The End of Term Web Archive (EOT) is a collaborative project, and we rely on the contributions and expertise of our partner institutions and the ongoing support of individuals and organizations like you! There are many ways to get involved and make a difference. Only YOU can prevent the loss of government information!
The last time Trump took over the executive branch, his apparatchiks went on a binge of changing, hiding, and deleting vital government data. Environmental data was a prime target. The End of Term Web Archive wasn't created because of Trump. It dates from the early 2000s. But it has turned out to be one of the most important initiatives to protect and preserve knowledge from ideologically motivated know-nothings, science-denying special interests, and wealthy corporations that want to disappear all evidence of their wrongdoing. The archive doesn't just collect and save the information; the point is also to ensure that it's available to all. You can help! Take a look at the site's About page for information on how.
Communities can help themselves and annoy the right wing
Public transit, in fact, offers a general model for political resistance in the second Trump era: Pay attention to the public goods the American right wants to attack and take away—and, instead, make those services better, safer, and less vulnerable to far-right narrative and smear. Conservatives know that public transit is popular—that’s why they’re excited at the opportunity to discredit it. We can learn from this and put public transit and urban civilization at the center of our politics, cleaning up the environment by taking cars off the road, and bringing ease, comfort, and twenty-first-century efficiency to working people everywhere. The right can’t compete with that.
[A] typical commuter e-bike with pedal assist emits 21 times less CO2 per mile than a typical electric car (based on California’s power mix) and 141 times less than a gas-powered car. And e-bikes are far less resource- and energy-intensive to manufacture and distribute. Cities also are coming to see e-bikes as a potential lifeline for their low-income communities, a healthy alternative to often unreliable public transit for families who can’t afford a car. And that electric boost gives some people who would never have considered bike commuting an incentive to try, thus helping facilitate a shift from car dependency to a more bikeable, walkable, livable culture.
These two articles, one from Mother Jones and the other from the New Republic, offer a glimpse into a future where American cities make transportation less car-dependent and more people-friendly. And the suggestions come from ends of the engineering spectrum – pushing mass transit and personal transit, the latter in the form of e-bikes. Both pieces recognize reality, by addressing the downsides, but they rightfully conclude that the upsides are irrefutably good in the aggregate.
[It]’s time that we made corruption — and the Republican-picked judges that enabled it — the villain. We need to explain the world, and the explanation really is corruption, not migrants. And if we do so from the start, with discipline, with repetition, then when Trump’s corruption ends up breaking things, causing catastrophe, that explanation will be ready at hand. I can’t tell you which of Trump’s corrupt schemes will do catastrophic damage first. Possibly his embrace of crypto currency, or maybe the dodgy types who set up his personal piggy banks will do something so shocking that even Pam Bondi’s DOJ can’t look the other way. But when Trump’s corruption causes catastrophe — and it’s a matter of when, not if — we need to be ready to name it, rather than let them scapegoat migrants for Trump’s doing.
As the second Trump regime takes shape, so does what is guaranteed to be unprecedented (for America) levels of presidential corruption, thanks to a Supreme Court that is now itself recognized as the most corrupt in U.S. history. The bended-knee millions that tech barons and others are serving up in tribute will mostly go into Trump's pocket, as this blog post notes, along with vast sums already in the pipeline. And that's just the beginning of what's coming.
It'll all be "legal" in many cases. The Supreme Court – which sneers at pleas for even modest ethical practices among its members – has not only legalized political bribery. but effectively rewrote the Constitution to give presidents (if they're named Trump, anyway) immunity from prosecution for crimes they commit while in office. What a deal!
How corrupt is the court? Massively, and there's a new example every week. "Justice" Alito, who flaunts his sleaze, called Trump to lobby for a giving one of his ex-clerk's a job in the administration – at the same time Trump's contemptible lawyers were feverishly trying to get the court to stop a New York court from sentencing Trump for the felonies he committed in trying to cover up just a few of his many crimes.
While it's logical – and good advice – to ask Democrats to loudly and continuously blow the whistle on the epic scumbaggery, that may be naive. Not only do they have their own soul-sucking billionaire backers, but with a few exceptions they visibly lack spines.
Big Journalism, meanwhile, continues to notice only the most egregious examples of pervasive Trump world corruption. Then they treat these cases like one-offs – never, ever putting them in context. To use a currently vivid analogy, it's as if journalists covered the LA fires one house at a time, without observing that there's a vastly larger inferno. This news-coverage blind spot isn't unique, but it continues to baffle me.
This newsletter is a compendium of the reporting and commentary that best explains the America's political, economic, and social conditions – and, most important, how we can find a way back from the dark days ahead. You will rarely find anything here from the New York Times or Washington Post or any of the other Big Journalism companies that failed us so completely during the 2024 elections and are now sucking up – even more than usual – to Donald Trump, his cult, and corporate oligarchs. My focus will be on smaller, more honorable outlets (and individuals). I hope you'll support them with your attention and your money. For more details, please read my About page.
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End of Term Web Archive
Liza Featherstone
Clive Thompson
emptywheel
