Category Archives: Global Issues

How To Buy Yourself A Cabinet Position

Posted on by under Election 2024, Global Issues, Law and justice, Political commentary, Trump's Staff Picks

Ever since the November 5th election, Trump has been spewing out names for people to fill positions in his upcoming administration.  Thus far, not a single one is actually qualified for the position to which he hopes they will be confirmed, but qualifications, such as knowing how the department they would be managing operates, seem unimportant to Felon Trump.  So, how and where did he find all these highly unskilled, unqualified people so quickly?  Well, as Robert Reich shows us – he didn’t find them – they found him!  They spent time, energy, and in many cases lots of money to buy themselves a seat in his ‘inner circle’.  Read on …

The difference between loyalty and subservience

Trump’s picks are submissive hacks whose cringeworthy subservience to him will bring down his administration — and possibly America

By Robert Reich

05 December 2024

The media has it all wrong about Trump’s picks for his administration. The conventional view is they’re “Trump loyalists” whom Trump “recruited.”

Rubbish.

First, they’re not loyalists; they’re subservient hacks.

There’s a crucial difference.

All politicians want their underlings to be loyal, but Trump wants them to be more loyal to him than to the nation, and he demands total subservience without regard to right or wrong.

For the FBI, Trump has picked Kash Patel, who has pledged to prosecute Trump’s political opponents and “come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig the presidential election.”

Trump’s selection for attorney general, Pam Bondi, has said that when Trump returns to power, “the prosecutors will be prosecuted.”

Moreover, Trump didn’t recruit these people or anybody else. They recruited him.

Every one of his nominees campaigned for these jobs by engaging in conspicuous displays of submission and flattery directed toward Trump.

Elise Stefanik, whom Trump has nominated to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, repeatedly boasted that she was the first lawmaker to endorse Trump’s reelection bid.

Before Trump tapped Kristi Noem to head the Department of Homeland Security, she sent him a four-foot replica of Mt. Rushmore with Trump’s face next to those of Washington, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Lincoln.

Mike Waltz, who Trump has picked for national security adviser, supported a move in Congress to rename Washington Dulles International Airport the “Donald J. Trump International Airport.”

Lee Zeldin, whom Trump has picked for EPA administrator, said publicly that the criminal prosecutions of Trump were akin to Putin’s persecution of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Stephen Miller, who will be a Trump White House adviser, said during a Fox News interview that Trump is the “most stylish president” in our lifetimes. “Donald Trump is a style icon!”

Ten of Trump’s picks so far were Fox News hosts or contributors who repeatedly mouthed Trump’s lies about the 2020 election being stolen, about January 6 being a “peaceful protest,” and Biden being the force behind Trump’s prosecutions.

Some of Trump’s picks showed up at his criminal trial in Manhattan, where they verbally attacked members of the presiding judge’s family on behalf of Trump, who was under a rule of silence.

Some picks appeared at his campaign rallies, expanding on Trump’s lies and lavishing him with praise.

Many made large donations to Trump’s campaign. Five of his picks so far are billionaires.

All knew that Trump wanted people who would do whatever he asked of them. So they prostrated themselves to show their deference to him.

All knew that Trump liked to be fawned over. So they debased themselves by giving him gushing compliments.

They knew that Trump wanted people lacking an independent moral compass. So they went out of their way to demonstrate they have no integrity by retelling Trump’s lies in public with even more verve and intensity than he displayed when telling them.

Time and again they have performed acts of cringeworthy subservience toward Trump, proving themselves reliable conduits for his scheming vindictiveness.

This is a rare bunch. How many Americans would eagerly repeat to national audiences bald-faced lies spouted by an authoritarian — lies that undermine our democracy? How many Americans would publicly grovel before Trump, making it clear they’ll do whatever he asks of them regardless of consequence?

To be a member of this unique group, one needs to be both colossally ambitious and profoundly insecure, willing to demean oneself to gain Trump’s favor.

