Thor Benson

Wealth of the top 1% in U.S. hits all-time high of $45 trillion

Data released by the Federal Reserve on Thursday shows the top 1% of Americans are the richest they've ever been.

The new data reveals that at the end of the fourth quarter last year they had a record $44.6 trillion in wealth. That's up from $30 trillion in 2020.

The main driver of wealth gains last year was from the stock market hitting record highs. While wages are increasing for average Americans, the top 1% is gaining wealth at a much faster pace.

The wealth of U.S. billionaires is currently at $5.5 trillion, which is up 88% since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. The nation's rich accruing so much wealth in recent years has renewed calls for a wealth tax.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass), Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), and others are pushing to pass the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act, which would put a 2-cent tax on every dollar of wealth over $50 million. Warren referred to U.S. President Joe Biden calling for higher taxes on billionaires during his State of the Union when the bill was reintroduced earlier this month.

"As President Biden says: No one thinks it's fair that Jeff Bezos gets enough tax loopholes that he pays at a lower rate than a public school teacher," said Warren. "All my bill is asking is that when you make it big, bigger than $50 million dollars, then on that next dollar, you pitch in 2 cents, so everyone else can have a chance."

As progressives fight to pass a wealth tax at the federal level, legislators in many states are pursuing their own wealth taxes.

Majority of Americans agree: Decline of unions bad for country

Most Americans think the declining number of unionized workers over the past few decades has been bad for the country, according to a poll released Tuesday from the Pew Research Center.

Pew found 54% of U.S. adults say the decline has been bad for the country, and 59% say it has been bad for working people. The center found 69% of Democrats think the decline has been bad for the country, and 40% of Republicans felt that way.

"A majority of conservative Republicans (60%) say the decline in organized labor membership has been at least somewhat good for working people, including 24% who say this has been very good," the report states. "Across ideological groups, large majorities of Democrats say the decline in the percentage of workers represented by unions has been bad for working people. But liberal Democrats (85%) are more likely than conservative and moderate Democrats (66%) to say this."

Union membership dropped to a record low last year—partially thanks to some red states limiting or banning the unionization of government workers. While recent reporting has tracked many stories of people fighting to unionize, only 10% of American adults belong to a union.

Unions have been shown to help reduce income inequality, they help raise the wages of nonunion members, and they can even improve life outside the workplace.

President Joe Biden and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump have both been vying for the support of union workers to some degree, but Trump hasn't been received quite as welcomely as Biden.

"Donald Trump is a scab," United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain said in January when the union endorsed Biden. "Donald Trump is a billionaire, and that's who he represents. If Donald Trump ever worked in an auto plant, he wouldn't be a UAW member. He'd be a company man."

Polls have consistently shown in recent years that Americans support labor unions, so running as a supporter of unions could benefit a presidential nominee. Some Republicans, though, have urged Trump to stay as far away from unions as possible.

Biden proposes major tax increase on fuel for private jets

U.S. President Joe Biden proposed a major tax increase on the fuel used for private jets on Monday in his latest budget request.

"The budget would gradually raise the tax on fuel used by private jets from about 22 cents per gallon now to $1.06 per gallon in five years," The Associated Press reports. "The Transportation Department says the increase would help stabilize funding for [the Federal Aviation Administration's] management of the national airspace, which is mostly paid by airline passengers."

"We should make private jets pay the real environmental and social costs of this indefensible form of luxury travel."

U.S. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) introduced legislation to increase private jet fuel taxes last year, and it appears the Biden administration took note. The senator welcomed the budget item and renewed his call for passing the bill on Tuesday.

While private jets account for 7% of U.S. flights, the AP notes, they contribute to less than 1% of the taxes used to fund public airports.

"We should make private jets pay the real environmental and social costs of this indefensible form of luxury travel," Chuck Collins, director of the program on inequality and the common good at the Institute for Policy Studies, told Common Dreams.

"The private jet lobby is a very powerful constituency that is used to getting their way. They represent the ultrawealthy billionaire and the private jet industry that serves them," he added. "They have spent millions to lobby to shift the real costs of private jet travel onto commercial travelers and regular taxpayers, including the cost of FAA services and airspace."

A Guardian report from November revealed that 200 private jet owners released over 415,000 metric tons of climate-heating carbon dioxide between January 2022 and September 22, 2023, which is the equivalent of what would be released by nearly 40,000 British residents from all of their activities.

The richest 1% of the world's population currently generate as much carbon emissions as two-thirds of the planet.

Norfolk Southern CEO got a 37 percent pay boost after toxic East Palestine crash

Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw got a large raise last year after the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio that devastated that community. Shaw's total compensation rose by 37% in 2023, which put it at over $13 million for the year.

The train derailment occurred in February of last year and exposed the community to toxic chemicals that caused a large fire. Though there were no human fatalities, the wreck sparked grave public health concerns andthe company has faced major criticisms for what have been described as lax safety practices. Jonathon Long, general chairman of the American Rail System Federation (ARSF) of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (BMWED), wrote about the problems with the rail company in a letter last year.

"I am writing to share with you the level of disregard that Norfolk Southern has for the safety of the railroad's workers, its track structure, and East Palestine and other American communities where NS operates," he wrote. “They gamble with your money, and you hold all the risk if they lose by putting a toxic train in the ditch in your community.”

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) criticized Shaw's compensation raise in a tweet on Monday.

Shaw's compensation increase last year came despite the fact the company's net income decreased by 44% in 2023. The company also increased its spending on lobbying by 30% last year. A group of shareholders from the firm Ancora Holdings is trying to replace Shaw and other members of the company's management with new leadership, because it doesn't feel Shaw is leading the company in the right direction.

"It's alarming that the board rewarded Mr. Shaw with a massive raise and total compensation of $13.4 million during the same year he presided over industry-worst operating results, sustained underperformance, and a tone-deaf response to the derailment in East Palestine," the group told CNN in a statement. "This failure of corporate governance … reinforces the need for sweeping changes to Norfolk Southern’s well-paid board."

The Department of Justice sued Norfolk Southern for violating the Clean Air Act last year, and the Supreme Court ruled in June of last year that a former Norfolk Southern employee who alleged he developed colon cancer after being exposed to hazardous chemicals could proceed with a lawsuit.

It remains to be seen how long Shaw will be in charge of Norfolk Southern, but the company has certainly had a tumultuous year since the disaster in East Palestine, and it doesn't seem he's yet paid a major price for what's happened under his leadership.

“Mr. Shaw and his boardroom allies have no credible plan and no viable record to run on,” the investors from Ancora told CNN.

Thor Benson is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

It’s time Biden sends Trump to Gitmo

Donald Trump is claiming that presidents need “total immunity” from being indicted for criminal acts. This is a cornerstone of Trump’s defense against the federal election interference case against him. No matter if his actions as president “cross the line.”

