American Doom

Justin Glawe
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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. 4월 13일

    Coroners made anti-immigrant remarks. Then, they investigated the death of an immigrant who died in ICE custody.

    This article is the result of months of digging into ICE deaths. The previous article in this series is viewable here. This reporting has taken much time and resources — and hundreds of dollars in fees to obtain autopsy reports. To support this work, please choose a paid subscription to American Doom or contribute to our Coffee Fund. Two coroners in Missouri who have publicly expressed anti-immigrant sentiment have overseen the autopsy of an ICE detainee who died in a local jail, American Doom has found. Now, under a questionable interpretation of Missouri law, the two coroners are refusing to release the autopsy report for Brayan Garzon-Rayo, a 27-year-old Colombian man who allegedly took his own life while being held on an ICE detainer in the Phelps County Jail just a little more than a year ago, on April 8. The refusal of the two coroners — Darren Dake and Ernie Coverdell — to release Garzon-Rayo’s autopsy report highlights transparency issues regarding the record number of deaths in U.S. immigration custody under the Trump administration. At least 44 people have died in the custody of ICE, other immigration agencies, or in local jails as a result of the Trump administration’s historic crackdown on undocumented immigrants. That’s the highest number of deaths in a 14-month period since the government began publishing detainee death data in 2018 — and possibly since the Department of Homeland Security and ICE were formed in the wake of 9/11. With about 70,000 immigrants in immigration custody each day, and plans to convert warehouses across the country into detention centers to hold even more, immigrant advocates worry that the number of deaths will continue to rise. As more immigrants are held in facilities that are already at or over capacity, conditions within the facilities will worsen, advocates have warned, leading to delayed responses to medical emergencies and routine ailments. “These recent tragedies underscore what we’ve known to be true for many years, which is that nobody is safe for any period of time inside ICE detention,” said Laura Hernández, executive director of Freedom for Immigrants, a nonprofit organization devoted to ending immigration detention. “The detention system is infamous for its long-standing record of brutal medical abuse, violence, and premature deaths.” While poor conditions inside ICE facilities have been well-documented, less known are the exact circumstances that have led to the record number of immigrant deaths during the Trump administration. But records collected by American Doom show that delayed or insufficient staff responses to medical issues played a role in some of those deaths. In September, a Chinese man experiencing seizures and heart issues was left unattended by medical staff at a facility in California, according to an autopsy report provided to American Doom by authorities. Huabing Xie later died of a heart attack after being left alone for 36 minutes during a crucial window of time, the autopsy showed. Another autopsy report showed that a Mexican man held at another California facility complained of severe rectal pain for weeks and was given only Tylenol. By the time the man was finally taken to the hospital, staff there recommended emergency surgery. The man, Ismael Ayala-Uribe, died of a heart attack before the surgery could take place. At the time of his death, Ayala-Uribe rated his pain at a level of 10 out of 10. In Missouri, two men have allegedly taken their own lives while being held in local jails on ICE detainers. They are among at least seven people who have died of what ICE and local authorities have said are suicide. In the case of Garzon-Rayo, he denied having a history of depression or suicidal thoughts, according to a detainee death report released by ICE. Several days later, after testing positive for COVID and tuberculosis, Garzon-Rayo allegedly committed suicide. But authorities have yet to release key records that could shed light on the exact circumstances of Garzon-Rayo’s death, which his family has questioned. Those records include Garzon-Rayo’s autopsy report, which Dake and Coverdell have refused to release. The two coroners have claimed an exemption in Missouri state law that prevents them from publicly releasing the report, but civil rights attorneys and public records experts who spoke to American Doom say the law is not prohibitive, and that it’s up to individual coroners in Missouri to release autopsy reports. This fact is backed up by the cooperation of another coroner in Missouri, who has agreed to release the autopsy report for Luis Cruz-Silva, who allegedly took his own life while in custody at the Ste. Genevieve County Jail. Dake and Coverdell have offered various explanations for their refusal to release