Trump didn’t find these people; these people found Trump. And to get in his good graces, they saw to it that he noticed their servile deference, fawning adulation, and total submission.

But these people will also bring about Trump’s downfall, and possibly the downfall of America.

That’s because one of the most important things a president needs is accurate and useful feedback. These are in short supply even in the best of administrations.

People who work for a president are often reluctant to be bearers of bad news. Presidents are typically surrounded by “yes” men and women afraid to say anything that will ruffle powerful feathers.

As a result, presidents can make huge mistakes — invading Iraq and Afghanistan, deregulating Wall Street and then bailing it out when its gambling gets out of hand, pardoning Richard Nixon, waging war in Vietnam.

Trump’s toadies are even less likely to cross him. To the contrary, they’ll egg him on.

The years ahead would be dangerous enough if Trump sought out unprincipled enablers.

The coming years will be even more perilous because unprincipled enablers have sought out Trump.

Da Memes Tell Da Story …

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, Economic issues, education, Election 2024, Global Issues, History, Humour, Law and justice, Political commentary, Social commentary

I was working on one of my rare attempts at fiction, but … it just didn’t seem very interesting when I read it, so I’m taking it back to the drawing board.  Then again, it could just be my mood of the moment, which is rather grey.  Anyway, I decided that instead, I’d share with you some of the memes from my stash, take a little break, and see if I can improve on my fiction piece to have ready for tomorrow (maybe).  As usual, some of the memes carry a message, and a few are thrown in just for fun.

One Small Town Leads The Way

Posted on by under Environmental Issues, Global Issues, History, Law and justice, Re-blogs

With a new administration set to take over our government in just 46 days, an administration filled with climate change deniers, conspiracy theorists, and fossil fuel-supporting billionaires, we need to be more outspoken than ever before about environmental issues.  That’s why I find Keith’s latest post about a small town standing up to the corporate giant, Duke Energy, encouraging and am hopeful that it is precedent-setting!  Thank you, Keith!

Small NC town sues Duke Energy

It Almost Happened In South Korea — Could It Happen Here?

Posted on by under Global Issues, History, Political commentary, Social commentary

I found that Heather Cox Richarson had the best, most understandable explanation of the 20 or so I read for what happened this week in South Korea.  As you read her post, think … and ask yourself a question:  Given the person who will take over the Oval Office in just 46 days, given his temperament and his efforts to surround himself with unqualified ‘yes’ men & women whose only qualification is wealth and loyalty to Felon Trump, and his ‘promise’ to be a ‘dictator on day one’ … could it happen here?  And would We the People fight the autocracy in the way that the people of South Korea did?  Just something to ponder.

December 3, 2024

By Heather Cox Richardson

04 December 2024

For an astonishing six hours today, South Korea underwent an attempted self-coup by its unpopular president, Yoon Suk Yeol, only to see the South Korean people force him to back down as they reasserted the strength of their democracy.

In an emergency address at nearly 11:00 last night local time, Yoon announced that he was declaring martial law in South Korea for the first time since 1980, when special forces under a military dictatorship attacked pro-democracy activists in the city of Gwangju, leaving about 200 people dead or missing. South Koreans ended military rule in their country in 1987, writing a new constitution that made South Korea a republic.

Yoon claimed he had to declare martial law because his political opponents were sympathizing with communist North Korea. It was a thin pretext.

A member of the conservative People’s Party, Yoon was elected to a five-year presidential term in 2022 after a misogynistic campaign fueled by young men who saw equal rights for women— whose average monthly wage is 67.7% of that a man, according to the BBC’s Laura Bicker—as reverse discrimination that is taking away their own rights and opportunities.

Before his election, Yoon had no experience in the National Assembly, and once he was in office, his popularity slid to record lows. In legislative elections held last April, voters crushed Yoon’s party, giving opposition parties 192 of 300 seats in the National Assembly. The legislature fought with Yoon over his budget and launched a number of corruption investigations into Yoon’s allies as well as his wife.