Trump, of course, is no longer even president of the United States. But let’s accept Trump’s argument. Once one does, it’s only logical to conclude that President Joe Biden can do whatever he wants while he’s still in office.

And that’s why Biden should not wait or hesitate — and send Trump to Guantanamo Bay, precisely because Trump, who faces 91 felony counts across four criminal cases, is a grave threat to our nation and its security.

That’d be fine, right?

Trump did, after all, show highly classified documents to people who weren’t supposed to see them. He tried to overturn a presidential election. He inspired an insurrection. He allegedly obstructed justice, falsified documents and statements and cooked his business books. Heck, he allegedly bullied his way into a “Home Alone 2” cameo. Send him to Gitmo. Put that orange jumpsuit on him. It’ll match his skin tone. Problem solved. Biden can serve his second term without that distraction bothering him anymore. You can’t do anything about it because Biden has total immunity.

Sound good?

Obviously, Biden should not do this. But here lies the folly of Trump’s legal strategy — one that serves only to protect him above all else. Just imagine an America where presidents could get away with countless abuses of power and not face any consequences for those actions. Trump’s lawyers are literally arguing — in a bid to save Trump’s skin — that a president could have his or her perceived political enemies killed by SEAL Team 6 so long as Congress didn’t previously remove that president from office.

If presidents can do whatever they want, why is Trump so hung up on Joe Biden being “crooked?” Being crooked is apparently a presidential right!

So when do presidents have actual immunity, and when should they have immunity?

ALSO READ: Racism, fascism and cruelty: Donald Trump’s New Hampshire performance in nine quotes

Jessica Levinson, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University, tells Raw Story that presidents have immunity from civil cases that relate to official acts, but that’s about it. She says she doesn’t agree with Trump’s argument that presidents should have “total immunity.”

“It’s nonsense. I think that legal precedent tells us quite clearly that you do not have absolute immunity from criminal prosecution,” Levinson says.

Many of these questions were considered during the Nixon years, Levinson says. There was a Supreme Court case that ruled presidents are immune from those civil cases, and there was a decision where it was decided that former President Richard Nixon didn’t have executive privilege that would allow him to withhold his Oval Office recordings.

“Nixon accepted the pardon from Ford. I think that would also indicate that Nixon thought there was potential criminal liability,” Levinson says.

ALSO READ: Deadline demolished: Illinois congressman violates federal financial disclosure law

Giving a president total immunity from criminal prosecution would “undercut” the idea that no person is above the law, Levinson says. Though Trump says presidents won’t be able to do their job if they don’t have total immunity, because they’ll constantly be worrying about getting indicted for their actions, Levinson noted we had 44 presidents before Trump who never needed total immunity to get the job done. The argument that presidents do need such legal protection is bogus, she said.

“History indicates that, in fact, you need a president who allegedly engages in this type of behavior to be here — where you have a president facing criminal indictment,” Levinson says.

The immunity question could end up before the Supreme Court, but it might not. It’s currently being considered by the D.C. Circuit. Levinson says she doesn’t think the Supreme Court is going to want to weigh in on this one.

“I think the Supreme Court is just going to let the D.C. Circuit decision stand. The Supreme Court is already looking at the obstruction statute,” Levinson says. “They’re already looking at Section 3 of the 14th Amendment for ballot access. I don’t think they want anything to do with this.”

It doesn’t seem likely the courts will decide that presidents should have total immunity. It would put the president above the law and open the door to presidents abusing their power in ways we can’t even imagine.

Trump’s not exactly great at coming up with strong legal arguments, though, and this will accomplish his main goal of slowing down the legal cases against him.

In the meantime, Biden may want to check his maps of southern Cuba.

Why Biden doesn’t need to become Obama to defeat Trump

In 2008, Barack Obama defeated the late Sen. John McCain by waging a campaign of “hope and change.” He presented a positive vision for the future. He inspired millions of Americans and won the election by a large margin.

Here in 2024, President Joe Biden, arguably, isn’t seen as the most inspiring figure. He’s likable enough, but people don’t typically get too excited about him. That might seem like a problem for him this year as his approval rating remains quite low and he tries to secure a second term. Even Obama himself wants Biden to be more like Obama, with the Washington Post reporting that the former and current president engaged in an “animated” discussion about the state of Biden’s re-election campaign.

But luckily for Biden, he doesn’t need to channel his inner Barack to defeat Donald for the second time in four years.

Here’s why: Though Biden’s numbers are low and most Americans don’t want a Trump vs. Biden rematch, it’s almost certainly going to be a contest between the two of them, and Trump’s numbers are also quite low. Biden’s current approval rating is 38 percent, and Trump’s is 43 percent.

ALSO READ: Birtherism is back. But these top GOPers are tired of Trump’s citizenship conspiracies.

“Biden’s numbers would be incredibly troubling if he were running against an open Republican field, because you’d expect the person to come out of that field to be the one that generates the most enthusiasm and to have relatively high numbers,” Andrew Civettini, an associate professor of political science at Knox College, tells Raw Story. “Trump starts off with very low approval, as well, and very high negatives.”

If Biden was facing off against a Republican who wasn’t extremely well known and was starting off with high approval numbers, he’d certainly be in trouble.

ALSO READ: Pat Sajak blasts ‘far-left propaganda’ that has ‘infected’ colleges: letter

Instead, he’s facing off against a man who is despised by millions of Americans and not particularly liked by many more. Trump’s base of support is passionate but, as a percentage of the electorate, relatively small and unlikely to grow much, if at all. It very well may shrink between now and November, when Trump is likely to go on trial in at least one of the four criminal cases, together containing 91 felony charges, to which he is party. Thus, Biden doesn’t need to be the most inspiring, transformational figure to defeat Trump.

So what should Biden be to the American people as the 81-year-old president seeks a second term?

First, Biden should consistently present a positive, compelling vision for the future. It’ll be easy for Biden to go negative in the coming months, and he should point out the threat Trump represents and the unpopular things Trump intends to do if he’s elected again. He should also go after Trump’s record. But Biden also needs to tell people what he would do if he’s given a second term — the re-emergence of “Middle Class Joe” and his focus on pocketbook and kitchen-table issues such as quality jobs, American manufacturing and better health care is key.

He can also focus on how we’re transforming the energy sector, and in the process creating jobs, to combat climate change. Biden needs to paint a picture of the best possible future we could build together, one that would itself stand in stark contrast to the American dystopia of civic discord, governmental chaos and political revenge and retribution that Trump offers.

Americans are exhausted by politics these days. If it’s all negative and all about the past, people are going to get more exhausted and might tune out. They might not be motivated to get out and vote. Instead of becoming Obama, Biden should simply utilize Obama as a campaign trail surrogate as much as he can.

“When they didn’t use Obama much on the campaign trail three and a half years ago it hurt them a lot. Obama generates enthusiasm. Crowds like him. He’s energetic. He knows how to play a crowd,” Civettini says.

