Message from MeidasTouch

 

CRITICAL Message from MeidasTouch Founder!

MEIDASTOUCH NETWORK AND BEN MEISELAS JUL 6

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By Ben Meiselas

Hello Substack Subscribers. It’s Ben Meiselas, co-founder of MeidasTouch. It’s Sunday, so let’s have a coffee—or a beverage of your choice—together and let’s chat.

First, let me thank our Subscribers. I’ve got some great data to report for you all.

The MeidasTouch Network continues to lead all cable news networks in digital views. We continue to get more monthly podcast downloads than Joe Rogan, Candace Owens, and Charlie Kirk combined (Remember to add the MeidasTouch Podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify to keep this momentum going).

We don’t have investors. Your subscriptions are critical to helping us grow. Subscribe today.

Let’s get into it.

I want to discuss something that sets the MeidasTouch Network apart. We were not afraid to immediately call out the Trump regime and Governor Abbott for their failures related to the flash floods in Kerr County, Texas.

We didn’t hesitate to call out the facts. I stand behind our coverage, and I am proud of our fearless reporting.

The facts are the following:

1. Trump has fired or forced out a huge number of employees at the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), the NWS (National Weather Service), and FEMA.

2. Trump and his Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, have repeatedly called for FEMA to be eliminated.

3. The Trump regime fired the interim head of FEMA—an ultra-MAGA guy—because he testified before Congress that he personally did not want to see FEMA eliminated.

4. Kristi Noem has bragged about diverting (aka stealing) $450 million in FEMA funds to fund the Alligator Alcatraz concentration camp in Florida.

5. Numerous top meteorologists have said weather forecasting is now severely degraded because of the Trump and DOGE cuts.

6. The Trump regime is now only sending a small fraction of the weather balloons needed for accurate forecasting.

7. A significant amount of resources within NOAA, NWS, and FEMA have been removed, dismantled, or defunded.

8. In April, Paul Yura—the warning coordination meteorologist at the NWS Austin/San Antonio office, with over 32 years of experience—was forced out by DOGE and took early retirement.

These are the undisputed facts that predated the flash floods in Texas.

This isn’t spin.

These are just the facts.

Since the catastrophic storm in Kerr County, Texas, here is what we’ve also learned:

1. Local law enforcement officials blame the NWS for their forecast and ineffective communications.

2. The top government official in Kerr County said he wasn’t aware the storm would be this big and could not explain why he didn’t evacuate people earlier.

3. Kristi Noem held a press conference in Texas on Saturday where she blamed faulty equipment and the Biden administration for criticisms about the federal warning.

4. Noem said Texas was leading the operations related to the flash floods and search and rescue, and that FEMA and the feds would provide resources as needed.

As of the time I am writing this, we know of 52 deaths from the flash floods. Many of these deaths are young girls. There are over 20 young girls from Camp Mystic who are still unaccounted for.

Our hearts go out to all the families enduring this unthinkable tragedy in Texas. I am so sad and heartbroken about this horrible situation. The loss of life is so tragic.

Given the undisputed facts I listed above, I still think it’s critical we ask tough questions of the regime and call out the lack of communication between the federal and Texas state governments. What happened? I feel duty-bound to ask these questions and look into it.

I think one of the biggest issues not being discussed is that states like Texas are simply not equipped to deal with these situations alone.

In the past, the federal government would establish joint responsibilities the moment an emergency forecast was made and immediately pre-position resources.

The feds would work with state and local governments to come up with evacuation and emergency plans—and coordinate it. Together. Even with fast-developing storms, the feds would be there at all stages.

The feds would jealously guard their jurisdiction and authority and would never say they would not be leading efforts regarding catastrophic storms.

How can we ignore that local officials in Texas—from a very pro-MAGA area—are pointing fingers at the NWS and blaming them?

You have Kristi Noem seeming to blame Biden and the NWS equipment, and suggesting that the feds are only playing an ancillary or support role while Texas is taking the lead.

