As a fan of the United States men’s soccer team since the 1980s, I have always kept my expectations about the team’s World Cup prospects pretty low.

Back in 1990, the U.S. qualified for the first time in 40 years. The Americans lost all three games, but I was just happy the team made it and even scored — twice!

Four years later, the U.S. hosted the global tournament and advanced from its group. In the first knockout round, the Americans lost to Brazil, but the 1-0 score was respectable and the crowds were record-breaking. American fans’ dream that the U.S. would become a perennial powerhouse was real.

The men’s team is approaching a quarter century of disappointing results, including missing the tournament entirely in 2018.

The first hiccup came in France in 1998 when the Americans didn’t win any of their group matches. But in 2002, the U.S. upset pre-tournament favorites Portugal, squeaked into the knockout round of 16 and comprehensively beat rivals Mexico “dos a cero.” In the quarterfinals against perennial power Germany, the U.S. outshot and outpossessed its opponent but lost narrowly after a handball on the goal line went uncalled. Young stars like Landon Donovan seemed poised to take the team even further. From minnows to the final eight — and nearly the final four — in just 12 years, glory seemed like a matter of when, not if.

Since then, all that promise has been almost entirely for naught. Sure, there have been moments, like Donovan’s last-gasp goal to win the group in 2010 or what players like Clint Dempsey and Tim Howard gave to the team, but the victory over Mexico remains the last time the men’s team has won a knockout game in the tournament. 

As the team begins its 2026 World Cup quest Friday night in Los Angeles against Paraguay, though, I am done with low expectations. 

Yes, the men’s team is approaching a quarter century of disappointing results, including missing the tournament entirely in 2018. But this edition of the USMNT has been billed as a “golden generation.” Seventeen players of the 26-man roster play in Europe’s top leagues. Teams are paying higher-than-ever transfer fees for American stars like Tyler Adams, Weston McKennie and, of course, Christian Pulisic — the first American to play in the men’s Champions League final.

With all this talent for the Americans, the mission in 2026 is simple: It’s time to put up or shut up. Anything less than a quarterfinal finish — just like in 2002 — should be seen as a failure in a vastly expanded tournament on home soil. And if the quarterfinals don’t happen, the entire U.S. men’s soccer program should consider serious reforms.

It’s not a mystery what is holding back the men’s team. “We are not developing players like the rest of the world,” Donovan said in a recent interview with Rich Eisen.

The players seem aware this is a pivotal moment for American soccer.

“Our youth soccer in this country is a disaster,” he added. “You have all these youth clubs … [that] charge you crazy fees. It’s all about winning. The kids get left behind because the clubs want to make money, the coaches want to make money, they want to win and the kids don’t develop. And now we’re seeing sorta the fruits of that, sadly.” 

The pay-for-play model, where parents like me have had to shell out thousands of dollars to develop their kids in hopes of a scholarship or a pro contract, isn’t working. 

That is not what soccer is all about. It is egalitarian. It is working class. It is a sport that anyone can pick up and play. Unless this country leans into soccer’s accessibility and makes it as affordable as possible, the USMNT will never succeed. 

Fortunately for this team, the players seem aware this is a pivotal moment for American soccer. “Everyone thinks that this thing of expectation and criticism is a bad thing. But like, if we’re worth talking about, it’s a good thing,” Adams said on the “Late Run” podcast. “Before, I think people wouldn’t even talk about the national team or talk about the players on it. Now we’re making waves at some of the biggest clubs around the world. Like, people want to talk about us. That’s fine. That’s what comes with the business, man.”

Thirty-two years after the last World Cup on American soil, the U.S. men’s soccer team has had enough time. This tournament, the expectations are different. That’s what comes with the business.

The post It’s time for the U.S. men’s soccer team to put up or shut up appeared first on MS NOW.

Bipartisan agreement on the Hill is all too rare. But over the past week, unlikely allies on both sides of the aisle came together to oppose the appointment of Bill Pulte to lead our nation’s intelligence community as acting Director of National Intelligence and refused to vote for an extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a controversial law which essentially allows the government to gather Americans’ private calls, texts and emails without a warrant.  

The pushback was so intense that President Donald Trump  announced a new nominee, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton, who has publicly supported several recent controversial Trump statements and initiatives, to permanently lead the office. Notably, Trump moved up Pulte’s installation as well. He will still serve as acting DNI until a permanent leader is confirmed. While Pulte is a uniquely unqualified and dangerous pick, nominating a replacement doesn’t change the fact that extending FISA in its current form, amid the rapidly expanding use of domestic surveillance, threatens all of us. 

While Pulte is a uniquely unqualified and dangerous pick, nominating a replacement doesn’t change the fact that extending FISA in its current form threatens all of us. 

 Pulte is a symptom — not the cause — of an already gargantuan and dangerously broken surveillance system. Regardless of who is leading the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, lawmakers who care about protecting Americans’ constitutional rights and security should continue to reject any extension of FISA that does not meaningfully protect our data from government misuse.  

The debate around FISA is about protecting Americans’ private data from warrantless surveillance. Normally, the government needs to obtain a warrant if it wants to access our private information. But under the current law, the government can “incidentally” collect communications through something called the backdoor search loophole. Plus, they can circumvent a warrant by purchasing our personal data from a third-party data broker, putting everything from our app and browsing data to our location history at risk in what’s called the data broker loophole. That’s essentially the same as police officers handing your landlord an envelope of cash to enter your home.  

Administrations from both parties have abused the backdoor search loophole, targeting Black Lives Matter protestors, political donors, and even members of Congress. When abusing the data broker loophole, the impact is likely farther reaching than we could ever imagine, given that the FBI, DHS, NSA, IRS, and numerous other agencies have admitted to purchasing data.  

All of this happened before Pulte was nominated. It’s why surveillance hawks have now tried (and failed) numerous times since April to pass a reauthorization of this law, with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle calling for reform to close these dangerous loopholes. Would these problems get worse under Pulte, who is still set to serve as acting director until a new leader is confirmed? Almost certainly. But even under different leadership, these problems are bound to get worse, perhaps exponentially, without meaningful legislative reform.  

This ongoing stalemate in Congress is a symptom of a broader failure to protect our Fourth Amendment right to privacy. Under this administration alone, while Congress has stood by, we have witnessed a dangerous and escalating pattern of surveillance, from the destruction of longstanding privacy protections at administrative agencies across the federal government to DHS developing a vast surveillance apparatus for warrantless mass surveillance. 

This ongoing stalemate in Congress is a symptom of a broader failure to protect our Fourth Amendment right to privacy.

Yet, there are members of Congress on both sides of the aisle itching to reauthorize FISA, even if it means writing a blank check for surveillance to the administration. They are a shrinking group of lawmakers, which is why so far, a growing number of reform-minded members of Congress and a bipartisan coalition of good governance and privacy rights organizations have stopped reauthorization without reform from passing. 

Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that some members of Congress have finally realized with Pulte’s nomination the grave dangers of unfettered, unconstitutional government surveillance, but feigned outrage and surrender to the administration are unacceptable. But this fight is far bigger than one individual.  

As artificial intelligence makes it even easier for the government to target individuals and communities, reauthorizing FISA without meaningful reforms would give both current and future administrations a blank check for surveillance. There’s a reason surveillance hawks are fighting tooth and nail to scare lawmakers into compliance. They know that there is real momentum for change.  

There is no democracy without privacy. If the government can use the websites you visit, people you love and associate with, and places you go against you, the result will be catastrophic to each of us and America as we know it. Closing the backdoor search and data broker loopholes would ensure that no one — neither Pulte nor the president or anyone acting in our name as a public official — can steal our private information and use it to target us.  

The post Bill Pulte is a symptom, not the cause, of our broken surveillance system appeared first on MS NOW.

As a writer, podcaster, and columnist for TRNN, Adam Johnson has been one of the fiercest, sharpest, and most consistent critics of legacy and Western media’s roles in laundering, obscuring, justifying, and manufacturing consent for crimes against humanity committed in the Gaza genocide by Israel and with the full support of the United States. But critique is not enough anymore; to ensure that these horrific crimes don’t continue, we need accountability for the political actors and media organizations that made it happen, or helped. At a live event hosted by Red Emma’s Cooperative Bookstore and Coffeehouse in Baltimore, Maryland, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with Johnson about his new book, How to Sell a Genocide: The Media’s Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza, and about how to hold media organizations accountable for their roles in manufacturing the conditions for genocide.

Guests:

• Adam Johnson is a writer, media critic, co-host of the podcast Citations Needed, and a columnist for TRNN. He is the author of the book How to Sell a Genocide: The Media’s Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza.

Credits:

• Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Welcome back to The Real News Network. I’m Maximillian Alvarez. As a writer, podcaster and a columnist for us here at The Real News, Adam Johnson has been one of the fiercest, sharpest and most consistent critics of legacy in Western media’s roles in laundering, obscuring, justifying and manufacturing consent for crimes against humanity committed in the Gaza genocide by Israel with the full support of the United States. Crimes committed in our name and with our tax dollars and the media cannot be let off the hook for its despicable role in all of this. As Adam writes in his new book, How to Sell a Genocide, the media’s complicity in the destruction of Gaza, “It took deliberate choices by deliberate moral actors, editors, reporters, bookers, producers, and TV personalities who decided early on in the so- called Israel-Hamas war that defending the powerful and spinning a fictional narrative to soothe Western liberal audiences was more important than speaking plain truths than defending a dispossessed people from a holy asymmetric campaign carried out by Israel with the full backing of the US to destroy in whole or in part the Palestinians of Gaza.” Listen, critique is not enough anymore.

If we are going to ensure that these horrific crimes don’t continue, then we need accountability for the political actors and the media organizations that made it happen or helped. We need a reckoning, but we’re not going to get one if we don’t fight for it. And Adam’s new book, in my opinion, gives us the data and the receipts and the analysis that we need to fight better and to actually win. I cannot recommend it enough and I am so proud to call Adam a friend and a colleague. He is a vital member of the Real News team and he has done a vital service to all of us in writing this book. So go check it out yourself and let us know what you think and let me know what you think about this conversation that I had with Adam Johnson about his new book at a live event at Red Emma’s Cooperative Bookstore and Coffeehouse here in Baltimore on May 23rd.

Well, again, welcome, welcome everyone. Thank you so much to Red Emmas for hosting this important discussion tonight about Brother Adam Johnson’s vital new book, How to Sell a Genocide, The Media’s Complicity and the Destruction of Gaza Out Now with Pluto Press. It is an invaluable read and I cannot stress enough the duty that we have to know what’s in this book. I don’t say that lightly, and I don’t say it to just chuck my buddy up. Adam, I’ve gotten the pleasure and honor of growing up with you over the past 10 or so years in the media ecosystem, the left media ecosystem, and then get to know you, get to be friends with you, get to work together. I wanted to say first that I know we joke a lot that what are we doing? We’re just podcasters. We’re not that out there doing the real work, but I wanted to thank you for doing the work that you do at Citations Needed and Everywhere Else.

Thank you for writing this book because even if you on your side through the microphone don’t see it or you on your phone tweeting at people and Dunking on people don’t see it, so often you and Nima, especially through citations needed, but now with this all your writing, you give us so many of us the language that we’re looking for to articulate what we’re feeling and sensing, but don’t have the time to process and don’t have the ability to find those words. And in this book, you have given us a tremendous amount of necessary ammunition to focus what we have known and sensed but not been able to fully articulate. And so I wanted to first acknowledge that. Second, I wanted to acknowledge here at the top that of course both of us as journalists here in the United States, a media critic journalist, however Adam wants to identify himself, we of course must have a moment of silence to honor those of our journalists and media making colleagues who have been slaughtered in this genocide and who continue to be slaughtered in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Iran.

So can you please join me in just a quick moment of silence to honor our fallen comrades and to thank them for their invaluable sacrifice.

Okay. Thank you all so much. All right, brother out. Like I said, your podcast and my podcast started around the same time. We got into this game around 10 or so years ago and we’ve gotten to working with each other. We publish your invaluable column at the real news now and for a few years now and you guys should absolutely read it. So I wanted to start there and ask if you could talk about how you got into media criticism and why. But then let’s talk about that growth process and let’s talk about what it was like to be a media critic as a genocide was unfolding in Gaza and what about all of that propelled you to move beyond podcasting and article writing into writing this book?

Adam Johnson:

Well, thank you for that introduction and thank you for having me here. Right Emma’s is of course a write a passage. You’re not really a leftling writer if you don’t come here. So I’m glad to be here. It’s huge, but it’s a very well organized operation, so thank you. Yeah, so I don’t talk about myself a lot, mostly because I don’t know, I feel like it’s genuinely quite boring, but I’ve always been interested in language and how language can shape our reality and my entry point into the left such as it was, the immortal science, whatever you wish to call it, I was late to the game. I mean, I was basically 29, 30 years old when I started exploring those ideas and media was a way I was like the entry point into that. And I’ve always thought media criticism is an entry point into asking bigger questions.

It’s a gateway drug. The podcast is meant to be a gateway drug. I’m like in the school yard pedaling left wing ideology like, “Come here kid, listen to citations needed.” It’s sort of vaguely liberal coded, but it’s not. So my goal is to be on one of those Glen Beck chalkboards. And so that’s how I, as an entry point into asking bigger questions because I think once one erodes the artifice of media, which we kind of imperfectly refer to as small L liberal media or center left media or mainstream media, I think it’s a gateway to ask bigger questions because once the artifice begins to crumble, I think you sort of ask yourself, well, okay, if this kind of officialdom, if the thing that is these very important people behind desks and these kind of prestigious institutions are basically full of shit, then you have to ask yourself, what do we build as an alternative to that?

