Systemic Error Podcast

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-...

What happened AlterNet reports that President Donald Trump floated Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy as a possible replacement for former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. Speaking to reporters on the White House South Lawn, Trump said Doocy was earning too much at Fox and that he had “lost him” after the correspondent negotiated his latest contract. Leavitt left the White House after...

What happened On CNN’s Thursday News Central , Democratic National Committee strategist Sawyer Hackett disputed former Trump administration official Matt Mowers’s claim that the economy under President Donald Trump presented a “mixed picture.” AlterNet reports that Hackett argued inflation was higher than when Joe Biden left office, while the job market had slowed, the economy had contracted, and...

What happened AlterNet reports that during a Thursday executive-order signing, President Donald Trump’s Cabinet members and other allies applauded for an unusually long time. New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie interpreted the scene as evidence that Trump’s subordinates were afraid to be the first person to stop. Bouie compared the social dynamic—not the consequences—to accounts of officials ap...

What happened RawStory reports that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth plans to announce a 20 percent reduction in positions reserved for generals and admirals, doubling the 10 percent overall reduction he ordered in May 2025. Pentagon officials told The Wall Street Journal that the armed services would have until Jan. 1, 2027, to complete the new cuts. Hegseth is expected to announce the plan during...

What happened RawStory columnist Jason Miciak argues that Republican senators’ complaints about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are an indirect challenge to President Donald Trump. But the column does not establish that senators are “plotting” Hegseth’s removal or using him as a proxy to target Trump. It offers two critical Senate quotations—one from an unnamed source—and interprets their tone as e...

What happened RawStory reports that Texas Attorney General and Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton privately said Donald Trump’s two-day midterm convention in Dallas hurt Republican polling. Asked at a Washington fundraiser whether Trump was “a little bit of a drag,” Paxton replied that “everybody’s numbers dropped” after the convention and that the situation was “not good.” The New York Times...

What happened AlterNet reports that Autumn Daniels was billed $410 by Carle Foundation Hospital in Urbana, Illinois, after an April emergency-room visit in which staff registered her, checked her vital signs and sent her to the waiting room. Daniels, suffering a severe migraine and vomiting repeatedly, left after four hours without seeing a doctor or receiving treatment. She obtained care at anoth...

What happened Sen. Jim Justice urged the Trump administration to reconsider immigration sweeps that remove long-established community members, telling Politico on Tuesday that officials should admit when enforcement has gone wrong and adjust. RawStory reports that Politico journalist Rachel Shin described his remarks as “a remarkable break” from the administration. Justice’s criticism followed com...

What happened RawStory reports that prominent Republicans are calling Democratic candidates “weird,” reviving an insult Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz used against Donald Trump, JD Vance and other Republicans during the 2024 campaign. Sen. Tim Scott used it at a Republican convention in Dallas, Vance directed it at Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, Trump has applied it to Texas Senate nominee James...

What happened RawStory reports that Sen. Marsha Blackburn sued former special counsel Jack Smith in federal court in Tennessee, seeking $1 in nominal damages and the return of phone records obtained during Smith’s investigation. The complaint alleges that a May 2023 subpoena to Verizon for Blackburn’s call logs around the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack violated her constitutional rights by preven...

What happened AlterNet columnist D. Earl Stephens rejects the claim that Democrats need to project more “joy” to reconnect with voters. His response was prompted by PBS NewsHour co-host Geoff Bennett’s interview with Fox News commentator Jessica Tarlov, who argued that Democrats need sustained engagement with conservative audiences, more cultural connection, and leadership that includes joy. Tarlo...

What happened RawStory, citing The Washington Post’s review of confidential board documents and tax filings, reports that the Kennedy Center’s Trump-appointed leadership exhausted its $21 million bank credit line, depleted much of its debt reserve and withdrew $10 million from the Washington National Opera’s $10.3 million endowment. Arts-management professor Karen Gahl-Mills described the institut...