Weird, wild stuff is happening in America. Members of Congress were blocked from entering the Department of Education by both a random man and police officers.

I’ll start with some articles on the context of the coup. Below that I will include terrifying reporting. Below that, where to go to learn about resistance. Scroll as needed.

Coup Context

Send the below articles to your friends and neighbors who need to understand the moment AND why their regular sources of information are causing them to miss it.

Timothy Snyder - Of course it’s a coup

Imagine if it had gone like this.

Ten Tesla cybertrucks, painted in camouflage colors with a giant X on each roof, drive noisily through Washington DC. Tires screech. Out jump a couple of dozen young men, dressed in red and black Devil’s Champion armored costumes. After giving Nazi salutes, they grab guns and run to one government departmental after another, calling out slogans like “all power to Supreme Leader Skibidi Hitler.”

Historically, that is what coups looked like. The center of power was a physical place. Occupying it, and driving out the people who held office, was to claim control. So if a cohort of armed men with odd symbols had stormed government buildings, Americans would have recognized that as a coup attempt.

And that sort of coup attempt would have failed.

Now imagine that, instead, the scene goes like this.

A couple dozen young men go from government office to government office, dressed in civilian clothes and armed only with zip drives. Using technical jargon and vague references to orders from on high, they gain access to the basic computer systems of the federal government. Having done so, they proceed to grant their Supreme Leader access to information and the power to start and stop all government payments.

That coup is, in fact, happening. And if we do not recognize it for what it is, it could succeed.

Parker Molloy - The Media Is Missing the Story: Elon Musk Is Staging a Coup

In the past two weeks, Elon Musk — a man no one elected to any office — has gained unprecedented access to Social Security payment systems, fired federal workers, shuttered entire agencies, and installed his loyalists throughout the government. If this were happening in any other country, we'd call it what it is: a coup.

Oliver Darcy - Trumpocalypse Now: News outlets aren’t ignoring Trump’s disturbing actions, but they’re failing to present the extreme measures coming out of Washington as an urgent crisis.

Terrifying Updates

Musk Watch - Musk associates given unfettered access to private data of government employees

The civil servants who oversee the OPM’s information technology services were then instructed to provide access to Musk's associates, according to the OPM staffers who spoke to Musk Watch. One of the OPM staffers received an email from the agency’s new leadership instructing them to give Musk’s team “access [to] the system as an admin user" and "code read and write permissions."

“They have access to the code itself, which means they can make updates to anything that they want,” the staffer explained.

It’s being reported that one DOGE member, Marko Elez, resigned after his bigoted views were discovered, but it appears several of the young men aiding Musk’s coup have ties to neo-Nazis and white supremacists. Chad Loder Bluesky Thread:

Wired.com - DOGE Teen Owns ‘Tesla.Sexy LLC’ and Worked at Startup That Has Hired Convicted Hackers

A young technologist known online as “Big Balls,” who works for Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has access to sensitive US government systems. But his professional and online history call into question whether he would pass the background check typically required to obtain security clearances, security experts tell WIRED.

Carl Quintanilla’s post links to Washington Post (don’t subscribe to WaPo)

Dannagal Young - National Science Foundation deletes decades long tracking of global temperatures.

Talking Points Memo - Musk Cronies Dive Into Treasury Dept Payments Code Base

NBC News reports on DEI Watchlist by American Accountability Foundation while giving zero context that AAF was the org that harassed Biden nominees until they withdrew their nominations and is funded by Donor’s Trust, the donor-advised fund of racist, right-wing billionaires like the Uihlein, Bradley, Coors, Scaife, and Koch families.

Jamelle Bouie provides essential context:

Kim Kelly reports that DOGE is coming after the Department of Labor and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This report from S&P Global contextualizes why this could upend our economy. More terrifying commentary from Michael Sainato here.

Senator Ed Markey was denied entrance to the EPA and mainstream media is headlining it like Democrats are in the wrong for being “anti DOGE.” America should be framed as being anti-DOGE because DOGE is destroying America. Here’s reporting from The New Republic on Trump’s anti-environment moves.

Trump is hinting at not leaving office after 2028 and mainstream media is telling us that it can’t happen even as Trump has spent the last three weeks illegally violating several parts of the Constitution.

Substitute teachers in Texas are asking ICE to come arrest kids.

ACTION: What Can Be Done?

I think informed people who want to do something about things like a coup happening in America often feel unsure of what can be done. I also think they get demoralized if the answer isn’t a quick fix. After all, they have jobs, relationships, children, and a whole life to attend to. The thing is that the work of saving democracy isn’t very sexy and it requires effort. If that feels overwhelming just do one thing that you can manage. Everything helps.

Indivisible has multiple action steps that you can take here.

Be like the Visibility Brigade. Guerilla messaging is essential in a time when our regular sources of information are insufficiently making things clear. Be information, literally. Wear shirts or hats or hang signs outside you home that stand up for democracy and sound the alarm.

Incredible media critic Dan Froomkin has started Heads Up News. Read the entire about section here, but here’s a snippet:

You want to know who’s making a difference -- to cheer them on and maybe even help them out.

The corporate media isn’t telling you.

Every Wednesday, Heads Up News gives you a heads-up on the week’s most consequential acts of resistance, along with profiles of people making a difference, and other news from greater “fighting-back” community.

Go subscribe to Heads Up News.

Josh Marshall writes about what options for resisting the coup are available to the opposition party at the federal level.

Ok, this post was pretty ad-hoc and I never quite arrived at a consistent formatting style, but I think you’ll forgive me. Reminder to follow and subscribe to the sources in this post. You can follow them on social media or get a subscription to their newsletters/newsrooms. Here’s to healthier information.

“Public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy.” When you sign up as a subscriber or pledge a subscription, you're supporting this idea. Every single day.

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In addition to other programming, I livestream about media and democracy every Monday-Wednesday 2:30-4:30pm ET. You can watch me do it live and check out all my content on Twitch and YouTube. I’m also on TikTok and Instagram and Bluesky. Every like, follow, repost, and subscribe helps me grow and continue the work of changing our information ecosystem to one in which we all achieve healthier outcomes.

Corporate Media Isn’t Informing The Public

Crime is going down.

The public is convinced it is going up.

The US economy is faring better than any major nation.

Meanwhile, half of Americans believe unemployment is at a 50-year high, when it is actually at a 50-year low.

Everyone, and I mean everyone, is talking about the price of eggs but how many know that high egg prices are largely driven by decades of corporate greed?

National newsrooms aren’t informing the public with the prominence and frequency necessary for Americans to absorb basic realities about the state of their nation.

This is especially troubling in a major election year.

Corporate Media Could Pretty Easily Inform The Public

In a recent piece for his Press Watch website, Dan Froomkin offered great suggestions for how newsrooms could “actually inform the electorate in a constructive way.”

• Identify a key issue. Explain what’s at stake. Discuss possible solutions. Then explain what the candidates are proposing.

• Identify highly trafficked falsehoods. Then debunk them, trace their origin, and report on who’s spreading them and why.

• Similarly, take a poll to determine what people believe about the current state of affairs in this country. Then identify those beliefs that are factually incorrect and commit to assiduously and repeatedly correcting the record until those numbers change.

Mainstream media’s obsession with airing “bothsides” of issues, even at those times when only one side is rooted in fact, leads to confusion and a general lack of understanding amongst the public.

We can have a media system where an over abundance of facts choke out the weeds of misinformation. And the change can start with you.

You Have Information Alternatives, Here’s How To Find Them

At its best, journalism allows us to participate in democracy by holding the powerful to account, exposing corruption, warning us of threats to our safety, exploring solutions to social problems, and connecting us to our communities.

