Yesterday, just before noon, The Washington Post, through CEO William Lewis, announced it would not endorse a candidate in the 2024 presidential election.

It was shocking for two immediate reasons.

(thread) The most grave—and, frankly, terrifying—reason is that the United States is obviously at threat of sliding into a horrific dictatorship from which it’s difficult to see how we’d ever recover.

I’m writing this after traveling back from the future, specifically Nov. 12th.

It’s a long story, but I know a lady who knows a lady who has a friend with a DeLorean souped up with an off-market flux capacitor and the trip got made.

(thread) Anyway, we don’t have much time, so I’ll cut to the chase.

I got some good news and some bad news and some more good news.

Here’s the first good bit: Election Night went mostly okay, though not without a lot of stress.

I'd love to be wrong on this because any other answer would imply a straightforward fix, but I'm pretty damn sure the "Democrats aren't reaching young men" critique is never backed up with suggestions because the critic knows it isn't about messaging. It's about misogyny. Sometimes, I'll see other answers offered that don't make any sense.

"Well, young men are worried about student loans."

VP Harris has talked about student loans, and Pres. has forgiven the loans of 5 million people. Also: how is this strictly about young men?

The Harris-Walz campaign just announced an extensive economic plan for rural communities. Deeply impressive vision for working class families in rural areas.

(thread)

I have been especially concerned with a growing attitude among many progressives and Democrats that AI disinformation is a problem limited only to conservatives, particularly Trump supporters.

And that is painfully false, and we need to talk about it.

(thread) Are there things about AI that I find cool and interesting and hopeful?

Of course.

From medicine to education to national security, artificial intelligence has made once improbable strides possible, seemingly, to most of us, overnight.

Tonight, Hurricane Milton will slam into Florida's west coast in the Tampa Bay region. It's expected to be one of the strongest hurricanes to ever make landfall in the U.S., threatening many millions of lives.

Here's what Pres. Biden is already doing to help prepare:

(thread) Pres. Biden has already approved an emergency declaration for Florida. Under an emergency declaration, FEMA provides direct Federal support to states for life-saving activities and other emergency protective measures, such as evacuation, sheltering, and search and rescue.

Okay, let's talk about this ridiculous talking point that some conservative men love to use, subsequently betraying their complete ignorance on our military draft.

Claiming the draft is to men like abortion is to women is ludicrous for three big reasons.

(thread) 1. The draft in the United States hasn't been in effect since December 27th, 1972. That was the last day young men were inducted in our Armed Forces. And yes, that means young men in the U.S. have been free of being drafted longer than young women have had abortion access.

The disinformation being pushed by rightwing extremists regarding Pres. Biden's + the federal government's response to devastation from Hurricane Helene is disgusting, and it's also the complete opposite of what Republican leaders are saying.

In their own words...

(thread) Here's Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, the Republican leader of a key swing state in this election, thanking Pres. Biden for his leadership.

https://x.com/GovKemp/status/1841865233872114046

The vice presidential debate between Gov. Tim Walz and Sen. J.D. Vance is tonight, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, network host CBS News has announced that moderators Margaret Brennan and Norah O’Donnell will not be fact-checking the candidates.

(thread) Instead, the network says, it will be up to the candidates to fact-check each other, and the moderators will “facilitate those opportunities” during candidate rebuttals.

Huh?

It was August 17th, 2015—a typical, late summer, hot Monday morning—when I heard booming music outside the bedroom window of my apartment. It sounded like it was coming from RFK Stadium, which was just up the street on the east side of Washington, D.C.

(thread) I was entering the final year of undergrad and needed a break from getting my class schedule in order and filing G.I. Bill benefits and looking at grad schools, so I decided to take a walk and locate the source of the revelry.

Folks, we’ve been here before. We know how this will end. It’s no mystery what happens next.

I will never begrudge anyone who offers a good faith critique of elected officials, even ones I really love, because good faith criticism is essential to a healthy democracy.

