Systemic Error Podcast

US President Donald Trump speaks to reporters as he arrives to attend the 81st United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York City, US, September 22, 2026. REUTERS/DAVID DEE DELGADO The White House Wants Coverage on Its Own Terms The Ban Is the Exercise of Power CNN’s Brian Stelter framed President Donald Trump’s encounter with reporter Kaitlan Collins at the United Nations as evid...

(REUTERS) The Cheapest Airtime Is Becoming a Megadonor Subsidy A Discount Built for Candidates Federal law gives candidates access to broadcasters’ lowest rates in the final weeks before an election. The stated purpose is straightforward: keep soaring television prices from shutting candidates out of communication with voters. But a succession of federal decisions has begun converting that candida...

US President Donald Trump speaks to reporters as he arrives to attend the 81st United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York City, US, September 22, 2026. REUTERS/David Dee Delgado TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY The Access Fight Is the Story A Question the President Would Not Answer At the United Nations headquarters on the Tuesday described in the report, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked Presi...

Fox News channel logo. (Photo credit: Poetra. RH/ Shutterstock) The Loyalty Test Swallows Fox News The White House Holds the Power The essential fact is simple: President Donald Trump barred CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House press corps. Five television networks—Fox News, ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN—then withdrew their cameras from Monday’s pool duty, saying no administration should punish...

Donald Trump takes a question at Trump National Doral Miami in Miami, Florida. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque The Presidency as a Personal Branding Operation A Proposal Built on Flattery MS NOW reports that administration officials discussed some form of tribute to President Donald Trump at Ford’s Theatre, where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865. The White House and Interior Department flatly deny...

U.S. President Donald Trump at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S., August 7, 2026. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz The GOP Is Rebranding Trumpism, Not Abandoning It Distance Without a Break Fox News reports that Republican candidates in Minnesota and elsewhere are keeping President Donald Trump at “arm’s length” as his popularity weakens. Minnesota Senate nominee Michele Tafoya and gubernatorial candidat...

REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein The Personnel Are the Policy Power Has Names The article’s strongest point is also its simplest: Donald Trump selected the officials, Republican senators confirmed or enabled them, and those officials acquired federal power. The resulting administration is not a weather event. Whatever one thinks of each nominee’s résumé, responsibility belongs first to the president who m...

US President Donald Trump and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speak to reporters during a press conference following their meeting at Gracie Mansion in New York City, US, September 21, 2026. Picture taken with a mobile phone. REUTERS/Andrew Hoffstetter The Presidency Reduced to Stage Directions An Awkward Clip, Not a Diagnosis MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” aired footage of President Donald Trump appea...

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 4, 2026. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst The Press Secretary’s Exit Interview Is Not Evidence An Anecdote in Search of Facts Former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Sean Hannity that White House briefings are “performative,” reporters chase television soundbites, and unnamed journalists privately apologized for q...

U.S. Congressman Byron Donalds speaking with attendees at the 2022 AmericaFest at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona. Image via Gage Skidmore. Byron Donalds Built His Campaign on Trump. Now Trump Is Becoming Fine Print. The Vanishing Endorsement With 42 days left before Florida’s 2026 general election, Republican gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds has stripped at least eight prom...

U.S. first lady Melania Trump walks next to a humanoid robot as she hosts a roundtable event on the second day of the inaugural Fostering the Future Together Global Coalition Summit, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 25, 2026. REUTERS/Kylie Cooper Congress Is Not Powerless Before AI. Its Leaders Are Choosing Delay. The Decision Belongs to the People Holding the Gavel Raw Story re...

President Donald Trump and justices from the Supreme Court, Image via Screengrab / NBC. Trump’s Complaint Is Not Judicial Betrayal. It Is Judicial Independence. The Evidence Writing in The Hill , former federal prosecutor James D. Zirin identifies Donald Trump’s attacks on judicial independence as the gravest misconduct of his second term. Zirin cites Trump denouncing Supreme Court justices Neil G...

US President Donald J. Trump in Washington, D.C., US, September 18, 2026. REUTERS/Evan Vucci Kansas Republicans Built Their Own Trap A Red State Is Not a Blank Check Kansas remains structurally Republican: it has not backed a Democratic presidential nominee since 1964 and has not elected a Democratic senator since 1932. Donald Trump carried the state in three consecutive presidential elections, wh...

