Just three media groups dominate the national newspaper market – and help shape our political narrative, while the Government has failed to act against 'lawfare', a new report finds
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The rise and fall of digital pioneers Ben Smith is making the rounds to promote his new book, “Traffic.” The proprieter of the shuttering BuzzFeed News told MSNBC’s Alex Wagner Tuesday night he did not aniticpate, in its infancy, what digital media would do to legacy media and politics. The pursuit of clicks contained in the BuzzFeed name came to define the goal of social media. That business model was the digital equivalent of “if it bleeds, it leads.” I recall once sitting in a packed Netroots Nation workshop on writing clickbait headlines to attract eyeballs before clickbait was a word and swiftly became a four-letter one. Smith did not forsee in those days what the lefties’ tech tools that gave rise to Jezebel or Huffington Post would become in the hands of the radical right. I recall, too, that Right Online, the onetime conservative shadow to Netroots, was thought a joke by our younger attendees. Right Online seemed a collection or hopelessly unhip retirees in the digital age trying still learning to turn on a computer and manipulate a cursor. That was then.
In a sea of crazy Like being dipped in living waters. That’s what it’s like anymore to hear an actual expert testify on Capitol Hill instead of partisan shills. Imagine hearings without grandstanding and hectoring from Republicans such as those on the Senate Judiciary Committee. “World’s greatest deliberative body,” indeed. Roll Call: Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee spent a hearing Tuesday making the case for legislation that would put the Supreme Court under an ethics code if the justices didn’t do so themselves, but witnesses were split as to whether Congress has the power to do so. The backers of proposed bills argued that the justices have waited for too long to impose their own ethics code, exemplified by recent reports about undisclosed luxury trips and a real estate transaction Justice Clarence Thomas received from a billionaire GOP donor. Amanda Frost, a University of Virginia Law School professor, testified that the Constitution is silent about the internal workings of the Supreme Court and instead left it to Congress to establish the court’s size, budget and rules like a quorum.
There is something very, very familiar about these women. I knew their type in school. Female bullies. I’m sure they think of themselves as Christians but they’re evil, horrible people. It wasn’t enough for Montana’s Republican-led state legislature to take away Democratic Rep. Zooey Zephyr’s seat in the legislature. Now people are taking her seat outside of the House chamber too. The Montana House of Representatives last week voted to censure Zephyr, Montana’s first openly transgender lawmaker. The vote came in response to Zephyr criticizing her Republican colleagues for restricting access to gender-affirming care. Zephyr announced Monday that she is suing to reverse the restrictions placed on her.
Maybe. Among a very few GOPers. But that could make a difference in the general election. The front runner for the 2024 Republican nomination for president, former president Donald J. Trump, is currently on trial in civil court in New York for rape (rape!) and it seems that none of his potential voters care that he is jetting off to a new golf course in Scotland instead of appearing in court to defend himself. Neither do they care that he’s also been indicted on felony charges in New York City for illegally paying hush money to an adult film actress or that he and his offspring are the subject of a massive civil fraud case filed by the state Attorney General last September. And that’s just New York. Trump’s also got investigations pending in Georgia over election fraud and two major federal probes being handled by Special Counsel Jack Smith regarding the stealing of classified documents and criminal liability for the insurrection on January 6. But according to a new CBS/YouGov poll, the majority of Republican voters could not care less about any of that.
When governing is not your agenda If Jared Leto in “a head-to-toe, mascot-style cat costume” at the Met Gala doesn’t satisfy your appetite for weird, there are always Republican governors. Jamelle Bouie gazes upon attempts by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to make a trip to Florida the next best thing to vacationing on another planet. Be warned: Planet Ron is fighting an outbreak of the “woke mind virus.” DeSantis warns Ronians with little exposure to Earth 1 that the infection is “a form of cultural Marxism that tries to divide us based on identity politics.” Bouie wonders what Ronians make of that (New York Times): Now, I can follow this as a professional internet user and political observer. I know that “woke mind virus” is a term of art for the (condescending and misguided) idea that progressive views on race and gender are an outside contagion threatening the minds of young people who might otherwise reject structural explanations of racial inequality and embrace a traditional vision of the gender binary. I know that “cultural Marxism” is a right-wing buzzword meant to sound scary and imposing.
“It’s a teaching and learning job” Candidates and officials could be using powers they don’t know they have for doing good, Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) argues. The American Prospect profiles the candidate for U.S. Senate from California: The tough-as-nails single-mom image caters to the legions of suburban parents in the Golden State. But what actually differentiates Porter from her main opponents in the California Senate race—progressive antiwar hero Rep. Barbara Lee and Trump impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff—is that she’s been able throughout her career to make progress without carrying institutional authority. Porter acknowledged that she, Lee, and Schiff would likely take the same votes, at least on the major issues. But there’s more to politics than that. “I just want to fix some shit,” Porter writes in her book.
All Disney had to do was read Ron’s book to make their case: When the Walt Disney Co. went looking for evidence to feature in its new lawsuit against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, its lawyers found much of what they needed in DeSantis’s own recently published memoir. Buried in Disney’s complaint against DeSantis is something surprising. Numerous quotes taken from “The Courage to be Free” appear to support the company’s central allegation: that the Republican governor improperly wielded state power to punish Disney’s speech criticizing his policies, violating the First Amendment. Memoirs by presidential aspirants often lay out a blueprint for their coming candidacies. DeSantis’s does, too. It boasts extensively about his war on Disney to advertise how he would marshal the powers of the presidency against so-called woke elites. Disney’s lawsuit cites exactly these passages.
The NY Times reports: The only clue to the gambit was in the title of the otherwise obscure hodgepodge of a bill: “The Breaking the Gridlock Act.” But the 45-page legislation, introduced without fanfare in January by a little-known Democrat, Representative Mark DeSaulnier of California, is part of a confidential, previously unreported, strategy Democrats have been plotting for months to quietly smooth the way for action by Congress to avert a devastating federal default if debt ceiling talks remain deadlocked. With the possibility of a default now projected as soon as June 1, Democrats on Tuesday began taking steps to deploy the secret weapon they have been holding in reserve. They started the process of trying to force a debt-limit increase bill to the floor through a so-called discharge petition that could bypass Republican leaders who have refused to raise the ceiling unless President Biden agrees to spending cuts and policy changes.
They’re coming for no-fault divorce I saw this news making the rounds on twitter a few days ago and was astonished at the response. There seems to be quite a few pissed off men about this. I had no idea it was on the menu but it stands to reason that it would be. Ban abortion and birth control and end no-fault divorce. Family values, macho style: STEVEN CROWDER, THE right-wing podcaster, is getting a divorce. “No, this was not my choice,” Crowder told his online audience last week. “My then-wife decided that she didn’t want to be married anymore — and in the state of Texas, that is completely permitted.” Crowder’s emphasis on “the state of Texas” makes it sound like the Lone Star State is an outlier, but all 50 states and the District of Columbia have no-fault divorce laws on the books — laws that allow either party to walk away from an unhappy marriage without having to prove abuse, infidelity, or other misconduct in court. It was a hard-fought journey to get there.