Agreed, fascinating to see political actors co-opt the language of journalism. Perhaps a reflection that they see their social media accounts as replacing the role they once had to rely on journalists to do and a signal to loyal media outlets on how they want this policy to be framed.

Can Illinois do anything more than sue? Suing clearly has a spotty track record…

Trump treating furloughed government workers the way he has always treated his Trump Tower building developers and subcontractors.

Is it really a “warning” if you wait until after he’s already confirmed and it’s too late for anyone to stop it?

Deference to whatever Trump says is the only Republican policy position in 2025.

Surely nudging out the staff dedicated to high quality news reporting would be one of Weiss’s objectives.

“That 1923 Munich beer hall speech was actually pretty good”

It’s a lot easier for Republicans to tell their voters “I don’t support healthcare programs because illegal immigrants might use it!” instead of the more accurate “I don’t support healthcare programs at all, but because I know that’s unpopular I’ll just throw in some fearmongering about immigrants”

The NYTimes is arguably the most financially independent major media entity in the US, unlike CBS or others that have corporate incentives to amplify content in accordance with the Trump pov, but they still choose to do publish this junk anyway. Why? They gain nothing and lose reader trust.

The fact that a vast majority of Americans agree on a wide array of issues and yet our political leaders advance none of them illustrates just how broken our system is. Power has shifted from the majority to a monied-few. How do we win it back? I have some thoughts. open.substack.com/pub/davidrot...

Relying on the courts alone to stop this will inevitably fail. It’s time for Democratic governors to do more and wield their own state powers to meet this moment.

Thats the scary part of the GOPs new mid-cycle gerrymandering strategy - they can make it so a voter backlash doesn't actually matter!

"Vote for me because MAYBE the White House won't punish NYC as much as other US cities" is definitely an inspiring pitch.

Gov. Spencer living up to his "call for unity" after the Kirk shooting in his state by supporting maps that virtually eradicate the existence of the opposition party.

Sure, this scenario is scary and raises the stakes, but it may be necessary to face the reality of the moment. The playbook of litigation and judicial rulings is simply too slow and limited to be the only tool to rely on right now.

Why not have the Oregon governor deploy the Oregon National Guard to get these California troops to stand down? Things could get interesting.

This is an old formula used by authoritarian regimes. Stoke chaos and blame scapegoats to justify the use of force.

I would love to hear some more of this, too. So far all I’ve heard is “I don’t like a lot of what Trump is doing, but I know that Harris or Biden would’ve been even worse so I still don’t regret voting for him.”

This is something @gelliottmorris.com touched on recently. Legacy media orgs still largely think of their audience as "all Americans". They haven't wrapped their heads around the fact that conservative readers/viewers aren't a significant part of their audience and haven't been for decades.

100% agree with you here. It goes down to the left no longer knowing how to effectively shape public opinion or influence media narratives. I bet that 30% Trump base has never once been exposed to content that is critical of Trump in years.

If 42% of Americans preferred strawberry ice cream, would you consider that flavor to be popular? I would. It’s definitely not a majority thankfully but that’s a huge number and it’s reasonable to call that popular. We need to get that approval number down.