Evening Roundup, August 20
Featuring Roberto Valadéz, Katherine Maher & Jen Rubin, Ilan Goldenberg, Jennifer Weiss-Wolf, RJ Matson, and The Democracy Movement. Also introducing our new weekly feature: Choose the Real Headline!
An Epidemic of Fear
Roberto Valadéz
Amid escalating ICE raids, America faces a generation of lost potential.
Katherine Maher on the future of public broadcasting in the Trump Era
Last month, Trump passed the rescission bill that took back $1.1 billion in funding for public broadcasting. This resulted in the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a non-profit made to promote and support public broadcasting including NPR and PBS, to shut down.
Trump Will Not Save Israel from Netanyahu
Since he came to office, many—including me—hoped Donald Trump might force Benjamin Netanyahu to end the war in Gaza. Trump had the leverage: his overwhelming popularity with the Israeli public, especially Netanyahu’s base, gave him unique power to pressure the prime minister by breaking with him publicly.
Of course Trump threatened ballot access on the 19th Amendment's anniversary
The 19th Amendment, ratified on Aug. 18, 1920, 105 years ago this week, marked a hard-won victory in the long march to women’s suffrage. (Cue the “SUFFS” soundtrack.) It took another 45 years and passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 for the full promise of civic equality to become a reality for women of color in this country.
A United Push
RJ draws several editorial cartoons each week for his substack, e pluribus cartoonum, and for Roll Call, the newspaper of Congress and Capitol Hill. His work is widely syndicated to print newspapers by Cagle Cartoons.
The Contrarian covers the Democracy Movement
Every day (Monday-Friday), we’ll update this space with protests, signs and other public demonstrations against the actions of the administration. Keep checking to see how Americans all across the country are protecting and defending democracy.
Quiz: Choose the Real Headline
With venerable papers folding in more ways than one and too many journalism standards at half mast, we’ve decided to start a weekly “news” quiz for the headlines that deserve a little extra infamy. In today’s quiz, can you guess which of the below was a real headline this week...
You really hit the high points, good job.
So many well written columns here. I never thought about public broadcasting that much until I started reading The Contrarian. Occasionally I would listen to NPR news on long drives out of town or visiting family, I enjoyed listening to many of their programs especially the music. Thanks for renewing my interest in this so very important public media coverage. We need it now more than ever.