Systemic Error Podcast

What happened RawStory reports that U.S. District Judge Todd Edelman raised the possibility that the Trump administration’s prosecution of Olympic athlete David Hearn was politically driven in part because Hearn was represented by Norm Eisen, a longtime legal adversary of President Donald Trump. Legal journalist Adam Klasfeld highlighted the judge’s warning about another potentially “meritless, po...

What happened RawStory reports that Sen. Tim Scott, chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, conceded that Kansas’s Senate race was “more competitive” than he wanted, while still predicting Republican Sen. Roger Marshall would defeat Democrat Adam Hamilton on Nov. 3. The reporting does not establish that Kansas is out of Republican reach; it shows that a historically safe Republican...

What happened RawStory argues that former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s public break with Donald Trump does not represent an ideological conversion. At the Texas Tribune Festival, Greene reportedly declared that “MAGA is dead,” criticized Republicans unwilling to hold Trump to his campaign promises, and described clashes with him—including being yelled at in the Oval Office. The article contends t...

What happened AlterNet reports that the Trump administration undercut Sen. Susan Collins’s central reelection pitch: that her seniority and role as the Senate’s lead Republican appropriator allow her to secure federal money for Maine. Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought told Congress that the administration would eliminate $1 billion lawmakers had approved, demonstrating that c...

What happened AlterNet, citing a Washington Examiner report published Thursday, says Kansas ranchers condemned President Donald Trump over high diesel costs, expanded beef imports, and immigration enforcement that could disrupt meatpacking. One farmer said Trump did not know what he was talking about; rancher Chuck Madron accused the administration of abandoning domestic producers while admitting...

What happened The Democratic National Committee sued the Trump administration after the Pentagon removed an option from the Federal Post Card Application used by Americans abroad to register and request absentee ballots. RawStory, citing NPR and The Guardian, reports that the deleted checkbox covered U.S. citizens born overseas who have never lived in the United States—a group permitted to vote in...

What happened Miles Taylor, a former Department of Homeland Security official in Donald Trump’s first administration, argued that the strongest sign of Republican alarm is Trump’s reported campaign schedule: despite promising to visit 35 competitive districts, his first rallies were set for Durant, Oklahoma, and Mobile, Alabama. As AlterNet reports, Taylor interprets those stops as evidence that R...

What happened President Donald Trump’s administration presented South Korean investment in the Alaska LNG pipeline as a settled commitment worth more than $50 billion. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced the figure during a Wednesday Oval Office event, and Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan declared that the project was “happening,” promising more than 10,000 jobs. South Korean officials rejecte...

What happened RawStory reports that conservative writer Matt K. Lewis plans to vote for Democrats across the ballot in the November 2026 midterms. Lewis, who previously used protest write-ins rather than support Democratic presidential nominees, argues that Republicans must “hit rock bottom” electorally before the party can reform. In a Washington Sun column summarized by RawStory, Lewis cited the...

What happened RawStory, citing The Guardian, reports that the Justice Department’s election-threats task force has effectively stopped prosecuting new cases under the Trump administration, even as former officials warn that threats against election workers are rising. The department did not directly answer The Guardian’s question about the task force’s status; former Oregon election-security offic...

What happened RawStory reports that Fox News analyst Brit Hume warned that Republicans were entering the midterm election in a weak position, citing a Fox poll that showed Democrat Abdul El-Sayed leading Republican Mike Rogers 51 percent to 48 percent in Michigan’s Senate race. With fewer than five weeks before Election Day, 69 percent of Michigan voters named the cost of living as their leading c...

What happened RawStory reports that some evangelical voters who strongly backed Donald Trump are turning against him over what religion professor J. Derrick Lemons describes as a broken promise of foreign-policy isolationism. Lemons said anger over an unspecified war, rising gas prices, and the lack of an exit strategy could damage Trump and Republicans in the midterms, though the article provides...

What happened RawStory reports that on October 1, 2026, photographs displayed near the White House Palm Room included President Donald Trump posing with Russian President Vladimir Putin and smiling while shaking hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Washington correspondent Jacqueline Alemany published images of the display after spotting it. The photographs prompted condemnation online. Republ...

