Joe Biden and Donald Trump have accepted the debate invitation from CNN for the first presidential debate, to be held in Atlanta on June 27, with no live audience.
“I’ve received and accepted an invitation from @CNN for a debate on June 27th. Over to you, Donald. As you said: anywhere, any time, any place,” wrote Biden on X/Twitter.
Trump told CNN, “The answer is yes, I will accept.”
Trump then wrote: “Biden is afraid to debate in front of a crowd. That’s only because he can’t draw one.” And then he dropped a campaign ad video comparing the crowds he can draw to the doddering Biden speaking to small rooms of people or sitting on a beach in the sun.
The debate is a break from recent tradition that has the Commission on Presidential Debates directing the schedule.
“Biden’s campaign earlier called on Trump to join him for two presidential debates hosted by news organizations and formally informed the Commission on Presidential Debates that the president will not participate in its previously scheduled fall debates. The former president quickly said he was on board with earlier debates and told radio host Hugh Hewitt that he would accept any moderator,” according to CNN.
Biden recently let it be known he would debate Trump, telling radio host Howard Stern, “I’m happy to debate him.”
In a video message, Biden said, “Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020. Since then he hasn’t shown up for a debate. Now he’s acting like he wants to debate me again.”
He then chided Trump by saying he heard Trump would be available Wednesdays, referring to Trump’s court schedule.
Trump’s campaign has suggested there be four debates. On Truth Social, Trump accepted the proposed two debates but said he hopes for two more.
“I am Ready and Willing to Debate Crooked Joe at the two proposed times in June and September,” Trump wrote.
Biden has said he won’t take part in the Presidential Debate Commission debates, scheduled for Sept. 16 in Texas, Oct. 1 in Virginia and Oct. 9 in Utah.
Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a letter that those dates are “out of step with changes with changes in the structure of our elections and the interests of voters.” She said early voting starts in October, and the the commission has made the debates into an “entertainment spectacle” and did not enforce the debate rules in 2020.
Jake Tapper and Dana Bash will reportedly moderate the debate in June.
In his My Turn column, “Israel-Palestinian conflict explodes at our door,” in the Sept. 26, 2001 Juneau Empire, printed two weeks after the Sept. 11 heinous terrorist attacks in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington D.C., Lisle Hebert made various historical and statistical errors that in 2001 could lead to a divisive and anti-Semitic outcome on the matter in our country.
Hebert’s arguments were: (1) Unjust creation of Israel in 1948 had provoked conflicts in the Middle East; (2) “Israel-Palestinian conflict exploded at our door on September 11,” and, therefore, “… the United States have to cut off foreign aid to Israel to encourage fairness.”
Soon after Hebert’s opinion piece was published in the Juneau Empire, members of the Juneau Jewish Community courageously responded to his misleading and fabricated article via several submissions in the Empire and public meetings in Juneau.
One of the responses came from Shari Kochman’s article, “More than one book on Mideast history,” published in the Juneau Empire on Oct. 4, 2001. At the time, she was a board member of the Juneau Jewish Community. In fact, the narrative and information in her article is still relevant to today’s Israel-Palestinian conflict in Gaza, and explains it all. Several critical points in the Kochman’s article of More than one book… reverberates today.
On the history of creation of the modern Israel, she responded to Hebert’s article as follows:
“Stating that, ‘President Truman decided to give the displaced Jews someone else’s country, i.e., Palestine,’ is extraordinary. Palestine was not Truman’s to give. The partition plan was established by the United Nations based on recommendation from an 11-member commission, which did not even include the United States. The Jews of Palestine were not completely happy with the plan, but accepted it. The Arabs rejected it. They went to war. Had Arab governments not gone to war in 1948 to block the UN partition plan, a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Galilee and Negev could be celebrating 54 years [76 years today] of independence. Instead, Egypt occupied Gaza; Jordan occupied the West Bank.
“Mr. Hebert’s reference to the land in question as clearly Palestinian by right is amazing. I challenge him to offer clear proof that it is Palestinian land and not the ancient land of the Jews.”
The second point in Kochman’s article was on establishing a two-state solution in the region. Kochman writes:
“Mr. Hebert claims Israel will not accept the legitimacy of a Palestinian state. In the most recent peace efforts, Israel agreed to establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinians rejected the offer and insisted on the “right of return.” That has the façade of a justifiable request. But by sheer numbers, it would mean destruction of the land of Israel as a Jewish homeland [i.e., “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”]. Based on the years of exile, discrimination and murder suffered by Jews, can Mr. Hebert understand why the destruction of Israel is not an option? Would any nation willingly allow self-destruction?”
