The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 2713 - Dr. Arday & Racist Online Terror; GOP Targets Left-Wing News w/ Karen Attiah, Rania Khalek

Episode Date: August 19, 2026

It's Hump Day at The Majority Report On today's program: There was good news and bad news from last night's primary elections in Florida. The bad news is Oliver Larkin and Elijah Manley will not be advancing to the general election after losing to establishment Democrats in Jared Moskowitz and Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The good news is that Angie Nixon trounced her opponent in the primary for Senate setting up a race against GOP incumbent Ashley Moody.   Angie Nixon gives an inspirational and emotional victory speech from her HQ in Duval County, Florida. We take a look back at when then State Rep. Nixon proposed a State House Resolution to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza back in November of 2023. Karen Attiah, journalist and publisher of the Golden Hour newsletter on Substack, joins to discuss her piece, "Jason Arday's Death and the Age of digital Racial Terror". Rania Khalek, journalist and host of Dispatches on BreakThrough News discussing the GOP-led House Ways and Means Committee issuing a subpoena to BreakThrough News. In the Fun Half Gary, Indiana has been without power for 8 days following tornados and FEMA has not lifted a finger to help. Further reporting on Trump obsessed aide, Natalie Harp, once climbed into a SUV trunk after being denied a seat in the president motorcade. Protestors dress as Gandalf the Grey and demonstrate in front of Peter Thiel's mansion in Argentina. Amazon is destroying rare books as a part of their AI training process. A former Biden staffer goes on a racist rant about 9/11 after a C-SPAN caller asks how he can call himself a Democrat when he is campaigning against Abdul El-Sayed. all that and more. To connect and organize with your local ICE rapid response team visit ICERRT.com The Congress switchboard number is [phone]. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the AM Quickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors: ONESKIN: Get 15% off OneSkin with the code MAJORITY at https://www.oneskin.co/majority FUTURE HINDSIGHT: Search for Future Hindsight wherever you get podcasts. SUNSET LAKE CBD: Use coupon code "Left Is Best" (all one word) for 20% off of your entire order at SunsetLakeCBD.com. Please fill out this form to request Bryan to come to your town to do stand-up comedy @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech On Instagram: @MrBryanVokey Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's YouTube channel: https://ww.youtube.com/Th3Discourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here: https:/www.youtube.com/@avaraiza

You are listening to a free version of the Majority Report. Support this show at join the Majority Report.com and get an extra hour of content daily. Majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Wednesday, August 19th, 2026. My name is Emma Vigeland in for Sam Cedar, and this is the five-time award-winning majority report. we are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA.

On the program today, Karen Atia, journalist, publisher of the Golden Hour newsletter on Substack will be with us to talk about the horrific death of Professor Jason Ardei and what it says about racist harassment online and in academia and later in the show, Rania Kallick of Breakthrough News will be with us to discuss House Republicans subpoenaing their newsroom. Also on the program, DSA member and state representative Angie Nixon stuns the country,

winning the Florida Senate primary despite being outspent 16 to 1. Progressive candidates Oliver Larkin and Elijah Manly Falls Short, in their races, unfortunately. Byron Donald's and David Jolly will face off in Florida's governor's election. Trump's handpick candidates go 0 for three. Two in Florida and in Wyoming's gubernatorial race. In Alaska's all-party primary, Peltola and Dan Sullivan and the other Dan Sullivan look poised to advance. Trump's DOJ is now

subpoenaing the other Sullivan. They are not happy about dirty tricks that they're not in charge of. In Alaska, oh, I already said that one. Alaska. A DOJ whistleblower says Trump's anti-Semitism probes of Ivy League schools were politically motivated.

And the outcomes were predetermined and false. No, really? I thought it was sincerely about fighting. in anti-Semitism. Yeah. No, it turns out it was about going after institutions, the IVs, that he thinks were mean to him. Which is anti-Semitism, by the way.

DHS is deporting Mexican migrants to Guatemala and Honduras against the wishes of the Mexican government, just for cruelty's sake. Minnesota sues Greg Abbott to force the extradition of an ICE agent that shot through a door, injured somebody, He's been caught on his jail phone, talking about fleeing to Mexico. Abbott says he won't work with the state

because of the so-called fraud that they won't take accountability for. You know, Texas that hates criminals and criminal behavior, which is why they're running Ken Paxton. Anyway, Trump to nominate another Maha crank who opposes the abortion pill as FDA administrator.

The DeSantis political appointee, a DeSantis political appointee, was just arrested on child sexual abuse charges against his grandson. How's that war on groomers going down there? The U.S. sanctions ICC officials over bringing war crimes charges against Netanyahu and Galant. Israel bombs a Syrian base where Turkish forces off,

and station and kill at least seven Palestinians in Gaza City. And lastly, the Trump administration will open 45 million acres of our national forests to construction and logging. All this and more on today's majority report. Welcome to the show, everybody. It is hump day. Caching, cashing in my royalties for coin in that phrase. I will be with you for the next week. Sam is on vacation. And then on the Thursday of next week, actually, when we're actually going to both be on vacation because I have to travel to a wedding. My best friend from middle school is marrying one of my best friends from college. I set them up. I mean, I'm not trying to brag and say it's all about me. But this is a really exciting wedding for me. I'm pretty pumped. And it's a little bit of a destination wedding. So I will be out next Thursday and Friday.

but we'll have a pre-recorded interview for you and Matt Leck is going to be at the helm so that'll be pretty fun. This is going to be your first time at Mar-a-Lago or have you been there before? You know? I was there one crazy summer where I slept in the locker room

just to be close to this boy that I liked I mean elderly man that I liked and by liked I mean loved worshipped. Worshipped. It's a whole new definition. A drink is bathwater if it wasn't. doesn't tinted orange. Actually, I did it.

