officials are resigning from their positions because they cannot handle the stress created by harassment and threats of violence. I am grateful that President Biden was so clear in rejecting violence. Reporters should ask every elected official where they stand—and an interview should end if the politician refuses to denounce it. 

#6

Why the World Is Betting Against American Democracy (Nahal Toosi, Politico)

When I asked the European ambassador to talk to me about America’s deepening partisan divide, I expected a polite brushoff at best. Foreign diplomats are usually loath to discuss domestic U.S. politics.

Instead, the ambassador unloaded for an hour, warning that America’s poisonous politics are hurting its security, its economy, its friends and its standing as a pillar of democracy and global stability.

The U.S. is a “fat buffalo trying to take a nap” as hungry wolves approach, the envoy mused. “I can hear those Champagne bottle corks popping in Moscow — like it’s Christmas every fucking day.”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

The world is looking skeptically at the United States. Can we really blame it? It’s not just that Donald Trump could become president again. Yeah, that’s a problem! But global diplomats have also noticed (among other issues) that the United States cannot keep its commitment to provide aid to Ukraine, has a Republican majority in the House of Representatives more likely to kick out its Speaker than pass a budget, and has a broken confirmation process for ambassadors and other officials. They also expressed concern to Toosi about how moral or national security arguments no longer seem to work with MAGA politicians. How can other countries trust the United States with long-term agreements under these circumstances?

#7

Disinformation poses an unprecedented threat in 2024 — and the U.S. is less ready than ever (Brandy Zadrozny, NBC News)

Disinformation poses an unprecedented threat to democracy in the United States in 2024, according to researchers, technologists and political scientists. 

As the presidential election approaches, experts warn that a convergence of events at home and abroad, on traditional and social media — and amid an environment of rising authoritarianism, deep distrust, and political and social unrest — makes the dangers from propaganda, falsehoods and conspiracy theories more dire than ever.

The U.S. presidential election comes during a historic year, with billions of people voting in other elections in more than 50 countries, including in Europe, India, Mexico and South Africa. And it comes at a time of ideal circumstances for disinformation and the people who spread it. 

An increasing number of voters have proven susceptible to disinformation from former President Donald Trump and his allies; artificial intelligence technology is ubiquitous; social media companies have slashed efforts to rein in misinformation on their platforms; and attacks on the work and reputation of academics tracking disinformation have chilled research.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Gulp. And as Zadrozny explains, there are no easy solutions to the problem. Local news outlets are laying off staff or closing. Social media companies like X/Twitter, Meta/Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok are cutting back from enforcing their trust and safety policies. Technology is making disinformation easier to create (one of the reasons, as Zadronzny writes, that “a World Economic Forum survey named misinformation and disinformation from AI as the top global risk over the next two years — ahead of climate change and war.” But these threats also exist at the local level—as we have seen with attacks against election administrators and school boards. I believe we will all need to make an effort to call out disinformation as soon as we see it. We don’t have to convince every voter, but we must do what we can to keep persuadable friends, family, and colleagues from falling for what is coming. 

#8

$6 Trillion in Taxes Are at Stake in This Year’s Elections (Richard Rubin, Wall Street Journal)

There isn’t a dime’s worth of a difference between the political parties. The chasm is more like $6 trillion. 

The winners of November’s presidential and congressional elections will quickly face decisions on extending tax cuts scheduled to expire after 2025. President Biden and Republicans support starkly different tax plans.

Republicans generally want to extend all expiring tax cuts from the 2017 law former President Donald Trump signed. The price tag: $4 trillion over a decade.

Biden proposed extending Trump’s tax cuts for households making under $400,000 annually but said the rest should expire. Beyond that, he would raise taxes further on top earners and corporations. That plan, including tax increases the president hasn’t fully detailed, would generate more than $2 trillion beyond current forecasts.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Anyone who claims to be a fiscal conservative or to give a damn about the rising national debt needs to be clear that they oppose extending the Trump tax cuts. I’d love it if we could also go back to the George W. Bush tax cuts that eliminated trillions of projected surpluses. I also wish Biden set a lower floor than $400,000 a year for reversing the tax cuts. But, sigh, I get the political considerations at play in this election year. Let’s be clear, though—we have over 40 years of experience showing that tax cuts do not increase revenues (which even Ronald Reagan demonstrated he understood when he signed a tax increase into law just one year after his famous 1981 tax cuts). Fiscal responsibility is incompatible with tax cuts when the economy is growing.