Throughout the Biden administration, MAGA and the media blamed Biden for every natural disaster and catastrophe—even when Biden appropriately responded and mitigated the disasters with all available resources.

Often, MAGA and the compliant media would just make things up and lie about Biden’s handling of situations with defamatory accusations that were reported as fact.

Democrats or others in the media were afraid to come to Biden’s defense for fear of being viewed as weak or an accomplice to the defamatory lies reported as truth.

In the absence of a defense and the truth getting out, the lies became what was reported.

Now, with the Trump regime in power, there seems to be a timidity in calling out the Trump regime’s handling of disasters—as though it’s taboo.

I’ve seen news outlets talk about how America “lost” its emergency forecasting capabilities as if it just disappeared.

I’ve seen people say it’s too soon to criticize Trump or that it’s politicizing the situation.

I don’t think we should ignore what local officials in Texas are saying about the forecasting. Even if the forecast was accurate, was there a robust federal and state coordination before the storm hit, as should have occurred? Why did it take almost a full day for Trump to say anything about the flood? Why was he partying and dancing to the YMCA song on Friday when he should have known what was happening?

Also, this is not the only devastating storm where the issue of resources and federal assistance has become a problem recently.

There have been multiple storms over the past 90 days that have resulted in mass casualty events where federal resourcing and assistance have been an issue.

Many of these storms—in states like Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Arkansas, West Virginia, and others—were simply ignored by Trump, even as they caused dozens of deaths. FEMA has denied supplemental emergency requests for both Georgia and North Carolina since Trump took office.

Our reporting must be fearless. It must also be compassionate. We must hold the regime accountable for its failures.

I ultimately know that’s why you are here at the MeidasTouch Substack and why we’ve grown the way we have.

The MeidasTouch Network needs your help today.

As I mentioned before, we don’t have investors. Yet, we still beat Fox and Joe Rogan.

One of the ways we’ve grown and expanded the network—while always staying independent—is through your subscriptions.

If you aren’t subscribed to the MeidasTouch Substack, please do so now.

You can also gift subscriptions to people you know if you are already subscribed.

We have a difficult July subscriber goal to hit, and we’d love for you to be a subscriber and help the MeidasTouch Network grow.

Thanks for having coffee with me.

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The violence and incitement are coming from Trump

Words & Phrases We Could Do Without

Jennifer Rubin Jun 17

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Donald Trump twists language, as do all autocrats, to cast himself and his cult as victims, whereas his dissenters are violent, rebellious, and threatening. In the real world, however, we have seen Trump repeatedly provoke violence rather than take any measures to prevent it. Indeed, he has historically encouraged rather than condemned violent supporters.

The president deliberately confuses “violence” with “protest,” and “rebellion” with “demonstrations.” He insisted in his memorandum nationalizing the California National Guard and deploying the Marines that he holds the power to deploy forces anywhere in the U.S. where protests are or are likely to occur. He later threatened to use “heavy force” against protestors who showed up at his sparsely attended birthday parade.

This all feeds into a pattern. When Trump called for his mob to charge the Capitol on Jan. 6 or egged on the crowd chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” he was inciting violence. As Gov. Gavin Newsom remarked to Californians, “Trump—he’s not opposed to lawlessness and violence, as long as it serves HIM. What more evidence do we need than January 6th?” When Trump pardoned violent insurrectionists, he established an approval structure that encouraged other acts of violence (be they in Minnesota, Utah, or Culpepper, Va.)

When Trump sent Marines and the National Guard into a relatively calm city, that was “incitement.” He was spoiling for a fight to justify more repression and state terror against ordinary workers whom he has demonized and dehumanized. And when he vowed to step up raids of masked ICE agents in Democratic cities, he was threatening to incite more violence.

Trump consistently tries to use opponents’ imaginary violence to justify the use of force. However, U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer of the Northern District of California debunked the government’s claimed authority to deploy force in anticipation of a “rebellion”:

[T]he Court is troubled by the implication inherent in Defendants’ argument that protest against the federal government, a core civil liberty protected by the First Amendment, can justify a finding of rebellion. The [Supreme Court cases] are chock-full of language explaining the importance of individuals’ right to speak out against the government—even when doing so is uncomfortable, even when doing so is provocative, even when doing so causes inconvenience….