Don’t lose your mind over Biden’s approval rating or where he stands in the polls. When Trump is back in people’s faces as the election ramps up, they’ll remember why they don’t like him and why they didn’t give him a second term. Biden needs to do what he can to avoid making everything negative and show Americans what could be if he’s given a second term and if Trump is denied one.

This is a strange election. What we’ve learned from elections past doesn’t really apply here. Only once has a former president run for a second, non-consecutive term and won — Grover Cleveland in the late 19th century — and Trump is a candidate unlike any other. That’s why it’s reasonable to question if we actually need to be freaking out about Biden’s approval rating or the latest poll.

“The idea that voters want to put somebody back in who lost is I think something that party strategists just never imagined could happen,” Civettini says. “The candidate who lost in the frontrunner. The candidate who lost is under indictment. These are things that are just unprecedented in any modern presidential election.”

So if Biden can simultaneously show Americans the negative, dangerous future Trump represents and the positive, forward-thinking future his administration could represent, then he’ll likely be able to defeat Trump in this election. He doesn’t need to inspire like Obama, but he needs to make sure people don’t tune out because of all of the negativity and rehashing of the past. He must welcome help from his most notable friends. And the balancing act en route to victory should begin now.

Inside a nightmare: Donald Trump’s White House on April 4, 2025

Imagine it’s April 4, 2025, and Donald Trump is not in prison.

Trump is in the White House.

You wake up before dawn, and a wave of dread washes over you as you check your news app to see what’s going on.

Trump has declared it’s Ivanka Trump Day, and his Cabinet secretaries are approaching her one by one to compliment Ivanka at an East Room ceremony. Trump gets in front of the cameras and notes how beautiful his daughter is. “If Ivanka weren’t my secretary of commerce, perhaps I’d be dating her,” Trump says.

Trump then goes on a tirade about China’s latest retaliatory tariff and indicates it would be “very foolish” for the Chinese to underestimate America’s military capacity. Trump hints about nuclear-armed U.S. ballistic missile submarines prowling the South China Sea.

“It would be unfortunate, wouldn’t it, if one of our patriot sub captains hit the wrong button,” Trump muses.

ALSO READ: Trump golf course isn’t making the grade: code violation records

Later that morning, Trump boards Air Force One, en route to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He’s ranting to Fox News and Newsmax reporters — among the few journalists he still allows to travel with him — about how the plane couldn’t run on “windmills.” He promises to get the price of a gallon of gas below $1. “We can do it. You’ll see,” he says. The picture on Trump’s gigantic in-cabin flatscreen, which is tuned to MSNBC so he can hate-watch “Morning Joe,” begins to flicker. Trump declares that “they don’t make television sets like they used to anymore" and orders an investigation.

“And where’s my remote? I can’t find my remote! Give me a break,” he says.

Finally, speaking from Saudi Arabia that evening, Trump announces there will be a “triumphant, never-before-seen” military parade through Washington, D.C., on May 1. The parade would celebrate soldiers that quelled nationwide anti-Trump protests in the days following his second inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025. Forty-two American citizens died and more than 700 were injured across multiple clashes.

“And maybe they’ll crack a few more heads,” Trump jests. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman smirks beside him.

It all may sound silly, but this really isn’t far from the kind of stuff to which Trump subjected America between 2017 and 2021. We had Trump’s love affair with Kim Jong Un, which followed their debate over who had the better button on their desk. Trump wanted military parades. He wanted us to inject bleach. He redirected a hurricane with a sharpie.

President Donald Trump gives a thumbs-up to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. (AFP)

It was a deranged mess of absurdities and legitimate causes for concern. It was every day, and it was impossible to avoid even if you just casually followed politics. Even people who didn’t couldn’t escape. Everywhere one went, people were talking about the latest insane Trump-y thing that had happened.

All of this is to say that Democrats may do well to remind the American people of how mentally exhausting it was having Trump in power.

He’s not just dangerous to democracy — he’s hazardous to Americans’ mental health.

Trump “created an environment where you are constantly in a state of fight or flight,” Lauren Carson, founder and executive director of the mental health nonprofit Black Girls Smile, told Vox. You can’t tell if he’s actually going to start a nuclear war or if he’s just posturing. You can barely understand what he’s ranting about sometimes, and he won’t stop ranting. He riles up tens of millions of impressionable Americans and panders to their darkest angels.

We really did get sick of that guy, didn’t we?

You woke up every morning and wondered what fresh hell you’d see in the news that day. He couldn’t stop doing ridiculous and terrible things, and he was constantly in front of the cameras. We were always on edge and tired — even people who supported Trump. Remember the family arguments and fall-outs? Remember avoiding people because they voted for Trump? We elected a boring guy for a reason, but now the crazy one has a real chance of winning the election next year. Voters have very short memories, so perhaps they’ve forgotten what it felt like to have Trump in charge of the nation, but I certainly haven’t.

So perhaps the Democrats should remind Americans — over and over and over again — about what we really had to endure during some of the most absurd and frightening weeks of the Trump years. Show us the crazy again. Show people who may have memory-holed those Trump experiences what they voted against when they went to the polls and cast their ballots for Joe Biden in 2020. With elections as close as ours are of late, even an effect at the margins could mean the difference between a nightmare repeated and a nightmare dispelled.

Trump and his people have learned from their past mistakes, and they’re now prepared to dismantle our democratic institutions. Trump isn’t at all being shy about it. They’ve got a lot of money and organization set up behind those plans, too.

If Trump comes back to the White House, he’s going to be everywhere, all of the time again. Everywhere. All of the time. Remember that. Every day. And for the next year, act accordingly.

How Democrats stormproof democracy from Hurricane Donald before Election Day

Donald Trump has some big plans for his second term should he be reelected, and they would be disastrous for American democracy.

Trump’s plan is called Project 2025, and it would involve replacing more than 50,000 career civil servants in the federal government with Trump loyalists. It’s a project being headed by the Heritage Foundation, and it’s so far backed by more than $20 million in funding. With those loyalists installed, Trump would be able to increase his power and abuse that power as he pleases.

Instead of just hoping Trump loses so that this plan doesn’t come to fruition, Democrats in Congress need to safeguard democracy by passing a law that would prevent Trump from carrying out this plan.

This won’t be easy while Republicans control the House. But the fractured GOP holds only a thin majority, and there may be enough disaffected Republicans who’d be willing to help. Even if Democrats fail to pass such a law, they must at least force Republicans to defend Trump’s plans and educate the public on Trump’s dangerous ploy.

ALSO READ: A convicted January 6 attacker faces prison. So he went to Mar-a-Lago to see Trump first.

