All posts tagged "new york times"

'What's even the point?' New York Times hammered for 'burying story' of Venezuela attack

Two legacy media outlets were tipped off about the Trump administration’s unprecedented attack on Venezuela but chose not to report on to “avoid endangering US troops,” according to a report Saturday night from Semafor, sparking a social media frenzy of outrage.

“Absolutely f------ despicable,” wrote X user “KareBearScare,” a frequent political commentator who’s amassed more than 2,600 followers. “What’s even the point of the media besides to help this lawless administration undemocratically lie to the American people.”

Semafor learned that the Washington Post and the New York Times both had both been tipped off about the Trump administration’s operation to kidnap Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife after speaking with two people the outlet said were “familiar with the communications between the administration and the news organizations,” both of whom spoke with the outlet on the condition of anonymity.

“So they knew the Trump administration was about to carry out an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation and the abduction of its leader and stayed silent?” asked independent journalist Jasper Nathaniel in a social media post on X. “Where exactly is the line here?”

Legacy media outlets have a history of holding onto reporting under the justification of protecting American soldiers. The U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba in 1961, for instance, saw the New York Times withhold key information in its reporting, and the outlet also withheld information regarding warrantless wiretapping during the Bush administration.

“If a media outlet has information about political leaders on the verge of committing an international crime of aggression, the job requires reporting about it,” wrote journalist Rishika Pardikar in a social media post on X. “Not burying the story to shield the perpetrators - this would qualify as complicity and be called state-controlled media.”

For those keeping score at home, this breaks all three of the first things listed on NYT’s Mission and Values page https://t.co/iZGISRxbXS pic.twitter.com/v9BL8GfQ7K
— Lindsay Ballant (@lindsayballant) January 4, 2026

This Epstein sideshow exposes elites' bad faith — and the ruin of our country

David Brooks, the conservative columnist who is beloved by liberals, wrote last month that the Democrats make too much of the Epstein story. He said they’re acting as conspiratorially as the Republicans.

Brooks said he was “especially startled” to see leading progressives characterizing all elites as part of “the Epstein class.” If he were a Democrat, he said, he’d be focused on “the truth”: “The elites didn’t betray you, but they did ignore you. They didn’t mean to harm you.”

Brooks went on to say: “If I were a Democratic politician … I’d add that America can’t get itself back on track if the culture is awash in distrust, cynicism, catastrophizing lies and conspiracy mongering. No governing majority will ever form if we’re locked in a permanent class war.”

Sounds noble, but he didn’t mean any of it.

Last week, it was discovered that Brooks palled around with Jeffrey Epstein. Pictures of him were part of a trove released by the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. It was deduced that they were taken at a 2011 “billionaires dinner.” A 2019 report by Buzzfeed identified Brooks, among others, along with Epstein, who had pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor for sex just three years prior.

Buzzfeed: “In 2011, after Epstein had been released from a Florida jail, it was an exclusive gathering, dominated by tech industry leadership. A gallery of photos taken at the event by Nathan Myhrvold, formerly Microsoft’s chief technology officer, named 20 guests, including just one media representative: New York Times columnist David Brooks.”

While defending Brooks, the Times inadvertently confirmed Epstein's presence at the dinner. “Mr. Brooks had no contact with [Epstein] before or after his single attendance at a widely-attended dinner.”

Sure, but Brooks knew Epstein was there. If he didn’t know about his crimes, which is doubtful, he still chose to write a column warning the Democrats against waging “permanent class war” without disclosing his non-trivial association with the namesake of “the Epstein class.”

It’s bad faith, up and down.

“I think that's what we get when (very) wealthy people are shaping opinion,” said Denny Carter, publisher of Bad Faith Times, a newsletter. “We can never really know the depths of their conflicts of interest, whether it's covering for a known pedophile ringleader or promoting a cause or politician or company that will benefit them financially.”

In 2023, Denny wrote a piece highlighting the importance of bad faith, which is to say, if you don’t put it at the center of your thinking about rightwing politics, you’re going to be very, very confused. He wrote:

“Republicans today support women’s sports (if it means barring trans folks from participating). They love a member of the Kennedy family. They’re skeptical of Big Pharma. They hate banks. None of it – not a single part of it – makes any sense unless you understand bad faith.”

