Trump lawsuit tracker

The AP published a graphic showing a nice summary of lawsuits filed against Trump. The courts are still generally fighting for the rule of law, but they're being worn down by the USSC and its MAGA authoritarianism and corruption.

Once most of those red squares turn to green, we know we will be in for some very bad stuff, even worse than what we're getting now.

Regarding the mainstream media, and its failures and constraints

Context

Accumulating evidence points to a MSM (mainstream media) that is increasingly weak, subverted and incompetent in keeping the public reasonably informed. The post here yesterday focused on that reality. As used here, the MSM means reasonably professional news and analysis outlets like the NYT, WaPo, Reuters, AP, BBC, and the like. Reasonably professional, not perfect or even stellar. Just reasonable.

As conceptualized here, the MSM does not refer to sources like Fox News, The Federalist, Town Hall or other MAGA demagoguery outlets. Years ago, those place were subverted into partisan demagoguery and propaganda outlets for American authoritarianism (dictatorship, Christian nationalist theocracy and oligarchy).

Public opinion is deeply divided over those definitions and assertions. For the most part, the MAGAland rank and file firmly believes that the sources I call the MSM are corrupt, authoritarian radical left demagoguery and lies sources. They also firmly believe that MAGA demagoguery news and commentary sources are the truth tellers. In those MAGA minds, my definitions make me a radical left demagogue and liar. Such is the inescapable nature of humans doing politics.

Obviously, the vast differences between the two perceptions of reality are bitterly contested, vast and not reconcilable. They're not reconcilable mostly because authoritarianism does not compromise when circumstances do not force it to at least some degree of compromise. Reasonable compromise is a trait of democracy, not an authoritarian trait.

The frightening current anti-democracy reality

Under current political conditions, one can reasonably treat MSM outlets as at most as sources of raw material (documents, quotes, on‑the‑record claims, empirical facts), but not as trustworthy framers of facts, reasoning, implications or explanations. In recent years, the basis for trust in the MSM has been mostly destroyed. But to be honest and transparent, one must acknowledge historical facts. There has never been a time in colonial or American history when the press was completely trustworthy, at least from the perspective of the public interest. Special interest points of view present a different analysis.

In recent years what pushed the status of the MSM from reasonably trustworthy to not? The main sources of anti-truth, anti-rationality, and anti-democracy framing that push against reporting and commentary about truth, rationality and democracy are probably obvious to most people who pay reasonable attention.

First and foremost is the profit motive. Investors and owners of corporations that own MSM sources are under constant, relentless pressure for more profit. The profit motive never goes away. It does not care about democracy, authoritarianism, truth, lies, good, evil or anything else. It cares about itself and only itself. Pro-profit ideologues and propagandists tell us that they are on our side. They strenuously argue that the profit motive is moral and good. And, we are told that very forcefully, very often. But, that propaganda is simply not true.

So, the MSM is forced to report, analyze, and comment through a lens that protects profit. That's just a matter of fact in a capitalist system. News, analysis and commentary are all influenced to soften adverse impacts on revenues and profits. MSM outlets that offend big advertisers, lose ad revenue and ad profit. That is common sense, not rocket science or even high school biology. Newsroom cuts and audience‑chasing algorithms prioritize conflict and novelty over structural analysis. Investigative capacity has shrunk because slow‑burn accountability stories don’t drive enough ad revenue.

The second big factor is direct threats and attacks by MAGA authoritarianism and MAGA elites including Trump. Trump filed a $15 billion lawsuit against the NYT for alleged defamation. The lawsuit was frivolous but nonetheless profoundly threatening to the NYT. For years, MAGA elites have been asking our authoritarian MAGA USSC chooses to lower the evidence standards that public officials have to meet to prove defamation in court. If this USSC finally does choose to lower the evidence standard, what is left of the MSM will either be completely destroyed, or more likely neutered to the point of being akin to the non-MAGA news and commentary sources mentioned above.

