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.)
Election interference from an (alleged) ally
If President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris needed any reminder that Benjamin Netanyahu is not their friend, not America’s friend and, most shamefully, not the friend of the Israeli hostages in Gaza, the murder by Hamas of six Israeli souls while Netanyahu dragged out negotiations should make that clear. Netanyahu has one interest: his own immediate political survival, even if it undermines Israel’s long-term survival.
Consistently since last Oct. 7, Friedman has offered some of the wisest commentary on what's happened. This piece puts many things in perspective, and says directly what has been fairly clear for some time: that Netanyahu is (among other things) trying to throw the U.S. election to Trump, who will rubber stamp anything that Israel's prime minister wants to do.
Voters who rely solely on traditional news sources are presented with a version of Trump that bears little resemblance to reality. They see a former president who, while controversial, appears to operate within the bounds of normal political discourse—or at worst, is breaking with it in some kind of refreshing manner. You can see this folie à deux at work in a recent Times piece occasioned by Trump’s amplification of social media posts alleging that Harris owed her career to the provision of “blowjobs”: “Though he has a history of making crass insults about his opponents, the reposts signal Mr. Trump’s willingness to continue to shatter longstanding norms of political speech.” Meanwhile, those who seek out primary sources encounter a starkly different figure—one prone to conspiracy theories, personal attacks, and extreme rhetoric.
I love the word "sanewashing" – a recent riff on wordplay that derives from whitewashing, more recently used with "greenwashing," the deceitful PR that polluters and climate-change instigators deploy to make it seem like they're doing good things for the environment. Sanewashing is what Big Journalism has been doing for Trump in epic ways for a long time now. (He loudly hates them anyway, of course.)
The incoherence of the Potterville speech is just one of countless examples. During a recent event in Wisconsin, Trump’s response to a question from the audience about reducing inflation entailed darting from his belief that Americans don’t eat bacon anymore to his assertion that wind energy doesn’t work. During remarks this spring, he stumbled from an attack on Biden’s age into a nonsensical reverie about the actor Cary Grant, which then spun off into an anecdote about a conversation he had with Michael Jackson. Compared even to his first term in office, Trump’s inability to focus on one train of thought appears to be growing significantly worse.
This opinion piece highlights a major news organization that rarely covers Trump's escalating derangement as, you know, news – but allows a commentator to go where the news reporters won't.
In one instance, the indictment said, one of the RT employees asked the company to produce a video that would blame Ukraine and the United States for a mass shooting at a Moscow music venue, the justice department said, even though Islamic State had claimed responsibility. A company founder responded that one of the commentators is “happy to cover it”, according to the indictment.
We only know the surface details of this story, and remember that the RT people are innocent until proved guilty (which will never happen since they're not likely to visit the U.S. anytime in the future). Based on what is known, it's worth noting that the so-far unnamed (by the Justice Department) U.S. company – CNN says it's an operation called "Tenet Media' – is cozy with some exceedingly nasty right-wing "influencers". As the Guardian notes in its story on this situation, quoting the Justice Department, the U.S. company was "happy" to smear Ukraine and the U.S. for murders that ISIS had already said it committed. So many questions: Was anyone receiving the money, directly or indirectly, curious about where it had originated? Who owns Tenet Media? Who runs it? How much were the influencers paid? I hope we see some serious journalistic digging into all of this. It stinks, big time.
Powerful
This video recitation of James Baldwin's advice to his nephew, on the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, reminds us of an evil part of America's past that still haunts our present and endangers our future. One of our two major political parties, now controlled by right-wing extremists, is trying to keep this history out of primary education – to protect white nationalism, not kids' sensibilities. Please have a listen.
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.
Parker Molloy
Zeeshan Aleem
Guardian staff and agencies
