I’ve now sent a personal letter to the Speaker, Minority Leader, Senate Leaders and each member of the Senate Rules Committee, begging them to intervene.

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My Bureau, The LCB, has provided clips, W-9s, proof of payments, etc. — yet nothing has been good enough to appease Senate Radio-TV Gallery Director Mike Mastrian and Executive Committee Chair Nate Reed of Scripps (a streaming service).

Please, someone, help!

- Laslo

PS - below find a link to some of what I cite in the video.

ICYMI — something’s off at RTCA

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WASHINGTON — Congress is explicit: Only “bona fide journalists” are allowed press credentials — and the special access and privileges that accompany a government-issued hard pass — to the US Capitol.

But the Senate Radio-Television Correspondents’ Association has been approving credentials for press secretaries, activists and corporate special interests.

Below, find raw research of questionable credentials the RTCA Executive Committee approved for their own news outlets.

The elected leadership of the RTCA Executive Committee has refused numerous attempts to clarify or correct our list. We’re especially curious about which membership tiers RTCA is currently offering.

Only one of the group’s four websites — RTCA Senate, RTCA House, RTCA Cap Hill and RTCA Capitol Hill — lists an “Honorary” member tier for “those persons, who in the opinion of the majority of the Executive Committee have rendered outstanding service to the objects of this Association.”

The cost of regular, Associate-level admission to RTCA is $40 per credential. RTCA does not publicly declare the cost for admission to its other tiers, though RTCA bylaws are clear that the Executive Committee sets the price for admission.

ICYMI — RTCA credentialed a convicted pedophile

Just the Facts

Latest available raw RTCA credentialing data

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ABC — 118th Congress

*17 of 141 credentialed (research assisted by Perplexity)

1. James Meek — credentialed after he resigned when FBI raided his home in 2022 (NBC)

a. “Man Arrested for Transporting Images of Child Sexual Abuse,” DOJ release Feb. 2023

2. Mina Kaji — public affairs, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)

a. Left journalism in 2022 (LinkedIn)

3. Kenneth Moton — ABC anchor role ended December 2022

a. Not active ABC staff during 118th Congress (LinkedIn)

4. Matthew Mosk — former ABC News investigative producer; joined CBS January 2022

a. Not active ABC staff during 118th Congress (LinkedIn)

5. Terrance Smith — former digital news associate; moved to Yahoo Sports May 2022

a. Not active ABC staff during 118th Congress (LinkedIn)

6. Megan Cunningham — left ABC in 2022; RTCA credentialed for 2023-2024

a. Missouri statehouse reporter, The Beacon (started 2022; Linkedin)

7. Carmen Currie — not journalist; hairstylist Meghan McCain/ The View (Business Insider)

a. Could be Associate Member; not clearly listed as such, though

8. Jackie Lyn Walker — not a journalist; makeup artist (LinkedIn)

a. Could be Associate Member; not clearly listed as such, though

ABC — not based in DC, per RTCA rules

Could be Associate Member; not clearly listed as such, though

9. Almin Karamehmedovic — New York-based since 2008; President, ABC News (LinkedIn)

10. Elizabeth Alesse — New York-based since 2020; former VP of ABC Audio

a. Now Vice President and General Manager of Axios Local (LinkedIn)

11. Andrew Dymburt — New York-based Anchor/Correspondent since May 2021 (LinkedIn)

12. Conor Finnegan — Mexico City-based from May 2022 to July 2025 (LinkedIn)

13. David Muir — no DC address; anchor of World News Tonight broadcast from New York

14. Siobhan Fisher — Brooklyn-based since 2022; Good Morning America (LinkedIn)

15. John Santucci — Executive Editorial Producer who left DC for NYC in 2022 (LinkedIn)

16. James Smith — Good Morning America Editor based in Brooklyn, NY (LinkedIn)

17. Armando Torres-Garcia — New York-based; no record they ever lived in DC (LinkedIn)

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CBS — 118th Congress

*14 of 206 people credentialed seem to skirt RTCA Constitution

1) Caitlin Conant — left journalism in 2022; RTCA credentialed in 2023-2024 (LinkedIn)

a. VP of Public Affairs & Policy Communications, The Walt Disney Company

2) Timothy Perry — left media to do PR for Disney; Los Angeles, CA-based

a. Corporate Communications Manager, The Walt Disney Company (LinkedIn)

3) Michael Peyton — left CBS / Atlanta-based non-Journalist

a. Partnerships and Communications, IGN & Warner Bros (LinkedIn)

4) Brooke Lorenz — Director of Communications, Artemis Strategies

a. Left media for PR/lobbying firm in 2022 (LinkedIn)

CBS — not based in DC, per RTCA rules

Could be Associate Member; not clearly listed as such, though

5) John Dickerson — no DC address; New York-based

a. Anchor and Chief Political Analyst (LinkedIn)

6) Benjamin Tracy — no DC address; LA-based

a. Senior national and environmental correspondent (LinkedIn)

7) Kristopher Van Cleave — no DC address; Phoenix, AZ-based (LinkedIn)

a. Senior transportation and national correspondent

8) Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews — no DC address; relocated to New York HQ (LinkedIn)

a. President, CBS News

9) Laura Doan — no DC address; relocated to New York in early 2024 (LinkedIn)

a. Fact Checker / Visual Verification Journalist

10) Mark Mazariegos — no DC address; relocated to Doral, Florida (LinkedIn)

a. Photojournalist

11) LaCrai Mitchell (Scott) — no DC address; relocated to New York (LinkedIn)

a. Producer, CBS Evening News

12) Camilo Montoya-Galvez — no DC address; relocated to New York (LinkedIn)

a. Immigration Correspondent

13) Brian Nalesnik — no DC address; New Jersey / New York City metro (LinkedIn)

a. Television Director

14) Bartholomew (Bryan) Noonan — no DC address; New York-based (LinkedIn)

a. Senior Financial Analyst / Finance Manager

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CNN — 118th Congress

*31 of 317 credentialed appear to be out of compliance

1. Jason Hoffman — went to Bloomberg in 2021; credentialed CNN by RTCA in 2023-2024

a. Moved out of DC in 2022; Brunswick Group PR (started May 2024; LinkedIn)

2. Nathalie Jimenez — left CNN for BBC in 2022

a. New York-based (LinkedIn)

3. Noah Broder — left CNN for CNBC in 2022; credentialed by RTCA in 2023-2024

a. Left DC in 2021; now New York City-based Field Producer at CNBC (LinkedIn)

