Very Real Threats to Press Freedom in the U.S.; Gov. Newsom Declares an Emergency Due to Bird Flu–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: Dec. 19, 2024

Indy Digest: Dec. 19, 2024

There aren’t a lot of things that cause me to lose sleep, but the diminishing state of press freedom in the United States has led me to a few sleep-deprived nights as of late—and this is happening before the second Trump administration has even started. 

Why am I so worried? Here are just a few examples:

• ABC News agreed to pay a whopping $15 million to go toward a future Trump presidential library, to pay $1 million to Trump’s attorney, and to issue an apology, all to settle a defamation lawsuit filed by the former and future president. What did ABC News do wrong? It has to do with statements made by George Stephanopoulos on the March 10 edition of This Week. According to The New York Times: “Mr. Trump sued after George Stephanopoulos, the star ABC News anchor, said on the air that Mr. Trump had been found ‘liable for rape’ in a New York civil trial. In fact, Mr. Trump had been found liable for sexual abuse, although the judge in that case later noted that New York has a narrow legal definition of rape.”

The difference between sexual assault and rape—that’s all it took. That NYT piece also noted in the lede: “Media law experts predicted the move would embolden Mr. Trump to file other lawsuits that could test the limits of the First Amendment.”

• In fact, Trump did file another lawsuit that could test the limits of the First Amendment. As explained by NBC News: “Donald Trump is suing Ann Selzer, her polling firm, The Des Moines Register and the newspaper’s parent company, Gannett, accusing them of consumer fraud, according to a copy of the filing reviewed by NBC News. The suit … says it seeks ‘accountability for brazen election interference’ over a Nov. 2 poll that showed Kamala Harris up by 3 percentage points in Iowa. Trump won the state by double digits, a difference that his lawyers argue in the suit constitutes ‘election-interfering fiction.’ Trump is making the claim under the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act, which prohibits deceptive advertising.”

That poll was obviously terrible—so bad that Selzer announced afterward that she’d no longer do election polling—but now Trump is accusing her and her newspaper of consumer fraud, when clearly the poll didn’t hurt his election prospects? Yikes.

• We’ve mentioned this in this space before, but it bears repeating: The PRESS Act passed unanimously in the U.S. House of Representatives. As the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press explains: “The PRESS Act would bar the federal government from using subpoenas, search warrants, or other compulsory actions against journalists to force the disclosure of information identifying confidential sources as well as other newsgathering records, except in very limited circumstances. It would also broadly limit the government’s ability to use the same actions against third parties, including email providers and search engines, to seize journalists’ data, with narrow exceptions.”

The bill moved to the Senate, and was not taken up before the election. Then on Nov. 20, in a Truth Social post, Trump linked to a PBS story about the PRESS Act and stated: “REPUBLICANS MUST KILL THIS BILL!”

On Dec. 10, Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden finally brought the bill—which, again, was passed unanimously by the House of Representatives—up for a vote. Well, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton did Trump’s bidding, and blocked the bill, saying its passage would turn the Senate “into the active accomplice of deep-state leakers, traitors and criminals, along with the America-hating and fame-hungry journalists who help them out.”

“America-hating and fame-hungry journalists.”

As of this writing, the bill is presumed dead.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• Stories like this creep me out, because they could either mean relatively little … or they could be precursors to something really bad. According to the Los Angeles Times: “Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency Wednesday as the H5N1 bird flu virus moved from the Central Valley to Southern California dairy herds, while federal officials confirmed the first U.S. case of severe illness in a hospitalized Louisiana patient—a concerning development as the virus continues to spread throughout the nation via migrating birds. The declaration by Newsom will allow for a more streamlined approach among state and local agencies to tackle the virus, providing ‘flexibility around staffing, contracting, and other rules to support California’s evolving response,’ according to a statement. … According to the CDC, 61 people have acquired the virus since March—the vast majority at dairies or commercial poultry operations. Most suffered from mild illness, including conjunctivitis, or pink eye, and upper respiratory irritation.”

• Today’s recall news involves … power bank chargers! NBC News says: “Nearly 500,000 Charmast power bank chargers sold on Amazon are being recalled because of fire and burn hazards. The Consumer Product Safety Commission said in a release on its website that Charmast, based in China, has received 44 reports of the power banks’ overheating in a dangerous way, including four reports of consumers’ receiving burns or blisters. Consumers are advised to stop using the recalled power banks immediately and contact Charmast for instructions on how to receive refunds.”

• The Los Angeles Times explains a state rule change that’s intended to bring home insurers back into California: “A revolution is underway in California’s insurance market that could provide relief to homeowners in high-fire-risk neighborhoods who have found it difficult to find insurers to cover their homes, typically a household’s most valuable asset. Under new rules, state insurers for the first time will be allowed to use so-called catastrophe models to help determine the cost of home insurance. The models, developed by firms such as Verisk Analytics and Moody’s, are complex computer programs that aim to better determine the risk a structure faces from wildfires amid a changing climate. … The regulations are intended to sharply increase the availability of insurance in areas that have high fire risk as defined by Department of Insurance maps released this year, which are expected to be updated soon. Homeowners in those areas have been flocking to the FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which sells bare-bones policies.”

• A big change is coming to Social Security is coming next year. CBS News says: “Social Security’s full retirement age (FRA) refers to when workers can start claiming their full benefits, which is based on the number of years they’ve worked as well as their income during their working years. The longer someone works and the higher their income, the more they can receive from Social Security when they finally claim their benefits. While the FRA used to be 65 years old, Congress overhauled the program in 1983 to raise the retirement age threshold in order to account for longer life expectancies. As part of that revamp, the FRA has been inching higher by two months at a time, based on a person’s birth year. … The full retirement age is set to increase again by two months, to 66 years and 10 months old, for people born in 1959. That means the higher FRA for that cohort will go into effect in 2025, with people born in 1959 starting to qualify for their full benefits in November 2025. (You can calculate when you could get your full benefits on this Social Security Administration page.)”

• A little good news for a change: life expectancies are on the rise. CNN reports: “Life expectancy in the United States is rising nearly as quickly as it fell at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic as deaths from COVID-19 and drug overdoses drop. After falling 2.4 years between 2019 and 2021, life expectancy rose by more than a year in 2022, and new data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that it increased by nearly another full year in 2023. People born in 2023 are now estimated to live 78.4 years, according to the CDC. That’s still shy of the 78.8-year life expectancy from 2019, but it’s a significant improvement driven by lower death rates in each of the 10 leading causes of death. The death rate for COVID-19—about 12 deaths for every 100,000 people in 2023, when adjusted for different age distributions in population groups—dropped to about a quarter of what it was in 2022, bringing it from the fourth leading cause of death to the 10th.”

• And finally … boy, does this Associated Press headline nicely encapsulate these times in which we live: “Nuclear bunker sales increase, despite expert warnings they aren’t going to provide protection.” Some details: “Global security leaders are warning nuclear threats are growing as weapons spending surged to $91.4 billion last year. At the same time, private bunker sales are on the rise globally, from small metal boxes to crawl inside of to extravagant underground mansions. Critics warn these bunkers create a false perception that a nuclear war is survivable. They argue that people planning to live through an atomic blast aren’t focusing on the real and current dangers posed by nuclear threats, and the critical need to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Meanwhile, government disaster experts say bunkers aren’t necessary. A Federal Emergency Management Agency 100-page guide on responding to a nuclear detonation focuses on having the public get inside and stay inside, ideally in a basement and away from outside walls for at least a day. Those existing spaces can provide protection from radioactive fallout, says FEMA.” OK then!

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