Applying these principles, courts have repeatedly reaffirmed that peaceful protest does not lose its protection merely because some isolated individuals act violently outside the protections of the First Amendment.

Breyer reaffirmed that preempting or preventing First Amendment expression on the speculation that violence might occur is verboten under the First Amendment. “In short, individuals’ right to protest the government is one of the fundamental rights protected by the First Amendment, and just because some stray bad actors go too far does not wipe out that right for everyone,” Breyer wrote. “The idea that protesters can so quickly cross the line between protected conduct and ‘rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States’ is untenable and dangerous.”

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Now, even core First Amendment speech is enough to set off a MAGA crackdown. MAGA authoritarians suggest the standard for use of force against peaceful Americans is so low that even “failing to show deference” to the regime is sufficient cause to trigger government violence, as the Department of Homeland Security claimed after manhandling Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) When the temerity of voicing dissent is sufficient to trigger a violent government crackdown, we should be clear which side has resorted to violence.

Trump appears “eager to create optics that support his claim that public dissent constitutes an existential threat to the nation,” writes Ruth Ben Ghiat. She adds that Trump, in true authoritarian style, uses various methods: “Flooding our screens with images that habituate us to a new reality of federalized state militia members standing opposite civilian protesters is part of it. So is mobilizing our armed forces for a parade staged on Mr. Trump’s birthday.” This is about intimidation, crushing dissent, and brute force. Trump’s characterization of protestors has nothing to do with their actual conduct, and everything to do with whether they are on his side. Whoever does not conform to his dictates is fair game for the strongman’s violence.

In sum, Trump has defiled ordinary language (“preventative,” “rebellion”). He mischaracterizes protests as “violence” or “riots,” and falsely adopts the mantle of “restoring law and order.” Those words have lost any semblance of meaning under his regime. Instead of adopting his descriptions, we must acknowledge that Trump actions fit the playbook of fascists, who instrumentalize violence to crack down on opposition. Trump wants to prevent dissent, and will use violence to accomplish his means. He wants to provoke and incite a violent response, leaving him with justification to crush his opponents.

If that sounds like the death knell of democracy, it is. Thankfully, millions of people peacefully demonstrated on Saturday that they know what the First Amendment allows, and do not intend to let Trump get away with inflicting violence on our Constitution or brutalizing fellow Americans.

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Employees are imprisoned in an ‘infinite workday’

Illustration: Anna Kim, Photos: Runstudio/Getty Images, Adobe Stock

Workdays once had a defined beginning and end. But, much like a bad first date or a card game at a party, workdays are increasingly stretching on forever, per the latest data from Microsoft’s Work Trend Index Special Report. The “infinite workday,” as Microsoft calls it, began as an anomaly with the rise of remote work during the pandemic but has since become the norm for many who are unable to disconnect completely. Microsoft made the observation after parsing “trillions” of data points across its Microsoft 365 products. Brace for the soul-crushing numbers: Early mornings: Microsoft used telemetry to determine that 40% of people online at 6am are checking work email instead of hitting the snooze. Meanwhile, Teams becomes the primary communication platform within the Microsoft environment by 8am, with workers receiving an average of 153 messages per weekday. Midday: Half of meetings take place between 9am and 11am and 1pm and 3pm, right when people are at their most productive (due to circadian rhythms). And 57% of meetings occur without a calendar invite, while 1 in 10 are booked last minute. Evenings/weekends: Meetings after 8pm are up 16% over last year, and the average employee sends or receives more than 50 emails outside of regular business hours. On weekends, ~20% of employees check work email before noon. Got a minute? This might be the most staggering detail from the report: Employees using Microsoft 365 are interrupted by a meeting, email, or notification every two minutes during “core business hours,” and that doesn’t even include your coworker swinging by your desk to tell you about their fantasy football team. AI could help (and also hurt). The report concludes that using AI for menial tasks will free humans to focus on more important aspects of their jobs. But as Forbes notes, if AI is only freeing people for more assignments, a healthy work-life balance will remain out of reach.—DL

 

Check out the Declaration’s list of grievances

It’s time to recapture our freedoms.