And in her final point, Kochman warned that a rhetoric of the Hebert’s article may lead to a possible emergence of terrorist activities in the region.
“Perhaps most alarming of all Mr. Hebert’s assertions is that Palestinians, out of despair brought on by an uncaring world, became terrorists. It seems Mr. Hebert is supplying an excuse, an explanation for terrorism. Is such a thing possible? Have other horribly persecuted peoples resorted to terrorism? And if they had, if they do in the future, would we offer an excuse that an uncaring world drove them to it? Is there ever a justification for terrorism?
“I am among the millions, who pray for peace in the Middle East and recognize it will require compromise and concessions by Israelis and Palestinians. While this quest continues, terrorism is not and will never be a legitimate path.”
Indeed, progressive and radical far-left advocates for a ceasefire between Israel and Gaza/Hamas must learn from Kochman’s insights—written 23 years ago—in order to understand the geo-political complexity and history of the region.
Today, “Hamas lovers” and violent pro-Palestinian protesters are either naïve or misinformed, or both. The world-wide pro-Palestinian and anti-Semitic protests clearly resemble those of the leftist Black Lives Matter and Antifa. These violent protests and anti-Semitic rhetoric must be stopped by rational and patriotic Americans.
As Golda Meir, an Israeli fourth prime minister from 1969 to 1974, observed: “You cannot negotiate peace with somebody who has come to kill you.”
Alexander B. Dolitsky was born and raised in Kiev in the former Soviet Union. He received an M.A. in history from Kiev Pedagogical Institute, Ukraine, in 1976; an M.A. in anthropology and archaeology from Brown University in 1983; and was enroled in the Ph.D. program in Anthropology at Bryn Mawr College from 1983 to 1985, where he was also a lecturer in the Russian Center. In the U.S.S.R., he was a social studies teacher for three years, and an archaeologist for five years for the Ukranian Academy of Sciences. In 1978, he settled in the United States. Dolitsky visited Alaska for the first time in 1981, while conducting field research for graduate school at Brown. He lived first in Sitka in 1985 and then settled in Juneau in 1986. From 1985 to 1987, he was a U.S. Forest Service archaeologist and social scientist. He was an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Alaska Southeast from 1985 to 1999; Social Studies Instructor at the Alyeska Central School, Alaska Department of Education from 1988 to 2006; and has been the Director of the Alaska-Siberia Research Center (see www.aksrc.homestead.com) from 1990 to present. He has conducted about 30 field studies in various areas of the former Soviet Union (including Siberia), Central Asia, South America, Eastern Europe and the United States (including Alaska). Dolitsky has been a lecturer on the World Discoverer, Spirit of Oceanus, andClipper Odyssey vessels in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. He was the Project Manager for the WWII Alaska-Siberia Lend Lease Memorial, which was erected in Fairbanks in 2006. He has published extensively in the fields of anthropology, history, archaeology, and ethnography. His more recent publications include Fairy Tales and Myths of the Bering Strait Chukchi, Ancient Tales of Kamchatka; Tales and Legends of the Yupik Eskimos of Siberia; Old Russia in Modern America: Russian Old Believers in Alaska; Allies in Wartime: The Alaska-Siberia Airway During WWII; Spirit of the Siberian Tiger: Folktales of the Russian Far East; Living Wisdom of the Far North: Tales and Legends from Chukotka and Alaska; Pipeline to Russia; The Alaska-Siberia Air Route in WWII; and Old Russia in Modern America: Living Traditions of the Russian Old Believers; Ancient Tales of Chukotka, and Ancient Tales of Kamchatka.
The National Park Service will get more time to respond to a federal lawsuit after three visitors sued alleging refusal to take cash for park entrance fees violated federal law.
An attorney representing the National Park Service asked Judge Timothy Kelly for more time to respond to the lawsuit, saying the case had been assigned within the past two weeks. The U.S. attorney also cited other cases and planned time off around the Memorial Day holiday weekend.
The judge granted the request for more time, setting June 7 as the new deadline for the government to respond to the lawsuit.
