Systemic Error Podcast

What happened AlterNet reports that the Trump administration asked a federal appeals panel to condemn U.S. District Judge Laura Provinzino’s use of civil contempt against Justice Department attorney Matthew Isihara. In February, Provinzino ordered Isihara to pay $500 a day until the government returned identification documents taken from a Minnesota man, after federal officials repeatedly failed t...

What happened AlterNet reports that former State Department official Ned Price disputed President Donald Trump’s claim that his administration gave Russia “nothing in return” for the release of Stephen Hubbard. Speaking with Nicolle Wallace on Wednesday, Price pointed to actions he characterized as concessions to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Price cited an announced diesel deal, waived sancti...

What happened AlterNet reports that clinical psychologist Vincent Greenwood described President Donald Trump’s conduct as showing “ominous” traits—impulsivity, remorselessness and a drive to dominate—and argued that they justified considering the 25th Amendment. Greenwood warned that the danger could increase if Republicans suffered major losses in the then-upcoming midterm elections. The article...

What happened AlterNet reports that former Kansas Gov. Bill Graves called President Donald Trump’s campaign rallies a “freak show at the carnival” and questioned whether Trump’s Monday appearance in Wichita would help Republican Sen. Roger Marshall win reelection. Graves argued that spectators may attend for Trump’s performance without becoming votes for Marshall—and that the rally could instead e...

What happened AlterNet argues that corruption—not a sudden conversion over Russia—finally fractured Donald Trump’s political base. The immediate triggers were his failure to deliver the complete Epstein files he had promised, worsening living costs, and growing suspicion that he was using the presidency for personal enrichment. The outlet also reports a sharp turn toward Vladimir Putin: Trump lift...

What happened AlterNet reports that psychologist John Paul Garrison believes Donald Trump’s apparent confusion and “seizure-like episodes” are not improving. Garrison based that assessment on public footage, including a White House event on women’s health and a rally in Kentucky—not on a personal medical examination. At the White House event, Garrison said he observed movements spreading across Tr...

What happened AlterNet reports that Donald Trump blamed Republican strategist Karl Rove and Texas Sen. John Cornyn for making it harder for Trump-backed Ken Paxton to defeat Democrat James Talarico in a Texas Senate race. The article argues that Trump’s Truth Social post—especially his praise of Paxton as Texas’s greatest attorney general—exposed the weakness of his own judgment rather than establ...

What happened AlterNet reports that Republican operatives were surprised when rural voters in recent focus-group conversations blamed billionaires, corrupt politicians, and a rigged economic system for their financial distress. The reporting does not establish that these voters are moving to the Democratic Party, but it says some are receptive to populist economic arguments. The article cites rura...

What happened Robert Reich accused The New York Times of “dangerously fraudulent” coverage for presenting online reactions to a Michigan Senate debate between Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed as two roughly equivalent partisan narratives. As described by AlterNet, the Times analyzed more than 13,000 posts on X and contrasted what purportedly left- and right-leaning feeds showed u...

What happened Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno told Fox News that Republicans could be “dead as a party” if they lose working-class voters. As AlterNet reports, Moreno argued that Donald Trump rescued a party that had abandoned those voters, only for Republicans now to risk losing them over economic pressure and the war with Iran. The warning came less than two weeks before the 2026 midterm elections...

What happened AlterNet, citing ProPublica’s reporting, says an FBI public-corruption investigation examined allegations that Sen. Lindsey Graham traded official help for campaign contributions. Former Navatek CEO Martin Kao told agents that, at a private Washington dinner on March 3, 2020, Graham agreed to support roughly $10 million in federal work benefiting Navatek after requesting a total of $...

What happened AlterNet reports that former Department of Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor believes Donald Trump opposed foreign election interference selectively: not as a matter of national sovereignty, but when he thought it could hurt him politically. Taylor bases that conclusion on his experience in Trump’s first administration, while presenting Trump’s underlying motive as his ow...

What happened President Donald Trump had White House staff distribute printed copies of a recent Truth Social post to reporters waiting outside the Oval Office on Tuesday, according to AlterNet. The post claimed that Trump had spent or would spend more than $400 million on the midterm elections, including more than $300 million on advertising, voter contact, rallies, turnout programs, and what he...