And then in some senses, the whole institute, because this book is fundamentally a book about the hypocrisy and the enforcement status of so- called liberal institutions and liberalism. And that’s why chapter seven is basically about that and how Gaza and the liberal response to Gaza and the liberal promotion of genocide, I should say elite liberal promotion of genocide was fundamentally a liberal project for that first year we were documenting. Obviously they were partnered and helped by the right and Republicans in Fox News, but fundamentally would not have been possible without liberal buy-in. And so obviously it very much falls into the wheelhouse of the Citations Deeded Podcast, which obviously critiques the ways in which liberals promote reactionary ideas and indeed work to launder reactionary ideas and make them seem palatable. And so it was a natural fit. And then obviously I had been writing ferociously from the beginning of it because as anyone who knows anything about Gaza knew precisely what was going to happen, it was very clear that on October 8th, when Tony Blinken tweeted out a call for a ceasefire and then subsequently deleted it a couple hours later that this was going to be at best killing an arbitrarily high number of Palestinians in the figures and at worst a genocide.

And of course it largely was a genocide and of course they ended up killing almost certainly over six figures. And so from the beginning, you and I were writing about it and you were letting me use obviously your platform to write about it and write media criticism about it. Much of the book is, not much, but some percentage of the book is readapting writing I did for y’all. So thank you for that because there was not a ton of outlets who were willing to do that, especially in a kind of existential way. And then once we started going, it was like, well, we need to quantifiably show this. So it’s a very data driven book, which is something I hadn’t previously had the time to do and that was central to how we did the book because I didn’t want to just assert it or cherry pick headlines.

I wanted to quantitatively show and establish bias and then from there in double standards and from there we can ask bigger questions once one accepts the premise of that, what is the implications of that? Because it’s a book much like citations needed. It’s a book for liberals. It’s not a book for the left who obviously by definition agrees with me, although I want them to be able to use the data and research and arguments in their daily lives. But it’s a book that is supposed to take someone who’s vaguely liberal or vaguely liberal left or progressive and senses something was wrong and then slowly and meticulously walk them to the water that there’s a larger critique of Zionism and US imperialism and that the media operates as an organ of those institutions not as any kind of neutral or objective, certainly not a counter or an adversary to those institutions.

And so again, I’m pedaling the drugs trying to get people addicted. First one’s always free and that’s kind of the way I approached the book. Now obviously the title’s provocative, but the word genocide I believe is more or less mainstream now. And you can’t get around that word because to do so is genocide denial. It’s something like I think 60 or 70% of Democrats, depending on the poll, believe it’s a genocide. So that itself is no longer even that provocative. What I believe is maybe more novel and useful to liberals in liberal left adjacent types is the concept that they were sold to genocide, that it wasn’t this bumbling accident that kind of happened or this one-off dictator who forced people to do it, but actually had ideological and narrative antecedents that were being pushed by so- called liberal media. So by the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC were the primary targets of my inquiry and criticism.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and that tees up kind of like my next question because that was awesome, it was thoughtful. I really appreciated that answer, but I also know the entire time you were screaming and ripping your hair out and like these fucking people look at the lies that I know because Adam would be pitching me. He’s like, “Hey, I got to write about this. ” I was like, “All right, go for it. ” And I knew so much was going through your mind and so much like the rest of us. We were seeing these sort of double standards. We were sort of seeing the kind of dual realities on the TV and on our phones, but again, it needed to go beyond just that sort of sense and needing to quantify and needing to name. And so I wanted to sort of unleash the attack dog, Adam Johnson we all know and love a second.

Let’s name some names here. Who are the worst offenders and why?

Adam Johnson:

Yeah. And I want to preface this by saying that that is the next stage of this project where I’m doing basically taking the 10 worst and we’re naming names and going to try to reach out to them and do more aggressive targeted criticism with like maybe in parallel campaignse because I do think when you criticize the media or the New York Times, it can be a little bit abstract, that which is owned by everyone is cared for by no one to paraphrase libertarians, but I think in some senses you can be too abstract. So the book does name names in retrospect as I’m rereading it, I felt like I probably should have made that more central, a little bit more ad hominem, a little more personal. And that’s kind of the next stage because we need to have accountability. And in parallel, I know others who I’ve spoken to are working on a project to hold Democrats accountable because now as you know, I’m a little bit off topic here, but indulge me.

You have Tony Blinken who covered up war crimes at the State Department. He’s now at Center for American Progress just down the road in DC. Obviously John Finer is at Center for American Progress, which if anyone knows what that is, it’s a ostensibly progressive think tank that’s basically the government in waiting for the next Democratic administration. John Feiner and Jake Sullivan, who also covered up war crimes and sold weapons to a country that knew was committing genocide, have a cheeky little foreign policy podcast on Fox. So what we’re working on with that is what we’re trying to come up with a branding for, but it’s going to be the Genocide 10 or the Genocide 20 where you’re basically pressuring organizations to remove these people from polite society, which of course is a bar that’s below the mantle of the earth. I mean, it’s the lowest bar possible, but right now everyone’s just vibing through it.

Progressives and liberals in Congress are doing events now with Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken. So really it’s a project fundamentally about accountability. And the reason why that is, and again, it’s going to be an upward battle, but I do think that you can build pressure, especially as every four years when Democrats have to act like they care what progressives or liberals think or even liberals, to be honest, that there needs to be a sense that these people need to be non-grada at the very least. So obviously you would refer them to the ICC for criminal arrest and prosecution for their role and complicity and genocide along with some of these media organs we can talk about. But at the very least, they need to be removed from polite society. And so fundamentally it just becomes a book about accountability because there’s not much else you can do.

And the conclusion I say I’m like the drummer boy and the drummer boy Christmas song. “What is he doing? Plays the drums. That’s all he can do. All I can do is media criticism. And I think like everyone else, as this was unfolding, you felt completely helpless. But I think the lesson you can take away from this and the lesson that Palestinian organizers and BDS organizers always tell you is that you can always contest in the way you can and the spaces you can. Whether you’re a tech worker, you can go on strike or boycott or try to … There’s always something you can do and it’s like, this is the only thing I’m able to do. I don’t have any other skillset or talent. I just know how to do media criticism. So that’s what I did and I tried to do it to the best of my ability.

That’s a very convoluted way of answering your question, but I think what you’re talking about is, what you allude to is the idea of accountability. So who are the worst? The worst were Jake Tapper and Joe Scarborough are featured heavily in this book as just outright genocidal propagandists, outwardly lying, smearing anyone opposing the war. Obviously New York Times, Patrick Kingsley, others, editors at the New York Times were probably certain writers who laundered Israeli intelligence over and over again, which we can get into. Those were the primary offenders. Actually, one of the things I try to do in the book and all the subsequent interviews I’ve done is I try not to flatten the difference that there are some that are worse than others. The New York Times is meaningfully worse than the Washington Post. Washington Post is not good, but they didn’t engage in what I would consider outright genocide incitement.

The New York Times would constantly intervene right when there was some pressure to push Biden for a ceasefire with the most obvious lies and bullshit. I’ll give you an example if you’ll indulge me.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, I was going to say, keep rolling and let’s talk about some of the worst offenses. If we could give in an ode to citations needed, give me your top three worst tropes or your top three most eye-popping stats from this book.

Adam Johnson:

Maybe let’s start at the beginning then if you’ll indulge me. So very quickly, the idea of a ceasefire needed to be removed from the realm of capital V capital S very seriousness, right? It had to be considered a far left fringe position, despite the fact that every other mowing the lawn episode, which is what Israel calls it when they kill civilians in Gaza as a part of collective punishment, had had a ceasefire. 2012, 2014, 2018, 2021, obviously 2009 cast led. But very early on when again, Blinken sends out the tweet and subsequently deletes it, it’s very clear a decision is made that they’re going for it all. They’re going for full-blown ethnic cleansing genocidal acts and at worst from their perspective, killing an arbitrarily high number of Palestinians as medieval reconpense and collective punishment to humiliate them so they will self-deport or leave because Palestinians are a fundamentally inconvenient people to the national methos and mythology of Zionism and anyone who knew anything about Gaza knew that was going to happen.

So within the first few days, you get this what I call isisification of Hamas in the first chapter, which is Hamas cannot have any secular grievances or political causes. They have to be mindless Jihadist cartoons who are just mindless anti-Semites, which as far as … Biden says they had the ancient hatred of Jews, which again, bad luck that the people who drove them off their land happened to have that as their national religion, out of all the gin joints and all the towns and all the world. But the idea that you would provide context was anathema. And so this was disciplined and enforced in a very documented way. First up was MSNBC. So on the morning of October 7th, Ali Valshi is running the desk at MSNBC and he brings in Iman Moihadine who had lived in Gaza for two years. He was by far the most qualified person to talk about it.

And so live on air as the attack is unfolding and we’re kind of getting information trickling in, they do what all journalists are supposed to do. They begin to provide context. They don’t cheer it on. They’re not for it. They’re not like saying, isn’t Hamas great? They’re saying talking about the Nakba, the dispossession, how 75% of the people in Gaza are refugees who were kicked out of their homes and what is today Israel. They’re talking about protective edge in 2014, putting them on a diet, the siege, the lack of being able to travel, all that. All hell breaks loose.

We reported this from two internal sources at MSNBC, which as I’m sure you would imagine was much easier to get sources in than say the New York Times, because a lot of people were ashamed of their role in this and were happy to talk. And this was later vaguely confirmed by the New York Times as well, but they bring in, they being Comcast, it’s the first and since last time they ever directly intervene in MSNBC’s coverage. They bring in Rashida Jones and Caesar Conde, who are the head of MSNBC and NBC News respectively and they say,” Never do that again. “That was terrorism apology. You’re not allowed to provide context for what happened on October 7th and indeed history has to start on October 7th. Nothing can precede it, right? It’s like the big bang. There’s nothing that precedes it. It’s like asking what’s north of the North Pole.

It’s ontologically impossible. And that was reflected in the coverage. Then on March 9th, there’s a company-wide call at MSNBC according to our two of our sources where they bring in Martin Fletcher, who’s the longtime NBC news correspondent who has since retired and he had family who were injured on October 7th. He himself had served in the IDF and he jumps on a conference call with all of MSNBC and NBC News and gives the playbook. He says,” Palestinians aren’t real. They weren’t a people until 1967. They’re invented by Arab nations. Jews are the real Palestinians. These are direct quotes, more or less. And Israel left greenhouses in Gaza. You’re kind of typical really racist anti-Palestinian vomit. And that becomes the official line in MSNBC. And if they say, if you have any questions, you go to Martin Fletcher because he’s the longtime NBC correspondent. CNN does something quite similar where Mark Thompson issues a memo on October 26th where he affirms an existing policy, which was probably more informal saying, you cannot mention the suffering of Palestinians or these Palestinian death counts without prefacing it with October 7th.

So that way it has to be framed by definition as defensive and you can’t talk about anything that basically comes before it. And so you would have a story, you were allowed to say, “Isn’t it sad this Palestinian died or there was this explosion that killed 15 people, but you always have to say as a military response to October 7th.” And so these policies very initially make it so you cannot provide context. Context is anathema. It is not allowed because it’s viewed as Hamas propaganda or terrorism apologea. And this therefore reduces, and of course you have the parallel atrocity of propaganda with the beheaded babies on October 11th. A story completely invented out of whole cloth that’s spread by everyone from Nick Robertson at CNN to Sarah Sidner who says it live on CNN where she says, “The Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office has confirmed that there were several beheaded babies at the Kabutsum.” Now the Prime Minister can’t confirm his own racist propaganda.

That’s absurd, but that was the editorial standard. You could basically say whatever you wanted about Palestinians. And then once the story was … And then of course Biden says he saw video of it, which he of course did not because it never happened and slowly tweets are deleted, people kind of issue very opaque apologies, but very early on they had to be this cartoon ISIS-like entity because you had to make a ceasefire impossible. And this was affirmed by progressives in Congress who refused to call for a ceasefire for months. Obviously Rokana, Elizabeth Warren, I think most cynically and most, I think high leverage was Bernie Sanders who went on CNN and CBS News in November and December of 2023 respectively and said, “I don’t know how you have a ceasefire with a group like Maas who seeks Israel’s destruction.” Now nevermind, of course, that Israel seeks Palestinians destructions.

Nevermind that a call for a ceasefire is not a moral endorsement of an organization. It’s just a call for a ceasefire. And this was affirmed by CIP, Matt Duss, who was like supposedly the far left progressive poll of so- called progressive foreign policy. He goes on democracy now and says, “Bernie Sanders has a good point. I’m paraphrasing, but something to that effect.” He basically affirms the logic of that. So it’s a far left position, a radical pie in the sky. You get a dozen articles in the Atlantic saying a ceasefire is impossible. Meanwhile, we’re getting 300 day dead, 500 dead a day. They kill almost 6,000 people in the first 11 days. They’re averaging about 550 dead people a day, 30% of whom are children. And you could not talk about a ceasefire mainstream media. There was no mention of it in New York Times.

