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Democracy Now Video • Feb 4, 2026
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Democracy Now Video • Feb 4, 2026
"No Means No": AZ Secretary of State Calls for Resistance as Trump Pushes to "Nationalize" Voting
New Republic • Feb 4, 2026
Washington Post Cuts Amazon Reporter Amid Mass Layoffs
Among the many layoffs The Washington Post announced Wednesday was reporter Caroline O’Donovan, who covers tech companies and corporate accountability with a focus on Amazon, the company founded by Post owner Jeff Bezos.O’Donovan, who had worked at the newspaper since 2022, confirmed the news in a post on X. Her last story, published January 28, was ironically about Amazon’s own layoffs last week that put at least 16,000 employees out of work.The day before, she wrote about tech executives and their relationships with President Trump following the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis by federal agents, notably beginning the article by mentioning how Amazon CEO Andy Jassy attended a documentary screening of Melania with Trump the same evening that Pretti was killed.O’Donovan also recently traveled to Minneapolis to cover the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown there. Her coverage of Amazon seemed to have slowed slightly in the middle of 2025, but she was still writing about the company just prior to her layoff.Ever since Bezos took over the newspaper in 2013, critics have raised questions about how the Post would cover his business holdings, chief among them online retail giant Amazon, and whether the billionaire would seek to influence the Post’s coverage. While the Post was criticized at times for failing to disclose Bezos’s ownership in some stories about Amazon, and its coverage of Amazon seemed to fall short in some cases, it never seemed to give the company a free pass.That might change now that there isn’t a dedicated reporter at the Post covering Amazon. What also might change is the newspaper’s relationship with President Trump, which has softened considerably in Trump’s second term. One thing is for sure: One of America’s foremost newspapers is now considerably smaller and weaker than it was at the beginning of the week.
13:24
Democracy Now Video • Feb 4, 2026
Top U.S. & World Headlines — February 4, 2026
New Republic • Feb 4, 2026
The Washington Post Is in Free Fall—and There’s One Person to Blame
The Washington Post laid off more than 300 journalists today, including a huge chunk of its reporters covering international news, local news, and sports. It’s the latest stage in the slow-motion destruction of what had been one of most respected news organizations in the world, coming after owner Jeff Bezos infamously blocked an editorial endorsing Kamala Harris on the eve of the 2024 election and, a few months later, shifted the paper’s opinion section to be much more pro-Trump. What’s happening at the Post is a tragedy and a huge missed opportunity. And I don’t just say that just because I’m both a journalist and a former Post staffer. America desperately needs, more than any point in my lifetime, a robust news organization with hundreds of reporters and editors who are firmly committed to fairness and accuracy but also willing to be honest and forthright about the radicalism of Trump and the current Republican Party. A paper whose motto is “Democracy Dies in Darkness” should be that outlet. But one man opposes that vision, and sadly, only Jeff Bezos’s opinion counts. Let me start with that robustness, and why it’s so distressing to see it diminished. The Post laying off reporters is a different action than CBS News installing a right-wing ideologue (which is what Bari Weiss functionally is, though she would deny it) at the top of its news organization. But in some ways, the results are the same: the dismantling of crucial journalism infrastructures that can’t be easily replaced. The Post and CBS not only have huge teams of journalists, but they have over decades built complicated systems to cover major stories and break news. So at the Post, complex stories often have two reporters; an editor who oversees the story and initially edits the piece; another editor or two who make further changes; a copy editor who reads each story super carefully for any factual or grammatical errors; and a lawyer who reviews the article to make sure none of its claims could lead to a lawsuit against the paper. These people have often worked together for years and even decades. 60 Minutes and other CBS News programs have similar structures. And because of decades of doing this work accurately, CBS, the Post and other such institutions have built a lot of trust. I suspect most Americans generally think that if CBS or the Post says, “Candidate X won this election,” they believe them. Foreign governments interact with Post reporters and consider the paper an important arbiter of foreign policy disputes. At CBS, Weiss is undermining that credibility because everyone knows she is putting her thumb on the scale to push stories to the right. She is also weakening that infrastructure because key staffers are quitting instead of working for her. By laying off foreign correspondents and other key staffers, the Post is directly eliminating this infrastructure. And this can’t easily be replaced. I love all of the various newsletters on Substack and other platforms that have cropped up in the last few years. The New Republic, Mother Jones, and other avowedly liberal media outlets are critical. But at the end of the day, none of those titles have reporters around the world covering the news, or teams of editors and reporters who can spend months on a single investigative project. The mainstream media has many, many flaws. And The New York Times, Associated Press, CNN, Reuters, and numerous other outlets with foreign bureaus and huge news teams remain. But the Post once approached