Editors’ Blog

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate recap the abrupt resurrection of the reconciliation package last week, and look ahead to the debt ceiling standoff.

You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.

The deepest corruption surrounding the Big Lie was Trump’s weaponization of the Justice Department. Big new report from the Senate Judiciary Committee just out this morning on exactly that aspect of the conspiracy.

If confirmed, Lucy Koh, one of President Biden’s judicial nominees, would become the first Korean American to serve as a U.S. appeals court judge.

During the start of her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee today, ranking Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) — an 88-year-old who just announced he’s running for another six-year term — made a remark that could only be interpreted as wildly inappropriate, at best, and pretty racist, at worst.

Why is Mitch McConnell blinking? Let’s be clear: this is a blink, not a cave. There’s a lot to play out. But here is the gist. Democrats refusal to budge on using reconciliation to beat Republicans’ repeated filibusters is moving quickly toward a situation where there will literally be only two options: filibuster carve-out or debt default. Those are both very bad options to McConnell. As I noted yesterday, this isn’t a matter of saying “Oh Democrats are tougher. They won’t cave.” It’s that the mechanics of reconciliation will mean there’s no more time. They’ll have no way to cave. That calendar reality creates a very bad situation for McConnell.

TPM Reader TD is 100% on the mark here …

I think you’re on the right track about ATT and OAN, but I think you’re overthinking it. Might there be some ideology influencing the ATT decision to suggest the formation of OAN? Sure, but that’s secondary.

What is corporate ideology? Money. Profit.

Fox had little to no competition as a conservative network. With no competition, Fox could back cable systems into a corner, basically demanding they be carried as the only “conservative” viewpoint, and demanding the very best terms available to them.

Reuters just published a fascinating special report about the role AT&T played in creating OAN, the far-right cable news network which has basically operated as a propaganda mill for Trumpite conspiracy theories. Just yesterday we learned that one of its lead “reporters,” Christina Bobb, worked for the Trump campaign while simultaneously working for OAN. That’s the kind of operation.

So is AT&T a far-right company trying to push Trumpism?

Well, we don’t know for sure. Reuters was able to piece together the story mostly from depositions in unrelated or tangentially related lawsuits. So we appear to have pretty solid confirmation of certain facts but we have to infer the different players’ motivations.

Here are the basics. I will try to fill in some of the blanks from my own understanding of the telecommunications world.

The Justice Department announced this week that it will soon start investigating violent threats against school teachers and school board members around the country — a concerning trend that escalated in recent months as students returned to the classroom amid a lingering pandemic and GOP-instigated culture wars violently boiled over during school board meetings across the U.S.

You’ve probably seen the latest controversy about Facebook/Instagram leading vulnerable teenagers to anorexia, fat-shaming content that seems almost designed to send teenage girls and some boys into spirals of self-loathing and unsafe behaviors. What jumps out to me about this latest controversy is that most people still don’t grasp that things like this are close to inevitable because of what Facebook is. It’s foundational to the product. It is not surprising.

Let me explain. First, set aside all morality. Let’s say we have a 16 year old girl who’s been doing searches about average weights, whether boys care if a girl is overweight and maybe some diets. She’s also spent some time on a site called AmIFat.com. Now I set you this task. You’re on the other side of the Facebook screen and I want you to get her to click on as many things as possible and spend as much time clicking or reading as possible. Are you going to show her movie reviews? Funny cat videos? Homework tips? Of course, not. If you’re really trying to grab her attention you’re going to show her content about really thin girls, how their thinness has gotten them the attention of boys who turn out to really love them, and more diets. If you’re clever you probably wouldn’t start with content that’s going to make this 16 year old feel super bad about herself because that might just get her to log off. You’ll inspire or provoke enough negative feelings to get clicks and engagement without going too far.