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.)
Szelényi told TPM that Orbán, during his rise, shared a key focus with the modern American right: significant, structural changes to politics and the functioning of government to accrue, and retain, power. In her telling of the rise of Orbánism, that manifests as a focus on “money, ideology, and votes” — changing the judiciary, press laws, and campaign laws in order to stay in power.
The Republican Party's adoration of Hungary's dictatorial ruler, Viktor Orbán, goes right to the top, and this interview shows how dangerous that is to democracy. Trump has made it clear again and again that Orbán is his kind of guy. Trump, and his senior apparatchiks and followers, have repeatedly said they're eager to bring the Hungarian style of government to the U.S. That style involves using power to entrench power, changing the law where necessary and ignoring the law when it's in the way.
A 2022 study by The Commonwealth Fund found that the U.S. is the only high-income country without universal healthcare. Many American athletes do have access to the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee’s health insurance policy. But their eligibility for the program is up to their sport’s governing body, and an independent commission appointed by Congress found that “some of the most talented competitors under our flag go to sleep at night under the roof of a car or without sufficient food or adequate health insurance.” More than a quarter of U.S. athletes report earning less than $15,000 per year, and more than 40% said they paid out of pocket for healthcare, with an average cost of $9,200 per person. Only 16% said they’d been reimbursed.
This may not seem like a political story, but America's deeply flawed health care system makes it one. In the 2024 elections, there are clear differences between the two major parties' approaches. The Republicans, who tried to eliminate the Affordable Care Act, have fundamental belief that health care is fine if you can afford it. The Democrats still can't bring themselves to supporting what every other major democracy has – a single-payer system – but they at least recognize the need for heavy taxpayer subsidy to bring health care to as many people as possible.
We can be sure that this is just the start. Trump demands absolute loyalty while giving none in return. He expects that these three board members — and the other election deniers he has placed in positions of power around the country — to deliver his preferred outcome one hundred percent of the time, regardless of the facts or law.
This piece from Democracy Docket, following up on yesterday's news about the Georgia election officials' outrageous (and lawbreaking) new rules, highlights the growing danger of the Trump party's refusal to accept results it doesn't like. Are Democrats even noticing this threat? If so, it's not obvious what they're doing about it.
Unlike her running mate, Harris seems unlikely to throw four kinds of dairy in the oven for dinner—she’s a Californian, and she cooks like one: swordfish with toasted cardamom for her pescatarian stepdaughter, herb-flecked Mediterranean meatballs on an Instagram Live with the celebrity chef Tom Colicchio. But she’s not immune to the humble charms of ice cream, gumbo, Popeye’s chicken, red-velvet cupcakes, or bacon, which she describes as a “spice” in her household. She comes off as sincere in her love of food but discerning in her tastes. When a 10-year-old recently asked her at an event what her favorite taco filling was, she answered with the kind of absorbed expression that she might otherwise display when explaining foreign policy on the debate stage: carnitas with cilantro and lime, no raw onions.
The intersection of politics and food is a, cough, staple of campaigns. But this piece, with a dollop of cynicism, gets at the essence of the Democratic ticket's joy in cooking and eating. It's a marked contrast with the gluttonous head of the Republican ticket, and though less so with Vance's (at home only) vegetarian diet.
Donald Trump rambled and lied for over an hour without any follow up questions or fact-checking. MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell says that while he hopes Vice President Harris answers questions from reporters, after the press conference that Donald Trump turned into a “charade,” Vice President Harris has “absolutely no greater obligation to do so because of what Donald Trump pretended to do today.”
Lawrence O'Donnell's commentary last night is a reminder that our "mainstream" political journalists have learned exactly nothing from their ongoing failures over the years. It was "2016 all over again," he said of the TV "news" channels' live broadcast of the lie-filled "press conference" Trump hosted at his Florida resort. "To make a bad news coverage situation worse," O'Donnell said, "none of the networks – none of them – carried Kamala Harris' speech live after the Trump appearance. None of them."
None of them did any fact checking during the Trump fiasco, either. There was some feeble after-the-fact checking. but as O'Donnell pointed out, how hard would it have been to use part of the screen during the lie fest to point out at least some of the lies? It would have been simple.
What accounts for this ongoing failure? Money. Trump gooses ratings and is pure clickbait. Our news organizations have stopped even pretending otherwise. Which means they've stopped pretending – not that they ever really did – to do journalism.
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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Stephanie Apstein
Marc Elias
Ellen Cushing
