After a long time on WordPress, I have moved my following back to Substack
Good morning everyone,
It has been some time since I have used this site to write pieces and continue my work. Though I enjoyed WordPress, I will admit that the Website’s financial burdens and lack of intuitive use made my choice to return Substack an easy decision.
The Progressive American is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
I thought that I would make my plans clear for the future here. Firstly, if you are a free subscriber, you will receive content as usual. All free articles, such as project updates and public articles, will be available to you via email. You don’t have to do a thing.
As for the paid subscribers, you will be receiving more benefits that I have been planning on adding for a while now. The obvious one is paid long-form articles. These will be more analytic and long-term research-based. So expect more scholarly and critical examinations from these articles. The other benefit you will share with my patrons is early access to YouTube videos and ad-free podcasts. This applies to all subscriber levels. Consider this my thanks for your support!
I plan to begin essays immediately as of this Wednesday. The first articles for the coming few days will be free as I am looking into some research on partisan identification and the news media. Updates to follow!
Thanks,
Conor
The Progressive American is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
I hope you enjoyed your Superbowl Sunday! I had the pleasure of visiting my family this weekend, so I know I spent this weekend well.
As many of you are likely aware, I have been dealing with some unfortunate issues with the newsletter thanks to a supposedly temporary API issue with Twitter.
While Twitter is not the sole basis for promoting the newsletter, it is a critical part of spreading it. Much of my branding and promotion has come from my Twitter account and the Twitter threads that have boosted my work over the years.
Unfortunately, that is not the only issue that has plagued my move to WordPress. Since the UIS Observer stopped paying student employees, I have had to make difficult financial decisions, and one of those that I have been seriously looking at is the state of the website. While WordPress provides an excellent array of options for promoting my work, and I have come to enjoy the website’s design, the fact remains that a subscription like this is not easy to maintain.
As a result, I am officially moving to Substack. I will wait a week and a half from Today before I end my WordPress subscription so that you can all access my materials. If you are a free subscriber, you don’t have to do a thing; I will add you to the newsletter automatically so you can continue reading. If you are paid, I will cancel your subscriptions so that you are not charged for the material you are not yet receiving, but you can set up your new subscription with the link here.
Unfortunately, Substack requires a minimum of $5 a month, but thankfully, the subscription system does not apply a minimum amount for the yearly subscription, which rests at $35 for the entire year.
I want to also thank all my readers for all the support they have provided me for so long, and I greatly appreciate the suggestions many of you have made. I will be adding more content on Substack for all of you to enjoy, and I look forward to writing more for you all.
If you have received this, please pay it no mind. I am looking into possibly moving the newsletter back to Substack since there may be some issues with WordPress. I will update you, as well as all WordPress subscribers to what is going on going forward.
Thanks,
Conor
The Progressive American is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
I am writing to you all today just to update you all about a recent development that has come to my attention surrounding Twitter’s API system. Previously, the API allowed third parties to connect to Twitter through automated bots. However, Elon Musk recently announced that API usage will no longer be free, and one of the programs that WordPress uses to automatically share articles to Twitter may be affected.
This means that while I would not have issues getting the articles to you, I would have some difficulty getting these articles to gain the attention needed to spread the newsletter and increase the subscriber base, both paid and free. For the moment, I am going to keep the newsletter here until I know more.
If things don’t go well, then I would highly recommend going to my Substack, where I will be archiving all my articles from this website. That is not the desired outcome, but if I am going to make this program work, I need to be able to consistently reach as many people as possible.
If you are a paid subscriber, I will ensure you are not charged for any months that the newsletter moves and you receive no content. If you want me to move you onto the Substack manually, you can comment under this or reach out to me on the contact form.
There is a saying that I have heard many times in politics, “a hit dog barks.” This old saying is almost always illustrative of individuals who protest too firmly against an accusation against them, signifying that the accusation is almost certainly true. And there is no better phrase to describe the GOP’s response to Biden’s state of the Union earlier this week.
On Tuesday, President Biden addressed the House of Representatives, pushing back on their claims of his supposedly failed presidency. During the speech, the president directly criticized some, not all, of the members of the House GOP for their proposals to let Medicare and Social Security sunset after five years. Sunsetting, of course, would mean that these programs would have to be approved again by congress after the deadline occurs, something that likely would not happen.
Such a position is, of course, unpopular. That unpopularity inevitably forced the GOP-controlled House to respond immediately, screaming at the President in the middle of his speech, with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) screaming at the president and calling him a liar.
