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Then-President Donald Trump speaks with reporters on the South Lawn of the White House in August 2019. Now in his third presidential candidacy, Trump continues to vilify the news media.

Public Domain/Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour

How a candidate treats the press while on the campaign trail is usually a good indicator of how they’ll treat them while in office. And as the 2024 general election nears, our U.S Press Freedom Tracker is making a public record of just that — cataloging statements against the press by candidates for federal office and efforts by them to diminish the media’s newsgathering capabilities.

It was certainly true for Donald Trump. From the time he declared his first candidacy for president in 2015 through to his account suspension on X (then Twitter) in 2021, Trump tweeted negatively about the press an average of more than once a day over those 5 ½ years, according to the Tracker.

And this year, as a candidate and presumptive presidential Republican nominee, he’s doing it again. His campaign, for example, barred an NBC reporter from attending an event in New Hampshire in late January, but did not provide any explanation why.

And this year, as a candidate and presumptive presidential Republican nominee, [Trump's] doing it again.

Only five days earlier, the former president said that CNN and MSNBC should “have their licenses or whatever they have taken away,” after the networks only aired a portion of his Iowa caucus victory speech.

Other candidates use similar playbooks. U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler, a Republican running for reelection in a tossup district in New York’s Hudson Valley, recently ended a monthslong effort to restrict media access to his public town hall events. Vivek Ramaswamy, who’s now suspended his Republican presidential bid, used his opening statement at a November GOP debate to target NBC News anchor Kristen Welker and the “corrupt media establishment,” while falsely claiming the media rigged the 2020 election.

From now until Election Day, our Tracker team will continue to document and highlight relevant sidelining of, attacks on, or outright barring of press from major campaign events across the United States.

Follow the Tracker’s Election Blog here.

Labor productivity was up 3.2% in the final quarter of 2023. That's nice. But for some reason I was curious about long-term averages over the past few decades. Here they are: The last five years have seen the highest productivity growth of the past 50 years with the exception of the dotcom boom. But why? ...continue reading "The pandemic produced a permanent change in productivity"

The lawsuit brought by voters contends that Senate districts in suburban St. Louis and western Missouri’s Buchanan County violate the state constitution.

The home was condemned by Brentwood's planning and zoning department found debris, animal waste, insect infestation, and other safety concerns.

Congresswoman Cori Bush, whose criticism of Israel after the October 7 terrorist attack drew a serious primary challenge and whose employment of her husband has now drawn a Department of Justice Investigation, is choosing to face her critics head on on both fronts.  Yesterday, the St. Louis Democrat appeared on MSNBC's The ReidOut and defended paying her husband Cortney Merritts for security services, saying that her campaign had trouble retaining quality staff and that Merritts, a military veteran, worked security for the campaign as a volunteer before taking on a paying role. 

The company alleged her property encroached on their proposed 147-unit neighborhood near land her late husband’s family had owned for over a century.

Visit The Galleries at Heartland Art Club for our newest Group of 8 Show. New artworks from Jo Jasper Dean, Mary Drastal, Julie Wiegand, Tim Breaux, Connie Schmidt, Margaret Murphy […]

The post Heartland Art Club Group of 8 Show appeared first on Explore St. Louis.

The Band’s classic tune “The Weight” is featured in Budweiser’s Clydesdale ad, set to run during Super Bowl 58, which airs February 11 on CBS. The clip, called "Old School Delivery," is set around a snowstorm…

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Harris-Stowe State University’s Presidential Lecture Series has brought an array of talented leaders and entertainers to the HCBU campus, and the January 25, 2024 session lived up to its high standard.

The latest season of 'Farmer Wants a Wife' is set to premiere tonight on FOX at 8 p.m. Among the contestants is Ty Ferrell, a 42-year-old roper who owns a 50-acre farm outside of St. Louis.

Back in December, we wrote about Appin. We were not writing about the reports (of which there have been many) that the organization that started as a sort of cybersecurity training school, but morphed into a kind of “hack-for-hire” scheme was involved in all sorts of nefarious activity. Rather we wrote about their (ab)use of […]

by Jessica Lussenhop

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

A pair of U.S. senators introduced a bill Thursday that aims to curtail the misuse of a home buying agreement known as contract for deed, a potentially predatory practice that has targeted immigrant communities.

The Preserving Pathways to Homeownership Act of 2024, introduced by Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn. and Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., would require states to enact laws that provide additional protections for home buyers and discourage exploitative behavior by sellers.

“It makes me so angry that people who are trying to pursue the dream of owning their own home” and that “those individuals would be exploited by these unscrupulous sellers, purely to make money off of them,” Smith said in an interview this week. “I mean, it’s just so outrageous.”