4. Maeve Reston — left CNN Feb. 2023; Los Angeles-based (LinkedIn)

a. RTCA re-credentialed her in April 2023 after she went to The Washington Post

5. Heather Fulbright Grambergs — left CNN in 2022; credentialed under CNN in 2023

a. Atlanta-based Photographer (LinkedIn)

6. Etolia Stinson — left CNN in 2022; credentialed under CNN by RTCA 2023-2024

a. Dallas-based Marketing Coordinator (LinkedIn)

CNN — not based in DC, per RTCA rules

Could be Associate Member; not clearly listed as such, though

7. Adrian Reyes — no DC address

a. Miami-based since starting with CNN in 2014 (LinkedIn)

8. Mary Moloney — No DC address

a. left DC in 2022; Atlanta, Georgia (Linkedin)

9. Bonney Kapp — appears to have never lived in DC

a. New York-based (LinkedIn)

10. Mark Biello — left DC in 1987

a. Atlanta-based Senior Photojournalist (LinkedIn)

11. Frank Bivona — never appears to have lived in DC

a. Atlanta-based Photojournalist (LinkedIn)

12. Robert Crowley — never appears to have lived in DC

a. Boston-based Senior Photojournalist (LinkedIn)

13. Tami Luhby — never appears to have lived in DC

a. Bronx, New York-based (LinkedIn)

14. Catherine Carter — never appears to have lived in DC

a. New York City-based Senior Editorial Producer (LinkedIn)

15. McKenna Ewen — left DC in 2020

a. Minneapolis, Minnesota (LinkedIn)

16. Melissa Frydman — left DC in 2022

a. New York-based Director, Integrated Content Development (LinkedIn)

17. Christopher Turner — no DC address

a. Jackson, Mississippi (LinkedIn)

18. Julia Vargas Jones — no DC address

a. Los Angeles / São Paulo / New York (LinkedIn)

19. Michelle Velez — left DC in 2022 (LinkedIn)

1. Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates Multiplatform Producer, Connect the World

20. Walter Imparato — no DC address

a. New York-based Photojournalist (LinkedIn)

21. Thomas Jurek — no DC address

1. New York-based Photojournalist (LinkedIn)

22. Jeffrey Simon — left DC in 2014

a. New York-based (LinkedIn)

23. Emily Welch — left DC in 2022

a. New York-based Senior Editorial Producer, Fareed Zakaria GPS (LinkedIn)

24. Gregory Krieg — left CNN / appears to have never lived in DC

a. New York-based; has since left CNN (LinkedIn)

25. Jamie Zahn-Liebes — no DC address

a. New York-based Director, Booking-Morning Programing (LinkedIn)

26. Sydney Walton — left DC in 2022

a. New York-based Associate Producer (LinkedIn)

27. Jamie Wiener — no DC address

a. Great Neck, New York; Photojournalist (retired April 2025; LinkedIn)

28. Monica Serrano Quintero — appears to have never lived in DC

a. New York, New York (LinkedIn)

29. Kitty O’Keefe — left DC in 2021

a. New York-based (LinkedIn)

30. Christopher Perry — never appears to have lived in DC. Atlanta-based (LinkedIn)

31. Oren Liebermann — Jerusalem Bureau Chief

a. Israel-based; family has northern Virginia home (LinkedIn)

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Fox News — 118th Congress

*11 of 252 credentials appear to run afoul of RTCA Constitution

1. Marina Minas — Chief Marketing Officer, Turning Point USA; Phoenix-based (LinkedIn)

a. Fox producer until 2022; RTCA credentialed her in 2023-24

2. Lauren Blanchard — media consultant (2024-Present)

a. Left Fox in 2023; Charlotte, North Carolina-based since 2023 (LinkedIn)

3. Grace Richardson — left Fox in 2017, credentialed by RTCA 2023-24

a. Freelance Video Editor / Videographer (LinkedIn)

4. Kelly Dixon — left Fox NYC Bureau in 2022; RTCA credentialed in 2023-2024

a. Fmr. Production Manager; now Inizio Engage XD FILM in Philadelphia (LinkedIn)

5. Jillian Mele — left Fox News in 2021-2022; credentialed 2023-2024

a. Local Philadelphia anchor (2022-23); founded Jillian Mele Communications (2023)

6. Isabelle Beyda — left Fox in 2022; credentialed by RTCA for 2023-2024

a. Fmr. Assignment Editor, Fox Business; now Miami-based (LinkedIn)

7. Tucker Carlson — RTCA approved credential after Fox argued he’s all ‘rhetorical hyperbole’

a. 2020: Fox lawyers got a defamation suit dismissed after arguing he’s just a commentator, not a journalist (McDougal v. Fox News Network)

Fox News — not based in DC, per RTCA rules

Could be Associate Member; not clearly listed as such, though

8. Nicholas Conca — no DC address

a. New York-based Production Assistant (LinkedIn)

9. Matthew Leach — left DC in 2021

a. Tampa, Florida-based Senior Producer, Fox Digital (LinkedIn)

10. Kevin Scimecca — no record ever lived in DC

a. New York-based Producer, The Five (LinkedIn)

11. Rachel Rea — hasn’t lived in DC since 2015

1. New York-based Executive Producer, Will Cain Show (LinkedIn)

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Fox Business — 118th Congress

*2 of 16 credentials issued to NYC residents

Could be Associate Member; not clearly listed as such, though

1. Daniel Hillsdon — Senior Field Producer

a. New York-based (LinkedIn)

2. Brooke Haliscak — Line Producer

a. Brooklyn, New York-based (LinkedIn)

Fox Radio — 118th Congress

*8 of 15 credentials issued to non-DC area residents

Could be Associate Member; not clearly listed as such, though

1. Jason Austin — Manager of News & Editorial, Fox Radio SiriusXM

a. New York-based (LinkedIn)

2. Wyatt Dobrovich-Fago — Associate Producer

a. Spring Lake, New Jersey-based (LinkedIn)

3. Thomas Graham — Anchor

a. Brooklyn, New York-based; moved away from DC in 2015 (LinkedIn)

4. Devon Kelly — Podcast Producer

a. New York-based (LinkedIn)

5. Maria Donovan — Director of Talk Programming

a. New York-based (LinkedIn)

6. Gurnal Scott — National Correspondent

a. New York-based (LinkedIn)

7. John Sylvester Jr. — Senior Vice President Fox News Media Audio

a. Jersey City, NJ-based (LinkedIn)

8. Tonya Williams — Podcast Producer

a. Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based (LinkedIn)

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Gray Television — 118th Congress