During Trump’s first term, he often wasn’t able to abuse his power in the way he wanted because career civil servants within his administration got in the way. Many even spoke out about what they were seeing. Trump derided them as part of an anti-Trump “Deep State.” But as non-political appointees who served the public’s interest, not that of Trump, they resisted his most MAGA orders and dictates out of obligation to their duties.

If Trump is able to fire these employees — he wants to implement a policy via executive order called Schedule F that would make it possible for him to fire these civil servants — he could replace them with political patrons and loyalists who would help him accomplish anything he sets out to do.

“It represents the learning process that has occurred since Trump was president first and where he is today,” Don Moynihan, a professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University, tells Raw Story. “Trump certainly has much stronger opinions and preferences about the administrative state than he did in 2016. Partly because Trump became more activated because of the impeachment process and his sense that he was surrounded by disloyal people, but what Project 2025 does is give him a blueprint for the tools to put those preferences into action.”

Moynihan says the best outcome for protecting democracy is that President Joe Biden gets reelected. But even that is, at best, a temporary fix. And given Biden’s dismal approval rating, no one can count on that. We’re still a year out from the 2024 presidential election, and polls are merely a snapshot in time.

But they do capture current voter sentiment, and they indicate that Trump — barring a massive defection to Nikki Haley or one of the other GOP presidential candidates — is likely to become the Republican Party nominee next year. And he is running ahead of Biden in many key general election states. Democrats, therefore, must act now to defend against the possibility that Trump, despite all of his legal troubles, could again occupy the Oval Office. It would be profoundly unwise for them to just cross their fingers and hope for the best instead of doing what they can now to lessen the damage that could be caused by Trump being reelected.

ALSO READ: Nazis bullied a conservative Tennessee town. Locals punched back. Trump should be worried.

“A plan that centers on Democrats always winning the presidency to defend democracy isn’t much of a plan, because eventually you’re going to lose,” Moynihan says. “Even if it’s not Trump, some of the stuff Trump is talking about is becoming embedded into the conservative governing philosophy.”

Democrats could pass a law that makes Schedule F illegal so that Trump would not be able to fire all of these civil servants and replace them with his loyalists. Moynihan notes that this has been attempted before, but it hasn’t yet been done.

“If you look at the history of authoritarianism, the way authoritarians accumulate and consolidate power is by neutering the judiciary and neutering the bureaucracy to ensure that they are loyal,” Moynihan says. “What he would do with the bureaucracy would be beyond anything we’ve seen in the last 140 years—when the civil service system was created.”

Though Democrats don’t currently control the House, so they might have trouble getting this conversation going there if Republicans try to block their efforts, they do control the Senate.

With Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in charge of what legislation goes to the floor and what debates are taking place in the Senate, Democrats could push to get legislation that would outlaw Schedule F passed and make it a topic that’s loudly being discussed in Congress.

“It would be a great idea if senators were to bring this to the floor and make the case for it,” Moynihan says. “The value of bringing it to the floor is going to be communicating to the public about what’s going on, drawing attention to this and holding hearings about how bad this could be. That’s part of Congress’ role. It’s oversight. It’s identifying which issues are important.”

How Elon Musk got the anti-journalism weapon he always wanted

I’ve been a tech journalist for more than a decade, and during that time, one person has remained a central figure throughout my career: Elon Musk. He’s been celebrated, scrutinized and hated. I used to think he might bring some positive changes to the world. I now think he’s one of the worst influences on culture and politics you could imagine.

To explain: When I started as a tech journalist, many observers lauded him as an innovator. He spoke relatively eloquently about the problems of the future, and he appeared to be taking big swings to change the world around us. He led a successful electric car company — with some help from the taxpayer — and we needed popular, efficient electric cars to beat climate change. He was also changing space travel with his rocket company SpaceX.

He promised a lot more — remember mass-scale hyperloop? — but we’d soon learn he wouldn’t deliver on a lot of what he promised. Regardless, he was someone Americans generally thought of in a positive light.

POLL: Should Trump be allowed to run for office?

That’s why I started reaching out to him. In 2017, we had a few conversations over email. I also had some questions for him for an article I was writing, and he gave me a quote for the article.

But the press was becoming more critical of Musk around that time, and he started lashing out against the media. In 2018, he proposed launching a website called “Pravduh” where the credibility of journalists and media outlets could be rated.

I found this idea concerning, because I don’t like the idea of some manic billionaire being the arbiter of which media outlets and journalists people should trust. I asked him about the idea and how it might all work. We discussed it quite a bit, and Musk told me his respect for the press was “extremely low” at that point and all they wanted to do was “trash” him. He said journalists would lose their relevance “entirely” unless they “got their act together.”

“Pravduh” fizzled. But since then, of course, Musk has purchased Twitter (now officially “X”). As owner, Musk has trashed media outlets and journalists, banned journalists, made verification on the platform almost meaningless and elevated the influence of right-wing trolls. In a way, Musk now has a version of “Pravduh.” He has the weapon he always wanted to use against the press.

Meanwhile, it's become extremely difficult to know what’s valid and generally follow the news on Twitter since he took over.

Matthew Baum, a professor of global communications at Harvard University, tells Raw Story that he’s not really using Twitter anymore since Musk took over. Neither are a lot of his colleagues.

“The quality of discourse on Twitter was never consistently wonderful, but it’s less wonderful now,” Baum says.

Baum says Musk seems to be following his “personal whims” as the head of Twitter and will attack and/or ban anyone he doesn’t care for at that moment. He says Twitter had problems with dealing with misinformation and disinformation before, but it’s gotten a lot worse since Musk took over.

ALSO READ: How Trump conspiracy lawyer Sidney Powell got chomped by her own ‘kraken’

“It’s a problem. Basically, it’s kind of been open season for the fringes of Twitter. There’s a lot of crazy floating around there,” he says.

Since Musk isn’t a fan of the media, he often encourages non-journalists to produce news content. He supports “citizen journalism,” which isn’t inherently a bad thing, but it is a difficult thing to actually do well. Furthermore, it would seem the kind of “citizen journalism” he would want would largely be created by right-wing trolls with whom he agrees.

“Societally, we have a huge problem, in terms of discerning credible vs. non-credible information,” Baum says. “The problem with this notion of ‘citizen journalism’ is that there are no particular norms or values or training or means of discerning between the good quality information and the bad quality information.”

Baum says citizen journalism can be done well, but it’s more often not done well. It certainly doesn’t represent a viable alternative to the mainstream media, he says. We’ve also very clearly seen on Twitter that a lot of people who try to do it aren’t just trying to break legitimate news but are pushing an agenda and might take things out of context or disseminate false information.

Musk has caused chaos in the world of journalism, since it’s where so many journalists share their content, follow the news and interact with each other. It seems that’s something he’s happy to do.