A whole new definition to locker room talk. Exactly. That's what she calls pillow talk. I guess people might be very confused if they haven't been following the insanity of, what's her name? Natalie. Natalie. This Trump aide that is just like obsessed with him and apparently slept in the Mar-a-Lago locker room to be closer to him and chases around his golf cart. She's a firecrack. I mean.

Get your cardio in girl. She's basically the funnel of information to the most powerful man in the world, and she herself is insane. Yeah, it's not great. But let's get back to the election results, because we'll start with the bad news first. There was some really good news, though. The bad news is that Oliver Larkin was easily defeated by Jared Moskowitz. And look, though, it was always going to be a very uphill battle in that district, conservative district, became more conservative, Zionist district. But Larkin and DSA's organizing in South Florida is going to keep going on,

and there will be an infrastructure there. Yeah, I mean, I think especially the way Oliver came on strong in media appearances toward the end of it. That is useful. It's useful to develop those sorts of things. DSA does need to get good at selling itself in these hostile media environments because they've basically been drafted to the top of politics in a very short time. and to see somebody like Oliver navigate those waters, and especially towards Zan,

every appearance went well for him. Yeah. I mean, he's just phenomenally smart and telegenic and good on his feet, so he has a bright future. Debbie Wasserman-Shultz also won her race, as I mentioned, against Manly, which is really unfortunate.

Lots of name recognition there. But the big story out of Florida is Angie Nixon, a massive upset. She defeated Alexander Vindon, Minn, and she'd raised less than a million dollars, just under a million dollars, and Vinmin had over $16 million that he had fundraised, 16 to 1, and she didn't just squeak out a victory. She won by 12 points in Florida. Now, this guy, Vinmin, served on Trump's National Security Council, and he was a whistleblower over in the first impeachment trial, because he

revealed the information that essentially Trump was trying to pressure Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden. Now, we're seeing this as a theme, though, across this election cycle that associations with Trump impeachment are not getting the shine that the Democratic establishment previously enjoyed. Like Diana DeGette in Denver was involved in the impeachment trial. Melot Kiros defeated her. Dan Goldman. Another example, perhaps the most high profile example, just destroyed in a deep blue district by Bradlander. And that's because you guys failed to hold Trump accountable. So let's not tout your

previous failed attempt to hold Trump accountable in a Democratic primary. I think that that might be a good lesson for the Democratic establishment going forward. Not that I'm in the business of doing that, because I'm very much enjoying seeing them being taken by surprise. Vinmin only one major metropolitan area, West Palm Beach, very wealthy, very Zionist. Nixon drove up the numbers in the rest of the state in major cities. So she's from Jacksonville, Duval County, did really well there. Miami-Dade County also, she won. And that's where Vindman is from as well.

So she will now face off against Ashley Moody. This is the DeSantis appointee who replaced Rubio after he was appointed. Secretary of State. Nixon ran on a national rent freeze. She ran on Medicare for all. She ran on ending weapon sales to Israel. All weapon sales. Iron dome included the funding of that, which is very important because Israel can fund its own Iron

dome if it wants, but our diplomatic cover and financial support allows for their belligerence in Lebanon, in Syria, as I just headlined in Gaza, in the West Bank, what have you. They have no threat of anything happening to them, essentially, for the most part, although Iran's missiles have shown the capacity to break through, U.S. support for that defensive system is a key reason why Israel is able to commit genocide right now. She also ran on free child care. So Nixon is just a really great candidate. This morning went on morning, Joe, and talked about how she defeated incumbents before.

She shouldn't be underestimated as a state lawmaker. She was outspent five to one in her state race and nine months pregnant with COVID. and she still won. So this is going to be a major uphill battle. I'm not lying about this in a state that has become quite red in Florida. But people should remember how close Andrew Gillum came in 2018. Now I know it's gotten redder since then. But Andrew Gillum, that was a midterm year, where Democrats were favored.

Anger at Trump was significant. It wasn't as bad as it is right now. And Gillum came within 0.5 percentage. points of defeating Ron DeSantis. 34,000 votes was the difference out of 8 million votes cast. So don't tell me that Angie Nixon can't pull this off, especially when you listen to her talk. Here she is last night at her victory speech talking about her race. Just to keep a roof over their heads is extreme.

This is just basic human decency. Like to claim the mantle of morality, yet their actions tell. a very different story. Behind that. Where she won. She won. But in November, she will call me senator. All right.

That little, we're good, I think. That little look in her eye that she gave of determination. It's just, I mean, that's the kind of thing. It's catnip for me. I'm like, already juiced up. I want a phone bank for her tomorrow. Yeah. Like, I have my biases.

I obviously think this is more even electable than something like Vindman. I generally think, like, you could. say maybe I'm agnostic about which one might be more electable in general. Well, the voters have spoken overwhelmingly, and this is who they want to take into battle for this. And this is going to be such a better campaign because it's going to be about, I mean, not that, like, you know, Trump corruption on the global stage is not real, but it is disconnected from people's day-to-day life.