Garzon-Rayo’s autopsy report. Initially, Coverdell told American Doom he couldn’t release the report because “it’s an ICE report,” without providing further information. Later, he joined Dake in citing state law regarding autopsy reports that the two men say prevent them from releasing the document publicly. But that’s simply not the case. To support the in-depth reporting that holds the Trump administration accountable for its role in immigrant deaths, please consider a paid subscription to American Doom. The Missouri Attorney General as well as local prosecutors did not respond to requests for clarification on whether Dake and Coverdell were allowed by law to release Garzon-Rayo’s autopsy report, but the public records experts who spoke to American Doom confirmed that the law is not prohibitive — both men could release the report if they wished. Additionally, the Missouri State Highway Patrol, which investigated the deaths of Garzon-Rayo and Cruz-Silva, have not yet provided records related to the two men’s deaths as requested under the state’s public records law by American Doom. The lack of transparency over Garzon-Rayo’s death is a reflection of the byzantine network of immigration detention facilities, multiple federal agencies, local law enforcement, and medical examiners and coroners across the country that must be navigated in order to understand exactly how the 44 people who have died in ICE custody under Trump met their deaths. In many cases, local authorities like medical examiners and coroners have helpfully released key records like autopsy reports. In others, local authorities and ICE have put up roadblocks to obtaining information about deaths in custody, or have provided incomplete and sometimes misleading information about those cases. For Garzon-Rayo, the situation is clear: Dake and Coverdell could release his autopsy report, but have refused to do so. Coverdell has said he has viewed video from inside the Phelps County Jail that confirmed Garzon-Rayo took his own life, but declined to answer questions about exactly what that footage showed. The Missouri State Highway Patrol investigated the deaths of Garzon-Rayo and Cruz-Silva, but would only say that no charges are forthcoming. *** After Garzon-Rayo died, Coverdell took custody of his body. Unable to conduct the autopsy himself — Coverdell is an elected coroner but not a licensed medical pathologist — Coverdell paid Dake, the coroner in nearby Crawford County, $2,600 to conduct the autopsy, he told American Doom. Coverdell and Dake have a history of making public comments in support of Trump’s immigration policies, among other disparaging remarks about Democrats, liberals and Americans who don’t support Donald Trump, according to an American Doom review of their Facebook posts going back to 2018. “CLOSE THE BORDER,” read a post shared in 2023 by Coverdell. In 2018, Coverdell shared a photo of a migrant caravan with a caption that read, in part, “wake up before we are truly overun (sic) you liberal fools.” Coverdell has shared posts that said “toilet dwelling” Democrats propagate a “culture of hate.” Among his many posts on his personal Facebook page, which has no privacy restrictions, Coverdell has also shared an AI-generated photo that showed an encampment of tents in a trash-strewn field under the banner, “Kamala’s America;” another AI-generated photo that showed the Statue of Liberty constructing a wall at the U.S. southern border; and a Dec. 23, 2023 post that encouraged his Facebook audience: “Everyone post: CLOSE THE BORDER!” Dake has shared posts that support Trump’s “remain in Mexico” asylum policy and decried “leftists” who “hate border walls and gun rights,” among other pro-Trump posts. Dake said he found nothing wrong with his posts, adding that he was “looking forward to the publicity.” “Every time you left-leaning ‘journalists’ write a spin piece about me my support and popularity increases,” Dake told American Doom. Dake did not answer specific questions about Garzon-Rayo’s autopsy, pointing to Coverdell in Phelps County. Coverdell told American Doom that he had seen video from inside Garzon-Rayo’s cell, but did not elaborate. “It doesn’t matter what race, religion, ethnic background,” someone is, Coverdell told the American Doom, “if it’s a person that feels it’s better to die than face life for one reason or another.” Coverdell said he did not intend to “disparage immigrants,” and said that he “in no way believes it is good when someone dies, especially by suicide.” In August, Phelps County Sheriff Michael Kirn, whose agency oversees the jail, addressed members of the county commission about the county’s agreement with ICE to hold detainees like Garzon-Rayo. Kirn told commissioners that “having the ICE inmates has incurred costs in food, medical, staffing and transport” that the county was having difficulty affording, according to meeting minutes reviewed by American Doom, adding that there was “not enough revenue coming in to offset” those costs. Under an agreement with ICE, the

    10분

  2. 4월 8일

    Georgia Republican officials cower from ties to FBI raid

    Today’s edition of American Doom has information about the fight over 2020 ballots in Georgia that you won’t find anywhere else. Please choose a paid subscription or contribute to our Coffee Fund to help fuel more of the fact-based, adversarial journalism you see below. As Fulton County and the Justice Department continue to argue in court filings over the thousands of 2020 ballots and other material seized during an FBI raid in January, witnesses who Trump’s DOJ has relied upon for its supposed evidence of fraud in that year’s election have officially — and strangely — attempted to distance themselves from the case. Of the 11 witnesses named in the FBI affidavit that led to the raid, all but four have agreed with American Doom’s motion to have their identities un-redacted. This means they’ve agreed to have their identities officially made public. Of the four who have asked that the court continue to withhold their identities, three are public officials. Two are current members of the Georgia State Election Board. “Wit. 2 is the Republican-appointed member of the Georgia State Election Board,” the affidavit states, abbreviating “witness.” Any ambiguity about which “Republican-appointed member” this witness is — there are four Republican-appointed members on the SEB — is obliterated by the next sentence. “Wit. 2 was an obstetrician prior to serving on the State Election Board.” For anyone with a passing knowledge of Georgia election matters, this is quite obviously SEB member Dr. Janice Johnston, who frequently discusses her time in private practice as an OBGYN, including at SEB meetings. “Wit. 3, the current House-appointed State Election Board member, confirmed there were missing ballot images,” the affidavit goes on, referencing an oft-referenced claim about missing ballot images in Fulton County in 2020 that reflects the election denial movement’s misunderstanding of the rules and mechanisms for storing such records. This is Janelle King, who is the only Republican member of the SEB who has been appointed by the Georgia House of Representatives. The remaining Republican SEB members — John Fervier and Salleigh Grubbs — were appointed by Gov. Brian Kemp and Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, respectively. “Current Fulton County Commissioner, Wit. 11, was a poll worker during the 2020 election,” the affidavit says of Bridget Thorne, who is one of only two Republicans on the commission, and the only Republican who has been outspoken in her belief about election fraud. The SEB’s Johnston and King are fighting American Doom’s motion to have the court make their identities public. Joining them is Thorne, a Fulton County commissioner who has spread lies and conspiracies about election fraud. American Doom is not naming the fourth individual who has asked that their identity remain redacted in court documents because they’re a target of what is broadly considered to be a politically-motivated prosecution by Trump’s Justice Department that is primarily based on “evidence” presented by biased, pro-Trump election skeptics like Johnston, King and Thorne. The evidence cited in the affidavit — which led to a magistrate judge issuing a search warrant that the FBI executed during its Jan. 28 raid of the Fulton County elections warehouse — is mostly recycled claims of technical errors and mistakes like double-counted ballots. That evidence is widely viewed to be not a predicate for criminal charges, which is what DOJ lawyers have argued is the basis for the raid, but for the Trump administration’s efforts to sow doubt in November’s election results. Combined with similar seizures of 2020-related election materials in Arizona, California and Michigan, the Fulton County raid appears to be part of a coordinated effort to resurface fraud claims ahead of an election that Republicans across the country are slated to lose — and lose big — as the president carries out an unpopular war in Iran, gas prices spike, and inflation continues to make life less affordable for most Americans. The Fulton County case is going nowhere but deep into the obscure lore of MAGA election denial conspiracy. Any criminal charges that result from the affidavit that Johnston, King and Thorne are now weakly distancing themselves from will likely be tossed by reputable judges. Perhaps this is the reason for their quiet recusal from being officially named as a result of American Doom’s motion. Read more below, and to support American Doom — the only publication this deep in election interference matters in Georgia and elsewhere — please choose a paid subscription. *** Johnston, King and Thorne’s attempts to keep their identities weakly sealed in the affidavit are at odds with much of their public behavior. As we reported in November, King and others have openly bragged about their coordination with the DOJ on election fraud claims in Georgia for months. If there were any remaining questions about the MAGA-dominated SEB’s role in the Fulton County raid, Johnston herself put them to rest at the last meeting of the board. “A request was made to the DOJ” by the SEB, Johnston said at the board’s Feb. 19 meeting, “and took notice (sic) to the Fulton County election irregularities that have been alleged, but had never been investigated.” So, why are Johnston and King asking the court to allow their names to continue to be redacted? That’s a good question, and one that I put to Johnston, King and Thorne. As of this writing, none have responded. One would think that, after years of claiming that the 2020 election was beset with widespread fraud by Democrats and poll workers in Fulton County, this trio of hardcore election skeptics would want to shout from the mountaintops that their “evidence” is the backbone of what Trump’s lawyers at the DOJ are now claiming is a criminal investigation. (No one has been charged yet.) Instead, Johnston, King and Thorne are quietly arguing behind-the-scenes to have their identities remain redacted in the affidavit — a laughable objection, considering how obvious the affidavit makes their identities to be. If nothing else, having their identities so obviously obtainable in the affidavit itself begs the question of why Johnston, King and Thorne are now fighting their official release. Maybe they’re fighting just because they feel like it, who knows, or to stick it to the “fake news,” as they like to say. It doesn’t really matter because everyone knows who they are. What does matter is that Fulton County is pressing the DOJ hard on the “evidence” that Johnston, King and Thorne presented to the FBI that led to the raid. That evidence is questionable at best. At worst, it’s the result of “research” from the same small but vocal network of election deniers who have tried to have their way with Georgia elections since 2020. This network has used their influence to pressure state lawmakers to institute changes to election administration and voting — like the ban on QR codes that are used to count votes in a more reliable way than the hand counts that election deniers would like to impose — on millions of Georgia voters. The election denial movement’s success in Georgia has caused a fracturing within the state Republican party. That divide is at the heart of the races for governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state and attorney general, all of which will be up for grabs in November. If the MAGA, election denial wing of the Georgia GOP wins out, you can expect to see the state implement even more anti-democratic measures aimed at cracking down on voting rights and fair elections. Because none of this is actually about election fraud; it’s always been about ensuring that Republicans win, no matter what. *** 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_ * 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

    9분

  3. 1월 8일

    All the ways the government is lying about killing an American

    Ten years ago, in the summer of 2015, a police officer in Cincinnati stopped a man named Samuel DuBose. It was night on a narrow road among winding back streets of a hilly neighborhood. Words were exchanged, and DuBose tried to drive away. Officer Ray Tensing claimed his arms were caught in the window and he was in danger of being dragged, so he shot DuBose point-blank in the head, killing him. I arrived the next day to see if protests would turn to flames. They did not. Tensing, who is white, was indicted for killing DuBose, who was Black. Eventually, Tensing was acquitted for DuBose’s killing. At trial, the prosecution was not allowed to present evidence showing that Tensing was wearing a shirt with the confederate battle flag underneath his uniform. The issue of police claiming that their lives were under threat by someone in a vehicle is not new. What’s new about the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis yesterday is that her death came at the hands of a federal immigration agent who should have never even been in the city. The primary reason the agent — who has not been named — was even in Minneapolis is that a right-wing political influencer made highly questionable claims about fraud committed by Somali immigrants there, prompting Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to surge her teams to the city. Good was more or less an innocent bystander. Now she’s dead because Noem wanted to continue her campaign of looking tough on immigrants, egged on by a 23-year-old kid pretending to be a journalist by filming Somali immigrants who ran childcare centers, piggybacking off actual reporting by local press who had exposed some fraud tied to the businesses. Good is dead for this reason. She is also dead because American fascism continues to grow and spread in very troubling ways. Take a scan of social media and you’ll see plenty of your fellow Americans justifying Good’s killing. I’ll get to why that’s intellectually dishonest on its face in a moment but for now, consider the ironic phenomenon of conservative Americans lining up in support of masked federal troops occupying American cities and killing U.S. citizens with impunity under the direction of the president himself. This is nearly the exact scenario under which our nation was founded, with all those self-identified patriotic Americans you’ll see in the coming days and weeks praising the agent who killed Good identifying with the colonists and revolutionaries who battled tyrannical overreach and a foreign military on their own streets 250 years ago. Now, the people like Good are the revolutionaries, but the patriots aren’t on their side anymore. *** Watch the video of Good’s killing and you’ll see a disorganized and unprofessional law enforcement operation. First, Good waves through an ICE vehicle that passes her by without incident. After this, other agents approach Good’s SUV, appearing to offer contradictory commands, motioning for her to drive away before demanding she exit the vehicle and grabbing the door handle. The agent who killed Good appears to position himself in front of the vehicle — which any cop worth his or her salt will tell you is a bad idea. Good puts the SUV in reverse as an agent wrenches on her door handle. She then shifts into drive and the SUV lurches forward. A video from another angle shows the agent who killed Good sliding from the hood to the front quarter panel of the car. As CNN’s chief law enforcement analyst, John Miller, noted on Wednesday night, it’s only after the agent is out of harm’s way from the front of the SUV that he begins firing. Prior to shooting Good, the agent had his phone out and appeared to be recording her. All of this — the lackadaisical yet contradictory commands and actions of multiple agents on scene, the firing agent’s stupid and pointless maneuvering in front of Good’s vehicle and his filming of her — do not add up to what Noem and president Donald Trump are now trying to sell: that the agent was so in fear for his life had no choice but to fire on Good. If all that weren’t obvious enough, Trump of course had to double down. Hours after the shooting, he claimed that the agent was “viciously” run over by Good. Video shows he was not. In fact, the agent was never even knocked to the ground. After shooting Good and after her car rammed harmlessly into a parked vehicle nearby as she lay dead or dying behind the wheel, the agent can be seen walking just fine under his own power. *** Fatal police shootings are always fertile ground for culture war battles between the left and right. Over the last 11 years as I’ve covered them, both sides have gone to extremes. Many on the left think there’s never any reason for an officer to use fatal force. Many more on the right believe that law enforcement should be able to kill just about anyone, for just about any reason. The reality of police uses of force and the events that precede them are much more complex than these two opposing viewpoints allow. But what used to not be up for as much of a debate was whether an officer had a legitimate fear for his life when killing someone. How anyone can watch the videos of Good’s killing and conclude that the agent was legitimately in fear for his life by a slow-rolling SUV that he was just filming with his phone defies common sense. But we are far past that. The American right — taking their cues from Trump or vice versa; it’s hard to tell anymore — will suspend reason in order to be on what it perceives to be the correct side of this police killing-turned culture war flashpoint. They’ll either lie and say they actually believe the agent faced his own mortality and had to make an impossible choice, or they’ll convince themselves that’s the case. There’s a cost to the soul for that. Maybe it’s not one they’ll pay here but they’ll pay it eventually. If Minneapolis burns tonight, or tomorrow, or in the coming weeks or months as Trump’s masked immigration agents focus their harassment campaign on it, there’ll be at least some level of justification. Trump and his people will feel equally justified in responding with their own violence. They’ll invoke the Insurrection Act or send in National Guard troops from Republican-led states. Hell, they’ve been wanting to do that since protests erupted in Minneapolis and across the country following the killing of George Floyd. DuBose’s killing happened in the middle of a two-year stretch of high-profile police killings across the country. A mass protest movement spawned from that, leading to a backlash from white voters who clung to then-candidate Trump’s message of “law and order.” That protest movement then mostly faded from view as the first Trump administration inflicted its daily chaos and corruption on the nation. It came roaring back with Floyd’s killing, further enraging the American right who watched from their small towns as big cities burned. That’s part of the reason why the attempted insurrection on January 6 was so easily dismissed by Trump and his supporters. If Floyd protesters could burn American cities over his killing, why shouldn’t self-described patriots be able to try to overturn an election they (wrongly) believed was illegitimate? Then, as now, we have a president who is unable or unwilling to calm tensions, instead choosing to inflame them as he sees every violent, unnecessary and tragic incident as an opportunity to score points in a nihilistic game that is hastening our national decline. In 2020, the cooler heads in the first Trump administration stopped our would-be dictator from outright shooting Floyd protesters outside the White House. This time, protesters might not be so lucky. In fact, Trump’s troops are already killing Americans like Good. At the time of DuBose’s killing, a question hung over the nation that was difficult to answer, and mostly persists today: Why does this keep happening? With cops all over the country interacting with Americans in innumerable tense and strange circumstances, fatal police shootings are probably always going to happen. But when it comes to Good, the answer is obvious: This happened because of Donald Trump. He caused it. He supports it. He enjoys it. Trump and Republicans don’t see Americans who disagree with them as their fellow countrymen. They see them as the enemy. Or, as Noem described Good today, people who are engaged in “domestic terrorism.” You tell me who you think is causing the terror: people like Good, or the people who killed her. Please follow AD on our social media for a little more doom to your scroll. That’s what we all need, right? * 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