The senators drafted the bill in response to a 2022 investigation by ProPublica and Sahan Journal that identified a rising market in Minnesota for home sales using contracts for deed, an installment payment agreement made between the seller and the buyer without the involvement of a bank. While proponents say the contracts create a path to homeownership for those without good credit or substantial work histories, critics say that in Minnesota and other states, the deals lack key consumer protections.

Contract-for-deed sellers in Minnesota marketed their services directly to members of the Somali Muslim community. Many practicing Muslims avoid paying or profiting from interest, which effectively shuts them out of the traditional mortgage market.

In recent years, investors began promoting the contracts for deed as an “interest free” purchase agreement by first buying houses using traditional mortgages, then reselling them to contract buyers — often for tens of thousands of dollars above market price. The deals were frequently fast-tracked and conducted without the involvement of a lawyer and without an inspection or appraisal of the property.

Somali homebuyers told Sahan Journal and ProPublica that they were duped into contracts they did not understand, with exorbitant down payments and lump sums of hundreds of thousands of dollars due at the end of five-year contract terms. Housing rights advocates say immigrant homebuyers who lack financial literacy and may not read or speak English fluently are easy targets for unscrupulous sellers. Under Minnesota state law, buyers in default can be evicted in as little as 60 days and lose everything they’ve put into a purchase, leaving sellers free to flip the property to a new buyer.

The article sparked concern not only from lawmakers, but from law enforcement. The Minnesota Attorney General’s Office launched an investigation last year into whether sellers broke the law by targeting minority buyers or using deceptive tactics. That investigation is ongoing, according to Mark Iris, the assistant attorney general leading the inquiry. In a previous Senate subcommittee hearing on the contracts — also known as land installment contracts or land contracts — Smith characterized the deals as “designed to fail.”

If passed, the legislation from Smith and Lummis would standardize laws surrounding contracts for deed on residential properties, which vary widely from state to state. It would not apply to commercial or agricultural real estate sales, and sellers who used the property as their primary residence in the previous two years would likewise be exempted. The latter is an attempt to exempt contracts between, say, parents and an adult child.

The bill would require all contracts be filed by the seller with a recorder of deeds office within five days of their signing, a step that is not currently mandated in all states and would provide a “basic level of sunshine on the process,” said Smith. A lack of documentation can result in exploitative practices, like selling the same property multiple times.

The bill would also require that if a buyer defaults, they and the seller must go through state foreclosure procedures that apply to traditional mortgages. Such protections typically allow residents to remain in a home for a period of time before they must vacate. Smith said that there’s also interest in the House on a companion bill.

“It's kind of like a basic level of safety and consumer protection that ought to be available for everybody who is engaging in a purchase through a contract for deed,” she said.

Ron Elwood, supervising attorney at the Legal Services Advocacy Project, the policy advocacy arm of Legal Aid in Minnesota, said the legislation is also intended to create a “built-in speed bump” to discourage sellers who act in bad faith. He said he is working with state legislators on a “complete overhaul” of Minnesota contracts for deed law.

That effort is being authored by Rep. Hodan Hassan and Sen. Zaynab Mohamed, both Democrats who represent districts in south Minneapolis; according to Elwood, legislation will be introduced this session. Hassan and Mohamed did not respond to requests for comment.

Jeff Scislow, a real estate agent who has sold homes to many Somali clients using contract for deed, said he supports a requirement that all contracts be recorded but has reservations about adding a foreclosure process in cases of default. He said Minnesota has a six-month period before homeowners must vacate when they don’t need to make payments.

Because contract-for-deed sellers often take out a mortgage to purchase a home before selling it, Scislow wrote in an email, the prospect of an extended period of nonpayment “would heighten the risk for sellers and likely dissuade many from engaging in contract-for-deed transactions.” If the current 60-day cancellation period were extended, he added, it “could limit opportunities for buyers, especially those with poor credit, insufficient tax return history, or those seeking alternatives to traditional financing.”

But Farah Mohamed, owner of Gurisan Realty and a member of the Minneapolis Area Realtors’ Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee, said lack of regulation has allowed the market to go too far in the Somali community. One of the most troubling things he’s seen is how contracts have been promoted as “halal” by local religious leaders, making it difficult for buyers to separate the transactions from their religious principles.

Mohamed said he was approached by an investor seller to recruit buyers from his largely Somali clientele, but he refused. He is working to educate community leaders about the pitfalls of the contracts, but said he has encountered resistance. “Once you start in a religious place,” he said, “it’s tough to kill it.”