In the latest socially distanced episode of our Useful Idiots podcast, hosts Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper are joined by none other than newly-freelance journalist Glenn Greenwald. [Editor’s note: This episode was taped on November 5th, the Thursday after Election Night.] Matt and Katie take a deep dive into how …
Read More »TikTok Is Becoming a Vector of Election Violence Rumors
In the lead-up to Election Night, most coverage has focused on how platforms like Facebook and Twitter are working to prevent election-related misinformation and disinformation, in an effort to avoid a repeat of what happened in 2016. One platform, however, has largely avoided scrutiny, despite already serving as host to …
Read More »'We Merely Need to Dampen Turnout': Leaked Docs Show Top Trump Allies' 2016 Plan to Suppress Black Voters
WASHINGTON — The disinformation operation was christened “Project Clintonson.” It brought together two notorious figures in Republican political circles, Blackwater founder Erik Prince and Trump adviser Roger Stone. Their objective couldn’t have been more explicit. “We do not need to make major gains among African American voters,” said a 13-page …
Read More »How Do We Fix American Democracy?
In the heady days after the 2016 election, a pair of political scientists, Valerie Bunce and Mark Beissinger, posed an unsettling question: “How might American democracy end?” Until Donald Trump’s ascent to the White House, such a question felt, well, academic. The United States was the longest-running democracy on Earth; …
Read More »In Kentucky, 2020's String of Election Disasters Threatens Again
Our elections have been melting down. Disastrous, spectacular collapses have become commonplace in this unimaginable year already filled with a pandemic, record unemployment, and civil unrest. While the failures are complex and manifold, many have been predictable and similar from state to state. The patterns are clear. There are not …
Read More »Bernie Sanders Ends Presidential Run as Joe Biden Clinches 2020 Democratic Nomination
Sen. Bernie Sanders has suspended his campaign for president, conceding the 2020 Democratic nomination to former Vice President Joe Biden. Sanders announced his decision Wednesday in a livestream address to supporters saying his grassroots-supported run —conducted under the banner of “Not me, us” —had changed the country for the better, …
Read More »Ohio Shows Why We Need Voting Reform
People have had to risk their lives to cast a ballot before in this country, but not because of a pandemic: John Lewis and his fellow marchers were bloodied on a Selma bridge 55 years ago this month, and that’s just one example. But even when there may not be …
Read More »This Primary's Real Loser Is Diversity
It shouldn’t be difficult to determine who is winning this. Bernie Sanders is the only candidate who has shown the ability thus far to form any kind of firm base within the Democratic electorate —younger voters who may find him personally popular even more so than a platform that Republicans …
Read More »Julián Castro Endorses Elizabeth Warren for President
Former Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro announced Monday that he is endorsing Elizabeth Warren in the race he pulled out of just days ago. Though 15 Democrats have already dropped out of the 2020 primary, Castro, the most recent to do so, is one of only two to have formally …
Read More »Bernie Is Disgusted by Obscene Sneaker Prices
Bernie Sanders sat down with Showtime’s Desus and Mero at the Brooklyn Farmacy, an old school soda shop not all that far from the Midwood neighborhood where Sanders grew up. It wasn’t boring! (“I do do a lot of boring ones,” Sanders said.) Among the things we learned, from this …
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