From Citizens United to Trump-era oligarchy, the billionaire takeover of American politics seemed unstoppable. Then Hawaii found a way to strike at the heart of the system… Against all odds and massive dark money, Graham Platner won. And won big. The oyster farmer and Marine Corps veteran who turned a long-shot run into a movement just took the Democratic nomination to challenge Susan Collins for her Senate seat in Maine, and he did it the hard way, the clean way, the way that’s supposed to be impossible in this age of unlimited corporate and billionaire money. He out-raised a sitting governor backed by the entire party establishment and their corporate funders, he packed arenas with Fighting Oligarchy rallies alongside Bernie Sanders, and he built the whole thing out of small-dollar donations from working Mainers rather than checks from corporate political action committees.

How white nationalism, anti-immigrant fear mongering, and open racism are reviving the politics that once tore America apart… Yesterday, Louise and I drove home from a ham radio convention in Seaside, Oregon and on the roughly 2-hour drive listened to rightwing radio. It was like stepping into a time machine tuned to the 1860s. One host was pounding on how “our tax dollars” are being used to support “those dirty Somalis” in Minnesota who were committing “massive welfare fraud that’s just fine with Tim Walz and the Democrats.” Louise and I were astonished as we heard another note that immigration across the Southern “open border” during the Obama and Biden administrations not only brought us “rapists and murderers,” but these (mostly Catholic) people carried a “dangerous ideology” to America. They were wiping out our healthcare system and depriving “good [white] Americans” of benefits through their “massive fraud.” These Black and Brown people are even fraudulently voting, handing elections to Democrats, another ranted, lying that that’s “why Democrats always open the borders.” Meanwhile, rightwing news sites brag that under Trump, Vance, and Miller, only white people have been legally admitted into the US during the last 6 months (true) because Trump is “protecting the [racial] integrity of America.” It echoed Trump’s false complaint that the white people of South Africa are experiencing a “genocide.”

The Best of the Rest of the News. — In eight days, the People’s House becomes a pay-per-view fight venue, and the symbolism is doing overtime. — Fox “News” spent months hunting a Maine sexting story while ignoring a Texas crime spree, and that tells you everything. — In the richest nation in human history, we have circled all the way back to pandemic-level hunger, on purpose. — The administration drew up plans to declare 2.7 million living Americans legally dead — and very nearly pulled it off. — For the first time in the internet’s history, bots now outnumber humans. — A heavily mutated COVID variant is spreading through 25 states right as Trump turns off the lights we use to see it. — Crazy Alert! The man who spent four years sneering about “Sleepy Joe” appears to have nodded off and started mumbling during his own 3 p.m. Oval Office event this week — Cult Alert! Trump bought his entire Cabinet matching $145 black Florsheim dress shoes — without bothering to ask their sizes

We must all become truth-tellers, whether our platform is radio, TV, Substack, social media, a local newspaper, or a protest sign raised in the town square… I started in radio news as a teenage reporter at WITL-AM/FM in Lansing, Michigan, then the number one station in the capitol city. I began reporting from the Capitol and City Hall, and was writing and reading the morning newscasts within a year. The station owner was a hardcore Goldwater Republican, our news director was a liberal but Libertarian-curious Democrat, and I was a long-haired anti-war hippie member of MSU SDS. I did the news there for years, and nobody ever told me how to spin it or what to insert or delete. I knew that I couldn’t bias it to reflect my own opinions: the news — accurate, factual, honest information — was sacred.