The Sunday Subject – June 30, 2024
Joe Biden and Donald Trump faced off in the first presidential debate of the 2024 election.
Biden appeared frail and lost his train of thought at several points, while most of Trump’s claims were counterfactual. Calls for Biden to step down and for fact-checkers to accompany debate moderators ensued.
Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, returned to his native Australia as a free man.
Assange helped found WikiLeaks in 2006, a news outlet that allowed whistleblowers to anonymously turn over primary source documents to the media. In 2010 WikiLeaks released hundreds of thousands of classified documents about US war crimes and operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, among other topics. After spending five years in a British prison, Assange has accepted a plea deal. Critics argue that the ordeal has sent a dangerous message that journalism can constitute a violation of the Espionage Act.
Jamaal Bowman, a progressive, lost the NY-16 primary election to George Latimer, a moderate.
In 2020 Bowman ousted 16-term Democratic Representative Eliot Engel by campaigning for progressive initiatives such as the Green New Deal and Medicare for all. His loss presages a resurgent establishment in New York Democratic politics.