That stuff, they don't feel like they have any empowered over at all anyway. Yeah, right. I mean, and like, how is it gone to run former Republicans all the goddamn time? Well, it just, we just showed it in that race in the primary. But in the general election, they've been getting their clocks clean by the actual Republicans. We see this time and time again, they've lost the electability argument as well. And people just need to, you know, get hip to it at this point. But there's a lot of money that's preventing people from understanding though this is what's electable.

And this would be better at governing if she were to win. Well, yeah. And when I say, but when I say Gillum, I bring up Gillum because he won. one, that primary is the progressive in the race and almost defeated DeSantis in a midterm year that favored Democrats. And, you know, it's a tragedy what's happened to him, him dealing with addiction. But the Democratic Party in Florida has become a ghost ship. It's a skeleton. There's no one driving the ship. So that presents a real opportunity for the left. And, you know, they can fill that vacuum.

if they need to because the Florida Democratic Party has been so ineffective and abandoned. Here is state representative Angie Nixon in the state government in 2023. I believe we played this clip back right as the genocide was beginning in Gaza, and this took so much courage. She introduced a resolution in the Florida House calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. if you recall, there were only, you know, a handful of members of the House. I don't even think any senators were really calling for a ceasefire for the first few weeks. I mean, maybe Bernie gone on board soon, but not, not, I don't think now.

Bernie, unfortunately, said he doesn't know how you can reach a ceasefire with a group like Hamas. Yes, right. So, like, this is November 20203. You just had like AOC and Rashid Taleb and Ilhan Omar and that and that and that and Summerlee in that group. Delia Ramirez. I don't want to leave people out. Diana Presley, but like that,

the group of progressives in the House that were behind the ceasefire resolution at this time. Here's Angie Nixon in the Florida House making that case. We are at 10,000 dead Palestinians. How many will be enough? I also... Okay, so pause it for a sec. They show it on the screen in the caption.

That is Representative Salzman. Michelle Salzman, Republican, I'd imagine, saying all of them, off mic. One of my colleagues just said all of them. Wow. One of my colleagues said all of them. One of my colleagues also stated that this is going to dry up their fundraising if we vote on this resolution. I also want that, like that's what we've become. come in this state. That's what we've become in this state where we don't care about innocent babies

that don't even get the opportunity to blow out their first birthday candle. Go to War for her. I mean, I'm happy for you guys in Florida too. It's a very popular state and you haven't had a real candidate to vote for in quite a while unless you're in one of these districts. I mean, in the general election. Since Gillum in 2018 and I think Angie Nixon here, I mean, this is like another. level in terms of how we can get behind her. She's phenomenal. I'm very, very excited about this. And we'll see, as I said, real uphill battle.

But I'm going to make a guess that it's going to be competitive. It'd be a bigger message than even Saeed went in if she won Florida. Yes. Yes, it would be. And I can't even begin to think about the possibility and how drunk I will get on election night if that happens. not really but I will be very I will be celebrating or how junk you get if the other she doesn't yeah I could go either way I guess um but drink when you win drink when yeah exactly right um now just

to to add to some of the good news here I mean look these are all Republicans so we're talking about varying degrees but this is I think an interesting development that Trump is not doing so well with his endorsements in Florida as well he went 0 for three last night Aaron Blake here, reporter, if we could put this up, compiled this list of Trump losses from his endorsements in the primary season. He writes here that 10 Trump endorsed candidates have now lost this primary season, including six in the last two weeks and three on Tuesday alone. Those 10 losses are as much as Trump suffered in 2018, 2020, and 2024 combined. And it's one shy of matching his worst year, 2022. Wyoming can't like he loses in Wyoming a lot it looks like yeah I mean uh but but but that's interesting

because Wyoming in 2024 was the state where he had the highest margin of victory right so he lost his gubernatorial pick lost and then uh you had Corey Mills in Florida who was accused of domestic violence and sexual misconduct under investigation by the house right now he lost and then uh Catalina Lough, former Commerce Department advisor and his administration also lost her race. You can't cut Lindele against me. I had to endorse it. Exactly. I didn't think he's going to win. I mean, yeah, look at that. Andy Ogles. So, and this, and the fact that Blake points out here that this happened, we could take it down, in the last few weeks would also match with what we're seeing with his historically low approval rating and also, you know, genuine anger about

the economy, the war in Iran, and more. So, mostly, you know, mixed bagging results yesterday, but I think that this Angie Nixon victory is such a big fish that we have to be celebrating today for sure. In a moment, we are going to be speaking with Karanatia, journalist, publisher of the Golden Hour newsletter on Substack about the horrific death of Professor Jason R. Day and what it means about racist

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for you. And when we come back, we'll be joined by Karen Attea. Hey, folks, I want to tell you about a podcast series I'm enjoying from future hindsight. It's called Occupy an unfinished uprising. Occupy Wall Street's the story of the improbable becoming possible. 2008, millions of people were devastated by an economic crash caused by Wall Street greed, but it wasn't until 2011 that there was a mass response from the left. Call the protests went out and thousands of people responded. They raged against the system that was rigged against them and tried to create their own anti-capitalist village in a small Manhattan park. The movement quickly spread across the country, inspiring hundreds of occupations and a new generation of activists.

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To listen, search for future hindsight wherever you get your podcasts. We are back and we are joined now by Karen Attia, journalist and publisher of the Golden Hour newsletter on Substack. Here to discuss her piece, Jason Ardae's death and the Age of Digital Racial Terror. Karen, thanks so much for coming on the show today. Thanks for having me, Emma. Of course. It's a, you know, a difficult topic, but I wanted to explore this because of how significant it is, just in analyzing how racism is communicated in the digital age and in academia and what it leads to.