And so, Yoon declared martial law, bringing the media under his control and banning political activities, “false propaganda,” “gatherings that incite social unrest,” and strikes. Police officers formed a blockade around the National Assembly, and helicopters landed on the roof to prevent lawmakers from getting inside to overturn Yoon’s declaration.

The South Korean people reacted immediately. Reporting from Seoul, John Yoon of the New York Times recounted the story of a real estate agent who watched President Yoon’s speech, got in his car, and drove for an hour to get to the National Assembly. The man told journalist Yoon, “I thought, ‘The end has come,’ so I came out. The president of a country has exerted his power by force, and its people have come out to protest that. We have to remove him from power from this point on. He’s in a position where he has to come down.”

Editor of The Verge Sarah Jeong, who works out of the U.S. and does not cover South Korean politics, happened to be working in Seoul this week and was on site after a night of drinking, giving an informed and honest account of what she was seeing. “[T]he crowd is a pretty even mix of young people and the older folks (mostly men) who would have been young during the dictatorship…. I heard tanks were here but I haven’t seen one yet. [O]ld men swearing “how dare the military come here.”

Michelle Ye Hee Lee, Washington Post Tokyo/Seoul bureau chief, reported that the National Assembly managed to pull together a majority of its members—190 of 300—in about two and a half hours to participate in a unanimous vote to overturn Yoon’s emergency declaration of martial law. That vote included members of his own party.

Political commentator Adam Schwartz shared a video taken by the leader of South Korea’s Democratic Party, Lee Jae-myung, as he climbed over the wall of the National Assembly to vote against Yoon’s martial law declaration. Other videos showed people in the streets boosting legislators over the walls for the vote.

Yet another video showed South Korean soldiers trying to get into the National Assembly during the voting thwarted by people wielding a fire extinguisher and flashes from cameras.

While the law said Yoon had to abide by the legislators’ vote, it was not clear whether Yoon would do as the law required. About six hours after he had declared martial law, Yoon bowed to the National Assembly and the popular will and lifted his declaration.

Yoon has been widely condemned, and South Koreans from all parties, including his own, are calling for his resignation or impeachment. Raphael Rashid of The Guardian reported today that on the morning after the attempted coup, South Koreans are bewildered and sad. “For the older generation who fought on the streets against military dictatorships, martial law equals dictatorship, not 21st century Korea. The younger generation is embarrassed that he has ruined their country’s reputation. People are baffled.”

For the rest of the world, though, South Koreans’ immediate and aggressive response to a man trying to take away their democratic rights is an inspiration. Among other things, it illustrates that for all the claims that autocracy can react to events more quickly than democracy can, in fact autocrats are brittle. It is democracy that is determined and resilient.

The events in Seoul also cemented the shift in social media from X to Bluesky, where news was breaking faster than anywhere else, in a way that echoed what Twitter used to be. Since Twitter was a key site of democratic organizing until Elon Musk bought it and renamed it X, that shift is significant.

And finally, the events in South Korea emphasize that for all people often look to larger-than-life figures to define our nations, our history is in fact made up of regular people doing the best they can. Journalist Sarah Jeong found herself entirely unexpectedly in the middle of a coup and, recognizing that she was in a historic moment, snapped to work to do all she could to keep the rest of us informed. “I’m f*cking blasted and hanging out in the weirdest scene because history happened at a deeply inconvenient hour,” she wrote on Bluesky. “[S]o it goes.”

When she finally went home, Jeong wrote: “I expensed my cab ride home. I’m tired so I put ‘korea coup’ down in the expense code field.”

Good People Doing Good Things — Matthew Chang

Posted on by under Economic issues, education, Environmental Issues, Global Issues, Good people doing good things, Social commentary

This week’s good people is Matthew Chang … a young man only 17 years old, living in Irvine, California, who has already given back more than many of us do in a lifetime.  Here’s Matthew’s story from the Points of Light website:

High School Junior Uses Environmental Education to Fight Back Against the Climate Crisis

By Kristin Park

20 March 2024

When Matthew Chang was in 7th grade, he emailed his city councilmember. Leading with passionate concern about the environment, he quickly caught the attention of the person on the receiving end.