*1 of 24 credentialed (should) raise red RTCA flags

1. Jillian Angeline — Public affairs, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)

   1. Left Gray DC bureau in 2021; left journalism May 2024 (LinkedIn)

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Lilly Broadcasting — 118th Congress

*1 of 2 credentialed left journalism in 2021 to become Comms Director for Rep. Mike Kelly & mouthpiece of panel investigating assassination attempts on President Trump

1. Matthew Knoedler — press secretary, Rep. Mike Kelly

   1. Left journalism in 2021; RTCA credentialed him 2023-2024

   2. Current: Communications Director, Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump (Majority Staff) | Chairman Mike Kelly (R-PA)

“National Public Radio” — NPR — 118th Congress

*2 of 94 credentialed appear to live outside of DC, per RTCA bylaws

Could be Associate Member; not clearly listed as such, though

1. Tom Dreisbach — no DC address

   1. Los Angeles-based Investigative Correspondent (LinkedIn)

2. Chloee Weiner — no DC address

   1. New York-based (LinkedIn)

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NBC News — 118th Congress

*15 of 265 credentials appear to run afoul of RTCA Constitution

1. Heidi Przybyla — left NBC in 2022; RTCA credentialed her in 2023-24

a. September 2022: POLITICO announced she joined its permanent staff (LinkedIn)

2. Lauren Egan — left NBC 2022; credentialed by RTCA 2023-2024

a. December 2022: Went to Politico; February 2025: Started with The Bulwark (LinkedIn)

3. Kasie Hunt — not NBC staff during the 118th Congress

a. Signed with CNN in July 2021 (Deadline)

4. Brendan Gaffney — now a law student, not active NBC staff during 2023-2024 (LinkedIn)

a. LinkedIn shows NBC production-assistant and desk-assistant roles ending in July 2021

5. Caroline Vakil — Campaign reporter, The Hill

a. Left NBC in 2021; not NBC staff during 118th Congress (LinkedIn)

6. Geoffrey Bennett — PBS NewsHour anchor since January 2023

a. Named PBS Newshour chief Washington Correspondent in Jan. 2023 (Wiki)

7. Lawrence Bartley — Publisher, The Marshall Project Inside

a. Contributor to NBC, CNN & PBS (Could be Associate Member; not clearly listed)

8. Rachel Maddow — no record of DC address; owns homes in NYC & in Massachusetts

b. In 2021, MSNBC lawyers defeated defamation suit by arguing Maddow’s a commentator

9. Richard Hudock — not a journalist; Senior VP of Communications, MSNBC / MS NOW

a. New York-based; left Washington 2018 (LinkedIn)

NBC — not based in DC, per RTCA rules

Could be Associate Member; not clearly listed as such, though

10. Kailani Koenig-Muenster — no DC address

a. Left DC in 2018; Chicago-based (LinkedI)

11. Fallon Gallagher — left DC in 2021

1. New York-based Producer, NBC Nightly New (LinkedIn)

12. Ellison Barber — no DC address

a Brooklyn, New York-based (LinkedIn)

13. Savannah Guthrie — hasn’t lived in DC since 2011

a. Owns $11.35 million townhouse in Brooklyn Heights, NY (Women.com)

14. Lester Holt — no DC address; New York-based

a. Previous: Chicago and Los Angeles (National Association of Broadcasters)

15. Brett Holey — no DC address

1. Greater New York City-based Senior Director (LinkedIn)

Newsmax TV — 118th Congress

*4 of 11 credentials flagged for RTCA review

1. Stephanie Cassidy — left Newsmax April 2023; RTCA credentialed 2023-24

a. Current: Talent Agency owner (2023-Present)

b. VP of Booking, Casting and Talent (2019-2023)

c. Left DC in 2019; Mount Laurel, NJ (LinkedIn)

Newsmax — not based in DC, per RTCA rules

Could be Associate Member; not clearly listed as such, though

2. Gary Kanofsky — no record he’s ever lived in DC

1. New York-based Senior VP of News and Operations (LinkedIn)

3. Christopher Knowles — no record he’s ever lived in DC

1. New York-based Vice President of Programming (LinkedIn)

4. Haley Gillman — no record she’s ever lived in DC

1. New York-based Vice President of Booking (LinkedIn)

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One America News (OAN) — 118th Congress

*6 of 22 credentialed seem to run afoul of RTCA bylaws

1. Christina Bobb — RNC, head of election integrity program (2024)

1. Left OAN in 2022, but RTCA still issued OAN credential for 118th Congress

2. Activism while credentialed

   1. Personal nonprofit spent $600,000 to influence 2020 election (New Republic)

   2. Author: ‘Stealing Your Vote: The Inside Story of the 2020 Election and What It Means for 2024’

3. Named RNC/DJT attorney March 2024; RTCA member list due April 25, 2024

2. Caitlin Sinclair — credentialed RTCA while TPUSA spokeswoman (2024)

a. Left OAN Dec. 2023; social media manager MAGA INC. Super-PAC (April-Aug. 2024)

c. Spokeswoman Turning Point USA (May 2024 - Dec. 2024) (LinkedIn)

3. Jennifer Pellegrino — America First Policy Institute; left OAN 2021 (LinkedIn)

1. Credentialed OAN by RTCA 2023 - 2024, while a Newsmax anchor (2021-24)

2. 2024 advocacy:

   1. America First Policy Institute, Media Affairs & Chief Spokesperson

      1. Appears to have been credentialed by RTCA during this period

3. 2025 advocacy:

   1. Defend Forgotten America, President & CEO

      1. Unclear if her RTCA credential was extended in 119th Congress

4. John Posobiec — Turning Point USA (TPUSA)

a. Left OAN May 2021; credentialed by RTCA for the 118th Congress (2023-2024)

5. Girish Gaur — “...considers himself ‘kind of an activist’ rather than a reporter”

a. Told New York Post he’s an activist, not a reporter (NY Post)

b. Not a DC resident: “...the New York resident,” according to NY Post

6. Charles Herring — President of OAN; Herring Networks HQ in San Diego (LinkedIn)

b. Could be Associate Member; not clearly listed as such, though

7. Chanel Rion — activist (not included in tally because current White House anchor)

1. Personal nonprofit spent $600,000 to influence 2020 election (New Republic)

Scripps News — 118th Congress

*6 of 49 credentialed appear outside RTCA residency requirements

1. Ellen Rolfes — left Scripps in 2021; RTCA credentialed in 2023-2024

a. Marketplace employee from Jan. 2022 - May 2025 (LinkedIn)

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Scripps — not based in DC, per RTCA rules