The complaint, filed in federal court in March, seeks to have a judge declare NPS Cashless unlawful. The suit alleges that three visitors were denied entrance to national parks in Arizona, New York and Georgia. The complaint further alleges that the “National Park Service no longer accepts American money at approximately twenty-nine national parks, national historic sites, national monuments, and national historic parks around the country.”
NPS stopped accepting cash at some parks to be better stewards of that money.
“Reducing cash collections allows the National Park Service to be better stewards of the fees collected from visitors,” according to its website. “Cashless options reduce transaction times at busy entrance stations and decrease the risk of theft. Moving to a cashless system improves accountability and consistency, reduces chances of errors, and maximizes the funding available for critical projects and visitor services.”
The complaint argues that NPS Cashless can’t stand.
“NPS’s violation of federal law cannot be overlooked in favor of any purported benefit NPS Cashless could hope to achieve such as reducing logistics of handling cash collected,” plaintiff’s attorney Ray Flores II wrote in the complaint. “Moreover, there is an increased cost to the NPS in going cashless, such as additional processing fees that will be borne by NPS and by visitors who ultimately fund the Federal Government through taxes, in addition to personal surcharges and bank fees visitors may incur under NPS Cashless policy.”
In a 2023 news release, NPS explained why Death Valley National Park was going cashless. It said that Death Valley collected $22,000 in cash in 2022. Processing that cash cost the park $40,000, according to the release.
“Cash handling costs include an armored car contract to transport cash and park rangers’ time counting money and processing paperwork,” according to the release. “The transition to cashless payments will allow the NPS to redirect the $40,000 previously spent processing cash to directly benefit park visitors.”
According to NPS, of the more than 400 national parks in the National Park System, 108 charge an entrance fee.
In recent days, veiled threats by House Minority Leader Rep. Calvin Schrage against Speaker Cathy Tilton and Senate Majority Leader Sen. Cathy Giessel against Senate President Gary Stevens might be chalked up to careless hyperbole during a heated debate.
Schrage made an “if-then” threat against Tilton, and Giessel menaced the Senate president by saying that if her amendment didn’t pass, his house would get broken into. The statements came close to coercion.
But there’s another possible form of coercion going on in the Capitol: Horse trading run amuck. In the halls of the building, members of the body are saying that Sen. Bill Wielechowski is holding the House hostage by not allowing as many as nine bills to come to the floor — unless the House passes Sen. Scott Kawasaki’s rewrite of House Bill 129, which originally was a bill from Rep. Srarah Vance to clean up Alaska’s voter registration rolls.
Kawasaki hijacked HB 129 by by inserting multiple bills into it, with election ideas from the Democrats, including having the government pay for the stamps on mail-in ballots.
The terms of the deal Wielechowski is said to offering the House is that it either concurs with the new bill version or the House bills won’t be heard; as Rules chair, Wielechowski has the power to enforce that.
Vance already told the Senate Finance Committee on Monday that she would not be able to get concurrence on the bill, after Kawasaki completely gutted it and made it into a different bill.
Wielechowski is a political ally of Kawasaki. Both are Democrats — Wielechowski is from Anchorage, Kawasaki is from Fairbanks. They’re both part of the Democrat majority in the Senate. Both want to increase vote by mail, which is what Kawasaki’s rewrite of Vance’s bill does, in party.
When horse trading become coercion, then the aspect of public corruption is a concern, because it requires a legislator to vote in a certain way — in a way they would not normally vote — in order to have their own bills moved. That is a concern now being expressed in the hallways of the Capitol.
According to WalletHub, Anchorage is in the top 10 cities for experiencing inflation. It’s at No. 8, right between Miami and Los Angeles.
The U.S. inflation rate hit a 40-year high during the first two years of the Biden Administration, but has since started to flatten.
“The year-over-year inflation rate sits at 3.4% as of April 2024, which is still above the target rate of 2%. Various factors, such as the war in Ukraine and labor shortages, drive this higher than average inflation. Despite the country not meeting its target yet, it’s possible the Federal Reserve could even cut interest rates this year rather than raising them further,” WalletHub reports.
According to the AP, three rate reductions were suggested for 2024, starting in June, “But given the persistence of elevated inflation, financial markets now expect just one rate cut this year, in November, according to futures prices tracked by CME FedWatch.”
WalletHub compared 23 major metropolitan statistical areas across two key metrics related to the Consumer Price Index, which measures inflation. Honolulu Hawaii got a total score of 71.83, putting it at the top of the list for inflation, with Detroit closely following.
