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.)
This issue of Cornerstone goes deeper into the danger our nation faces this fall. Trump's escalating, violence-laden rhetoric – which reached new levels over the weekend – has sparked an outpouring of worry and contempt from people who understand the threat. (Our biggest news organizations remain preoccupied with other things, as always.)
[W]arnings about the authoritarian menace of Project 2025 and its ilk must be wedded to clear ambitions to rebuild our emaciated public institutions, to protect people from the predations of a rigged economy. The fascist threat collapses when ordinary people have meaningful opportunities for social connection and purpose, the groundwork of human dignity.
This op-ed, by a professor of American studies at Yale, is entirely plausible speculation on what the early days of a new Trump administration would look like. The author describes a nation that has gone beyond authoritarian, into a hellscape of corruption, violence, racism, and denial of fundamental human rights including free speech. Our duty to America requires us to help the broader public understand how grim things will be if the Republicans take the presidency and Congress. And it will start the minute he is sworn in. But as the author also notes, angry opposition is not an agenda. Harris has one – not perfect by any means – and it outright sunny compared to the nightmare of Trump's.
Trump, repeatedly and in open sight, is outlining two major initiatives involving large-scale, systematic arrests of groups of people. His proposed mass deportations of millions of migrants, he warned Saturday, will be “a bloody story.” And he keeps pledging to redirect the Department of Justice against his own political enemies, calling for prominent Democrats to face “public military tribunals” and for members of the congressional committee who investigated January 6th to be indicted for treason. (For good measure, his promises to pardon January 6th rioters now explicitly include those who assaulted police during the insurrection attempt.)
Not long after the 2016 elections, I was discussing the fallout of the coming Trump presidency with a colleague. I had a litany of worries: the shredding of civil liberties, further elevation of racism, government corruption becoming the norm, and more. My colleague nodded as I spoke, but when I finished he told me what he was anticipating with deep trepidation: a surge in domestic violence, sparked in large part by a man who was plainly eager to see it. Trump's cult plainly got the message. But the harm they've done to date is just a warm-up for what's coming as official policy if Trump re-takes the White House (and his angry cultists will trigger some serious mayhem). Egger and Kristol call on our major news media to meet this emergency with the urgency it demands, and forego the standard, trivial political pursuits just this once. Sadly, there's not much in Big Journalism's performance to date to imagine it will step up, even when it matters this much.
It’s also quite serious: a promise to imprison his enemies, junta-style, that extends not just to his political foes but to those who run elections and those who donate money to candidates. It’s a broadside against Democratic society of the sort that was unrivaled in American history before Trump. It’s a kind of high water mark, even for him.
I praised Talking Points Memo in the weekend Cornerstone because of pieces like this one. It takes a noteworthy development, puts it into the context we need to understand – in this case, the gravity of the Trump plans. One of the most significant elements of this latest threat is how directly it attacks the people who work to make our elections safe and honest. Fascists rely on intimidation. Trump is no exception.
Theofficer’s visit appears to be part of a broad — and unusual — effort by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration to inspect thousands of already verified and validated petitions for Amendment 4 in the final two months before Election Day. The amendment would overturnFlorida’s six-week abortion ban by proposing to protectabortion access in Florida until viability. Since last week, DeSantis’ secretary of state has ordered elections supervisors in at leastfour counties to send to Tallahassee at least36,000 petition forms already deemed to have been signed by real people. Since the Times first reported on this effort, Alachua and Broward counties have confirmed they also received requests from the state.
Across the country, Republican-controlled states are using increasingly brazen tactics to suppress voting by people who are likely to vote for Democrats. The policy is driven by the usual motives: racism and a conviction that Democrats simply cannot be allowed to govern. Florida has enacted any number of anti-voting measures. One of the most vile is a a new state police agency aimed, according to DeSantis and his appratchiks, at rooting out (basically nonexistent) voter fraud – adopting the lie and then sending out the cops to find problems to prosecute. This is police-state bullying, pure and simple.
"In one day, Trump threatened the use of mass government violence inside the United States, asserted that kids are getting secret medical procedures at schools, and promised to lock up his political opponents. One might reasonably assume that when Trump takes the stage with Vice President Kamala Harris tomorrow night, the first thing the moderators will ask is: Are you out of your mind? Well, maybe not in those words, exactly. But the very first question at the debate should reflect a basic paradox in this election: How can any meeting between Trump and Harris be a “debate” if Trump has already made clear that he rejects the foundations of the American system of government?" – Tom Nichols in the Atlantic
A near majority of voters say Mr. Trump is “not too far” to the left or right on the issues, while only around one-third say he’s “too far to the right.” Nearly half of voters, in contrast, say Ms. Harris is too far to the left; only 41 percent say she’s “not too far either way.” Nate Cohn in the New York Times, citing a recent poll. [Editor's note: This absurd misperception among the electorate can be largely attributed to the failures at media outlets like the New York Times to do their jobs.]
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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Daniel Martinez HoSang
Romy Ellenbogen
