1. @megynkelly owes @taylorswift13 an apology

This isn't a matter of politics

Kelly has repeatedly trashed Swift based on FACTUAL CLAIMS that are OBJECTIVELY FALSE

Follow this thread for the truth

🧵 2. On September 10, Taylor Swift endorsed the Harris/Walz ticket in an Instagram post. Swift said she "was so heartened and impressed by her selection of running mate @timwalz, who has been standing up for LGBTQ+ rights, IVF, and a woman’s right to her own body for decades."

Kelly was ENRAGED

1. There are 49 days until Election Day & although the presidential race remains very close Trump has escalated his attacks on the legitimacy of the election

The difference is that this time Trump has the full support of tech billionaires who are amplifying his false claims

🧵 2. Yesterday, Trump said the USPS has admitted that it is incapable of handling election mail.

This is false.

The USPS says its prepared to handle mail-in ballots.

The National Association of Secretaries of State says Postmaster DeJoy (appointed by Trump) should ensure that USPS staff are appropriately trained.

Election mail is supposed to be prioritized.

1. Joe Kent, a Republican House candidate in Washington State, is competing in one of the most hotly contested races in the country.

Kent is also spending hours on conservative news programs and podcasts where he promotes positions that are nearly identical to Kremlin propaganda.

Follow this thread for details

🧵 2. Kent has described the war in Ukraine as an effort by Putin to bring together people who share a common culture.

Putin "never really had any aspirations to anything but unite the Russian-speaking people," Kent claimed on a January 2024 podcast.

popular.info/p/meet-the-kre…

1. Trump is not just running for president; he's also partnered with a professional pickup artist to launch a new crypto company

THE COMPANY IS STRUCTURED SO IF TRUMP WINS IN NOVEMBER HE CAN USE THE POWER OF THE PRESIDENCY TO GENERATE MILLIONS IN PROFITS FOR HIMSELF AND HIS FAMILY

Follow this thread for details on how the scheme works

🧵 2. Trump is the "Chief Crypto Advocate" for the nascent venture, World Liberty Financial.

Donald Jr. and Eric are the company's "Web 3 Ambassadors."

18-year-old Barron Trump is World Liberty Financial's official "DeFi Visionary."

popular.info/p/trump-teams-…

1. For weeks, major media orgs — including @washingtonpost, @politico, and @nytimes — have possessed internal Trump campaign docs

But all 3 outlets have declined to publish or excerpt them

It's a radically different decision than the same pubs made when Clinton's campaign was hacked in 2016

🧵 2. @washingtonpost Executive Editor Matt Murray defended the decision: "The news organizations in this case took a deep breath and paused, and thought about who was likely to be leaking the documents, what the motives of the hacker might have been, and whether this was truly newsworthy"

1. Tens of thousands of Florida students are getting NO SEX EDUCATION at all, thanks to the policies and incompetence of the DeSantis administration

Popular Information has obtained internal documents that reveal the disfunction

Follow along for details

🧵 2. In May 2023, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) signed Florida House Bill 1069, a law that requires sex education classes in the state to conform to right-wing ideology.

Specifically, the law requires all sex education classes to teach students that sex is binary, "either male or female," even though that is inaccurate.

Schools also must "teach abstinence from sexual activity outside of marriage as the expected standard for all school-age students" and "the benefits of monogamous heterosexual marriage."

1. EXCLUSIVE: A drug kingpin convicted of murdering a police officer, Jamie Davidson, whose life sentence was commuted by Trump on his last day in office, was charged with strangling his wife and convicted of domestic violence in Florida earlier this year.

Davidson's reoffence has not been previously reported.

Popular Information has obtained the entire case file, including a full transcript of Davidson's trial.

Follow for details.

🧵 2. The commutation of Davidson's sentence was controversial at the time because of the severity of Davidson's offense and the atypical process that led to his release.

Requests for pardons and commutations usually are handled through the Office of the Pardon Attorney.

Davidson had sought the commutation of his life sentence through official channels in 2013 and 2017 and was denied both times.

1. Major corporations, including @Mastercard, @Meta, and @CocaCola, are quietly sponsoring a Canadian conference headlined by @realchrisrufo, a far-right anti-diversity crusader.

Many of these same companies, however, champion diversity in their public communications. 2. Rufo's profession is to drum up hysteria about efforts to improve diversity at any institution. Rufo appeared alongside DeSantis in Florida when DeSantis signed the Stop WOKE Act, which limits workplace conversations about diversity and race. (Federal courts enjoined that provision as unconstitutional.)

1. Fact-checking is important but the problem with the modern fact-checking industrial complex is that fact-checking is not viewed simply as a mechanism to scrutinize false claims but has a vehicle to demonstrate a media outlet's "objectivity" and proof it treats "both sides" equally.

This leads to some absurd results.

🧵 2. When former President Donald Trump addressed the Republican National Convention (RNC) last month, Glenn Kessler, who writes the Washington Post's fact-check column, scrutinized the claims in his speech. Kessler found that Trump lied repeatedly.

It was all pretty straightforward.

1. Does taking on price gouging at the federal level make you a communist?

If so, Donald Trump has some explaining to do.

Follow along for details.

2. Both Harris' proposal for a federal law combating price-gouging and existing state laws are geared toward preventing large companies from exploiting a crisis or market disruption.