Source: WalletHub
WalletHub compared the Consumer Price Index for the latest month for which Bureau of Labor Statistics data is available to two months prior and one year prior to get a snapshot of how inflation has changed in the short and long term.
Legendary dog musher Rick Mackey died in Fairbanks on Monday, after a battle with cancer. He was 71. From the legacy mushing family of Dick Mackey, who first won the Iditarod Sled Dog Race in 1978, Rick was raised in the world of sled dog racing and won the Iditarod in 1983. Rick’s brother, Lance Mackey, won Iditarod and younger brother Jason Mackey has raced for several years.
Rick’s passing was shared by his daughter, Brenda Mackey, on Facebook. She noted that he died on May 13, and that the number 13 was the bib number that the Mackeys so often drew. Rick wore No. 13 bib in his 1983 Iditarod win.
Rick had been suffering from cancer for the past 19 month and it had spread to his bones and spine; he was in pain for several months, Brenda wrote.
Brenda Mackey’s Facebook announcement of Rick Mackey’s passing.
The Iditarod Sled Dog Race website biography of Rick states:
“Rick Mackey, born in Concord NH on May 1, 1953, came to Alaska in 1959. Helping his father, Dick Mackey, prepare for the first Iditarod race in 1973, Rick has always been a part of the Iditarod and sled dog racing has always been a part of him.
“Racing dogs since 1964, the 2004 Race will be his 22nd Iditarod Race. Rick won the 1983 Iditarod and has placed in the top ten numerous times. He is known for taking excellent care of his team and having a very strong team of dogs. He has won the award for the fastest time between Safety and Nome five times.
“There is a time for every season” and this seasoned veteran musher is ready to go. After taking a two-year break from racing the Iditarod he is ready and willing to cross the finish line in Nome. Rick Mackey has been married to Patty for 30 years and is the father of two children, Brenda 25, and Roland 7.
Rick was the owner of a sled dog kennel and worked in lumber when not training with his team or managing the kennel business. Across four decades, he completed 22 races, and is one of six mushers to win both the Iditarod and the Yukon Quest. He also won two Kuskokwim 300 races.
The polls closed at 8 p.m. and the ballot drop boxes were locked. The first batch of ballots were run and the results look grim for Mayor Dave Bronson.
With 50,967 ballots counted in the runoff between Bronson and Suzanne LaFrance, the totals are:
– Bronson: 22,997, 45.12%
– LaFrance: 27,970, 54.88%
Ballots cast on Tuesday were not included, as they have to be checked to ensure people didn’t vote earlier. About 50% of the expected vote has been counted.
LaFrance is the former chairwoman of the Anchorage Assembly and is a favorite of the Democrats. If her lead holds, she will be sworn in July 1.
A bill that is meant to help meet the teacher’s shortage was hijacked by Sen. Cathy Giessel on Tuesday and made into an entirely different bill, which passed the Senate before she ended up withdrawing the amendment. Word in the Capitol is that her move to force her own bill into another had made her very unpopular with the Democrat-majority caucus that she has joined.
Giessel, working at the behest of the AFL-CIO and Alaska Public Employee Association, inserted the entire contents of the failing Senate Bill 88 — a return to a defined pension plan for public employees in Alaska — into House Bill 230.
Sen. Bert Stedman, who was a key lawmaker in dismantling the old pension plan, which became unaffordable for the state budget, spent 40 minutes on the Senate floor speaking against Giessel’s amendment. Next was Sen. Shelley Hughes, who agreed with Stedman, and then came Sen. David Wilson, who also agreed.
“This is a 52-page bill being shoved into a one-page bill. This has become one of those tur-duck-ens” said Shower. (Tur-duck-en is a turkey stuffed with a duck, stuffed with a chicken).
“When the State cuts a check for a defined contribution plan, it’s gone. That liability for future generations is gone, not on the books. However, on a defined benefit plan, then you have something where we [the State] are assuming the risk. That is something that is not insignificant in this debate,” he said.
Shower said Alaska’s children, grandchildren and their grandchildren are going to assume the liability and that today’s workers want to move around, and do not want to stay in jobs for dozens of years.
In addition, “we have billions of dollars that we are trying to make up for the previous plan,” Shower said.