the ambition and scale of the Times. It was great to have a second paper of that stature. It’s sad to see that gone. Now, let me move to that forthrightness and honesty about the Republican Party. I worked at the Post as a reporter from 2007 to 2011. Back then, the paper was struggling financially and was in some ways adrift journalistically too. The rise of Trump revitalized the Post. A presidential administration that was constantly trying to flout democratic norms and hide its corrupt and often illegal actions was a perfect foil for the paper. During Trump’s first term, it broke numerous stories of the president’s misdeeds. That resulted in a huge surge in subscriptions and readership. And while the paper denied that the “Democracy Dies in Darkness” slogan that it adopted in 2017 was about Trump, its coverage approach, more than that of the Times or other outlets, seemed to recognize that Trump was a unique threat to American democracy. After Trump left office, there was an opportunity for the paper to distinguish itself by fully leaning into that pro-democracy mission. Early in Joe Biden’s term, leaders at CNN and the Times in particular hinted that they were going to move their outlets to the right to rebut charges they were liberally biased. And while Trump was out of office, plenty of antidemocracy MAGA Republicans like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis were abusing their power at the state level. There was fertile journalistic ground and a clear market lane for defending democracy. But that was not what Bezos wanted. In 2022, Bezos got in a tit-for-tat with the Biden White House. He blasted the administration for high inflation; the administration said billionaires and the wealthy should pay more in taxes. I (correctly) suspected that Bezos’s real beef was that the Biden administration and the Democratic Party were becoming more Bernie Sanders–ish: skeptical of Big Tech, major corporations, and billionaires like Bezos. It was increasingly clear that the superwealthy would have to align with either a populist Democratic Party or an antidemocratic GOP—and many would choose the latter. In 2023, the Post started not renewing the contracts of liberal columnists and had others write less, moves that I think were designed to appease an owner who had grown increasingly conservative. You know the rest. Bezos blocked the Harris endorsement; the paper’s opinion leadership blocked a cartoon that mocked Bezos and other billionaires for trying to court Trump; Bezos was seated a few rows behind where Trump spoke at his inauguration; he announced the opinion section would be about “free markets and personal liberties”; left-leaning opinion columnists like me were offered buyouts, while others were fired. The Post is casting these current layoffs as modernizing the paper. And the paper has lost money in recent years. But Bezos is one of the richest people in the history of the world. He could run the Post at a loss because he views it as an asset to democracy. Or he could probably sell the paper to someone who would keep its current staffing levels. But Bezos is keeping the paper, likely because he wants to curry favor with the Trump administration and have influence in Washington. I suspect the Post in the future will be political news, pro-Trump editorials, and little else. That’s not nothing. The Post has broken many stories in Trump’s second term that are critical of the president. Perhaps that will continue. But in this diminished form, the Post won’t be able to match the scale and scope of the Times while being more avowedly pro-democracy and anti-authoritarianism than the Times. And that’s really sad. We are in a uniquely dangerous time in the United States. We have a radical president with three more years in office and a MAGA political movement that could endure for decades and is bent on destroying the U.S. as we know it. The Washington Post could have been the moral center of the news industry in this era, as it was during the 1970s after breaking the Watergate scandal. It had the reporters, editors, editorial writers, columnists, researchers, lawyers, and legacy. But it didn’t have the owner. And that flaw proved fatal.
New Republic • Feb 4, 2026
Tulsi Gabbard’s Whistleblower Case Just Got a Whole Lot Worse for Her
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s office just tried to clean up allegations she buried a whistleblower complaint—but made an even bigger mess, instead. In May, a whistleblower accused Gabbard of restricting the distribution of a highly classified intelligence report for political purposes, saying that the inspector general for the Intelligence Community had failed to report a potential crime to the Department of Justice—also for political reasons. Typically, an employee is able to share a complaint alleging wrongdoing directly with lawmakers, as long as the DNI instructs them on how to securely transmit it. But eight months later, the whistleblower’s complaint was still not transmitted to Congress—and was reportedly locked away in a safe, a person familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal.In a series of posts Tuesday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence tried to combat claims that Gabbard had “hindered dissemination” of the whistleblower complaint, citing a February 2 letter from Christopher Fox, the inspector general for the intelligence community. ODNI claimed the letter proved that security guidance was provided and that Gabbard had “acted immediately, delivered what was required, supported lawful whistleblower channels,” even for a complaint that was deemed “baseless.”But the letter doesn’t actually exonerate Gabbard, or her office. In the letter, Fox claimed that Gabbard was never actually notified about the complaint—even after the former Intelligence Community Inspector General Tamara Johnson determined in June that the complaint was of “urgent concern” if true, and the whistleblower asked that it be transmitted to the congressional intelligence committees.Fox wrote that days after making her determination, Johnson received newly obtained evidence and issued a memo finding that the allegation against Gabbard “did not appear credible” but that she could not determine the credibility of the other claim. Andrew Bakaj, the attorney representing the whistleblower, said he was never informed that any such determination was reached. Johnson’s supplemental memo had “no legal effect” on the whistleblower’s right to submit the complaint to Congress, Fox wrote. For months, nothing happened, but on September 17, Fox said the ODNI acting general counsel cited “complexity in classification” as the reason transmission was delayed. In October, Jack Dever took over as ODNI general counsel, and Fox replaced Johnson.