They never mean what they say.

Denny brought my attention to that piece by reposting it. I immediately thought of Brooks. Scolding the Democrats about demonizing “the Epstein class” while fraternizing with “the Epstein class” (it was a “billionaires dinner,” for Christ’s sake) — that’s the kind of behavior you might expect from a man who’s ready to betray you.

“You see these op-eds about supporting the fossil fuel industry and continuing to accelerate climate collapse in the guise of electoral advice for Democrats without having any idea if the writer means what they're saying or has some financial stake in promoting Big Oil and its various subsidiaries,” Denny told me in a brief interview. “You assume good faith among these writers and influencers at your own peril.”

JS: In a 2023 piece you recently reposted, you said the world is upside down. The right loves Russia. The left hates Russia. This is confusing for those of us who remember 20 years ago. What happened?

DC: This one, I think, is pretty straightforward. The right despised the collectivism inherent in Soviet ideology and the left was curious about how it might look in action. The fall of the USSR (eventually) led to a totalitarian fascist Russian state ruled by a vicious dictator who used religion and "traditional values" as a weapon against his many enemies, or anyone who dared promote democracy in Russia.

Listen to Putin and you'll hear a Republican babbling about “woke” this and “woke” that and positioning himself as the last barrier between so-called traditional society and some kind of far-left hellscape.

It's the same script every modern fascist leader uses, and it appeals very much to Republican lawmakers and their voters. You sometimes read stories about Americans fleeing to Russia to escape the “woke” scourge, only to deeply regret it. That's always funny or tragic, depending on how you look at it.

You say bad faith explains the upside-downness, but you also suggest the center has not held — that social fragmentation brought us here. You even cite David Bowie. How did you come to that insight?

I've been a Bowie superfan for a while now, and like a lot of folks who spend too much time online, I've seen the viral clip of Bowie explaining the world-changing potential of the internet way back in 1999.

He was right on a few levels, but most of all he identified the internet's potential for destroying any sense of commonly held reality. Here we are today, a quarter century later, trying to operate in a political world in which there are a handful of different realities at any one time.

A traitorous right-wing mob tried to overthrow the US government in 2021. We all saw the footage. We all know what happened. Yet there are tens of millions of Americans who believe January 6 did not happen or was in fact a walking tour of the US Capitol.

We can't even agree that there was a coup attempt orchestrated by the outgoing president because social media took that event, broke it into a million pieces, and allowed bad actors to piece it back together to fit a politically convenient narrative. I wrote about it here.

You suggest that simply telling the truth won't fix things. Why?

I don't mean to sound cynical but if we've learned anything over the past decade of small-d democratic backsliding, it's that the truth doesn't mean anything anymore because of the societal fragmentation created by social media. There is no truth. We can choose our own adventure now because our phones will confirm our priors about what happened and why.

Pro-democracy folks in the US can't rely on facts and figures to win the day. They won't. The Harris campaign reached a highwater mark in August 2024 when they were ignoring facts and figures and coasting on vibes. It was a heady time because it seemed like Democrats had finally learned their lesson: good-faith “Leslie Knope” politics [facts will win the day] has no place in the modern world, if it ever did.

The right has a gigantic media complex and it's getting bigger. Twitter, CBS News and soon perhaps CNN — all are right-coded or soon could be. Are you seeing recognition among liberals and leftists that this imbalance is unsustainable? If so, what's the plan?

Look, there are plenty of pro-democracy folks in the world with more money than they could spend in 50 lifetimes. A little bit of that money could go a long way in establishing pro-democracy media outlets that operate as propaganda outlets for the kind of liberalism that has been washed away by the right's capture of the media. Democracy needs to be sold to Americans just as fascism was sold to them, first in the seedy corners of the internet, then on Elon Musk's hub for international fascism, then in mainstream outlets run by people cooking their brains daily on Musk's site.

I'm not sure of a specific plan. I'm just a blogger. But people are awash in fascist propaganda 24 hours a day on every major social media site. It has ruined a lot of relationships and radicalized Americans who spent most of their lives ignoring politics as the domain of nerds.