#9

She Was the World’s Best Player. Now She Won’t Play Soccer Again. (Rachel Bachman, Wall Street Journal)

It was the kind of contact that happens in every soccer game. Playing in a friendly, U.S. midfielder Sam Mewis stretched her right leg toward the ball, an opponent slid to tackle her, and their knees collided. As the months stretched on from that Nov. 12, 2017, game against Canada, however, the damage Mewis’s knee suffered that day eventually would end one of the most quietly spectacular careers in American soccer. 

Mewis, who was named the top player in the world during the Americans’ triumphant 2019 Women’s World Cup, announced her retirement from the game on Friday. She is 31 years old. 

She’s already started her next career: serving as editor in chief of women’s soccer coverage for the Men In Blazers Media Network. There, she’ll build an operation that Roger Bennett, the network’s co-founder, hopes will equal the size of the network’s men’s soccer coverage by the end of 2025.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Sam Mewis’ excellence on the pitch often seemed to fly under the radar. She won everywhere she played: winning a national championship with UCLA, three NWSL titles, an FA Cup with Manchester City, and that 2019 Women’s World Cup title. But recovering from that knee injury became more difficult. I’m not alone in thinking that her inability to play in the 2023 World Cup explains a bunch about the USWNT’s underperformance in that tournament. Like many soccer fans, I was able to experience Mewis in a different environment during that World Cup as I listened to her co-host live streams and podcasts with Men in Blazers’ co-founder Roger Bennett. They were lively and fun conversations, despite starting so early in the morning (given the time zone differences between New Zealand and Australia). So I was looking forward to seeing what she would do when her playing career was over—but I was hoping it wouldn’t be this soon. I am glad Mewis has this opportunity to make this smooth transition at the end of her playing career. And I am excited to see what she will do with Bennett on the Men in Blazers network to increase the coverage of women’s soccer.  

The Closer

The United States grew in size by a million square kilometers last month. “America is larger than it was yesterday,” said Mead Treadwell, a former Alaska lieutenant governor and former chair of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission. “It’s not quite the Louisiana Purchase. It’s not quite the purchase of Alaska, but the new area of land and subsurface resources under the land controlled by the United States is two Californias larger.” (Liz Ruskin, Alaska Public Radio)

Quick Pitches

• The Hidden World of Undersea Cables (Brian Klaas, The Garden of Forking Paths) 
• The Week in Abortion: 1/15-1/19/24 (Jessica Valenti, Abortion, Every Day)
• That Numbness You’re Feeling? There’s a Word for It. (Adam Grant, New York Times)
• The California Town Owned by a New York Investment Firm (Michael Waters, The New Yorker)
• We Really Don’t Have to “Understand” Trump Voters Anymore (Parker Malloy, The Present Age)
• How Charlie Kirk Plans to Discredit Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Act (William Turton, Wired)

Post-Game Comments

Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:

“It’s thrilling to be extremely polite to rude strangers.” (Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living)

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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Today’s Lineup

President Biden campaigns in defense of democracy, the Trump supporters who believe he’s been chosen by God to rule, the toxic mix of Christian Nationalism and authoritarianism, what a dictator on day one could do with executive orders, our health care system fails people with difficult to determine ailments, forced-birth advocates are criminalizing pregnancy outcomes, the failed promise of police body cameras, how freedom feels for a man exonerated after 48 years of false imprisonment, we are different from previous generations of humans, and how those QR codes work.

#1

Remarks by President Biden on the Third Anniversary of the January 6th Attack and Defending the Sacred Cause of American Democracy (President Joe Biden, White House Briefing Room)

In trying to rewrite the facts of January 6th, Trump is trying to steal history the same way he tried to steal the election. But he — we knew the truth because we saw it with our own eyes. It wasn’t like something — a story being told. It was on television repeatedly. We saw it with our own eyes. 

Trump’s mob wasn’t a peaceful protest. It was a violent assault. They were insurrectionists, not patriots. They weren’t there to uphold the Constitution; they were there to destroy the Constitution.

Trump won’t do what an American president must do. He refuses to denounce political violence. 

