President Obama on Iran: “We pulled it off without firing a missile. We got 97% of their enriched uranium out. There’s no dispute that it worked and we didn’t have to kill a whole bunch of people or shut down the Strait of Hormuz”
In August 2010, Jane Mayer published a long article in The New Yorker called "Covert Operations."
It introduced most Americans, for the first time, to two brothers — Charles and David Koch — and the quiet network of foundations, think tanks, and political organizations they had spent decades building to reshape American politics from behind the scenes.
The article was meticulously sourced. It named names. It followed the money.
A few months later, Mayer started getting strange messages.
A blogger asked her how she felt about the private investigator who was looking into her. She thought it was a joke. Then a former reporter told her, at a Christmas party, that he'd been approached and asked to help dig up damaging information on a journalist who had written something two billionaires didn't like.
Then, in January 2011, her editor at The New Yorker, David Remnick, forwarded her a query from the New York Post. The Post had been handed material claiming Mayer was a serial plagiarist. The "evidence" was being shopped to multiple outlets at once.
It wasn't true. The reporters she had supposedly stolen from confirmed she had cited them properly or asked permission. The Post dropped the story. But the campaign had been real — and Mayer eventually traced it to a firm called Vigilant Resources International, run by Howard Safir, the former NYPD commissioner. The firm had been hired, she would later document, by people connected to Koch business interests.
The dirt didn't exist. So someone had tried to manufacture it.
That moment told Mayer something about her own work that she has never forgotten.
She wasn't being attacked because her reporting was sloppy. She was being attacked because it was accurate.
Mayer has spent more than three decades doing this. Before Dark Money, she wrote The Dark Side, the definitive account of how the United States adopted torture as policy after September 11. After Dark Money, she investigated dark money behind Supreme Court confirmations, the network funding election-denial campaigns, and the secret political work of a Supreme Court justice's spouse.
Each story has followed the same arc.
Reporting comes out. Power responds — not by disputing the facts, but by going after the reporter. Lawyers get involved. Personal information gets leaked. Old colleagues get phone calls. The accusation is always the same in spirit, even when the words change: she went too far.
But "too far" has never meant inaccurate. It has meant inconvenient.
That's the quiet education buried in Jane Mayer's career: powerful institutions rarely correct the record. They reach for the messenger. They make the cost of telling the truth so high that the next person thinks twice.
It only works if it works.
Mayer is still reporting. The stories are still landing.
The lines, it turns out, were never where we were told they were.
Someone just had to be willing to walk past them, and write down what was on the other side.
@realstewpeters A good reason to change the name of Dept. of Defense to Dept. of War.
Ask about the safety of those innocent 168 little children Hegseth bombed twice.
Who were they a threat to?
@TheFl0orIsLaVa As your friendly twitter psychic, I see a pair of spiritual warriors joining up with the Republican Idiocracy. Russell Brand and Erika Kirk.
WHAT AN AMATEUR. I, GAVIN C. NEWSOM, STOPPED 72 WARS. IN THE SHOWER THIS MORNING. ON THE WAY TO WORK I SIGNED 32 PEACE DEALS. PEOPLE CALL ME ALL THE TIME, "MR. NEWSOM, STOP STOPPING WARS!" BUT I CAN'T HELP IT. I'M A STOPPER. NO ONE STOPS AS MANY WARS THAT THEY START AS ME.
@DrNeilStone TED Talks: Skeptic James Randi takes a fatal dose of homeopathic sleeping pills onstage, kicking off a searing 18-minute indictment of irrational beliefs. James Randi is a strong critic of homeopathy, viewing it as quackery and fraud. He argues it provides a placebo effect.
Like all pimps Ghislaine Maxwell befriended her vulnerable victims and made them feel like she cared. She hung out in front of schools and gave bonuses for referrals like some MLM for sexual abuse. According to testimony, she also participated in the abuse. She prepped, lubed and raped. If Trump pardons her, which I am certain he will, it's because living in a country club prison isn't enough for her to fully keep her mouth shut.
NEW: In honor of White House Correspondents Weekend, this video message highlighting Trump’s relationship with Epstein is being displayed on the side of the building where Trump will attend the dinner.
Trump’s $10 BILLION lawsuit against his own government just hit a wall.
A federal judge says the case looks collusive, raising serious concerns that Trump is trying to use the courts to get a payout from the Treasury Department.
Now the judge is demanding answers, ordering Trump or his administration essentially to explain why this isn’t a fraud on the court.
One possible outcome? The judge could pause the entire case until Trump leaves office—so that a real adversarial process can exist.
NEWS: Bette Midler just released a new music video for her remake of "All You Fascists Bound to Lose"—featuring Barbara Hershey, other celebrities, and crowds from the No Kings protests in a joyful, powerful show of resistance.
You have to see this.
I didn’t expect this to get as much attention as it has. Anyone who follows me knows I don’t toil in conspiracies. I believe there is legitimacy to this. Trump merged w/a Fusion co. after the death of a scientist & Thiel is working on nuclear tech, & then there’s the stolen docs.
Todd, Port St. Lucie, Florida. Republican: My family members worship Donald Trump. They do believe he is Jesus Christ. My family doesn't pray for Donald Trump; they pray to him. This is a cult.
Mimi Geerges: Did you ever vote for President Trump?
Todd: Why would I? He's a pedophile.