Jessica Huseman/VoteBeat:
It’s clearer than ever that Fox News stars lied about 2020 while local election officials told the truth
Bonus: Here’s how many election administrators you could pay with one year of Tucker Carlson’s salary.
It’s a weird thing to know for an absolute fact that the people lying to you knew they were lying to you at the time they did the lying. But there it is, the proof, in black and white. Still, it’s not particularly surprising, is it? Surely it makes more sense that Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham simply lied, rather than that they really did believe that stuff. Right?
And it’s not surprising specifically because while these people popped off on cable there was a group of hundreds of people telling us the truth about the election in real time: Local and state election officials. Even under wave after wave of scrutiny, their reassurances about the security and integrity of the 2020 election have been supported by the facts.
The remarkable thing is how many people now understand and how many casually note in passing that they are liars.
The New York Times:
Murdoch Acknowledges Fox News Hosts Endorsed Election Fraud Falsehoods
Rupert Murdoch, the conservative media mogul, spoke under oath last month in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox by Dominion Voting Systems.
Asked by Dominion’s lawyer, Justin Nelson, whether he could have ordered Fox News to keep Trump lawyers like Ms. Powell and Mr. Giuliani off the air, Mr. Murdoch responded: “I could have. But I didn’t.”
The document also described how Paul D. Ryan, a former Republican speaker of the House and current member of the Fox Corporation board of directors, said in his deposition that he had implored Mr. Murdoch and his son Lachlan, the chief executive officer, “that Fox News should not be spreading conspiracy theories.” Mr. Ryan suggested instead that the network pivot and “move on from Donald Trump and stop spouting election lies.”
The above is the reference article in the David French tweet.
Oliver Darcy/CNN Newsletter:
The Fox Corporation board has a huge mess on its hands — and it needs to work quickly to clean it up.
That's according to Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, the renowned professor and senior associate dean for leadership studies at the Yale School of Management. Sonnenfeld told me on Tuesday that the dramatic revelations brought to light by Dominion Voting Systems' $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News — showing it knowingly peddled election lies to its audience — are cause for serious concern that could threaten the parent company.
The filings, he said, showed members of the Fox Corp. board had failed to act to prevent misconduct by Fox executives, and warned the disclosures will result in "likely" shareholder lawsuits, a possible SEC investigation into "deceptive practices of the board for conspiring to conceal known misconduct with material adverse impact," and the potential loss of insurance protection for the company's directors and officers.
Sonnenfeld, who has advised hundreds of CEOs and recent U.S. presidents, said the board should take immediate action, including the removal of high-ranking personnel, such as Fox News chief executive Suzanne Scott, from their roles.
"The board has a duty to remove such officials for proven misconduct," Sonnenfeld told me by email, explaining that peddling known election lies — as "acknowledged in the company's own sworn testimony" — damaged the outlet's corporate reputation.
Jennifer Rubin/The Washington Post:
Ron DeSantis shows how not to run an education system
The Florida governor seems to view schools as the battleground for his war on inclusivity and truth. Whether it is Desantis’s “don’t say gay” law or his vendetta against African American and gender studies, his obsession with telling teachers what they cannot teach far outweighs his concern for how students are performing.
And as it turns out, that performance is pretty lousy.
While Florida officials — including DeSantis — have boasted about the state’s relatively high proficiency scores among fourth-graders, they have largely ignored how quickly those scores drop as students grow older. As education journalist Billy Townsend writes in an opinion piece for the Tampa Bay Times, “No other state comes close to Florida’s level of consistent fourth to eighth grade performance collapse.”
The Washington Post:
As CPAC’s head faces sexual assault claim, other leadership concerns emerge
Matt Schlapp, who runs the Conservative Political Action Conference, has been backed by prominent Republicans but some staffers complain of the group’s culture
With CPAC readying to welcome Trump back to its flagship annual gathering in D.C. this week, Schlapp is facing multiple challenges, including the exodus of more than half of its staff since 2021, according to the current and former employees and board members. Some expressed concern that Schlapp has given an inexperienced contractor too much influence. One former employee notified the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission last month of plans to sue over claims that she was fired in retaliation for complaining about a co-worker’s sexist and racist comments.