But I wanted to start with your personal experience first, because I think it colors our conversation so well. You were fired last year by the Washington Post because you dared to accurately point out that Charlie Kirk was racist. I wanted to start there. Talk a little bit about that and maybe put into context how quotidian this kind of treatment is of black academics and writers in the West. Yeah, thanks for leading with that.

Yeah, for me, the story of Jason Ardei, and not just for me, probably for a lot of black professionals whose job it is to influence or try to influence society with our voices and our thoughts and our analysis, particularly in the last five, six years, have come under a sustained attack versus anti-CRT, critical race theory. Now we've changed the acronyms to a new set of words, anti-D-EI, diversity, equity, and inclusion. So for me, I was a longtime editor and columnist at The Washington Post, had been there for 12 years almost until last year. My job was to write specifically on race, culture, human rights, and international affairs. So this is coming in the context of Jeff Bezos's edicts to have the Washington Post opinion section turn more towards the right and, quote, unquote, focus on personal liberties and free markets, right? So I was the last black full-time staff colonists left. And when Charlie Kirk was killed, I actually didn't even talk much about Charlie Kirk at all on social media.

I actually was pointing out the double standards in how America talks about political violence, depending on the color of the skin and the gender of the people who carry out said violence. So what I said, and this is what offended the Washington Post so gravely, I said in the context of Melissa Hartman and the assassinations of Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota, I said that part of what keeps America so violence, because again, people were talking so much about how this is not who we are, we are not, violence has no place here. And I said, absolutely does have a place here. And particularly for, we tend to coddle as this country, perpetrators of violence who espouse, hatred and violence, especially if they are white men.

And then secondly, I said that I was not going to tear my clothes and smear my, smear ashes on my face in performative mourning for Charlie Kirk, a white man who, in my opinion, espoused racism and violence. And for that, that is why the Washington Post cited firing me. They claim that I disparaged white men. So that is the actual reason. And so here we are 11 months later. I challenge them in arbitration.

We are waiting on a decision on that case, literally any day now. I mean, I think the facts will show that it was quite ridiculous, but it speaks broadly to a wholesale effort to remove, particularly black people who are elevated to positions, positions, I think, at places like the Washington Post, at places like Cambridge. You know, I don't think, I personally don't think the witshunt would have come for me if I wasn't at a place like the Washington Post. If I was just some blogger at some kind of small publication, I wouldn't have a target

on my back. So Jason Ardei was what's happened at Cambridge being the youngest, formerly the youngest black ever, you know, PhD at Cambridge, achieving him and 10. taking space at these high-level institutions puts targets on our back. And I've known that ever since I've been at the post. And it's just a real world example of how this purge of Black Voices, as I said, in my substack is an explicit political and transnational project. And a transnational project is absolutely right.

it's it's I mean it's a global project by the by the right particularly in these western institutions it's a way to fortify white supremacy like there's no other way to describe it's a essentially a defensive action to attempt to purge black voices brown voices LGBTQ voices any voice that presents an opinion or an academic framework that would challenge the underpinnings of the institution. It's seen as such a threat. And Dr. Ardei was also a part of that. I mean, you write about this in your piece, the sheer volume of articles that were written about him. And we should say this is Cambridge in the UK. So that's why we're talking about how global this is. But British media wrote nearly 249 articles in 22 days on Jason Arde.

Can you talk about who he was and what this story was really about? Yeah, so Jason Ardei was a professor specifically of the sociology of education. He had done a lot of work on decolonization of education of these spaces and was pretty well-belobeyed loved educator. And I think part of what is important to note, and I'm hoping that future discourse on this will take into account is that the lack of British academics in academia is appalling compared to the United States. Already, there are such few black academics, particularly at a place like Cambridge. So he was appointed about three years ago as the youngest ever black professor at Cambridge. And just at the age of, well, he was 41, right? I'm just a year older than me.

So a spectacular, considered a spectacular talent, had hundreds of citations of his scholarly work, right? And so, but what has happened is a known scholar, Nathan Confuss, who is known for advocating for race eugenicism. picked up on Jason's forthcoming memoir, right, and drummed up allegations of fabrication, plagiarism, that took off and became a UK story and then increasingly an international story, right? So there's a couple of angles to look at this, right? It's to look at how, in terms of the disproportionate media response

is, I think, what people are, are seasoned. on. And again, you know, those of Western America who might not even be familiar with UK journalism and tabloid culture in particular, I think that this is also emblematic of the sort of paparazzi culture, right? Like just to interject. I mean, people may know the harassment against Princess Diana is infamous, but right now it's also Megan Markle because she's a black woman. Yeah, absolutely. And literally chasing people to death and specifically chasing, I'm literally chasing Megan Markle out of the country, she talked about her suicidal ideations. Now, Jason Narday, just a few days after announcing his resignation, was found dead, right? So there's, and despite

pleas from his family, pleased from him to the media to just leave him alone, they kept going. And I believe it was one outlet in particular. It might have been the telegraph fact check me if I'm wrong. But that actually took out paid advertisements on Twitter. So this was beyond just journalistic coverage. This is them putting money and resources behind negative stories to push out and stoke global hatred against this one man that probably a lot of people had never heard of before. So I think for me it was, it's reminiscent, right, of the, of course, the UK cases of chasing people to death, literally, but also about the sort of the past histories of media, media aiding and abetting racial terror against black people both in the U.S. and from a British perspective, newspapers justifying colonial punitive expeditions. where, you know, African people in Benin were justified in being slaughtered by the British, right?

And that was partly, that was that sort of racial campaigns of terror were not possible without newspapers doing their job to whip up frenzies, right? So for me, that's why I was thinking about at what point does quote unquote, just asking questions, media scrutiny become an active campaign of, terror, of media terror. This has been well documented in America from newspapers inciting mobs against Ida B. Wells, the legendary black civil rights journalist who dared question the media's complicity at the time in the late 1800s of fomenting support for lynching of black people, all to, you know, as I said, British colonial media saying that it was right for Britain to take the sword to Africa to conquer the dark continent. Racial terror has always needed the media to give it the fuel that it needs in order to,

at the very least, not only terrorize the subjects themselves, but to also say to any institution or any white person, especially, any white institution that dares ally themselves with black people, they will also come after you. So it acts as a deterrent, right? So again, purging black people is the political objective. It is the political goal. And part of that is using fear to deter people from even associating or elevating black people. As we're seeing with Cambridge right now, the way that the discourse has progressed is now they're blaming the right-wing, the racists are blaming Cambridge for our day's death. They said, well, if they had never had hired him, this wouldn't have happened to him.

Right. We, again, have seen this before. White people who dared in the South and America who dared to help runaway slaves or who dared to offer any assistance, the white supremacists would hang black people in front of white people's homes and tell them, you did this. This is your fault for helping these people. people, right? So that's how terror and fear works. And as I argued in the past, these might have been localized mobs that would have been contained to whatever city, right, or state. But now with

digital media, we are able to have that same sort of global tear instantaneously. And again, I say terror in the sense of institutions, them being afraid to hire anyone black. I'd say black people in the U.S. seeing what happened to Jason Ardei, and we're getting the message, don't aim too high, don't ever make a mistake, right? There's an element of fear that is beyond the target of the campaigns, we are a global audience for what can be possible if we transgress the racial hierarchy. It's a digital lynch mob in this instance. I mean, that's really how you can describe it and how they came for Jason Ardeh. I'm also reminded of Claudine Gay,

just from, you know, less than three years ago. The, the black woman who was the president of Harvard, who was basically singled out and targeted by, I would say, you know, both political parties. She was hauled in front of, you know,

the congressional committee and forced to resign. And over, God forbid, Harvard students protesting a genocide, as you had you had doxing campaigns by the Zionist donors also targeting black student activists

in particular at that institution and then also successfully forcing the resignation of Claudine Gay over plagiarism accusations more broadly which also serves to delegitimize her position and they were using those same tactics with Ardei.

Absolutely. Yeah, Claudine Gay is a real prime example of both one of the highest educational institutions in the U.S. And the same tactic. And I like that you said, the attacks that came on her were from both sides. I, you know, have former colleagues at the Washington Post joining in, writing about writing and accusing clotting gay of plagiarism. And so it's also about.

exactly, like who, because we can think of a number of examples of writers and academics who'd been caught plagiarizing. I'm thinking, gosh, immediately it's Bill Ackman's wife who was, right. So some of the leading kind of spearheads of these anti-DAI campaigns, his wife, also an academic who was accused of plagiarism, one of that same campaigns. President of Stanford, who also was, accused of academic misconduct. The media mostly left him alone. What exposed him was the student newspaper at Stanford. So student journalists had more integrity to hold the president of Stanford, this a few years ago, to account for academic misconduct. But we didn't We have not seen, I would argue, and I'm open to examples, but we have not seen white academics and high-level journalists who have been found and even admitted to plagiarism, admitted to lifting passages, stealing, stealing other people's work, claiming credit for things.

We've not seen anywhere near the level of pressure that someone like a Claudine Gay and now, sadly, a Dr. Jason, are dating. the head mouse. The the yeah exactly it is really also troubling too because I was unaware

I guess he hasn't had an autism diagnosis if I'm if I'm not mistaken and I mean there's a sensitivity that should be applied to somebody who has you know autism

and the digital harassment and the delusion of it and the days and days and the dozens of articles a day, the amount, I just feel so much for where he probably was in that state of mind. To anybody, it would be immensely, you know, overwhelming. But he leaves behind children. And like the race science, white supremacist guy that got this all kicked off, who you mentioned earlier, Nathan Confis, I mean, what is they're not going to face any reckoning.

He's not going to face any reckoning. I think I've seen in this I mean, I was about to say this guy looks exactly like you would think. Yes. Yes.

Yes. He looks like a Groyper weirdo. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A spineless pale, pathetic a lot. Anyway, so he has been on internet claiming that now he's this victim, right, of harassment and all of that.

Again, this is someone, and I look back to even the media angle, this is someone whose ideas academically race science, he calls himself a biology professor and someone who is claimed academically, right, that black people are less intelligent. So even just that alone, journalists who picked up on this story should have, like, at the very, very, very least made explicitly clear that they were choosing, I suppose, to advance the sort of rantings and the ideology of a white supremacist of someone who is advancing debunked ideas. Somehow that is less of a crime advancing race science in this media environment. Somehow that is less disqualifying than allegations of someone maybe copying a few texts. Right. Like that's the disproportionate and iris media malpractice, in my opinion, right?

