JD Vance

Mark Zuckerberg is really sorry for censoring you

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee yesterday that the government pressured his company to censor content during the Covid-19 pandemic and said he regrets following their wishes. The committee described his comments as a “big win for free speech.” Meta produced thousands of documents for the committee’s investigation into alleged government censorship and Zuckerberg wrote the supplemental letter to outline what he had learned during the process. “In 2021, senior officials from the Biden administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain Covid-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree,” he said.

Zuckerberg

How Silicon Valley fell for Trump

Just weeks after Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance, the July 13 assassination attempt on Donald Trump radically shifted the election calculus yet again. Amid the intense, fast-moving news cycle, one event that would ordinarily have garnered wall-to-wall coverage went nearly unnoticed. “I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery,” Elon Musk posted to X on the day of the assassination attempt. In recent weeks, a legion of tech giants from the deep-blue stronghold of Silicon Valley have broken ranks and openly pledged support for the MAGA leader. With each new backer comes a slew of mega-donations to his campaign.

trump

Where is the clarity in modern center-right foreign policy?

When Ohio senator J.D. Vance arrived at the Munich Security Conference in February, he had a clear message meant for the world: the Republican Party was no longer the party of Ronald Reagan. Standing outside the Hotel Bayerischer Hof, he informed reporters that he did not believe American support for combat against authoritarian regimes should extend to Ukraine — and that he would continue to oppose efforts to “increase the supply of weapons in Ukraine because we’ve already expended so many of our munitions and resources” to achieve a victory that he does not foresee. Vance’s bootstrap story is well-known — he’s a Marine veteran turned Yale Law grad turned venture capitalist made prominent by his bestselling Appalachia memoir Hillbilly Elegy.

foreign policy

Will Republicans learn from the midterms?

The 2022 midterm elections consumed more than 16.5 billion real American dollars. They featured thousands of candidates and the most expensive Senate race in history, resulting in the election of Democrat John Fetterman from Pennsylvania. Millions of viewers across the country tuned in to watch election-night returns in anticipation of a promised red wave that never came. The 2022 midterms were the political equivalent of the Red Queen’s race — a massive effort, all to end up pretty much back where you started. Post-election recriminations were complicated by how well Republicans actually did. They massively increased their turnout and won the House of Representatives. They saw wide margins of victory by incumbent governors in Florida, Georgia, Ohio and Texas.

republicans

Where in the world is J.D. Vance?

Cockburn loves campaign gossip, and the latest gossipy article from the Daily Beast does little to inspire confidence in Ohio GOP Senate hopeful J.D. Vance. Last week, Vance made a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Israel, which is pretty far from his home state in the Midwest. And apparently the fact that he wasn't campaigning in the Buckeye State has ticked off more than a few Ohioans. This isn’t the first of Vance’s abandonment issues. He’s been missing from Ohio speaking events and conferences, and even ghosted some of his donors according to the Beast’s source in the GOP. This comes a few days after the Beast posted about Vance’s finance issues, stating plainly in the very first line that “The J.D. Vance Campaign is broke.

Tim Ryan wants to be China on abortion

While on Bret Baier's Fox News show Special Report, Ohio Democratic Senate candidate Tim Ryan said there should be no abortion restrictions at all, establishing himself as radical even by pro-choice standards. After the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court, Ohio passed a heartbeat bill that restricted abortion after six weeks. Yet Congressman Ryan believes this is too strict. In fact, he believes any kind of restriction is too strict. Ryan said, "Look, you got to leave it up to the woman, because you and I sitting here can’t account for all of the different scenarios that a woman, dealing with the complexities of a pregnancy, are going through. How can you and I figure that out?

The Real Housecucks of Ohio

After eight months that felt like eighty years, the Ohio Republican Senate primary has at last come to a close. It ended as it began, as a kind of highbrow-cum-low political farce, Aristophanes’ take on post-Trump America. Think a pileup of clown cars on the highway — and then cut to a grinning Donald Trump in a rescue helicopter, swooping down tauntingly only to pull back up again. From the start, the race was an exercise in how far good men would go in order to nab an endorsement from The Donald. And while obscene, the endless attention seeking did have a certain thrill to it. Would JD Vance deny that Vladimir Putin exists? Would Josh Mandel murder an epidemiologist on live TV? Tune in next week to find out, only on The Real Housecucks of Ohio.

Can protectionism bring back my father’s world?

My father was born in 1948. He’s the same age as Jackson Browne: ’65 I was 17, ’69 I was 21. His plan was to graduate from his Western Pennsylvania public high school and join the Marine Corps. The local draft board came damn close to saving him the trouble of enlisting. But near the end of his high school career, it was discovered that his girlfriend was “in a family way.” His parents briefly floated the idea of obtaining an illegal abortion. Fortunately, my 17-year-old father, his soon-to-be in-laws, and his Episcopal priest (in those days such men could be depended upon) stood firm. He and his girlfriend were married. Soon after, my half-brother was born and my father enrolled in an apprenticeship program with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.