American Doom

Justin Glawe
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  • Politics
  • Updated Bi-monthly

I’m Justin Glawe, writer and journalist, and I’ve spent my career chronicling the violence, unrest and chaos of American life. On this podcast, I’ll discuss the events roiling this complex and troubling country, and speak with some of the people trying to make sense of the madness that pervades our world. This is American Doom. www.american-doom.com

  1. 18 July

    How a small-town Facebook comment led to a Georgia election investigation

    We’re really cooking now. Here’s the latest bit of reporting from an ongoing series I’m conducting with Zeteo called Start the Steal, which will detail how Trump and Republicans are working to sow distrust and/or outright overturn the results of the November mid-terms. Today, how a Facebook post led to an official Georgia State Election Board investigation. Things are going to move fast heading toward November, so we’re going to need your help to keep us running at this high rate of speed. If you appreciate what you see here, spread the word, choose a paid subscription, or drop a few dollars in our Coffee Fund. On May 19, a real estate agent and small-time political operative in Cherokee County, Georgia took to his Facebook page to warn his friends and followers of long lines at a polling location there during the primary. “Problems in Cherokee,” Bryan Laurens wrote, saying that “combined precincts in a single location create almost 2 hour wait time.” While there were long lines that day, it wasn’t because polling precincts had been “combined.” Instead, the lines were the result of the owners of a building declining to offer it as a polling location, causing election officials to have to use just one polling location in that district. Laurens did not report this nuance to his followers. “TWO OF THE MOST REPUBLICAN PRECINCTS IN STATE OF GEORGIA. PEOPLE ARE LEAVING — NOT VOTING,” he wrote. “Reports now of similar happenings around the county in at least four different combined precincts.” Not long after his post, Laurens was contacted by the executive director of the Georgia State Election Board, James Mills. Mills then filed an official complaint with his own board against Cherokee County based on Laurens’ Facebook post, and sent a newly-hired private investigator to question county election officials about long lines during the May 19 primary. Then, in June the investigator, a Trump-supporting believer in election conspiracies named Larry Duckworth, sat down with Cherokee elections director Anne Dover, a 19-year veteran in the office, as well as the county’s attorney. Dover was aware of Laurens’ post, which was screenshotted and served as the genesis of Duckworth’s investigation. Dover noted that “this was the first time we’ve had any kind of complaint about lines in the 19 years I’ve been here.” “I want to know who made those screenshots and submitted the social media post,” Dover said, according to audio of the meeting obtained by American Doom. Duckworth then told Dover that Mills had taken the screenshots as a result of his regular monitoring of election keywords on Facebook. “The executive director has a flag for social media issues… what trigger words they have, I don’t know, but I received those from him,” Duckworth said. “As executive director, he’s got his eye out for issues.” Prior to being appointed to the State Election Board by Republican legislators, Mills served on the state’s parole board and was a member of the state legislature. Before entering government, he was a Baptist minister and owned storage facilities. He has no experience in election administration. Dover then asked if Mills looked at Facebook posts for complaints of long lines in any other counties. Clearly, he did not, although Duckworth wouldn’t admit this. The reason this question is important is because it shows that Mills — along with the other Trump-supporting election skeptics on the SEB — is prioritizing even the most minor complaints from Republican strongholds. Long lines at polling locations are a regular occurrence throughout Georgia — and especially in cities like Atlanta, where voters skew Democratic. But the SEB isn’t concerned with ballot access issues in places where voters elect Democrats; they’re only concerned with making sure that voters in places like Cherokee — which is overwhelmingly Republican — have as smooth an election experience as possible. Duckworth’s haphazard “investigation” and his unserious questioning of Dover are evidence of this pattern. That his probe began because Mills saw a Facebook comment from a fellow, rural Georgia Republican is just the icing on the cake. Mills and Duckworth even went to the trouble of blacking out Laurens’ name on the screenshots that formed the backbone of this strange and wasteful investigation. (Duckworth is paid by taxpayer dollars, as is the county attorney and Dover who had to take time out of their day to answer his questions.) “Well, we decided to make those names redacted, etc., so there’d be no retaliation,” Duckworth said. You’re not going to find this reporting anywhere else in the country. Support our work. But Dover had already seen the posts. She knew Laurens, as well as others who had commented about the long lines that day. In fact, the posts are still up, and Laurens’ Facebook page is largely open to the public with few, if any, privacy settings. For his part, Duckworth insisted that Cherokee was not “targeted” as a result of Laurens’ post, and that his investigation was above board. But Dover already knew that it was apparently the case that Laurens’ Facebook post had prompted the investigation. Prior to meeting Duckworth, Dover asked a statewide group of election officials if any other counties had received official SEB complaints as a result of social media posts regarding long lines. Not a single one of Georgia’s other 158 counties responded that they had. “I have asked other counties that have been targeted via social media for cases to be opened — there are zero,” Dover told Duckworth. *** Doom social: * Bluesky - @americandoom.bsky.social * TikTok - @americandoom_ * YouTube - @americandoom_ * Instagram - @americandoom_ * Facebook This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.american-doom.com/subscribe