HB 230 addresses the current situation in which teachers are allowed to count eight years of out-of-state teaching experience, if they have a masters’ degree, and six years of out-of-state teaching experience, if they have bachelors’ degree, for the purpose of determining the correct placement on a district’s salary scale, even if they taught out of state for much longer. Repealing these onerous conditions is a recommendation from the “2021 Teacher Retention and Recruitment Action Plan,” a product of the governor’s working group on teacher retention and recruitment that was established in 2020.
Districts across Alaska are having an extremely difficult time filling teaching positions, the governor’s working group said. First day teacher vacancies in Alaska have increased from about 155 in 2019 to about 394 in 2022 according to the Department of Education and Early Development and this shortage impacts both urban and rural districts. With the passage of this bill, state statute will no longer inhibit districts from hiring the most experienced out-of-state candidates, and in turn teachers will be fairly compensated for their experience.
During her closing remarks, Giessel mentioned to President Gary Stevens that he has a house in Kodiak, and his house might get broken into because there are not enough police. It was not a threat, but it was on the boundary of what is considered appropriate.
Voting in favor of the amendment were Senators Click Bishop, Jesse Bjorkman, Matt Claman, Forrest Dunbar, Cathy Giessel, Elvi Gray-Jackson, Scott Kawasaki, Jesse Kiehl, Kelly Merrick, Loki Tobin, and Bill Wielechowski.
Vote on Amendment 1, cramming a 52-page amendment into a one-page bill.
Voting against the bill were the two co-chairs of Senate Finance Committee, Stedman and Donny Olson, as well as Lyman Hoffman, Shelley Hughes, James Kaufman, Robb Myers, Mike Shower, Gary Stevens, and David Wilson.
The 52-page hostile amendment by Giessel transformed the governor’s bill into her own bill.
The amendment was later withdrawn after Stedman removed his name as a cross-sponsor of the bill. The original bill then passed the Senate.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed Wisconsin Rep. Tom Tiffany and Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert’s “Trust the Science Act,”House Resolution 764, which would remove the gray wolf from the list of endangered species and prevents a judicial review of the delisting.
Rep. Mary Peltola of Alaska voted against the measure, which passed on a vote of 209-205. The bill gives individual states and their wildlife management agencies the right to manage gray wolf populations within their borders. It’s a states’ rights issue.
Alaska is home to an estimated 7,000-11,000 wolves and is the only state in which wolves were never included on the Endangered Species List. Many Alaskan hunters consider wolves to be a problem, especially in Southeast Alaska, where the carnivorous canines kill deer.
“Wolves do have an impact on moose and caribou populations, and this impact, in combination with factors such as severe winter weather or bear predation, can depress moose and caribou populations to very low levels leaving little harvestable surplus for humans,” according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, which occasionally thins out wolf populations so that humans can have access to wild meat.
“These programs are designed to reduce predation by wolves or bears and increase moose, caribou, or deer populations that are a needed food source for Alaskans,” Fish and Game says on its website.
Wolves can also be a problem the Lower 48 for ranchers, and elk and deer hunters. Sheep ranchers in Washington State are finding that they are essentially growing livestock to feed wolf packs. One rancher reported that wolves had killed 22 of his 2,000 sheep.
“There have been repeated, documented wolf kills; non-lethal methods have not stopped the predation; the attacks are likely to continue, and the livestock owner has not done anything to attract the wolves,” one state wildlife official said in 2019, as the state approved the killing of wolves in Stevens County. There are 260 known wolves in 42 known packs in Washington State.
“The science is clear, the gray wolf has met and exceeded recovery goals. Today’s House passage represents an important first step towards restoring local control over the skyrocketing gray wolf population in Wisconsin. I will continue to fight to get this legislation through the U.S. Senate to protect livestock and pets from brutal wolf attacks,” said Rep. Tiffany of Wisconsin.
“There have been numerous gray wolf attacks in Wisconsin’s Seventh District over the last few years. You can view some examples here, here, and here (warning of graphic content),” Tiffany wrote on his official page. And yes, the links are pretty gory.
Gray wolves were put on the endangered species list in 1974, but they are no longer considered endangered, although only 13 states have wolf packs, mostly in the north.
During the Trump Administration, the Department of the Interior and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service delisted the gray wolf in the lower 48 United States after reviewing the science. But a California judge reversed the ruling in 2022.
Among groups supporting the bill was Hunter Nation, an advocacy group for hunters.