We must replace our failing corporate media with the many outlets doing civic-minded journalism at the local, state, and national levels. The more we make the switch, the more we can shift mainstream journalism paradigms away from the status quo that’s keeping us in the dark. Here’s how to find better news.

State and Local

The Media and Democracy Project (MAD) has put together an expansive, searchable local journalism directory that covers all US states and territories. Want to keep track of the recovery efforts from Hurricane Helene in Asheville, NC? They’ve got you covered.

What happens at your state capitol likely has a bigger impact on your daily life than anything going on at the federal level. As newsrooms shutter across the country, it’s imperative that watchdogs continue to cover these seats of power. MAD’s local journalism directory features many outlets that provide state government coverage, including all newsrooms that are a part of the States Newsroom project and several that have partnered with the Solutions Journalism Network.

MAD regularly updates this project and by year’s end they project it will contain over 2,000 newsrooms. Search the directory here.

National

With legacy media corporations prioritizing frames and narratives that play up sensation, drama, and entertainment, finding national news outlets with a focus on informing the public is difficult.

I recommend canceling your legacy media subscriptions (e.g., New York Times, Washington Post) and using those funds to subscribe to the outlets below for national news. You’ll be taking an active step towards the proliferation of more pro-democracy journalism. I believe in you.

ProPublica

The Guardian

The New Republic

The Intercept

Popular Information

Beware Pink Slime

There are thousands of “pink slime” news sites spreading disinformation and propaganda. Pink slime sites “mimic local news providers but are highly partisan and tend to bury their deep ties to dark money, lobbying groups, and special interests.”

Here are some questions to ask when evaluating news sites for journalistic integrity:

• Is there a byline? If there’s no staff reporter associated with the content, you could be reading generic AI generated content produced by scraping publicly available data, mixed with propaganda designed to manipulate opinion.

• What does their “about us” section say? A newsroom doing journalism on behalf of its community will often feature an ‘about’ section that talks about its values. They might stress a commitment to reporting factual information. Pink slime sites can mimic trustworthy sites and say whatever they want, but often skimp on about sections. Pink slime site The Keystone Courier has no about section at all yet tells you twice on its landing page how much you can trust them. Generally, if a newsroom obsessively tells you how much you can trust them and then doesn’t back that up with reasons why you can trust them…you shouldn’t trust them. Looking at you, Epoch Times.

  

• Do they make it easy to see who funds them? A trustworthy site will often openly address how they fund their operation.

• Do they make corrections to stories? If an outlet issues corrections to stories, that’s a good sign they at least care about getting the record straight.

Your Media Choices Can Make A Huge Difference, Seriously

The information pumped through our phones, radios, TVs and computers shapes our culture, our beliefs, and our outcomes. When we click on a piece of information or engage with a news source, that choice is communicated back to a corporate and social media matrix incentivized to find and feed us more of the same. By choosing healthier sources of information we can have a profound effect on this system.

You are already doing little things in life because you hope they will make a difference to the health of the wider world. Maybe you donate to a certain aid organization, choose to drive an electric car, try not to eat beef, or you use reusable shopping bags. When it comes to your personal health, you pay a little extra attention, like when you read the labels at the grocery store. Making positive choices is a part of your life.

Being mindful of your personal media choices can have a real impact on society. Adding pro-democracy news sources to your media diet, and helping to fund them, increases your civic health (which has personal health benefits!) and promotes the generation of more healthy information.

So what are you waiting for? Start your journey towards healthier information today! Cancel those legacy media subscriptions and invest in journalists dedicated to informing you. In short order, a majority of Americans might even know basic facts about their country. Wouldn’t that be something?

Have suggestions?

What are some of your healthy news practices? Got a great outlet to share? Let everyone know in the comments.

“Public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy.” When you subscribe, you're supporting the idea that we all deserve healthier information!

Click below to help me keep up the fight for better outcomes with healthier info!

With love,
Brian

Help spread this far and wide:

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