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.)
All corruption, all the time...
It also came less than two weeks after another new Trump venture was rolled out. That one was a complicated cryptocurrency-based product, one that allows people to buy in before using its assets to make loans. Here, again, the money that flows in could include untraceable amounts from anyone, including foreign actors. If a government like Egypt’s did want to make a seven-figure payout to Trump without attracting the attention of federal investigators, there are more vehicles for them to do so than there were eight years ago.
Imagine that Kamala Harris had done of even one – just one – of the countless examples of corruption that, for decades, have come from Trump world like a firehose of sleaze. It would be the top of the news for days or weeks. Some Democrats would be demanding that she step down from the ticket, or would support her impeachment. The standards are different for Trump, his family, his apparatchiks, his appointees, his business partners – that is, everyone in Trump world. Especially the boss. Trump has been a dirtball his entire adult life, and only recently has he even begun to be held accountable. Yet he is remorseless, and relentless. These latest "ventures," as the Post so politely calls them, are a sad demonstration of the extent to which Trump can con his cult – and invite plain old bribery. Meanwhile, the press continues not to notice the breadth and depth of Trump world corruption, sticking to one-offs on the latest one-day scandal, noticing brush fires but not that the entire forest is ablaze.
It’s not surprising that Trump’s approach to the gender gap is so openly scornful and bitter. He is a lifelong misogynist whose sexism has served him well: His insults of Hillary Clinton helped rally the right in 2016. Trump’s goal is clearly not to decrease the gender gap he has with women but to increase the gap with men, which would in fact improve his standing in the polls.
Trump's all-CAPS rant about women on his "Truth" Social site has earned vast scorn from just about everyone but the cult, but given that he repeated it at a rally we have to assume it's not just the boss being dense. It's a fundamental part of the ideology. A wider gender gap could help him only if it includes young men – and Trump has made worrisome inroads in that demographic. So, as with so much else this year, we'll know whether it helped or hurt only when we know who turned out to vote. Trump doesn't have to work hard to motivate his base, but the more he does stuff like this, the more he's motivating people – voters – to come to the polls to stop him.
The court submissions could eventually provide Americans with the most comprehensive view they’ll ever get of Smith’s case alleging that Trump conspired to defraud the United States in his efforts to overturn his 2020 electoral loss.
The chances that the American people will see any of this before the election are probably nil, or close to it. Trump's lawyers are masterful at the art of the delay. But given Smith's ardent pitch to the judge to put these documents on the record, you have to believe that they would be damaging to the Trump campaign. If he gets back in the White House, we'll never see what was in the files, because he'll just order the Justice Department to shut down the prosecution. Has anyone ever operated with more impunity when it comes to accountability?
“All any decent person wants him to do is to say, ‘Don’t vote for Donald Trump, and here’s why,’ and he won’t even do that,” O’Donnell told the Fast Politics podcast, of the Republican president who was in office from 2001 to 2009.
Until Donald Trump came along, it was safe to say that the worst president of the past century was George W. Bush. After all, he presided over a terrorist attack that might well have been prevented if his appointees had been paying attention; took America into a ruinous war based on lies; turned a Clinton-era surplus into a vast deficit; and mismanaged regulation of a banking system that led to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Now, by refusing to condemn his replacement as worst president, he's compounding the damage he caused. But he's not alone; while a few brave Republicans have told the truth about the danger Trump poses to our democracy (and so much more), most are at best silent in the face of a potential catastrophe to come. Not a surprise, unfortunately.
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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Jeet Heer
Martin Pengelly