  2. 17 July

    Trump promises a smoking gun on the 2020 election, wastes nation's time

    The era of Start the Steal has begun. I’ll have some more exclusive findings tomorrow about election interference efforts in Georgia. For now, a rundown of Trump’s address last night. Subscribe, support and share. - jg Last night, President Donald Trump spoke to the nation in an address in which he hyped overblown claims of fraud in the 2020 election as he kicked off Republican attempts to overturn the results of November’s mid-terms. The speech will be looked back upon as one the strangest and most obvious threats to American democracy from an elected official in the country’s history. The only real new developments the president mentioned were an error-filled DHS estimate that 278,000 undocumented immigrants are registered to vote across the country, and that China accessed the voter registration information of 200 million Americans back in 2020. First, the estimate that 278,000 undocumented immigrants are registered to vote isn’t even correct according to the documents released by the White House itself. Those documents show that a little more than 10,000 noncitizens were found on voter rolls nationwide. The only way to reach the 278,000 number is by adding dead voters to that number of noncitizens. I can’t stress enough how incompetent this is. Prior to Trump’s address, DHS leaked the 278,000 claim to Politico as if were a major finding — but DHS’ own findings don’t show that. Trump nor DHS claimed that any of these 10,000 noncitizens actually voted. The China claim is interesting — but comes from 2016, not 2020, according to the documents release last night. Alos, voter registration information is largely public and not hard to come by. Political parties, individual candidates, non-profit organizations, lawyers and many more regularly access the type of information that China is accused of obtaining. What China allegedly did in 2020 may not even have been illegal. So, Trump had no smoking gun because he never has — and because it doesn’t exist. But that wasn’t really the point of the address. The reason that the people around Trump and Republicans in Congress are letting this madness go on as we approach the mid-terms is that it’s good for them politically. Frightening and angering their base of voters increases the odds that Republicans might be able to hold onto power in Congress. Led by a historically unpopular president, those odds are long. The second reason most Republicans are willing to go along with Trump’s election lies is because they will help them claim the mid-terms were stolen from them when they lose. From there, Republicans in Congress and elsewhere will attempt to legally maneuver Democrats out of their wins, a story I’ll have coming out in the next few weeks. Simply put: unable and unwilling to appeal to voters — or really anyone not named Donald Trump — Republicans in Washington and across the country are engaged in an organized and sweeping plot to undo the will of American voters in November. For his part, Trump has to do everything he can to help Republicans win in November so that a Democrat-controlled Congress won’t hold him accountable for the crimes and impeachable offenses he and his administration commit on a weekly basis. Last night, Trump simply provided specific talking points to be used in efforts to reverse the outcome of an election that Republicans are favored to lose. But let’s be clear about the fundamental reason this is all happening — again. Trump cannot accept that the American people told him “no” in 2020. A civilly-convicted rapist, Trump simply cannot stand that he was told “no” by voters, just as he wouldn’t accept the word “no” from the woman he raped, or the two dozen some-odd women who have credibly accused him of assaulting them. We don’t have to take their word for it — Trump himself said he can simply grab women “by the p***y” if he feels like it. Trump couldn’t stand being told “no” in 2016 when he said Ted Cruz “illegally stole” the Iowa caucuses that showed Cruz winning there. Trump couldn’t stand it when he barely beat Hillary Clinton in 2016, and then formed a task force on election integrity that was quickly disbanded after finding no evidence of widespread voter fraud. And Trump still can’t stand that the American people told him “no” in 2020. He especially can’t stand that it happened thanks in large part to Black voters in Fulton County, Georgia. If Trump’s address actually contained damning information about the 2020 election, it would have come in the form of a court filing — a DOJ affidavit against foreign powers or domestic officials who took part in the fraud — but that was not the case. In the world of U.S. elections over the last six years, we often talk about press releases that are disguised as affidavits and lawsuits — legal filings making bombshell allegations that then never see their day in court for, you know, lack of actual evidence. This wasn’t even that — if Trump had the smoking gun, his DOJ would be filing as such in court. It’s not, and there’s a reason for that. Trump’s address covered a wide variety of areas that have been the obsession of the election denial movement for years. All of this is also probably aimed at creating some sort of legal mechanism that would allow Trump to declare a national emergency, force passage of the SAVE Act — which will help to prevent millions from voting — and do things like call in immigration agents or the military to polling locations in order to intimidate voters and seize ballots, voting machines and other materials in places where Republicans lost. You know, like the FBI has already done right here in Georgia. But even Trump stopped short of that emergency declaration last night. That doesn’t mean it’s not coming, but I think it’s an important distinction to make. Much of Trump’s claims dealt with vulnerabilities in online election systems, including voter registration databases. During his second administration, Trump has gutted government agencies tasked with protecting these systems and data. Nothing in last night’s address included new claims that actual votes were manipulated in 2020. Instead, Trump just repeated a bunch of things that were already known, exaggerated some others, made some stuff up, and claimed that all of this means someone could manipulate actual votes (they can’t). The address was a nothingburger — boring, dumb, overblown, but harmful nonetheless. Millions of Americans will now even more fervently believe lies that elections aren’t secure, priming them to believe more lies when Republicans lose fair and square in November. In the wake of his loss in 2020, Trump’s own intelligence community — led by then-DNI John Ratcliffe, who Trump still likes enough to employ as director of the CIA — found no credible evidence that any foreign power was able to manipulate votes. “We have no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process in the 2020 US elections, including voter registration, casting ballots, vote tabulation, or reporting results,” the first finding of Ratcliffe’s report made clear. So what has changed between then and now? Two impeachments, to start. Now, Republicans are likely to lose the House of Representatives in November, and possibly the Senate as well. Trump expects to be impeached if and when that happens for the many and obvious crimes he has and continues to commit. That’s why he’s so desperate for Republicans to win in November, regardless of who Americans actually choose to elect. *** Follow Doom on social: * Bluesky - @americandoom.bsky.social * TikTok - @americandoom_ * YouTube - @americandoom_ * Instagram - @americandoom_ * X - @americandoom_ * Facebook This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.american-doom.com/subscribe