What happened RawStory reports that President Donald Trump paused when Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy asked why he was campaigning in Texas after Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton privately said Trump’s Dallas convention had hurt polling numbers. Trump called the convention a “tremendous success,” defended its audience figures and did not answer whether Paxton had contacted him. The New Yor...

What happened RawStory reports that Donald Trump said he wants the Oval Office designated a federal landmark to preserve both the room and his gilded redesign. Asked whether a successor could remove that decor under his proposal, Trump answered, “No.” The article does not establish that any designation has been created or that Trump has legal authority to bind future presidents this way. Trump als...

What happened RawStory reports that Chief Justice John Roberts has become socially isolated and publicly protested around his longtime summer home near Port Clyde, Maine. Residents interviewed by The New York Times linked the backlash chiefly to the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade and Roberts’s 2024 majority opinion granting Donald Trump broad immunity from criminal prosecuti...

What happened Live Now from Fox briefly cut away from Vice President JD Vance’s Thursday speech in Lakeland, Florida, after protesters repeatedly interrupted him during a rally supporting Republican gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds and Sen. Ashley Moody. According to RawStory, the Trump 47 Committee paid for the midterm campaign event. Vance called the first heckler a “Democrat plant” and cla...

What happened AlterNet reports that Bethany Lnenicka, a 41-year-old small-farm operator in Fairfax, Iowa, who voted for Donald Trump three times, said rising grocery and household costs have left her disappointed with his second term. She had expected conditions resembling his first term but said they had not improved much and that income was not keeping pace with expenses. An AP-NORC poll of 2,14...

What happened AlterNet columnist Robert Reich reports that investment companies backed by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have accumulated between $3.2 billion and $6.3 billion in Pentagon contracts, current funding, and future options since January 2025. He also identifies Palantir, founded by Trump and JD Vance ally Peter Thiel, as a major Defense Department partner benefiting from the war with...

What happened AlterNet reports that White House officials and Republicans fear their political support may be collapsing, according to journalist Jonathan Lemire. He cited an Associated Press-NORC poll in which 17 percent of U.S. adults approved of President Donald Trump’s handling of living costs and 26 percent approved of his handling of the economy. On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Lemire said 68 perc...

What happened AlterNet reports that the Trump administration used federal money to air three television advertisements encouraging Americans to vote in the November 3 congressional elections. At least one reportedly relies heavily on footage from Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, and the campaign has cost $2.5 million so far, with spending plans said to reach $100 million. Trump characterized the adve...

What happened Ken Paxton may lose some disaffected Republican votes not to Democratic nominee James Talarico, but to Libertarian Ted Brown. AlterNet, citing The Bulwark’s Lauren Egan and a Texas Democratic strategist close to Talarico’s campaign, reports that Brown could receive 3 or 4 percent in the Texas Senate race as some John Cornyn voters recoil from both Paxton and, potentially, Talarico. T...

What happened A federal judge ruled that President Donald Trump could not unilaterally fire Roger Rogoff, the court-appointed U.S. attorney for Western Washington. According to AlterNet’s account of reporting by Politico, U.S. District Judge Stanley Bastian held that Rogoff legally occupied the office after taking his oath on July 15 and ordered the administration to recognize him as U.S. attorney...

What happened AlterNet reports that retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig warned Republicans could try on January 3, 2027, to prevent a duly elected Democratic House majority from taking office. His warning is a forecast, not a reported plan: Luttig argues that Donald Trump has pressured Speaker Mike Johnson and House Republicans to portray a possible November 3 midterm defeat as fraudulent and...

What happened Senator Steve Daines told Republican voters unhappy with MAGA candidates to “get over” their anger and vote for the party anyway. As AlterNet reported, the retiring Montana senator warned Thursday at the Richard Nixon Foundation’s Grand Strategy Summit that Republicans could suffer losses in the 2026 midterms comparable to their 2006 defeat. Daines blamed part of the danger on Trump-...