That in terms of being objective, you would wait more. accusations of plagiarism, accusations, again, Ardei was found to still be in good standing. So again, accusations, allegations versus someone, Nathan Confuss, who has a history, a documented history of advancing racist eugenicist beliefs. And somehow that is not, not only not disqualifying, but worth advancing his agenda, right? And that's what the media has done. It's more, it's more applicable or it fits better with the institution than our day's work did, which would challenge the underpinnings of the institution. And I just, you mentioned that the news covered.

I think it was the Times actually that was running these paid ads. If we want to, yeah, Matt, thanks for finding this. This is crazy. Like, this is an ad that you can see in the top right there. the Times and Sunday Times, which I believe is owned by Rupert Murdoch. A woman taught by academics said she learned nothing of substances was accused of white privilege when she challenged them. So you can see what kind of audience they're trying to capture with this sort of advertisement.

Right. And that's because it actually gets them clicks. Like just to wrap with you here shortly, lastly, I'm wondering if you could shed some light on how the digital side of this, the online media side as well, like these institutions, and these papers are immensely complicit in his death. But, you know, we have these tech platforms that elevate racialized violence for, for, because engagement is usually based in anger and outrage. The algorithm quite literally rewards heavily racialized content.

And there is a complicity that these tech companies have in furthering this level of harassment to allow for paid ads like this. in a campaign and then juicing it with, you know, other people who never knew Jason Arde's name until a week ago, you know, engaging in this kind of racialized terror. That part is also super, I think, important as well. Yeah, a thousand percent. It's a good point and it's a, it's somewhat of a scary thing to contemplate. And it's not just the newspapers. Now you have algorithms that are not driven by truth or objectivity, that are

driven by clicks and that are driven by money. So the times to run an ad on an ad on social media and literally profiting off of this man. In a dark way, it's the profiting off of

black people, but the profiting off of targeting black people and not just anger and but all also of pain and trauma. Even I thought about this writing my piece.

It's done well on Substack. It's making the rounds on social media. But there's a part of me that is also like, what is right ethically, ethically, especially if the man has died as journalists, and particularly as black writers, are we contributing in some ways to the problem by us getting the clicks and the likes and the, you know. So it's something I've always struggled with as the writer and as an editor in a lot of ways, being black and knowing that we now have a media ecosystem that is actually always profited off of anti-black anxiety and off of black pain. So it's people being outraged and leaving the comments and sharing and using the sharing and engagement as a form of.

release and we're releasing this digitally maybe instead of well not instead of i mean we saw all that people took to the streets in our days memory and honor in chalfauga square um in london so we are seeing people mobilize uh offline and people who are mobilizing to try to hold the journalists and the media outlets in the uk accountable so there is it has mobilized uh social media has mobilized a counter to this. So it's a double-edged sword. But yes, it's really quite sick and terrifying that, again, the social media algorithms can have us knowing and targeting a man that we might not have heard of 24 hours ago. And this amplified by news media's needing, particularly the British sort of paparazzi type of mentality.

needing to feed off of black trauma, and they're feeding off of white anxiety, too. They're feeding off of white racism. It pays. It's literally that ad is showing that anti-black racism, white supremacy, literally lines people's pockets, right? Yep. So this is something that we're going to have to contend with, think about, perhaps mobilize against. It's a question for journalistic journalism outlets. What do we do when people warn that somebody's life is in danger because of the media targeting?

You know, I think it raises a lot of both new questions and old patterns and injustices. Well, I really appreciate your time today. We'll read you one I am from one of our viewers, WAPO Guild member writes in Washington Post Guild Guild Guild stands Karen forever. So we have, I guess, a WAPO Guild member in the audience who want to send their love. Really appreciate your time today.

You can read Karen's piece, Jason Ardae's Death in the Age of Digital Racial Terror on her substack newsletter, The Golden Hour. Karen Atia, thanks so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for the conversation.

Absolutely. All right, folks, quick break. and when we come back, we will be joined by Rania Kallek, who is of Breakthrough News, and the Republican-led House Ways and Means Committee is subpoenaing her organization. We'll be talking to her about that in just a second. We are back and we are joined now by Ranya Kaleck, journalist and host of dispatches on Breakthrough News, who's here to talk about how the Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee are issuing a subpoena to Breakthrough News. and their and and and rania's organization rania thanks so much for coming on the show today

thanks for having me emma and thank you for covering this story of course we've been meaning to have you on um i saw you're on democracy now a few weeks ago uh right after this this story broke i guess just take us back to that time um a few weeks ago when the house ways and means committee subpoenaed breakthrough news in your organization yeah so last month that we received a from the Republican-led House Ways and Means Committee, which is basically a committee that's supposed to be reviewing U.S. tax policy. And we've been being harassed by them for the past several months. In fact, the first letter we received from them was back in February, basically demanding our internal communications and other records. And in those letters they've sent us, they

explicitly say that their problem with breakthrough news, the L that I work for, is our coverage of the genocide in Gaza and of the opposition across the country against ICE. And they say that this is part of a foreign plot and that we have to, you know, give them our internal communications so they can review us. We're a nonprofit. So they go through it in the sense of like reviewing nonprofit tax policy. and this committee is led by a man called Jason Smith. He's a Republican congressman from Missouri, who has been at the forefront of attacking pro-Palestine groups across the country, specifically related to the encampments and then going after universities

that had encampments against the genocide. So he's been on this for basically years and is basically just abusing his legislative authority to go after press freedom and free speech. And in that letter, that first letter they sent us back in February, they explicitly reference what they call our anti-American rhetoric, which is just basically, you know, what you would hear from the House on American Activities Committee during McCarthyism. So this is basically just the modern day witch hunt. And they gave us a deadline of August 7th to respond to their subpoena. And we have lawyers.

