A compendium of the best reporting and commentary surrounding the pivotal 2024 elections in the United States. You will rarely 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.)
This report, from a team of superb researchers into misinformation, is by far the most thorough assessment I've seen of how thoroughly the Republicans under Trump have guaranteed turmoil on and after Election Day. They have organized adeptly, and put into place a systematic, deep campaign to a) throw sand in the gears of public understanding; and b) further persuade the Trump cultists that everything has been rigged against them. There's a lot of detail in this report, but it's all presented in plain English. I learned things I didn't know before, and so will you.
Kudos: Kate Starbird, Danielle Lee Tomson, Joseph S. Schafer, Ashlyn B. Aske, Melinda McClure Haughey, Rachel Moran-Prestridge, Emma S. Spiro, and Michael Grass
Over the last couple of months, there have been growing reports of grassroots campaigns reminding women that no one has to know how they voted. Post-it notes have been left in women’s bathrooms reading, “Woman to woman, your vote is private.” And a new pro-Harris ad from Vote Common Good this week featuring a voiceover from Julia Roberts shows two women at the polls sharing an understanding gaze as they cast their ballots for Harris while their pro-Trump husbands cluelessly egg them on. This development has deeply disturbed MAGA husbands everywhere.
As this article points out, mail-in voting has one huge drawback for many women who live in homes where their husbands or boyfriends run the household like Trump-style dictators. But the news is also good in its own way, if women are voting for their interests – by voting for Harris anyway. Another good sign: Early voting at polling places, where your vote is your business and only your business, is dominated by women. It's worth keeping in mind that secret ballots are relatively new in American history – and vital to preserve, for just this sort of election.
Trump plots to wreck public health
The prospect of Kennedy holding any senior government role has increasingly alarmed public health leaders and federal workers who say that he should not be allowed anywhere near the nation’s public health infrastructure. As an anti-vaccine activist, Kennedy spent years lobbying lawmakers across the country and the world to reduce their use of vaccines — including leaders of Samoa in 2019, as the country reeled from a measles outbreak that left dozens of children dead.
It's not just this guy's monstrous attacks on vaccines that should freak you out. It's his contempt for public health in general. RFKjr got started on this by – sometimes almost reasonably – challenging the greed and too-frequent deceptions of the "Big Pharma" industry. But he expanded his campaign of contempt to include kinds of things that are plainly good for us. Our economic competitors must be absolutely drooling at the prospect of a United States policy that deliberately leaves its citizens wide open to easily preventable diseases. What's unbelievably now is that this is even a possibility. Scarily, it is.
In the final week of the presidential campaign, the country’s two most prominent newspapers extended into a second day their credulous coverage of Republicans’ fake outrage over President Biden’s “garbage” comment.
As TPM's Kurtz says, "It's an editorial choice" – and it's journalistic malpractice. Again. And again. And again. I'm so damn sick of our top political journalists and their bosses falling for every single Trump world provocation, no matter how bad faith it may be. I would bet anything that when the Trump people heard about Biden's mini-gaffe, they were thrilled. Outrage was the last thing any of them felt. But journalists just can't help themselves, not when they act as though Trump and his apparatchiks are their assignment editors.
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.
Take your personal contact list, compare it to the national voter file, and find out which of your actual friends, family, co-workers and past acquaintances live in swing states and districts where a call or text from you could be hugely influential.
Please read Micah Sifry's advice – and heed it! You still have time to make a huge difference.
Please send your suggestions
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.
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Malcolm Ferguson
David Kurtz
Micah L. Sifry
