1. You may be wondering WTF is happening at the New York Times.
Let me explain in plain English.
2. Google and Facebook are destroying the journalism industry. The legacy publications that have survived are under pressure to appeal to the widest possible audience.
When the NYT plays "both sides," it's not about journalism. It's about the business model.
3. The NYT does some amazing journalism but, in a lot of cases, it's poorly positioned to challenge people in power. It needs ACCESS to powerful people for its reporting. And it needs to be a comfortable place for powerful corporations to advertise.
4. The NYT times is happy to suck up your anti-Trump dollars with these "truth" t-shirts. But, as any Times reporter will tell you, they do not oppose Trump. It's a scam perpetrated by their marketing department.
5. Unfortunately, journalism that is aligned with power, rather than opposed to it, is becoming the norm. Local independent outlets are being bought up by huge corporations. Coverage is being neutered and homogenized.
6. If you are looking for an alternative model that is focused on taking on power, check out my newsletter, Popular Information. Our scoops come from primary source documents and ordinary people.
1. In 2018, many CEOs boycotted Saudi Arabia's investment conference in protest of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi
Since then, US intel concluded the murder was ordered by Saudi Crown Prince MBS
Yesterday, many of those SAME CEOs traveled to Saudi Arabia to lunch with Trump and MBS
Let's name names
🧵
2. In 2018, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said: "I'm very troubled by the reports... about Jamal Khashoggi...unless a substantially different set of facts emerges, I won't be attending"
3. Qatar is also home to Al-Udeid Air Base, "the largest U.S. military facility in the Middle East" with about 13,000 American troops. The presence of the base serves as a security umbrella for the country and enhances its diplomatic stature in the region.
1. We've been told there's a federal budget crisis that necessitates gutting the social safety net and slashing funding for medical research and national parks
Meanwhile, Trump's budget includes a record $1 TRILLION in military spending
Who benefits?
Military contractors like @elonmusk
Let's dig in
2. Trump is proposing a $1.01 trillion military budget — $119 billion more than this year — alongside a $259 billion cut to non-military spending.
3. With his $1 trillion Pentagon budget request, Trump is proposing that the US spend as much on its military next year as it did annually from 1942–45.
Effectively, Trump is asking Congress for a World War III-sized military budget even though troop deployments are at a historic low.
1. Trump says imposing tariffs on nearly every nation on earth is essential to force companies to make investments in the US instead of abroad
But since January, the Trump Organization has announced new multi-billion $ development deals in the UAE, Qatar, India, and Vietnam
And NONE in the US
2. In Qatar, the Trump Organization is partnering directly with the government. This violates Trump's own, extremely weak, ethics agreement he released before returning to the White House.
1. Next school year, thousands of high school students in Oklahoma will be required to learn about Trump's debunked claims that the 2020 election was tainted by fraud.
The lesson will not be part of a course on conspiracy theories, but an official component of the new social studies curriculum.
2. The new curriculum requires students to "analyze contemporary turning points of 21st-century American society. One task: "Identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results by looking at graphs and other information."