Could be Associate Member; not clearly listed as such, though

2. Matthew Anzur — no record of DC address

a. Golden, Colorado based (Scripps)

3. Carrie Cochran — left DC in 2022; RTCA credentialed for 2023-2024

a. Cincinnati, Ohio-based since 2022 (LinkedIn)

4. Alexandra Miller — non-DC Resident

a. New York City-based (LinkedIn)

5. Maira Nolasco-Carranza — non-DC Resident (Queens, NYC)

a. “Transitioning from Washington, DC bureau to New York City as a senior producer” (2021 Scripps press release)

6. Megan Liz Smith — non-DC Resident

a. Brooklyn, NYC-based (LinkedIn)

Spectrum News — 118th Congress

*2 of 29 credentialed don’t appear to meet RTCA residency requirement

Could be Associate Member; not clearly listed as such, though

1. Benjamin Gordon — no record of DC address; Maplewood, NJ-based (LinkedIn)

   1. Graphic Systems Engineer out of Chelsea Market NY1 facility

2. Zoe Slemmons — no public record of DC address

   1. New York-based Producer (LinkedIn)

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What’d we miss? Let us know!

Most 25th Amendment coverage by the mainstream media is so ignorant it’s misleading.

While pundits and politicians alike regularly rely on the amendment to “sound the alarm,” as they call for the ouster of the President from the opposing party. That surface-level critique misses the culture out of which the amendment came to be.

What critics forget — or never knew… — is the nuclear backdrop of the 25th Amendment, because the legislation itself is a product of the fear-saturated Cold War era.

“We had to make sure there was always somebody who had his finger on the button,” then-Senator Birch Bayh — the only non-Founding Father who helped write two amendments that were added to the US Constitution — said when he was helping craft the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.

The Bayh episode is recounted by Dr. Rebecca @DrLubot in her timely history of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, Keeping a Finger on the Button: Presidential Continuity and the Nuclear Age.

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The behind-the-scenes glimpse of negotiations surrounding the 25th Amendment reveals the rare addition to the Constitution was crafted in an age marked by the ever-present fear of nuclear annihilation.

While it’s an academic work, it’s an accessible read for congressional — & nuclear… — geeks. You can order a copy here.

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Bureau chief / Washington Correspondent

The LCB — Laslo Congressional Bureau (2010 — )

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  • Founded artificial intelligence meetup for independent journalists

  • Includes alumni of Bulwark, CBS, CNN, Vanity Fair, USA Today, Washington Post, Associated Press, HuffPost, Weekly Standard, NPR, Politico, Kaiser Health News, Meidas Touch, etc.

• X (Twitter) 50k+ followers across various X accounts

  • Jan. 6 Capitol breach video — 43+ million views

  • Found Matt Gaetz Motion to Vacate the Speaker in a Capitol restroom — 3+ million views

    • The View: “I feel like we’ve become a deeply unserious country…”

    • New Republic: Matt Laslo & The Motion

    • Rolling Stone: Late-Night Hosts Roast Republicans

    • Washington Post: In a leaderless House, the ‘clowns’ stumble toward a shutdown

    • New York Magazine: Who Left Motion to Remove Kevin McCarthy in House Bathroom?

  • Finalist 2010 Shorty Awards (lost to The Nation magazine)

• Instagram

  • Photos re-published by ABC, Boston Globe, CNN, NBC, Newsday, NPR, PBS, VICE News, Wall Street Journal, etc. (pre-Jan. 6)

  • Photos & videos from within US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — tens of millions of views

The Johns Hopkins University (MA, Government & Public Policy; Washington, DC)

• Delivered history of new media & politics lecture for visiting MA students (‘19, ‘23, ‘24)

• Courses: Politics & the Media (2016, 2018, 2021); Government & New Media (2017); Independent Studies with two ESL students (2017); Congressional Communications (2018)

• Developed Politics & the Media into online CDM (2020/2021)

• Guests: fmr. Rep. David Jolly, The Guardian’s Ben Jacobs, Buzzfeed’s John Stanton, NPR’s Sue Davis; fmr. White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows asked to audit

Boston University (MA & BA; Multimedia & Journalism; Washington, DC)

• Lectured visiting students on evolution of contemporary press corps (2022 & 2023)

• Course: Rhetoric vs. Reality (2016) — explores how rhetoric adapts to new mediums

University of Maryland (BA; Journalism)

• Journalism 201 (2017 & 2019)

• Guests: Tom LoBianco of AP, CNN & Pence biographer (Harper Collins) / Haley Byrd of NOTUS (fmrly. CNN) / Daniel Newhauser of VICE News (fmrly. National Journal)

George Washington University (MA; PR & Communications)

• Media Relations in Digital World (2018, 2019, 2020); Advanced Comms Writing (2019)

  • Reference for President Trump press secretary & Speaker Pelosi aide, etc.

• Guests: CBS Mornings’ executive producer Shawna Thomas, Semafor’s Dave Weigel (fmrly. Washington Post), Sarah Peck (comms Sen. Tim Kaine) & Rachel Holland (Rep. Will Hurd)

Op-Ed Writer (2016 — PRESENT)

Columbia Journalism Review, The Guardian, Reuters, NBC Think, The News Station, Wisconsin State Journal, SALT Weekly & Lights, Cameras, Memes!

• Pen original enterprise op-eds on new media, partisanship, Big Tech, cannabis, elections, etc.

• Live coverage of presidential debates for The Guardian during 2016 election

• Republished: Salt Lake Tribune, Guardian Australia (Weekend print edition), The Standard (Canada), Malay Mail (Malaysia’s oldest newspaper), Cannabis Culture, etc.

• Cited: New York Times, Fox News, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Washington Post, PBS, Forbes, Bangkok Post, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Daily Mail, USA Today, Cultural Daily, The Hill, Marijuana Moment, Roll Call, Middle East Eye, Politico, WeedWeek, Milwaukee Independent, New York Post, McClatchy, etc.

Craft Beer Columnist

• Explored intersection of booze & politics in the nation’s capital

Public Speaking / WRITINGS

• 60+ Keynotes, Guest Lectures, Panels (2009 — PRESENT)

  • Aspen Ideas Festival, Cornell, Georgetown, Northwestern, George Mason, NYU, etc.

• 50+ op-eds authored by “Prof” Laslo

  • Columbia Journalism Review, Reuters, Guardian, NBC Think, etc.