The recovery of the gray wolf is a remarkable conservation success, and the time has long since passed to manage their exploding population based on science,” said Keith Mark, founder and president of Hunter Nation. “This is an important achievement for American hunters, game animals, pets, livestock, and wolves. Keeping liberal activist judges out of wildlife management decisions is an important component to this legislation.”
“The delisting of the gray wolf reflects sound science and will bring balance to the habit and carrying capacity in those areas that have been decimated by unmanaged wolf populations,” said Ted Nugent, spokesman for Hunter Nation.
Peltola deflected, writing on social media: “The Second Amendment is integral to the Alaska way of life. For many households, hunting is their only way to guarantee food security. That’s why I’m doing everything possible to protect 2A and make sure our rights aren’t eroded by politicians living thousands of miles away.”
The decline of traditional metropolitan “objective” media outlets has affected the news landscape dramatically. Those outlets were more liberal and less objective than they pretended, and their business model, which relied on advertising, has collapsed as online advertising has soared. This had led to targeted partisan journalism on the left and right, for business as well as political reasons. But while traditional outlets like the New York Times have moved further leftward, they and other national outlets have lost the trust of most Americans, who now place much more trust in state and local media.
In response, left-wing foundations have made massive investments in nonprofit journalism and related efforts. Most recently, liberal foundations led by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation have staked $500 million over five years in hopes of fundamentally upending the local news marketplace and buying the trustworthiness of local news to use as camouflage for left-wing propaganda. Thus, the Left continues to expand its existing state-level “nonprofit newsrooms” that distribute ideological agitprop.
The largest is States Newsroom network; another is the Courier Newsroom. States Newsroom, spawned from the Arabella Advisors network, operates in 38 states and in 2021 spent $13.2 million, four times the closest center-right analog, Franklin News Foundation. Another right-leaning analog, Star News Digital Media, is even smaller.
The Left also works to boost its talent pipelines feeding into the media environment by focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and leftist-aligned “communities”—an emphasis that strengthens the internal mobs at major outlets who brook no dissent from the radical line. Further leftward pressure comes from the NewsGuild–Communications Workers of America union, active in many prestigious outlets and far-left even by “social justice unionism” standards. It recently endorsed “Solidarity with the Palestinians from the river to the sea.”
Nonprofit efforts like ProPublica feed investigations picked up by larger outlets. These, too, have a strong leftward effect, as intended by ProPublica’s donors who fund, for example, not only numerous investigations into conservative Supreme Court justices (and no investigations into liberal justices) but also fund advocacy groups that demand court packing. ProPublica donors include the Sandler Foundation, which also funds Demand Justice; the Hewlett Foundation, which also funds Fix the Court; and Ford; Open Society; and others. This investigative journalism is a double-edged sword, one side sharpened to attack enemies, the other blunted to protect friends.
Social media are another avenue where the Left hopes to control information, but Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter/X has hindered this crusade. In response, Pierre Omidyar has backed the phony “Facebook Whistleblower,” and Media Mattershas launched pressure campaigns against Twitter’s advertisers.
Fact-checking groups assist with control of social media and political narratives. Here as everywhere in the media landscape, the Left enjoys more groups and more money than conservatives. Harvard’s Nieman Lab says, “Publishers hope fact-checking can become a revenue stream. Right now, it’s mostly Big Tech who is buying.” Nonprofit support comes from the usual suspects, including Soros, Tides, Ford, and Carnegie.
In 2022, the Democratic National Committee released a 5,000-word action plan for aggressive censorship, a.k.a. “combating online misinformation.” Social media statistics indicate earlier changes by Facebook and other platforms resulted in significant boosts for “mainstream” media outlets and equivalent losses for their competitors. Elon Musk’s “community notes” model for fact-checking on Twitter/X, which crowd-sources the work, is a dramatic improvement.
A related effort, NewsGuard, is suffering multiple federal lawsuits because of its likely illegal collusion with the federal government to suppress speech. NewsGuard provides an app for web browsers that puts labels next to news sources in online search results. The labels rate on a 0 to 100 scale, with nearly all “mainstream” outlets like the New York Times and NPR receiving 100s, despite their egregious misinformation on Russian collusion, COVID origins, and Hunter Biden’s laptop. Conservative outlets rate mediocre to bad.