Republicans should not be so loud in their protests or accusations, as their statements on Social Security and Medicare are all public knowledge. Florida Senator Rick Scott proposed that very plan with his so-called “plan to rescue America.” Under this plan, all legislation would have to be voted on again by Congress after 5 years after its original passage.
While the proposal itself does not mention either Social Security or Medicare, the fact that no exemption exists for either program means that Senator Scott’s proposal would effectively allow for the sunsetting of these two incredibly important programs. Nor was Senator Scott the only Republican to support a similar goal.
The Republican Study Committee released its budget plan titled Blueprint to Save America, which proposed raising the age of eligibility for Medicare from 65 to 67, along with recommendations to cut funding for disabled Americans. Not to mention they proposed increasing the age of eligibility for Social Security to 69.
Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) also feign anger at the idea that he would want to get rid of Social Security, but as MSNBC’s Chris Hayes pointed out, Lee himself has been caught on camera saying that his long-term goal is to phase out Social Security, and to “pull it out by its roots.”
This isn’t to say that all Republicans want this to be the direction that the GOP follows. Both of these programs are incredibly popular and would be electorally dangerous for any party to attack, but Biden didn’t claim it was a majority of the GOP—he argued that it was some of the Republican Caucus, and yet, the GOP still threw a fit.
This is not the first time that Republicans have heckled President Biden during his state of the Union address. In 2022, representatives Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and Greene both heckled Biden, with Boebert going out of her way to accuse Biden of killing thirteen service members during the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. It is worth noting that she did this while the President was referring to his son’s death and his service to the country.
Some point to former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to rip Trump’s speech after his 2020 State of the Union as equally disrespectful as the heckling that Presiden Biden has endured in the last two speeches he gave before Congress. That is an absurd proposition.
Aside from being a distraction from the content of the GOP’s failed policy-making, the comparison is insulting to the public. The GOP’s response to Biden correctly calling out their attempts to rob the American public of services they pay for, which would harm millions of Americans, is far worse than a pointless attempt by Pelosi to appeal to her own base. And it is certainly not comparable to accusing the President of murdering service members while he is referencing his dead son. Millions of people could be harmed by the GOP’s policy-making. Nobody was hurt by Pelosi ripping up a piece of paper.
Biden’s speech and the GOP’s pathetic response to it demonstrate the fundamental dysfunction within the Republican Party. They could have come to Congress with a legitimate proposal for change for Biden to work, but instead, they have embraced conspiracism and austerity politics. Say what you will about Biden, but he hit the GOP where at its core, and they deserved it.
Nobody should be surprised, and yet nobody should pretend it wasn’t a bigoted and partisan attack. In a brazen act of retaliation against Democrats, the House GOP stripped Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Mich) from the Foreign Affairs committee, citing her comments on Israeli foreign policy.
The vote, which went entirely along partisan lines, was supported by GOP leadership by Omar’s alleged “antisemitic and anti-American remarks,” which Republicans argued made her unfit to stand on the foreign affairs committee.
Ironically, anti-semitism has not stopped the GOP from supporting the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene. It didn’t stop them from putting her on the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, much less the Committee on Homeland Security. Comments about Jewish Space lasers don’t seem to concern the GOP.
The comments by Omar are far from perfect, but when it came to taking responsibility, Omar was willing and ready to apologize for her remarks, crude and inappropriate as they were. Compare that to the haphazard defense and apology that Marjorie Taylor Greene gave to keep her committee, and the distinction becomes clear.
Omar apologized because her tweet, “it’s all about the Benjamins,” was fundamentally wrong. Greene apologized because she wanted to hold onto power.
But in the face of newly established, albeit weak, GOP control, the American public should not be surprised at all that antisemitism has been used and will continue to be used as a tool in a larger political game. It should also not be surprising that one of the first members of congress that said the tool was deployed against was a Muslim woman who the GOP loves to hate.
This morning, the FBI searched President Biden’s home in Delaware, prompting a firestorm of media coverage and new attention on the ongoing investigation into the President’s handling of classified material. The search, though consensual and not requiring a warrant, has inevitably created comparisons between how the Justice Department responded to Biden and Trump. Those comparisons are beyond weak and are downright deceptive.
COMPLAIN AND LIE
Already Republicans are falsely claiming equivalence between the search of Mar-A-Lago and the investigation into Biden. House Chair James Comer (R-Kentucky) complained on Fox News that the National Archives and the General Counsel held “a double standard…” for how Trump was treated and how Biden was treated.
