Politics

alt-text for thumbnail: text saying “blocking fascists is self-care” next to an antifascist flag on a 2d digital art wooden background

Archived version

The rapid spread of baseless claims about Haitian immigrants reveals the need for long-term accountability in political reporting.

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Liars must pay a price

Given this landscape of rampant misinformation, journalists have an important role to play — one that goes beyond fact-checking. It's time for the media to make politicians pay a real price for spreading outrageous lies.

When a politician like J.D. Vance amplifies a baseless claim about Haitian immigrants eating pets, or when Trump asserts that schools are secretly performing gender transition surgeries, these lies shouldn't be treated as isolated incidents. They should become part of the narrative about these politicians moving forward.

Journalists have a responsibility to consistently remind the public of these lies in future coverage. Every article about Vance should mention his willingness to spread xenophobic misinformation. Every piece on Trump should reference his history of transgender fearmongering. These lies should color all future coverage of these candidates, becoming an integral part of their political identity.

By doing this, journalists are accomplishing several things at once. It holds politicians accountable for their words, creating a lasting consequence for spreading misinformation. It provides important context for readers, helping them evaluate the credibility of these figures on an ongoing basis. It may deter politicians from spreading future lies, knowing that doing so could tarnish their reputation long-term. Perhaps most importantly, it helps combat the normalization of misinformation in political discourse.

Some may argue that this approach compromises journalistic objectivity. However, consistently reporting on a politician's documented history of spreading lies isn't a form of bias — it's responsible journalism. Facts aren't partisan, and the public deserves to know when their leaders have a track record of dishonesty.

Moreover, this strategy could help break the cycle of misinformation we're currently trapped in. If politicians know that spreading lies will damage their credibility long-term, they may think twice before amplifying unverified claims for short-term political gain.

Of course, this approach requires courage from news organizations. They must be willing to withstand accusations of bias and potential loss of access to these political figures. But the alternative – allowing politicians to spread harmful lies without consequence — is far more damaging to our democratic discourse.

"In the end, we all knew what we knew before, that ABC's goal tonight was to help Kamala Harris, and ABC did help Kamala Harris," Laura Ingraham said on Fox News. That's one way of putting it. Van Jones on CNN found another.

"She whupped him," Jone said. "She just whupped him. ... Kamala Harris did something great for every parent in America. She put the bully in his place."

A certain super gigantic galactic pop star seemed to agree. Moments after the debate, Taylor Swift endorsed Harris, signing her Instagram post "Childless Cat Lady," a reference to a comment made by Trump's running mate, JD Vance.

For more details on the 4chan nature, head over to the Daily Beast for pieces like these:

• "...they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
• meandering rant on abortion rights also included multiple false claims
• recap of daily beast debate tweet/commentary

Debate Transcript: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/harris-trump-presidential-debate-transcript/story?id=113560542

PBS (no longer live) updates: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/live-updates-trump-and-harris-debate-in-philadelphia

The first 10 minutes in the linked video shows the undercover meeting, the rest is a Q&A with one of the investigative journalists by media outlet Democracy Now.

As Donald Trump tries to distance his campaign from Project 2025, those behind the right-wing policy blueprint to remake the U.S. government continue to brag in private about their close ties to the Republican presidential nominee and how they intend to push a radical right-wing agenda in a second Trump administration.

In July, Project 2025 co-author Russell Vought met with two people he believed to be relatives of a wealthy conservative donor interested in funding the effort. In fact, he was meeting with two reporters with the U.K.-based Centre for Climate Reporting as part of an undercover sting captured on video.

Over the course of two hours, Vought described Trump's disavowal of Project 2025 as mere theater and laid out plans for mass deportations, restricting abortion, gutting independent government bureaucracies, using the military against racial justice protesters and more.

The secret plans are "designed to ensure that this kind of radical agenda that the conservative movement has in the U.S. can be implemented from day one," says Lawrence Carter, founder and director of the Centre for Climate Reporting and one of the reporters who spoke with Vought. "They want to make sure that the mistakes from the first Trump administration, as they see them, where not much got done, are avoided this time around."

[Edit typo.]

alt-text: [yellow words saying “abolish cis puberty” next to a trans flag on a digital art wooden background]

How we treat puberty relates heavily to the systems of transphobia, sexism, and quite a lot of other hierarchies. How we treat it is a large component of systematic oppression and must be taken seriously.

Fred Trump III’s new memoir, All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way, shares fresh insights into the Trump family and acts as a platform to advocate for individuals with developmental disabilities.