  3. 16 July

    EXCLU: Meet Georgia's newest election "investigator"— a PI who backs Trump

    Good morning and welcome back to the madness. The plan to steal the November elections — led by Donald Trump and backed by Republican elected officials and everyday citizens across the country — is about to kick into overdrive. American Doom will be on top of this just like we have been on all Republican efforts to undo democracy over the last six years. But we can’t do it without your help. Please choose a paid subscription or drop a few dollars in our Coffee Fund. Your money directly funds our journalism. Now, on to the news…. - jg We’ve got an exclusive here today at Doom and Zeteo that details Georgia’s newest election “investigator.” Larry Duckworth is a private investigator who has been hired by the State Election Board to look into election complaints across the state. While that may sound above board, in practice what it means is that Duckworth is being directed by the SEB’s Trump-supporting, election-denying majority to drag up anything that they think can help convince people that November’s mid-term elections are rife with fraud. Duckworth is joined in these efforts by Jason Frazier, who the board is also now paying with taxpayer dollars to act as an investigator. We’ve reported on Frazier a lot here — he’s a hardcore election denier and conspiracy theorist who, like Duckworth, should be nowhere near the election process. Alas, this is the world in which we now live. Anyway, Chloe here at Doom found Duckworth’s Facebook page which contained enough evidence of support for election lies and Trump to prompt me to give him a call to talk about his beliefs. (This reminds me of the time I called former SEB member Rick Jeffares to ask him if he had sought a position in the Trump administration in exchange for help with pursuing election fraud claims in Georgia, and Jeffares just admitted to it outright.) Because I know that the SEB, Georgia’s election denial movement and perhaps even powerful state Republican lawmakers are likely to say I somehow spun Duckworth’s comments and beliefs, I’m providing the entire recording of my conversation with him here. You can read a transcript of our discussion below if you like. I’ve also got a breakdown at Doom’s home on YouTube of Duckworth’s posts, what he’s looking into in places like Cherokee County, and some other news about what the SEB is doing to challenge the eligibility of voters in Democratic strongholds like Chatham County, where I live. There’s a lot more where all of this came from so stay tuned, spread the word, and support our work if you can. You’re not going to find this reporting anywhere else in the country. Please consider supporting our work with a paid subscription. ***Interview conducted July 13, 2026. LD - Larry Duckworth, JG - Justin Glawe JG: Larry, this is Justin Glawe, reporter in Savannah, and I’m working on a couple of lines of reporting that I was hoping to talk with you about if you have a couple of minutes. LD: Yeah but for comment, we have a chain of command… You’ll need to talk to (SEB executive director) James Mills in Atlanta. JG: OK. Sure, yeah, I’m happy to do that. I mean, the reason I wanted to talk to you about it is because they deal specifically with some things that you’ve posted on Facebook about, you know, election matters, and so I figured it would be best to go straight to the source. LD: I have not posted anything on Facebook about election matters. JG: Well, I’m looking at a post right here that’s, there’s multiple posts here that are on a, on a profile with your name and the same photo that’s on your CV. So are you saying this is not your Facebook page … On April 1st, 2023? You’ve got a thing about time to get serious for your family’s future. Uh, there’s multiple posts on here and they all have your name and your face as the profile picture. LD: Why don’t you send it to me, I don’t remember doing those. That’s fine, I’m a bipartisan guy. JG: Well, one of them says we must counter these Liberal dishonesties to destroy elections by citizens. Only is that bipartisan in your mind? LD: Well, I don’t ever do that. JG: Well, this was March 11th, 2024. LD: Okay, maybe they were some specific things, good, so, I understand what you’re trying to do in style so, send me those cause I disavow those right now till I see them. JG: What do you, what do you mean that I mean it’s clearly you it’s the same photo that’s on your CV that’s online. Like it’s clearly you and it’s clearly your page. I mean, in one of these posts, which was 2024, you say that… LD: OK, so I’m talking. It’s clearly me to you, it’s not clearly me to me. JG: I need if you’re gonna disavow this and claim that this is not you, sure I guess, but like, you know, this is you it says ‘the cheat is on,’ but I’m happy to send them to you. And if you would like to refute this and claim that you did not say these things, you know, then I guess I’ll just have to take that into consideration. But, I mea… LD: Well, send them to me. JG: you don’t recall posting any of these multiple things about LD: Did you not listen to me? I don’t recall… JG: no, it’s not that I’m not listening to you, Larry, it’s that I don’t believe you. LD: That’s alright. Ok, ok… JG: So I think, I think you’re lying and I think you’re a committed Trump supporter who is now probing elections under the guise that there is widespread election fraud when there is not. That’s what I think. LD: I’m not committed to anybody, I’m committed to the rule of law JG: Well, one of your posts directly says right here that you are committed to Trump and that you should vote for Trump. LD: Well, send those to me because I don’t remember doing that. JG: So, okay, and what happens then when I don’t get a response from you? LD: I don’t know. JG: Okay, so what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna write a story that we’re gonna publish that says that you’re a Trump supporter and an election denier. And if you wanna go ahead and refute that and say that these are not your posts, I’ll, I’ll, you know, okay, maybe I won’t write the story then, but, I mean, I just, it’s it’s clearly you, so, yeah, LD: I am not anti-Trump. I’m not a MAGA person. I’m not an election denier. JG: So then, so then what does it mean when you say the cheat is on? LD: I don’t know, I don’t remember doing that. I don’t know what the context is. JG: Context is another reason we need to turn out the vote. The cheat is on, on August 9th, 2024. LD: What cheat is on? What cheat are we talking about? JG: I assumed it would be something related to elections. Larry, I mean, you’ve got another post here that says ‘only Republicans voting in large numbers can stop this typical Dem Liberal madness.’ LD: I don’t remember doing that. JG: Okay, you got another one here that says we must counter these Liberal dishonesties to destroy elections by citizens, only they hate normal America. LD: I don’t want an election destroyed by anyone. JG: Yeah, but this is, but this is directly and then it’s like got a Fox News, uh, uh, story here about attempting to register undocumented immigrants to vote and you say ‘Dangerous! They hate normal America because it sees through their lives.’ Are you saying that you don’t agree with that post that you wrote? LD: Say that again. That doesn’t register. Say that again. JG: Yeah, it says you said we must counter these Liberal dishonesties to destroy elections by citizens only. And then in reference to Democrats, you say ‘they hate normal America because it sees through the lies. Dangerous. LD: I don’t remember that at all. That’s all BS. JG: Okay, this is your post on your Facebook page. LD: Well, it wasn’t by me. JG: So then are you saying that your Facebook page was hacked? LD: I don’t know. This is stuff out of the blue to me. I’ve asked you to send it to me. I can tell you what, I’m an American. Um, I’m not a MAGA person. I’m not against the MAGA people. Matter of fact, I was a Democrat for 34 years. So the issue is, I’m trying to be very… I very much believe in election integrity. I very much believe in self responsibility, honesty. I believe in … principle. I believe, today, a certain party [unintelligible] better, but when I do this job, which is all that counts, I’m very non-partisan. JG: So when I’m looking at your CV here, it says licensed professional investigator and security president related bio. And it’s got, like, detect Excel,it’s got private investigator agency president, and then, like, some numbers here that look like registration numbers PSC… LD: Yeah, that’d be correct. JG: Yeah, so this is you, and it’s got a link to your Primordial Leadership [book]. So the same photo that is on this bio for you is also the exact, is the exact same photo that’s on this Facebook page that has all of these. LD: I don’t want to say it for the fourth time. Send it to me. You know, to the degree that that is there, I don’t know, but I’ll comment when I see it. JG: I mean, you’ve got, you’ve got a post on here from January 12, where you share a video that comes directly from Donald Trump’s Facebook page. LD: OK, I don’t remember doing that, send it to me. How many times do I need to ask you to do that? JG: All right, I’ll send it to you, but I just, here’s the thing. I don’t think, I think that when you see this you’re going to be like, oh, no comment. So while I have you on the phone here, I wanna get your comment on, if you say you’re not a Trump supporter, why are you sharing a reel from the president’s page on January 12? LD: I said I am not a MAGA person. Who I voted for is my business and my business only. JG: Well, it is your business until you’re hired by the state election board to investigate. LD: It is my business. I have no obligation to say who I voted for… JG: I’m

