Systemic Error Podcast

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) listens as U.S. Representative Carlos Gimenez (R-FL) addresses reporters, on the day of a House Republican Conference meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on July 14, 2026. REUTERS/Ken Cedeno What happened RawStory reports that New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman told the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin that Republicans she speaks with expect serious...

FBI Director Kash Patel testifies before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., September 16, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst What happened RawStory reports that FBI Director Kash Patel posted a campaign-style infographic on September 27, 2026, boasting that he had made 101 calls to “foreign partners” during...

US President Donald Trump speaks during the Presidents Cup at the Medinah Country Club, in Medinah, Illinois, US, September 27, 2026. REUTERS/Nathan Howard What happened RawStory reports that an attendee at the Presidents Cup in Medinah, Illinois, appeared to shout a profanity-laced accusation at President Donald Trump during his Sunday remarks. The words are not independently established in the r...

(Official White House Photo by Molly Riley) What happened AlterNet reports that New York Times contributing writer Molly Jong-Fast described Donald Trump’s White House as a “sycophancy Olympics,” where officials compete through imitation and televised praise. The “living diet” in the headline refers to a reportedly shared regimen of meat and sauerkraut followed by several senior administration fig...

NASA / VIIRS data courtesy of NOAA. What happened AlterNet, republishing Grist, reported that a developing El Niño had pushed temperatures in the Niño 3.4 region of the Pacific to 3.11 degrees Celsius above normal, surpassing the peak recorded in November 2015. Forecast models cited in the article put the chance of the event remaining “very strong” through the end of that year at 90 percent. The r...

FILE PHOTO: Federal agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conduct an immigration enforcement operation in Pine Grove, Minnesota, U.S., January 28, 2026. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton/File Photo What happened RawStory reports that ICE officers nationwide received verbal instructions over the weekend to temporarily stop arresting undocumented immigrants unless they had criminal conv...

U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) listens to an aide during a Senate Finance Committee hearing on health care costs on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., November 19, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst What happened Former Republican Rep. Barbara Comstock told MS NOW that Republicans had effectively stopped trying to improve their November prospects and were instead attempting to “make the patient c...

B‑1B Lancer bomber at the RAF Fairford airbase, which hosts US Air Force personnel, in Fairford, Gloucestershire, Britain, September 27, 2026. According to the police, security measures were increased around the air base after police arrested several men on suspicion of offences under the Explosives Act. REUTERS/Toby Shepheard TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY What happened RawStory reported that residents of...

REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein What happened RawStory reports that former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene accused Republicans of using reports of a migrant caravan to frighten voters before the 2026 midterms because “nothing else is working.” Her September 27 post responded to activist Anthony Aguero’s claim that more than 400 migrants, predominantly Honduran, had entered Mexico and were heading toward the...

U.S. Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) speaks to reporters in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump saying he may temporarily drop the nomination of Todd Blanche to be U.S. attorney general, as he arrives for a vote at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 30, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein What happened The “colossal mistake,” according to Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, was...

U.S. President Donald Trump looks at media members after returning to the White House from Scotland, Britain, in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 29, 2025. REUTERS/Umit Bektas What happened RawStory reports that former senior CIA officer Marc Polymeropoulos warned that the Trump administration’s reassignment of federal law-enforcement resources from counterterrorism to immigration enforcement could in...

US President Donald Trump attends the Presidents Cup at the Medinah Country Club, in Medinah, Illinois, US, September 27, 2026. REUTERS/Nathan Howard What happened RawStory reports that President Donald Trump told Axios he was “always thinking about” resuming strikes against Iran after rejecting Iran’s latest proposal to end the war. He also predicted further negotiations that week but said Iran h...

Nicki Minaj Anton Oparin / (Shutterstock.com) What happened RawStory reports that musician Nicki Minaj urged Americans to “vote red” during a Saturday Fox News interview with Lara Trump. Minaj briefly laughed and offered a joking “nah,” but Trump embraced the endorsement and called it a sales pitch to American voters. Minaj also encouraged viewers to research local candidates before voting. Accord...