The New York Times editorial board and Washington Post editorial board supported. Everyone is in this stories about how it’s eight billion, nine elevens or some kind of fatuous nonsense like that. And it’s immediately indexed in this kind of war on terror civilization versus this vague Asiatic ward who again are presented as this cartoon villain with no political grievances. And that right there cements creates the inevitability of genocide because if you have to defeat Hamas, you by definition cannot do that. They are a gorilla force, an indigenous guerrilla force. Unlike ISIS, they’re not who are foreign mercenaries. They are of Gaza. They live in Gaza. They are Palestinians in Gaza and they support hovers between 40 and 55% in Gaza. It’s a litle higher in the West Bank, but they’re Palestinians, like all grill military movements that are national liberation movements, again, whether you like them or not, doesn’t matter.

They’re not going to just surrender. And this is something Tony Blinken himself affirms behind closed doors in January of 2024 when Andrea Mitchell reports that Blinken tells Nanyahu that Hamas cannot be defeated militarily. Now, a reporter worked their salt would say, “Well, wait a second, then why are we arming and funding this extensively military operation?” But this is the kind of Orwellian inverse reality we operated in for several months where everything is a contradiction. And then of course, which we can get into, and I’ll maybe let you interject here so I’m not droning on, but then you get into the ceasefire redefinition in late February, early March of 2024 where ceasefire is polling at about 75% Democrats don’t even bother at that point defending the genocide on first principles or as such. Then they move into the helpless Biden fuming Biden. We’re actually working on a ceasefire.

Okay, what’s your definition of ceasefire? And then you hear their definition and it’s simply reasserting terms of capitulation, reasserting demands of surrender by Hamas, which of course has not been the definition of ceasefire for 5,000 years of human warfare. Ceasefires, both sides ceasefire and you come to a political solution, not I win and you surrender. That’s just you winning. But then that becomes the oralian definition that’s broadly adopted by the media. And this goes on for months and months and months and months and months. It was based on a fundamental contradiction and the only people who ever pointed it out were people like left wing critics on like, “This doesn’t make any sense.” And so that’s all documented in the book. Basically with the argument is that within the first few weeks really, the White House doesn’t even defend it as such. They simply try to move it into the non-sequitur by playing up this idea that Biden is either helpless, which again, the media assisted these laundering operations or that he’s very mad.

He was always sort of vaguely upset all the time. It’s what I call the asymptotic break with Netanyahu. I can read you some examples if you’ll indulge me. I know I’ve been rambling here for a bit, but I do think these are very illustrative.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Bro, people literally came out in the rain to listen to you talk.

Adam Johnson:

There’s talking and then there’s talking. But sorry, I’m going to make sure I get … So this is, I think, critical and this is when you get these, I think, fairly sophisticated liberal interventions of inventing reality, which I think was one of the reasons people felt like they were going insane at the time because it was all premised on a contradiction. So you had this idea of the helpless Biden, which I’ll skip and get to the fuming Biden. So this was a media trope. There’s literally dozens of these articles, but I documented the top 10 and then we did a source analysis. So 94% of the sourcing for these stories are White House aids and very quickly one can realize why they would be painting this narrative because they themselves know it’s indefensible. They themselves want to go in and out of liberal and progressive circles.

So the decision is made to distance the White House in some kind of narrative or abstract sense while painting them as working towards a ceasefire or some peaceful resolution, sufficiently removing them from the genocide that they themselves are arming, supporting and diplomatically providing cover for. So you have November of 2023, it begins in earnest with NBC news. The gap between the Biden administration and the Netanyahu government over Gaza future is widening. Ooh, it’s widening. CNN, December of 2023, unprecedented tensions, unprecedented. Watch out. Between White House and Netanyahu as Biden feels political price for standing with Israel. Axios, our friend Barack Rive, who we can get into January of 2024. Biden, running out of patience with Bibi as Gaza war, it’s a hundred days. Washington Post the next month, Biden moving closer than ever to a breach with Netanyahu over a war in Gaza. CNN March of 2024, how a brief exchange and a call explains the strained Biden Netanyahu relationship associated press, Biden cajoles Netanyahu with top talk.

Ooh. Politico, March of 2024, from I love you to asshole how Joe gave up on BB after decades of building a close personal friendship with Netanyahu, Joe Biden has had it with the Israeli Prime Minister and he’s hitting him hard and it may be working spoiler. He did not hit him hard and it did not work. So there’s this alternate reality where Biden, who’s the most powerful person on earth, is somehow unable to get a country the size of New Jersey who’s 75% of their weapons company in the United States, 100% of their weapons arms reshipments come from the United States, cannot operate militarily for more than a week or two without support from the United States because obviously because of a tax in Yemen and Lebanon and elsewhere is bumbling, simply just a dottering old man who’s working really hard for a ceasefire for fucking ostensibly for nine months and he just darn it Chucks can’t get one.

And what we later learned, which I think is important is that Israeli prime minister at the time, Michael Hertzog, tells Israeli media in April of 2025 that Biden quote, “Never asked for a ceasefire not once.” He never asked for a ceasefire. And we know that because there wasn’t a ceasefire and he’s the most powerful person in the world. So there was this alternate reality that had to be painted where he was working for a ceasefire, but really what he was working for was, “Hey, Nanyahu, I’m not going to use any leverage, but would you mind?” And so the analogy I use is it’s like LA Dodgers, I know you’re an LA Dodgers fan, Dave Roberts right before the World Series saying, “I’m going to bench Shohei Otani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freedman and all my all stars, and we’re going to put in the AAA baseball team, but I’m tirelessly working to win the World Series.” I don’t think anyone would find that to be credible.

He would be committed and people would think he’d lost his mind, but Biden repeatedly said, “I’m not going to condition military support, but I’m working for … ” That’s literally the only leverage that would do that. And everybody knew this at the time and there was precedent for it in 2021, Biden pressured Netanyahu to stop. And so it all got sort of mystified. Aaron David Miller shows up, he’s one of these Biden Hacks, one of these pro- Israel hacks who shows up and says, “Well, Biden couldn’t do it even if he wanted to. ” And then every time he shows up in the New York Times or Foreign Policy Magazine or Washington Post to kind of give this pat line about how Biden, because you had in parallel with fuming, you had helpless. So he was also helpless. He would always end it by saying, “But even if he could, he wouldn’t.” And you’re like, “Wait, what?

” So he doesn’t want to, because they’d say, “Oh, but he’s a hardcore supporter of Israel.” And it’s like, yeah, that’s the point. And so this was obviously crazy making for a lot of people who were reading this thing, pointing out that it didn’t make any sense and had all these contradictions and was based on the analogy I give is it’s like theater 101, the difference between a sketch and a plot is a sketch. A plot moves forward, it has beats, things change. A sketch is the same gag three or four times that you get out in under four minutes. This was a sketch.This went on for 10 months. You had these articles, literally over a hundred of these articles, you can find them. And you would think an editor worked their salt after the 70th fuming Biden story would raise their hands and say, “Wait, is Biden changing any policy?” No, but he’s generally mad.

Okay. Well, how is that a story? Because these were curated by the White House. All the sources are Biden aids or phone calls they know are recorded. It’s obviously-

Maximillian Alvarez:

Biden pops can of spinach and like Shakesphist at Netanyahu.

Adam Johnson:

And that’s why they have to use these meaningless puffy language about unprecedented about to. So you have this asymptotic break that always approaches zero but mysteriously never gets to zero. And then they do what they were trying to do, which is wait it out. And this is a book about buying time and about liberal hand waving and time wasting and pseudo savvy negotiations. It was about maintaining the status quo and buying time. And the reason why you buy time as any good public relations person will tell you is because you cannot defend the actual thing that’s happening. And that was the theme that we saw over and over and over again. And mainstream media just laundered that obvious self-serving bullshit over and over and over again.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well put. And obviously the whole while you’ve got this historical rupture that is occurring in large part because of media and our relationship to media, right? The disconnect between this reality obscuring power serving, genocide enabling, like all of that is being undercut by the innocence destroying images that we’ve all been bombarded with on our phones, not just the younger generation, but yeah, of course a lot more in the younger generation, which is why right now TikTok fucking sucks. You know why? Because in 24, Biden and the Democrats answer to like, what are we going to do about the public turning on us about because we’re selling a genocide that they’re not buying, we’re going to take over the fucking platform that they’re seeing it on.

Adam Johnson:

Well, they forced to sell to the Ellison family who are the single biggest donors of the IDF.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Which is, there you go. So that’s what we got. Thank Biden for that too. But I wanted to kind of ask a question here, Adam, about the why. There are a lot of potential whys here, right? But it’s obviously something we all need to be empowered with to talk with clarity but nuance about because as all of this is unfolding, regular people who are trying to make sense of the horrific reality that they’re seeing and the lies that they’re being told or the obscuring that’s being done in front of them, if they’re not getting the answers that they’re looking for, a lot of horrible ideas and conspiracies fester. A lot of hatreds and prejudices emerge. It is no coincidence that there has been rises in antisemitism while this is all happening because people are being told if you are opposed to this, you’re against all Jews.

And so a lot of people are saying, “Well, I’m opposed to that. ” So I don’t know what to tell you, but I don’t want to see a child be cut in half, blown to bits, crying over- That’s obviously because

Adam Johnson:

You’re a racist.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Yeah. So the point being is that amidst all of that crap, there are very real truths here about CNN’s like Jerusalem Bureau, everything basically being reviewed and rubber stamped by the IDF. But that itself is not the whole of the explanation, right? It’s not just a sort of like Israel is telling all these newsrooms what to do, but I wanted to ask if you could sort of help us navigate the why this is being done and where it’s coming from. I’ll put it

Adam Johnson:

In these terms. And this is where I think a dialectical criticism is useful because the book is not called How to Sell Genocide because I’m trying to be provocative. It is a genocide was decided in Washington and in Tel Aviv and in the halls of power and then liberals are fundamentally a broker between the ruling class and the plebs, right? They come in and say, “Don’t worry, I’m going to take care of it. I’m going to sell what you got and meanwhile I’m going to tell them I’m going to sell them what you got.” So this is fundamentally about a decision was made, then it had to be sold and it’s an unseemly business, but once that decision’s made, what other option is there? You think they’re going to criticize, I mean, you think they’re going to criticize the genocide? You think they’re going to suddenly start putting their support behind Palestine?

No. So everyone, again, eventually around the margins, you have some pushback, but fundamentally on a structural level, the US media, whether it’s Vietnam or Iraq, is liberal, imperialist at its core, that’s its primary function. If the New York Times didn’t help sell the genocide, then there would be no New York Times. That is their social function. By definition, that’s what they exist to do. And so the decision was made and it was bipartisan and the worst place to be in the world is on the business end of a bipartisan consensus in Washington because what is the mechanism of pushback? There isn’t one. What a bunch of crusty leftists in a bookstore somewhere, they don’t get shut. You have no power didn’t fucking matter. And though by the way, you have to vote for us anyway because something, something Trump, right? And they knew that and this is under … Which I understand is that the engine that drives this is elite immunity.

When Barack Obama says, “We’re not going to prosecute torture under Bush. We have to move forward, look forward, not backwards.” When we, again, prosecute nobody for Vietnam except for some half-ass reforms, that’s a cycle of elite immunity. And every decision that was made by Tony Blinken and John Feiner in the fateful days in October and November of 2023, they knew they could just bypass it. No future administration’s going to hold them accountable. Certainly Republicans aren’t going to hold Cabo because they agree. And so they were banking on that. They were banking on Israel committing a very two, three month mass expulsion, genocide, getting their recompense and then vibing past it to the presidential election and extorting people with the specter of Trump, albeit a real specter, but nevertheless, that was part of the plan. So there’s a cycle of elite immunity that makes it so, who’s going to hold these people accountable?

Again, Tony Blinken has the most cushy job right now in liberal politics and he knew that was going to happen. So what’s the pressure, what’s the mechanism to actually push back on this from their perspective? Well, the primary fulcrum of rebellion was college campuses, which is why you had to have this campus anti-Semitism narrative, which was a complete fiction, a complete concoction of these Zionist crime bully groups like the ADL, because that was the one space where there was genuine momentum to create both the spectacle and energy and moral narratives to push back against the genocide, which is why you saw, again, I dedicated an entire chapter to it. I think it’s chapter eight, why you saw these high profile kangaroo trials in Congress where they would bring the president of Harvard and Princeton up. There’s a really clever thing the ADL does where they create what I call meta scandals where it’s all smoke and no fire, kind of like a version what they did to Jeremy Corbin.

They would ask the president of Harvard and Princeton and Yale, they would say, “Do you condemn the term globalize the Intifada?” And they would say, “Well, no, because that just means struggle and it’s a little more complex than that. ” Obviously we would not allow speech that intimidated any group of people, but we don’t condemn that phrase. And then literally the headline the Washington Post is university presidents refuse to condemn calls for genocide of Jewish students. And the average person reads that and says there were calls on campus to genocide Jewish students. There of course was no calls. We had our fact checker look for weeks. There was no such call. It did not exist. It never happened. But the way you do it is you gen up these false scandals and everyone runs for the fucking hills. And this is, if you can check out Steve Thrasher’s book, this is all explained in his book, the overseer class, which came out last week.