“He was interested in starting a community garden at his middle school and wanted to see if there were any resources or help,” Farrah Khan, now mayor of Irvine recalls. “So, I responded. And from there, he’s just been doing one thing after another, and it’s been very impressive.”

With the encouragement of an enthusiastic response, Matthew went to City Hall to pitch his idea supported by academic research on the benefits of such projects. His hard work paid off, and it led to both resources and a valued mentor relationship that continues to this day.

Matthew comes from a second-generation Korean-American family of five. His grandfather, a man who learned to grow vegetables during his childhood in rural South Korea, taught him to garden, and he and his mom keep a small plot in their backyard.

“It was really him who inspired me to begin all of this. Although he isn’t with us anymore, I try to continue his legacy in a lot of the things that I do with Climate Garden,” Matthew says.

Climate Garden is an organization Matthew founded as an 8th grader in 2021. He formed a team of student leaders with neighboring K-12 schools to focus on sustainability, eradicating food insecurity and environmental education. The harrowing experience of being sent home from school due to wildfires and poor air quality moved him to take action.

“I really felt an almost implacable urge to contribute to the cause. I couldn’t let my future burn without trying everything I could,” he emphasizes.

“So, I used my platform as my school’s student body president, and I began doing what I could to achieve realistic reform.”

The initial middle school garden quickly expanded to 12 gardens across Orange County that have produced more than 11,000 pounds of fresh fruit, vegetables and herbs. While most of it goes to a local food bank to help fight food insecurity, some goes to the school cafeteria to be enjoyed by the student body.

“They’re coming up with new trends and new ways of doing things that are really going to be beneficial for us in the long run,” Mayor Khan says of the young constituents who have taken on active roles in setting up the community for the future.

Recently, Matthew has added a composting program at his high school in response to SB 1383, a state Senate bill that was passed to regulate food waste in the public school system. So far, it has transformed 4,000 pounds of food waste into nutrient-rich soil for the school garden.

“The compost helps nurture the plants in our garden, which then creates food that can be eaten at the school cafeteria,” he explains. “It’s a sustainable, self-fulfilling cycle.”

Education is key to Matthew’s mission to empower his peers to help tackle the climate crisis. Teaming up with Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris of District 73, he has worked towards passing a resolution in the California Assembly that will recognize California Youth Climate Action Day and provide schools and local organizations with resources and curriculum needed to make environmental education across the state more robust.

With Climate Garden, Matthew also leads weekly workshops based at one of the gardens along with educational summer camps to enable young people to create projects of their own. Last year, one virtual climate camp saw around 1,600 students from 212 schools.

“What I really love about the programs that we’ve been doing is they not only inform students about systemic issues in the world but also provide them with a platform for developing as leaders and expressing themselves,” he says.

Afterwards, they awarded 23 Future of Sustainability grants to students initiating such projects. It’s an opportunity Matthew particularly enjoys, because it ensures that students from all backgrounds can have equitable access to resources. He holds weekly virtual meetings to offer help and guidance for anyone undertaking a new venture.

“He’s just had the great ability to bring people together. What he’s done with the youth community is incredible,” Mayor Khan gloats. “He shares his passion, and that ignites the fire and in so many others.”

Currently, nearly 270 middle and high school volunteers across the country and international schools are actively involved in either maintaining school garden sites or virtual summer camp lessons. The comradery built through working towards a common goal and the opportunities created make Matthew’s mentor proud.

“We want every one of our community members to be involved, but especially our youth, because they’re the ones that are coming up with these new ideas and haven’t had the opportunity before to get engaged with local government,” Khan stresses.