    8분

  4. 2025. 12. 17.

    What the White House told me about Trump's hands

    I’m out today at Public Notice with a look at the obvious lie about the bandages on Trump’s hands — a coverup of some unidentified health problem — and how it’s part of a pattern of Trump’s endless lies starting to catch up to him in the face of reality, economic and otherwise. Today’s post will be brief but I have something longer coming later this week that deals with the downward flow of corruption and viciousness, and how it’s affecting the efficacy of our democracy. That will be my last piece for the year. To thank all of my subscribers for their support throughout this very newsy year, I’m offering a discount of 20 percent off subscriptions to American Doom through the second week of January. Now, onto the news on Trump’s health below, as well as some links to stories you might have missed in a tumultuous 2025… Whatever happens during President Donald Trump’s address to the nation tonight, know that it will be partly an attempt to distort reality or distract from it — and that reality is that it has been a disastrous end to the first year of Trump’s second presidency. Epstein, the economy, extrajudicial killings — how’s that for just some of the scandals that are roiling the Trump administration as it limps out of 2025 and into 2026. Hanging over all of it is the president’s health. A few weeks back I began asking the White House why Trump wears bandages on the back of his right hand. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded last week — with an obvious lie. “President Trump is a man of the people and he meets more Americans and shakes their hands on a daily basis than any other President in history,” Leavitt said in a statement. “His commitment is unwavering and he proves that every single day.” Why is this so obviously a lie? Well, there’s common sense, for one: have you ever known a single person to injure their hand from handshaking? I haven’t. There’s a few other reasons why this lie is so obvious and ridiculous, not the least of which is the fact that Trump has had fewer public events this year than any other year as president. Now, he plans to get back out on the road next year to whip up support for Republicans in the mid-term elections, which they’re of course trying to rig in their favor. To prepare for the exhausting prospect of campaign-style Trump rallies, I’ll be taking as much time off as possible over the holidays. This year really has flown by. Like 2024, 2025 was incredibly newsy and we’ve grown quite a lot here at American Doom. Really, these two years have sort of melded together in my mind. There hasn’t been much of a break, so I’m looking forward to taking one. The only reason I’m able to do that is thanks to the support of my paid subscribers. To join those ranks, please consider a paid subscription to American Doom. Believe it or not, next year is going to be even crazier, and American Doom is one of the only publications keeping a close eye on state and local threats to elections. That’s where the rubber meets the road for our democracy, and you’ll want to pay attention to stay in-the-know about how Republicans are working hard to rig the mid-term elections in their favor. Before my last dispatch of the year later this week, take a look at some of the greatest hits from 2025. 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

    3분

  5. 2025. 12. 06.

    There was no fog of war

    On Friday night, “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth took to X to address one of the growing scandals surrounding him — what increasingly looks like murder, war crimes, or both. “The Department of War will never back down,” Hegseth wrote. “America First. Peace Through Strength. Common Sense. For the warriors, always.” In addition to the gaping holes in Hegseth’s story about the killing of two survivors of a Sept. 2 airstrike on alleged drug smugglers — inconsistencies that will catch up to him at his inevitable congressional testimony — the entire months-long mission to take out supposed drug boats in international waters has required incredible suspensions of reason to square with reality. Of course, Hegseth and many others are clearly lying about much involving the strikes, which have killed 87 people since September. The Trump administration hasn’t presented a single piece of evidence that the targets of the attacks are drug smugglers, that the drugs are even headed to the United States, or that the strikes are any more necessary than the non-lethal drug interdiction operations that have been in effect for decades. Instead, we’ve gotten grainy videos shared bombastically on social media and questionable legal justification for a “war” on “narco-terrorists.” At Public Notice today, I’ve got a breakdown of how these airstrikes are evidence of an erratic and largely leaderless administration running purely on the instinct of morally depraved strivers like Hegseth trying desperately to impress Trump by looking tough. But I wanted to take a moment here to address Hegseth’s (apparent) claim that the strikes necessitate a “never back down” stance by the U.S. military. Let’s start with… America First The administration has claimed the strikes are necessary to take out drug dealers whose drugs are killing Americans. One problem: the boats are coming from South America and carrying mostly cocaine. More than 70 percent of American drug deaths are from fentanyl, not cocaine. If the Trump administration wanted to save American lives, it would be better off doing something about the fentanyl flooding American streets, much of which comes from China. Peace through strength Nothing says strength like the most powerful military in history obliterating speed boats piloted by, in some cases, Venezuelan fishermen. If the disproportionate use of force weren’t enough, we’re also now in the business of killing helpless non-combatants. After a first strike killed nine men on Sept. 2 and separated their boat in half, two men clung to the craft’s wreckage. Democrats who viewed video of the strike said that the two survivors may have been waving their arms in surrender or begging for mercy. Showing strength, our military fired on these helpless souls. Common sense Is it “common sense” to spend untold millions (or billions) of dollars on military strikes to take out low-level drug smugglers? Does that same common sense apply to Trump’s pardon of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was convicted by U.S. courts for smuggling 500 tons of cocaine into the country? For the warriors, always Maybe there are some members of the military who are proud of their work raining hellfire upon speedboats in the Caribbean, I don’t know. What I do know is that this isn’t likely what they signed up for. It therefore must take a significant amount of energy to convince oneself that these strikes are necessary to protect Americans. Are these strikes “for the warriors” then? When Hegseth says, “for the warriors,” he means these strikes are for people like himself — men with little to no combat experience who have romanticized conflict well past its brutal realities. It’s a desperate attempt at self-actualization from a man with a mediocre-at-best resume — an unintentional admission of his own insecurities. *** 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_ * 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

    4분
  6. Ongoing threats to the system

    2025. 11. 12.

    Ongoing threats to the system

    We begin today with news of sweeping pardons issued on Monday to 77 people who tried to overturn the 2020 election. Less important than the actual individuals who were pardoned — bizarrely, for many of them were not under threat of federal indictment, the only classification of crime that falls under the jurisdiction of a presidential pardon — is the message that these pardons send going forward: try to interfere with elections on behalf of Trump and Republicans, and Trump and Republicans will have your back. Among those pardoned were two small-time Trump operatives who share the ignoble distinction of being the only Americans to have infiltrated voting machines in their futile attempt to find non-existent evidence of voter fraud. The American right absolutely loves to warn about the insecurity of voting machines but almost always fails to mention that it was their people in Georgia who were the only ones in recent years to actually illegally access election equipment. Cathy Latham and Misty Hampton worked with Sidney Powell and members of the 2020 Trump campaign to infiltrate voting machines in Coffee County. They then shared sensitive information from the equipment online, where it was accessed by an unknown number of people within the election denial movement. Both were indicted in Georgia for their crimes — state cases that are in danger of being dropped after Republicans targeted Atlanta prosecutor Fani Willis for having the audacity to prosecute obvious election crimes. Latham and Hampton are among a handful of election deniers and Republican officials who tried to overturn the 2020 election, and who were pardoned on Monday. They include Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who is running to become Georgia’s next governor. Jones was one of the 16 Republicans who signed fraudulent documents purporting to allocate Georgia’s electoral college votes to Trump in November 2020. Jones and his “fake elector” co-conspirators were all pardoned by Trump on Monday. The pardons come as the Justice Department increasingly operates as the governmental arm of the election denial movement. Across the country, the DOJ is demanding access to the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans as the Trump administration constructs a national database of voters. This database is currently being used to hunt for undocumented immigrants registered to vote — an occurrence so extraordinarily rare that it almost ceases to exist — and in the process likely purge many Americans from voter rolls. The DOJ is also at work in Georgia, demanding access to ballots and other material from the 2020 election in Fulton County as part of yet another futile investigation into widespread voter fraud there. These two undertakings — voter purges based on overblown claims of voting by non-citizens and bogus fraud investigations — are lining up to be the central themes of election denial efforts going into next year. Combined with executive orders targeting voting machines, mail-in and absentee voting and an insistence on one-day elections, the Trump administration, Justice Department, and officials at the state and local levels are all working in coordination to at minimum sow widespread doubt in any results of next year’s elections that don’t result in a win for Republicans. In the event Democrats rack up large wins in next year’s elections, there’s a final stopgap available to Republicans in Washington. Those tools are part of a doomsday scenario that represents the next step in anti-democratic efforts to dismiss the will of the people and solidify Republican power for years to come. I’ll have more on that front in the coming weeks and months. For now, know that much of this is happening right out in the open. Not only are Justice Department officials like pardon attorney Ed Martin bragging about pardoning those who illegally tried to interfere in the 2020 election, but allies across the country are in place in state and local governments working to implement the policies of the election denial movement. Those policies are rooted in a single, troubling goal: ensure no Republican can ever lose an election again. *** 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_ * 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

    4분

  7. 2025. 11. 05.