Jennifer Rubin Jul 3

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Desperate for some inspiration, I decided to reread the entire Declaration of Independence. We know it as an aspirational document (“We hold these truths…”). We understand it as a repudiation of tyranny (“Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.”). It is both those things, but it is also a compendium of complaints, a description of an autocrat’s offenses against a free people. And that was the part I found strangely relevant to our times.

The signers railed about exclusionary immigration policies that hurt the colonies (“He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither”). They inveighed against barriers to trade (“cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world”). And they condemned imposing “Taxes on us without our Consent,” which, if we remember that unilaterally imposed tariffs are a consumer tax, also sounds familiar. Tyrants, then and now, seek to dominate and micromanage commerce to the detriment of ordinary people seeking a better life.

And notice the common problem, then and now, when a tyrant attempts to corrupt the rule of law by seeking to intimidate and threaten members of the judiciary (“He has obstructed the Administration of Justice…. He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices”); seeks to impair due process (“depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury”); and even ships people out of the country for punishment (“Transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences”). The tyrant playbook has not changed much in nearly 250 years.

Using the military improperly has always been a go-to move for tyrants. “He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures” (or in our case, the governor of California) and tried to make “the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power” (by, among other things, threatening to deploy them to silence protests). “Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us” is still going on in Los Angeles. And “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us …”—or in Donald Trump’s case, incited violence, called it an insurrection and then used it as a pretext to send in the military.

Though our bill of particulars against Trump bears some resemblance to the Declaration’s list of grievances, it might be useful to include a few of Trump’s more recent offenses:

• He has waged war without the authorization of Congress.

• He has used his office to enrich himself and corrupt commerce.

• He has attempted to quash states’ laws and practices (e.g., California’s air quality standards, sanctuary cities’ prohibitions on cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement).

• He has threatened the free press.

• He has weaponized the administration of justice against his enemies and released felons who staged an insurrection.

• He has installed incompetent, ignorant, and morally compromised people in high office.

• He has vowed to strip his political opponents’ citizenship.

• He has attempted to usurp the power of the purse.

I could go on.

In a functional democracy with a vibrant, independent and conscientious Article I branch, the compendium of Trump’s offenses would serve as an outline for articles of impeachment. In the era of a pliant, quivering Republican House and Senate majority, the litany of horrors should at least highlight the degree to which Trump has tried to assume the powers of a king. (It’s no coincidence he flocks the Oval Office in gold—décor long favored by monarchs, tyrants, and real estate developers with bad taste.)

Nearly 250 years ago, after listing the offenses against the colonies, the signers of the Declaration felt compelled to declare their break from Britain as the only means to unshackle themselves. We must not (as Trump has) resort to insurrection and/or violence. Thanks to the handiwork of the Constitution ratified 12 years after the Declaration, we have all the tools (e.g., elections, free speech) necessary to maintain our status as a “Free and Independent” people.

We all can use this Independence Day to rouse our fellow Americans from their stupor, recall for them the offenses of our modern tyrant, and summon them to embrace the spirit of the Declaration (“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”).

We can remind them that generations of Americans have pledged their Lives, Fortunes and sacred Honor for the right to live as free citizens, not helpless subjects of a mad king. And we might then enlist them in the immense task of peacefully recapturing our democracy and reforming all branches of government. Then we might be worthy of the greatest inheritance one might receive: the privilege of being a free people in a country capable of transcending its faults.

I hope you have a meaningful, inspiring, and joyful Fourth of July!