What happened AlterNet reports that Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign circulated an attack ad featuring Donna Arthur, the mother of Democratic candidate Amy Acton, accusing Acton of lying about her childhood. Acton’s brother, Philip Stearns, said the campaign was exploiting family trauma involving alleged sexual abuse by Arthur’s husband. The ad drew condemnation f...

What happened AlterNet reports that President Donald Trump’s lawyers are seeking to prevent the BBC from calling former special counsel Jack Smith as a witness in Trump’s defamation lawsuit against the broadcaster. Trump alleges that a BBC documentary misleadingly edited portions of his January 6, 2021, Ellipse speech to suggest that he directly called for violence at the Capitol. The BBC disputes...

What happened AlterNet reports that President Donald Trump has intensified his public attacks on Fox News while promoting the pro-Trump Right Side Broadcasting Network. Conservative commentator Jim Geraghty argued that the dispute shows an increasingly strained relationship between Trump and the network as the midterms approach. Trump praised RSBN’s coverage of a Kentucky appearance and accused Fo...

What happened AlterNet attributes the renewed squeeze on US paychecks to President Donald Trump’s decision to attack Iran at the end of February. The outlet reports that Iran retaliated by blocking oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, driving up energy, transportation, and fertilizer costs while wage growth slowed. According to the article, year-over-year wholesale inflation reached 6.3 per...

What happened AlterNet reports that Homeland Security Investigations, the ICE branch responsible for criminal investigations, inadvertently switched internet providers in April of the previous year and lost its ability to conduct court-authorized wiretaps for months. During the outage, wiretaps reported by Department of Homeland Security investigators fell by more than 80 percent under then-DHS Se...

What happened Seven Boeing 737-700 jets acquired for the Department of Homeland Security as part of President Donald Trump’s deportation campaign were largely idle at Lake Charles Regional Airport in Louisiana, AlterNet reported, citing Bloomberg. Aircraft-tracking data indicated that each had flown fewer than five times since April 2026. The aircraft were part of a reported $464 million purchase...

What happened AlterNet reports that President Donald Trump delivered a confused passage at a Monday political rally, invoking Barack Obama, “Mohammed,” Michigan, and an unspecified campaign appearance without clearly connecting them. The report does not identify whom Trump meant by “Mohammed,” establish what event Obama was supposedly attending, or explain whether Trump’s claims were accurate. Alt...

What happened AlterNet, citing Bloomberg Law, reports that U.S. District Judge Ada Brown emailed confidential material—including sealed court papers unrelated to the misconduct allegations against her—to roughly 140 judges, lawyers, and journalists. The Judicial Council for the Fifth Circuit disclosed the distribution in an order issued Tuesday while confirming that Brown was already under miscond...

What happened AlterNet reports that Vice President JD Vance, asked at a press conference to define socialism and explain the success of candidates described that way, first connected the term with prioritizing workers, then said he no longer knew what it meant and substituted complaints about foreign workers and transgender athletes. The “trap” in the headline is AlterNet columnist Sabrina Haake’s...

What happened AlterNet reports that, early in President Donald Trump’s second term, political appointees at the Department of Homeland Security directed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to secretly obtain and hack a voting machine, then send its findings to the White House. CISA staff were also reportedly told not to notify the manufacturer about discovered vulnerabilities. Car...

What happened AlterNet reports that Donald Trump asked oil executives at an April 2024 Mar-a-Lago dinner to raise $1 billion for his presidential campaign while presenting industry-friendly policies as a “deal.” Citing The Washington Post, the outlet says Trump offered tax breaks, regulatory rollbacks, expanded drilling, an end to the Biden administration’s pause on new liquefied-natural-gas expor...

What happened AlterNet reports that anti-Trump conservative commentator Rick Wilson argued on Molly Jong-Fast’s “Fast Politics” podcast that President Donald Trump’s increasingly unfiltered remarks are undermining a central MAGA myth: that he represents “robust, strict masculinity.” Wilson pointed particularly to Trump’s repeated comments about the attractiveness, physique, and appearance of Ohio...