Our lawyers responded. People can actually go to breakthrough news. and read our 17-page response from our legal counsel, essentially saying that Breakthrough News will never forfeit our First Amendment rights. And this is really an attack not just on independent media or our outlet, which is quite small in comparison to the end of the billionaire funded media. But it's an attack on press freedom more generally because they are explicitly referencing our viewpoints. And the last thing I'll say on this for this part is, you know, the first letter we received from the House Ways and Means Committee back in February,

we actually didn't receive it ourselves. We saw the letter posted in Fox News. In almost every instance, Fox News has actually received these harassment letters before we have. They knew about the subpoena before we knew about it because they were asking us for comment before we even received it. So there's also an aspect of this where you have Republican members of Congress leaking these kinds of things to friendly media first to try to sully and smear the reputations of individuals and organizations they don't like, which also is something that you saw these various witch-hunt committees under McCarthyism do. So part of this is also just a smearing operation

to make people uncomfortable with independent left media. Well, that's a great summary of the attacks against Breakthrough News and other organizations. because, well, this announcement also happened in conjunction with this Cuba memorandum that was sent out, you know, designating Cuba a terrorist trying to, you know, commit terrorism against the United States and accusing groups like Code Pink and others that had been supportive. And I think Hassan was on one of these lists, too. There were a lot of people, Karen Bass for some. Riesing was on this list. I guess that was what Ken Klippenstein reported. But I can't get over that one.

It's like the least, the least radical Democrat in the country. Revolutionary. Far like revolutionary. Exactly. Exactly. But there were a lot of people on there. And but it was that that was released as well as this, you know, Stephen Miller summit with a bunch of kind of foreign diplomats trying to get to trying to say like, hey, can we enlist you in the fight? against our domestic war on left-wing extremism. There's clearly a concerted effort here by the Republicans, I think both politically in the House, but also when there was a memo that was leaked to the Washington Examiner, showing that that's what their midterm strategy is, is anti-communist rhetoric. So you can see how that fits into what you're saying about them leaking this information

to Fox News. Oh, absolutely. And I'm glad you mentioned the Cuba report and that anti-communist summit that Stephen Miller and Marker Rubio held. just a few weeks ago, because those were absolutely connected. I mean, this is Trump 2.0. They came into this administration with a very well-organized plan to go after what they see as the organized,

progressive or left of the country. So they could basically take out dissidents in any dissent against MAGA. And the fact that Karen Bass was included in that 100-page insane Cuba report just shows that they don't, make a distinction between people like, let's say, me and probably Hakeem Jeffries. Like, to them, anything left of MAGA is considered far-left extremism.

And I feel like that's something that the Democratic Party doesn't seem to really understand because you really haven't seen a pushback. You've seen a tiny pushback from people like Ilhan Omar and others like her, but you haven't seen a broader pushback from the leaders of the opposition party against this very real, very well-organized threat against dissent across the U.S. And, you know, Stephen Miller came in with a plan. There are certain think tanks that are brightly billionaire funded from, you know, places like the Manhattan Institute, which have people assigned to watch people like

Hassan Piker, for example, or people in the DSA and try to frame their ideas and actual viewpoints as being somehow violent or terroristic, because like Medicare for all is violent. There are people being paid to watch the left and then to smear the left and then to try to get these committees in Congress to use their legislative authority to go after groups across the left.

So like that anti-communism summit that was held, they were saying crazy things and talking about things like far-left violence, which doesn't really exist. And it sounds so silly, but we have to take that very, very seriously. And it's absolutely about the midterms. That 100-page Kippa report

had an entire section about the DSA and about how they're worried because you have these progressive insurgents across the country that are winning these elections. Most of them, DSA members are backed by the DSA. That's a real threat because of the kinds of left policies that the DSA is pushing for. And that are also, it should be noted, so popular across the country. Like, these aren't fringe ideas. Medicare for All is not a fringe idea. You know, cutting off weapons to Israel is no longer a fringe idea, taxing the rich, not a fringe idea. And so these people have lost the argument. And the only thing they have left is to try to shut down organizations that are able to

organize people and to try to criminalize dissent. So, you know, I know it's like scary for people to watch these sorts of things happen. And also the idea is to make it so that people will feel scared about being tied to the DSA or a part of it or anything related to it or like organizations like Code Pink. because maybe the government will come after you. But this actually just demonstrates that they are scared because these organizations actually represent the will of the American people. And so going into the midterms, they're going to lose so badly.

All they have left is to just call everything a foreign plot that's being organized by this tiny island nation, Cuba, which the U.S. is currently suffocating. Yeah, yeah. I mean, what would the Republicans know about a tiny foreign nation dictating, say large swaths of policy. I mean, give me a break here. It's a lot of its projection. Do you have a sense of why they came after

breakthrough news in particular? I mean, there's a lot of left-wing outlets that could be targeted. We've thought about it. We've talked about what could happen to us. Do you have a sense of why breakthrough news was targeted? So I think there's a few reasons for that. I think breakthrough news, first of all,

the coverage of Gaza has been, like we've been mentioned by the Heritage Foundation for that. And we're a small outlet, and they specifically were upset in these various think tank reports that are kind of connected to the Republican Party, very upset about the fact that we've grown because of the genocide in Gaza, like as a news outlet. So I think part of it is just our growth as a very small news outlet. And another part of it is you come after a smaller outlet, like breakthrough news, like we punch far above our weight, but we're a really small outlet. We have like a microscopic budget compared to a lot of other outlets, even in the independent media world. So I think it's kind of the idea is you come after a tiny outlet first and try to sort of drain them of their resources