'DOUBLE STANDARD': House Oversight Chair James Comer tells "Hannity" that his meeting with the National Archives revealed that the Biden classified documents were treated "very differently" compared to those found in Trump's possession. pic.twitter.com/S8BylCcjYs
Others, however, have attempted to sell the idea of the investigation being far more significant than it actually is, Texas Congressman Ronny Jackson seemingly arguing that Biden had a significant amount of classified material and that perhaps his son, Hunter, had access to those documents.
THE FBI IS CURRENTLY SEARCHING BIDEN’S BEACH HOUSE!! How many HIGHLY CLASSIFIED documents did he have there? Did Hunter have access to them? Remember, as a Senator and as VP, he had NO RIGHT to possess ANY classified materials!
It is far from surprising that Republicans have capitalized on the investigation into the President’s handling of classified material. It would be political incompetence if they didn’t, as the investigation into Biden serves as a perfect distraction from the still on-going inquiry into Trump and his possession of classified materials.
Such a distraction is perfect for Republicans, as they hope the American public forgets that some of the stolen materials at Mar-A-Lago contained nuclear secrets, as I noted last year. With the new search of Biden’s home, Republicans will wail about the supposed injustice of Trump’s treatment while actively disregarding the actions which put Trump into the position to be raided in the first place. They will rehash all their conspiracy theories and pretend that Hunter Biden’s laptop is somehow connected to the mishandled documents in Delaware, all while attempting to establish a supposed equivalence that doesn’t exist.
ADDRESSING THE INVESTIGATIONS
While it may be tempting for some of my readers to assume that this defense is meant as a partisan argument, it must be stated that under no circumstances am I attempting to argue that Biden had a right to hold these documents and Trump didn’t. In both cases, classified material was handled improperly. That said, how the documents were found and how two public figures interacted with them couldn’t be more distinct.
Right off the bat, the scope of the documents retrieved is beyond comparison. When the Justice Department searched Mar-A-Lago last year, over 300 documents with classified markings were recovered. The documents retrieved in the Biden investigation doesn’t come close to that number.
Even if the volume of documents retrieved were equivalent, the response by the two men would still justify the difference in treatment by the DOJ. When Biden and his lawyers found out about the documents, they contacted the National Archives and began cooperating with the investigators, actively allowing the DOJ to access multiple locations without resistance. This is why today’s search of Biden’s home didn’t require a warrant.
Trump provided no such cooperation and had been subpoenaed for the documents as far back as May of 2022. Additional reporting by the DOJ showed that some of the documents were moved from a storage area at Mar-A-Lago, seemingly to obstruct the subpoena. As a result of this alleged obstruction, the Justice Department was forced to get a search warrant and seize documents from Trump’s home.
The department is also investigating three potential criminal acts, including an alleged violation of the Espionage Act of 1917. Far from a mere search, the investigation into Trump was a response to the severe disregard by Trump and his team for national security and the federal government’s property. It is an investigation into the theft of government property and secrets by a former president.
This isn’t to say that Biden is off the hook. Holding onto classified material, even unintentionally, is a serious issue and merits a thorough investigation. Worse still is the revelation that former Vice-President Mike Pence also had classified documents at his home. He is also cooperating with investigators.
If anything, the holding of these documents by Biden and Pence demonstrates the inadequacy of the federal government’s policies relating to sensitive materials, but it is far from comparable to the criminal investigation into Trump and those who helped him. Biden may have been negligent, but Trump could be downright criminal.
In this recent video, I talk with Dr. Andrew Bard Schmookler, a twice-published author, former radio host, and Democratic congressional candidate. I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Schmookler about the nature of America’s broken spiritual and political culture and how that corrupts and weakens our political system.
I hope you are doing well! I mentioned it before, but I wanted to remind you all that I plan to do a video essay to go over just how disgusting it is that News Nation hired Chris Cuomo.
For those unfamiliar with my views on Chris Cuomo, you can find my original commentary in the video linked below.
Please consider checking out the channel itself and turning on the notifications so you can get updated when I release the video.
A bit of an update for you all! After my recent video on Kanye, I was thinking I would do another video essay going after the bad behavior of high-profile of other media personalities. I made a video a while back responding to CNN’s firing of Chris Cuomo, pointing out that their hesitation to deal with him undermined an already weak public trust in the media.
Unfortunately, some companies have yet to get the memo, and another media company, NewsNation, has hired him as one of their contributors. So, that will be addressed in my next video. Branding and time of release will be released soon!