With Twitter as his weapon, he can disrupt the journalism community and elevate extremists he agrees with. Twitter is not even close to the largest social media platform, but it’s an influential and important one, especially for those in journalism and who want to follow news developments. Alternatives such as Mastodon, Bluesky and even Threads have attempted to supplant it, to no avail — at least not yet, as many journalists and news organizations continue to hold out hope Twitter will, at some point, again feel more like Twitter.

Musk is certainly well aware of that.

‘Existential fight’: Five ways the media must cover Donald Trump as an authoritarian threat

The presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, is promising to dismantle this country’s government institutions and increase his power if he returns to office. He’s also threatening to jail his political opponents.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is currently a distant second in the Republican primary, also plans to dismantle America’s institutions and attack our democracy should he become president.

Some journalists and media experts who focus on threats to democracy have been sounding the alarm. The threat of authoritarianism is real, they argue, particularly with Trump racing forward toward a nomination victory despite the 91 felony counts he’s facing across four separate criminal cases.

POLL: Should Trump be allowed to run for office?

However, much of the media is still approaching this election as they would any other.

An August article published on the blog Press Watch pleaded with newsroom leaders not to treat this election as “business as usual.”

Doing so could include:

Using a “democracy frame” instead of a “horse race frame” to cover incremental election developments
Focusing on the stakes of this election rather than the odds
Putting the election in historical context
Demanding clear answers on policy from candidates
Resisting coverage of extreme candidates just to appear to be giving a balanced picture

Kim Lane Scheppele, a professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University, tells Raw Story that she finds the current coverage of the election “alarming,” and the media needs to stop covering this “pivotal” election as if it’s just another normal election.

“Politics in the U.S. should be covered like the four-alarm fire that it is. The question before the electorate in the next presidential election – as in the last two – is not left or right, but instead democracy or autocracy,” says Scheppele, an expert on authoritarianism. “That’s the choice that the media should make clear.”

Scheppele says this can be done by telling the public exactly how candidates such as Trump and DeSantis plan to dismantle federal institutions by installing loyalists in key positions in the government, how election laws are being changed to favor Republicans and how democracy is being threatened in so many other ways. She says it’s also important for reporters to talk to Republicans and right-leaning independents who do believe in democracy and do not support what candidates such as Trump and DeSantis hope to do.

On HBO, then-Axios journalist Jonathan Swan's interview of President Donald Trump in 2020 served as a template for holding Trump accountable for falsehoods. (MSNBC)

“I know reporters always want to be neutral and give ‘both sides’ equal time, but there are times when the highest calling of the journalism profession should be to keep the world safe for a free press to continue to operate,” Scheppele says. “The sides are not equal. This is an existential fight for democracy – and in that world, the media can only be on one side.”

An example: journalist Jonathan Swan's 2020 interview of Donald Trump, widely regarded as the gold-standard for holding Trump to account for his lies.

Steven Livingston, a professor of media and public affairs at The George Washington University, tells Raw Story the media also needs to get over its obsession with “polarization” — a phenomenon recently detailed by Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch. Livingston says the problem is not that there is some happy medium and both sides have become much more polarized, it’s that one side has become radicalized and “left the rest of us behind.”

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“The polarization frame allows for a patina of balance… You need to change the narrative away from polarization and toward why authoritarianism emerges,” Livingston says. “We need to think holistically about the system that leads to radicalization, to authoritarianism and not just polarization.”

Livingston says Trump should not be treated like a normal candidate, because he isn’t one, and journalists shouldn’t be overly concerned with the notion of harboring some kind of liberal bias. He says that often causes journalists to overcorrect and do “both sides” coverage. He also says journalists should be talking to more experts on authoritarianism and fewer pollsters and pundits.

“The horse race frame is a convenience that allows news organizations to present themselves as being apolitical, and it’s dramatic. It offers a who’s ahead, who’s behind today frame, like baseball. It’s been known all along that that does not serve the public very well,” Livingston says.

The mainstream media has all of the resources it needs to do quality coverage of what’s truly happening in America as the election approaches. It would be far more useful if they were to consistently explore why authoritarianism has become an attractive option for so many Americans — rather than just covering the latest poll and taking Trump at face value.

How Joe Biden could really burn Donald Trump

If you weren’t sure of it yet, climate change is quite clearly here. Heat waves scorching the United States. and other countries this summer — and subsequent wildfires that have killed dozens and choked millions — have shown us that extreme heat and its effects aren’t some abstract concepts that will only affect other people at some indeterminate point in the future.

It’s happening to us.

Matters will only get worse as we continue to burn massive amounts of toxic fossil fuels day after day, and since President Joe Biden has stated fighting climate change is one of his top priorities, it’s time for him to go further — and formally declare it the national emergency that it obviously is.

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It’s the right thing to do. But it could also provide Biden a surprisingly strong weapon in Election 2024 by hurting Donald Trump.

Polls show nearly 60 percent of Democratic voters who want the Biden administration to act on climate change think the administration could be doing “a lot more” to tackle the problem. Furthermore — and considering a majority of independents feel climate change is a major threat that needs to be addressed — Biden could take some share of that voting bloc away from Trump by acting more aggressively.

“Every day we're seeing the horror of this crisis and why we need a real climate emergency declaration from Biden,” Karuna Jaggar, California political director at the Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund, told Raw Story. “Across the country people are feeling the heartbreak of the Maui wildfires, the deadly heat waves and our overheating oceans. Voters aren’t buying it that Biden has done enough because he hasn’t.”

With emergency powers, Biden could utilize laws such as the National Emergencies Act and the Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act to take dramatic actions: prevent U.S. financial institutions from investing in foreign fossil fuel projects, divert funding from existing budgets to installing more renewable energy around the country, increase the production of solar panels, wind turbines and grid-scale batteries.

“Biden has said the climate crisis is the existential threat to humanity, and it’s time he acts like it. That means more than talk and more than investment in renewables,” Jaggar says. “It means urgent action by the world’s largest oil and gas producers to phase out the fossil fuel culprit.”

It’s not enough for Biden to simply declare a climate emergency and rely on its associated symbolism as the sole pre-election climate action he’ll take. But considering the Republican-controlled U.S. House surely won’t let him pass any significant climate legislation before the 2024 election, it could do some good and get a quiet majority of climate voters energized in ways they often are not. It could possibly increase Biden’s chances of being reelected, particularly in a handful of swing states where the margin of victory may come down to a percentage point or less.

Sure, an action as dramatic as declaring a national climate emergency would likely end up before the courts. But as a political maneuver, it’ll demonstrate that Biden is doing everything he can. (And a state court in Montana this month showed that the judicial system is capable of taking dramatic climate-related actions itself.)

Daniel Kammen, a professor of energy at the University of California, Berkeley, says there are some other ways he’d like to see Biden show he’s serious about continuing the fight against climate change at a large scale. What he can’t accomplish through executive action could be significant second-term policy goals he could campaign on.