Fred Trump’s own son William has a rare genetic disorder that causes severe developmental and intellectual disabilities. He says Donald Trump once told him to abandon William, saying, “He doesn’t recognize you. Let him die, and move down to Florida.” After a meeting in the Oval Office about dedicating more resources to people with disabilities, Fred Trump says his uncle said, “Those people, the costs. They should just die.”

“How could one human being say that about any other human being, least of all your grandnephew?” says Fred Trump, who calls on the next president to support disabled Americans. “The Harris campaign and her positions are ones that I believe. Now, that being said, I have yet to hear anything regarding disability actions … and I will put their feet to the fire on this.”

Archived version

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued two of the state’s largest counties to block efforts to register voters ahead of the November general election, drawing claims of voter suppression from state Democrats.

Paxton announced Friday a lawsuit to block Travis County, which includes the state capital of Austin, from using taxpayer money to hire a third-party vendor to identify and contact eligible but unregistered voters to try to get them registered before the Oct. 7 deadline.

That followed a lawsuit earlier in the week against Bexar County, which includes San Antonio; that county hired the same company for a similar registration effort. Paxton has also threatened legal action against Houston’s Harris County if it engages in a similar voter registration effort.

Paxton’s lawsuits are the latest round in an ongoing fight between Texas Republicans, who have long dominated state government and insist they are taking measures to bolster election integrity, and Democrats, who have strongholds in Texas’s largest urban areas and complain the GOP-led efforts amount to voter suppression, particularly of Latinos.

In the lawsuits, Paxton claimed the contracts went to a partisan vendor and argued they go beyond the local government’s legal authority. Paxton said Texas law does not explicitly allow counties to mail out unsolicited registration forms.

The extreme right-wing blueprints of Project 2025 [by the Heritage Foundation] and Agenda 47 [by Donald Trump campaign team] call for radical changes to gun control laws-- making it harder to track illegal weapons, overturning state restrictions on deadly firearms, and even arming teachers.

These proposals check off the gun lobby’s wish list at the expense of public safety, despite most Americans supporting sound gun control measures, according to Kris Brown, president of Brady: United Against Gun Violence.

Together, Agenda 47 and Project 2025 aim "to sell as many guns to as many people as possible, and to remove every public safety measure to allow that to happen-- it's profit-seeking," Brown says, adding that Trump and the gun lobby "could care less" that gun violence is now the leading killer of American youth.

[Edit typo.]

Archived version

Yesterday, at the Economic Club of New York, one member asked Donald Trump a very specific question about his policy priorities:

“If you win in November, can you commit to prioritizing legislation to make child care affordable, and if so, what specific piece of legislation will you advance?”

Trump’s reply was not only not specific; it was incoherent. After a little throat-clearing about how “important” an issue child care is, he seemed to turn to a discussion of his nebulous idea to increase tariffs on foreign imports, although even that is hard to ascertain.

Trump said:

But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, that—because, look, child care is child care. It’s, couldn’t—you know, there’s something … You have to have it. In this country, you have to have it.

But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to, but they’ll get used to it very quickly. And it’s not going to stop them from doing business with us, but they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country.

Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about, including child care, that it’s gonna take care. We’re gonna have—I, I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time, coupled with, uh, the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country—because I have to stay with child care. I want to stay with child care, but those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I’m talking about, including growth.

But growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just, uh, that I just told you about. We’re gonna be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it’s, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in.

We’re going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people, and then we’ll worry about the rest of the world. Let’s help other people. But we’re gonna take care of our country first. This is about America first. It’s about: Make America great again. We have to do it, because right now we’re a failing nation. So we’ll take care of it. Thank you. Very good question.

Archived version

Here is the CBPP report

If Republicans were to win the White House and Congress, their fiscal agenda would increase poverty and hardship nationwide in order to provide deep tax breaks for corporations and wealthy families, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a liberal-leaning think tank.

In a new report, the group analyzes the House GOP’s legislative wish list alongside Project 2025, the policy blueprint for another Trump administration written in part by former White House officials and published by the right-wing Heritage Foundation. Taken together, the documents reveal a conservative vision for policies that would exacerbate existing inequities in life expectancy and generational wealth, with millions of people facing higher costs for health care, child care, food and housing.

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Taking aim at a longtime bugaboo on the right, Project 2025 proposes the elimination of Head Start, the federal program that provides early education support for low-income families and benefits 800,000 children aged 3 to 5 years old. This would reduce access to child care and other services that allow parents to go to work and pay the bills.

The United States would be a “harsher” place to live with more inequality and less opportunity under these GOP policies, the report warns. Behind these budget numbers are millions of real people who will lose health coverage, food assistance, and other supports as the nation grapples with interconnected crises of affordability, addiction and homelessness.