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at a ceremony held to dedicate a 4-mile stretch of road from West Palm Beach Airport to his Mar-a-Lago estate as ‘President Donald J. Trump Boulevard’, at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., January 16, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque What happened RawStory columnist Sabrina Haake reports that U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly ordered the White House...

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt reacts while she takes questions from the media during a press briefing at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 10, 2026. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY What happened RawStory reports that former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt publicly recounted a private lunch at which President Donald Trump allegedly told Bri...

US President Donald Trump addresses the 81st United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York City, US, September 22, 2026. REUTERS/MIKE SEGAR What happened RawStory argues that a photograph taken during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s September 24, 2026 White House visit revealed Melania Trump’s “white-hot hatred” for Donald Trump. It does not. The image reportedly shows Donald and M...

“Dan Scavino” by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0 What happened RawStory reports that White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino posted a video depicting himself in a tuxedo, holding champagne and riding a gilded luggage cart through an ornate, confetti-covered room. Donald Trump briefly appears. Critics described the clip as AI-generated, but the reporting does not independently establish that. The...

REUTERS/Evan Vucci What happened Biographer Michael Wolff told The Daily Beast’s Joanna Coles that foreign leaders can exploit President Donald Trump through flattery because Trump refuses detailed briefings and enters high-stakes meetings without mastering the issues. Wolff’s “like a fiddle” assessment is his interpretation: he said foreign counterparts see a president from whom they can extract...

REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst What happened AlterNet reports that Donald Trump’s social media account posted an AI-generated image of Xi Jinping’s arrival at Joint Base Andrews on a Thursday shortly before an election. The image showed Trump saluting beside Xi as a bomber passed overhead, but omitted Melania Trump and Xi’s wife, Peng Liyuan, both of whom appeared in video of the actual event. Online spec...

(REUTERs) What happened AlterNet reports that Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson see a limited improvement in how the Supreme Court handles emergency appeals: more justices are publicly explaining fast-track decisions instead of issuing consequential orders without reasoning. Jackson called that shift “good and positive” because lower courts and the public need guidance to understand a...

U.S. President Donald Trump in Dearborn, Michigan, January 13, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein Congress Chose Deference, and Fetterman Supplied the Decisive Vote A War Without Authorization The Senate’s 50–49 vote against House Concurrent Resolution 89 preserved President Donald Trump’s ability to continue U.S. hostilities against Iran without a declaration of war or specific congressional authoriz...

FILE PHOTO: U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein appears in a photograph taken for the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services’ sex offender registry March 28, 2017 and obtained by Reuters July 10, 2019. New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services/Handout via REUTERS. Epstein’s “Fake Office” Was an Institutional Accommodation The Jail Sentence With an Exit Door CNN’s reporting desc...

JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA-APRIL 14: Professional Football Player Tim Tebow at the Tim Tebow Foundation Celebrity Golf Classic on April 14, 2012 in Jacksonville, Florida. (Photo credit: Rob Wilson / Shutterstock) The Celebrity Halo Is Part of the Sales Machine Worship, Wealth, and the Upsell Mother Jones reports that Life Surge stages roughly 30 events a year combining Christian worship, celebrity spea...

President Donald Trump speaks to the media as he leaves after a Team USA reception hosting athletes who competed for Team USA at the 2026 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in Milano Cortina, Italy, in the East Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 6, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein Susan Collins’s “Concern” Is a Political Asset, Not a Check on Power The Performance of Dissent...

REUTERS/Evan Vucci The Tariff Bill Comes Due at the Checkout Counter The Power Sits in the White House Donald Trump’s tariff policy is often packaged as economic nationalism on behalf of workers. The AlterNet interview instead describes a system in which the president imposes trade barriers, businesses absorb the initial costs, and consumers ultimately pay higher prices—while factories dependent o...