“What we need to do is develop a national investment fund far larger than ARPA-E. We need to have a fund much larger than the Inflation Reduction Act and the Chips and Science Act combined, and we need to prioritize gender, racial and social economic justice,” Kammen says.

ARPA-E is a government agency that was founded during President Obama’s first term to study and fund the research and development of advanced energy technologies. Kammen notes that he could sell these goals to voters as job creators. He says there are more jobs benefits coming from clean energy than fossil fuels, so there could be a strong economic message — one that dovetails with Biden’s cornerstone “Bidenomics” rhetoric.

If Biden can prove to voters who care about climate change that he’s going to keep fighting this fight, on a large scale, it could energize younger voters who care about this issue and help him generally get the base and independents more excited about his candidacy. Given the lukewarm — at best — enthusiasm for giving an octogenarian commander-in-chief four more years, Biden needs to show that he’s capable of being bold and decisive in the face of crisis.

Trump can’t win these voters with his current stances on the climate issue, so there’s a real opportunity for Biden to shore them up and increase their enthusiasm.

And while climate won’t likely be one of the top issues going into the 2024 election, which will surely be dominated by conversations about economics, abortion, democracy and other issues voters are notably concerned about, every percentage point in support Biden can gain could make the difference.

How Joe Biden will increase his reelection chances by fixing these five everyday annoyances

President Joe Biden has lately focused on solving relatively small — but highly annoying — everyday problems that Americans face.

Most notably, he’s begun to tackle what his administration refers to as “junk fees,” which range from overdraft fees to unexpected fees that arise when you’re buying tickets to a concert or a sporting event.

“You shouldn’t have to pay an extra $50 to sit next to your child on the plane, pay a surprise ‘resort fee’ for a hotel stay, pay $200 to terminate your cable plan, or pay huge service fees to buy concert tickets,” Biden recently tweeted. “That’s why my Administration is taking action to curb them.”

This example is instructive. Doubling down on this effort could be an effective way for Biden to solidify his support with swing voters around the country ahead of his 2024 general election battle against Republican Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis or any of the several other underdogs vying for the GOP’s nomination.

After all, Biden’s chances of getting any big pieces of legislation passed before the 2024 election — Republicans control the House — are limited. But he can press more pedestrian priorities that the average American will appreciate. “I’m the president who killed spam phone calls” isn’t a bad campaign slogan.

Biden has already shown he can get some bipartisan bills passed, the recent debt ceiling deal chief among them. So if he pushes the right issues, he might be able to get some of these changes done through Congress. Other changes might simply rely on the use of executive orders or government agencies more aggressively enforcing existing laws..

Raymond La Raya, a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, says that Biden shouldn’t count on fixing minor problems winning him the election, but it could help at the margins.

And in a close race, candidates win on the margins.

“At the end of the day, the election is about the state of the economy and whether independent voters can stomach Trump again,” La Raja says. “The small-ball stuff that Biden focuses on is safe and reassuring to potential swing voters, and it avoids the culture wars these voters hate. Biden is trying to cultivate an image that he’s thinking about them.”

Considering how close the presidential election can be in swing states, La Raja says Biden has to do whatever he can to appeal to these voters.

Alan Abramowitz, a professor of political science at Emory University, says this move by Biden is something we’ve seen before.

“It’s kind of similar to what we’ve seen before from an incumbent. For example, when Obama was coming up on his reelection campaign in 2012 they used the term ‘no drama Obama.’ I think what you’re seeing here is something similar,” Abramowitz says.

Abramowitz says it’s all about presenting a “clear contrast” with Trump and the rest of the Republican Party. While they’re screaming about critical race theory and Trump’s indictments, Biden can just be the consistent, above-the-fray president who’s getting things done that matter to people.

Here are five of Biden’s most promising people-first plays:

Bank overdraft fees

No one likes them, and they punish people for not having enough money by making them go into some debt. Polling shows 84 percent of Americans want the government to get banks to get rid of them, and it’s hard to hit that number on any political issue. Luckily, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has started working on ways to fix this.

The CFPB released a guidance in October of last year saying certain overdraft fees are “likely unfair and unlawful under existing law.” Those fees include ones that are derived from a check bouncing or when someone charges their debit card and the amount they charged goes beyond the available balance.

Robocalls

The Federal Communications Commission has been working on this, but I just got one, and you might have already received 10 today. So they haven’t solved the problem yet. The majority of Americans don’t answer their phones anymore because they’re worried about robocalls, so it’s clearly a problem that generally everyone is dealing with.

The FCC says it is committed to “using every tool at our disposal and working closely with private, public, and international partners to combat unlawful robocalls and spoofing.” The agency has fined multiple companies responsible for robocalls. Perhaps if it goes after enough of these companies or Congress passes new legislation, we can finally be rid of these calls. But it will likely take Biden using his bully pulpit to make it a priority.

Spam phone calls have become a plague for many Americans. Rokas Tenys/Shutterstock

Utilities

There are legal monopolies throughout this country when it comes to who provides us our electricity, natural gas and other necessities, and people complain about the lack of choice all of the time. Biden should consider attempts to break up some of these companies or find other ways to increase the number of options available to the average consumer. This would likely be accomplished by passing new antitrust laws or possibly just enforcing existing antitrust laws at the federal level. Further incentivizing home solar generation to help reduce energy costs is another attractive option.

Concert tickets

One thing Biden is already working on that he should really push for is getting rid of the fees so many of us end up paying when we just want to go to a concert. Ticketmaster may advertise a ticket for $35 on the website, but you end up paying more than $50. These massive ticket companies are hated by most, especially Taylor Swift fans, and Biden should rein them in. This is a bipartisan issue that Biden and Congress might actually be able to address. Evidence of this came earlier this month, when Biden announced a tentative deal with Ticketmaster and Live Nation for them to voluntarily disclose fees up front, starting later this year.

Singer Taylor Swift (image via Wikimedia Commons).

Surge pricing

Biden should also rein in the rideshare companies. Too often, you need to get somewhere fast, and a ride that would usually cost $10 is now $40 because of “surge pricing.” I don’t remember there being surge pricing when I used to ride in a taxi, and it’s not fair to people who rely on semi-predictable pricing to balance their personal budgets. Congress could pass legislation that limits how much these companies can raise prices.

If Biden can do these kinds of things and more, it’s possible that the swing voters around this country might look upon him a little more fondly, and perhaps that will lead him to victory in 2024. It could show that Biden is actually interested in the problems people are dealing with all the time while the Republican Party is obsessed with the culture wars.

‘As long as possible’: Inside Republicans’ power play to keep Texas red amid wave of blue

Republicans in the Texas legislature recently passed two bills that will affect how elections will be run in the state’s largest county, Harris County — a Houston-centered Democratic stronghold.

The first bill gets rid of Harris County’s elections administrator entirely, and the second allows the state’s Republican secretary of state to directly oversee elections in the county. These moves have been referred to as a Republican “power grab” by Democrats in the state.

