Earlier today we wrote about Trump’s extraordinary admission that he was basing military deployment decisions on old Fox News footage and lies from his advisors. But there’s an even more damning story here: how that revelation almost never saw the light of day because of journalistic cowardice. The smoking gun quote came from Trump’s phone […]
Support us on Patreon » Last year, Renée DiResta joined us on an episode of the podcast to talk about her book, Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality, all about the people who have crafted a massive fictional narrative about the state of social media and government’s involvement in content moderation. Now that […]
There is a moment in every authoritarian takeover when the business elite must choose between principle and profit, between defending the system that made their wealth possible and accommodating the forces destroying that system. That moment has arrived for America’s capitalist class, and they are failing the test so spectacularly that they’re validating every Marxist […]
No matter what Trump says, ICE is never going to be going after the “worst of the worst.” If White House advisor Stephen Miller wants 3,000 arrests per day, ICE is just going to have to go after anyone who looks foreign, which basically means it’s just going after anyone who isn’t white. This has […]
The 2025 AI Super Skills Bundle has 8 courses to help you get familiar with how to use some of the latest and coolest artificial intelligence tools out there. Courses cover ChatGPT, DALL-E 3, Leonardo AI, Quillbot, and more. It’s on sale for $30. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. […]
Who’s running the country? That question became terrifyingly urgent this weekend when the President of the United States admitted he was preparing to send US military forces into an American city based entirely on old Fox News footage and lies from his advisors. Tim Cushing had a story yesterday about Trump’s bizarre declaration of war […]
After years of hyperventilation about TikTok’s impact on privacy, propaganda, and national security, TikTok is likely being sold to a bunch of Trump’s billionaire technofascist buddies who don’t believe in privacy and want to use TikTok to spread right wing propaganda. Bang up job all around, especially to all the befuddled Democrats whose hysteria about […]
Let’s do a thought experiment together. I want you to imagine that six months ago, you bought a couch. It’s a lovely couch and you put a lot of time and energy into making sure you got the right one. For six months, you’ve sat on this couch, napped on it, sometimes even slept on […]
Pretty much everyone who was willing to put justice ahead of Trump is long gone from the DOJ, either having been fired or resigning ahead of an expected firing. Trump has stocked the DOJ with incredibly under-qualified loyalists, overseen by the under-qualified loyalist holding the top spot in the Department, AG Pam Bondi. Bondi has […]
There’s a bit of a trend emerging: when you decide to stand up and fight against Donald Trump and his parade of dim authoritarian sycophants, you usually win. If you fecklessly fold (like CBS, Meta, Columbia, and countless others), these annoying assholes just keep pushing you harder for concessions. That’s certainly the lesson from ABC’s […]
Remember all that concerned coverage about an elderly President’s cognitive decline? And all those (admittedly overhyped) warnings about deepfake videos tricking the gullible? Well, we now have a President who was apparently fooled by an AI deepfake video of himself to the point that he posted it to Truth Social as if it documented something […]
The All-in-One Ethical Hacking & Penetration Testing Bundle has 9 courses to help you go from beginner to expert in hacking and pen testing. Courses cover everything from social engineering to working with Metasploit to cloud security, and more. It’s on sale for $30. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. […]
One of the few, small things the US press could do is stop pretending this administration is normal. It isn’t. It’s motivated solely by cruelty and revenge, in service of imposing its will and white Christian nationalist imperatives on the nation, which is nothing less than fascism. So, when President Trump says he’s sending the […]
Our mad, idiot king recently declared war on Tylenol. Nobody really knows why, exactly. There’s only shaky, correlational data to support any link between Tylenol and autism (did you know summertime ice cream consumption leads to an increase in shark attacks?). And even the backers of those studies say telling pregnant mothers to avoid Tylenol […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Heart of Dawn with a comment about the Trump administration’s unproven announcements regarding Tylenol and autism: As an autistic person, it infuriates me no end that some people think a life like mine is a fate worse than death. As woman,its also clear that […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2020, we wrote about how the TikTok “deal” was a grift from the start, while the blowback from China started to arrive, though TikTok and the DOJ were still fighting it out in court (and a judge issued a preliminary injunction against the WeChat ban). The authors of Section […]
I recently wrote about the Oklahoma state legislature’s plan to build a memorial plaza and statue to honor Charlie Kirk, while mandating signage signifying him as a “civil rights leader.” That post was labeled as a “Part 1” and this post was intended to be “Part 2” for reasons we’ll get into. We’ll have to […]
A federal judge ruled on Sept. 2, 2025, that the Trump administration broke federal law by sending National Guard troops to Los Angeles in June in response to protests over immigration raids. In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said that National Guard troops in Los Angeles had received improper training on the legal scope of their […]
Earlier this month we noted how Disney and ESPN had sued Sling TV for the cardinal sin of actually trying to innovate. Sling TV’s offense: releasing new, more convenient day, weekend, or week-long shorter term streaming subscriptions that provided an affordable way to watch live television. These mini-subscriptions, starting at around $5, have already proven […]
Apparently, it’s no longer acceptable to speak ill of the dead. Not that it bothers the dead. But it certainly seems to bother a bunch of people who are still alive and who have nothing better to do with their time but snitch on anyone who doesn’t treat Charlie Kirk like an American hero who […]
stLouIST