“The culture was toxic,” said the former communication director, Regina Bratton, in an interview. “From my perspective, he acted like a bully.”
Jill Lawrence/The Bulwark:
Josh Hawley’s False Choice
For a guy who says we should do less for Ukraine and more for America’s working people, he sure doesn’t support policies that help the working people.
Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley has been trending, sadly, for presenting a false and dangerous choice to his fellow Republicans in Congress: “You can either be the party of Ukraine and the globalists or you can be the party of East Palestine and the working people of this country.”
Puh-leese. It’s absurd to suggest the United States should ignore what’s happening in the rest of the world or that America can’t handle a literal train wreck at the same time it is helping Ukraine fight to survive and bury Vladimir Putin’s imperialist delusions of resuscitating the Russian Empire. What’s even more ridiculous is that Hawley himself isn’t choosing either option. He’s made clear he wants to back away from Ukraine, to cut off aid. But he has also passed up major opportunities to help working people.
What does Ukraine have to do with the unfortunate souls of East Palestine in the wake of a freight train derailment that spewed toxic chemicals all over their town? You won’t be surprised to hear, if you haven’t already, that a very concerned-looking Tucker Carlson appears to have led a willing and well-prepared Hawley into this thicket.
“Yeah, I don’t think they’re unrelated at all, Tucker,” Hawley says in a short video clip he tweeted.
If that wasn’t the summary you need, maybe this next piece is.
Katelyn Jetalina/Substack:
COVID-19 Origin Debate
I’ve been asked by many to comment on the SARS-CoV-2 origin debate and new Wall Street Journal article. And, honestly, I don’t want to touch this topic with a 10-foot pole. But, I will leave you with a few thoughts:
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The origin of COVID-19 is an ongoing scientific debate. Scientific consensus has not settled. We can all agree that the Wuhan market was an amplification event (i.e. super spreader), but I don’t think we will ever know how it got there because we’ve missed the window of opportunity for critical data. Disproving the lab leak will be close to impossible. This is a tragedy, but I look forward to seeing the ongoing science we can muster.
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Transparency is key, and I don’t like how things have to be “leaked” to be known.
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The debate is another example of false dichotomies. In reality, opinions range on a scale from “natural spillover” to “lab leak.” Perspectives fall somewhere within the spectrum of probabilities. I lean more towards natural spillover, but I’m certainly not 100%. (I’m a ~70% given some evidence released last year.) I think everyone should recognize where they land on this spectrum and why. Also recognize there are conflicts of interest all over the place.
Michael Tomasky/The New Republic:
Biden’s Biggest Job Now: Crush the Economic Argument
Events have conspired to give the president a chance to start putting the grand economic vision he articulated during the State of the Union into practice.
But now, Ohio awaits. The president is really good at building empathic connections to people who have experienced loss or are enduring worry; he should do fine in that setting. But there’s something far more important than local face time: Biden should focus the country’s attention on the way Wall Street is wrecking (literally) the freight-rail industry. The New Republic’s Tim Noah ably described all the ways that moneyed interests had hollowed out the industry last September at the time of the strike—laborers got Dickensian working conditions, communities got massive resistance to reasonable regulation, and the fat cats got the highest profits of any industrial sector in America.
In an interview over the weekend with ABC’s David Muir, Biden mentioned—twice—that the railroad companies make “tens of billions of dollars in profits.” The big four freight-rail companies are hauling in profits of around 50 percent (the average profit margin in American business is just under 10 percent). And, of course, they’re spending a lot of that money on stock buybacks to make themselves even richer. They’re a huge target, and making them into a bad guy is exactly of a piece with the middle-out economics Biden is making the centerpiece of his policy campaign. Taking a stand against the highest-profit employer in America would send a strong signal that he means what he says about sticking up for the little guy—and that he’s ready and willing to make some enemies.
And finally Eric Swalwell tells a story that actually happened: Matt Gaetz invited a gun club acquaintance to a committee hearing, but it turns out the guy has a … well… track record.
But better Rep. Swallwell tells the story.
YouTube: