A daily compendium of helpful 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 must 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.)
The Chadron degree is what gave a kid from West Point, Neb., whose dad died when he was 17, a chance to become a beloved high school teacher and coach, then a U.S. House member, then governor of his adopted Minnesota, and now the presumptive Democratic nominee for vice president. In a stunning contrast with the Ivy League self-hater Vance, Walz has used his platform to expand college opportunities so today’s kids can have the same shot that he had.
Bunch is an expert on the recently poisonous intersection of higher education and politics, having written a book on it. In this commentary, he contrasts the views the two vice presidential candidates hold about America's colleges and universities. Boiled down, Vance wants to wreck them and Walz wants to make them even more available. Vance called universities "the enemy" while Walz signed legislation boosting Minnesotans' ability to learn. While vice presidents have limited authority (i.e. almost none other than what presidents give them), it's plain that both of these candidates would have significant influence on policy. What they believe matters a great deal.
Walz’s approach — casting the fight against climate change as a potential economic win for residents in his state — is the same model President Joe Biden used to drive enactment of the sweeping Inflation Reduction Act and attract support for other clean energy initiatives. Getting political buy-in to support policy goals will be critical for the next phase of US clean energy development. And that’s where the approach taken by Walz in Minnesota could become an indicator of how he might lead from Washington.
As Trump and Vance make it clear they'll do everything possible to torpedo anything that interferes with the fossil fuel and nuclear industries, and weaken or kill environmental protection laws and regulations, the Democrats have an easy comparison to make. It's not as if they've done enough – they surely have not – but they've at least made a stab at taking the climate emergency seriously. Walz can run on his record, which is forward-looking and optimistic rather than appearing (or being) a draconian collection of annoying rules.
STAT reporters interviewed experts in their respective subject areas to understand what they make of Project 2025, and what Trump’s personal proposals on health care could mean for Americans.
This report is worth reading, but it strikes me as quite credulous. It assumes Trump can be taken at his word, a hilariously wrong notion. A notable example is the section on abortion, where Trump has claimed a (ever so slightly) more moderate position than the activists who actually guide policy – even though he's bragged about appointing the Supreme Court justices who came up with the anti-Roe margin. He's also wanted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and has offered nothing as a replacement. But the article offers some history of his administration's on-the-ground policies and offers the possibility that he'd continue at least some of the Biden administration's better policies.
Georgia Election Board Chair John Fervier read numerous objections from Democratic state legislators, like state Sen. Jason Esteves who said in a letter that “these rules, as proposed, create avenues for malicious actors to disrupt the election process under the guise of addressing discrepancies and could be exploited to sow doubt and distress in election outcomes.”
The Republican effort to suppress voting by people who are likely to favor Democrats is matched only by the party's accelerating campaign to prevent results it doesn't like from becoming final.
I’m not surprised the Trump campaign is going there. I mean, they’re vicious degenerates and professional liars. But even more generally, campaigns put out lots of tendentious attacks. “Fair” isn’t part of the political campaign framework. But we should expect a lot better from the country’s leading dailies, especially charges directly from a campaign that contain so many red flags. Once a major paper picks up a hit and gives it credulous coverage it stops being a campaign attack and becomes a “story.” It’s a very specific kind of editorial decision. As I’ve explained in other posts, there’s been a growing push, especially at the Times but more generally, that Harris’s campaign momentum has been going on too long and needs to come to an end. Little question that fever played heavily into this editorial decision. And it’s not the first time. Let’s remember that the Times spent the better part of a year in 2015 and 2016 writing articles based on the hit book “Clinton Cash” which was funded by Steve Bannon. It’s a pattern.
This is more than merely another failure, one of many, in Big Journalism's political coverage. But the way the Times and Post have bought into this latest barrage of Trump world propaganda on Walz's military service is infuriating, because they surely know exactly what they're doing, as Marshall points out in his commentary. It is the worst kind of stenography for liars. Now, there are a couple of small truths in the attacks on Walz, including his saying he took his weapons "to war" when he didn't go into combat. (Not that the press will add this context: Trump was a notorious draft dodger and Vance wrote what amounted to press releases in military bases way, way behind the lines.) But small misstatements don't begin to justify the all-out propaganda war the Republicans are waging to make the American people believe – contrary to all reality – that Walz served in any way other than honorably. This stuff is disgusting, made more so by the possibility that Big Journalism's wholesale regurtitation of lies could get traction. These news organizations should be ashamed, but you can assume they're not.
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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Rachel Cohrs Zhang, Theresa Gaffney, Lev Facher, Isabella Cueto, Sarah Owermohle, John Wilkerson
Courtney Cohn