So, hear me clearly. I’ll say what Donald Trump won’t. Political violence is never, ever acceptable in the United States political system — never, never, never. It has no place in a democracy. None. (Applause.)

You can’t be pro-insurrectionist and pro-American. 

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

This! This! A million times this! Thank you, President Biden, for laying out the stakes of the 2024 election so clearly. This speech was outstanding—and sadly necessary. After a few days of widespread agreement about what happened on January 6, 2021, Republicans have been trying to rewrite that day’s history since former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy made his trip to bend the knee to the former president at his Mar-a-Lago resort. House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik continued these efforts over the weekend on Meet the Press, where she talked about the “January 6 hostages” and refused to promise to accept the results of the 2024 election. So let’s be clear: our democracy barely survived the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and Donald Trump and his supporters are focused on finishing the job this time around. I hope you’ll take the time to watch President Biden’s speech if you missed it. Here’s a recording from C-SPAN.

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#2

Many Trump supporters believe God has chosen him to rule (The Economist)

For years scholars have tried to explain why conservative Christians so avidly support Donald Trump, a man who is more intimately acquainted with the seven deadly sins than the contents of the Bible. Some chalk it up to Mr Trump’s conservative policies. (He appointed the judges who gave back to the states the power to ban abortion.) Others think they share Mr Trump’s nostalgia for America’s past—an era when white Christians dominated the country. Yet another factor may also have played a role: the belief that Mr Trump was anointed by God to lead the country.

In 2016 a self-styled prophet named Lance Wallnau had a vision: the next president would be a latter-day Cyrus, the Persian emperor who, though not Jewish, was chosen by God to free the Jews from captivity. Mr Wallnau proclaimed Mr Trump, then a Republican candidate, the Cyrus of his dreams. The message was, even though he is not evangelical, “Trump is sent by God to deliver conservative Christians back from cultural exile,” says Matthew Taylor of the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies in Maryland.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Insurrectionist Donald Trump’s hold on evangelical Christians has been one of the most important dynamics of our politics since the former president descended from the golden escalator and announced his 2016 campaign for president. The Economist explains how Trump has managed to keep so many conservative Christians as enthusiastic supporters by looking into the teachings of the New Apostolic Reformation. The group’s followers were key leaders of the January 6, 2021, insurrection against the lawful government of the United States. As the article explains, “Many protesters brandished flags emblazoned with the words “An Appeal to Heaven”, the apostles’ rallying cry for a Christian conquest of America.” We should also be aware that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has displayed that flag outside his Congressional office. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

#3

The Only Thing More Dangerous Than Authoritarianism (Tim Alberta, The Atlantic)

The crisis at hand is not simply that Christ’s message has been corroded, but that his Church has been radicalized. The state-ordered closings of sanctuaries during COVID-19, the conspiracy-fueled objections to Joe Biden’s victory in 2020, the misinformation around vaccines and educational curricula—these and other culture-war flash points have accelerated notions of imminent Armageddon inside American Christendom. A community that has always felt misunderstood now feels marginalized, ostracized, even persecuted. This feeling is not relegated to the fringes of evangelicalism. In fact, this fear—that Christianity is in the crosshairs of the government, that an evil plot to topple America’s Judeo-Christian heritage hinges on silencing believers and subjugating the Church—now animates the religious right in ways that threaten the very foundations of our democracy.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

It is impossible to understand the authoritarian turn in the Republican party without grappling with the rise of Christian nationalism within the party. Alberta has regularly raised this alarm from the perspective of a believer. He explains how a 50-year effort of “weaponizing the Gospel to win elections” has been accelerated by Trump, the COVID-19 pandemic, and immigration. History warns us about how dangerous the mix of authoritarianism and religious fanaticism can be. Will we listen?

#4

Dictator On Day One: The Executive Orders That Trump Would Issue From The Start (Josh Kovensky, Talking Points Memo)

On his first days in office, Trump is planning on issuing orders which would end birthright citizenship, give himself the authority to fire tens of thousands of federal civil servants, and force federal bureaucrats to obey culture war dictates.

Through executive action, Trump plans to proclaim extreme new interpretations of baseline provisions of the Constitution, dramatically expanding the reach of presidential authority while upturning principles of law and American society, like birthright citizenship, that for decades have been taken for granted. Many of the proposed orders are likely to spark court fights, setting up legal battles over bedrock issues destined for a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court.

