Laurie Penny/Longreads:
We need to talk about what consent really means, and why it matters more, not less, at a time when women’s fundamental rights to bodily autonomy are under attack across the planet, and the Hog-Emperor of Rape Culture is squatting in the White House making your neighborhood pervert look placid. We still get consent all wrong, and we have to try to get it a bit less wrong, for all our sakes.
To explain all this, I’m going to have to tell you some stories. They’re true stories, and some of them are rude stories, and I’m telling you now because the rest of this ride might get uncomfortable and I want you to have something to look forward to.
It’s well worth the long read.
Anthony Zurcher/BBC:
Last week, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders assured reporters that Donald Trump was an "incredible advocate" of constitutional free-press protections. This week, the president is contemplating - just wondering! - whether a broadcaster could be forced off the airwaves because he doesn't approve of its news coverage.
Never mind that the federal government licenses local televisions stations, only some of which are owned by national broadcasters like NBC.
Just because a threat is unworkable in the extreme doesn't mean the president won't make it.
Media-bashing is one of Mr Trump's favourite pastimes - a means of venting frustration, apportioning blame and, perhaps, distracting reporters who always enjoy a bit of journalistic navel-gazing.
As with the NFL anthem-kneeling controversy, the cultural battle lines form quickly when it comes to questions of media bias. The president knows this and uses it to his advantage.
Taking pot-shots at journalists is one thing, of course. Contemplating the use of government coercion to stifle a broadcaster because of its news content is another.
Even if such an outcome is unthinkable in the US at the moment, there are places in the world where press freedoms aren't as deeply entrenched. Their leaders are watching the president, too.
Erik Wemple/WaPo:
President Trump may be too incompetent to destroy the First Amendment
All manner of politicos and pundits have called on President Trump to curb his Twitter habit. It demeans the office of the president and makes life difficult for his White House crew, goes the argument.
Okay, but there’s this benefit: The tweets expose just how predisposed is the president toward gutting the First Amendment, and just how little he understands how it works.
Will Bunch: philly.com:
How to save America by running for Middletown Township auditor
There are many ways to resist President Trump, and not all of them involve clogging the streets of American cities in mass marches, throwing your body onto the asphalt of a busy intersection, or jamming your senator’s phone switchboard to beg him to stop taking away your grandma’s kidney dialysis.
Just ask Anna Payne, barely 30, spending this tropically humid mid-October Monday night tromping down the leaf-covered cul-de-sacs of Langhorne in her stylish jeans and sneakers with bright purple laces, knocking on glass storm doors ringed by fall pumpkin paraphernalia and tiny American flags.
If she’s lucky, the diminutive Payne will hand her election brochures to a voter who had no clue there’s an election on Nov. 7. “It will be here before you know it!” the cheerful budding politico tells one before hustling off to the next storm door, where a muffled voice screams, “We’re eating dinner!” Payne sheepishly props her literature on the doorstep and turns, undeterred, to her phone and her map showing the next likely voter.
Welcome to life in the dreary trenches of a counterrevolution.
Frank Bruni/NY Times:
To Serve Is to Slobber
I flash back on that infamous cabinet meeting, when Trump coaxed those insane testimonials, and see more clearly than ever that he was establishing the terms of service: I strut, you slobber, for as long as I can stand you or you can stand it.
Which won’t be forever, and that’s the scariest part. Trump’s options will grow less attractive, not more. On the far side of this uncomely crowd, there’s an even sorrier, more simpering crew of replacements.
Roger McNamee/USA Today:
If Zuckerberg wants forgiveness, we must insist that he earn it. I would ask him to start with five actions:
- Provide complete support and transparency to every agency and committee investigating Russian interference in the election. This must include transparency about Facebook’s algorithms.
- Implement a substantive plan to prevent further exploitation of Facebook by malicious third parties.
- Facebook must disclose to each of its users whether they were personally targeted for Russia paid ads or induced to join any group or event created by the Russians.
- Guarantee that bots will no longer be able to impersonate humans on the platform.
- Zuckerberg needs to testify before Congress in an open hearing about Facebook’s business model and the design priorities for its algorithms, and defend his view that Facebook is not responsible for what third parties do on its platform.
Rep. Eliot Engel (D), senior Democrat on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs/USA Today:
I opposed the Iran nuclear agreement. I reached that conclusion from the dozens of hearings I attended as the senior Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, hundreds of hours of briefings that included classified material, and meticulous assessment of the negotiations and how the United States and its five negotiating partners approached the most challenging issues.
Today I believe America’s interests are best served by living up to our commitments in the deal, aggressively enforcing it, cracking down on Iran’s other dangerous behavior, and continuing to look for ways to make the nuclear agreement stronger.
Daily Beast:
Russia Probe Now Investigating Cambridge Analytica, Trump’s ‘Psychographic’ Data Gurus
They were once Steve Bannon’s favorite analytics shop. Now investigators want to know if the Kremlin had a thing for Cambridge Analytica, too
The congressional inquiry is not the only one Cambridge Analytica is facing. The UK Information Commissioner, Britain’s privacy watchdog, in March began examining the firm’s role in the successful 2016 push to persuade British voters to “Brexit” the European Union. But Cambridge has said it never actually advised the Leave.eu campaign beyond initial discussions, despite Leave.eu’s own statements that the firm “will be helping us map the British electorate and what they believe in, enabling us to better engage with voters.”
In May, the Guardian’s Sunday Observer reported that Cambridge Analytica and its UK affiliate SCL––which owns 10 percent of Cambridge Analytica to Mercer’s 90 percent––have worked in Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, Iran and Moldova.
“Multiple Cambridge Analytica sources have revealed other links to Russia, including trips to the country, meetings with executives from Russian state-owned companies, and references by SCL employees to working for Russian entities,” the Observer reported.
Gabriel Sherman/Vanity Fair:
“I Hate Everyone in the White House!”: Trump Seethes as Advisers Fear the President Is “Unraveling”
In recent days, I’ve spoken with a half dozen prominent Republicans and Trump advisers, and they all describe a White House in crisis as advisers struggle to contain a president that seems to be increasingly unfocused and consumed by dark moods.
In recent days, I spoke with a half dozen prominent Republicans and Trump advisers, and they all describe a White House in crisis as advisers struggle to contain a president who seems to be increasingly unfocused and consumed by dark moods. Trump’s ire is being fueled by his stalled legislative agenda and, to a surprising degree, by his decision last month to back the losing candidate Luther Strange in the Alabama Republican primary. “Alabama was a huge blow to his psyche,” a person close to Trump said. “He saw the cult of personality was broken.”
Hey, maybe that’s why Henry Kissinger was brought in.
See, Corker speaks and all of a sudden, stories….