Citations / QUOTATIONS

• Data privacy — 25+ law review citations

  • Section 230 features assigned in 5+ syllabi (NYU to UNC)

  • Cited in FCC filing, FTC letter and Freedom House paper (funded by Google…)

• Generative AI — 13+ law review citations*

• Real-time media critic – 25+ citations

  • Including PEW Research, law journals and a seminary study

• Government reform — 20+ (mostly) book citations

  • Including Campaign Legal Center, Oxford Academic, NYU School of Law, etc.

• “War on drugs,” race, opioids — 25+ journal & book citations

  • Columbia Law School to Oxford University Press

• Mass shootings, 2nd Amendment — 8+ law reviews, think tanks

  • Citations range from the National Shooting Sports Foundation to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence

• Jan. 6, 2021 attack on US Capitol — 15+ interviews, profiles, quotes

  • “‘They breached the Capitol’: Journalists in D.C. show the world what’s happening,” Kristen Hare, Poynter Institute (Jan. 6, 2021)

References / EXAMPLES

• 20+ Merriam-Webster quotations'

  • Citations include entries for cosponsor, senatorial, partisan & the Senate

• 20+ Wikipedia citations

  • Including entries for US Senate “AI Insight forums,” “gun violence“ & “War on drugs”

Education

Johns Hopkins University — MA, Government & Public Policy (2011)

• Cum laude

• Thesis: “The Trading Game: Why ‘Compromise’ shouldn’t be a Dirty Word in Washington”

• Alumni Advisory Board, JHU Center for Advanced Governmental Studies (2014—)

Covenant College — BA, Philosophy (2006)

• Resident Assistant (RA) as Sophomore; led Bible studies, prayer sessions to hall of 15+

• English tutor, Alton Park Middle School (volunteer)

• Senior Integration Paper: Pedro Almodovar’s representation of male heterosexuals

Awards & extras

• Read 47+ presidential biographies

  • Studied Congress through the White House (and I hate biographies)

• Regional Reporters Association; Board member (2009 — )

• Johns Hopkins University Alumni Advisory Board (June 2014 — )

• Breaking News Award; Chesapeake AP Broadcasters Association (2014)

• Outstanding News Series Award; “Federal Spending and the DC Area” (2013; Chesapeake AP Broadcasters Association)

• Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellowship (2009-10)

• Journalism Education Association National Student Media Contests; Judge, broadcast news category (2020)

• Society of Professional Journalists; Judge, dateline awards (2020)

• Radio/Television Correspondents Association; Judge Joan S. Barone Award (2010 & 2014)

• Journalism Mentorship; John McCandlish Phillips, fmr. New York Times staff writer (1955-1973)

  Subscribe now

Media Consultant

• Generative artificial intelligence:

  • AI ethics adviser to dozens of award-winning editors, journalists & startup founders

  • Train veteran journalists to court AI chatbots w/ GEO, Generative Engine Optimization

  • Counsel dozens of veteran journalists/editors on ever-evolving new media landscape

  • Train dozens of NPR news directors, hosts & station managers on tech’s role in politics

  • AI Show n’ Tell:

    • Founded & lead monthly AI meetup for independent journalists in Washington

    • Substack startup coach: Alumni of CBS to recently laid off Washington Post journos

• Mentor:

  • Advised dozens of public radio reporters through on-air delivery & on-screen presence

  • 200+ broadcast journalists trained:

    • Alaska Public Media, CBS, CNN, Fox News, NBC, Marketplace, WAMU 88.5 News, WBEZ (Chicago), WSKG (Binghamton, NY), WGBH (Boston), WUSA-TV (DC), etc.

• Media survivalist:

  • Help dozens of journalists rebrand themselves as independent contractors

  • Mastered sites like Substack, Patreon, etc.

  • Podcast expert: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, Audible, etc.

• Technophile:

  • Study & regularly test state-of-the-art wireless mics, next-gen cameras, LED, etc.

  • Transform at-home offices into professional studios with inviting lighting, pristine sound & eye-catching, yet uncluttered, backdrops

• Details matter:

  • Expert with a steamer; decent with a makeup kit

Notable Panels & Lectures

• Aspen Ideas Festival; Moderator (2019)

  • “CBD: Hype or Hope?” — first cannabis panel in Aspen Ideas Festival history

  • Only sold-out panel

• Public Media Journalists Association; Speaker (NPR HQ; 2024)

  • “Make Politics Boring (Again): Outfoxing AI, deepfakes & nationalization of local politics”

  • Dozens of local public media news directors, editors, producers & reporters

• Guest lectures: Cornell, Northwestern, Georgetown, NYU, George Mason, Loyola, etc.

• TheCapitol.net; Lecturer

  • Government certificate program; 1-3 lectures annually (2017 – )

• Public Radio News Directors Inc; Panelist (2014 & 2012)

  • Political reporting panel w/ NPR hosts Ailsa Chang & Todd Zwillich (2014)

  • Media training webinar (2012)

Previous

The News Station — TNS (Aug. 2020 – Dec. 2021, RIP)

Managing editor

• Flipped unread local cannabis PR blog into culture-focused, national alt-weekly

• Quoted by 100+ outlets; VICE, Politico, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Newsmax, USA Today, etc.

• Redesigned site (SEO, Google News, etc.); wrote original styleguide; Twitter growth 5,300%+

• Managed, coordinated & brainstormed with 12+ editors spread across eight diverse verticals

• Built freelancer network of 260+ contributors in 14 mo., including 30 published book authors

• Contributors included Ben Jacobs, Emma Loop, Chris Moody, Megan Carpentier, etc.

• 900+ news pieces, exclusive features, original fiction, songs, poetry (including musicians), diverse op-eds, videos, visual essays & comics

• Posted 500+ works & weekly newsletter

• Devised & commissioned: 50 at 50 – essays from 50 prisoners impacted by war on drugs

• 20+ collaborations, including The Pitch, Prisoner Journalism Project, National Native News, Inewsource, Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, Dig Boston, etc.

Chief Correspondent

• Wrote 130+ stories; news, exclusives & in-depth features; most read contributor on site

• Profiles: hemp farmer & Rep. Denver Riggleman; System of a Down’s Shavo turned weed CEO; Calif. AG Rob Bonta; Rep. Madeleine Dean & her post-recovery son, etc.

Other

Capitol News Connection with PRI; Correspondent (2006-10)

• Covered Congress for dozens of local NPR member stations

• Coordinated with news directors & local reporters nationwide; blog most read on site

Metro, Philadelphia Edition; music reporter (2005)

• Interviewed: Sufjan Stevens, System of Down, Citizen Cope, Chocolate Genius, Chris Botti, etc.