Matthew finds motivation in the excitement volunteers experience seeing their flowers sprout for the first time and when they learn something new. The latter is a more common occurrence after he delved into the world of podcasting over the pandemic. The Sustainable Future promotes environmental advocacy and serves as a resource for climate literacy. Through a lot of self-professed trial and error, it has grown to a listenership of around 700 people each month on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and is entirely produced and edited by him and his team.

“We have a really great lineup of interviewees this season ranging from politics, to business, food, science and more,” he says, having recently started hosting season three. “It’s been a great way to elevate student voices and give them a platform to share their opinions with the world.”

This June, the Climate Garden team is organizing an international youth climate summit with guest speakers from all areas of environmental stewardship. Matthew hopes this and the establishment of gardens at four additional schools by the end of the year will help expand Climate Garden’s reach and inspire more people to join the cause. His volunteer work is a meaningful part of his daily life, and he encourages others to get involved wherever they are.

“Just get started. Find a cause that is important to your local community, something that’s important to you, and just contribute as much as you can to it,” he suggests. “Connecting yourself with any cause is a great way to be grateful, to think less about yourself and contribute more towards the community that has shaped you.”

Matthew cherishes the time he has spent building up Climate Garden and making a tangible difference in the lives of his friends, neighbors and community members.

“Solving the big problems of today is something we can’t do alone. So, it’s important to listen to others, especially those who have differing opinions from us and make bridges of connection to rally a community towards change and progress,” he notes, emphasizing listening in leadership.

Having led Climate Garden for four years now, this may be the most important lesson yet. Because with the climate at stake, everyone’s future hangs in the balance, and everyone is vital to the solution. Teamwork can change the world.

The Worst Of The Lot

Posted on by under Global Issues, History, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Trump's Staff Picks

Wow … Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, is turning out to be a real grade-A jerk, isn’t he?  Every day, new information comes to light, with not a shred putting him in a positive light. I guess this is what happens when you go to the dung heap (Fox ‘News’) in search of staff.  I’m with Steve Schmidt on this one …

Pete Hegseth: Trump’s strike two

By Steve Schmidt

03 December 2024

The world we live in is far from perfect, but it has survived for 80 years with the power of Armageddon within the hands of a few human beings.

The security of the world has been maintained imperfectly by American power. The institutions that were created to save humanity from destruction after the Second World War were imagined into existence by the genius of Franklin Roosevelt, who said that he hoped they would endure for as long as everyone who was alive on the day the war was won lived. The youngest of those people is almost 80 years old. A new era has begun.

The jingoistic and performative displays of patriotism that have been packaged into the NFL marketing strategy for many years have helped create a culture of blind cheers for uniforms. They have been stripped of any meaning, and they blind the American people to the purpose of our armed forces, which isn’t power, but the preservation of peace.

The responsibility for America’s sons and daughters who volunteer to go into harm’s way is immense for the nation’s leaders. A vote to confirm Pete Hegseth is a deep betrayal of the men and women who wear the cloth of the nation. He is unfit mentally, morally and temperamentally to lead the American military and order lethal actions.

He was unable to run a 10-person $5 million charity, and he’s going to run the most complex and lethal institution on Earth that controls 5,044 nuclear warheads?

This is Trump’s judgement?

Of course it is.

Here is what Jane Mayer, arguably the nation’s best investigative journalist, reported about Pete Hegseth in The New Yorker:

A trail of documents, corroborated by the accounts of former colleagues, indicates that Hegseth was forced to step down by both of the two nonprofit advocacy groups that he ran—Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America—in the face of serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct.