There has to be a flood of pro-democracy messaging in the media and that can't happen without billions being invested in a massive network of outlets that can effectively push back on the right's unreality.

I wrote about the selling of democracy here.

The meaning of "elites" is central to the fascist project. As defined by David Brooks, they are educated liberal-ish people who drive Teslas, or used to. With an affordability crisis underway, liberals and leftists have a chance to redefine "elites" for the long haul. Thoughts?

I think engaging the right on the meaning of "elites" is probably a road to nowhere. They will label as "elite" anyone who has ever read a book or graduated from college. I would say the left can and should point out the vast gulf between real populism and fake right-wing populism. Media outlets, of course, have conflated these two because the media assumes everyone in politics is operating in pristine good faith.

But pointing out that Zohran Mamdani and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are real populists while Trump and his lackeys talk a big populist game while selling the country for parts to their golf buddies and business associates could offer people real insight into what it means to be on the side of the working person. Barack Obama has toyed with the idea of rejecting Trump as a populist; I think every pro-democracy American needs to push back harder on that label because it's disingenuous and a powerful tool for fascist politicians who have nothing if they don't have at least some working-class support.

'Practically AWOL': Trump's 'shadow' government exposed in NYT column

Despite being given powers well beyond previous presidents, President Donald Trump has largely outsourced his duties to advisors who are actually running the White House's day-to-day operations, according to a recent analysis.

In a Wednesday op-ed for the New York Times, columnist Jamelle Bouie argued that Trump is mostly "uninterested in anyone except his most devoted fans, and would rather collect gifts from foreign businessmen than take the reins of his administration." Bouie pointed to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles' recent bombshell profile in Vanity Fair, in which she maintained that despite occupying America's highest office, Trump "doesn't know the details" of the "smallish agencies" that his administration decimated earlier this year.

"The president doesn’t know and never will," Wiles said.

Despite Trump being "practically AWOL," Bouie pointed out that he is president at a time when the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has dramatically expanded the powers of the executive branch under the philosophy of "unitary executive theory." Under that system, Trump himself is vested with all the powers of the executive branch as outlined in Article II of the U.S. Constitution, which SCOTUS' conservative majority has clarified includes the ability to fire executive branch employees at will — even those at independent agencies.

However, Bouie asserted that the caveat of SCOTUS's new broad definitions of executive power is that Trump is mostly idle, "rarely meets with ordinary Americans" and "is shuttled from one Trump resort to another to play golf and hold court with donors, supporters and hangers-on." He added that SCOTUS's empowering of Trump to act beyond traditional checks and balances has, by default, meant that his cadre of advisors has free rein to run the White House as they see fit.

"[T]here is something ironic at work in this effort to concentrate executive power in the name of constitutional fidelity. It is being done on behalf of a president who is mostly missing from the business of government," Bouie wrote. "The unitary executive lacks an executive. And the president we have isn’t unitary. He has given his newfound power away to a small set of virtually unaccountable advisers, insulated from public outcry and indifferent to public opinion."

These advisors include Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, who Bouie characterized as the "de facto shadow president for domestic affairs," and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, whom the Times columnist called the "shadow president for internal security." Bouie noted that the work of foreign policy — which has always traditionally been seen solely as the president's wheelhouse — is largely being handled by Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Bouie quoted former President John F. Kennedy, who wrote in the foreword of his advisor Ted Sorensen's 1963 book Decision Making in the White House that the “secret of the presidential enterprise is to be found in an examination of the way presidential choices are made."

"What do we make of a president who chooses not to make these choices?" Bouie wrote.

Click here to read Bouie's New York Times column in full (subscription required).

Conservative declares Trump is 'the most loathsome being ever to occupy the White House'

Conservative New York Times columnist Bret Stephens is a frequent critic of President Donald Trump, though he took his criticism a step further after the president insulted the late actor-director Rob Reiner.

In a Tuesday column, Stephens castigated the commander-in-chief and lamented having to write about Trump, who he called a "petty, hollow, squalid, overstuffed man." He argued that dedicating a column to him was necessary as Trump was, in his words, "the most loathsome human being ever to occupy the White House."