    Some good news

    I’m getting through a bottleneck of reporting and have many findings to share regarding Republican efforts to interfere in elections. You can support my work by throwing a few dollars my way with a paid subscription to American Doom. As always, thanks for your support. - jg When was the last time you remember voting in an election for your public utilities board? Who were the candidates and how much did they win by? If your answer to those questions is anything but, “I have no idea,” please seek help. Kidding, of course. Most Americans don’t pay attention to these types of elections, let alone things as local as school boards or city councils. But things are a bit different nowadays. Have you noticed? Taken by themselves, the wins of Alicia Johnson and Peter Hubbard to become the first Democrats to serve on Georgia’s Public Services Commission — which oversees utility rates — since 2007, don’t amount to much for their implications on the balance of power in Washington. But, as you may have heard by now, Johnson’s and Hubbard’s wins were not the only good news for Democrats last night. Zohran Mamdani beat up Anthony Cuomo in New York. Democrats took the governor’s offices in New Jersey and Virginia. (They also took the lieutenant governor’s office in Virginia and took even more control of one of their legislative chambers.) Voters in California overwhelmingly turned out in favor of a Gavin Newsom-backed proposal to draw new district lines to help Democrats take control of the House of Representatives. Across the country, Democrats didn’t just win; they cleaned up. That includes Georgia’s Public Service Commission, where Johnson and Hubbard beat their Republican opponents by 25 points. It was the first time since 2006 that Democrats in Georgia won a statewide race for a non-federal election, as the AJC’s Greg Bluestein pointed out. While there are certainly voters who took to the polls yesterday in Georgia who were solely focused on the issue of public utilities — the costs for which have been rising substantially since 2022 — the margin of victory for Johnson and Hubbard points to something else: Americans are fed up with Trump and Republicans, and they will vote for just about any Democrat they can get their hands on. That’s an encouraging sign heading into next year’s mid-terms, when Republicans will pull out all the stops to both rig the election in their favor and call into question any results that don’t favor the GOP. More on that soon. But for now, do yourselves a favor and tune into Fox News for a few minutes today to see their hosts being apoplectic over a self-described democratic socialist becoming the mayor of New York in a decisive victory. We’re still a long way from preventing further democratic backsliding, but yesterday was a hopeful reminder that there are many more reasonable, freedom-loving Americans than there are those who support Trump’s authoritarian power grabs. *** 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_ * 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

    3분

  8. 2025. 10. 04.

