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‘Cowardice’: Washington Post Faces Backlash After Refusing to Endorse in Presidential Race
For the first time in 36 years The Washington Post, owned by billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, will not endorse a candidate in the presidential race. The move is infuriating critics, democracy advocates, and everyday Americans who point to the paper’s official slogan: “Democracy dies in darkness.”
“The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election. We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates,” The Post’s publisher and CEO, William Lewis, wrote in an opinion piece Friday. He added: “our job as the newspaper of the capital city of the most important country in the world is to be independent.”
NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik writes, “The decision was revealed in a tense meeting with people on the editorial staff. And it arrives at a time of heightened concern over whether news [outlets] are pulling their punches in order to appease Trump in final days of a neck and neck presidential race [against] VP Harris.”
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“It is not clear whether Post owner Jeff Bezos or Publisher/CEO Will Lewis made the call,” Folkenflik adds. “I’m told by person with direct knowledge that [editorial page editor David] Shipley implies that Bezos ordered the decision and Lewis carried it out.”
Former Washington Post Executive Editor Marty Baron told Folkenflik, “This is cowardice, a moment of darkness that will leave democracy as a casualty.”
“Donald Trump will celebrate this as an invitation to further intimidate The Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos (and other media owners),” Baron added. “History will mark a disturbing chapter of spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.”
Columbia Journalism Review executive editor Sewell Chan reports, “The Washington Post opinion editor approved a Harris endorsement. A week later, the paper’s publisher killed it.”
The massive deluge of comments criticizing The Washington Post’s decision to not endorse either candidate flooded the paper’s comments section, thousands in just the first hour, seemingly dozens if not hundreds by the minute at one point, with many vowing to cancel their subscriptions.
Anger also flooded social media.
One user on the social media platform X wrote: “An outrageous abdication of responsibility. Tyranny vs freedom – it’s an obvious choice. Perhaps it’s the ‘anticipatory obedience’ that scholars on tyranny warn us about.”
Michael McDonald, a professor of political science who specializes in American elections wrote: “Democracy Dies In Darkness Isn’t a motto for the Washington Post, It’s a mantra.”
U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) wrote: “The first step towards fascism is when the free press cowers in fear.”
Political scientist Norman Ornstein, a contributing editor at The Atlantic offered a deep dive (thread).
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“Let’s unpack this,” Dr. Ornstein writes. “Donald Trump just referred again to the press as ‘the enemy of the people. He has promised to lock up his adversaries, ‘the enemy within.’ Pledged to forcibly deport 12 million or more immigrants, legal or not, first putting them in detention camps.”
“He has expressed admiration for Hitler, wants generals like Hitler had. He is talking regularly to Netanyahu, urging him to do nothing to help Biden. He talks to Putin, pledges to blow up NATO, shows increasing signs of mental decline. He is a narcissistic sociopath & grifter,” Ornstein continues. “He has been convicted on 34 felony accounts and adjudicated rapist. He praises the Supreme Court for Dobbs, said he would pardon violent insurrectionists, absconded with our most important secrets. He called our heroes who died for the country suckers and losers.”
“Top military leaders say flatly he is a fascist. Dozens of those who worked closely with him in his presidency have denounced him. He is a serial liar, represents an existential threat to democracy. I could go on. But the point is @washingtonpost knows all that.”
“It is a breathtaking show of cowardice and irresponsibility if the nation’s newspaper refuses to make an endorsement in this existential election. Will Lewis, Jeff Bezos, David Shipley are all complicit in this. Shame on them all.”
READ MORE: Fox Host Insists Trump’s Hitler Remarks Were Made in Private — Just ‘Letting Off Steam’
Image of William Lewis: USDA Photo by Lance Cheung via Flickr
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
