VIDEO OF THE DAY: Justice Department drops stunning Epstein news
Brian Tyler Cohen and legal expert Glenn Kirschner break down the stunning news that the DOJ claims they have up to a million more Epstein files.
Take Action: Impeach Pam Bondi for attacking our constitutional rights!
Karoline Leavitt is fascism’s lead mouthpiece
Adrienne Mahsa Varkiani, The New Republic: "In her debut briefing as White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt already had her hands full. President Trump had signed an executive order pausing all federal funding, which was set to take effect that afternoon and was already causing panic. 'Why impose this pause with so little notice?' a reporter asked Leavitt. 'Why not give organizations more time to plan for the fact that they are about to lose, in some cases, really crucial federal funding—' 'There was notice. It was the executive order that the president signed,' she replied, before going on to spread a bizarre conspiracy theory. 'DOGE and OMB also found that there was about to be 50 million taxpayer dollars that went out the door to fund condoms in Gaza,' she said. 'That is a preposterous waste of taxpayer money.' No one had any idea what she was talking about—because she had made it all up. It was an early lesson in how Leavitt operates. At 28 years old (27 when she was first picked), Leavitt is the youngest press secretary in history. But rather than make her generation proud, she has served as just a pretty face for fascists to hide behind—while spouting racist, right-wing conspiracies. A calculating nihilist, Leavitt will do and say anything to build a version of America that is more white, more Christian, and free of leftists. Leavitt—a devout Catholic who wears a giant cross necklace, posts Bible verses on Instagram, and holds team prayer sessions where she asks Jesus to help her be “articulate”—defends every sick thing that Trump does. Last month, when the president told a female reporter, “Quiet, Piggy,” Leavitt claimed it was a sign of respect. There is nothing Trump can do that Leavitt won’t defend. So long as he’s building a whiter America, Leavitt will be there to deform the English language in his defense."
Progressive Democrat takes on Santa-punching Republican
Nick Marshall for Indiana: The Republican majority leader for Indiana, Chris Garten, just made headlines across the country for posting a bizarre series of AI images in which he's physically assaulting Santa Claus. This is just the kind of unserious and unbecoming behavior that we can expect from Republicans, and Indiana deserves better — and Nick Marshall is just the leader to replace him. Raised in the foster care system, Nick understands the importance of second chances and the power of community support, and he's ready to fight for the well-being of Indiana voters, not corporate donors. Will you chip in to help kick-start his campaign against this Republican buffoon?
The real war on Christmas is a class war waged by bosses
Liza Featherstone, Jacobin: "In the right-wing imaginary, the War on Christmas had a good run. Fox News host John Gibson alleged in a 2005 book that liberals were planning to 'ban the sacred holiday,' and a moral panic was born, yielding outrage after outrage almost every year. This year, however, the defenders of all things merry and bright have been pretty quiet, and polling shows that even among conservatives and Donald Trump supporters, a declining minority of Americans believe that the beloved holiday is under siege. Sensitive neighbors (and corporations hoping to avoid their ire) may continue to wish us a 'Happy Holidays,' the ACLU may continue to object to religious iconography in the town square, yet Americans are ignoring the likes of Tucker Carlson and Bill O’Reilly, instead adulting with a 'live and let live' attitude. This rare moment of cultural chill allows us to come together as Americans to confront the real war on Christmas, the one you won’t hear about on Fox News: a class war. If you’ve read Charles Dickens’s 1843 classic A Christmas Carol, you’ll remember that the main character is one of literature’s nastiest bosses. Ebenezer Scrooge hates the holiday and resents giving his employee, Bob Cratchit, even one paid day off with his family, calling Christmas 'a poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket' and demanding that the terrified Cratchit be at his desk “all the earlier' the next day. As bad as that sounds, poor Bob Cratchit had it easier than many American workers today. A recent survey of over one thousand workers found that one in ten were working on Christmas Day. Nearly one in four expected to be working on Christmas Eve, while more expected to work on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day. Reasons included needing the money and lacking paid time off. Dickens, like his contemporary, Karl Marx, made observations about capitalism and its abuses to the human spirit that remain all too relevant today; in this case, his point was that bosses don’t stop acting like bosses at the holidays. Today, layoffs at this time of year are common. Last week, billionaire Elon Musk, who has been elected to exactly no government office but suddenly seems to be running everything, was apparently seeking to outdo Scrooge by trying to force a government shutdown, which would have meant that active-duty soldiers and other government workers wouldn’t get their paychecks. For some workers, conditions on the job get even worse at Christmastime. One of the reasons Americans give for working during the holiday is the fact that it is an especially busy time of year for their company or industry. As Teamsters went on strike at seven Amazon warehouses — in New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta, and Southern California — some workers have observed that they were barely seeing their loved ones this season, considered 'peak' for the company. 'When you think of the holidays you think of spending time with your family, you think of reconnecting,' a packer in Staten Island told Labor Notes, 'And during peak, all you can think of is sleep.' Even for those who don’t have to slave away in an Amazon warehouse, exploitation gets in the way of Christmas. Many people don’t get paid enough to enjoy travel and gift-giving. In fact, financial stress during the holiday season is so common that articles advising us how to manage it are published every year. Dickens was smart enough about class relations under capitalism to know that Scrooge’s transformation wouldn’t have been realistic without an extraordinary plot twist. Scrooge needs an intervention — by ghosts. Dickens knew that getting capitalists to behave humanely, at Christmas or at any time of year, would require a departure from the realism he employs in many of his other novels."