Bills and Brews; host & founder (2014 – )

• Raised 36k on Kickstarter

• Executive Producer Kyle Crosby, Drunk History (Comedy Central)

Random

*Grace Community Bible Church (Roselle, Ill.); youth pastor intern (2004)

• Mentored teens; taught theology to adults; delivered sermons to students & full congregation

**Earth Friendly Landscaping (Mainline, Philly); co-founder, head of marketing, etc. (2005)

• Ran boutique landscape firm; trained and led crews comprised of my college buds

***Part-time Nanny (Mainline, Pa); 3-yr-old sis, 5-yr–old bro

• Made dinner, read, played, etc. (something’s got to pay for bad habit of journalism…)

****Office of US Senator Lamar Alexander (Chattanooga, Tenn.); intern (Spring 2006)

• Established reporter but took advantage of senior year to see inside US Senator’s local office

  Download: Searchable PDF of Matt Laslo’s CV

  

  Cv Laslo Gray (may 2026)

  1.45MB ∙ PDF file

  Download

  Download

Academia

50+ op-eds authored by “Prof” Laslo (sample below…)

• “It’s embarrassing being a part of the press corps these days,” Lights, Cameras, Memes! (2023, Laslo’s Substack for op-eds & things)

  • cc: “My First Byline,” Your First Byline (2025, Ryan Teague Beckwith’s Substack)

• “How Obama gave us Donald Trump,” Guardian (2016)

• “Commentary: Is this database a bigger threat than Facebook?” Reuters (2018)

• “The Ghost of Privacy Past Haunts the Senate’s AI Future,” WIRED (2023)

• “Worst job in Washington — being AOC in our digital death threat era,” SALT Weekly (Winter 2025, Nashville print-only alt-quarterly)

• “MTG, margaritas, ‘merica — inside a mythical Trump boat parade,” SALT Weekly (Winter 2025)

• “Right-wing lawmakers are moonlighting as media stars,” Columbia Journalism Review (2024)

• “Inside Ask a Pol — media startup striving for people-powered press corps,” SALT Weekly (2024)

• “The Political Theater Behind the Bipartisan Data Privacy Push,” WIRED (2023)

• “Joe Biden’s Big AI Plan Sounds Scary—but Lacks Bite,” WIRED (2023)

• “Trump’s Fulton County indictment is the most sweeping and dangerous one yet,” Lights, Cameras, Memes! (2023)

• “The US Congress Has Trust Issues. Generative AI Is Making It Worse,” WIRED (2023)

• “Congress Wants to Take Back Power Over Crypto,” WIRED (2023)

• “The US Senate Wants to Rein In AI. Good Luck With That,” WIRED (2023)

• “The Quiet Insurrection the January 6 Committee Missed,” WIRED (2022)

• “Euroviews. The New York Times presidential endorsement shows why newspapers must end the practice,” Euronews/ NBC Think (2020)

• “Coronavirus is revealing why local news is so important. It’s also killing it,” NBC Think (2020)

• “COVID-19 conspiracies get embraced by Trump and right-wing media because reality is painful,” NBC Think (2020)

• “Fox News is key to the 2020 election, whether liberals like it or not. Denying it a debate only hurts Democrats,” NBC Think (2019)

• “The fake Trump shooting video is the result of decades of media demonization by conservatives,” NBC Think (2019)

• “Alex Jones won’t rethink his antics because of a Twitter timeout. Jack Dorsey can’t be that naive,” NBC Think (2018)

• “Sinclair’s ‘fake news’ script put its viewers’ trust in their local news at risk,” NBC Think (2018)

• “Commentary: The right way to run Kavanaugh’s SCOTUS hearing,” Reuters (2018)

• “Trump’s disinterest in Jamal Khashoggi’s murder is a betrayal of the promises of the First Amendment,” NBC Think (2018)

• “Commentary: Here’s one way to help Facebook protect data,” Reuters (2018)

• “The latest front in fake news is streaming on Netflix,” NBC Think (2018)

• “Can Congress Fund a Real Fight Against Opioids?” Rolling Stone

  • Republished: Rep. Donald Norcross’ official Congressional website (2018)

• “The problem with ‘fake news’ comes from trying to prove you’re not it,”NBC Think (2017)

• “A conspiracy-laden blog has no place in the White House press corps,” Guardian (2017)

• “How Congress Could Fix Redistricting -- Without Supreme Court,” Matt Laslo, Ozy (RIP)

  • Republished: Rep. Ro Khanna’s official Congressional site (2017)

  • “What’s Happening in Democracy Today: November Roundup,” Myeisha Boyd, FairVote.org (2017; Fair Vote)

    • “Matt Laslo writes about the Supreme Court considering the Wisconsin case and understanding the problem of gerrymandering, highlights the Fair Representation Act and ranked choice voting”

• “To protect America, skilled policy experts must fill the Trump administration,” Guardian (2016)

• “Obama blamed media for the election outcome. That’s counterproductive,” Guardian (2016)

• “Has Bernie Sanders changed American politics? Reviewing a ‘political revolution’ — Jeffrey W Rubin, Raúl M Grijalva, Keli Goff, Kim Phillips-Fein, Matt Laslo, Barrett Holmes Pitner, Barbara Lee and Maria Cardona,” Guardian (2016)

• “Why the Trump-Clinton matchup is a boon to libertarians,” Guardian (2016)

• “I cheered as protesters clashed with Trump supporters. Then I felt shame,” Guardian (2016)

• “Obama’s post-presidency focus on redistricting is an establishment move,” Guardian (2016)

• “Analyzing the midterms,” Center on Politics & Foreign Relations (2010, George Mason)

• “Pot healed my post-surgery pain. Why’s it banned from pain relief research?” Guardian (2016)

• “Congress Wrestles with How to Help States Combat Heroin Epidemic,” Virginia Public Radio

  • Republished: fmr. Vice Presidential candidate, Sen. Tim Kaine’s official Senate site (2015)

• “Bera Angers Organized Labor Over Fast-Track Trade Vote,” Capital Public Radio

  • Republished: Rep. Henry Cuellar’s official Congressional site (2015)

• “Federal Recognition for VA’s Indian Tribes,” WVTF — Virginia’s Public Radio (2013)

  • Republished by Tulalip Syəcəb News (“syəcəb” means gossip in Lushootseed)

• “Like It or Not, You’re Being Tracked,” Campaigns and Elections Magazine (2011)

  • “Campaigns Tracking Voters Online,” C-SPAN (Dec. 21, 2011, Washington Journal)

Generative AI features — 13+ law review citations

• “Governance in the Absence of Government,” Tracy Hresko Pearl, Social Science Research Network (2025, University of Oklahoma College of Law)

• “Fairness & Privacy in an Age of Generative AI,” Alice Xiang, Columbia Science & Technology Law Review (2024, Columbia University Libraries & Columbia Law School)

• “A Copious Void: Rhetoric as Artificial Intelligence 1.0,” Atilla Hallsb, Rhetoric Society Quarterly (2024, Routledge Taylor & Francis Group)

• “Yelling “Fire” in the Financial Theater: Bank Runs in the Social Media Age and the Threat to Financial Stability,” Eric J. Spitler, North Carolina Banking Institute (2024, UNC School of Law)

• “Misinformed Depositors,” Raj Ashar, University of Miami Business Law Review (2024, University of Miami School of Law Institutional Repository)

• “Democracy and Trust: The Troubling Role of Education in Misinformation Belief,” Edward Lee & Andrew Moshirnia, Michigan State Law Review, (2023, Elsevier Inc.)