A previously undisclosed whistle-blower report on Hegseth’s tenure as the president of Concerned Veterans for America, from 2013 until 2016, describes him as being repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity—to the point of needing to be carried out of the organization’s events. The detailed seven-page report—which was compiled by multiple former C.V.A. employees and sent to the organization’s senior management in February, 2015—states that, at one point, Hegseth had to be restrained while drunk from joining the dancers on the stage of a Louisiana strip club, where he had brought his team. The report also says that Hegseth, who was married at the time, and other members of his management team sexually pursued the organization’s female staffers, whom they divided into two groups—the “party girls” and the “not party girls.” In addition, the report asserts that, under Hegseth’s leadership, the organization became a hostile workplace that ignored serious accusations of impropriety, including an allegation made by a female employee that another employee on Hegseth’s staff had attempted to sexually assault her at the Louisiana strip club. In a separate letter of complaint, which was sent to the organization in late 2015, a different former employee described Hegseth being at a bar in the early-morning hours of May 29, 2015, while on an official tour through Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, drunkenly chanting “Kill All Muslims! Kill All Muslims!”

He is a drunk.

As reported in The New York Times, he is an abuser of women, according to his mother, who wrote this:

On behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way, I say … get some help and take an honest look at yourself.

I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego. You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth.

America’s all volunteer force and their families do not deserve this.

Disgusting is the word.

Any US senator who would dare vote for this man is making clear that they hold the American soldier, sailor, airmen, marines and coast guardsman in absolute and abject contempt.

Pete Hegseth is a clown and a danger to world peace.

He will be Trump’s second strike.

The hearings will be more brutal than anything that has ever been seen in Washington, DC, and deservedly so.

‘Freedom of the Press’, You Say???

Posted on by under Free Press Issues, Global Issues, History, Political commentary, Social commentary

Freedom of the Press.  All my adult life, I’ve relied on the press to keep me informed, to tell the truth, but today the sources I’ve long relied on such as The Washington Post & New York Times have let us all down.  They sugarcoat and ‘sanewash’ the antics of the most despicable politicians of our time, and there is a very real danger in that.  We cannot fight the enemy we don’t know exists; we cannot protect ourselves if we don’t see the danger coming.  It is a sad statement of this era that the ‘free press’ is largely in the hands of uber-wealthy scions who have decided that lining their own pockets is more important than keeping We the People informed.  Our old friend Robert Reich has some thoughts on the topic, and also some recommendations for where to find truth in the media …

Where to find the truth?

As we enter the darkness of the Trump regime, it’s more important than ever that we have access to the truth

By Robert Reich

29 November 2024

I hope your Thanksgiving Day was peaceful.

Today I’d like to raise a less peaceful question that many of you are asking me: As we enter the darkness of the Trump regime, where can we find trusted sources of information? What and whom can we count on to give us the truth?

I will give you the sources I rely on in a moment, but first let me explain why reliable and independent sources of news are threatened by a growing alliance of oligarchs and authoritarians.

The mainstream media doesn’t use the term “oligarchy” to describe the billionaires who are using their wealth to monopolize information and turn it into propaganda — but it’s the most accurate term, because that’s exactly what’s happening: from Elon Musk’s X to Jeff Bezos’s The Washington Post to Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News to Vladimir Putin’s worldwide disinformation campaign to Donald Trump’s continuing stream of lies on Truth Social and X.

Even legacy mainstream media — which mostly answer to corporate or billionaire ownership — refrained during the 2024 campaign from reporting how incoherent and bizarre Trump was becoming, normalizing and “sanewashing” his increasingly wild utterances even as it reported every minor slip by Joe Biden.

The New York Times headlined its coverage of the September 2024 presidential debate between Trump and Kamala Harris — in which Trump bellowed conspiracy theories about stolen elections and Haitian immigrants eating pet cats and dogs — as: “Harris and Trump bet on their own sharply contrasting views of America.”

Trump has called the free press “scum” and the “enemy within.” He has threatened to revoke the licenses of television networks and jail journalists who don’t reveal their anonymous sources. Last month, Trump sued CBS, based on conspiratorial claims that “60 Minutes” made “edits” favorable to Harris for the final cut of its interview with her.

Come January 20, Trump and his billionaire toadies — including Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, Howard Lutnick, Scott Bessent, Doug Burgum, and Linda McMahon — will control the executive branch of the United States government, and Trump’s MAGA Republicans will be in charge of both chambers of Congress.