Republicans argue that they’re making these changes because of election problems in the county, but Democrats argue that they’re targeting Harris County simply because it’s large and blue. President Biden won the county by 13 points in 2020. It may be that Republicans are worried that Texas overall will turn blue, or at least a shade of purple, because of — among other things — changing demographics in the state.

“They’re targeting Harris County in an attempt to suppress the vote, put their elections under the control of the Republican statewide leadership and potentially risk future elections being overturned or results being questioned,” says Sawyer Hackett, a democratic strategist in Texas. “This is one of the bluest counties in Texas essentially being put under state control in a state that’s dominated by Republican politicians.”

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Hackett says he believes Republicans are trying to keep Texas red “as long as possible.” Texas isn’t absolutely destined to turn blue, Hackett says, but he thinks Republicans are very concerned that it could turn significantly more blue in the not-too-distant future.

While Republicans in Texas have maintained a nearly 30-year winning streak of statewide offices, then-President Donald Trump won Texas by less than 6 percentage points in 2020 — the worst showing there for a Republican presidential candidate since 1996.

Republicans now appear to be doing whatever they can to defend against conservative vote erosion, he says.

“If you look at the trends that I think are triggering this: In 2018, the statewide deficit for Democrats was a little bit more than 200,000 votes. Harris County contributed 201,000 votes to Democrats, but it’s a county that’s growing amazingly fast,” Hackett says. “It also has a lot of people who don’t vote. If voter turnout was where it should be, you could flip the state with just that county. They see Harris County as the biggest threat to keeping control over the state.”

The Texas Republican Party did not respond to a request for comment.

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Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX), who represents a district in Harris County that includes a large swath of Houston, tells Raw Story that she thinks Republicans’ targeting of Harris County is “unacceptable” and that politics, not election problems, are driving their effort.

“Extreme MAGA Republicans know that when minorities vote, they lose. This is yet another attempt to restrict voting rights in Harris County, one of the most diverse counties in the country,” Garcia said. “In 2020, voters were afforded greater accessibility to the ballot through measures like drive-thru voting, 24-hour voting and increased drop off locations for mail ballots. These measures increased voter turnout and put a Republican target on the county. MAGA Republicans are trying to push back against our constitutional right to vote, by adding barriers to voter registration and casting a ballot. They are more concerned with keeping people away from the polls instead of driving them to the polls.”

Texas is also a state that often sets legislative trends. The kinds of bills the Texas Legislature passes might be duplicated in other red states, Hackett says, so Democrats nationwide should be worried about what’s happening in Texas. He says there may be other blue-trending red states where conservatives get increasingly creative in a bid to diminish the Democratic vote.

“This is a new form of voter intimidation and voter suppression that Texas Republicans are trying, and Texas has always been ground zero for different forms of voter suppression,” Hackett says. “National political leaders on the right pay attention to what happens in Texas, because they’ve been able to stave off the state being flipped and put under Democratic control largely because of these efforts to suppress the vote.”

At present, there’s not much Democrats in Texas can do to stop Republican efforts to overhaul how elections are run in places such as Harris County, considering that conservatives significantly outnumber liberals in the legislature. But that doesn’t mean some won’t try: Last week, Harris County approved a move to sue the state of Texas over its targeting of its election administration.

Democrats are also raising the alarm to get more people to pay attention to what’s happening here and because they want Democrats around the country to see what could be coming their way.

How Democrats could push back against GOP ‘judge shopping’

U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk of Texas isn’t a household name, but he’s ended up ruling on important legal cases that affect the whole nation.

And that's not by accident.

The reason he’s been the judge presiding over numerous important federal cases is because he’s the focus of what is called “judge shopping.”

Judge shopping — different from “forum shopping,” which is when a lawyer is trying to get a case heard in a jurisdiction where they think they might get a favorable result — is the act of filing lawsuits in typically smaller geographic areas led by particular judges in hopes of getting a favorable result.

This seemingly happened with Kacsmaryk in the mifepristone abortion pill case, where he last month ordered a hold on federal approval of the drug. Judge shopping also was arguably performed by former President Donald Trump in the classified documents case where Trump was trying to delay the legal proceedings as the Justice Department investigated him taking classified documents to Mar-a-Lago, his post-presidential home in Florida.

Kacsmaryk, widely regarded as a conservative ideologue, became a federal judge in 2019 after then-President Trump nominated him in 2017.

Judge shopping is quite easy to do with Kacsmaryk because the vast majority of cases filed in his Northern District of Texas subdivision in Amarillo go to him.

“The Judge Kacsmaryk case is interesting because you’re basically assured you’ll get him,” says Jessica Levinson, a professor of law at Loyola Marymount University.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in Florida, a Trump nominee who last year made a favorable — and controversial — ruling that favored Trump, is another prime example, Levinson said.

Kacsmaryk’s office did not reply to a request for comment.

Plaintiffs can’t just file with Kacsmaryk because they want to. They must have a reason to be filing with him, such as they live in Texas or are an organization that operates in Texas. In the mifepristone case, some argue that the plaintiff, The Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, made sure they had the ability to file with Kacsmaryk specifically by incorporating within his subdistrict only months before the lawsuit was filed.

“You see an advocacy organization incorporating in Texas, and I can’t imagine any other reason why they’d do that other than for the express purpose of getting in front of Judge Kacsmaryk,” says Alan Trammell, an associate professor of law at Washington and Lee University.

Potential ‘judge shopping’ pushback

Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) has introduced a bill to push back against this practice of judge shopping.

The bill would make it so any civil lawsuit that would lead to what’s called a “nationwide injunction” — a ruling would affect the whole nation — would have to be heard by the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

If that was what had happened in the mifepristone case, for example, then Kacsmaryk would not have ruled on the case at the federal district court level.

“Activist plaintiffs should not be able to hand-pick individual judges to set nationwide policy, which is why it’s critical we address the issue of judge shopping in our federal courts,” Hirono said in a statement.

U.S. Sen. U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI), wearing a face mask with drawings of late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Shawn Thew-Pool/Getty Images

It’s early, but so far, however, Hirono’s bill has not yet attracted a co-sponsor or received a hearing date.

Nationwide injunctions have become more common in recent years, Levinson said, and Trump was very effective at getting ideological judges, who will issue these kinds of rulings, placed on the federal bench. Levinson says the conservative legal movement seems to see this as a time to achieve as many of its goals as it can now that there are so many judges on the federal courts that are sympathetic to those goals.

“This is the moment. If you’re a conservative, I don’t know if it’s going to get better than this,” Levinson says. “This crop of conservative justices is just so much more conservative than anything that we’ve really seen in the past 75 or 100 years.”

