“What can Biden tell the electorate about Trump that they do not already know? That he’s a serial liar? That he stands indicted in a series of criminal cases? That he commits business fraud the way others inhale and exhale? That he has spent a lifetime stiffing employees, contractors, lawyers? That he paid off a porn actress? That he recklessly mishandled sensitive government documents? All of this is a matter of public record, let alone the pesky detail of his desperate efforts to retain power by essentially overthrowing his own government.
Again, if The New York Times polling is correct, a plurality of American voters have absorbed all this and prefer him to the president. They have, as the financial world says, “priced” Trump’s behavior into their choice and as of now, have not considered the behavior disqualifying.
In some sense, this has been true for eight years, certainly in the Republican Party. The fact that four of the previous five GOP presidential nominees refused to endorse him in 2016 did not make a difference — Trump received a bigger share of Republican votes than Romney did. The fact that so many of Trump’s own key appointees — secretary of Defense, secretary of State, attorney general, national security adviser — all regard him as a threat to our political system has made no difference to Trump’s commanding lead for the GOP nomination.
So when a separate New York Times poll shows that a criminal conviction would significantly damage Trump, take that with a grain or a handful of salt. For eight years, he has survived conduct that would have swept a politician into oblivion.
It is true that the public’s judgment may turn as the prospect of a second Trump administration draws closer; it may be that the stories of what Trump plans for a second term — retribution against his political opponents, the obliteration of the guardrails that restrained his worst impulses, the staffing of a government with toadies who when asked to jump, will ask, “How high, sir?” — will change enough minds to give Biden (assuming he’s on the ballot) a second term.
It’s also true, however, that the task this unpopular president faces is a whole lot tougher than what the last successful incumbent presidents faced. And if a troubled incumbent can’t define an opponent effectively? Well, just ask Jimmy Carter or Gerald Ford or George H.W. Bush what happened.”
“The war in Gaza marks the end of that era. X CEO Elon Musk has so profoundly undermined the functions that made Twitter useful in an international crisis that it is now counterproductive to turn to it if you hope to understand what’s happening on the ground when news breaks around the world. Over the course of 10 years, X has evolved from indispensable to useless.
It’s fitting that along with his other changes, Musk changed the name of the company. Literally and figuratively, we’re witnessing the first post-Twitter major world conflict.
Disinformation and misinformation proliferated on the platform prior to Musk’s takeover. But the difference in degree is so significant now as to amount to a difference in kind. Almost every significant change Musk has made has reduced its value as a source of reliable information from and for people affected by a disaster, and every change, similarly, has increased its utility to malicious propagandists and scammers.
When Musk arrived, he dissolved Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council, the advisory group of some 100 independent civil, human rights and other organizations that helped the company to combat misinformation, and fired its full-time Trust and Safety employees, including all but one member of the AI ethics team that monitored algorithmic amplification.
He blew up the old verification system. A blue check once signified that the account belonged to someone whose identity had been confirmed and who fell under one of the following categories: government; companies, brands and organizations; news organizations and journalists; entertainment; sports and gaming; activists and organizers; content creators; and influential individuals.
The prevalence on Twitter of verified journalists, academics, researchers and government sources made it possible, in a crisis, to quickly find reliable people who were on the ground and who could probably be trusted to report what they were seeing in reasonably good faith. Now, the blue checkmark signifies only that the owner has paid for it. When you buy a blue check, your posts go to the top of the search results and replies, irrespective of others’ desire to see them.
X now pays users based on the number of views they receive, creating a massive incentive to post sensationalistic and inflammatory lies. On-the-ground witnesses — and worse, people who need help — can’t reach their audiences unless they have a costly blue check mark and a willingness to compete with the most outrageous promoted content.
Musk has stripped headlines and summaries off article previews. Images are no longer accompanied by context, making it that much easier to misunderstand them and that much less likely that users will read the article. Meanwhile, Musk promotes — directly, via his own tweets and algorithmically — conspiracy theorists, Russian war propagandists, hostile-state media, foreign and domestic extremists and engagement farmers who exploit pain and tragedy to gain followers.”