Other minor factors are in play to weaken the MSM, but the bottom line is this: Anger and frustration with the MSM and its failures are rational. The best that pro-democracy citizens can do is to use that emotion as a guide. One must understand that the MSM has serious structural conflicts that mitigate against telling the whole truth. A person has to extract what the MSM still provides, namely the raw material. People of good will have to either interpret the raw material for themselves or trust sources to interpret it for them.

Points for consideration

Gathering and interpreting news is complicated and time consuming. Most people cannot or will not do that. Most people generally rely on news sources, not their own analyses, on occasions when they do pay attention. Poll data supports the claim that trust has been “mostly destroyed” among large segments of the population, with Republican trust in MSM outlets falling to single digits. However, human susceptibility to deceit, and emotional manipulation (demagoguery) is a deep, species‑level vulnerability, not something unique to this moment or MAGA and its demagoguery. We have been here before.

One question is to what extent, if any, has the failure of the MSM this time worse than at times in the past? Another is what are the odds of democracy, the rule of law and our civil liberties surviving the current kleptocratic authoritarian MAGA threat, and to what extent does (1) the current state of collapse of the MSM, and (2) the non-MSM such as Fox News, contribute to the threat?

From the MAGA death chronicles: MAGA attacks infant HBV vaccination, babies will die

The NYT reports (not paywalled) that Dr. Brainworm's (RFK Jr) politicized, pseudoscience CDC (Centers for Disease Control) has changed the science-based standard recommendation to get infants vaccinated against HBV (hepatitis B virus). The new magic and crackpottery based recommendation is shown below. The vaccinations at birth and 1 month are no longer recommended despite data proving that lives are saved using the current vaccination schedule.

A modeling study released in December 2025 by researchers in partnership with HepVu, the Hepatitis B Foundation, and the National Viral Hepatitis Roundtable projected that delaying the birth dose to 2 months for infants whose mothers test negative could result in at least 1,400 preventable hepatitis B infections among children, 304 excess cases of liver cancer, and 482 preventable deaths for each year the revised recommendation remains in place, along with over $222 million in excess healthcare costs.​ If the vaccination schedule is delayed to a first vaccination at 12 months of age, the projections increase to 2,700 preventable infections and over $313 million in excess healthcare costs annually.

Infants face catastrophic outcomes if infected. Ninety percent of infants infected at birth develop chronic infection, and one in four chronically infected children will die prematurely from liver disease or liver cancer. Children infected between ages 1-5 have a 25-50% chance of developing chronic infection.

A comprehensive review by the CIDRAP Vaccine Integrity Project examining more than 400 studies spanning 40 years found no evidence that delaying the universal hepatitis B birth dose improves safety or effectiveness. The review found that birth dose vaccination does not cause any short- or long-term serious adverse events or deaths.

The NYT article commented:

Dr. Noele Nelson, a hepatitis expert at Cornell Public Health and a senior author on the C.D.C.’s previous guidelines for the vaccine, said the advisers did not “follow the scientific evidence, and risk undoing decades of progress in hepatitis B prevention, eroding vaccine confidence, and causing confusion among parents and health care providers.”

Mr. Kennedy fired all 17 previous members of the vaccine panel in June, replacing them with people who largely share his [pseudoscientific] skepticism about vaccines. Meetings of the new members, most of whom have no experience in vaccine research or clinical practice, have been marred by disorganization and intense disagreements, sometimes devolving into shouting matches. (emphasis added)

CDC vaccine experts 

Q: Once there is solid evidence of an increase in infant deaths from HBV infections under the new recommended HBV vaccination schedule, does that make Dr. Brainworm, his crackpot experts and his boss evil people who have committed Trump homicide, i.e., killers, or are they (a) merely good people doing what they think is best for us, or (b) something else, e.g., ignorant but making excusable honest mistakes?

Qs: Killer or not, or do we need to wait for the mortality data to accumulate? Is it responsible or not to suggest he and his crackpot pseudoscience cadre and his boss Trump are killers?

Dr. Brainworm - a killer?

Q: Does being deceived and manipulated by MAGA crackpottery absolve parents of the deaths, harms and costs of them being deceived and manipulated?