because at the end of the day, like it costs money to hire lawyers. And all the money that you spend on lawyers, you can't spend on reporting. And if you can kind of make an example out of a smaller outlet, the bigger, outlets will be like, okay, well, we don't want to be subpoenaed or, you know, we don't want to be on the radar of like the Department of Justice. So maybe let's soften our rhetoric. I think that that's the idea behind it at the end of the day. But I'll tell you, you know, what I've seen has been the opposite of that. I've seen, you know, a lot of bigger outlets than breakthrough news. Like you guys, like democracy now like others, actually rallying around because this is being recognized as a threat,

not to just break through news, but as a threat to anybody who's in independent media or just any media in general. And also, I think it's seen as an attack on the broader left, as it should be. And so that's what's important in this moment is to not allow the various organizations and people that are being targeted to be isolated, because that's what actually gets us in trouble. So this is really about putting up a kind of united front and not, you know, allowing the chilling effect to take hold, especially because this administration is not going to be in power forever, and they know that, which is why they're accelerating this right now. It's why you see the anti-communism summit, followed by the Cuba Report, followed by subpoenas,

and who knows what else is going to come. But they understand that they have a limited window left to kind of take out who they see as their enemies. Well, how can people support breakthrough news during this challenging time as they try to drown you in legal bills? Well, I would say the best thing people can do is to go to breakthrough news.org. There is a banner at the top of our website that has a link to a petition to sign to tell the House Ways and Means Committee to drop this McCarthyist witch hunt against Breakthrough News. And there's also a link to a fundraiser for us because, you know, every amount of money that we spend, like I said, on legal bills, we're not spending on reporting. And we want to continue to be able to do the reporting that has so upset Jason Smith of the House Ways and Means Committee. So breakthroughnews.org.

All right. Well, we will put a link to that down below wherever people are listening to or watching this. Ranya, Colic, journalist, host of dispatches on Breakthrough News. Best of luck.

Really appreciate your time today. And yeah, let's not let the new McCarthyites win. Thanks so much. Thank you guys. All right, folks. With that, we're going to wrap up the free part of this program

and head into the fun half where we will have for just a short period, a special guest. A special guest. One of the Tim Pool surrounded foes who will shed some light on what it was like to debate Tim and that,

you know, maybe he can settle the debate that Tim was having or at the very least the denial that he was engaged in about whether or not he rage quit. So we'll be talking to our guest in the fun half. Matt, what's happening on Left Reckoning and the Jacobin, Yeah, left reckoning we discussed this THC mess that is going on in Texas.

I mean, just ludicrous, all over, like, ranging in the Republican side from, sorry, I don't know what that is, what's going on with the THC, to Dan Patrick being like, we need to stop this because it's basically the worst thing in the entire world is people getting a little bit high. And then we also talked about Jason Calacanus and Tech Bros. realizing that people hate them now and they might have a problem in a democracy going forward. So check that out Patreon.com says left reckoned. Also, I will be live in L.A., the 4th of October with Francesca Furentini, the bituation room

live at the lodge room. It's a matinee, which is always fun. It's basically brunch. So check it out. It's on Sunday, October 4th. We will put a link to that down below wherever people are listening to or watching this. And please become a... member join the majority report.com. It helps us stay alive, thriving, at least relatively,

and, you know, protects us from some of the, you know, worst possible outcomes of like deplatforming and things like that as this administration ramps up its war on left wing media. So join the majority report.com. You get access to the fun half. You can also IM the show. We will read your IMs on air. All right. With that, We are going to head into the fun half, and we'll have a little bit of a special guest on the other side. See you there. Okay, Emma, please. Well, I just, I feel that my voice is sorely lacking in the majority report. Wait, whoa.

Look, Sam is unpopular. I do deserve a vacation at Disney World. So, ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to welcome Emma to the show. It is Thursday. Yeah, I think you need to take over for Sam. Yes, police. No, I'm going to, I'm going to pause you right there. Wait, what?

You can't encourage Emma to live like that. And I'll tell you why. So it's offered a twerk, sushi and poker, sushi and poker with the boy. So it's offered a twer boys. What? Twerk. Sushi and the boys. It was offered a twerk, sushi, and, uh, that's what we call biz.

I just think that what you did to Tim Poole was mean. Free speech. That's not what we're about here. Look at how sad he's become now. You shouldn't even talk about it because I think you're responsible. I probably am in a certain way, but let's get to the meltdown. here. That's not what we're talking about here.

It's not a fun job. That's a real thing. That's a real thing. That's a real fit. Willie Walker. That's a real thing. Live YouTube. Sam has split the way of the world on the shoulders. Sam doesn't want to do this show anymore.

It was so much easier. One of the majority report was just you. You were happy. Let's change the subject. Rangers and Nick's are going great. Now shut up. I don't want people saying reckless things on your program. That's one of the most difficult parts about this show.

This is a pro-killing podcast. I'm thinking maybe it's kind of buried the hatchet. Left is best. Violet twir? Don't be foolish. The way Emma is cuck. L.C.O.C.O.C. A little theme song.

I Bumbler. Emma Viglin. Absolutely one of my favorite people. Actually, not just in the game. Like, period.