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“A massive number of accounts posting images that purport to be from Gaza are in fact posting images from unrelated conflicts. These tweets have racked up millions of views and shares.”
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“According to Cyabra, an Israeli analysis firm, pro-Hamas forces have launched a coordinated influence operations campaign involving tens of thousands of fake profiles. As a result, one in five social media accounts participating in the conversation about the war in Gaza are fake. One in four pro-Hamas profiles are fake. It’s not clear who is creating and using these fake profiles to spread disinformation, but it could be anyone from Russian internet trolls to antisemites to far-right hucksters who are eager to make a buck.
Accounts that were once clearly labeled as state-affiliated, such as that of Iran’s Press TV, are no longer distinguished from others. In September, an EU report found that the “reach and influence” of Kremlin-backed accounts on social media, and on X in particular, had increased in 2023.
In another study, the EU found that disinformation was more easily found on X than on any other social media platform. It also received more engagement than it did on any other platform.
That report found that X had the highest ratio of what the authors called “disinformation actors” to real posts. “The average engagement with mis/disinformation content found on X is 1.977 times as high as the average engagement with non-mis/disinformation,” the authors wrote. In other words, X users are twice as likely to engage with lies as the truth.”
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“Meanwhile, good sources of information are leaving the platform. Many of the most useful voices are now gone. Reporters have fled, largely moving to Bluesky. But Bluesky can’t replace X yet; its network is too small. You can use it to talk to other journalists, not so much to find sources or promote your work to your readers.
To judge by the responses to the fake tweets, most people have no idea they’re fake. Musk certainly doesn’t. Recently, he recommended (in a since-deleted tweet) that his followers follow two well-known disinformation accounts — one of them, for example, provides such helpful analysis as, “The overwhelming majority of people in the media and banks are zi0nists.” When Musk suggests something like this, it is not just his 162 million followers who see it. You can mute him, but unless you do, everything Musk says is now forced into the timeline of every user of the platform, whether or not they follow him.”
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“This state of affairs is massively deleterious to American national security. Members of Congress are as vulnerable to hostile disinformation as anyone else. One morning, I watched a number of Russian accounts, including that of former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, begin simultaneously to push out the line that Israel had been attacked with weapons the U.S. sent to Ukraine, which Israelis immediately denied. By afternoon, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) was asserting this as fact.”
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“The degeneration of the quality of information on X means that journalists who are still on the platform waste far more time looking for the signal in the noise. They waste more time running down rumors. They are at greater risk of sharing fake information. They are doubtless absorbing narratives and framings from X shaped by disinformation, even if they’re not sharing falsehoods.”
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“At least in the short term, the market won’t be able to solve this problem because Twitter’s value to consumers was owed to its market dominance. Everyone used it. A number of competitors are now trying to fill the void, but because the microblogging market is now fractured, no company can play the central role Twitter played.”
“When the right to abortion is on the ballot, it wins. It wins in red states that voted for President Donald Trump. It wins in counties President Joe Biden lost by more than 20 points. It wins when popular Republican officials campaign for it and when they ignore it. And it wins even when the outcome has no immediate effect on abortion access.
Support for abortion cuts across party lines, performing significantly better at the ballot box than Biden and other Democrats. In fact, abortion outruns Biden most in the most Republican areas”
“From Western capitals to Muslim states, protest rallies over the Israel-Hamas war have made headlines. But one place known for its vocal pro-Palestinian stance has been conspicuously quiet: Indian-controlled Kashmir.
Indian authorities have barred any solidarity protest in Muslim-majority Kashmir and asked Muslim preachers not to mention the conflict in their sermons, residents and religious leaders told The Associated Press.
The restrictions are part of India’s efforts to curb any form of protest that could turn into demands for ending New Delhi’s rule in the disputed region. They also reflect a shift in India’s foreign policy under populist Prime Minister Narendra Modi away from its long-held support for the Palestinians, analysts say.
India has long walked a tightrope between the warring sides, with historically close ties to both. While India strongly condemned the Oct. 7 attack by the militant group Hamas and expressed solidarity with Israel, it urged that international humanitarian law be upheld in Gaza amid rising civilian deaths.”
