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.)
Department of Judicial Revenge
The Kerry investigation was not an outlier. Through the rest of Mr. Trump’s time in office, he never let up on pressuring federal agencies to take action against his perceived enemies even as he was counseled against it by aides like Mr. McGahn and John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff from the middle of 2017 until the beginning of 2019.
This article – you should also take a look at the sidebar describing each case of Trump-inspired legal harassment – connects all kinds of dots, and uses Trump's history in the White House to offer a glimpse of what is to come if he occupies it again. I say "glimpse" because, as the article makes clear (in its oh-so-polite New York Times way), the consistent abuses of Trump's past will be amplified by orders of magnitude. He has announced this publicly, and proudly, and his apparatchiks this time would gladly carry out his retribution war on adversaries, perceived and real. That's bad enough, but keep in mind the new legal context in which this would occur: As the article notes, Trump "would also return to the White House bolstered by the Supreme Court’s ruling in July that former presidents have broad immunity from prosecution for official acts taken while in office." Now, extend these kinds of abuses – and Trump world's mind-boggling corruption – across the entire government. I keep waiting for Big Journalism to wake up to that, and tell the American people what could be in store for us. I hope this piece will prove, in retrospect, to have been a fine start. (BTW, this piece shows how well the New York Times can do serious political journalism when it tries (which is not often, sorry to say).
In fact, the FTC is suing the middlemen responsible for selling insulin, what are called pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs. The claim is that the PBMs and the producers themselves are in a loose cartel, jointly raising secret prices to specifically hit people who must pay cash out of pocket for insulin. Basically, like everything else in America, since 2012, a set of monopolists have turned buying pharmaceuticals into a weird financial game, with opaque rules and fees. That’s why medical billing, with things like deductibles, coinsurance, copays, and the like, is so annoying. It’s designed to extract. And this scheme shows how.
This is a great move by one of the most effective – at least under the current administration – federal agencies. Stoller is one of the best reporters around on the rip-off ways of so many industries that have become effective monopolies or cartels. In this piece he explains in clear language what predatory slimeballs run the "pharmacy benefit managers" – middlemen who extract billions from the health-care system in ways that will blow your mind – and how important the FTC's action could prove to be. This is, hopefully, just the first of many related cases.
Related: Watch this "60 Minutes" interview with FTC head Lina Kahn, whom I consider Biden's best regulatory appointment. You won't be surprised to learn that America's billionaires and biggest businesses are trying to get Harris, should she win, to replace Kahn and others who are looking out for the interests of everyone, and keeping the rich and powerful as honest as possible. If Trump wins, expect a total purge of the regulators who work for the rest of us.
“If Donald Trump did half of what he’s promising, the results for the US economy would be chaotic and negative,” says Jason Furman, a former White House economist in the Obama administration, who is now a Harvard professor. “The biggest thing we have on our side against China is we’re part of a bloc of countries that get along pretty well. Putting tariffs on all of those countries would rip that apart.”
This Financial Times report is a stark warning, and it's likely an understatement. There's a case to be made for systematic – not knee-jerk – economic disengagement from China, but what Trump is (apparently) planning is downright dangerous.
“When you see the information about Republican operatives boosting her candidacy, you can deduce from that very simply that she is very much sponsored and purposefully placed on the ballot to help Donald Trump,” said Joel Payne, spokesman for MoveOn, a progressive political-action committee. ... Polls suggest Stein is drawing support from 1% of the electorate and slightly more in some battleground states, but rarely above 2%. Even her small share of support could matter, though, because in 2016, Stein’s vote totals in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan were greater than Trump’s margins of victory.
Democrats have played shell games occasionally in recent years with lower-level races, helping Republican extremist candidates win primaries and thereby helping Democrats in general elections. Promoting a third-party candidate to siphon off votes in a presidential race isn't that. The article's reference to 2016 is important. Yes, Hilary Clinton ran a dud of a campaign that year, and a host of other factors contributed to her Electoral College loss. But Stein's presence on the ballot – remarkably like Ralph Nader's ego-driven candidacy in 2000 – contributed enough voting noise to keep the national popular vote winner out of the presidency. The fact that she's doing it again, with Republicans' cynical help, is a reminder that every vote counts. (Meanwhile, in an odd move, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – after saying he was dropping out and endorsing Trump – is suing New York State to stay on the ballot there. Earlier, he sued North Carolina to take his name off the ballot, in a move that forced the state to delay early voting, which historically favors Democrats.)
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.
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Matt Stoller
CBS News