Stephens referred to Trump as America's "ogre in chief" and reminded readers that he criticized Reiner as "deranged" even after he was found dead in his home after allegedly being fatally stabbed by his son. He posted Trump's Truth Social post in its entirety, saying that it "captures the combination of preposterous grandiosity, obsessive self-regard and gratuitous spite." And he argued that Trump's disrespect of a beloved cultural icon "is where history will record that the deepest damage by the Trump presidency was done."

"Right now, in every grotesque social media post; in every cabinet meeting devoted, North Korea-like, to adulating him; in every executive-order-signing ceremony intended to make him appear like a Chinese emperor; in every fawning reference to all the peace he’s supposedly brought the world; in every Neronic enlargement of the White House’s East Wing ... in all this and more, our standards as a nation are being debased, our manners barbarized," he added.

Stephens also differentiated Trump from other conservatives who put politics aside to mourn the Reiners, as actor James Woods did in a recent Fox News interview. He noted that Woods called Reiner "a great patriot," and that while they had different visions of how America could succeed, they both shared a love for country and a mutual respect for each other as Americans.

"Good people and good nations do not stomp on the grief of others. Politics is meant to end at the graveside. That’s not just some social nicety," Stephens wrote. "It’s a foundational taboo that any civilized society must enforce to prevent transient personal differences from becoming generational blood feuds."

The conservative columnist also observed that Trump's post came on the heels of a shooting at Brown University that killed two people, and an attack against Australia's Jewish community on the first day of Hannukah that left 15 people dead. Stephens asserted that Trump's second term was not a "golden age," but rather "a country that feels like a train coming off the rails, led by a driver whose own derangement was again laid bare in that contemptible assault on the Reiners, may their memories be for a blessing."

Click here to read Stephens' full column (subscription required).

CEOs called out to their faces for 'groveling' to Trump

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) spent a significant portion of a recent address criticizing members of his audience for their obeisance to President Donald Trump.

Politico reported Wednesday that the two-term governor — who is presumed to run for the presidency in 2028 — told audience members at the New York Times DealBook Summit that they were complicit in some of the Trump administration's worst abuses. At one point, he suggested they should buy the kneepads with Trump's signature he's selling on his website, given their pattern of "groveling to Trump’s needs."

"Some of you may need to buy them in bulk," Newsom added.

The outlet reported that Newsom's segment was sandwiched between Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Turning Point CEO Erika Kirk (wife of slain MAGA activist Charlie Kirk), and he spent much of it attacking the Trump administration. He specifically called out the administration's deployment of federal agents ahead of the campaign kickoff for the Prop 50 initiative (which was passed in November as a means of countering Republican gerrymandering efforts in Texas and elsewhere).

“Some of you are probably fine with it,” Newsom told the audience. “A lot of people figured it out. They know the game, state capitalism, crony capitalism, the great grift. A lot of you are doing extraordinarily well.”

Politico reported that Newsom's speech was met not with boos, but with muted applause. Two people in the audience described the California governor as a younger version of President Joe Biden. Another said he was impressed by Newsom's presentation.

According to the New York Times, the DealBook Summit's attendees typically include "high-level executives, leaders and entrepreneurs from the worlds of financial services, technology, consumer goods, private investment, venture capital, banking, media, public relations, policy, government, academia and more."

Click here to read Politico's report in its entirety.

Speaker 'barely holding it together' and 'crushed by his workload': NYT

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) made several revealing admissions about the stressful and chaotic nature of his job, according to a recent New York Times report.

The Times' Annie Karni wrote in a Wednesday article that Johnson turned what was meant to be an easy interview with a friendly podcast host into a spotlight on how he's handling the pressure of being second in the presidential line of succession. While sitting alongside his wife in an appearance on the Katie Miller Pod (hosted by the wife of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller), Karni observed that Johnson gave unusually detailed answers to softball questions.

"Sitting together in the speaker’s office, the Johnsons appear perfectly practiced and coifed. Ms. Johnson’s bright orange lipstick exactly matched her suit and her shoes. The two know how to do this; they used to co-host a podcast about religion and politics," Karni wrote. "But they both revealed in their conversation with Ms. Miller that they are barely holding it together."