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Trump has a shortlist for Fed Chair

 

Trump has a shortlist for Fed Chair ready

Brendan Smialowski, Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

As Jerome Powell was finishing up his summer Capitol Hill tour on Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that President Trump could name a successor to Powell—whose term as Fed chair doesn’t end until May 2026—as early as this summer, potentially anointing a controversial “shadow chair.” The dollar dropped by over 0.5% yesterday to a three-year low as investors mulled the possible threat to the political independence of the Fed. The White House said that despite the report, a nomination is not “imminent, although the President has the right to change his mind.” The president, who has threatened to fire Powell for refusing to cut interest rates, said on Wednesday during a press conference that he had “three or four people” in mind for the role. The speculated shortlist: Former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh interviewed for the job eight years ago alongside Powell, but he has been pretty anti-lowering interest rates lately. National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent are considered likely options…but both have said they aren’t interested, according to the Wall Street Journal and DealBook. Having a Fed Chair on his side might help Trump, but there are 12 voting members of the committee that determines interest rates. Undermining Powell, and by extension the independence of the Fed, with an early nomination could spook other members.—MM

 

WhatsApp ditches its no-ads policy

WhatsApp

You either die an ad-free hero or live long enough to see yourself become like Instagram: Meta is bringing paid advertising and subscriptions to the world’s most popular messaging platform, the tech giant announced yesterday, reversing WhatsApp’s longtime stance against ads. You may not notice a difference…if you only use the app to text your international aunts and uncles. Messages will remain ad-free, Meta said. Sponsored content will only appear in Updates, a social tab launched two years ago. Within that section: WhatsApp will start interspersing ads when you’re tapping through Statuses, which is its version of Stories. Creators, brands, and the 200 million businesses using WhatsApp can start monetizing the app’s broadcast channels with subscriptions for their premium content. They’ll also be able to pay WhatsApp to appear higher in the in-app search results. Users who link their Facebook or Instagram accounts to WhatsApp will get ads that are personalized beyond just their location, language, and channel-following data. Founder’s remorse? Before Meta (then Facebook) bought WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014, the platform’s mantra was “No ads! No games! No gimmicks!” Co-founders Brian Acton and Jan Koum reportedly despised digital advertising so much that they both left Meta by 2018—before their stock vested—over the company’s alleged insistence that they bring ads to WhatsApp. Meta’s WhatsApp head denied reports of its ad plans as recently as 2023. Why monetize WhatsApp now? Meta has an expensive habit to support: artificial intelligence. Mark Zuckerberg’s company recently invested $14.3 billion in the startup Scale AI, and it’s planning to shell out as much as $50 billion more on AI this year, mostly supported by Meta’s advertising revenue. WhatsApp is an untapped attention gold mine. WhatsApp has 3 billion global monthly users (only 100 million of whom are in the US), and half of them visit the Updates tab every day, per Meta. On top of an expected influx of ad dollars, Meta also plans to take a 10% cut of WhatsApp channels’ subscription fees.—ML

The Public Lands Grift?

 

The controversial push to sell public land

Gary Tognoni/Getty Images

As Senate Republicans take a red pen to the massive tax and spending bill passed by the House last month, some GOP lawmakers are pushing to add a provision that would green-light the potential sale of 2.1 million to 3.2 million acres of public land across 11 Western states. Land of opportunity: Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee is leading the charge, saying his sale proposal would only free up a tiny fraction of federal land and that the sales would help drive down housing costs. According to a draft of the provision obtained by Politico’s E&E News, the land will be required to be used for “the development of housing or to address associated infrastructure to support local housing needs.” Conservationists, hunting groups, and politicians from both sides of the aisle have lined up to oppose the proposal: Several Republican senators oppose the plan, including Tim Sheehy and Steve Daines of Montana, as well as Idaho’s Jim Risch and Mike Crapo. The Senate Energy Committee’s ranking Democrat, Sen. Martin Heinrich, called the proposal a “sledgehammer to our national public lands,” and says it’s unclear whether it would even lead to substantial housing improvements. The Wilderness Society conservation group said in a statement that the sale would be a “betrayal of future generations,” and that it has considerable room to maneuver around some of the housing guarantees, especially in the long term.