I just did an event with him in Chicago and he was kicked out of his teaching job, his 10-year trek job at Northwestern and he now is looking for work and has to freelance because he tried to protect his students on the campus of Northwestern and was beaten by a cop and made a villain by Republicans in Congress and later sold out by all of his supposed friends, several of whom are anti-apartheid scholars and James Baldwin scholars. Excellent book, please read it. And we can talk about the crisis of liberalism because Gaza exposed the vacuousness and uselessness of liberal and liberal institutions. But I’m sorry, I digress. I was talking about the weaponization of the antisemitism charge and how effective it was, but that’s discussed in detail and you can look at the data of … I’m going to mind if I read some data here to sort of cement this a little bit and- Read some data maybe.

Making these claims.

Yeah, here it is. So the mentions of antisemitism versus Islamophobia. So after the antisemitism scandals, which there were dozens on all these campuses, these universities and state legislators would force studies to document this. So even taking the ADLs juiced up stats, which literally say free Palestine is a basically a hate crime, even if you accept that, they were always roughly comparable to episodes of Islamophobia. Yet this was not reflected in the media. So the New York Times made reference to antisemitism on college campuses in our hundred day survey period 412 times and made mention of Islamophobia in and of itself five times and 31 they would mention both. There was sometimes it was like liberal box checking. These are all liberal box joking. Washington Post mentioned antisemitism 197 times and Islamophobia or anti-Arab hatred one time AP News 154 versus four, Politico 370 versus three for a grand total of 1,865 mentions to about 32 mentions of Islamophobia.

So the narrative was entirely one way and I’ll give you another example of this asymmetry and this double standard. I’ll give you one example in Chicago. So DePaul University, there was two students who were active members of the IDF who were on the corner every day doing this like debate me thing, I’m going to defend Israel, defend the idea. They have big Israeli flag and they were there every day. Again, after human rights watch and the International Court of Justice and Amnesty International all confirmed and found that Israel was committing genocide. So they were supporting a genocide, right? Some guy takes it into his own hands and punches him in the face. And what’s the headline the next day in local media? Jewish student attacked an anti-Semitic hate crime. Now it’s possible as an anti-Semitic hate crime, but that would be the worst coincidence ever because the guy was actively engaging in active, visible, pro- Israel activity, but then what the story becomes is about ethnic hatred.

Meanwhile, you had two major incidences, one at UCLA where these pro- Israel vigilantes came in with clubs and beat people, pro- Palestine and Palestinian protestors on campus again, attacked them with wrenches causing severe injury. And then you had the chemical attacks in Columbia in late 2023. Now, no one ever referred to that as anti-Muslim or anti-Arab racism. So any attacks or counter protests of pro- Israel students was always framed in the mobius sectarian terms whereas any attack on Palestinians was purely put in secular ideological terms and that double standard is quantifiable. You can show it and there’s no reason why that should be the case. There’s no legitimate editorial reason why there should be that asymmetry. And this book is about pointing out and quantifying and showing those asymmetries and then going up to editors and saying, “Why did you do this? ” Because we went to the New York Times and said, “Why do you use the word slaughter for the killing of Israelis 140 times, but you never use it for the killing of Palestinians?

How is it that Israel killed 20,000 children?” Again, the numbers probably double that, but they killed 20,000 children and somehow managed to never commit a slaughter or a massacre not once. Doesn’t that feel statistically unlikely? And they say, “Oh, it’s different.” Well, why is it different? It just is. But why? Because it has to be, because my entire ideology falls apart if it’s not. So that’s why they create these ontological nonsensical concepts like terrorism. There’s those sort of buzzwords because they’re meant to shut your brain off and to not do critical thinking. And so that asymmetry is, again, extremely quantifiable beyond a reasonable doubt and our numbers are conservative. We didn’t even include opinion columns. That’s how conservative we were. So if you include opinion columns, it’s probably 100% worse. And so that was what people were up against and there was very sophisticated turnkey mechanisms to use basically liberalism against itself.

So anti-hate rules on campus or Title IX or other federal legislation against discrimination was turnkey used against Palestinians, pro- Palestine protestors because to stand up for Palestine was per se, somehow a form of racism. This is why groups like the ADL have ingratiated themselves into anti-racist spaces for so long because they need to use that to defend the left blank of Zionism and Israel, which they’ve done to tremendous effect.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, we could be talking about this for two more hours and I would love to, but I wanted to just sort of talk about accountability and what that looks like and what this book empowers us to do to get it. Because I think we must acknowledge that for three plus years we tried. Not everyone can say that. I imagine if you’re all here, you did. I know and can quantify how much we tried at the real news hundreds of interviews or documentary reports or like original work on the genocide in Gaza Adam column after column interviewed like podcasts, like we post, do what people in Gaza have been asking us to do. Just like, please get our stories out there. Please don’t let people forget about us. Please do something to stop this. And for the rest of our lives, we’re all going to have to be haunted with the reality that we didn’t.

Adam Johnson:

Yeah. Well, one thing is for Israel and the US we’re banking on is that people would grow numb to it. And I think that to some extent that was a correct assumption

Maximillian Alvarez:

That in itself could lead to a very big discussion about why, because I actually think it goes beyond Gaza and it wasn’t lost on me as I was reporting from East Palestine, Ohio around the same time the train in that Ohio town derailed in 2023. And when I was there trying to get their stories up, I noticed that the algorithms they saw the name, a lot of the stories aren’t getting out there. So I’m trying to explain to these Trump voting white working class people who have been poisoned why the internet is suppressing their stories. And so there’s a lot here and again, our goal is not to explain everything in Adam’s book. You got to go read the book and I promise you won’t be disappointed. You’ll be infuriated, but you’ll be empowered by it. But again, the fact is that from algorithmic suppression and platform specific suppression and all these goddamn Trump loving oligarchs owning the media platforms as well as gobbling up the media companies and whether from CBS to HBO to TikTok.

So we got a lot on our plate here and a lot to deal with, but I wanted to ask Adam like, what accountability looks like here because we name names we have thanks to you in this book and everyone who contributed to it, the ammunition that we need to hold people accountable. But I guess I wanted to ask how we do that.

Adam Johnson:

Yeah, because I think that’s obviously the next step. Again, I’m working on projects with that. I know other people are as well. I will say that the writers against the war in Gaza has organized the boycott against the New York Times that I think we should wholly support. It’s been signed by 300 pro- Palestine and Palestinian writers and academics. It’s a subscription and a writing boycott. I know it may seem a little like boycotts can feel a little maybe not that impactful, but I think at the very least that’s a good place to start delegitimizing the New York Times as an institution because I think there’s this idea that you can reform and I think an institution like New York Times is fundamentally unreformable. So seeking to delegitimize it, not like again, indulging it, not when someone gets a job or places an op-ed, you go, “Ooh, you in New York Times.” I think that mentality that we’re going to change it from the inside with an institution like that has to be gone.

So I would check out the writers against the war in Gaza and their boycott on New York Times. Actually going to do an interview with them on Tuesday talking about it because it is like a very, very, very first step. It’s obviously not like in and of itself that, but I think delegitimizing the institutions like the New York Times who, again, we can talk about their interventions where they, I believe, crossed the line into outright genocide, whether it was accusing Honorah, which does the aid and provides food and shelter of being Hamas by laundering bogus Israeli intelligence that fell apart in two weeks, whether it was again, promoting atrocity propaganda, whether it was doing the Al-Shifa hospital command and control center that looked like a bun villain layer and then they got there, nothing was there. The Washington Post debunked it. The New York Times kept trying to put lipstick on the pig for months.

But then this outright genocide denial on healthcare workers, they repeatedly militarized schools, places where people were sheltering children. Everything was a Hamas bunker or … So that would be the first step in my opinion. Secondly would be maybe doesn’t work towards accountability, but again, reach out to your local BDS coordinator, reach out to people who are attempting to delegitimize these institutions that seek their destruction and genocide and it starts there. But unfortunately we just need to be armed with the data and be armed with the critical analysis and seek to, within our own spaces, to push back on those narratives and to delegitimize platforms like the New York Times, who I thought who are uniquely high leverage and uniquely pernicious in selling this genocide.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Let’s give it up for Adam Johnson, everyone. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Real News Network Podcast and thank you to the great Adam Johnson for this incredible discussion. Again, Adam’s new book is called How to Sell a Genocide: The Media’s Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza and it’s out now with Pluto Press, so go get yourself a copy and thank you to Red Emma’s Cooperative Bookstore and Coffeehouse for organizing this really great event. If you want to get more coverage and hear more important conversations just like this, then we need you to become a supporter of The Real News Now. Share this podcast with people in your circles, your friends, your family, and your coworkers. Sign up for the Real News Newsletter so you never miss a story and go to the realnews.com/donate and become a supporter today. I promise you guys, it really does make a difference.

For the Real News Network, this Maximillian Alvarez signing off from Baltimore. Take care of yourselves and take care of each other.

Interviewing someone for my new ‘Portugal Talk Radio’ project is fun enough when they have a great story about moving to and loving life in Portugal. But when their extraordinary

The post Right, said FRED. For best results, don’t argue with 88 inner voices appeared first on Portugal Resident.

Vladimir Putin is losing the war he started. His army occupies every kilometer at a cost no economy can sustain, and the goals set in February 2022 have quietly vanished from his staff maps.

But this war has more than one front, and one of them runs through Poland. On

In today’s roundup, Natasha and Carl look at: Plus the usual mix of politics, society, expat life and what it all means for those living in (or moving to) Portugal.

The post A&E summer closures, Portugal still top 10 for safety & power cut risk cont/d. appeared first on Portugal Resident.

Almost every month, Portugal’s property market generates another round of headlines announcing that prices have risen by yet another percentage point. According to various reports, values are up 5%, 7%,

The post The false economy of the continuing increase in Portugal’s property prices appeared first on Portugal Resident.

I am a native Angeleno. I have lived here my entire life. It truly is the city of make-believe. 

Los Angeles is, of course, home to Hollywood, Tinseltown, the storied entertainment capital of the world, where we make up all sorts of fake stories that entertain the world.

But now a new story of apparent make-believe has emerged from Los Angeles — that of voter fraud. And this story is unlikely to win any awards. 

President Donald Trump has made unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud related to California’s June 2 primary elections. This is nothing new and follows years of baseless claims of voter fraud by Trump, which ultimately culminated in the events of Jan. 6, 2021. 

What has changed is the Justice Department’s enthusiasm for jumping into the thicket of elections. Recently, the Department of Justice has brought suits, unsuccessfully asked for data regarding voter rolls and even sought to inspect ballots. Taken together, this is a rare demonstration of the DOJ’s desire to get involved with elections and, frankly, to use that agency’s levers of power to back up the president’s attempts at undermining the credibility of elections. 

Los Angeles’ top federal prosecutor recently assured listeners of a radio program that charges for election fraud will be forthcoming. This is happening despite DOJ regulations indicating that the department should stay out of criminal investigations until elections are certified, as well as the apparent lack of specific evidence of election fraud. 

It is worth noting here that it does, in fact, take a long time to count ballots in California. But that’s actually evidence of the integrity of the process. The majority of us vote by mail; it takes longer to count and verify those ballots. Given the state’s current system, calling elections on or shortly after election night could be actual evidence of possible fraud. 

Have the shapes of the races in Los Angeles and California changed since election night, during the long process of counting ballots? Absolutely. That’s what happens when you count votes. 

Did things look better for Republican and conservative candidates on election night than they do now? Again, absolutely. But that’s a result of a predicted phenomenon — younger, more progressive and more liberal voters returned their ballots later in the process. Counting those ballots will, of course, affect the results of the races. 

The irony that the administration has called into question the veracity of elections, while simultaneously undermining the public integrity division of the DOJ that focused on elections, should not be lost. This division is a post-Watergate creation designed to root out corruption. It now stands as a shell of its former self thanks to the Trump administration. 

Given the state’s current system, calling elections on or shortly after election night could be actual evidence of possible fraud.

Some states have and will use the ever-increasing accusations of voter fraud to pass more restrictive voting rules. Clamping down on when and how people can vote makes all the sense in the world if that actually solved a problem. The issue is there’s little to indicate that it does. For instance, one form of these laws is to require photo identification at the polls. This intuitively makes sense, but voter impersonation, which photo IDs guard against, is extremely rare. Laws requiring proof of citizenship also make intuitive sense. Cases of noncitizen voting are, also, exceedingly rare. 

Where does this all leave us? The nonfiction version of this story is that fraud in America is very rare. Unfortunately, the fictionalized version of events is becoming more common and popular. 

Few things about elections in America in 2026 should be beyond dispute, but here are a few — every valid vote should be counted, any credible allegation of voter fraud should be investigated, one instance of voter fraud is one too many and the DOJ should use its investigatory and prosecutorial power to serve the American public, not a president’s personal preferences. False narratives originating might entertain Trump’s MAGA base, but they shouldn’t be allowed to eviscerate voters’ confidence in our nation’s election.

The post What the DOJ’s investigation into Los Angeles elections is really about appeared first on MS NOW.