  4. 10 July

    Heat, conflict and the growing police state

    Lots going on - election stuff is really starting to heat up, plus some important developments in Sapelo I’m staying on top of. Can’t do it without your support, so buy my book, choose a paid subscription to Doom, or throw a few bucks in the Coffee Fund. Thanks. - jg *** As a heat wave grips much of the country, conditions for conflict are ripening. This is a typical pattern for the American summer — acts of violence rise with temperatures — but the last week has been hotter than normal. Combine this heat wave with a few other patterns of life under the reign of Donald Trump and the possibility of an explosive event only grows. First, murders and violent crime are down across the country but police killings are on the rise. The downward trend in daily violence could change, but so far this year, 2026 looks to be one of the least violent in decades in cities and towns across America. This year’s drop in violence reflects the general decline in violent crime since 2020, when the isolation and economic desperation of the pandemic was a major factor in a spike in acts of violence and homicides. The violence of that year played an undercard to the unrest over the killing of George Floyd and the contested presidential election. Despite the decline in violence so far this year and since 2020, police continue to kill more and more Americans. So far this year, police have killed 646 people, on track for another year in which American law enforcement has killed more than 1,300 people nationwide. (A decade ago, this annual number stood around 1,000 police killings a year.) Police killings are an important measuring stick for understanding excessive force by law enforcement, which disproportionately affects Black and Brown communities. It’s far from perfect, but police killings can be a relatively effective way to measure distrust between minority communities and the law enforcement agencies that occupy them. American law enforcement agencies have done relatively little to address the distrust and animosity from minority communities since the pockets of unrest that shook the nation a decade ago (read my book that recounts all of that madness), and occasionally boil over in the aftermath of heinous police killings like that of Floyd. An underclass of Americans who are overly policed and under-represented politically — even more so thanks to Republican redistricting efforts across the South that are diminishing Black voting power — continues to exist. This is a situation that will inevitably lead to unrest. If the aggressive policing and open attempts to reduce or eliminate minority political power weren’t enough, the Trump administration has surged immigration agents and even the National Guard into Black and Brown communities. In Memphis last week, members of the National Guard killed Tyrin Johnson, who is Black. Two weeks ago, US Park Police in Washington DC — given new powers by the Trump administration — went on a chaotic and questionable police chase that resulted in the death of an innocent bystander, Nolberto Armando Sanabria Meza, who was from Venezuela. On Tuesday, ICE agents in Houston shot and killed a Mexican man, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, during a traffic stop. Araujo was apparently still alive when security footage from a nearby store captured him lying on the ground in handcuffs, when “a loud groaning sound could be heard,” an employee told the Washington Post. Another witness said Araujo could be heard saying, “You’re killing me!” ICE has said Araujo tried to ram agents with his car — a frequent excuse the agency has used for killing people, and one that is often directly contradicted by video evidence in cases like the killing of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. Meanwhile, immigrants across the country are being deported and detained at historic rates. Last week, ICE arrested more than 10,000 people in five days. As Trump’s immigration forces capture more and more immigrants, the deaths of those inside the nation’s immigration detention centers continues to rise. Nearly 50 people have died while inside immigration facilities run by the Trump administration, or in local jails while in the custody of local law enforcement working with ICE. This is the highest number of immigrant deaths in custody ever recorded. As I reported in March, many of those deaths came under questionable circumstances in which ICE either misled the public about the cases, or immigrants suffered under poor conditions inside facilities. Trump’s immigration dragnet has had a traumatizing effect on Brown communities across the country. In just about every city and town, someone knows someone who went out for work one day and never came back. Some were simply sent back to the country from which they came. Others have been sent to distant nations with poor human rights records that they have no ties to as the Trump administration uses payments and threats to cajole nations in Africa and elsewhere to house immigrants picked up in the U.S. The historically aggressive attempts by the Trump administration to completely rid the U.S. of tens of millions of undocumented immigrants have caused even right-wing Americans to question the efforts, especially those who rely on immigrant labor, like farmers. Right here in Savannah, students who played baseball with Johan Efrain Sandoval Rodriguez, a 22-year old student at Savannah State University who was here on a visa from his native Dominican Republic, are questioning why he has been taken by ICE. The agency says Rodriguez failed to comply with requirements of the visa. Last week, the Savannah State campus was briefly put on lockdown as agents chased Rodriguez down and took him into custody. With ICE enjoying another summer of acting with impunity in immigrant communities — thanks to the help of local law enforcement — the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility has changed its mission from acting as a watchdog for misconduct amongst agents to hunting for anti-ICE protest and dissent online, Wired reported. Meanwhile, agents are harassing U.S. citizens who have criticized the agency, showing up at the home of a New York man who sent acting ICE director Todd Lyons an email that called Lyons a “monstrous human being.” ICE agents also showed up at a polling location to question a poll worker who had posted comments critical of the agency following the killing of Good in Minneapolis. The signs of our growing police state are there if you look. As we inch closer to November, the question will become how this apparatus of local and federal law enforcement, immigration agencies, and the National Guard and the military could be used to overturn an election that Republicans are likely to lose. It’s possible that the hottest time will be the fall. *** Doom socials: * Bluesky - @americandoom.bsky.social * TikTok - @americandoom_ * YouTube - @americandoom_ * Instagram - @americandoom_ * Facebook This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.american-doom.com/subscribe