Clueless, therefore not responsible 

for their actions?

An editorial shift at the NYT: Authoritarian institutional capture

An incoherent opinion defending the indefensible

Context

One astute observer of politics recently noticed that something strange seemed to be going on at the NYT (New York Times). The newspaper openly positions itself as pro-democracy and staunchly opposed to Trump and MAGA authoritarianism and corruption. Despite that public face, the observer pieced together information that led to an assessment that the NYT has undergone a major editorial shift. The shift constituted what the observer called "a retreat from pluralism and from the democratic purpose the NYT so recently claimed to defend".

That assessment was based on several congruent observations. One was that NYT reporting and editorializing about threats to democracy, the rule of law, civil liberties and the public interest generally from Trump and MAGA elites had shifted. There was an apparently intentional, strategic omission of context and facts readers needed to assess what was being reported. What the NYT left hidden was the scope and depth of MAGA authoritarianism. Instead of core facts needed to assess MAGA politics and actions, NYT reporting and commentary had degraded into superficial reporting of selected facts and MAGA propaganda without context or mention impacts on democracy or the public interest.

In essence, the argument is that the NYT and a lot of other national reporting and commentary frame Trump and MAGA authoritarianism in ways that normalize and justify what is clearly abnormal and unjustifiable.

The Trump administration has waged unprecedented lawfare against the NYT. Direct legal attacks include a $15 billion defamation lawsuit filed in Sept. 2025 over 2024 election coverage. However, it is unclear if the NYT shift results mostly from public threats that Trump and MAGA elites have leveled at the NYT, or if other factors dominate. Authoritarian capture of political discourse has become widespread and that could easily be a major factor in the NYT editorial and reporting changes. NYT journalists reported explicit pressure to avoid appearing biased, leading to both-sides framing even when one side openly defies democratic norms. There is fear at the NYT of (1) loss of access to news sources, and (2) being labeled partisan for accurately describing MAGA's authoritarian actions.

The NYT hasn't become pro-Trump or pro-authoritarian, at least not yet. But it is institutionally captured. Its commitment to "viewpoint diversity" now includes perspectives that, if implemented, would destroy the free press it claims to defend.

An incoherent opinion defending the indefensible

An NYT opinion by Sarah Isgur (not paywalled), senior editor at The Dispatch, argues that the USSC (US Supreme Court) knows what it is doing, and it is good. Her argument is pretty simple. To increase accountability of executive agencies, the USSC is merely rebalancing power among the branches of government. She asserts that this not just transferring power to a unitary executive with legal immunity for committing crimes while in office. A unitary executive is close to a dictator, since he is now legally above the law while in office. 

In her opinion Isgur also claims, incoherently, that the Founders would be "shocked" not by a presidency that has accumulated vast new powers, but by a Congress that has given up a lot of its power. She argues that congress has too little power. But in the same opinion she notes that the USSC is on the verge of giving the president a whole lot more power at the expense of congress. The case, Trump v. Slaughter, could decide the fate of dozens of independent administrative agencies and the president’s ability to control them.

Isgur denigrates members of congress like this:

They [the Founders] would be confused that so many of its more than 500 members seem to have no further ambition than to act like glorified Instagram influencers**.**  

That may be true to some extent, but not very much. That aside, how that justifies giving an already too powerful and corrupt but above the law president more power is clear as mud. Her NYT opinion claims to strengthen Congress but she directly proposes supporting the USSC to weaken it further by transferring congressional delegations to unlimited presidential control in Trump v. Slaughter.

Points for consideration

Does this opinion mostly amount to the NYT publishing legal arguments that sanitize authoritarian power grabs as constitutional theory, the Founder's intent or some other rationalization?

If Isgur is right that the Founders would be shocked at how wimpy congress has become, is it irrational for her to argue that the presidency needs more power, which would be taken from congress in the pending Trump v. Slaughter case? Do her arguments amount to a blatant contradiction that exposes intellectual dishonesty? Does that dishonesty extend to the NYT itself, or is the newspaper walled off from criticism by saying it's her opinion, not ours?