Whatever happens on November 3rd, science won. President Trump thought that he could bluff and spin his way through the pandemic. He thought he could hold big rallies and deride masks as gestures of political correctness. That he could ignore biology and create his own alternate world in the midst …
Read More »Contact Tracing Trump: A Guide to Who in the President's Circle Has (or Could Have) Covid-19
President Trump returned to the White House on Monday after spending the weekend at Walter Reed Medical Center following his positive Covid-19 diagnosis. Though the president tweeted Tuesday that he’s “FEELING GREAT,” his health status remains a mystery, and a growing number of people he’s been in contact with directly …
Read More »Amy Coney Barrett Is an Emergency
This is not a drill. This is a judicial emergency. We are at DEFCON 1. These are not exaggerations. If the reports are true that President Trump plans on nominating Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court on Saturday, we will be on the verge of the Supreme Court …
Read More »Wisconsin's Governor Called a Special Session on Police Reform. Republicans Stopped It After 30 Seconds
A Kenosha, Wisconsin, police officer shot an unarmed black man seven times in the back. An armed teenage vigilante has been charged with five felonies for shooting three people, and killing two, at the ensuing protests. As marches continued, with armed white snipers observed on downtown Kenosha rooftops, the state’s …
Read More »Video Surfaces of Bannon Joking About Stealing 'All That Money From Build the Wall'
Only one day after he was indicted on conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering charges, a video has surfaced showing former Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon joking with one of his alleged co-conspirators about stealing “all that money from ‘We Build The Wall,’” a crowdfunding campaign that raised …
Read More »Rep. Ayanna Pressley on Channeling the Protest Movement into Real Change
The last of Ayanna Pressley’s hair fell out in the middle of December, on the day before the Massachusetts representative and the rest of the House voted on President Trump’s articles of impeachment. Losing her crown of Senegalese twists — the signature hairstyle that Pressley, 46, had been wearing since …
Read More »Useful Idiots: Omar Wasow on Violent Vs. Non-Violent Protests
In this week’s quarantine episode of ourUseful Idiots podcast, hosts Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper are joined by Omar Wasow, assistant professor of politics at Princeton University. Our hosts Matt and Katie debate (or as Matt describes it, “I decided to pick a fight with Katie”) the shifting attitudes of …
Read More »American Plague
It was just a week ago now that Derek Chauvin, then still employed as a Minneapolis police officer, pressed his left knee into the neck of George Floyd for what, on video, seemed like an interminable amount of time. It was a total of eight minutes and 46 seconds, nearly …
Read More »Senator Sherrod Brown Knows How to Save the Soul of the Democratic Party
Sherrod Brown has always defied easy categorization. A Yale graduate from a well-off family, he became a state representative in Ohio at the age of 21 and spent his free time in local union halls, absorbing the stories of auto and steelworkers. In the 1990s and 2000s, when Bill Clinton …
Read More »Can Ads That Use Trump Against Himself Destroy His Re-Election Bid?
A new ad that attempts to capitalize on President’s Trump’s laissez-faire handling of the coronavirus crisis by using his own words against him seems to be a sure-fire strategy, but will it prove effective? The digital ad artfully pulls together clips of the president lying about the state of the …
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