  5. 3 July

    Dispatch #7: Happy Independence Day: The MAGA movement will end

    Happy Independence Day weekend! A few thoughts today on what’s coming as we reach both the half point of the year and are getting closer to the midterms. Also, make sure you check out Chloe and Ava’s reporting on Trump’s recent failures — the Iran peace agreement and the Reflecting Pool debacle. Things aren’t going great! Elsewhere, I was on the American Friction podcast to discuss my book, which you can order here. Listen to the podcast on your preferred platform at this link. Also, my book won an Independent Publisher Book Award, which I am contractually required to brag about. (Kidding — this is exciting!) So, thank you to everyone who supported my work by buying my book and reminder: if you want to support the independent, adversarial journalism we perform here at Doom, consider a paid subscription or dropping a few bucks in our Coffee Fund. In the coming months, we’ll be blowing the lid off Trump and Republican efforts to overturn the midterms, which unfortunately is coming right down the pike. Hold fast… - jg If there is a single statement that sums up what American life can feel like under President Donald Trump’s second term, it may be this: “We control everything.” That’s what Trump said Wednesday during a speech at the Teddy Roosevelt presidential library. Trump is correct in some ways — it certainly does feel like the president, his authoritarian regime, and its enablers possess vast control over the government, the economy, and the media. But like all fascist movements, this power is brittle. Trump and his people may feel like they control everything because they live in a hyper-curated echo chamber where even the remotest dissent from anyone within their ranks is not allowed, but their movement is broadly unpopular. That’s because it’s obvious to anyone who is not a committed member of this movement that Trump and his people are no better than the corrupt Washington insiders they were elected to ostensibly replace. The Epstein stuff, the war in Iran, the constant self-dealing, the wasting of taxpayer dollars on frivolous construction projects to feed Trump’s ego — there remains a large swath of conservative American voters who look at all of this and, at minimum, will decide to stay home in November. Some of them may have even had enough of the corruption, waste and incompetence of Trump’s second term to go out and vote for Democrats. This group of voters will doom Republicans for one very simple reason: it is becoming quite clear that Trump and his people are getting obscenely rich off the backs of everyday Americans. Deluded by the belief that the white rage that fuels their fascistic policies on immigration gives them a free pass to loot the government, Trump, his family, and his administration have developed a massive blind spot that is preventing them from seeing what’s coming. But it’s coming, and that’s because of very clear and obvious things like this: What you see here is the result of deep reporting from Reuters, showing that Trump and his family’s crypto ventures are nothing more than a scam that enriches those at the top. In a way, this graph perfectly illustrates American life under Trump because it shows the decline of the many — and the rising prosperity of the few. Making gobs of cash is as American as apple pie, as they say. But this is something different than your run-of-the-mill, hyper-capitalist cash grab. As president, Trump has enacted policies that have helped the crypto industry gain a foothold in global markets. (He’s also directly helped other industries in which he is heavily invested.) The crypto company run by Trump’s sons, World Liberty Financial, has benefitted from investments from the United Arab Emirates, a regional ally, and the founder of Binance, who Trump pardoned. These are the exact type of swampy, jet-setting conflicts of interests that fueled Trump’s political rise. Now they’ll help usher in his movement’s downfall. Still, instead of this being a universally-accepted understanding of the perversion of American values that it is, a solid third of the country sees nothing wrong with the profits Trump, his family, and the world’s richest people have made directly as a result of Trump’s election to his second term. But a recourse is probably coming — this time in the form of a sweeping rebuke of Republicans in November. *** Trump, the billionaires who populate his cabinet, the tech industry titans that have cozied up to Trump’s authoritarianism, and anyone and everyone who has access to the president and is cashing in on federal government contracts are the few who have gained massive profits since Trump took office. Americans making less than six figures a year are no better off — at best. There is simply no amount of immigrant fear-mongering that can make up for the fact that the lives of working class Americans look no better now than they did before Trump took office. Of course, this should have been obvious to them from the very start, but we’ll have to take what we can get. The many millions of white, working class voters who will likely stay home in November will do so because they will have finally learned that Trump doesn’t actually give a solitary fuck about them. Between now and then, Trump will probably only make this dynamic worse. The golden age is not already here and it is not coming because it never was. It’s here for Trump, his family, and the richest people in the world — but not for me, you, or any of the white working class masses who thought that kicking out immigrants would solve all their problems. By November, if deportation levels keep going the way they are, there will hardly be any undocumented immigrants left to blame. That’s why, in recent days, you’ve seen Republicans shift to a new scapegoat: “communists” running for office against less left-wing Democrats. Trump has called these “communists” — also known as members of the Democratic Socialists of America, or just plain old Democrats — the “biggest” threat the United States has ever faced. Bigger than World War II, Pearl Harbor and 9/11, Trump has said. This makes the leftists currently winning elections across the country just the latest “biggest threat” of the Trump era. China, Mexican immigrants, immigrants in general, the news media, Democrats in Congress, judges — all have had their turn as the biggest threat facing the nation. After 10 years of proclaiming whatever person or entity Trump was able to focus on for more than 10 consecutive minutes the “biggest threat,” what are Americans to actually believe? Even some of Trump’s supporters understand that, at a certain point, you can’t just keep claiming that everyone else is ruining things for the president you elected to make your life better. After 10 years of this, and with Republicans in control of “everything,” even some Trump voters will begin to question why it is that Trump can’t seem to make things better for the white working class. Then, those voters might catch a glimpse of some news that Fox or their algorithms aren’t feeding them. Something like, since taking office in 2024, Trump’s net worth has doubled, from $2.4 billion to $6 billion. Even some Trump supporters who would otherwise brush this off with, “he’s a businessman” won’t be able to countenance the news of Trump’s obscene profits during his second term. They elected him to make the country richer, to make them richer, not himself. Recall that, from the beginning, one of Trump’s biggest selling points was that he couldn’t be bought — he was already rich, so he wasn’t in it for the money. Tens of millions of Americans elected him on this very idea. Now, even with the powerful forces of right wing media and Trump-slanted social media algorithms, they won’t be able to avoid the truth that Trump has bilked his voters and everyone else to the tune of godly sums of money. Some of these Trump supporters will feel lost and confused. And in that moment they’ll have to decide between what are really the only three choices in life: freeze, fight or flee. The ones who freeze simply won’t show up in November. The ones who fight will buy the new line about “communists.” The ones who flee will come to the other side or go farther to the right. The MAGA movement will end because of its greed, hubris and brittleness. They don’t actually control everything — at least not yet. Trump and Republicans’ constant lies about election fraud are proof of this: they don’t have complete control over elections because that’s not how our founders set it up — but they sure do want that control, and are doing everything they can to try to get it. That’s another reason they’ll lose in November. Not only will lots of Trump’s people stay home — bored with his nonsense, fed up with the corruption, the lies about Epstein, or the war he started — but many, many millions of Americans who aren’t particularly politically engaged will come out of the woodwork to stop what is the actual biggest threat to American freedom: Trump and Republicans themselves. *** Doom socials: * Bluesky - @americandoom.bsky.social * TikTok - @americandoom_ * YouTube - @americandoom_ * Instagram - @americandoom_ * Facebook This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.american-doom.com/subscribe