Other proposed day-one orders lean into the culture wars with real-world consequences, like one which would bar federal agencies from running programs supporting gender-transition education.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

We are fortunate that Trump and his supporters are being so transparent about their intentions. We know how many people a second Trump administration plans to harm. Despite our frustrations, we must do whatever we can to prevent this outcome. As Reed Galen wrote in response to Democratic campaign staffers writing yet another anonymous protest memo, “There are also no “moral victories” in politics. It’s a binary outcome. A candidate wins or loses. The continuation of democracy, the American experiment, and America itself depends on ensuring Donald Trump never returns to the White House.” I wish the 2024 election was about something else. I wish ten more Republican Senators had voted to convict Trump during his second Impeachment trial and made clear he was ineligible to run again. I wish death treats from MAGA supporters didn’t keep Republican leaders from endorsing Trump this time around. But my wishes don’t change our reality. 

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

#5

My Unraveling: I had my health. I had a job. And then, abruptly, I didn’t. (Tom Scocca, Intelligencer)

Maybe, the cardiologist said, eyeing my scrawny limbs and loose clothes, I should consider checking into a hospital. Just so I could get all my testing coordinated in one place.

It was only a thought, one that dissipated as I sought out second opinions. The medical-mystery column doesn’t usually dwell on how slowly the inquiry goes in our fractured health-care system. How the highly recommended pulmonologist doesn’t return the first phone call and only has an opening five months away, and how the major-medical center does have an appointment but isn’t in network with the major-medical insurer. How the chest X-ray is over by the East River and the breathing booth is in the West 160s and the phlebotomist is by Columbia, and how each one has its own online portal for billing and results.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Tom Scocca writes about how an unknown illness, COVID, and our horrifying employer-based health insurance system combined in a Kafkaesque fashion. We see, once again, how getting someone healthy is not our society’s priority. Having an unknown illness is stressful enough. But how are people supposed to focus on recovering given the financial strains and other stresses created by navigating a health insurance system designed to deny us care?

#6

The Year in Abortion: Criminalization (Jessica Valenti, Abortion, Every Day)

Let’s be clear: Republicans aren’t interested in stopping abortions or saving ‘babies’—they simply want to hurt those who would see women be free. The punishment has always been the point.

And despite assurances that they have no interest in targeting abortion patients, the GOP worked overtime this year to ensure that women who have the temerity to decide their own lives and futures be punished for it.

A Nebraska teenager who self-managed her abortion. An Ohio woman prosecuted for flushing her miscarriage. Story after story this year proved just how much the GOP plans to make examples of the most marginalized among us.

But criminalization in 2023 went far beyond individual punishment—the broader goal is to stop us from helping each other in a moment when help is needed most. There were bills to ban pro-choice websites, local ordinances that made lending someone money or sharing information about abortion illegal—even a law in Idaho that would punish professors with prison time for “promoting” abortion.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

We should be clear about what forced-birth judges and politicians have been doing across the country since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. While their rhetoric often downplays their desire to criminalize pregnancy outcomes, their decisions and legislation tell a straightforward story. Republican politicians continue to propose outrageous laws in the hopes that voters will normalize their ideas. That’s why we need to be quite clear about the realistic ramifications of what forced-birth advocates propose. Jessica Valenti’s Abortion, Every Day newsletter is an essential resource to see how these efforts build upon each other. I hope voters will continue to reject these policies as long as we have the opportunity to do so. 

#7

The Failed Promise of Police Body Cameras (Eric Umansky, The New York Times and ProPublica)

When body-worn cameras were introduced a decade ago, they seemed to hold the promise of a revolution. Once police officers knew they were being filmed, surely they would think twice about engaging in misconduct. And if they crossed the line, they would be held accountable: The public, no longer having to rely on official accounts, would know about wrongdoing. Police and civilian oversight agencies would be able to use footage to punish officers and improve training. In an outlay that would ultimately cost hundreds of millions of dollars, the technology represented the largest new investment in policing in a generation.

