The Trump Action Tracker is brilliant already, keeping track of the regime's bad acts. The UI could use a few improvement, and I'd urge several more categories (or emphasis of sub-categories), but I'm blown away now. www.trumpactiontrac...

This is remarkable, if the title is a bit misleading. It's about way, way more than venture capital fascists and their projects.

Not sure who's behind it, but it's worth at least a look. Valuable resource...

www.vcinfodocs.com/

Trump, the Ellison family and their cynical -- but rich -- acolyte, Weiss, are spitting on the graves of Murrow and Cronkite. They're neutering the remaining honorable journalists.

CBS was never perfect. But it once stood for integrity. That's done.

It's CBS "News" now.
www.reuters.com/bus...

As usual, Talking Points Memo understands what's happening earlier than Big Journalism -- in this case the Trump regime's actual goal in its attack on LA.

What's happening is a coup, an extreme right-wing overthrow of the elected state and local governments.

talkingpointsmemo.c...

The flagrant lawbreaking by Trump, Musk et al is not, as Big Journalism says in its standard timid way, merely a push to expand presidential power.

It is testing whether there are ANY limits to presidential power whatsoever. It is testing whether Trump is king.

Why can't journalists get this?

If Substack RSS feeds are a "disaster" that is likely to be deliberate. www.manton.org/2024...

www.theguardian.com... Reminder that the Murdoch family's media outlets are as corrupt as the company that owns them.

The barrage of emails pushing "Cyber Monday" and "Giving Tuesday" pitches is the most convenient way to prune the mail lists that have -- in many cases -- opted me in without my consent, much less request.

One of the best journalists anywhere is the New Yorker's Jane Mayer. Her report on Hegseth shows him to be even more disgusting as a person -- and professionally incompetent -- than I thought possible.

www.newyorker.com/n...

For Trump and the Republican cult, these aren't disqualifying issues. They're sterling qualifications for high public office.

It's about time that all journalists acknowledge the new political context.

I hope this Apple employee wins this lawsuit against the company and brings a halt to a corporate control freak's insistence on knowing everything its employee is doing, at work and at home.

Pervasive bossware should be illegal, period. Congress, of course, is indifferent to privacy rights, and it's dangerous to rely on our increasingly right-wing courts for help.

Unions are still the best way forward for workers' rights.

www.semafor.com/art...

Topics in the latest edition of my "Cornerstone of democracy" newsletter include:

-- Kashing in the Constitution
-- Patel as propagandist
-- Surprise. Trump was lying about Project 2025
-- Keeping the heat on climate change

I curate to save you time. Please subscribe (it's free), and let other folks know about it.

cornerstone.ghost.i...

The reliable New York Times normalizes extremism, as always, with the Kash Patel nomination. This headline does not even begin to hint at his often-stated eagerness to be a fascist apparatchik.

The Times' indifference to dictatorship is disgusting.

Tom Nichols gets it 90% right in his latest @TheAtlantic post: If democracy dies in the next several years, he says, blame Trump, his democracy-loathing cabal, the Republicans in general, and feckless voters who miss what's at stake.

www.theatlantic.com...

But while he mentions the press, he doesn't assign nearly enough responsibility to its cowardice and willful refusal to a) recognize what's at stake and b) actively fight to save our system.

(Wishing Nichols would leave deadbird site...)

Philanthropy's highest value is in repairing things that have broken due to the flaws in government and markets.

Communications today are controlled by huge, centralized members of cartels -- a societal failure of profound danger.

Which constantly makes me wonder why philanthropy is so visibly unwilling to support decentralized communications in a concerted way.

I suspect it's because the people who run major foundations LIKE being among the comms elite. They can't imagine otherwise.

Mozilla's elimination of its advocacy group -- which worked for the open web against the monopolists and cartels -- is a terrible move, but not totally surprising. I speculate that Google has informed Mozilla that its massive financial subsidy will be dropping or ending.

www.theverge.com/20...

Journalists should be praying that Harris wins this election, because President Trump and his brownshirts will be coming after them if she doesn't.

Media never confronted the meaning of fascism in their coverage. Let's hope they -- and the rest of us -- don't have to confront it in real life.

Of course, if she wins (and Trump cult doesn't pull off a coup), journalists will say everything's fine and pretend there never was an emergency.

How on earth does Musk still have a security clearance?

www.thebulwark.com/...

Netanyahu and Putin want Trump to win, and Israel's head honcho is working overtime to make it happen.

theintercept.com/20...

"Wargame simulated a conflict between Israel and Iran: It quickly went nuclear."

It's hypothetical until it isn't.

thebulletin.org/202...

I cannot understand why Big Journalism isn't yelling from the rooftops about the Republicans' voter suppression crusade -- in state after state, working to rig elections.

Even on the rare occasions when journalists notice, they talk about a single state with zero context. It's like spotting a brush fire but never observing that the entire forest is ablaze.

The Republicans are engaged in a direct attack on people's right to vote. It is a direct attack on democracy.

And our media won't see it.