  6. 20 May

    Trump’s MAGA “pitbulls” sowed doubt in Georgia election results before a single vote was counted

    You’ll read lots of pieces today about last night’s election results but this is the only publication where you’ll learn about the following. To support our work, you can subscribe for $6 a month or throw a few dollars in our Coffee Fund. Georgia’s election denial network of public officials, unhinged online personalities and average citizens spent yesterday ricocheting between joy and despair — and it had nothing to do with the results that began to roll in last night. Led by Trump allies on the State Election Board (SEB) and a handful of far-right state lawmakers and political candidates, election denial forces here have spent weeks fear mongering and successfully placing clips in right-wing media over the Secretary of State’s election night operation center that the election deniers have deemed a “secret bunker.” In fact, the “Election Night Reporting Center,” as the Secretary of State’s Office calls it, is not, and never has been, a secret. Nor are any votes actually counted there, as SEB members and a pair of Republican candidates who filed a lawsuit to gain access to the “bunker” have alluded. Votes are counted at county offices of elections, which then send those totals to the Secretary of State. There, the totals are put online for the public to see. But Georgia’s election denial wing of the Republican party does not trust Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger as part of their demands that all elections be administered and all votes be counted by those who pass a litmus test that includes abject support for Donald Trump and a fervent belief in lies and conspiracies about widespread election fraud. That wing includes the MAGA majority on the SEB and figures like Greg Dolezal, a state senator, and Christopher Mora, a candidate for one of Georgia’s U.S. House seats. Dolezal and Mora filed a lawsuit this week demanding that the SEB and Republican poll watchers be granted access to the reporting center at the Secretary of State’s Office. On Tuesday, a judge briefly ordered that that access should be granted before rescinding the order on a technicality, thus prompting the back-and-forth emotions on display by Georgia’s vast network of election denial officials and activists. While much of the coverage of these developments has covered the lawsuit, opposing judicial orders and the reporting center under the both sides framework, key context has been absent: the SEB (and its MAGA “pitbulls,” as Trump has called them), Dolezal and Mora have had months — years, really — to make their claim that poll watchers and other observers should be legally allowed to oversee election night proceedings at the Secretary of State’s reporting center. The simple and obvious reason that they did not file their lawsuit until this week is that it would not have benefitted them from a political and media-savvy standpoint to do so. By filing the lawsuit this week, Georgia’s election deniers took advantage of public interest in Tuesday’s primaries to gin up further distrust in elections. Raffensperger has a secret bunker where he could manipulate votes! He’s running in the very election that his office is charged with overseeing! He won’t let us into the bunker to ensure he isn’t stealing the election for himself and other people who are bad! In the last 48 hours, these have been the stupefyingly insincere arguments that Dolezal, Mora, the SEB and others have made. Maybe many of them actually believe their own nonsense, but just as many understand that the best way to secure elections for MAGA candidates is to sow as much doubt as possible in all elections. By doing so, election deniers think they can convince the public that they, and only they, should be allowed to administer elections, make rules about voting and polling locations, and effectively control all levers of government in order to ensure that real Americans are in charge. You see this mindset reflected in statements from Trump administration officials and Republican members of Congress every single day when they say things like how they want to pass the SAVE Act to ensure that “the right people” are voting. It’s part of a playbook that includes the aggressive redistricting of the South to dilute Black — and in turn mostly Democratic — voting power. From this week’s nonsense over the “secret bunker,” to efforts across the country to purge voters based on false and misleading claims about undocumented immigrants voting in elections — every policy and talking point about voting and elections pushed by the vast majority of Republicans is aimed at a singular goal: using the levers of power to ensure that they maintain their grip on it, regardless of what American voters say at the ballot box. Other election night takeaways: Massie vs. whoever Rep. Thomas Massie lost to a man whose name most voters probably did not even know until they arrived at their polling locations in Kentucky yesterday. That’s because the majority of those voters were simply doing what Trump told them to do — get Massie out of office by voting for the other guy. Why was Trump so adamant that Massie had to go? Because Massie had the gall to be one of the only elected Republicans in the country to ask serious questions about the president’s ties to Jeffery Epstein. Just a few years ago, nailing politicians and powerful figures with Epstein ties was a huge deal for Republican voters! But what they actually meant was that they wanted to imprison people like Bill Clinton, not Donald Trump. It’s sort of like all the MAGA folks you see with the Gadsden flag. They don’t really mean Don’t tread on me; what they really mean is Tread on them. But don’t believe the hype Massie’s loss — it was a primary in a very Trumpy state. Considering Trump’s dismal approval ratings, this is like winning a preseason football game. Jones (Trump) vs. Jackson (cash) Lt. Gov. Burt Jones will head to a runoff with billionaire Rick Jackson to become the state’s next governor. If you’re not in Georgia, this race may not seem important but here’s why it matters: Jones has been instrumental in not just spreading Trump’s lies about election fraud but propagating rules and systems that have allowed the MAGA wing of his party more control over elections here. Considering Georgia’s role as something close to a swing state, Jones becoming governor stands to have an important effect on how elections and voting are run here — and how those rules will help and hurt Republicans and Democrats. Jones was responsible for appointing Salleigh Grubbs to the SEB, where she has quickly become the most forceful and unhinged voice of Georgia’s election denial movement who has any position of power (albeit very little). You might remember Grubbs as the woman who chased a garbage truck in 2020 because she thought it contained shredded ballots. As this week’s madness over the “secret bunker” played out, Grubbs was out front on the issue, appearing on Mike Lindell’s “news” channel. Jones is also one of Trump’s fake electors who was never fully punished for, you know, fraudulently trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Rick Jackson is just another loaded guy who thinks his billions entitles him to run things. Not great choices! One of the two will face former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms in the general. Who will lose to Jon Ossoff? A pair of MAGA backbenchers — Rep. Mike Collins and Derek Dooley — are headed to a runoff for the honor of probably losing to Sen. Jon Ossoff. Collins is most famous for his work on the Laken Riley Act, a classically regressive piece of legislation built, more than anything, to give him an “I hate immigrants more than most” talking point on the campaign trail. Dooley was once the head football coach for the University of Tennessee, so is therefore obviously qualified to join the United States Senate. No paywalls here, but that means we need your paid support. Subscribe and spread the word. *** Doom social: * Bluesky - @americandoom.bsky.social * TikTok - @americandoom_ * YouTube - @americandoom_ * Instagram - @americandoom_ * Facebook This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.american-doom.com/subscribe