Notably, during his presidency, Trump was confronted with a severe crisis, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.

Trump responded by announcing he would crack down on price-gouging.

1. This will be a thread of actual quotes from Donald Trump's press conference yesterday. 2. "She has been unbelievable in terms of her badness to some of our allies, some of our great allies. You know who I'm talking about."

1. Earlier this week, Popular Information posted a report detailing the influence of right-wing conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer on Donald Trump

Shortly after publishing we heard from readers that they were unable to post the story to Facebook

So we decided to investigate

🧵 2. There was a button that allowed you to request a review of the decision to remove the post.

But when we clicked the button, we received an error.

1. Trump's infatuation with racist conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer is having a major impact on the presidential race

Loomer frequently pushes false and/or bigoted information about Trump's adversaries

Trump is a huge Loomer fan and keeps repeating these spurious claims

🧵 2. Loomer has said the United States should be a "white Judeo-Christian ethnostate," called for the creation of a ride-sharing app like Uber that bans "Islamic immigrant driver[s]," collaborated with Alex Jones to suggest mass shootings were staged by the government, celebrated the deaths of 2,000 refugees in the Mediterranean, and claimed January 6 should be a national holiday to "celebrate the bravery of American patriots who protested a stolen election."

I could go on, but you get the idea.

1. If you traveled this summer, the rate you paid at hotels may have been artificially inflated.

According to two lawsuits, numerous hotel operators are participating in an illegal scheme to increase their prices.

Follow this thread for details.

🧵 2. In a traditional price-fixing arrangement, rival executives gather in a smoke-filled room to rig rates. In the modern version, competitors do not need to talk. Instead, companies who ordinarily would compete send their internal data to a third party.

popular.info/p/how-hotels-a…

1. Tonight, @elonmusk will hold an event with @realDonaldTrump here on X.

It's being billed by the campaign as "THE INTERVIEW OF THE CENTURY"

In reality, it is the most expensive political ad ever made

Follow along for details

🧵 2. In 2022, Elon Musk purchased Twitter, one of the world's largest social networks, for $44 billion

It hasn't been a good investment

Today, the company is worth $12 billion or less

But Musk has used his control of the algorithm to promote his own posts to ALL USERS

In recent weeks, Musk has weaponized his account to flood millions of X users with pro-Trump and anti-Harris messages

1. A central argument of Trump's campaign is that there is a violent crime wave fueled by undocumented immigrants

The DATA shows the opposite is true. Violent crime is plummeting.

So Trump fills his stump speech with anecdotes of crimes committed by migrants, pinning the blame on Biden and Harris.

Trump claims if he wins in November, those crimes will stop.

But there were similar crimes committed during Trump's presidency.

Trump blamed Democrats.

🧵 2. "Our crime rate is going up while crime statistics all over the world are plunging," Trump told the crowd at the Turning Point Action Conference last week in West Palm Beach, Florida. "We have a new form of crime. It's called migrant crime."

popular.info/p/the-truth-ab…

1. Robby Starbuck has convinced major corporations to cancel programs supporting LGBTQ employees & customers

He is also a CONSPIRACY THEORIST and ANTI-LGTBQ EXTREMIST

Starbuck has suggested, for example, that CHEMICALS IN TAP WATER ARE TURNING KIDS "GAY"

Follow along for details

🧵 2. Starbuck first targeted @TractorSupply, complaining that the company displayed “Pride month decorations in the office,” funds Pride events, and engages in “DEI hiring practices.”

popular.info/p/meet-the-con…

1. The cypto industry is spending an absolutely INSANE amount of money on the 2024 election

Its main Super PAC, Fairshake, has raised $202 MILLION this cycle

That's more than the primary Super PACs supporting Trump or Harris

The strategy appears to be working

🧵 2. At the Bitcoin Conference on Friday, Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) said is introducing legislation to create "a strategic Bitcoin reserve."

It would require the federal government to purchase 1 million Bitcoin for $68 billion

popular.info/p/how-the-cryp…

1. Are J.D. Vance's views on women and children "weird"

Follow this thread for an overview

Then decide

🧵 2. Yes, Vance said Harris and other leaders who don't have children are "childless cat ladies" who "don't really have a direct stake" in the country. (Harris has two step-children)

A few months later, Vance said that Harris and others who don't have kids "want to take our kids and brainwash them so that their ideas continue to exist in the next generation."

1. Arkansas has the LOWEST voter registration rate in the country, just 63%

Now, Republicans in the state are pushing a new rule to make it MORE DIFFICULT TO REGISTER TO VOTE

The move would thwart the efforts of a grassroots group that has successfully registered hundred of young voters

🧵 2. @GetLoudArkansas successfully registered hundreds of people -- most young and Black -- using an online form with an electronic signature.

They were told by Secretary of State John Thurston, a Republican, that electronic signatures were acceptable

popular.info/p/arkansas-has…

1. Eugene Ramirez, the lead anchor of @WeAreSinclair's national evening news broadcast, resigned this year over concerns about the accuracy and right-wing bias of the content he was required to present on air, three sources told Popular Information.

Follow along for details

🧵 2. The sources, one current and two former Sinclair employees, said one of the primary issues that prompted Ramirez's resignation was the mandate to include 3 stories produced by Sinclair's Rapid Response Team each night.

One current Sinclair employee described the RRT as "the right-wing propaganda arm of the national digital operation."