The strategy, beyond working with federal agencies to suppress speech they dislike, is to spread NewsGuard into libraries and schools for use with mandatory “media literacy” courses. NewsGuard’s largest investor is Publicis Groupe, the world’s largest conglomerate of marketing agencies who already use a separate NewsGuard product that channels their ads away from disliked outlets to favored ones. Thus can investors protect their clients, just as the government protects itself from unwanted speech. But federal and state legislators could consider bans on governmental use of such third-party censorship schemes.
The Hub Project is another left-wing effort to use media for political purposes. Launched through the Arabella Advisors network with cash from foreign national Hansjörg Wyss, it aims to create “research-based messages frames” to “drive measurable change” and achieve “significant wins” that lead to “implementations of policy solutions at the local, state, and federal level”—cagey language designed to permit 501(c)(3) entities to fund and carry out much of this political work. This hidden scheme was exposed by the New York Times, with help from Capital Research Center. Outlets like Politico and The Atlantic credit it with significant “damage” to conservative political causes.
Despite all the Left’s money and groups, on the conservative side of the media landscape for-profit and nonprofit opportunities remain. Indeed, some of the best work exposing governmental malfeasance has recently come from left-leaning writers, many of them refugees from the corporate regime media, who have shifted to new, independent platforms where they cannot be cancelled by the powerful people and institutions they challenge. These voices may be called “government-” or “power-skeptical.”
Existing conservative efforts include the Franklin News Foundation and its Center Square. The foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, but it also owns two for-profit enterprises, the Illinois Radio network providing sports and statehouse coverage for 84 affiliates, and the Franklin Media Group, a marketing firm. Their profits subsidize the nonprofit news effort, whose supporters include the Scaife, Bradley, Searle, and Thomas W. Smith foundations.
Other conservative efforts are legally for-profit but likely require considerable annual subsidies (as does Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post), including the Washington Free Beacon (reported to be largely funded by Paul Singer), the Washington Examiner (reported to be owned by Phil Anschutz), and the New York Post (owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp). The RealClear websites are also owned by a for-profit firm.
A different, more revolutionary approach would be to seed writers on Substack, a fast-growing enterprise that combines social media, multimedia, podcasting, and blogging for independent content creators. Those creators keep roughly 80 percent of email subscription fees they charge, which are typically around $50 per year. That means 2,000 subscribers would yield an independent creator $80,000 annually. Already some power-skeptical writers like Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss have such large subscription bases, generating hundreds of thousands of dollars, that the creators have plowed revenues into hiring less famous journalists to join their originally solo Substack outlets. This resembles the way earlier talk radio entrepreneurs like Rush Limbaugh created new business models that had widespread political effect and were self-sustaining. Other existing Substack successes include Christopher Rufo and the Twitter/X celebrity known as Libs of TikTok. Donors could fund new voices with a program similar to MacArthur’s famous “genius grants,” which guarantee quarterly income across several years.
Another intriguing strategy involving established local newspapers is being mulled by Dave Smith, the executive chairman of Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which owns roughly 200 television stations. Sinclair has multiple stations in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, North Carolina, and Georgia and it has local news departments in about 70 cities. It currently owns no radio or newspaper properties, though Smith personally bought the Baltimore Sun in January 2024.
Any paper he runs will follow the same model as his TV newsrooms: Focus on local crime, local political corruption, and local public schools’ failure, and teach reporters how to do the investigative reporting that breaks these stories. This model has worked in cities like Seattle, where he purchased the last-ranked station and within two years it was number-one. Smith is open to working with other investors in other cities and believes newspapers can remain self-sustaining without subsidies.
Still living in his native Baltimore, Smith says he wants to help poor and middle-class citizens suffering in our dysfunctional cities, and he also believes that improving their lot will also mean weakening the corrupt left-wing establishment that controls those cities and, through those cities, wields political power it does not deserve.
In sum, the Left is taking journalism seriously. Is the Right?
Scott Walter is president of Capital Research Center. He served in the George W. Bush Administration as Special Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and was vice president at the Philanthropy Roundtable, editing Philanthropy magazine and producing donor guidebooks on assistance to the poor, school reform, public policy research, and other topics. Walter has written for and been quoted in such outlets as the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and Chronicle of Philanthropy. A Georgetown graduate, he served as a senior fellow at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and as senior editor of AEI’s flagship publication. He lives in Virginia with his wife and four children. This is the introduction to a forthcoming CRC special report Nonprofits and Journalism: An Analysis of the Shifting Information Landscape and Potential Growth Opportunities.