  7. 13 May

    A permanent majority

    Quick reminder that Doom was the only publication to nail the DOJ on its efforts to mess with elections here in Georgia. That work takes a lot of time and resources. If you want to support our hard-nosed, adversarial journalism, the best way to do so is through a paid subscription or dropping a few dollars in our Coffee Fund. Now, on to the news… In just the last few days, Republican threats to democracy have exploded. Using legal, quasi-legal and legislative means, Republicans from Washington D.C. on down to state legislatures have enacted widespread measures to secure what they hope will be a permanent majority of American power, voters be damned. That’s because the goal of the election denial movement — which forms a major part of the Republican base of voters — has never been to “secure elections.” It’s always been about ensuring that only Republicans can win elections, as I explained on the Signal Fire podcast today. You can watch our conversation here. With Republicans asking the Supreme Court to purge voters very close to the November midterms under the guise that scores of undocumented immigrants populate voter rolls (they do not), this plan to not just sow distrust in an election Republicans are set to lose, but to ensure that the rules prohibit anyone else from winning it, has become more clear. Not satisfied with these efforts — and helpfully backed by a Supreme Court decision two weeks ago — Republicans throughout the South have begun to legislate Black lawmakers out of their elected positions. Quite literally, Republicans are using the tools of democracy to undo it. Already, several elections have been outright cancelled as Republicans draw new maps that will solidify their political power. Again, not satisfied with this historic power grab, Republicans in Tennessee have gone a step further, stripping Black lawmakers of legislative roles that allow them a say in how their state is run. Helping Republican politicians along are their foot soldiers in the election denial movement, who continue to file voter roll challenges and harass election offices with lawsuits, demands for public records based on their conspiracies about election fraud and, in the case of someone here in the South this week, threaten election officials who refuse to tow President Donald Trump’s line on non-existent widespread election fraud. Someone mailed a four-page manifesto threatening Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to a sheriff’s office in Mississippi, bizarrely. The letter preceded a bomb scare at a campaign event in Georgia on Monday, where Raffensperger was speaking to voters about his bid to become the state’s next governor. Raffensperger famously refused to help Trump overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, and as a result has been the target of constant harassment from his fellow Republicans. If you appreciate the clarity of this rundown in addition to our exclusive reporting here, please throw us a few bucks. Your support directly funds the adversarial journalism we hope holds power to account in these troubling times.d Meanwhile, Trump is again floating the idea of sending the military to voting locations in November, just as he did in 2020 when he considered having the National Guard seize voting machines. (In December, Trump said he regretted not doing that.) Trump saying something random to a reporter is one thing, but there’s more than that: multiple federal agencies are involved with efforts to “secure” the midterms. You might remember the inexplicable presence of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard at the FBI raid of a Fulton County elections warehouse in January. Recent reporting makes clear that her presence there was part of an administration-wide effort to stay on top of false election fraud claims in order to exploit them for maximum benefit in November. Department of Homeland Security officials have been reaching out to state- and county-level election officials throughout the country. The DHS officials have demanded, among other things, voter history and registration information from these officials, Reuters reported. Keep in mind that counties are the frontlines of U.S. elections. It’s there that results are initially certified before being approved by state officials, which is why, as I reported on significantly back in 2024, Republicans tried to use their power at the county level to refuse to certify election results that showed Democrats winning. To my knowledge, no state has reformed its certification rules in the wake of those attempts, and there is no indication that efforts by election denial officials in counties across the country aren’t just as robust as they were two years ago. Meanwhile, those same county and state officials have fewer resources from the federal government to help them manage election threats and chaos this time around. That’s because the Trump administration has gutted agencies that provide help to state and local officials battling online threats, hacking attempts and other scenarios that states and counties might not have the tools to fight. “Nearly every program and capability to stop bad actors and support election administrators has been dismantled,” a former Biden administration official at the National Security Council who worked on threats to elections told ProPublica last month. Whatever agencies and programs haven’t been purposefully destroyed by the Trump administration have had their missions completely perverted with the hiring of election conspiracy theorists to lead them. Already, this has (partly) resulted in things like the seizure of voting machines in Puerto Rico and, of course, the FBI elections raid here in Georgia. Seven months out from the midterms, the threats to Americans’ ability to actually elect who they prefer continues to rise. You hear a lot of hyperbole these days — and around the time of any election, really — but I don’t think it’s too alarmist to say that if Republicans succeed in their efforts to effectively gerrymander and rule-make their way into legislative majorities both in the states and the U.S. Congress, that’s power they’re never going to give up. Trump has said as much, urging states to gerrymander their way into power and chastising them when they don’t. He’s doing this because he’s terrified of being impeached when Democrats take the House and, possibly, the Senate after November. Even in his current state of severe cognitive decline, even Trump knows that Republican chances in the midterms are bad. He’s certainly not helping by driving up costs with a clueless war in Iran, spending tons of money we don’t have on vanity construction projects and a missile defense system we don’t need, and just generally not giving a shit what everyday Americans are going through as daily life becomes more and more expensive. There have always been two paths to power. The democratic one has always been more difficult. The authoritarian one is easier, if sometimes bloodier. *** Follow Doom on social: * Bluesky - @americandoom.bsky.social * TikTok - @americandoom_ * YouTube - @americandoom_ * Instagram - @americandoom_ * Facebook This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.american-doom.com/subscribe