Members of the Supreme Court (some of whom, like Clarence Thomas, have been beneficiaries of billionaire gifts) have already signaled their willingness to consolidate even more power in Trump’s hands, immunize him from criminal liability for what he does, and further open the floodgates of big money into American politics.

All of this is sending a message from the United States that liberalism’s core tenets, including the rule of law and freedom of the press, are up for grabs.

Elsewhere around the world, alliances of economic elites and authoritarians similarly threaten public access to the truth, without which democracy cannot thrive.

It’s a vicious cycle: Citizens have grown cynical about democracy because decision-making has become dominated by economic elites, and that cynicism has ushered in authoritarians who are even more solicitous of such elites.

Trump and his lapdogs lionize Viktor Orbán and Hungary’s Fidesz party, which transformed a once-vibrant democracy into a one-party state, muzzling the media and rewarding the wealthy.

Trump’s success is already encouraging Marine Le Pen and her National Rally party in France; Alternative in Germany, or AfD; Italy’s far-right Giorgia Meloni; and radical right-wing parties in the Netherlands and Austria.

Trump’s triumph will surely embolden Russia’s Vladimir Putin — the world’s most dangerous authoritarian oligarch — not only in Ukraine and potentially eastern Europe but also in his worldwide campaign of disinformation to undermine democracies.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Musk — the world’s richest person, self-described “First Buddy” of Trump, and a linchpin of U.S. space efforts — has been in regular contact with Putin since late 2022.

Evidence is mounting that Russia and other foreign agents used Musk’s X platform to disrupt the 2024 U.S. presidential campaign in favor of Trump. Musk did little to stop them.

During the campaign, Musk himself reposted to his 200 million followers a faked version of Harris’s first campaign video with an altered voice track sounding like the vice president and saying she “does not know the first thing about running the country” and is the “ultimate diversity hire.” Musk tagged the video “amazing.” It received hundreds of millions of views.

According to a report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, Musk posted at least 50 false election claims on X, which garnered a total of at least 1.2 billion views. None had a “community note” from X’s supposed fact-checking system.

Murdoch, another oligarchic champion of authoritarianism, has turned his Fox News, Wall Street Journal, and New York Post into ever-louder outlets of right-wing propaganda, further amplifying Trump’s lies.

Artificial intelligence may make it even easier for oligarchs and demagogues to manipulate the public. Trump has nominated right-wing FCC commissioner and Musk bro Brendan Carr to chair the agency. Don’t expect him to do anything about weaponized disinformation. Carr ranted publicly about NBC featuring Kamala Harris on “Saturday Night Live” during the election.

Bezos barred The Washington Post from endorsing Kamala Harris. Evidently, he didn’t want to raise Trump’s ire because Bezos’s other businesses depend on government contracts. The mere possibility of a Trump presidency forced what had been one of the most courageous newspapers in the U.S. to censor itself. Marty Baron, former editor of the Post, called the move “cowardice, with democracy as its casualty.”

The billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, Patrick Soon-Shiong, blocked his newspaper’s planned endorsement of Harris as well, prompting the head of the paper’s editorial board to resign. Mariel Garza said she was “not OK with us being silent,” adding: “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up.”

Honest people standing up is precisely what resisting authoritarianism and protecting democracy require — monitoring those in power, acting as watchdogs against abuses of power, challenging those abuses, and sounding the alarm about wrongdoing and wrongful policies.

But how to “stand up” without reliable sources of the truth?

So, as we enter the darkness of the Trump regime, please make sure you and others you know have access to accurate information about what’s occurring.

Here are the sources I currently rely on for the truth: The Guardian, Democracy Now, Business Insider, The New Yorker, The American Prospect, Americans for Tax Fairness, The Economic Policy Institute, The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, ProPublica, Labor Notes, The Lever, Popular Information, Heather Cox Richardson, and, of course, this Substack.