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“Kashmiris have long shown strong solidarity with the Palestinians and often staged large anti-Israel protests during previous fighting in Gaza. Those protests often turned into street clashes, with demands for an end of India’s rule and dozens of casualties.”
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“India “views Israel’s assault on Gaza as a counterterrorism operation meant to eliminate Hamas and not directly target Palestinian civilians, exactly the way Israel views the conflict,” Kugelman said. He added that from New Delhi’s perspective, “such operations don’t pause for humanitarian truces.”
India’s foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, sought to justify India’s abstention.
“It is not just a government view. If you ask any average Indian, terrorism is an issue which is very close to people’s heart, because very few countries and societies have suffered terrorism as much as we have,” he told a media event in New Delhi on Saturday.
Even though Modi’s government has sent humanitarian assistance for Gaza’s besieged residents, many observers viewed its ideological alignment with Israel as potentially rewarding at a time when the ruling party in New Delhi is preparing for multiple state elections this month and crucial national polls next year.
The government’s shift aligns with widespread support for Israel among India’s Hindu nationalists who form a core vote bank for Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party. It also resonates with the coverage by Indian TV channels of the war from Israel. The reportage has been seen as largely in line with commentary used by Hindu nationalists on social media to stoke anti-Muslim sentiment that in the past helped the ascendance of Modi’s party.”
“The actual problem here is prices.
They’re not going up nearly as much as they were in, say, the middle of last year, but they’re by and large not declining en masse, either. And in most cases, they won’t get back to where they were in the Before Times.
“Inflation in the US is falling relatively quickly compared to all of our other peer countries, and we have the strongest growth out of the recession,” said Felicia Wong, president and CEO of the Roosevelt Institute, a progressive think tank. “But people don’t just want falling inflation numbers, they actually want deflation.”
Deflation probably isn’t in the cards (and the rub is we don’t want it to be). Higher prices might just be the sort of thing we’ve all got to get used to. The truth is we’re never going back to how things were in 2019 — we won’t be returning to the office at the same levels, we’ll never hear “corona” and only think of beer, and that night on the town is going to cost us more than it did before.”
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“Basically, if I get a raise at work, I think it’s because I’m awesome. That may be partly true, but that’s not all that’s going on — it’s also that the labor market is tight and wages broadly are going up. My current employer doesn’t want to lose me, and my future employer would have to pay me a little more to lure me away.
While many people see their employment situations (good or bad) as something they’ve earned, they see inflation as something that’s happening to them and that it’s the government’s fault. “The reality is inflation takes away and it gives back. It takes away, prices go up, and it gives back, wages catch up,” said Justin Wolfers, an economist at the University of Michigan. “But you code what it takes away as inflation’s fault but what it gives back as your own genius.””
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“The rate of inflation really is slowing (and, if all goes well, will continue to do so), and the disorienting nature of what’s happened in the economy over the past few years will likely fade. Post-pandemic prices will eventually feel normal, and post-pandemic wages should make those prices more feasible — or at least not significantly less feasible than they were before. Sooner or later, sticker shock will feel a little less shocking.”
“In a win for wild lands and wildlife, President Joe Biden recently moved to protect more than 10 million acres of Alaska’s North Slope from oil development. The action permanently bans drilling across large swaths of this region.”
“An investigation by The New York Times found that many of the troops sent to bombard the Islamic State in 2016 and 2017 returned to the United States plagued by nightmares, panic attacks, depression and, in a few cases, hallucinations. Once-reliable Marines turned unpredictable and strange. Some are now homeless. A striking number eventually died by suicide, or tried to.
Interviews with more than 40 gun crew veterans and their families in 16 states found that the military repeatedly struggled to determine what was wrong after the troops returned from Syria and Iraq.”
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“The United States had made a strategic decision to avoid sending large numbers of ground troops to fight the Islamic State, and instead relied on airstrikes and a handful of powerful artillery batteries to, as one retired general said at the time, “pound the bejesus out of them.” The strategy worked: Islamic State positions were all but eradicated, and hardly any U.S. troops were killed.
But it meant that a small number of troops had to fire tens of thousands of high-explosive shells — far more rounds per crew member, experts say, than any U.S. artillery battery had fired at least since the Vietnam War.”