The speaker casually mentioned that he hadn't had a vacation or a day off "in two years, literally." He told Miller that "literally 100,000 people have my cellphone number" and that he is constantly worried about missing important calls and text messages because his phone is constantly ringing — and that most of his typical calls are emergencies. The Johnsons sold their home in Shreveport, Louisiana as the effort of caretaking and maintenance on the property became too much for them to handle, and that he spent his last Christmas "taking calls from members with their drama."

"[E]ven on this forgiving platform, Mr. Johnson presented himself as a man toiling to fulfill his duties at a moment when his weak grip on his conference appears to be slipping even further," Karni wrote. "... [T]he throughline was Mr. Johnson’s sense of being crushed by his workload and the demands of his job managing an unruly Republican majority."

Even at home, Johnson alluded to a hectic and topsy-turvy lifestyle, which Karni described as "pure chaos." The Times journalist opined that while some in Washington thrive in high-pressure environments, the speaker "appeared to be burdened by it all"

“We’re in triage every day, and every day is different. There’s no pattern or schedule,” Johnson told Miller. “We’re kind of in survival mode right now. We order in food because we just don’t have the time or luxury of cooking.”

Click here to read Karni's full article in the New York Times (subscription required).

Trump displaying signs of 'fatigue' with shorter days and fewer public appearances: NYT

Just 10 months into his second term, President Donald Trump is already exhibiting multiple signs of "fatigue," according to the New York Times.

The Times reported in a Tuesday article that the president's behavior has prompted various experts to question whether the administration is being forthcoming about Trump's health, given that he is the oldest person to be ever be elected president (beating out former President Joe Biden by roughly five months). George Washington University political historian Matthew Dallek told the Times that the White House is withholding information about Trump's health in ways similar to those of the Biden White House.

“The people around him are similar to Biden’s aides,” Dallek said. “They would talk as if we’re living in a little bit of a fantasy world. Trump, in that way, with the help of his aides and his doctors have created this fiction about his health to hide the hard, cold truth that he is 79 and one of the oldest people to ever occupy the Oval Office.”

According to the Times, Trump's "battery shows signs of wear" during some public appearances, including one from November in which he was seen dozing off during an Oval Office event. Trump appeared to drift in and out of sleep until someone at the event collapsed and required medical attention.

Trump's public appearances themselves have also been cut short compared to his first term. The paper cited Capitol Hill outlet Roll Call's presidential calendar tracker and found that the president typically doesn't attend official events until after 12 PM, whereas his average day started around 10:30 AM during his first term.

"The number of Mr. Trump’s total official appearances has decreased by 39 percent," the Times reported. "In 2017, Mr. Trump held 1,688 official events between Jan. 20 and Nov. 25 of that year. For that same time period this year, Mr. Trump has appeared in 1,029 official events."

Trump's schedule is noticeably less demanding than that of his predecessors during their respective second terms. The paper found that while former President Barack Obama's days typically started around 10 AM, he maintained a regular daily schedule through 7 PM, when he had dinner with his family. Former President George W. Bush was usually in the Oval Office by 6:45 AM each day, and both Bush and Obama also made time in their schedules for regular exercise, while Trump does not.

Click here to read the Times' full report (subscription required).

New York Times accused of 'sanewashing' Trump post with report on dumping 'brown liquid'

Donald Trump posted an AI video in which "King Trump" can be seen dumping feces from a fighter jet onto protesters, but the New York Times is catching flak for its coverage of the post.

The president shocked political analysts and experts with an AI video he posted this weekend. Trump late Saturday night dropped a new Artificial Intelligence video in which "King Trump" is shown flying a jet in a crown and dumping feces on "No Kings" protesters, leading some to call into question his sanity.

Now, the Times is being criticized for its portrayal of the video.

In an article called, "Trump Posts Fake Video of Himself Flying a ‘King Trump’ Jet Over Protesters," the Times argued, "President Trump shared what appeared to be an A.I.-generated video on social media. It shows Mr. Trump wearing a crown and flying a jet that dumps brown liquid on demonstrators."