*Fox claimed he learned about the complaint the day after he was appointed. “Accordingly, I prioritized its transmittal to Congress since the moment I first learned of it,” he wrote. But he also wrote at length how he’d personally determined the complaint did not meet the definition of “urgent concern.”In December, months into Fox’s supposed crusade to transmit the complaint to Congress, he finally got around to asking Gabbard about providing guidance. “I inquired about security guidance and she revealed to me that the Acting General Counsel prior to Mr. Dever’s confirmation had never informed her of the outstanding requirement for this security guidance,” he said.Gabbard “committed to providing the guidance as soon as practicable,” Fox wrote, adding that he also received communication from White House counsel that they were reviewing the claims for a potential assertion of executive privilege. Fox received security guidance from Gabbard on January 30, and wrote that he intended to pass along the memos.Here’s what Fox’s letter does confirm: “In the present case, the intelligence report from which the complaint was derived is the most sensitive to-date received by IC OIG as an ‘urgent concern’ complaint,” he wrote. The letter also suggests that ODNI spokesperson Olivia Coleman lied in a statement Monday when she claimed “the Whistleblower’s complaint is with the Congressional Intelligence Committees for review.”During a press conference Tuesday, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Vice Chair Mark Warner said his committee had yet to receive the complaint. * This article incorrectly stated the name of ODNI acting general counsel.
New Republic • Feb 4, 2026
JD Vance Delivers Sick Message to Alex Pretti’s Family
When asked if he wanted to apologize to the family of slain Minnesota protester Alex Pretti, Vice President JD Vance replied, “For what?”Vance sat down for an interview with The Daily Mail, in which he continued to cast federal agents as the real victims of Operation Metro Surge while offering virtually no sympathy for a U.S. citizen who was shot dead in the street by his own government.“Have you apologized, did you plan to apologize to the family of Alex Pretti?” The Daily Mail’s Philip Nieto asked Vance.“For what?”“For, you know, labeling him an assassin with ill intent.”The day Pretti was killed, Vance shared a post on X from White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller that read, “An assassin tried to murder federal agents and this is your response,” referring to calls for ICE to leave Minneapolis after killing Pretti. Calling Pretti—who was disarmed and then shot—an “assassin” is beyond slanderous, and just one of many false right-wing narratives that emerged in the aftermath.“I just described to you what I said about Alex Pretti, which is that he’s a guy who showed up with ill intent to an ICE protest,” Vance continued.“But if it’s determined that his civil rights were violated by this FBI investigation, will you apologize?”“So if this hypothetical leads to that hypothetical leads to another hypothetical—”“It’s a real case that’s open,” Nieto responded.“Like I said, we’re gonna let the investigation determine.… I don’t think it’s smart to prejudge the investigation, I don’t think it’s fair to those ICE officers.” Pretti was killed by Border Patrol, a mistake that only reaffirms Vance’s indifference toward the event.Vance couldn’t care less about Pretti’s killing. He, Miller, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and many on the right smeared Pretti immediately after he was killed, calling him some trained domestic terrorist looking to assassinate ICE agents. But now, when the entire country can see that an act of brutal injustice occurred, the vice president wants everyone to wait and see.
truthout • Feb 4, 2026
After HRW Blocks Report on Right of Return, Group’s Israel-Palestine Team Quits
“We have once again run into Human Rights Watch’s systemic ‘Israel Exception,’” said a former HRW employee.
1:23:53
FACTUALLY • Feb 4, 2026
America Needs to Start Over, with Osita Nwanevu
Headlines
3724 headlinesMeasuring Change at Scale: Positioning Workflows for Mining Volumes, Progress, and Safety Zones
DC Report •
Rep. Himes Sides With Trump on Warrantless Surveillance of Americans
Common Dreams •
Trump Convenes “God Squad” Committee in Move That Could Annihilate Whale Species
truthout •
Two Young Boys Were Detained by ICE. Then Ms. Rachel Shared Their Stories.
Mother Jones •
Coalition Sues Trump EPA Over Illegal Repeal of Mercury and Air Toxics Standards
Common Dreams •
The Small Things That Quietly Change How We Experience a Space
DC Report •
Usha Vance Started a Reading Show for Kids Whose Families Haven’t Been Separated
Mother Jones •
Trump Declares ‘Cuba Is Finished’ While Letting Russian Oil Tanker Break Illegal US Blockade
Scheer Post •
“Affordable” Care Gets Pricier Under Trump
Lever News •
Pope Leo Says God “Does Not Listen to the Prayers of Those Who Wage War”
truthout •
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