“Younger Americans, born after 1985, may have no frame of reference for the current state of journalism which is highly partisan and considered untrustworthy (at least to partisans on the opposite side). The Gallup Organization’s data shows that trust in ‘Mass Media’ (not identical to but related to journalism) is way down, from 72 percent in 1976 to 28 percent in 2025. The reverse is also true. People who answered positively to survey questions about trust in media, whether they had ‘None at all,’ went from 4 percent in 1976 to 34 percent in 2025. In between those answers was ‘Not very much’ trust in media, which hit a high point of 41 percent in 2016 and has fluctuated since (36 percent in 2025).” (04/06/26)
“The erosion of early work experience is widening inequality. A modern apprenticeship system could rebuild the first rung of the career ladder.” (04/06/26)
“Washington has a habit of changing its budget goals — not because the country solved the spending-driven debt problem, but because each goal proved harder than lawmakers were willing to confront. I remember working on fiscal policy in 2011, when lawmakers still talked about balancing the budget. It was an intuitive target. If the government only spent what it collected in revenues, the debt problem would eventually disappear. Simple in theory. Difficult to achieve in practice.” (04/06/26)
“After being ambushed by privacy activists outside a town hall in southern Connecticut last week, Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), the ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, spoke at length about the urgency of extending Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the warrantless spying program he has been actively lobbying Democratic colleagues to support without reforms. The 702 program is set to expire on April 20. Himes assured protestors that ‘anything I said today, you can sort of check if you want’. In a press release Friday, organizers with QuitGPT and a number of Connecticut-based advocacy groups held him to it: ‘Unfortunately, Himes repeated several false and misleading statements about FISA, the data broker loophole, and AI surveillance.’ Their comments came just hours after a separate virtual town hall last Friday where Himes ‘repeated many of the same statements’ about Section 702.” (04/06/26)
Source: Liberal Currents
by Silvaria Lysandra Zemaitis
“Toby Buckle’s ‘It Wasn’t Fascism All Along’ is exactly the kind of argument worth engaging directly. It is a serious argument that seeks to address a real epistemic problem, which is the impulse to flatten all right-of-center politics into a single undifferentiated mass. There are real differences between the different brands of conservatism in practice, and it matters—not least because we must understand our opponent, so that we may successfully confront and defeat our opponent. And ultimately, we both agree that at this current moment, there is nothing to redeem or to save in the conservative project—fascism has won the argument within the right decisively.” (04/06/26)
“It’s pretty clear what the TV screen caption should have read as the Donald expectorated a veritable shower of bully boy phlegm and sputum at the White House cameras last night: ‘Attention JD Vance – activate the 25th Amendment now, POTUS has gone full retard into veritable delusionary madness.’ That’s right. There was hardly a sentence in the speech that accords with reality in any way shape or form. Not even remotely. … The yawning disconnect with reality, however, was probably best revealed by Trump’s utterly ludicrous contention that that if he had not cancelled Obama’s JCPOA in May 2018 Iran would have nuked the entire middle east and Israel into oblivion by now.” (04/06/26)
“Iran is not some fragile backwater that will crumble under the weight of American bombs. It is a civilization state with thousands of years of continuous existence, a population of ninety million people, and a geography of mountains, deserts, and underground fortifications specifically designed to resist foreign subjugation. The notion that air power alone can decapitate its leadership, destroy its infrastructure, and produce regime change represents a fantasy that scholars have debunked repeatedly over the past century. Yet here we are, over a month into Operation Epic Fury, watching Washington learn these lessons the hard way.” (04/06/26)
“We must all confront Israel, but we must also confront this toxic runoff along with it and we must confront them both simultaneously with the weapon of history. The Jews are not the problem here, Zionism is, and Zionism has absolutely nothing to do with Judaism or the Semitic people. In fact, Zionism is really just another malignant cell of white supremacy, and it has long disdained both Judaism and most people of Semitic de[s]cent. Zionism emerged from central and eastern Europe during the mid-19th century as a distinctly secular strain of the same European national swamp that would fester into fascism and national socialism, and it caried many of the same characteristics too; devotion to such toxically contrived notions as ‘blood and soil’ and scientific racism, not to mention a pronounced disdain for the east, including the Jews who once closely identified with it.” (04/05/26)
“‘Well, it’s a new world. It’s the same Constitution.’ Those words from Chief Justice John Roberts during this week’s oral arguments signaled that the conservative justices are unlikely to reject birthright citizenship. Of course, nothing is certain until this summer when the Court issues its opinion in Trump v. Barbara. However, we need to consider the need for a 28th Amendment to reaffirm [sic] the meaning of citizenship. As some of us stressed before the oral argument, the odds were against the administration prevailing in the case, given more than a century of countervailing precedent. There are good-faith arguments against reading the 14th Amendment as supporting citizenship for any child born in this country.” [editor’s note: Yes, it is POSSIBLE to be constitutionally and historically illiterate and therefore believe nonsense “in good faith.” But it’s an odd admission for Turley to make – TLK] (04/06/26)