Bari Weiss is doing exactly what she was installed at CBS to do
Adam Johnson, The Intercept: "The media world is disgusted and indignant at CBS News’s new editor-in-chef Bari Weiss’s decision not to air a '60 Minutes' segment critical of the Trump administration’s deportation of Venezuelan migrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador. (In a now-deleted promo clip for the segment, the reporter said the migrants endured 'four months of hell,' with one man saying, when asked if he thought he was going to die, 'We thought we were already the living dead.') According to a statement from CBS correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, the report had been internally reviewed and cleared by broadcaster’s legal and standards departments. It had also been heavily promoted on '60 Minutes' social media. But three hours before it was set to air, Weiss pulled the segment, citing the need for 'additional reporting' and on-camera interviews with White House officials –– who had reportedly refused to comment for weeks. This was, of course, an excuse that didn’t pass the most basic smell test. By all accounts, the piece had been thoroughly reported, and the idea that reporters need to secure on-camera interviews with government officials before reporting on government misdeeds effectively gives the administration veto power over CBS’s news reporting, as Alfonsi pointed out. The outrage in the U.S. media has been swift and more than justified. But in the back and forth, some key context is being overlooked — context that might help clarify that as bleak as Weiss’s move is for the future of journalism, it is a perfect example of why Paramount’s new owner, David Ellison, hired her in the first place. Her job is to suck up to Trump, yes, but largely as a means –– not an end in and of itself. If Trump favors CBS and Paramount, it could undermine the pending Netflix–Warner Bros. Discovery merger, help Ellison take over WBD himself, and cement the Ellison family’s media concentration to further advance their business interests and their right-wing ideology. This is not just a matter of routine MAGA brain rot; there are material interests at work. Unlike in traditional corporate media arrangements, Weiss reports directly to Ellison. Her role, from the onset, has been to police the CBS newsroom, an open acknowledgment that CBS News must reflect the ideological preferences of the Ellison family — namely, their fidelity to Israel and surveillance capitalism. Through that lens, Ellison’s decision to buy the Free Press earlier this year can best be seen not as a straight-forward business decision, but a commitment to a political project that would dovetail with the family’s broader ideological and business interests in surveillance and military technology. Their goal isn’t just to promote Trumpism –– this is a temporary necessity with a lot of obvious ideological overlap –– it’s to promote the Ellisons’ own agenda. To do this, and do this swiftly, David Ellison’s foot soldiers within these organizations, with Weiss leading the way, are going to have to move fast, break journalism norms, and potentially wreck the old models and brands of trust and credibility –– ideally before Trump leaves office or other media competitors manage to win his favor first. Weiss and Ellison’s interference into “60 Minutes” creates a de facto state media, but their burgeoning empire is about consolidating top-down oligarchical control over legacy media brands that will endure long after Trump fades into irrelevance."
If Democrats campaign on stopping scam calls, they’ll be re-elected forever
Nathan J. Robinson, Current Affairs: "Spam calls have just reached a six-year high. Eric Burger of Virginia Tech’s Commonwealth Cyber Initiative says that it’s “mind-boggling how much is lost to fraud perpetuated through robocalls,” especially now that cryptocurrency makes it damn near impossible for people to get their money back. Many scammers are sophisticated in manipulating people. A couple of years ago, even a seasoned financial journalist found herself handing $50,000 in cash to a scammer, who had made her think her family was in danger and she needed to give her money to a federal agent for safekeeping. It’s tempting to scoff, thinking we ourselves would never fall for such a ruse, but the trick of scammers is to first make people panic by thinking something terrible is happening, then swindle them once their judgment is compromised. That’s why the 'warrant out for your arrest' scam is one of the most commonly-reported fraud techniques. The stories can be truly heartbreaking—people sometimes even kill themselves after being scammed. And of course the whole situation is becoming vastly more disturbing now that AI enables easy, realistic impersonation of absolutely anyone. Scammers drive Americans bananas. I think we can all agree that they’re the absolute worst. As far as criminal immorality goes, I think many murders are probably more defensible than impersonating an elderly person’s grandchild and making them think the grandchild has been in an accident in order to steal their money. Yet strangely, even though there is essentially a universal incentive to stop scams, the United States is weirdly tolerant of them. Americans get twice as many scam calls as those in other countries, and the overwhelming majority of Americans report having been targeted (successfully or not) by scammers. As Eric Priezkalns of CommsRisk writes, despite the efforts of telecom lobbyists to pretend otherwise, 'the USA is doing a terrible job at protecting phone users from unwanted and harmful communications.' Other countries, like Germany, Australia, and Italy, have taken aggressive regulatory measures to stop scammers. A large part of the problem is that the U.S. government simply hasn’t gotten tough enough on the telecom providers that transmit scam calls to us. We could, of course, make them strictly liable for scams perpetrated by users of their networks, and put the burden on carriers to ensure callers are who they say they are. Unfortunately, we live in an age where scams are increasingly normalized, as if fraud is a legitimate part of the free market. The president himself has a history of scamming people, from running a fake university to fleecing his followers with a personal cryptocurrency. There is a risk that people will just come to accept constant attempts to lie to them and steal their money as part of the natural order of things. This is, after all, the age of the bullshitter. But no one likes it, and I think a campaign to eliminate scams once and for all (you know, being 'tough on crime') would be a major political winner. I don’t really understand why more of an issue isn’t made of this. It’s a nonpartisan issue, a constant source of frustration, and nearly everyone knows someone who has been swindled thanks to the failures of government and large corporations. A party that wants to build popular support should make a simple promise to the American people: we will keep you safe from the nefarious actors who want to manipulate you, lie to you, and take your life savings. Who wouldn’t vote for that?"
Food for thought
The Sunday wrap-up
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