(thread) There are plenty of valid reasons to critique Vice President Harris and Governor Walz because I recognize that the Democratic Party and the progressive movement are not monoliths and certainly not cults.

While she was at Howard University, Vice President Kamala Harris worked at McDonalds to earn spending money, and now that she’s the Democratic nominee for president, the rightwing blogosphere is attempting to push the absurd conspiracy theory that she lied about it.

(thread) They apparently realize it’s not great that Donald Trump—infamously gifted enormous sums of money from his father coming out of college—is being juxtaposed with VP Harris making french fries and working the cash register, and they’re freaking out about it.

Folks, believe it or not, there are just seven Fridays left before Election Day. Surreal, I know. So, for the final sprint, on several Fridays, I'll be putting a spotlight on an org or candidate that could use our help.

To kick it off, I wanna talk about @TheNext50Us.

(thread) Founded in 2019 by @Ciaomack and Zak Malamed, The Next 50 supports diverse, next generation candidates running in some of the most important races up and down the ballot across the U.S.

The Exec. Director is @ZachWahls. You probably remember him from this viral speech in 2011:

As we await details on whatever it is that's being called a "major scandal" for North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, it might help to contextualize the long, long, long history of terrible behavior on his part that, apparently, wasn't enough for NC GOP.

(thread) Hard to know where to start, but let's begin with his history of antisemitism. Among other things, he's fully bought into the "Jewish bankers running the world" nonsense, frequently invoked horrible Jewish stereotypes, and basically shrugged re: Nazism.

jpost.com/diaspora/antis…

Alright, folks, the big moment has arrived. For the first time, a Black and South Asian woman is standing on a presidential debate stage. And she's the leader we need. Follow my debate live-tweeting here.

(thread) Also, if you enjoy my analysis...

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A few months ago, in the midst of the national fervor over President Biden’s debate performance, I was in a pretty terrible mood listening to it all and decided to take a long walk through D.C.

(thread) I put on some sunscreen, popped in my earbuds with a good playlist, and took a stroll around town, about an hour later finding myself on a residential street.

All of us kids were sleeping in my mother’s room when the gunshot went off. The three of us who weren’t holding a gun woke up almost immediately. My mother, improbably, slept through it.

(thread) I sat up, obviously startled and a bit foggy, and saw my younger stepbrother, almost four at the time and barely over three feet tall, standing next to me and facing the bedroom window.

Tell me if you’ve heard this one before.

A Navy SEAL, a doctor, and an astronaut walk into a bar.

They’re all the same guy.

(thread) Last week, NASA announced that 40 year-old U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Jonathan “Jonny” Yong Kim will deploy to the International Space Station in March onboard the Roscosmos Soyuz MS-27 with cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky for eight months.

I’ve had a nagging feeling over the past several years that there’s an important aspect to evangelical church culture in the United States that’s been consistently overlooked, or simply unknown to most of the public.

(long thread) I was a senior in high school when I became a Christian, and while I was certainly primarily motivated by Christ’s teachings, there was another factor that played an enormous role in keeping me going to church: the warmth of community.

We practiced with caskets that were stored outside our barracks building. To simulate the weight of honored remains, we’d toss several full sandbags into the belly of the casket and then, for hours, we’d go through our exact movements.

Over and over and over.

(thread) Those were hot and humid D.C. summers, and it didn’t matter. Drink water. And then back at it. We’d march up crisply, pick up the casket, go through the entire funeral protocol—with an earned coordination that would rival any synchronized swimming team—and then do it again.

On Wednesday night, at the Democratic National Convention, America was introduced to 17 year-old Gus Walz, the son of Gwen Walz and Gov. Tim Walz, who instantly became a national treasure due to an unexpectedly emotional moment of pride and joy for his father.

(thread) When Gov. Walz told his family, seated in front of the stage, that they were “his whole world,” the young man was so overcome with emotion that he stood up, tears streaming out of his eyes, pointed toward the podium, and shouted: “I love you, dad! That’s my dad!”