Yet without deeper changes, it was a fix bound to fall far short of those hopes. In every city, the police ostensibly report to mayors and other elected officials. But in practice, they have been given wide latitude to run their departments as they wish and to police — and protect — themselves. And so as policymakers rushed to equip the police with cameras, they often failed to grapple with a fundamental question: Who would control the footage? Instead, they defaulted to leaving police departments, including New York’s, with the power to decide what is recorded, who can see it and when. In turn, departments across the country have routinely delayed releasing footage, released only partial or redacted video or refused to release it at all. They have frequently failed to discipline or fire officers when body cameras document abuse and have kept footage from the agencies charged with investigating police misconduct.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I do not believe any institution can oversee its own actions effectively. The police are particularly ineffective at it, repeatedly choosing to protect its members instead of the public. As this investigation examines, police departments frequently withhold body camera footage—even in cases of police violence and misconduct. Politicians have rewarded this bad conduct, and these dynamics have led to civilian injuries, deaths, and wrongful convictions. Law enforcement agencies should no longer be given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to requirements to be more transparent.

#8

Glynn Simmons: Freedom ‘exhilarating’ for man exonerated after 48 years (Madeline Halpert, BBC News)

Mr Simmons was released from prison in July 2023. In December he was declared innocent in the 1974 murder of Carolyn Sue Rogers. His is the longest known wrongful conviction in the US.

His sentence was vacated after a district court found that prosecutors had not turned over all evidence to defence lawyers, including that a witness had identified other suspects.

He was 22 when he and a co-defendant, Don Roberts, were convicted and sentenced to death in 1975, a punishment that was later reduced to life in prison.

Mr Simmons spoke to the BBC this week about his newfound freedom, his current battle with Stage 4 cancer and the hope that carried him through 48 years behind bars.

“Being innocent, it helps you to keep your faith,” he said. “I would be lying if I said I didn’t lose my faith, lots of times. But it’s like a rubber band – you expand and you return.”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Speaking of law enforcement misconduct, I am glad that Glynn Simmons is enjoying his freedom after 48 years of wrongful imprisonment. Yes: 48 years. But his case highlights the need to ensure wrongfully convicted people can access the resources required to appeal their convictions—especially when prosecutor or police misconduct is uncovered or scientific advances expose new possibilities for examining evidence. But some radical conservatives, like Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, have taken resources that were dedicated to helping the wrongfully convicted and transferred them to use on culture war issues. Voters should check that impulse. We also should do more to compensate people who have been wrongfully imprisoned. Oklahoma, for example, has a maximum compensation of $175,000—and it could take years before Simmons sees a dime. A goal of our criminal justice system should be accuracy—not fighting to keep wrongful convictions in place. 

#9

We are different from all other humans in history (Brian Klaas, The Garden of Forking Paths)

I recently visited my family in the US and managed to defeat transatlantic jet lag in one night—a small miracle. But as I patted myself on the back for my unusual sleeping prowess, I considered an astonishing fact: in the history of humanity, just three and a half generations of human beings have been able to experience jet lag.

The phenomenon was only identified in 1931. Before that, it wasn’t possible for a human to travel far enough fast enough to knock their internal circadian rhythms out of sync. Our technological prowess created a novel biological experience that was impossible for roughly 9,497 out of the 9,500 or so generations of Homo sapiens.

We, the modern humans who are alive today, are unique.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

It is remarkable how much has changed so quickly for our species. In 1914, it would take someone up to 40 days to reach some of the remote places on the planet from London. Now? It takes 36 hours. As Klass explains, “The furthest reaches of inaccessible terrain on our planet are now far easier to reach from London than were most places in Western Europe a century ago.” (Klass includes maps demonstrating this transition.) Klass discusses how this change—and other advancements like our global communications networks and how often children are now teaching older generations essential skills—have impacted how humans interact. It was great to take some time away from current news to consider how much we take advantage of today would have been impossible to imagine just three or four generations ago. 

The Closer

The Quick Response code, known as the QR code, has become more ubiquitous since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. But how do they work? Dan Hollick takes a deep dive into what those black dots and white spaces mean and how they work to transmit information. They have come a long way since the Japanese company Denso Wave created them in 1994 to track automobile parts inventory. 

Post-Game Comments

Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:

“If the American Republic falls, democracy as the leading political system in the world falls. If democracy falls, the peace and security of the global order falls. No one will escape the consequences.” (Stephen Marche, The Next Civil War)

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.