A compendium of solid reporting, commentary, and direct-from-source information surrounding the pivotal 2024 elections in the United States. You won't find horse race coverage here, or the standard "both sides" (even when one is lying) BS that passes so often for political journalism. What you will find are links – with brief quotes from the coverage and short commentary from me – to work that I believe advances the conversation we should be having about America's, and the world's, future. Remember: Everything is at stake this year. (Unfortunately, some of the work I point to is behind paywalls.)
After months of negotiations with manufacturers, list prices will be reduced by hundreds — in some cases, thousands — of dollars for 30-day supplies of popular drugs used by millions of people on Medicare, including blood thinners, diabetes drugs and blood cancer medications. The reductions, which range between 38% and 79%, take effect in 2026.
America's insane health care system is so corrupt and broken that even small victories for common sense are worth celebrating. Biden and Harris took a victory lap at a Maryland campaign event, for a genuinely important political win. But it's way, way too early to know whether Big Pharma will find a way to wriggle out of this long-overdue shift. Thanks largely to congressional Republicans (they had Democratic help), federal policy has not allowed Medicare to negotiate prices with companies that extract increasingly ridiculous profits on the back of taxpayers and people who need their drugs. It's true that corporate middlemen, who've created a cartel that rips off doctors, patients, and insurance companies, need to be brought to heel. But the pharma industry's greed and bad faith – and ability to spend whatever it takes on lobbying to protect its profits – has wasted countless billions of our dollars.
Trump has publicly rejected Project 2025 as Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has sought to tie him to some of the plan’s most extreme proposals. But in private, Vought said that those disavowals were merely “graduate-level politics.” Vought said his group, the Center for Renewing America, was secretly drafting hundreds of executive orders, regulations, and memos that would lay the groundwork for rapid action on Trump’s plans if he wins, describing his work as creating “shadow” agencies. He claimed that Trump has “blessed” his organization and “he’s very supportive of what we do.”
I'm not a big fan of "undercover" journalism, and especially loathe hidden-camera gotchas that are selectively and deceptively edited (the odious Project "Veritas" is notorious for this). But there are times when people will spill the beans on themselves when they think they're talking to someone who's friendly to their cause. CNN says it got the full set of videos from a U.K.-based "Centre for Climate Reporting", and its report of about Project 2025 – the Trump world plan for top-down, retrograde rule – puts lie (again) to the Trump campaign's attempts to downplay their terrifying plans for America if he wins. It's possible Vought is just a self-aggrandizing creep, but this has the ring of a well-planned roadmap for dictatorship. And Trump owns it.
Not all of Harris’ initial policy signals line up with Sanders’ own priorities. As she rolled out her economic agenda, Harris’ campaign quietly signaled that she would not support Medicare For All, the senators’ signature health care policy. And, while progressives have expressed confidence that Harris will do more to oppose Israel’s war in Gaza than Biden, she has yet to outline a detailed position on the conflict, which has been a major source of friction between the White House and the left. Nevertheless, Sanders expressed optimism about Harris emerging agenda and flatly stated he sees her as a fellow “progressive.”
In this long interview with TPM's Hunter Walker, Sanders offers the kind of nuance that others on the left should be including in their own view of the election. He has some fundamental disagreements with the Biden adminstration, and is not in complete sync with Harris, but he makes the liberal case for her election. The selection of Tim Walz as vice presidential candidate is one of the reasons, but Sanders says he has confidence that Harris herself will be more progressive than her detractors on the left believe.
Before Thursday's board of trustees meeting, Amy Reid, the faculty chair and representative on the board, said she hadn't heard about the disposal of books. When shown photos and videos, she was visibly shocked. She said when you throw away books, you also throw away democracy.
America's right wing book-banning crowd has passed laws that lead to grotesque cases like this. The article makes clear that the college spokesman lied about what was happening; no surprise there. Get ready for lots, lots more book banning – but perhaps less deceit about it – if the Republicans take more power in this fall's elections.
A grandparent coming to help out with a new baby isn’t unusual; it’s also a huge gift, and something too many American families have to rely on because we have no other safety net. A normal person might express gratitude to their mother-in-law for such overwhelming generosity. JD Vance used the story as an example of a post-menopausal woman’s purpose, and has used his political influence to force women into motherhood and further shred the safety net for women, mothers, and families. Yes, his way of speaking is extremely weird. But his views on women and work are much worse than weird: They’re dangerous.
The more Vance opens his mouth, the more condescending and scary he sounds. This commentary connects a bunch of dots. The picture they draw is a reminder that Vance and his party want women to understand their role as subservient.
Voting is just part of democracy, but it's the essential place to start. Make sure you're registered. Doublecheck in the fall, well before Election Day, because in some states Republican officials are removing people, mostly those who tend to vote for Democrats, from voting rolls.
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I spend a lot of time looking for essential coverage, and hope you'll help me by letting me know about the good stuff you find. Let me know.
AMANDA SEITZ
Curt Devine, Casey Tolan, Audrey Ash, Kyung Lah
, Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Jill Filipovic
