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BY BRIAN BEUTLER, PRIYANKA ARIBINDI & CROOKED MEDIA Tuesday, August 6, 2019 |
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| MSM, WTF?!?! |
| Liberal frustration with the way the mainstream press treats President Trump may have finally reached a boiling point this week. Here’s some evidence that we may be seeing a more concerted effort by Democrats and progressive advocates to change the way the political media covers our terrible president.
On Sunday, Beto O’Rourke had one of his first viral moments of the presidential primary when he lost his patience with reporters covering the terrorist attack in El Paso, TX, and asked: “members of the press, what the fuck?!” That quote instantly became a go-to phrase for anyone expressing exasperation with how poorly the political press has covered Trump’s bigotry and corruption.
What does this all mean? People are pissed, and rightly so. In the Trump era, liberals have had to balance their criticisms of the media with the broader and more important goal of defending it from a right-wing assault, which Trump has led, to discredit neutral journalism altogether. This week’s developments show liberals are willing to use their clout to demand that those outlets produce journalism worth defending.
Does this change everything?! Probably not on its own, but it’s easy to imagine things snowballing. O’Rourke got a lot of attention for the stand he took, and other candidates will likely want to capture some of that magic—particularly when they return to the debate stage in September. Media reporters also sense something different is afoot here. And as our own Dan Pfeiffer told Politico, “For the first time in my career, making the press a foil is good politics in a Democratic primary, and that is going to have long-standing consequences for the business of journalism.”
Read → |
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| At least 17 million people were removed from voter rolls between the 2016 election and the 2018 midterms, according to a new report by the Brennan Center for Justice.
Back in 2013, the Supreme Court gutted Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. This section required states with a history of racial discrimination to clear any changes they made to voting requirements with the federal government. The report finds that jurisdictions that were previously subject to Section 5 now remove voters from the rolls at a median rate 40 percent higher than other jurisdictions.
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| H.R. 8 is a bipartisan bill that requires background checks on all gun sales or transfers and passed the House on February 27, but Mitch McConnell has blocked H.R. 8 in the Senate and still refuses to bring it to the floor. As long as McConnell leads the Senate, America will never get comprehensive gun reform.
Donate to Get Mitch or Die Trying to support 2020 Democratic Senate Candidates so that we can take the majority away from him and finally get the gun reform that America desperately needs → votesaveamerica.com/getmitch |
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| Author and luminary Toni Morrison has died at age 88. Morrison was the first black woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction as well.
Mexico will open a terrorism investigation into the mass shooting in El Paso, TX, that killed 22 people—eight of whom were Mexican citizens—and may request that the shooter be extradited to Mexico for trial. “We consider this an act of terrorism, in this case carried out in U.S. territory, but an act of terrorism against Mexicans,” said the country’s foreign minister.
President Trump and his campaign have filed a lawsuit challenging a new California law that requires presidential candidates to produce five years of their tax returns in order to appear on a primary ballot in the state, because he clearly has nothing to hide. The GOP and state party organization have also sued, because they are 100 percent confident he isn't hiding anything.
The disputed region of Kashmir is under lockdown after India’s Hindu-led government stripped it of the special status that gave it significant autonomy from the rest of India. The Muslim-majority Himalayan region is one of the most militarized places in the world, and both India and Pakistan claim sovereignty over it. India’s nationalist ruling party promised to take a firmer hand in Kashmir during this year’s election campaign and has placed prominent politicians in the region under house arrest, deployed more troops there, and instituted a communications blackout.
Trump has signed an executive order freezing the property and assets of the Venezuelan government—the latest escalation in his effort to remove President Nicolás Maduro from office. The U.S. has similar embargoes on Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Syria.
House Democrats have asked the National Archives and Records Administration to turn over documents stemming from Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s service in the Bush administration from 2001-2006, when Kavanaugh served in the White House counsel’s office, and staff secretary. During Kavanaugh’s confirmation process last year, then-Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley requested documents from 2001-2003, but withdrew the request before they were provided in full, and Republicans confirmed him despite enormous gaps in the vetting process.
U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman has submitted his resignation, effective October 3. Fiona Hill, the top Russian affairs official at the National Security Council, is also expected to step down. Must be because they’ve stopped Russia’s attacks on our elections with Trump’s full support and their work here is done.
Former FBI agent Peter Strzok (you know, the one with with the affair and the texts Trump won’t stop tweeting about) has filed a wrongful termination suit against the Justice Department and FBI. He claims his dismissal was politically motivated and a violation of his First Amendment rights, and, yeah, kinda seems that way.
The police chief of Galveston, TX, has apologized after a photo surfaced depicting two white officers on horseback leading a black suspect in handcuffs by a rope. Are you fucking kidding, how does this happen?
The Nebraska GOP told the Republican lawmaker who said the party is “complicit to obvious racist and immoral activity” to register as a Democrat. Ah yes, not being a racist! Something that is somehow political again in 2019.
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| 25 percent of humanity faces an urgent risk of running out of water. Water stress has already affected many of the major cities in the 17 countries that face these risks, including São Paulo, Brazil, Chennai, India, and Cape Town, South Africa, which just last year barely avoided hitting “Day Zero,” when all the country’s dams would run dry.
Climate change obviously exacerbates this issue, making rainfall more erratic and the days hotter, resulting in more evaporation and demand for water. This past July was the hottest month in recorded history.
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| Sometimes traveling for work is a blast (like when Jon, Jon, and Tommy bring you on tour to Nashville and you all do a bar crawl down Broadway). But most of the time, not so much. So why not make it easy for yourself? From the creators of KAYAK, Lola.com makes it simple to book, manage, and track corporate travel. It also helps you save money, by giving you access to negotiated fares, refundable tickets, and automated travel policies, along with 24/7 support. Work travel doesn’t have to be a pain in the ass, ok? For a limited time only, get a $50 Amazon gift card when you attend a demo of Lola. Save yourself → |
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| Colombia will grant citizenship to more than 24,000 children born to Venezuelan migrants living in Colombia since August 2015, making them eligible to receive adequate education and health care. More than 1.4 million Venezuelans have fled their country for Colombia to escape violence, inflation, mass food and medicine shortages, and widespread power outages. However, the children born to those migrants are currently in “legal limbo” with no identity documents or proof of citizenship in any country.
“...We are supporting these helpless little ones who want to have a right to citizenship and we’re proudly saying that they are Colombians,” said President Ivan Duque. “We are going to embrace them, we are going to support them in difficult times. We are giving a ray of hope to thousands of children and families.”
Colombia’s government has also urged Venezuelan migrants to register with authorities, so the country is better able to provide them with aid without the threat of deportation. |
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