• “Letter to OpenAI founder Sam Altman,” from Sen. Elizabeth Warren & Rep. Lori Trahan (2024)

  • Cites: “Inside the Senate’s Private AI Meeting with Tech’s Billionaire Elites,” WIRED (2023)

• “Large Language Model Prediction Capabilities: Evidence from a Real-World Forecasting Tournament,” Philipp Schoenegger & Peter Park, arXiv.org (2023, London School of Economics, MIT)

• “What they’re saying about the White House’s executive order on AI,” Drew Pearson, AI in Healthcare (2023, Innovate Healthcare)

• “What Trump Knew and ‘Risky Business’ at 40 — Plus: History Has Its Eyes on Jack Smith,” Jim Swift, The Bulwark (August 4, 2023)

• “Face the Facts, or Is the Face a Fact?: Biometric Privacy in Publicly Available Data,” Daniel Levin, Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal (2022, Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History)

• “Could Trade Agreements Help Address the Wicked Problem of Cross-Border Disinformation?” Susan Ariel Aaronson, Centre for International Governance Innovation (2021, CIGI)

• “Deplatforming Misogyny: Report on Platform Liability for Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence,” Cynthia Khoo, LEAF’s Technology-Facilitated Violence — TFV — Project (2021, Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund)

Real-time media critic — 25+ citations

• “Dis-Info Ops and Strategies of Resistance from Another Age of Inflationary Media,” David Castillo & Bradley Nelson, Anti-Disinformation Pedagogy: Tackling the Power of Manipulative Media (Spring 2024; Hispanic Issues On Line Vol. 32, ed.)

• “Right Wing Angered by Calderón’s Debate Questions,” Richard Prince, Journal-isms (2023, National Association of Black Journalists)

• “Combating Fake News with ‘Reasonable Standards,’” Tawanna D. Lee, UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal (2021, UC Law SF Scholarship Repository)

• “Compelling Code: A First Amendment Argument Against Requiring Political Neutrality in Online Content Moderation,” Lily A. Coad, Cornell Law Review (2021, Cornell Law School)

• “Policing the Digital Public Square: The Duty of NonManipulation as an Alternative to Free Speech Restrictions on Social Media,” Ben Kabe, Connecticut Public Interest Law Journal (2021, University of Connecticut School of Law; printed Western Newspaper Publishing Co)

• “Is Truth Hanging on by a Thread?” Thomas Ryan, University of Illinois Chicago Law Review (2021, University of Illinois Chicago)

• “The Virus vs. Journalism,” David Leonhardt, New York Times (2020, Opinion)

• “Targeted Disinformation Warfare: How and Why Foreign Efforts are Effective, and Recommendations for Impactful Government Action,” Ethan Guge, Iowa State Digital Repository (2020, Iowa State University)

• “Web of Lies: Hate Speech, Pseudonyms, the Internet, Impersonator Trolls, and Fake Jews in the Era of Fake News,” Yitzchak Besser, Ohio State Technology Law Journal or OSTLJ (2021, Ohio State University Moritz College of Law)

• “Corporations Under the Bill of Attainder Clause,” Harrison A. Newman, Duke Law Journal (2020, Duke University School of Law)

• Red November: Will the Country Vote Red for Trump or Red for Socialism? Joel B. Pollak (2020, Hachette Nashville)

• “Lapdogs, Attack Dogs, or Watchdogs? News Media’s Role in State Government and Politics,” Jessica Opoien, JScholarship (2020, Johns Hopkins University Advanced Academic Programs)

  • “...Matt Laslo, whose feedback was integral in refining and improving my thesis from draft to finished product.”

• “COVID-19 Has Ravaged American Newsrooms – Here’s Why that Matters,” Damian Radcliffe, The Conversation US (2020; Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University)

  • Quotation: “The business model itself was critically wounded by the internet and then social media even before news outlets were affected by the coronavirus,” notes the journalist Matt Laslo. “The truth is that now, journalism is beyond saving by capitalism alone.”

  • Harvard’s Nieman Lab & Yahoo! (2020, republished under Creative Commons license)

• “The Local News Paradox,” Rosa Elías Najri, Medium (2020, Liberty University)

• “Access Now Comments: In the Matter of Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934,” Eric Null, Isedua Oribhabor & Jennifer Brody, letter to Federal Communications Commission (Sept. 2, 2020)

• Legislative Hardball: The House Freedom Caucus and the Power of Threat-Making in Congress, Matthew Green (2019, Cambridge University Press)

• “Qatar’s Use of Hacking and Mass Media To Assassinate Characters of Rivals and to Shut Down Criticism: Implications for Reputational Management,” Irina Tsukerman, Character Assassination and Reputational Politics Conference (2019, George Mason University)

• “Post-truth Politics: Disinformation Through Alternative Information Streams,” Jillian Donovan, JScholarship (2019, Johns Hopkins University Advanced Academic Programs)

• “US - #WeeklyAddress: February 11 - February 17: BBC cameraman attacked at Trump rally in El Paso, Texas,” RSF.org (2019, Reporters Without Borders)

  • “This was first time any officer put their hands on me or my coworkers in front of me, so it was really disheartening,” Matt Laslo, who has been covering Capitol Hill for 12 years, told Roll Call (in 2019).

