A compendium of the best reporting and commentary surrounding the pivotal 2024 elections in the United States. You won't find horse race coverage here, or the standard "both sides" BS that passes so often for political journalism. What you will find are links, with brief commentary, 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.)
If the Court is confronted with such a case, will it behave in a principled and democratic manner, enforcing the rules neutrally and allowing the chips to fall where they may? Put differently, will it buttress the basic principle of majority rule, or will it be guided instead by a preference for one side in our political wars? Given the Roberts Court’s record in politically significant election-law cases, and even more importantly given the Court’s most recent, stunning decision to give the president a vast new form of absolute criminal immunity, there is every reason to be fearful that the Court will put a political thumb on the scale if given half a chance.
While politics and party ideology have always played a role in Supreme Court actions, people who study the modern version date the fully partisan takeover to the indefensible 2000 ruling that put George W. Bush in the White House. Only the barest pretense of merit came out of the Republican majority's word processors. They discredited themselves, and their institution. But they have nothing on today's thoroughly corrupt right-wing super-majority. This crew, half of which was nominated by Trump, is almost completely in the bag for whatever he and his extremist party want. As the likelihood grows that the court will be ruling in some way on who becomes the next president, so does the likelihood of a decision that makes Bush v. Gore look like a model of judiciousness. In other words, the court is one more weapon for the forces that want to end democracy. The only way to prevent this, it's increasingly clear, is a sweeping victory for Harris and the Democrats – by overwhelming margins in the popular and electoral votes.
To counter this effectively, obviously you want to have the DOJ tuned in and ready, and I’m not sure that they are. Certainly, the FBI has shown itself to be extremely problematic under Christopher Wray in terms of the ongoing presence of dedicated Trumpists within the FBI. That’s the wild card. Law enforcement is our main guardrail for these kinds of things, and we have Trumpist cops working on the local level, we have them working on the state level, and we have them working on the federal level. ...
Being from a rural area myself, the really great unreported story that the corporate media won’t touch is: Why don’t we talk about these people in these small towns who are Democrats in red cities and red states, and what life is like for them. Because I can tell you, I mean, my family and friends who live in such conditions: They feel threatened, they feel intimidated, they feel like they have to keep their heads down. They don’t put bumper stickers on their cars, they don’t announce their politics in social situations, or they do it very discreetly, and only on a one-to-one basis.
Read every word of this Rick Perlstein interview of a journalist who has studied and reported on right-wing extremism in America for decades. The conversation is a warning, a stark one. Neiwert says our federal government and (of course) big media organizations are all but ignoring not just the growing threat that members of the Trump cult will take up arms after the election in wide-ranging spasm of violence – but that law enforcement at all levels is riddled with extremists who might well join with the MAGA forces. A portion of the interview (quoted above) discusses the threats that non-MAGA people live with in the red states. Most Americans don't know about any of this. Please share it with people you know.
Notwithstanding evidence that immigrants are generally more law-abiding than native-born Americans, the U.S. immigration system is preoccupied with barring criminal – or even suspected criminal – conduct. These bars are so strict that Trump himself, were he an immigrant and subject to the same scrutiny as those he now maligns, would be at high risk of being either refused entry, denied a green card, or rejected for citizenship.
What a smart piece this is. Trump and his apparatchiks have libeled immigrants for years, calling them criminals, terrorists, and every other ugly name in the book. So the reporters on this piece set out to see if Trump could possibly pass the vetting we give to people seeking immigrant status here. They hedge a bit, but the only conceivable answer is No Way.
What I am saying is that mainstream news outlets should be alarmed by the trends. In 1976, 72% of Americans trusted mass media to fairly report the news; 32% feel that way today. While the right wing dismisses mainstream journalism as “fake news,” many of us criticize the media for kowtowing to the “fake news” crowd and refusing to acknowledge the threat it poses. As legacy news outlets get battered by both sides, their best way out is to fearlessly tell the whole truth. If they keep normalizing fascists and trying to find a safe space between facts and lies, they’ll be paving a path to their own irrelevance. – Mark Jacob
Fifty years ago this summer, Richard Nixon resigned the presidency because people believed what they read about him in the Washington Post. Today, Harris feels she doesn’t need journalists at all, and a lot of the public is cheering her on. And a vainglorious elite news media with severe tunnel vision has no one to blame but themselves. – Will Bunch
I have long despaired of our journalistic elite. They are not interested in doing their jobs in any way that reflects the emergency our nation faces. It's business as usual, and they've made that plain again and again. Maybe a few of them will start listening to the critics if the chorus of disgust gets loud enough. They'd do well to read both of these pieces. Why do I doubt that they will, or if they do, care?
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.
Benjamin Wittes
Rick Perlstein
Edgar Chen, Dan Ross
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Mark Jacob