As markets opened Friday morning, Elon Musk-owned SpaceX was poised to become the biggest new addition to the stock market — ever. The company, which also owns X — the social media cesspool formerly known as Twitter — and xAI, set an initial share price of $135. That placed the corporation’s overall valuation at $1.77 trillion. But shares surged once trading officially opened, pushing SpaceX’s value over the $2 trillion mark and officially making Musk the world’s first trillionaire. If the Securities and Exchange Commission approves confidential filings made earlier this year, SpaceX’s massive initial public offering could be followed by IPOs from two other tech giants: OpenAI, valued at more than $850 billion, and Anthropic, valued at more than $960 billion.

All three tech firms are taking steps to go public amid a high-stakes race to control the burgeoning artificial intelligence market. At the same time, questions abound about the hype surrounding AI, its safety issues and pacpotential profitability. This means those dreaming of getting rich with SpaceX’s IPO or any other tech titans should keep in mind: For all the resources Silicon Valley is pouring into these emerging technologies, it’s still possible that predictions of endless growth could turn out to be another LLM-generated hallucination.

For all the resources Silicon Valley is pouring into these emerging technologies, it’s still possible that predictions of endless growth could turn out to be another LLM-generated hallucination.

And should the AI bubble pop, the results for the global economy could be disastrous. In effect, these AI giants are strapping a time bomb to the stock market. If they go down, they might take most of those who went along for the ride down with them.

For months, economists have debated just how much of an effect massive investments in AI infrastructure have had on the U.S. economy. Regardless of its actual effect on GDP, investors have bet big on Big Tech, helping propel the major stock market indexes to record heights. Notably, that stock market boom hasn’t included the companies behind the large language models most widely used: Grok (SpaceX), ChatGPT (OpenAI) and Claude (Anthropic). So far, those firms have relied on investment rounds from venture capital, major institutions such as banks and other private deals to raise funds.

At the same time, many of the companies fueling the AI explosion are also investing in one another. Established multinational corporations such as Microsoft, Amazon and Google are pouring money into purchases from chip manufacturer Nvidia. Nvidia, in turn, has joined those giants in pumping cash into OpenAI and Anthropic, which also purchase Nvidia chips. Musk, meanwhile, used SpaceX to “acquire” xAI from himself, adding a whole new layer to the fiscal ouroboros he’s already fashioned.

But the vast sums being invested and spent have yet to generate sustainable profits. Meanwhile, advanced AI models consume a lot of energy in their computations. Between the cost to keep them running and investments in new research, even the billions in revenue being brought in aren’t enough to generate profits. And some companies that have been pushing their employees to use generative AI are feeling sticker shock as the fees associated with their licenses cut into their own bottom lines. It’s possible that cuts to that spending could depress revenue for AI companies, fueling their quest to tap new funding sources — which look likely to soon include ordinary investors or index funds that house retirement plans.

The timing couldn’t be better for the Center for Economic and Policy Research to have launched its “AI Bubble Monitor” earlier this week to track potential signs that we’re experiencing what would be the third major economic bubble of the past three decades. Economist Dean Baker, co-founder of the center, points out that “the value of the stock market relative to the economy is nearly twice as large as it was at the peak of the tech bubble.” And the stock prices of many tech companies driving the stock market far outshine their earnings.

Already, there are signs that some major financial institutions are getting worried about how much credit to offer based on stakes in AI companies. We have reached a point, then, where new money needs to be injected into this previously closed system. Whereas most firms doing IPOs reserve 5% to 10% of shares for retail customers, SpaceX held back as much as 30%, by some reports.

As things stand, the AI system is like a dazzling array of dominos — eye-catching and poised to topple with the slightest jostling.

While some might be thinking about the potential for people who believe Musk is going to terraform Mars will snap up shares, a better question could be the point made by this New York Times op-ed: “Mr. Musk could well believe his own projections. What’s harder to understand is why so many investors do, given his recent track record of missed deadlines, abandoned products and failed business predictions.”

As things stand, the AI system is like a dazzling array of dominos — eye-catching and poised to topple with the slightest jostling. Should one of these firms prove unable to meet the obligations it has to the other major players, the cascading effect could launch another recession. Rather than inoculating the financial system against this potential contagion, regulators appear poised to greenlight injection directly into the U.S. economy. Amid the talk of trillionaires, it should not be missed that a few people stand to get much, much richer in the short term — and these giant IPOs have the potential to leave everyone else holding the bag if AI proponents’ visions do not become reality.

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Allow me to explain. If one has tried to learn even the basics of Portuguese language, one will understand that ‘alto’ means tall or high. It is masculine, and ‘alta’

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Part of “subduing” and “ruling” (Genesis 1:26-28) is fulfilled in phones, computers, and other technology. Yes, these things can be and are abused. But the problem is in the person who operates it, or, in the case of children harmed, the parents who allow its use. But the phone is not the problem.   We... Continue Reading

In his latest book Pandemic of Lunacy, philosopher J. Budziszewski dismantles the delusion that manhood and womanhood can be whatever we wish, exposing the lack of scientific basis for transgender ideology and the real harms of “transitioning.”   There are plenty of lunacies out there. The latest book by J. Budziszewski lists 30 of them.... Continue Reading

President Donald Trump’s latest gaffe Wednesday in which he said he loves inflation is more than an act of political self-harm. It’s the kind of error that should once again raise questions about his soundness of mind. 

A reporter at the White House asked Trump whether he was concerned about Wednesday morning’s Bureau of Labor Statistics report that inflation hit 4.2% in May, a three-year high.

Trump replied:

No, I love it. The numbers were great. You know what I really love? I love the inflation. You know why? Because as soon as this war is over, you know, I can say it now, something you didn’t know, do you know, we’ve been taking out millions of barrels of oil. Nobody knows it, you know. Who doesn’t know about it? Iran, until right now. We took out the other night 22 ships late at night with no lights because they don’t have any radar, because we blasted the crap out of it.

It was a jaw-dropping response. 

It’s beyond baffling that Trump would announce that he’s fond of an economic phenomenon that hurts working people and has been leading to losses for incumbent parties across the democratized world. People struggling to put food on the table and make rent are suffering in a tangible way from skyrocketing energy costs, and their corrupt billionaire president is cavalierly describing inflation as a positive. Trump is once again writing Democrats’ midterm attack ads for them.

When Trump gets midway through the comment, one might wonder if he’s speaking in an ironic tone and winding up to offer a counterintuitive explanation for why Americans should see inflation as tolerable. But instead, he pivots to a non sequitur about the U.S. allegedly secretly smuggling barrels of oil from somewhere unspecified — Iran? The Strait of Hormuz?

Other officials in his government appear to have no clue what he meant. As MS NOW reported, “Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who was simultaneously testifying before the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, told lawmakers that he did not know of any such operation.” 

A White House official tried to clean up Trump’s confusing claim by telling The New York Times that Trump was referring to the U.S.’ efforts to escort commercial ships out of the Strait of Hormuz. But not only was that operation entirely public, it also failed miserably. Unless more evidence emerges that says otherwise, it appears Trump was making something up or doesn’t understand how his own Iran policy works.

But crucially, nothing he said explains why he said, “I love the inflation.” Even if there has been some secret oil-removal mission in Iran, it doesn’t make inflation good, or tolerable (or more likely to recede). Instead it seems Trump failed to retain focus on the topic at hand, and then blurted out something he meant to sound like an advertisement for American power. 

Wednesday’s gaffe is distinct from Trump’s comment last month that “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation” as he confronts Iran. That professed indifference amounted to Trump accidentally revealing his true feelings.

“I love the inflation” is closer to President Joe Biden saying “we finally beat Medicare” at the end of an unintelligible ramble during his 2024 debate with Trump. Biden’s answer amplified doubts among Democrats over whether he was capable of completing a second term, and it eventually led to him dropping his candidacy for re-election. 

By contrast, Trump’s incoherent account of inflation and tall tales about his foolish war are yawned at by Republicans. A functioning party would do everything it could to buck a party leader who is a walking, talking liability and appears to have declining reasoning skills. But if those Republicans running in midterm elections don’t strongly condemn Trump’s claim to love inflation, we’ll have reason to question their reasoning skills, too. 

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The State Department is deepening the federal government’s official ties to the Ultimate Fighting Championship, effectively vowing to globally promote a company in which President Donald Trump has a financial interest.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio held an event Thursday to sign a memorandum of understanding that authorizes what the State Department is calling “a new public-private partnership to enhance sports diplomacy initiatives and collaborate on the global growth of mixed martial arts.”

Rubio hosted the event with UFC President Dana White, a close Trump ally. And the arrangement reeks of possible corruption.

Financial disclosure forms recently showed that Trump purchased thousands of dollars of stock in TKO, the UFC’s parent company, at the same time he was promoting this weekend’s UFC fights at the White House. The purchases are just one of the reasons plaintiffs suing to stop the event have called it a “volcano of corruption,” as my colleague Jordan Rubin explained.

The White House has called the lawsuit meritless. The case is pending in U.S. District Court.

But the same issue exists with the State Department’s arrangement as well, to say nothing of the labor crisis surrounding the union-busting UFC. I would argue this is ample reason to question this partnership — the fact that Trump holds TKO stock means his administration’s promotion of the UFC could ultimately line his pockets.

It’s one of several brazenly unethical ways Trump and his allies have helped enrich himself and his family during his presidency. And the fact that the State Department is rolling out this latest enrichment effort as Trump’s economy wreaks havoc on Americans’ wallets makes it all the more grotesque.

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Just days after saying the United States may “need another 9/11” to convince Democrats to support barring Muslims from participating in politics, Trump ally and a racist conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer traveled with press on a Defense Department trip to Cuba. 

Loomer made her remarks earlier this week when she condemned a video in which Michigan Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib defended demonstrators for wearing gas masks to protests against the Trump administration’s racist anti-immigrant crackdown, during which Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other law enforcement groups have used chemical agents against them.

Here’s Loomer’s quote, as Media Matters reported:

So, I think I’ve given enough evidence and enough examples. Maybe, just maybe, it’s not such a great idea to allow for Muslims to be involved in our political process in America. Maybe. Maybe. But I guess I don’t know. Maybe we need another 9/11 because I guess those clips right there and those people in their own words isn’t going to be enough to convince the Democrats.

In 2024, Trump invited Loomer, who has spread conspiracy theories about the 9/11 terrorist attacks, to join him at a ceremony memorializing victims of the attack. 

Earlier this week, Loomer announced she would be traveling with the Pentagon press corps on a Defense Department trip to Cuba. The trip comes as Trump and his administration have threatened to invade Cuba.

Loomer’s presence just underscores the extent to which the Defense Department has become a safe haven for extremists, as well as its heightened interest in promoting propaganda at the same time it has taken steps to limit reputable reporting on its activities.

Among the questions Loomer asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday, by her own account, was why the government had not executed some Muslim detainees at Guantanamo Bay. That line of questioning, in addition to her presence on the Pentagon press trip to Cuba, also highlighted the absurdity of the Trump administration’s claim that its counterterrorism strategy is targeting people who promote “anti-American” views, rather than merely an attempt to crack down on liberal groups and organizations.

It’s hard to imagine anything more anti-American than suggesting the U.S. should “need” to endure a scenario similar to one of the worst terrorist attacks in its history, in which thousands died during the attack and in the years following. But a top Trump ally did just that days before the U.S. military brought her on an overseas trip. 

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s request for comment.

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This Friday, SpaceX will execute its initial public offering. The company has set a share price of $135; that would put its value at $1.77 trillion, making it the largest IPO in history. On Wall Street they are practically vibrating with excitement, as banks and investment firms compete to get in on the action. Demand for the shares is reportedly off the charts. The IPO will likely make CEO Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire. 

Some investors consider Musk a genius and a visionary; others just want a piece of the cash grab. But all of them are pretending that this IPO can be separated from the repugnant things about Musk — his promotion of white supremacy and antisemitism, the poison his social media network pours into global debate every day, the damage he has done to the federal government. None of that exists in a separate sphere from his businesses. It is not a hobby or a sidelight. It is the very heart of who he is and the world he is seeking to create. Musk and his IPO are where greed meets hate, and that stain should be on anyone who participates.

Musk has turned the social media network formerly known as Twitter into the most important amplifier of hatred in the world today. 

This week, ahead of the IPO, Musk encouraged what became an anti-immigrant pogrom in Belfast. This horrific series of events began when an immigrant in Northern Ireland was charged with attempted murder — an event that was caught on video. Far-right provocateurs in Great Britain and elsewhere immediately called for anti-immigrant protests, which Musk used his X account to amplify to his 240 million followers. When a far-right politician pledged “to prosecute officials and politicians who knowingly placed dangerous third world savages in our communities,” Musk replied on X, “This is the way.” He also shared a post announcing locations for anti-immigrant protests and a post from the far-right Restore Britain party that said, “Do not make peace with evil. Destroy it.”

Later that day, masked men rampaged through a Belfast neighborhood, burning cars and setting fire to houses where they believed immigrants lived. “As a woman from an ethnic minority background looked down from an upstairs window, some of the men rushed the front door and broke it down,” The Guardian reported. “As they stormed the property, some claimed to be ‘liberating’ it. Graffiti nearby demanded ‘local homes for local people.’”

Musk denies that he promotes violence. But he has turned the social media network formerly known as Twitter into the most important amplifier of hatred in the world today. This is hardly the first time the richest man on the planet was an awful human being. Henry Ford, for instance, was a hateful antisemite; Adolf Hitler decorated his office with a picture of Ford, who published and distributed works like “The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem.” But the automaker’s reach pales in comparison to what Musk can do with X. 