Trump installed so many judges that a plaintiff might not even have to work very hard to get the desired result when filing this kind of suit, Trammell says, because there are now so many “zealots” on the federal bench. He says you could get a favorable ruling with “dumb luck” because of that.

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Evan Caminker, a professor of law at the University of Michigan, says he thinks Hirono’s bill would likely “minimize judge-shopping for national injunctions,” because these kinds of cases would all end up before the same district court in Washington, D.C.

That said, he can imagine conservatives might feel such a change would be too beneficial for liberals.

“I suspect some will oppose the bill simply because there happens to be a slight majority of Democratic-appointed judges in D.C. on both the trial and appellate levels, though of course that will change over time,” Caminker says.

Alternatively, Caminker says some have proposed sending these kinds of cases to a random district court. That would also be effective because the plaintiffs filing the lawsuit would have no idea where it was going to be heard.

Regardless of what happens with Hirono’s bill, it is clear the conservative legal movement has gone into hyperdrive trying to craft lawsuits and model legislation to accomplish their goals through courts.

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden’s own judicial nominees are back on track after long delays caused by the extended health-related absence of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), whose vote was required on the Senate Judiciary Committee to advance the nominees.

Liberals consider it essential that Biden appoint as many left-leaning judges as possible between now and the 2024 election, when Democrats control both the White House and Senate.

Inside the Republican playbook for crushing press freedoms

A bill in Florida that’s supported by Gov. Ron DeSantis would make it easier to sue journalists for defamation, and press freedom advocates say such a change in the law would be extremely dangerous. The bill would seemingly violate a Supreme Court ruling that established these press protections, New York Times v. Sullivan, but it appears the bill may be an effort to get the Supreme Court to reconsider that decision and, as former President Trump once put it, “open up” libel laws.

The bill, HB 991, was introduced by Florida state Rep. Alex Andrade, a Republican. It would redefine “actual malice” to make it easier to win a defamation suit against a journalist. Actual malice is the term used to determine if a journalist knew what they were writing about a public figure was false or should have known it was false. The bill would also change who can be considered a “public figure” under the law.

“The New York Times v. Sullivan ‘actual malice’ rule applies when the plaintiff is a public official or a public figure, and the courts have defined the category of public figure pretty broadly,” Samantha Barbas, a law professor at the University at Buffalo who focuses on First Amendment law, told Raw Story.

Essentially, the bill would make it so fewer people are considered public figures, which means the Sullivan rules would apply to fewer cases, and the people who do qualify as public figures wouldn’t have to provide much evidence that the journalist was acting maliciously or irresponsibly. This change in the law wouldn’t only affect journalists, though.

“The Sullivan actual malice rule affects all speakers, so ordinary citizens who want to comment on public officials or public affairs are protected by it if they make comments that are defamatory. We tend to think of Sullivan as a shield for the press, but really it affects everyone who wants to make commentary or criticism on public issues,” said Barbas, who recently wrote a book on the matter entitled “Actual Malice: Civil Rights and Freedom of the Press in New York Times v. Sullivan”.

So say you’re a Florida resident. You want to go to a town hall meeting and make some negative comments about your local representative. Feel free to do so — just know that without Sullivan in force, the lawmaker could potentially sue you for defamation, possibly successfully, just for insulting their character. The same could apply to posting negative comments about public figures on social media.

Prior to the Sullivan ruling in 1964, defamation lawsuits were often used against newspapers that were writing about the civil rights movement and racist activities in the Jim Crow South.

Post-Sullivan, those newspapers were much more protected from such lawsuits.

“In the late 1950s and early 1960s in the Jim Crow South there were a few judges and lawyers who came up with this very cynical theory of using defamation law to try to squelch northern newspapers from covering the civil rights struggle, voting rights abuses and things like that,” Lili Levi, a law professor at the University of Miami, told Raw Story. “They wanted to maintain the Jim Crow regime. That is the case that went up to the Supreme Court that we refer to as New York Times v. Sullivan.”

If this kind of legal shift did come to pass, such repressive tactics could be revived by people who want to stop the media from reporting on things they don’t like or want to keep hidden from the public eye.

Barbas and Levi said they believe this bill was introduced to set up a case for the Supreme Court, because there would certainly be court cases regarding if it was constitutional. Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch have both expressed a desire to revisit the Sullivan rules.

“You might actually be able to get five justices to agree to revisiting and, even if not totally reversing, at least significantly truncating New York Times v. Sullivan protections,” Levi said. “The press, which by the way includes anyone who writes on Substack or Twitter or wherever, is going to potentially be liable for a significant amount of damages in a libel suit. That is one of the dangers of legislation like this, if it’s passed.”

Beyond what’s happening in Florida and the possibility of a Supreme Court case, it’s clear there’s a growing desire among Republicans nationwide to “open up” libel laws in a bid to shut down press freedoms.

Trump, who is running for president again while facing massive legal peril, famously called for that when he was running for president in 2016 and has repeated it multiple times. DeSantis, too, appears to support this kind of change as he considers challenging Trump and launching his own 2024 presidential bid. Even a libertarian such as Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) has called for changing the Sullivan rules to make it easier to sue journalists. Relatedly, DeSantis is also seemingly trying to prevent journalists from requesting information about where he travels.

“We’ve seen this widespread attack on New York Times v. Sullivan over the past five or six years … I don’t see why this wouldn’t spread to other conservative states while there’s this pervasive anti-media sentiment and all of this talk about needing to change Sullivan,” Barbas said. “This is really unprecedented, historically. I’ve looked at the criticism of Sullivan since 1964, and there’s always been an undercurrent of dissatisfaction and people saying Sullivan went too far, but I don’t think we’ve had a concerted attack like this in our history.”

Levi said that if other states start to pass similar bills, that could make it more likely the Supreme Court would reconsider Sullivan. She said there would presumably be a lot of court cases going on around the country focusing on the constitutionality of these laws.

“I think if you have a bunch of statutes in a bunch of states that attempt to cut back, in one way or another, on protections for the press, some of those are going to end up being upheld by some courts, and they might become the occasion when [a Supreme Court review] could be granted,” Levi said.

Policies that are spearheaded by DeSantis in Florida, from the “Don’t Say Gay” bill to book bans, sometimes spread to other states, so it only seems logical that members of a party that’s constantly decrying the so-called “liberal media” would join this effort to change defamation laws in America. What happens in Florida doesn’t tend to stay in Florida.

“It’s quite possible this could spread to other states, which is also what makes it very dangerous,” Levi said.

One of the bill's co-sponsors, Florida state Rep. Mike Beltran (R), says he’s not sure if other states will adopt similar legislation.

However, he did make clear what he’d like to see happen.

“I think that it will likely be litigated and would be the vehicle to roll back much of the Supreme Court's dicta from NYT v. Sullivan, etc.,” Beltran told Raw Story. “The current case law finds no support in textualist or originalist principles and unfairly allows people to be defamed without redress."