Systemic Error Podcast

What happened RawStory, summarizing NPR’s reporting, says FBI counterintelligence staffing has fallen to roughly 50% to 60% of authorized positions in many field offices, with some offices cutting the number of counterintelligence squads in half. Agents and analysts have been redirected toward violent crime, gangs, and immigration—the priorities President Donald Trump emphasizes while campaigning...

What happened RawStory columnist Ray Richmond writes that President Donald Trump told a rally in Grand Island, Nebraska, that Iran could “take out” Los Angeles or San Diego and called that “a very small price to pay.” Richmond interprets the remark as encouragement for Iran to attack millions of Americans in two cities that overwhelmingly reject Trump politically. The column says the crowd cheered...

What happened AlterNet reports that the Justice Department appealed to the conservative 11th Circuit for access to information concerning 2020 election workers in Fulton County, Georgia. The filing misspelled “north” twice, but the substantive failure came earlier: U.S. District Judge William Ray ruled in July that the demand was unreasonable and would not produce information supporting any viable...

What happened AlterNet reports that the Trump administration did not invite observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe to monitor the November 3 midterm elections. If that remains unchanged, this would be the first U.S. federal election since 2002—and the first of seven midterm elections during that period—without OSCE observers. The State Department said the OSCE shou...

What happened AlterNet reports that a newly unsealed, court-appointed monitor’s report found that Stephanie Ameiss, whose firm AZ Truthfinder received a Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office contract for sensitive internal investigations, omitted significant parts of her background from her résumé. Those omissions included six years as lead investigator for Understanding the Threat—classified by the So...

What happened Former New Jersey governor and EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman told AlterNet that the Republican Party she left in 2022 is unlikely to return after Donald Trump leaves its leadership. Her answer to the headline’s extinction metaphor is blunt: the old GOP is gone because, in her assessment, the party has become a “cult” whose positions change with Trump’s commands rather than...

What happened AlterNet reports that political analyst David Rothkopf expects the Jeffrey Epstein controversy to become “much, much bigger” after the midterm elections, particularly if Democrats gain congressional power, call witnesses, or obtain new information. That is Rothkopf’s forecast, not a reported new revelation from the files. Rothkopf made the argument while discussing President Donald T...

What happened President Donald Trump signed an executive order temporarily waiving penalties for highway use of cheaper red-dyed diesel, but CNN analyst Matt Egan said the measure would provide only modest relief and would not address the forces driving diesel prices. AlterNet reported that diesel averaged about $6.32 a gallon and had risen nearly 80 percent so far that year. Egan estimated that f...

What happened AlterNet reports that Digger , a $180 million climate-disaster film starring Tom Cruise, failed at the box office. The film depicts an oilman whose Greenland drilling triggers ecological catastrophe, then reveals that this narrative is a play performed in a future already devastated by those decisions. The review praises the film’s climate politics, elaborate structure and visual amb...

What happened AlterNet reports that Giffords PAC, the gun-control organization founded by former Rep. Gabby Giffords, launched ads in two Republican-leaning House districts as part of a planned $10 million intervention ahead of the November 2026 midterms. The “new issue” is gun policy, deployed alongside public-safety arguments in races national Democrats have not typically treated as top-tier tar...

What happened The venue Elie Mystal identifies as “where Republicans go to do what voters reject” is the Supreme Court. AlterNet reports that Mystal, writing in The Nation on Monday, argued that Republican-aligned litigants use the Court to pursue outcomes they could not secure through elections, including challenges involving the National Voter Registration Act, Title IX, gun restrictions, protec...

What happened AlterNet reports that Tennessee officials intend to attempt to execute Christa Pike again if she recovers from a coma after two failed lethal-injection attempts. Pike remained hospitalized in critical condition with significant injuries to both arms; the state’s pentobarbital injections reportedly entered her arm tissue rather than her veins. The execution process lasted more than tw...

What happened A new Alliance for Youth Power PAC/YouGov poll found Donald Trump deeply unpopular among Michigan voters ages 18 to 29: 78% viewed him unfavorably and 19% favorably. AlterNet reports that the survey, released Monday less than five weeks before the November election, also showed young voters favoring Democratic candidates by wide margins in Michigan’s statewide races. Among respondent...

