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.)
Vance’s proud adoption of spreading false memes may have shocked people. But if you’ve been watching these people as closely as I have over the years, you know it’s not new. The ploy of using false memes to direct mainstream media attention has a storied tradition. For years, right-wing internet influencers—self-described trolls—have deliberately aimed to use “shitposting” to get the mainstream media to cover their favorite topics.
Wheeler (disclosure: a friend) is known in the online world as Emptywheel. Her detailed research and reporting are signature qualities, and in this New Republic piece she goes deep into the way Trump's right-wing online acolytes push so many lies by creating memorable memes. As she notes, they do it in large part to persuade Big Media to pick up the BS, and our journalism organizations routinely swallow the bait.
[D]etails about World Liberty Financial remained scant, with much of the conversation devoted to general talking points about the potential for crypto to help those who face challenges in getting access to financial services. Several figures in the crypto world remarked on how the conversation felt like a flashback to the starry-eyed and largely substance-free conversations from early into the 2020 hype cycle, when many waxed poetic about the potential for cryptocurrency to “democratize finance”. Personally, I think it’s telling that the first time anyone in the Trump family has expressed concern about equitable access to financial services is when they’re hawking their crypto project.
The most corrupt presidential administration in American history was, by far, Donald Trump's – because he is by far the most corrupt person ever to hold the office. No one is even close. He, his family, his business associates, and his political appointees were a firehose of sleaze during his 2017-21 term. Trump and his businesses – his media venture, for example – have been sued countless times going back decades, in part because routinely stiffs creditors and breaks promises. You have to wonder why anyone is willing to do business with him. Now, in almost a chef's kiss of contempt, he and his family are deep into launching a venture in the most corrupt "industry" in recent history: cryptocurrency. The details are still somewhat opaque, and the brilliant Molly White has an early analysis in her latest "Citation Needed" newsletter (scroll down for the Trump material). If the goal is for Trump and family to collect a vast amount of money from speculators who have no idea what they're buying, but are sending money because their cult leader is selling, it may work.
The Trump record of corruption brings up one of the news media's most notable, ongoing shortcomings. For reasons I can’t fathom, Big Journalism treats his serial scandals as one-offs that are always a surprise and never connected with each other. This piece from the Washington Post, published in August, is an example of brilliant reporting with insufficient context. It’s baffling that journalists can’t be bothered to pull it all together — to show the staggering breadth and depth of the Trump world sleaze. Our news media notice some of the brush fires. But they never notice (or tell the rest of us) that the entire forest is ablaze.
Cannon, whose oversight of the Donald Trump classified documents case has garnered widespread criticism, has repeatedly violated a rule requiring that federal judges disclose their attendance at private seminars.
This disclosure violation is a relatively minor example of judicial corruption – at least by the super-low standards set by two Supreme Court members (Thomas and Alito). But it's worth noting because it tells you more about the character of a Trump appointee who's overseeing one of his criminal cases. She has acted as though she's a member of the defense team, visibly biased for the defendant who named her to the court. Trump world is a cesspool of sleaze. And what we've seen in the past will be mild compared with what's coming if he returns to the White House – because, remember, his Supreme Court cabal legalized all crimes he might commit while holding office. A thoroughly corrupt president plus immunity from crimes he commits: Do the math on that.
One of the most oft-quoted sentences ever penned by a philosopher is George Santayana’s observation that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” In 2024, this aphorism is practically a campaign slogan. Donald Trump, seeking to become the first former president since Grover Cleveland to return to the White House after being voted out of the job, has waged war on remembrance. In fact, he’s depending on tens of millions of voters forgetting the recent past. This election is an experiment in how powerful a memory hole can be.
It's a constant frustration to people who think about context and history that so many people don't want to bother with either. We all create memory holes of one kind or another. But it's downright astonishing that Americans are fondly remembering the Trump presidential years in ways that utterly defy the reality of those times. This article will help you understand why that happens.
The stakes of this election are extremely high, but the pathologies of American politics will endure no matter the outcome. Antisystem alienation and hyperpartisanship are reinforcing each other in deeply destabilizing ways that can’t be repaired simply by selecting better candidates. We face a systemic problem that requires a systemic solution—and that solution, I contend, is to break out of our broken two-party system.
This long essay in the Boston Review just amazing. Drutman, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and author of a new book on this topic, makes an extremely strong case for fixing our politics by having many, many more political parties – but then bringing back a system that was once common: "fusion" voting, in which more than one party can endorse (and collect votes for) a candidate. The major parties all but outlawed this practice, and our current, problematic system emerged. I'm not entirely persuaded, but the logic is compelling. I strongly urge you to read this piece. It's eye-opening, and important.
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.
Marcy Wheeler
Molly White
Nick Surgey
David Corn