U.S. Sen. Mike Lee at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, Florida on July 22, 2022 (Gage Skidmore/Flickr) The Blue Slip Fight Is About Power, Not Procedure A Veto Trump Cannot Control Politico reports that Donald Trump has pressed Senate Republicans to abolish the “blue slip,” a Judiciary Committee tradition allowing home-state senators to block district court judges, U.S. attorneys and federal...

President Donald Trump attends a maternal health event in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., May 11, 2026. REUTERS Evelyn Hockstein The Presidency Is Not a Body-Language Puzzle A Diagnosis the Reporting Cannot Support An article built around psychologist John Paul Garrison’s video commentary claims that Donald Trump’s altered eye contact and response to negative coverage may i...

Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown/CNN The Presidency Is Power, Not a Ratings Entitlement A Petty Dispute, Inflated Into a Political Drama The report says President Donald Trump objected to CNN correspondent Kaitlan Collins covering his United Nations appearance after barring CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House press pool. CNN’s The Situation Room did not carry the speech during its 10 a.m....

President Donald Trump addresses the 80th United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York City, NY, September 23, 2025. REUTERS/MIKE SEGAR A Spasm Is Not a Diagnosis—and Speculation Is Not Accountability The Claim Reporting on Donald Trump’s address to the 81st session of the United Nations centered on an interpretation by clinical and forensic psychologist John Paul Garrison. Aft...

President Donald Trump speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Michigan on July 27, 2026. REUTERS/Evan Vucci Distrust Is Not the Actor. It Is the Aftermath. The Story Behind the Polling The reporting describes former Trump supporters abandoning him over the handling of the Epstein files, the reported war in Iran, rising diesel prices, and economic claims they no longer believe. A New...

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh listens to remarks at U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s residence during a visit by Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Micheal Martin, ahead of St. Patrick’s Day, in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 12, 2025. REUTERS/Leah Millis Missouri’s Map Fight Is a Contest Over Who Gets to Create Electoral Chaos The Power Sits With the Courts Missouri officials had printed...

U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) in Washington, D.C., U.S., September 15, 2026. REUTERS/Evan Vucci Republicans Built the Squeeze. Farmers Are Paying for It. A Price Crisis With Authors The immediate dispute is over diesel: with Grassley citing a price of $6.57 in Iowa in a September 19 post, he urged President Trump to embargo exports. But The Hill’s reporting places that demand insid...

Then-Maine Governor Paul LePage speaks at the 23rd Annual Energy Trade & Technology Conference in Boston, Massachusetts, November 13, 2015. (REUTERS/Gretchen Ertl/File Photo) Paul LePage Discovers Due Process at His Own Dinner Table One Case Made the System Visible Former Maine Gov. Paul LePage, now running for the state’s open 2nd Congressional District seat, says his son’s father-in-law is being...

Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) speaks during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies hearing at the Dirksen Senate Office building in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 9, 2021. Stefani Reynolds/Pool via REUTERS The Scandal Is Not Susan Collins’s Anger A Serious Allegation, Not a Proven Scheme ProPublica reported that Martin Kao, a former defense contractor...

U.S. Senator Susan Collins speaking with attendees at the 2018 Small Business Expo at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona. (Photo credit: Gage Skidmore / Flickr) The Allegations Remain Unproven. The System That Could Test Them Was Dismantled. A Case Cut Short ProPublica reports that Martin Kao, the former CEO of defense contractor Navatek, told federal investigators in 2022 that his...

Rev. Nelson Johnson, Joyce Johnson and Lewis Brandon (l-r), survivors of the Greensboro Massacre, pose next to a historic marker unveiled in 2015. (Courtesy Beloved Community Center, used with permission.) The Greensboro Massacre Was Not an Intelligence Failure The Violence Was Foreseeable The newly released FBI records add detail to an already damning institutional record surrounding the Greensbo...

US President Donald Trump, riding inside “The Beast”, arrives at Gracie Mansion for a meeting with New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, in the Upper East Side neighborhood of New York, September, 21, 2026. REUTERS/Bing Guan The Spectacle Is the Cover; Institutional Power Is the Story Racism With a Government Seal Raw Story columnist Jason Miciak describes a September 2026 sequence in which Texas Republi...