That description didn't sit well with many, including Democratic Rep. Sean Casten of Illinois, who chimed in, "We leave it to you, the reader to speculate on what that brown liquid might have been. Perhaps mole sauce, as a belated recognition of Hispanic Heritage month? Perhaps something even more presidential? Just impossible to say."

National security journalist Marcy "emptywheel" Wheeler also weighed in, writing, "NYT sanewashing extends, apparently, to sparing NYT readers from a description of Trump's literal s---."

That led conservative attorney George Conway to chime in with, "Look, the Times was obviously unable to confirm at time of publication what the brown liquid that looked like diarrhea and that appeared to have been dumped from an AI-generated jet fighter by the president of the United States was intended to represent in his mind."

"A Times reporter called the White House for comment and was told that the brown liquid represented his mother, but the newspaper was also unable to verify that claim at press time," Conway added on Sunday.

How our media became so vulnerable to Trump — and what we can do about it

Jimmy Kimmel returned to the airwaves just two weeks and two days ago (although in Trump time, it seems far longer).

Disney’s decision to allow Kimmel back on was a victory for freedom of the press and a setback for Trump’s authoritarianism.

Nonetheless, today’s media ecosystem is far more vulnerable to authoritarianism than it was decades ago.

Today I want to explore three structural changes in our political economy that have made it so, and suggest what must be done to strengthen media independence.

1. Media concentration has facilitated censorship

After Paramount’s CBS settled Trump’s frivolous $16 million lawsuit against them and canceled Stephen Colbert, much to Trump’s delight, the FCC swiftly approved Paramount’s merger with Skydance.

The result: a newly consolidated media giant now run by David Ellison — son of Larry Ellison, the world’s third-richest man and a major Trump donor.

Now, Ellison has announced Paramount’s acquisition of The Free Press and installed its anti-“woke” founder, Bari Weiss, as editor-in-chief of CBS News.

This is the same billionaire-led conglomerate that wants to absorb Warner Bros. Discovery — an even bigger step toward the concentration of the power to shape public opinion.

The proposed merger would hand control of CNN, CBS News, HBO, MTV, Comedy Central, BET, HGTV, TNT, and more to a single mega-corporation — with Trump’s allies at the helm.

When the media is under the control of a handful of people, it’s far easier for an authoritarian in the White House to intimidate that handful — and force them to do his bidding — than when the media is less concentrated.

In 1983, the U.S. media was dominated by 50 companies. Today, that number has shrunk to just six giant media conglomerates.

2. Ultra-wealthy individuals are now controlling major media. These are people likely to be biased against the public’s right to know.

The second trend has been a shift in control over those media corporations to a relative handful of ultra-wealthy moguls.

As noted, the Ellison family is rapidly taking over a large swath of media.

Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, bought X (then Twitter) for $42 billion. He then turned it into a right-wing cesspool.

Jeff Bezos, the second richest, owns Amazon and The Washington Post.

Rupert Murdoch, another billionaire, owns Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Post.

Why are the ultra-rich buying up so much of the media? Vanity may play a part, but there’s a more pragmatic — some might say sinister — reason.

As vast wealth concentrates in the hands of a few, this small group of the ultra-wealthy may rationally fear that majorities of voters could confiscate their wealth through, for example, a wealth tax or the elimination of the “stepped-up basis at death” rule, which would tax all capital gains.

If you’re a billionaire, in other words, you may view democracy as a potential threat to your net worth.

Control over a significant share of the dwindling number of media outlets enables you to effectively hedge against democracy by subtly (or not so subtly) suppressing criticism of you and other plutocrats.

Seen in this light, Jeff Bezos’s decree that The Washington Post’s opinion section support “personal liberties and free markets” isn’t just a means of ingratiating himself with Trump. It also reduces the risk that movers and shakers in the nation’s capital might be seduced into raising taxes on people like Bezos.

3. The shift from stakeholder to shareholder capitalism.

Behind these maneuvers lies a third underlying shift — from the stakeholder capitalism of the first three decades after World War II to the shareholder capitalism that began in the 1980s — along with the rise, starting in the 1990s, of CEO pay packages consisting of large amounts of shares of stock and options to purchase additional shares.