After Musk bought the platform (and later rolled it into his artificial intelligence company, xAI), he dismantled many of its guardrails against disinformation and hate. In short order, neo-Nazi and other far-right accounts began to flourish on the site. I certainly experienced it. Thanks to writing on the internet for decades, I have thick skin. But when my ordinary comments about politics started being greeted with “Get in the oven, Jew,” I decided I had had enough. I left X, which I haven’t regretted for a moment. 

This was a feature of X, not a bug, and it is reflected in Musk’s personal drift to the right. An analysis earlier this year by The Guardian found that Musk “posted about how the white race was under threat, made allusions to race science or promoted anti-immigrant conspiracy content on 26 out of 31 days in January.” A longer examination by The Washington Post in April found that Musk had made “posts about race and his concerns about perceived threats to Whiteness” hundreds of times in recent months, at a dramatically accelerated rate from his previous dabbling in white supremacy. Offline, Musk threw up a stiff-armed salute at Trump’s inauguration, and he has long promoted the Nazi-aligned Alternative für Deutschland party in Germany.

Let’s not forget the wreckage left by Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

Then there’s Grok, xAI’s chatbot. From its beginning, Musk specifically positioned Grok as a rebuttal to “woke nonsense” from other AIs. Last summer, xAI had to roll back a Grok update and delete “inappropriate” posts last summer after the chatbot started spewing antisemitism and dubbing itself “MechaHitler.” People have used Grok to produce millions of sexualized images of real people, including children. (In a statement at the time, xAI said, “We take action against illegal content on X,” such as by suspending accounts and working with authorities.)

Earlier this year, Musk merged xAI into SpaceX, and now Grok is at the heart of the SpaceX IPO. In its propsectus, SpaceX claimed “the largest actionable total addressable market (‘TAM’) in human history. We estimate that our quantifiable TAM is $28.5 trillion.” But $22.7 trillion of that estimate comes not from anything space related, but from “enterprise applications” of AI — in other words, businesses spending money to use Grok. 

And let’s not forget the wreckage left by Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency. This assault on the capacity of the federal government left agencies dismantled, sensitive data compromised and thousands of committed civil servants purged. Immense damage has been done by the destruction of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the world’s largest foreign aid agency, which Musk spoke gleefully of “feeding … into the wood chipper.” The toll is mind-boggling. Hundreds of thousands around the globe have already died because of the rapid withdrawal of food and medical aid. The devastation will compound as time goes by. One study published in The Lancet projected that by 2030, more than 14 million people will have died as a result of the shutdown of USAID, including 4.5 million children. A study by the Center for Global Development estimates between 670,000 and 1.6 million lives lost annually due to the cuts.

SpaceX doesn’t have to bring in fantastical profits to work out well for early investors; all that’s necessary is that the hype machine keeps rolling so they can offload the shares — and the risk — to a steady supply of new investors. That machine is wholly dependent on Elon Musk. But buying into Musk means buying into the future he is trying to create, a future in which government’s ability to protect the public interest is crippled, inequality worsens, AI slop drowns the internet and the ideology of hate prevails. If you invest with him, that’s what you’re investing in. 

The post Musk’s SpaceX IPO is where greed meets hate appeared first on MS NOW.

El partido político Movimiento Sumar, que se supone, aunque quizá a estas alturas ya sea demasiado suponer, es la matriz tanto del grupo parlamentario Sumar (cuarta fuerza política de la cámara y socio de coalición del PSOE) como de la coalición electoral Sumar, que no está claro que a día de hoy exista, ha convocado para el próximo 11 de julio de 2026 su III Asamblea, que, a voz de pronto, lo de ir a asamblea por año tampoco está claro que favorezca una solidez estructural a un partido político. Y, para celebrar el ambiente preasambleario, los dirigentes de esta formación que quedan han decidido ilustrar a sus seguidores con una nueva y entrañable trifulca pública, que tenía en los tuits de Elizabeth Duval contra Lara Hernández su mejor proyección pública, con el trasfondo de acusaciones de acoso laboral.

Yolanda Díaz, antigua militante de Izquierda Unida y del PCE, apareció como una de las diputadas de las 'mareas' gallegas, la confluencia gallega de Podemos en las elecciones generales de 2015 y 2016, y luego, tras vivir en primera fila cómo dichas mareas se autodestruían, en 2019 pasó a ser diputada por Galicia en Común, la nueva confluencia gallega de Unidas Podemos. Fue Pablo Iglesias quien la propuso como ministra en el primer gobierno de coalición PSOE-Unidas Podemos en 2020. Y en marzo de 2021, el mismo Iglesias anunció de manera unilateral que la proponía para reemplazarle como vicepresidente cuando decidió retirarse del Gobierno, y también para que liderara el espacio político 'a la izquierda' del PSOE. Difícilmente se podía imaginar Díaz que la misma persona que le ofrecía sucederle iba a ser su mayor hostigador durante todos sus años al frente de ese espacio político.

Yolanda Díaz intentó construir la plataforma Sumar, intentando dejar claro que no quería ser tutelada por el 'pablismo', algo que Juanma del Olmo ya decía que no le iban a perdonar. Un repaso a su etapa como cabeza visible de este espacio refleja unos años bastante convulsos.

8 de julio de 2022 - Yolanda Díaz anuncia en un acto público la constitución de un proyecto político denominado Sumar. Al acto acude Enrique Santiago, secretario de Estado en uno de los ministerios regentados por Podemos. Ese mismo mes es destituido de ese cargo y reemplazado por Lilith Verstrynge. Irene Montero le acusará posteriormente de haber conspirado contra ella.

13 de noviembre de 2022 - La celebración de un acto político de Yolanda Díaz con la 'errejonista' Mónica García, Ada Colau y Mónica Oltra, titulado Otras Políticas, en Valencia, inicia oficialmente una campaña de Podemos, encabezada por el propio Pablo Iglesias y los activistas de este partido en redes sociales, contra Yolanda Díaz por no haber incluido a la ministra de Igualdad y madre de los hijos de Iglesias, Irene Montero, en dicho acto. Las malas relaciones entre 'el pablismo' y el 'yolandismo' eran un secreto a voces, aunque oficialmente se habían negado hasta ese momento. Antonio Maestre había pedido en un artículo en ElDiario.es un abrazo público entre Yolanda Díaz y Pablo Iglesias (24-09-2022), pero este nunca se producirá.

2 de abril de 2023 - Yolanda Díaz presenta públicamente, en un acto en Magariños, la coalición Sumar y el partido político que será su matriz, Movimiento Sumar. Al acto asisten, entre otros, Izquierda Unida, Más País-Más Madrid, los Comunes, Compromís y Chunta, pero no Podemos, que boicotea el acto y ataca desde las redes sociales y sus tertulias a Sumar.

2 de junio de 2023 - El proceso de negociación de las listas electorales de Sumar acaba en conflicto público. Yolanda Díaz, al configurar su equipo, no desea contar con las figuras más destacadas del 'pablismo', como la ministra Irene Montero o Pablo Echenique. Podemos opta, no por una negociación discreta, sino por "calentar" desde las redes sociales como método de presión para forzar a Yolanda Díaz a rectificar e incluir como diputada a Irene Montero, para no seguir siendo tachada de traidora y vendida, causando que todas las entrevistas sobre Sumar no se centren en su programa, sino en el "veto a Irene Montero". El ministro Alberto Garzón (Izquierda Unida) renuncia a ir en las listas de Sumar en nombre de la renovación, facilitando la exclusión de Montero.

9 de junio de 2023 - Podemos firma su integración en la coalición Sumar. Su secretaria general, Ione Belarra, incluida en un puesto de elección segura en las listas de Sumar, anuncia el acuerdo, pero no con ilusión, sino con reproches. Belarra estará en las listas electorales de Sumar, pero no estará la ministra Irene Montero, cosa que Podemos considera un insulto para ellos. Podemos escogerá la estrategia de 'pitufo gruñón' contra Sumar y, a pesar de formar parte de la coalición, sus activistas en redes sociales no pararán de atacar a Yolanda Díaz en ningún momento. Uno de los fichajes estrella de Yolanda Díaz es el de Elizabeth Duval como secretaria de Comunicación.

23 de julio de 2023 - Las elecciones generales dan a la coalición Sumar 31 diputados. El partido mayoritario es el propio Movimiento Sumar, siendo Marta Lois, diputada gallega del equipo de Yolanda Díaz, quien asumirá la portavocía parlamentaria. También obtienen diputados Izquierda Unida (5), Podemos (5), los Comunes (6), Más Madrid (2), Compromís (2), Chunta (1) y Més per Mallorca (1). Tras conocerse los resultados, Ione Belarra, diputada electa de Sumar, declara públicamente que la estrategia de Yolanda Díaz "ha fracasado" y la acusa de haber querido "invisibilizar" a Irene Montero, a la que considera portavoz del feminismo español. Se mantiene la presión por parte de las redes de Podemos para que Yolanda Díaz incluya a Irene Montero como ministra de Sumar a cambio de frenar los ataques.

17 de noviembre de 2023 - Yolanda Díaz propone que Nacho Álvarez sea el representante de Podemos dentro de los ministros de Sumar. Este acepta, pero Podemos lo desautoriza, lo que provoca que Nacho Álvarez abandone Podemos y se retire de la política. Los ministros de Sumar, finalmente, serán Yolanda Díaz (Movimiento Sumar) como vicepresidenta, Pablo Bustinduy (Movimiento Sumar), Sira Rego (Izquierda Unida), Mónica García (Más Madrid) y Ernest Urtasun (Comunes).

5 de diciembre de 2023 - Pablo Iglesias anuncia a través de su canal, Canal Red, que los cinco diputados de Podemos —Ione Belarra, Lilith Verstrynge, María Martina Velarde, Javier Sánchez y Noemí Santana— abandonan el grupo parlamentario de Sumar y se pasan al Grupo Mixto después de que Irene Montero fuera excluida del Gobierno.

6 de enero de 2024 - Íñigo Errejón es nombrado portavoz del grupo parlamentario de Sumar a propuesta de Yolanda Díaz. Sustituye así a Marta Lois, que deja el cargo para ser candidata de Sumar a la presidencia de Galicia.

18 de febrero de 2024 - Las elecciones gallegas suponen una derrota total para Sumar y para Yolanda Díaz en particular, que se volcó en aquella campaña. De los 170.000 votos que logró Sumar en las generales de 2023, se desploma a 28.000 votos en las autonómicas (Podemos queda por debajo de los 5.000). La derrota debilita mucho la imagen de Yolanda Díaz de cara a sus socios, dado que se suponía que Galicia debía ser la zona territorial donde ella arrastrara más voto, frente a aliados como Íñigo Errejón, de Más Madrid, que representa a un partido que sí demostraba tener un electorado potente en Madrid.

23 de marzo de 2024 - La I Asamblea de Movimiento Sumar elige a Yolanda Díaz como su coordinadora. El partido tendrá una ejecutiva en la que Íñigo Errejón aparece como una de las piezas fuertes, simultaneando su condición de portavoz parlamentario con la de responsable de Análisis Político y Discurso. Lara Hernández será la secretaria de Organización y Elizabeth Duval se mantiene como secretaria de Comunicación.

25 de marzo de 2024 - El fundador y líder espiritual de Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, se estrena como tertuliano de TVE con una ristra de ataques contra Yolanda Díaz y Sumar, sin que nadie salga en defensa de este espacio político en sus intervenciones. La dirección de RTVE de José Pablo López concede una fuerte presencia a tertulianos de Podemos, como Iglesias, Laura Arroyo o Manu Levin, para que despellejen a Sumar, pero, en cambio, no concede el mismo grado de presencia a tertulianos de Sumar en esos mismos espacios.

9 de junio de 2024 - Las elecciones europeas suponen un nuevo varapalo para Sumar. De los seis eurodiputados logrados por Unidas Podemos en 2019, Sumar se queda con la mitad: tres, en 2024.

11 de junio de 2024 - Yolanda Díaz anuncia que dimite como coordinadora de Movimiento Sumar tras los malos resultados de la coalición Sumar en las elecciones europeas. Se presenta como una asunción de responsabilidades, a pesar de lo importante que es, en los primeros años de existencia de un partido, mantener una dirección estable de cara a sus seguidores. La dimisión de Díaz coloca al portavoz parlamentario Íñigo Errejón como "la figura fuerte" de Sumar.

24 de octubre de 2024 - Íñigo Errejón dimite de todos sus cargos al quedar destruido política y públicamente al verse involucrado en acusaciones anónimas de machismo y en una acusación pública, la de la actriz Elisa Mouliaá, por presunta agresión sexual. La nueva portavoz del grupo parlamentario de Sumar será Begoña Martínez Barbero. Yolanda Díaz comparece el día 28 de octubre de 2024 para asegurar que, de haber sabido la actitud de Errejón hacia las mujeres, nunca le habría nombrado portavoz.

21 de noviembre de 2024 - La exministra Irene Montero y dirigente de Podemos publica el libro Algo habremos hecho, que supone un ajuste de cuentas contra los dirigentes de Sumar Yolanda Díaz, Enrique Santiago, Íñigo Errejón, Mónica García, Alberto Garzón o Jaume Asens, a los que presenta como traidores e inútiles, al tiempo que elogia a Bildu y ERC como 'izquierda fuerte'.