“Dick Cheney will be voting for Kamala Harris,” she said of her father, who served as vice president under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009. “If you think about the moment we’re in, and you think about how serious this moment is, my dad believes — and he said publicly — there has never been an individual in our country who is as grave a threat to our democracy as Donald Trump is.”

“One of the most important things we need to do as a country as we begin to rebuild our politics is we need to elect serious people,” Liz Cheney said. “Here in Texas, you guys do have a tremendous, serious candidate running for U.S. Senate.”

The audience erupted in applause cutting Liz Cheney off.

“It’s not Ted Cruz," she said.

She blamed Cruz for leading the effort in the Senate for trying to overturn the election.

"That is not somebody to put in a position to be able to do that again," Cheney said.

Archived version

Donald Trump’s latest attack on American rule of law and the U.S. Dept. of Justice is facing condemnation. The GOP presidential nominee and convicted felon awaiting sentencing, while speaking at a courthouse press conference on his efforts to appeal a $5 million judgment in a New York sexual abuse and defamation civil case, called the DOJ’s bombshell indictments in the Kremlin cash and Russian disinformation case a “scam.”

It’s always the same,” observed foreign policy, national security, and political affairs analyst and commentator David Rothkopf. “Defend Putin. Defend Russia. Defend corruption. Accuse those who are enforcing the law of being engaged in a scam. Why does he sound this way? Because he is a traitor and a criminal.”

Trump told reporters Friday, “This is a long and complicated web and story, but it all goes back to the DOJ and Kamala and sleepy Joe and all the rest of them.”

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“Nobody’s ever seen anything like what’s happening now. I understand yesterday, they’re bringing up Russia, Russia, Russia again, that they’ve done for years. Never found anything,” Trump falsely claimed. “But they should be looking at China, China, China, Iran, Iran, Iran, lots of other places.”

“I haven’t spoken to anybody from Russia in years. They know that, but it’s a scam,” he claimed. “But, it all goes back to the DOJ because we had a trial today. It’s an appeal of a ridiculous –.”

Trump was referring to this week’s indictments that reveal a U.S. media outlet that platformed several far-right pro-Trump influencers was funded with millions of dollars from Russia in a scheme to help Trump.

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The liberal super PAC American Bridge responded to Trump’s comments by pointing to an Associated Press article and writing: “YESTERDAY Trump’s former senior campaign aide was charged for accepting $1 million to spew Kremlin talking points.”

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Archived version

For many months, media critics and liberal Democrats have insisted that Donald Trump’s mental unfitness for the presidency is—or should be treated as—a big and important news story in and of itself. If President Biden’s age merited extensive, focused coverage because his fitness for the job was naturally of interest to voters, goes this critique, then surely Trump’s visible incoherence, cognitive impairment, inability to cogently discuss the simplest public matters, and increasingly strange flights of fantasy deserve equivalent treatment.

This argument has never received an even remotely serious hearing from newsroom leaders at big media organizations. But it might have just become a bit harder to ignore, now that a well-respected veteran journalist has—in a moment of striking candor—called out his colleagues for failing to take Trump’s mental state seriously as a story in its own right.

“We have a damaged, delusional, old man who again might get reelected to the presidency of the United States,” Mike Barnicle, who served as a longtime columnist for The Boston Globe and other newspapers, said on [TV ]Morning Joe early Wednesday. Barnicle continued that Trump frequently says “deranged” things in public that “you wouldn’t repeat” on “American television” or “in front of your children.”

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The judgment that Trump is “out of his mind” might strike some newsroom denizens as loaded, opinionated language. And surely some of them would reject Barnicle’s critique by noting that they do often cover Trump’s wild-eyed utterances.

But we should pause to appreciate Barnicle’s deeper, underlying point here. It’s that merely covering each of Trump’s hallucinatory claims as news items, even if that includes aggressively fact-checking them, doesn’t do justice to the much bigger story that’s unfolding right at the end of all of our noses.

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Archived version

Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, privately heaped praise on a major religious-rights group for fighting efforts to reform the nation’s highest court — efforts sparked, in large part, by her husband’s ethical lapses.

Thomas expressed her appreciation in an email sent to Kelly Shackelford, an influential litigator whose clients have won cases at the Supreme Court. Shackelford runs the First Liberty Institute, a $25 million-a-year organization that describes itself as “the largest legal organization in the nation dedicated exclusively to defending religious liberty for all Americans.”

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Thomas wrote that First Liberty’s opposition to court-reform proposals gave a boost to certain judges. According to Shackelford, Thomas wrote in all caps: “YOU GUYS HAVE FILLED THE SAILS OF MANY JUDGES. CAN I JUST TELL YOU, THANK YOU SO, SO, SO MUCH.”