  8. 11 May

    Dispatch #3: Light over darkness

    You might have seen that American Doom beat the Justice Department in federal court last week. Trump’s DOJ will now have to officially reveal the names of some of the witnesses in an affidavit that led to an FBI raid on an Atlanta elections office. Doom was the only publication in the country to motion the court to release the names. To support our work, please choose a paid subscription or drop a few dollars into our Coffee Fund. I do not think this summer will be as hot as the last one, but what do I know? I’ve been wrong before. For whatever reason, it seems that many Americans have come to accept the daily drumbeat of chaos and corruption that emanates from Washington, as well as the more recent authoritarian machinations being heaped upon us by Trumpian legislatures throughout the country. Well, maybe accept isn’t the right word. Maybe people are just exhausted. And when I say us, I guess not all of us. Because lots of people are very happy about the abject power grab that has occurred in recent days following the Supreme Court’s decision to allow Republican-led states to effectively rig the map so that only Republicans can win. Last summer saw fairly widespread protests over the Trump administration’s mass deportation regime as masked agents stormed American streets. The song of the summer this year seems to be a slightly less obvious one of rising authoritarianism: the quiet, plodding work of Republicans who are using the tools of democracy to undo it. There are many ways to create an authoritarian state. One of those ways includes the masked police that sparked outrage and protests last year. Another involves what we’re seeing now: duly-elected officials ensuring that no one else can come to power by using the very levers of government and elections that are supposed to ensure equal representation under the law. Simultaneously, Republicans are working to, once again, convince millions of Americans that any election that doesn’t result in a Republican victory is fraudulent. (This is the thesis statement of the election denial movement, whether they explicitly state it or not.) All of this — the war in Iran, Trump administration corruption coupled with a complete disregard for the economic concerns of Americans, attacks on voting rights, sowing distrust in elections — feels like the inevitable, if not openly-violent, end state of decades-long period of turmoil that I’ve reported on in one form or another my entire career. Today at Luke O’Neil’s Hell World, you can read about some of that chaos in an excerpt from my forthcoming book, If I Am Coming to Your Town, Something Terrible Has Happened – The Life and Times of a Domestic War Correspondent. The book will be published in June by the University of Georgia Press and you can pre-order it here. (Use the code 08TERRIBLE to receive 30 percent off.) Some folks have been asking me why I wrote this book, which also deals with my descent into and recovery from alcoholism, and the short answer is: I had to. Not only did I have to get all this shit off my chest, but I felt I had to put these events down so that other people who were watching the chaos and violence of American life — and who were wondering if it all was really as bad as it can sometimes seem — were not alone. First, you are not alone. Secondly, it certainly all has been very bad. Third, it’s going to get better. The pendulum never stops at the top, as my dad would say. If you appreciate this post, please consider sharing it with friends. We could also use your support with a subscription for a few bucks a month. All of this pressure and pain will go away if Americans stick to the principles of light, love, justice and progress. It can be hard in dark days to remember that those principles can win, but by remembering that they can defeat darkness we get closer to willing the darkness away. *** Please follow AD on our social media for a little more doom to scroll. That’s what we all need, right? * Bluesky - @americandoom.bsky.social * TikTok - @americandoom_ * YouTube - @americandoom_ * Instagram - @americandoom_ * Facebook This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.american-doom.com/subscribe

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About

I’m Justin Glawe, writer and journalist, and I’ve spent my career chronicling the violence, unrest and chaos of American life. On this podcast, I’ll discuss the events roiling this complex and troubling country, and speak with some of the people trying to make sense of the madness that pervades our world. This is American Doom. www.american-doom.com

Information

  • Creator
    Justin Glawe
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    67
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Justin Glawe
  • Show Website
    American Doom