21 de marzo de 2025 - Elizabeth Duval dimite como secretaria de Comunicación de Movimiento Sumar. En ese momento lo presenta como una decisión personal, aunque los últimos acontecimientos apuntan a una relación mejorable con Lara Hernández.

29 de marzo de 2025 - La II Asamblea de Movimiento Sumar elige a dos co-coordinadores para liderar el partido: Lara Hernández (procedente de Izquierda Unida) y Carlos Martín Urriza (procedente de CCOO), quedando Laura Moreno como secretaria de Organización y David Comas como secretario de Comunicación. Programas de televisión como 'El Intermedio' hacen burlas sobre lo escasamente conocidos que son los líderes de Movimiento Sumar para el electorado.

25 de junio de 2025 - Una de las dos diputadas de Compromís en Sumar, Àgueda Micó, la representante de Més Compromís, anuncia que, de acuerdo con una votación asamblearia, rompe con Sumar y se pasa al Grupo Mixto. El otro diputado de Compromís, representante de UPV, sí permanecerá en el grupo parlamentario.

6 de agosto de 2025 - Carlos Martín Urriza dimite como co-coordinador de Movimiento Sumar. La noticia se presenta como un tema personal, aunque la situación actual del partido ha reforzado la idea de que tuvo diferencias con Lara Hernández.

La batalla actual no tiene un trasfondo ideológico, ni tan siquiera estratégico. Se diría que los dirigentes de Movimiento Sumar saben que la coalición Sumar está acabada

17 de enero de 2026 - Se hace público un informe de Izquierda Unida que da por acabado el proyecto de Sumar y anuncia la necesidad de reformular el proyecto con una nueva denominación.

26 de mayo de 2026 - Dimite David Comas como secretario de Comunicación de Movimiento Sumar, una salida atribuida a diferencias con Lara Hernández.

9 de junio de 2026 - Se hace pública la dimisión de Laura Moreno como secretaria de Organización de Movimiento Sumar, en medio de publicaciones sobre presunto acoso laboral de la coordinadora Lara Hernández. Desde su cuenta de X, Elizabeth Duval responsabiliza a Lara Hernández de las dimisiones de Martín Urriza, de David Comas y de Laura Moreno, evidenciándose una nueva batalla interna dentro de Movimiento Sumar.

La batalla actual no tiene, aparentemente, un trasfondo ideológico, ni tan siquiera estratégico. Se diría que los dirigentes de Movimiento Sumar saben que la coalición Sumar está acabada y que, en la nueva coalición que llegue para ese espacio político progresista, los de Movimiento Sumar, como mucho, podrán aspirar a un puesto de elección segura, y de ahí la disputa por la persona que ocupe ese hueco, se llame Lara Hernández o se llame Verónica Martínez Barbero.

En lo que se refiere a Yolanda Díaz, podrá reivindicar su gestión de más de seis años en el Consejo de Ministros (siete si se agota la legislatura), en los que ha podido influir en multitud de legislaciones, pero lo más llamativo de su etapa como dirigente de un espacio político es que se suponía que era la líder de un espacio izquierdista ("a la izquierda del PSOE" es el eufemismo) y ha sido atacada con mucha más ferocidad por parte de Podemos que por Vox. Le tenían muchas más ganas los tuiteros de Ione Belarra y Canal Red que los de Santiago Abascal, provocando que los de Sumar no hayan podido librarse de la sombra del gag del Frente Popular de Judea durante todos sus años de existencia.

In 2026, Brussels has reason to celebrate. Russia's share of EU gas imports has fallen from 45% to 12%. Russian coal has virtually disappeared. Russian oil is down to 2% of the European market. Officials call it one of the fastest energy transformations in modern European history.

But Russian LNG is still flowing. The EU paid Russia €7.2 billion for it in 2025—enough to fund roughly five years of Iskander-M ballistic missiles at the rate Russia ordered them for 2024–2025.

As President von der Leyen stated this week, EU sanctions are aimed at weakening the economic foundations of Russia's war effort. For Ukrainians, this reality is painfully tangible: every euro of revenues from Russian fossil fuel exports is transformed into drones and missiles that strike our cities and civilians.

Razom We Stand's new analytical paper, Europe's Break from Russian Fossil Fuels, reveals the gap inside the celebration. Pipeline volumes collapsed, yet the LNG channel never closed. In 2025, the EU imported around 20 bcm of Russian liquefied natural gas, and imports rose. By the first quarter of 2026, Europe was receiving 97% of exports from Russia's Arctic Yamal LNG project.

Russia is being paid by Europe's choice, not contract necessity, until 2027

The EU's 19th sanctions package, adopted in October 2025, set 1 January 2027 as the legal end of Russian LNG imports under long-term contracts. The same package gave EU buyers force majeure cover to exit early.

Yet, only after four years of Russia's invasion did the German government ask SEFE, which holds a 2.9 million-tonne-per-year contract originally running to 2040, to consider invoking the legal exit available to it. Four years of civilians killed daily by Russian missiles and drones, and four years of Ukrainian soldiers holding off the world's #2 army funded by the very money earned by selling LNG to Europe.

SEFE is, as of recent reporting, still weighing the costs. The flow continues.

Specific European companies anchor this trade. France's TotalEnergies holds a 20% equity stake in Yamal LNG and the largest single offtake contract. Germany's SEFE and Spain's Naturgy hold long-term offtake contracts. Belgium's Fluxys operates the Zeebrugge terminal that handles a significant share of trans-shipment. The Yamal ice-class tankers that move the cargo are operated by Seapeak Maritime Glasgow in the UK and Dynagas in Greece.

France led EU buyers in 2025—87 ships delivering 6.3 million tonnes through Dunkirk and Montoir, worth €3.16 billion to Russia.

The TotalEnergies CEO has been candid about the philosophy. Asked about the ethics of profiting from Russian LNG amid sanctions on Russia, Patrick Pouyanné told reporters: "This is not Russian money—it's a European contract."

In February 2026, after the 20th sanctions package gave TotalEnergies additional legal protections, Pouyanné announced the contract might be terminated earlier than its 2041 end. The 20% equity stake in Yamal LNG isn't part of that timeline.

Sanctions taken hostage to restore flow of Russian oil

The oil channel tells a similar story. The April 2026 resolution of the Druzhba crisis allowed the 20th EU sanctions package and the €90 billion EU loan for Ukraine to pass—but the resolution restored Russian crude flows to Hungary and Slovakia. Ukraine, under pressure to unlock both, repaired the pipeline that Russia had struck at Brody in January and resumed transit of Russian oil through its territory.

The two countries continue importing through Druzhba's southern leg under exemptions with no defined end date. Hungary and Slovakia imported a combined 8.7 million tonnes of Russian oil in 2024—more than before the full-scale invasion.

Croatia's Adria pipeline (JANAF) can cover their oil needs. The reason it doesn't: Hungarian state oil company MOL reports approximately 30% additional profit from arbitraging Russian crude prices.

The problem is no longer willingness. The April hostage demonstrated how Kremlin-aligned EU governments can use Russian fuel exemptions as leverage on sanctions and aid. The pattern can repeat anywhere those exemptions remain.

Russia cut its own pipeline gas exports to the EU

Even the pipeline gas drop owes more to Russia than to Europe. Razom's analysis credits Russia's own export cuts—driven by Gazprom's pivot to Asian markets and the loss of the Nord Stream pipelines—as the primary cause of the collapse from 45% to 12%. Brussels accepted the result and took credit.

The diversification story is also less than it appears.

As Russian pipeline gas declined, the EU sharply increased LNG purchases—primarily from the United States. American LNG accounted for around 28% of Europe's total gas imports in 2026 and nearly 60% of all LNG consumed in Europe.

Total LNG import capacity now stands at approximately 250 bcm per year—more than double current LNG imports. This shift now operates under the political conditions of a US administration that has explicitly used European LNG dependency as a trade and diplomatic lever. Europe has traded Kremlin leverage for White House leverage.

Closing the actual remaining channel requires enforcing what the 19th sanctions package set in October 2025—and extending it.

The package made Russian LNG imports under long-term contracts legally void from 1 January 2027 and gave EU buyers force majeure cover to exit early. EU buyers should invoke that cover now, not next year. Germany waiting until November 2025 to press SEFE is the model failure to avoid.

The 2027 deadline should also move forward. Each month of activation delay means more euros flowing to Moscow while Ukraine fights weapons funded by that revenue.

Coordinated G7 sanctions across the entire Russian LNG value chain—Novatek, Yamal LNG, Arctic LNG 2, the affiliated entities and executives, the transshipment operators, the tanker operators, the insurers. The UK has banned shipping services. The EU has not.

EU sanctions on the European companies sustaining the trade: TotalEnergies, SEFE, Naturgy, Fluxys, Seapeak Maritime Glasgow, Dynagas. And separate treatment for equity stakes—TotalEnergies plans to keep its 20% in Yamal LNG even after the contract ends. The structure outlasts the contracts.

For pipeline oil—a firm deadline on the southern Druzhba exemption. For pipeline gas—termination of the Hungary–Gazprom long-term contract for 4.5 bcm annually delivered via TurkStream, replacement with non-Russian suppliers such as Romania's forthcoming Neptun Deep project, and strengthened market monitoring to prevent circumvention through third countries.

Why is the EU moving so slowly?

The ultimate reason is that Europe still perceives the phase-out of Russian fossil fuels primarily as an economic challenge, while Ukraine experiences it as a matter of security and survival. Therefore, the business interests and lobbies of oil and gas giants and their long-term contracts with Russia get priority over cutting off Russia’s war revenue immediately and completely and establishing the continent’s energy independence.

The deeper truth behind all of this is one Russia's war has made unmissable. Fossil fuel dependence creates leverage for whoever controls the supply. Replacing the Kremlin with Doha or Washington reduces immediate risk but preserves the structure. The only path that ends the leverage is reducing demand—through renewables, electrification, heat pumps, and grids.

The EU has already proven this works. Since 2022, gas consumption has fallen 15–18%, driven not by new LNG terminals but by efficiency and renewables. Wind and solar rose from 17% to 29% of the electricity mix. Solar capacity nearly tripled, from 120 GW to 338 GW.

That is the foundation. Finishing the job means matching the speed of demand reduction with the speed at which Brussels closes the LNG channel still funding Russia's war.

Europe has nearly broken from Russian fossil fuels. The "almost" means contracts still active until 2027, equity stakes that outlast them, named companies still buying, money still flowing to Moscow. Closing that gap—without falling into the next dependency—is the work left.

Editor's note. The opinions expressed in our Opinion section belong to their authors. Euromaidan Press' editorial team may or may not share them.

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American soccer fans have suffered many indignities over the years: waking up before dawn to watch games overseas, enduring the men’s national team’s failures and listening to Alexi Lalas on television broadcasts.

But this year’s FIFA World Cup was supposed to make up for all that.

More than 1 billion people watch the World Cup final, making it the biggest event in sports. It is a global celebration. And in 2026, that celebration was finally supposed to be coming to our backyard.

Then President Donald Trump got involved.

Through a mix of manufactured crises and an apparent desire to make every major event revolve around him, Trump managed to turn the World Cup into a fiasco. It’s the biggest disappointment for American soccer fans since the men’s team failed to qualify in 2018 by losing to Trinidad and Tobago.

The trouble began in June 2025, when the Trump administration imposed travel restrictions on multiple countries, signaling to fans that the United States might not be a friendly place to visit. From there, longer lines at airport security, a Department of Homeland Security shutdown, threats to send Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to the World Cup, an explicit threat to pull customs officers from airports in some host cities and visa restrictions and denials to some teams all played a part in hurting the tournament.

The World Cup was supposed to be a melting pot of global soccer lovers, drawing visitors from all 48 of the participating countries. But fans from four countries whose teams are in the World Cup — Haiti, Ivory Coast, Iran and Senegal — won’t be allowed in thanks to Trump’s refusal to even temporarily suspend those countries’ travel bans.

One of the tournament’s top referees – Omar Artan – said he was denied entry to the U.S. and held by Customs and Border Protection for 11 hours. The Trump administration said CBP denied him for ties to “suspected members of terror organizations,” but Artan already had a valid visa issued by the State Department.

Iran, currently facing attacks from the U.S. military in a war that Trump entered with no congressional approval and little public support, is set to participate in the World Cup. But even a week from kickoff, the team was still struggling to get visas to let its players get to their matches, forcing it to relocate its base to Mexico.

Even players for ostensible U.S. allies are struggling to get in. Switzerland’s star striker, Breel Embolo, one of the team’s most recognizable players, faced a temporary block on his travel authorization as the U.S. looked into a conviction he had for his role in a fight in 2018.

And the problems are not limited to other countries. American fans hoping to enjoy the matches also have run into corporate greed.

Ticket prices have become so bad that New York and New Jersey’s attorneys general are investigating FIFA for its ticket practices. Asked about similarly high four-figure ticket prices for the NBA Finals, which he attended on taxpayers’ dime, Trump was blasé.

“They can watch it on television. It’s semi-free to watch it on television,” he said. “But that’s the way life goes.”

And for those fans willing to pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars for a ticket, Trump’s attacks on public transit subsidies and his chummy relationship with FIFA President Gianni Infantino mean fans will not have an ally in their corner to fight for increasingly awful game-day experiences.