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Shackelford attacked Justice Elena Kagan as “treasonous” and “disloyal” after she endorsed an enforcement mechanism for the court’s newly adopted ethics code in a recent public appearance. He said that such an ethics code would “destroy the independence of the judiciary.” (This past weekend, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said she too was open to an enforceable ethics code for the Supreme Court.)

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This is not the first time that a spouse of a Supreme Court justice injected themselves into controversial political matters. Ginni Thomas sent dozens of messages after the 2020 election that echoed then-President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud. In messages to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, Thomas said “Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History” and urged Trump to not concede the election. In emails to Arizona and Wisconsin lawmakers, she pleaded with them to fight back against supposed fraud and send a “clean slate of Electors.” She later wrote, “The nation’s eyes are on you now. … Please consider what will happen to the nation we all love if you do not stand up and lead.”

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Martha-Ann Alito, the wife of Justice Samuel Alito, faced scrutiny for flying an upside-down American flag at the family’s Virginia home — a symbol used by the Stop the Steal movement that claimed the 2020 election had been stolen from Trump. The flag flew outside the Alito home as the Supreme Court was deciding whether to hear a case related to the 2020 election. (Samuel Alito told The New York Times he had no role in flying the flag. He said his wife did it in response to “a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.”)

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Near the start of the Biden presidency, [Shackelford] said, First Liberty raised $3 million to run a campaign that sought to block efforts to add more justices to the high court and to reform or eliminate the filibuster in the U.S. Senate. Getting rid of the filibuster then would’ve removed the 60-vote procedural hurdle that currently exists for most types of legislation.

According to Shackelford, First Liberty conducted polling, ran advertisements, worked with social media influencers and urged Congress to oppose these changes. In particular, Shackelford said, his group focused its activities on convincing Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to oppose filibuster reform.

In the end, both senators did just that. “We stopped this from happening,” Shackelford said. (Spokespeople for Manchin and Sinema did not respond to requests for comment.)

But now, he went on, First Liberty needed more money if it wanted to mount a similar campaign to stop Supreme Court reform. He mentioned the Brennan Center’s recent $30 million gift and then asked, “Where’s our, you know, $10 million guy or gal?”

Archived version

The Republican Vice Presidential nominee JD Vance said that school shootings were simply a “fact of life” after a shooting at a Georgia high school left four dead — the 45th school shooting in the United States so far this year.

The comments, made at an Arizona rally on Thursday, come after Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz called for enhanced gun control measures in their own campaign rallies following the shooting.

“If these psychos are going to go after our kids we’ve got to be prepared for it,” Vance said, bucking a question asked on gun control measures and instead championing efforts to spend more on school security, per the Associated Press. “We don’t have to like the reality that we live in, but it is the reality we live in. We’ve got to deal with it.”

The New York Times Climate Forward event will align with the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, and one its speakers will be Kevin D. Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation and Heritage Action for America.

Project 2025 is a [Republican] presidential playbook to dismantle democracy, spearheaded and organized by the far-right Heritage Foundation, and with 100 coalition partner organizations, many of which are well-known for pushing anti-LGBTQ policy, climate change denials, anti-abortion views, and harmful rhetoric, accompanied by Christian nationalism.

You may find this useful: https://www.25and.me

Archived version

As Republican politicians in the U.S. push anti-transgender rhetoric ahead of a historic election, transgender and nonbinary Americans are facing new laws and rules that effectively prohibit them and others from obtaining documentation like birth certificates and driver’s licenses that align with their gender identities.

Advocates are fighting back. They’ve been mobilizing communities and organizing resources to help transgender Americans, an effort aimed at safeguarding their civic rights. Some trans voters have expressed confusion and fear of discrimination at the ballot box that could discourage them from participating in public life.

“There is a chilling effect,” said Lauren Kunis, CEO and executive director of VoteRiders, which helps voters obtain identification. “There is an unsafe and intimidating environment around existing as trans in society, and definitely in being able to go to the polls safely and cast a ballot.”

UPDATE: Chinese Consulate says envoy was not removed after Hochul remark

Archived version

China's consul general New York in the U.S. left his post as scheduled after completing his posting last month, the State Department said on Wednesday, hours after New York’s governor said she asked for his expulsion in the aftermath of an aide’s arrest for secretly acting as a Chinese agent.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters that Consul General Huang Ping “was not expelled.”

“Our understanding is that the consul general reached the end of a regular scheduled rotation in August, and so rotated out of the position, but was not expelled,” Miller said.