What happened RawStory reports that Jonathan V. Last, an anti-Trump conservative editor at The Bulwark, warned that even a decisive Democratic midterm victory would not guarantee a Democratic presidential win in 2028. His “doomsday scenario” is that Republican candidates could blame a Democratic-controlled Congress for national problems, present themselves as insurgents and retain the White House....

What happened RawStory reports that conservative podcaster Ben Ferguson called former special counsel Jack Smith’s “No Kings” shirt “pretty rich,” falsely accusing Smith of trying to overturn an election. Smith wore the Bruce Springsteen tour shirt at the Power to the People Fest in Columbia, Maryland, on Saturday. Fox News host Harris Faulkner introduced the shirt after noting that Smith had test...

What happened RawStory reports that Sen. Thom Tillis defended his vote to confirm Attorney General Todd Blanche after “The View” co-host Ana Navarro challenged Blanche’s refusal to examine reported payments by Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev toward Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding celebrations in the Bahamas. When Tillis called Blanche qualified to give President Donald Trump honest advice, Navarro shoute...

What happened RawStory reports that two unnamed U.S. sources briefed Drop Site News on a classified CIA assessment warning that Israel could face civil war or “total collapse.” The August report, titled “Fracture From Within,” reportedly described several pressures converging ahead of Israel’s October 27 elections. Neither RawStory nor Drop Site News obtained the document itself, and the reporting...

What happened RawStory argues that Senate Republicans’ hostile questioning of former special counsel Jack Smith reflected loyalty to Donald Trump and an effort to divert attention from the Epstein files. At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, Republican senators Eric Schmitt and John Kennedy attacked Smith’s credibility, while ranking Democrat Dick Durbin welcomed him. Smith answered...

What happened RawStory columnist Jason Miciak argues that Donald Trump is pressing ahead with a federally supported AI and data-center expansion despite mounting opposition from voters, including Republicans. The column says local communities are objecting to electricity costs, water use, land consumption, and public subsidies, while GOP candidates are struggling to defend the policy. Citing Axios...

What happened RawStory reports that online critics compared the redesigned U.S. passport to an AI-generated layout because its cover uses a small all-caps “PASSPORT” above an oversized country name—a typographic device associated by commenters with Claude. The reporting provides no evidence that Claude or any other AI system designed the passport. Secretary of State Marco Rubio unveiled the “Fligh...

What happened RawStory reports that California Republican gubernatorial nominee Steve Hilton released a campaign ad depicting one young woman helping another mark a mail ballot for him while they sit on a bed beneath a Pride flag. Hilton, a former Fox News host endorsed by Donald Trump in April, called the spot provocative and funny before releasing a video saying he regretted the pain it caused....

What happened AlterNet reports that Paul Waldman, writing for MS NOW, identified the “unmanly truth” as the Trump administration’s failure to deliver the economic security it promised young men and other voters who backed Donald Trump in 2024. Citing the latest federal jobs report, Waldman argued that prices remain burdensome, manufacturing employment is lower than when Trump took office, and the...

What happened AlterNet reports that, in a 75-minute interview with Time, President Donald Trump rejected unfavorable polling, blamed the press for public understanding of his statements, defended “annihilating” Iran as a means of creating peace, and declined to rule out invoking emergency powers around the approaching midterm elections. When asked whether ICE agents would be sent to polling places...

What happened Nine U.S. service members wounded in an Iranian drone strike said Pentagon medical care left them navigating serious injuries largely on their own. According to RawStory’s account of Associated Press reporting, the March 1 strike at Port Shuaiba, Kuwait, killed six troops and injured dozens on the second day of the war. The soldiers described delayed evacuation, inadequate transport,...

What happened According to RawStory, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s Consumer Protection Division sent a small central Texas pediatric practice a 28-item demand in December seeking 10 years of vaccine records, internal policies, and details of every benefit received from vaccine manufacturers. The letter instructed the pediatrician, identified only as Rachel, not to disclose the request and sa...