NJ Transit’s decision to put the cost of travel entirely on soccer fans means matches in the New York area could cost close to $100 for round-trip transportation that would normally be less than $15.

For fans who have the money for the tickets and transit, Trump could theoretically be leaning on FIFA to rein in its practices seemingly meant to nickel-and-dime customers. Last week, FIFA reversed course and banned fans from bringing water bottles into stadiums despite many matches being played in temperatures above 80 degrees. The organization also plans to ban tailgating at venues.

But soccer fans will tell you that even if they have qualms about the leadership of a host country, they can still enjoy the game.

The 2018 World Cup in Russia held under the iron fist of President Vladimir Putin did not stop fans from appreciating the ascendance of France’s breakout star, Kylian Mbappé.

Despite the horrors of the construction of facilities and the repression of support for LGBTQ rights at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, there was still space to appreciate Lionel Messi finally lifting his first FIFA World Cup trophy for Argentina.

The difference in 2026 is the disruptions are not happening in the background. They are shaping who can attend, how fans travel, what they pay and, in some cases, whether teams can fully participate at all.

The World Cup was supposed to be a celebration of soccer’s ability to bring the world together. Instead, the Trump administration has turned it into a reminder of how quickly politics, bureaucracy and self-inflicted chaos can diminish even the world’s biggest sporting event.

This is a preview of MS NOW’s Project 47 Newsletter. As President Trump continues implementing his ambitious agenda, get expert analysis on the administration’s latest actions and how others are pushing back sent straight to your inbox every Tuesday. Sign up now.

The post Trump didn’t ruin the World Cup. He just made it less fun. appeared first on MS NOW.

Google made an announcement last month that could turn the journalism world upside down, accelerating the internet’s shift toward an overwhelmingly AI-driven landscape and serving the Trump agenda of media suppression.

At its developer conference in May, the company announced the most disruptive changes to Google Search in over 25 years. Google Search will further demote its index of the web — a list of links that information-seekers can explore as they choose. Instead of prominently displaying links, it will increasingly become a destination that answers questions directly through AI, linking only to the sources it decides to reference in its overview. On the majority of our tests, the AI overview was followed by a heavy block of sponsored results and a combination of videos, short clips, trending posts, and discussions. Index links — for example, to articles on news sites and research studies — were given only a small fraction of real estate. Additionally, Google is aggressively pushing readers to use AI Mode, which completely removes the index links.

In practical terms, this means users of the world’s largest search engine will see, in response to their queries, a summary generated by an AI bot developed by a corporate behemoth with close ties to the Trump White House.

This seismic move builds upon the launches of AI Overview in 2024 and AI Mode in 2025, shifting toward nearly eliminating the user’s ability to search autonomously, and toward an overwhelmingly AI-driven experience of the internet (and therefore, for many people, of life).

We must take into account the political context in which this shift transpires. Alphabet (Google’s parent company), along with Facebook’s parent company (Meta), as well as Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia, were among major tech companies that donated to President Donald Trump’s inauguration. They have also consistently capitulated to Trump’s recent manipulations.

Last fall, Alphabet’s subsidiary YouTube agreed to a $24.5 million settlement in a lawsuit stemming from the platform’s suspension of Trump’s YouTube channel. The majority of the settlement will go toward Trump’s now-infamous White House ballroom. Meta, similarly, agreed to a $25 million settlement in 2025. $22 million of that sum was designated to go to Trump’s presidential library.

Meta, like Google, has long been making moves that have severely destabilized the news industry. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg decided in 2018 that the platform would prioritize showing Facebook users posts made by their friends and dramatically reduce their ability to see posts made by news organizations that they had chosen to follow. In other words, due to a single algorithm change, the more than 758,000 people who had at the time eagerly signed up to receive links to all of Truthout’s articles in their Facebook feeds suddenly stopped seeing the majority of our posts. This caused a major drop in traffic across the board to news sites, many of which had been persistently encouraged by Facebook to grow their brands on the platform. At Truthout, over 90 percent of our traffic from Facebook disappeared, which decreased our overall traffic by 40 percent and, consequently, the donations we rely on to survive.

Chaotic changes at Twitter also played a role in destabilizing the journalism ecosystem. In 2022, when Elon Musk finalized his takeover of that platform, the move quickly turned the social media site into a cesspool of far right trolls, disinformation, and bot-generated content. This toxicity and disinformation spiral forced many people on the left to leave X, which decreased traffic to progressive websites from the platform.

Over the course of these changes, news organizations like ours have struggled to respond to corresponding significant declines in readership and revenue, along with our readers’ understandable loss of trust in the social media platforms and search engines that initially allowed us to grow. Sudden algorithmic changes, news deprioritization, and increased implementation of AI summaries are shaking the economic foundation of journalism itself. Meanwhile, publishers are being sold the idea that they can cut costs by replacing staff with AI.

The connections to the Trump agenda aren’t hard to see. Trump has been an outspoken critic of news organizations, particularly those that are left-leaning and critical of his administration. Facebook and Google are suppressing journalism on their platforms and weakening news organizations’ ability to hold Trump to account, while also donating to Trump and settling multimillion-dollar lawsuits in his favor.

Whether Facebook and Google are capitulating to Trump due to fear of economic retribution, shared politics, or a desire to increase their stock prices or keep up with technology, the impact is devastating for journalism and democracy.

AI is eroding journalism — and obscuring truth

We’ve already seen some corporate publishers try to jump on the AI bandwagon, arguing that AI will come for our costly but necessary industry one way or another. They frame AI as a way to solve journalism’s most intractable problem: the cost of reporting. But in reality, they’re proposing a vision of journalism resembling content without the journalists — just regurgitated slop of varying accuracy.

Take one high-profile example from last year: Just two months after the Chicago Sun-Times laid off 20 percent of its staff, the paper issued an AI-generated summer reading list sourced from a third-party company. One key problem: Several of the books on the list didn’t actually exist. Some outlets are going so far as to create AI-generated “writers,” complete with fake names and photos, to author their AI-generated articles. And in one notable case, an AI news initiative meant to provide more information in areas with limited access to local news was scrapped after it repeatedly plagiarized the local journalists actually doing that work.

The irony is that the misinformation and deepfakes created by AI make the need for journalists more urgent than ever. For example, during the height of the war on Iran, we watched AI-generated fakery wreak havoc on the sphere of public information. And it should come as no surprise that Grok, Elon Musk’s AI chatbot most known for spewing racist hate and distributing child sexual abuse material, further spread inaccuracies when users called upon it for help with fact checking. Right now, those of us who are real human journalists are still able to act as a bulwark against AI-introduced errors. What happens when we’re taken out of the mix?

These inaccuracies are perhaps one of the reasons why people are reluctant to get their news from AI chatbots in the first place. Make no mistake — these changes are being forced upon an unwilling public. Fewer than 1 percent of Americans say they prefer getting their news from chatbots, compared to other news sources, a recent Pew Research survey found. For people who do use chatbots for news, roughly a third of them say they have a hard time determining what’s actually true, and about half say they see news from chatbots that they think is inaccurate.

They are right to be skeptical. A recent study from the AI research company Forum AI found that the answers that top AI chatbots provided on questions about elections were riddled with errors; more than one-third of responses included fact errors of some type. Oftentimes those errors sounded incredibly precise, the research found, giving an undeserved air of confidence to factual inaccuracies. Those chatbots also regularly pulled from commercial sources in their summaries — even using websites like firearm retailer Ammo.com to answer questions about gun control, the researchers discovered.

Trusted news outlets have policies for issuing corrections and clarifications. Publications like ours maintain policies and avenues for offering such corrections and feedback. Who can a reader hold accountable if a Google AI summary is incorrect? Matched with the likelihood of factual errors, the lack of accountability has terrifying implications.

On a deeper level, the hyperindividualization of chatbots also poses some bleak questions about the escalating fragmentation of our shared sense of reality. For years, we’ve heard media critics sound the alarm about how social media has helped false information travel far further at much quicker speeds. Additionally, Big Tech companies, understanding that their bottom line requires eyeballs to stay on their platforms as long as possible, designed the algorithms that feed us information to be as addictive as possible by sticking us in echo chambers.

Now AI could atomize us all even further. Study after study has shown that AI chatbots are sycophantic, offering users excessive praise and telling them what they want to hear. And the timing — ahead of a high-stakes election, at a moment when trust in media is at new lows, and in a period where the future of journalism itself is at risk — could not be worse.

An existential threat to journalism

As the Google Search changes take their toll, we will very likely see a new round of cost-saving measures at longstanding newsrooms. These steps will likely include massive layoffs and downsizing, more aggressively invasive revenue generation tactics, mergers, consolidation and closures. It will be harder for existing news sites to continue publishing and nearly impossible for new newsrooms to reach a large enough audience to become financially viable.

Organizations like Truthout — ones that depend on community-building and audience growth to sustain their work — will be among the most impacted.

For 25 years, Truthout has survived by publishing impactful investigative journalism and analysis; distributing full editions 365 days a year; and building a community of readers who support us with small, hard-earned donations.

Eighty percent of our $3 million yearly budget comes from small donors alone. Of those, 8,000 readers support us with monthly donations. Back in 2018, when Facebook decided to suppress the circulation of posts made by organizations, thereby cutting readers off from seeing many articles shared by the news organizations they had intentionally decided to follow, Truthout’s total traffic declined by 40 percent, as nearly all of our traffic from that platform disappeared.

The consequences of the impending changes to Google’s search engine promise to be even more explosive. Google Search is our single largest source of traffic; it’s the route by which 27 percent of our readers find us. And visitors who find us via Google Search are more likely to stay for longer, engage with our work, and donate than those who find us through social media.

If even half of that 27 percent disappears, it will have a devastating impact on our journalism.

Truthout is just one example; journalism organizations across the field will be devastatingly affected by Google’s new move, just as they were impacted by Meta’s abrupt algorithmic shift. The entire journalism ecosystem will shoulder this blow, particularly independent publishers and news sites that depend on traffic and aren’t bankrolled by large corporations.

How do we resist?

The sudden shift in Google Search presents us with a pointed question, not only about journalism, but about the future of humanity: How much of our autonomy will we cede to AI? To what extent will we adopt an “oh well!” mentality? Or will we seek creative ways to resist, even when it may feel impossible to confront the largest corporations on the planet?

We cannot allow ourselves to become mired in the trap of inevitability-based thinking.

When grappling with questions around the future of AI, it’s helpful to remind ourselves of how the people — yes, actual humans — are relating to all this. The truth is, most people in the United States are concerned about AI. In fact, in a deeply divided country, AI is something of a uniting cause. A significant majority of Americans rate the “societal risks” of AI as high, with majorities worried that AI will disrupt human connection and inhibit creativity. People in this country are overwhelmingly more worried than excited about how AI has become enmeshed in everyday life. Meanwhile, across political lines, most people in the U.S. oppose the building of data centers in their communities. This is a mobilizable base.

Why should an entirely AI-driven future be inevitable, when most people don’t really want one? Instead of assuming the die is cast, let’s imagine a world in which the onslaught of AI threats is fuel for a broad-based movement.

This movement isn’t just aspirational: It’s already begun. Some of the most hopeful organizing in recent years can be seen in local fights against data centers. Communities are pushing back against corporate giants like Blackstone, BlackRock, and xAI. And from Arizona to New York to Wisconsin and beyond, they’re often winning. According to Data Center Watch, in 2025, local opposition efforts prevented or stalled dozens of data centers, totaling around $156 billion in investment funds.

Meanwhile, we can all respond to Google’s shift toward AI with concrete steps to support independent media and reject the “inevitability” assumption.

Instead of jumping to social media or a search engine for our news, let’s return to visiting news websites directly. Each of us can maintain a list of trusted publications to visit each day. Bookmark your favorites, and return to them. Sign up for email newsletters from your trusted publications, and create filters so that those newsletters arrive in your primary inbox instead of in spam or “promotions.” Subscribe to print publications. Commit to simply reading the news.

Double down on media literacy, practicing discernment and critical thinking as you read and watch the news. In a time when mammoth corporations are attempting to literally tell us what to believe, these commitments are acts of rebellion.

Additionally, since Google Search’s overwhelming prioritization of AI will severely impact revenue for many publications, it’s time to support independent journalism with your money as well as your readership. If you can afford to give, do so, at any level. Without material support from readers and viewers, many independent journalism organizations will fall by the wayside amid the AI onslaught.

For foundations and major donors, there’s a clear mandate here: It’s time to fund our journalism organizations while we experiment and determine new ways of expanding our audiences and driving traffic. We need room to try things — to test out strategies to map an online world beyond Google.

Funding these experiments doesn’t just help one organization or even one sector: As journalism organizations figure out new methods to reach readers, we can share those strategies with other groups, expanding the potential for grassroots groups, unions, and more to connect with human beings in a manner not dictated by the whims of giant corporations’ platforms.

Truthful journalism is an essential public good, and as Google and Meta wage algorithmic warfare against it, it’s essential to protect it. Foundations, donors, and folks connected with money should prioritize journalism alongside other urgent issues, recognizing that trustworthy information is a bulwark against rising fascism.

Finally, we must all adopt a resistance mindset in relation to AI’s slippery slope. Each day, we have an opportunity to choose another way. Resist inevitability. Resist inertia.

Our ability to access facts — and to discern truth from disinformation — is at stake. How will we fight back?