    Nothing will stop Georgia's election deniers

    Lots of info in today’s special Saturday edition of American Doom about how election deniers in Georgia continue to screw with elections here. It’s going to be a mess next year thanks to their success in convincing state lawmakers that they’re serious people (they are not). Anyway, lots of messes these days. You won’t find this information elsewhere — in Georgia or anywhere for that matter. So if you appreciate my work, please consider a paid subscription to support it. A free press ain’t for free! - jg I spent the better part of Thursday watching a meeting of a committee of Georgia state legislators discussing elections. The committee has hosted meetings around the state on various aspects of election administration, and Thursday’s was focused on Georgia’s membership in ERIC, the Electronic Registration Information Center. There has been a lot of right-wing noise about ERIC since 2020 and I’m not going to rehash all that — it’s mostly reactionary nonsense that came as a result of Donald Trump losing that year and many Republican states being very sour about it. Suffice to say that Thursday’s hearing was another example of what has become an unsettling reality in this country: conspiracists, cranks, and plain incompetents re granted the same deference and space as competent professionals who have spent years and decades gaining the respect of peers in their areas of expertise. This phenomenon has been almost entirely facilitated by Republicans, from Trump on down to people like Georgia Rep. Martin Momtahan, who you’ll meet in a moment. The GOP has been taken over by a class of politicians with great disdain for the level of professionalization on display at places like ERIC, or Harvard University, or the FBI — unless the person is someone like Trump who is very good at making money. Of the many shameless grifters working to climb their way up the very crowded and cutthroat ladder of modern Republican politics, election deniers are the largest group and often the most shameless — and bizarre. Their lack of shame is rooted in the fact that they never have to actually do anything. Like everyone in the highest echelons of the Trump administrations, all they have to do is go around breaking what other people have built. Election deniers say our election systems are rife with fraud. Not only can they never actually prove it — instead, they have a lot of conjecture they say should lead to investigations by, you know, actual authorities — but they have no real way of replacing this broken system. Well, that’s not entirely true. They do have a way, but it’s absurd. I’ll get to that in a second as well. Republicans like Momtahan want to point to things like the fact that ERIC has an address listed in Washington DC but no office there. (This, to Momtahan and others, is apparently evidence of some unexplained wickedness on the part of ERIC. For security reasons, ERIC’s director, Shane Hamlin, said on Thursday that he would not divulge the exact location of the organization’s data center, but said it was located somewhere in the Midwest.) Momtahan and Republicans want to point to “their constituents” who have questioned ERIC — nevermind that their constituents have no background in election administration and are getting their information from some of the election denial grifters who were invited to speak at today’s hearing. Republicans in Georgia and elsewhere want to point to the men and women of the election denial movement as if they were reasonable, competent, serious people. They simply are not. But that’s the situation across our society, where unserious flamethrowers now have great power because many of our fellow Americans think that people like Trump and Momtahan are kind of cool. They tell it like it is. They’re just like them, you see — not some fancy bought-and-paid for college professor with a haughty title. Momtahan spent today’s hearing doing his folksy, I’m a small businessman bit, something that is awfully tiring when you’ve been around long enough to realize this isn’t about small-town common sense, but about the deep insecurities of people like Momtahan who want to be liked and respected for their intelligence, but just never quite figured out how to achieve that. I’ve watched countless hours of these types of meetings over the last four years and am always struck by the obvious and profound un-seriousness of both government officials and members of the election denial movement. But there really is something about watching these folks discuss things that are so clearly out of their depth that words just can’t do justice for, so I’ve included a few clips of some of the exchanges that caught my attention. *** Momtahan went on to grill Harris over ERIC’s security protocols, consistently conflating access to voter data via the Internet with susceptibility to hacking — despite Harris repeatedly explaining that ERIC staff only access voter data after going through several digital security checkpoints. Just really tough stuff to watch. I’m sorry that you had to watch all of that but it’s important so that you can understand what we’re working with here as lawmakers in Georgia and elsewhere operate under the belief that anything tied to the Internet means that system can be hacked by Antifa, or whatever. This entire exchange could be summed up by simply saying that Momtahan does not understand what a VPN is. I will also note that when Momtahan mentions digital security for his own small business, he is talking about the driver’s education company he runs — not a multi-state data-gathering operation like ERIC dealing with tens of millions of voters and untold billions of data points. Bit of a difference there. There was plenty of other ignorance-based questioning of people like Blake Evans, Georgia’s elections director, but I want to skip ahead to the deniers who spoke at Thursday’s hearing. First up was Mark Davis, an obscure political consultant who appears to run a company that deals with campaign marketing. Last year, Davis was floated by the State Election Board’s Dr. Janice Johnston — herself an election denier — to be on a “monitoring team” for Fulton County, ground zero for Georgia election conspiracies. Here, Davis has an exchange with Georgia Rep. Saira Draper, a Democrat. Draper points out that Davis’ research has led him to advocate for investigating virtually every single person in the state of Georgia who changes their address in an election year. Like many of the tortured theories of the election denial movement, Davis’ work does not show any purposeful acts of voter fraud — like double-voting or false registrations in order to illegally vote for one candidate or party over another — but routine technical errors, like voters forgetting to update their addresses. Davis’ research is based on National Change of Address data, which you’ll hear a lot about if you spend as much time in election denial circles as I do. Just to clarify: poor people move a lot. People in the military move a lot. Young people move a lot. People with aging parents might move a lot. What Davis is saying is that all of these changes of addresses are probable cause to investigate hundreds of thousands of Georgians for voter fraud under the belief — because election denialism is akin to religious belief systems — that something very bad is going on with all of this. Next up was Garland Favorito, who if you are not familiar with, you should consider yourself fairly lucky. Favorito is perhaps the state’s most prominent election denier — and certainly one of its most colorful. Like Davis, Favorito has many theories about widespread election fraud in Georgia, but can never seem to boil them down into a succinct explanation. He’s one of those guys who insists that you listen to him for as long as he is able to speak in order for you to understand that he is correct. But even if you give Favorito all the time in the world, most reasonable people will come away more confused about who is carrying out voter fraud in Georgia and how, let alone why. Favorito’s theories are an amalgamation of disparate bits and pieces of information, lore, and conjecture that, together, add up to his conclusion that the only way to ensure completely secure elections is to have him and all of his people looking over the shoulder of every single poll worker in the state as they hand count paper ballots. (Voting only on paper ballots and having them hand-counted by poll workers is the replacement election system proposed by Favorito and others. Trump has glommed on to this, recently issuing executive orders demanding hand-counted paper ballots.) Draper pointed out that, for all Favorito’s advocacy for what he calls “election integrity,” he has no apparent interest in the actual breach of election equipment in Coffee County in 2020. That breach was carried out by pro-Trump election officials who gave access to their election equipment to associates of Mike Flynn, Sidney Powell, and Mike Lindell. Those associates — including the Atlanta law firm who I busted for their role in the illegal breach — then turned around and published the sensitive information they’d obtained on the Internet. Some in Georgia maintain that that information would allow anyone who accesses it to get inside every voting machine in the state. To reiterate: the most serious breach of election equipment in recent Georgia history — the very thing that Favorito, Davis, and many others are so intent on stopping — was carried out by Trump-supporting Republicans. Favorito and his fellow election deniers have a lot of theories about election fraud in Georgia. They have successfully lobbied the State Election Board — run by a majority of Trump supporters — to pass scores of rules that will affect millions of Georgia voters. They have also called for

    24분
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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

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    Justin Glawe
  • 방송 연도
    2024년 - 2026년
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    58
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