“But of course, when it comes to the status of particular employees of a foreign mission, I would refer you to the foreign country to speak to it. But there was no expulsion action.”

China’s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Huang Ping’s status.

Earlier on Wednesday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul told an event that she spoke by phone at the request of Secretary of State Antony Blinken to a high-ranking State Department official “and I had conveyed my desire to have the consul general from the People’s Republic of China in the New York mission expelled.”

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TL;DR: Democrats are united against Trump and will continue to be that way, but if Trump loses so overwhelmingly that he stops running, then a Harris administration will be stuck with a largely Republican government that will keep it from getting much done, thus making it easier for a new brand of Republicans to emerge in two years for for the mid-terms and beyond.

Harris is effectively an emergency nominee, has few policy proposals, scant governing history in Washington and a history of churning through staff. Oh, and she would be the first Democrat to enter the presidency since 1884 without majorities in both chambers, should Republicans flip the Senate.

That adds up to a recipe for gridlock — and perhaps some deal-making to fund the government and avoid across-the-board tax hikes — but not a Scandinavian social welfare state.

The day after Trump leaves the scene, Democrats will lose their best force for unity, fundraising and enthusiasm. But they’ll have the same challenges they do today with the Electoral College, the Senate and the House and the distribution of voters therein.

Archived version

The Texas attorney general is now threatening to sue two Latino-majority counties in his mad dash to block alleged “voter fraud.”

It seems that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton will do anything to prevent Texas from flipping for Kamala Harris—including preventing eligible citizens from registering to vote.*

Paxton threatened legal action against Bexar and Harris counties if they proceed with sending out mail-in voter registration forms, which the counties have proposed doing via third-party vendors. Paxton argues that it could encourage noncitizens to register to vote.

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Paxton’s office announced Wednesday that he’d filed a lawsuit against Bexar County Commissioner Court after it approved a proposal that funds the production and mailing of voter registration forms “to unregistered voters in location(s) based on targeting agreed to by the county,” according to KENS-5. Paxton claimed the program was unlawful because it “could induce ineligible people—such as felons and noncitizens—to commit a crime by attempting to register to vote.”

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In reality, there is little to no evidence to demonstrate that noncitizen voting is a significant problem in the United States. In 2016, noncitizen votes accounted for just 0.0001 percent of the votes cast, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Still, it’s a nonissue that Republicans such as House Speaker Mike Johnson, and of course Trump, have continued to tout baselessly throughout the election cycle.

Paxton’s offensive goes even further, to conflate unregistered, but eligible, voters with noncitizens.

His newest action is part of his larger campaign to actively disenfranchise Latino voters in Texas who might support Harris.

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Archived version

For instance, last week, Trump posted the following to his Truth Social account:

I have reached an agreement with the Radical Left Democrats for a Debate with Comrade Kamala Harris. It will be Broadcast Live on ABC FAKE NEWS, by far the nastiest and most unfair newscaster in the business, on Tuesday, September 10th, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Rules will be the same as the last CNN Debate, which seemed to work out well for everyone except, perhaps, Crooked Joe Biden. The Debate will be “stand up,” and Candidates cannot bring notes, or “cheat sheets.” We have also been given assurance by ABC that this will be a “fair and equitable” Debate, and that neither side will be given the questions in advance (No Donna Brazile!). Harris would not agree to the FoxNews Debate on September 4th, but that date will be held open in case she changes her mind or, Flip Flops, as she has done on every single one of her long held and cherished policy beliefs. A possible third Debate, which would go to NBC FAKE NEWS, has not been agreed to by the Radical Left. GOD BLESS AMERICA!

CNN described that rambling, insult-laden, conspiracy-riddled wall of text—itself a pretty good example of what he spends his time off the campaign trail doing—by writing, “Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced he has ‘reached an agreement’ to participate in a September 10 debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, noting that ‘the rules will be the same as the last CNN debate, which seemed to work out well for everyone.’”

Does that really capture what Trump posted?

[The article provides more exampmes like that.]

This “sanewashing” of Trump’s statements isn’t just poor journalism; it’s a form of misinformation that poses a threat to democracy. By continually reframing Trump’s incoherent and often dangerous rhetoric as conventional political discourse, major news outlets are failing in their duty to inform the public and are instead providing cover for increasingly erratic behavior from a former—and potentially future—president.

The consequences of this journalistic malpractice extend far beyond misleading headlines. By laundering Trump’s words in this fashion, the media is actively participating in the erosion of our shared reality. When major news outlets consistently present a polished version of Trump’s statements, they create an alternate narrative that exists alongside the unfiltered truth available on social media and in unedited footage.

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 [...]