Paramount (CBS) surrendered to Trump, and Disney (ABC) initially did so, because they determined that fighting him would have cost those firms’ CEOs and shareholders far more.

Disney then discovered — when its customers threatened to boycott all Disney products and services — that the actual cost of surrender was far higher than it had counted on. Hence, its decision to reinstate Kimmel.

I’m old enough to remember when CBS News would never have surrendered to a demagogic president. But that was when CBS News — the home of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite — was independent of the rest of CBS, and when the top management of CBS had independent responsibilities to the American public.

The New York Times, by contrast, decided to fight Trump from the moment he initiated a lawsuit against it. That may be because the Times is owned and controlled by the Ochs-Sulzberger family through a trust that holds a majority of special, high-voting shares in the company. The Times is not dedicated to maximizing shareholder value; it’s dedicated to the public’s right to know.

***

Trump and his stooges are engaged in blatant political censorship that runs afoul of the First Amendment.

But the three underlying trends I’ve just outlined — the consolidation of media into a handful of outlets, the increasing control of the media by the ultra-rich, and the growing primacy of shareholder interests — have made it far easier for Trump and his lackeys to do their dirty work.

When and if We the People are ever back in charge, not only do we have to protect freedom of speech from demagoguery, but we must also reverse these three underlying trends that have made it far too easy for a demagogue to undermine such freedom.

This will require:

conditioning media ownership on a proven commitment to the public’s right to know,
using antitrust laws to prevent or break up media monopolies and giant media conglomerates, and
raising taxes on the ultra-wealthy so they have less power to undermine our democracy.

Easier said than done, obviously, but key prerequisites for restoring American democracy.

***

Here’s CBS News’s Edward R. Murrow in 1954, criticizing Senator Joe McCarthy — and criticizing America for allowing McCarthy’s witch hunt. Would today’s CBS News have allowed Murrow to say this on the air?

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/
Robert Reich's new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org.

'Very worrying': NYT reporter alarmed by Kristi Noem's DHS social media feed

A New York Times reporter Monday called Kristi Noem's Department of Homeland Security feed "very worrying" and an "egregious overstep" by the agency.

"Has anyone looked at the Department of Homeland Security's X feed?" New York Times reporter and CNN contributor Lulu Garcia-Navarro asked during a live panel with CNN anchor Kasie Hunt.

The department shared several shocking videos and images, including one reshared from Immigration and Customs Enforcement by DHS that says, "PORTLAND — Refuse to walk? We'll give you a ride." The video features a person in custody lying on their stomach and handcuffed, set to the 2005 Chamillionaire song "Ridin'."

"I would urge people to go and have a look at that because I think it undercuts the message that this is about either fighting crime or immigration enforcement," Garcia-Navarro said. "I mean, there is a very worrying political message being sent with that feed, basically saying 'America is for Americans,' people's fists in the air. It's resonant of darker periods in history that I think is troubling.

She also argued that this message shows what the Trump administration is really most focused on.

"And I also think the bigger question around this is, what is the administration really after here? Because you can look at this and say, 'Why is the administration at war with American cities? Why are they focused so much on sending military into cities that have not asked for it?' While they are not perhaps occupied with other things internationally, or the cost of living at home, or many other things that are important, they are very focused on these culture war issues," Garcia-Navarro added. "They are very focused on picking fights with Democratic cities. And I think that there is a larger question here about what it is that they actually want."

Some of the footage DHS is sharing is stunning — and in many ways — can tug on people's heartstrings, she said. It also puts ICE's moves in question.

"Because there's a question, even Trump said it himself, like, 'Maybe we shouldn't send those people back who've been here working so hard. Right?' And then he got a lot of pushback on that," Garcia-Navarro said.

"I'm quoting here from my publication, The New York Times," she said. "In Chicago, agents have deployed tear gas with no warning, raided apartments and zip-tied residents for hours in the middle of the night, handcuffed a city council member at a hospital after she asked to see an arrest warrant for a detainee. These are serious, you know, sort of egregious overstep of what ICE should be doing. And so the question becomes, are you going to just allow that to happen? Or or is there a mechanism in place to say that's not."