• “The Power of Local Government: A case study of Rockbridge County’s high school consolidation,” Robert Cook (2019, Johns Hopkins University)

• “Cruel Limbo: DACA’s Shortsightedness Leads to Dim Long View,” John Schmid, Towson University Journal of International Affairs (2017, Towson University)

• “‘The Truth Is Always Relevant’: Race and Economics in Contemporary African American Preaching,” Frank A. Thomas, Nettie Sweeney & Hugh Th. Miller; Homiletic Journal Vol 41, No 1 Special Issue (2016, Christian Theological Seminary)

• “Georgia GOP lawmakers line up behind Donald Trump after first meeting,” Tamar Hallerman, Atlanta Journal-Constitution (July 7, 2016)

• “Daily Media Links 4/6: Sanders and Cruz won Wisconsin. That’s unlikely to change the race overall, Wisconsin’s Local Media Aren’t As Trump-Obsessed As National Outlets,” Brian Walsh, www.ifs.org (2016, Institute for Free Speech)

• “The Politics of Worldbuilding Post-Apocalyptic Dystopia,” Laura French Moran, University of Western Australia (2016, MA in Philosophy creative writing thesis)

• “Today’s Washington Press Corps, More Digitized, Specialized,” Amy Mitchell, Jesse Holcomb & Rachel Weisel, PewResearch.org (2015, Pew Research Center)

  • as Regional Reporter Association board member, coordinated Pew interviews

Section 230 (data privacy) — 25+ law review citations

• “Social Media’s Impact on the Adolescent Mental Health Crisis and the Current Legal Landscape to Protect Adolescents Online,” Katharine Sexton, Journal of Law, Technology & Policy (2025, University of Illinois College of Law)

• “Censorship as a Cure for the Youth Mental Health Crisis in the United States: Utah’s Social Media Ban for Minors,” William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice (2025, William & Mary Law School Scholarship Repository)

• “The Kids Are Not Alright: A Look into the Absence of Laws Protecting Children in Social Media,” Libby Morehouse, Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Review (2024, Loyola Marymount University & Loyola Law School)

• “Data Surveillance and Abortion After Dobbs,” Leila Nasrolahi, Berkeley Technology Law Journal (2023, UC Berkeley School of Law)

• “For My Eyes Only: How to Protect Digital Diaries of Reproductive Data in a World Without Roe,” Carolyn Zaccaro, Boston College Intellectual Property & Technology Forum (2023, Boston College Law)

• “Section 230: A Retrospective,” Christopher Cox, The Center for Growth and Opportunity (2022, Utah State University)

• “Moderated Content,” Evelyn Douek, Stanford Law School podcast (2022, Simplecast)

• “In Antitrust We Trust?: Big Tech Is Not the Problem—It’s Weak Data Privacy Protections,” Olivia T. Creser, Federal Communications Law Journal (2021, Federal Communications Bar Association & George Washington University Law School)

• “Mad about the First Amendment, Our Beacon for Liberty, Equality and Democracy,” Nicholas Allard, BrooklynWorks (2021, Brooklyn Law School)

• “Overview of Section 230: What It Is, Why It Was Created, and What It Has Achieved,” Ashley Johnson & Daniel Castro; www.ITIF.org (2021, Information Technology & Innovation Foundation)

• “How Content Moderation May Expose Social Media Companies to Greater Defamation Liability,” Tanner Bone, Washington University Law Review (2021, Washington University School of Law)

• “Deplatformed: Social Network Censorship, The First Amendment, and the Argument to Amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act,” John A. LoNigro, Touro Law Review (2021, Touro Law Center)

• “Freedom of Thought in the United States: The First Amendment, Marketplaces of Ideas, and the Internet, John G. Francis & Leslie Francis, Utah Law Digital Commons (2021, SJ Quinney College of Law, University of Utah)

• “Changing Counterspeech,” G.S. Hans, Cleveland State Law Review (2021, CSU College of Law Library)

• “The internet of children: Protecting children’s privacy in a hyper-connected world,” Eldar Haber, University of Illinois Law Review (2020, University of Illinois College of Law)

• “Soft Law in U.S. ICT Sectors: Four Case Studies,” Adam Thierer, Jurimetrics (2020, ASU’s Sandra Day O’Conner College of Law)

• “Enjoining Non-Liable Platforms,” Maayan Perel, Harvard Journal of Law & Technology (2020, Harvard Law School)

• “The Internet as a Speech Machine and Other Myths Confounding Section 230 Reform,” Danielle Keats Citron & Mary Anne Franks, University of Chicago Legal Forum (2020, Chicago Unbound)

• “Customer Transparency Can Dampen the Growing Human Trafficking Problem,” Colin Martell, Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law (2020, Caruso School of Law at Pepperdine)

• “Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act: Why California Courts Interpreted It Correctly and What That Says About How We Should Change It,” E. Alex Murcia, Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review (2020, Loyola Marymount University & Loyola Law School)

• “Constraining the Cybermob: Using a Doxing Notice and Takedown Regime to Optimize the Social Security Utility of Online Shaming,” Erik Money, Journal of Law and Technology at Texas (2020, University of Texas School of Law)

• “Section 230: The Valyrian Steel for Website Operators, and Why a Tax Credit is the Best Solution to a Safer Internet,” Noah Hale, Pace Law Review (2020, Elisabeth Haub School of Law, Pace University)

• “The Mice that Roar: What Small Countries Can Teach Great Powers About National Cyber-Defense,” Melissa Kate Griffith, www.escholarship.org (2020, University of California, Berkeley)

• “Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost: The Pathway towards American Data Privacy Law,” Aaron Shubet, Hofstra Law Review (2020, School of Law at Hofstra University)

• “United States: Freedom on the Net 2019 Country Report (& great booklet summary), Adrian Shahbaz and Allie Funk, Freedom on the Net* (2019, Freedom House)

  • *Fine Print: “This report was made possible by the generous support of the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL), the New York Community Trust, Google, Internet Society, and Verizon Media.”

Section 230 features assigned in 5+ syllabi

• NYU, UNC (Chapel Hill), DePaul, GW & Johns Hopkins University

• Showcased in UT Austin School of Law’s academic guide

Government reform coverage — 20+ (mostly) book citations

• Fools on the Hill: The Hooligans, Saboteurs, Conspiracy Theorists, and Dunces Who Burned Down the House, Dana Milbank (2024, Little, Brown and Company)

• Global Digital Data Governance: Polycentric perspectives, ed. Carolina Aguerre, Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn & Jan Aart Scholte (2024, Routledge Taylor & Francis Group)

• “The Congressional Ethics Enforcement Gap A Comparative Analysis of Ethics Enforcement in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives,” Roger G. Wieand, CampaignLegal.org (2024, Campaign Legal Center)

• Keeping the Republic, Brief Tenth Edition, Christine Barbour & Gerald C. Wright (2023, SAGE)

• “An Analysis of the Biden Impeachment Inquiry,” Joshua Matz, Norm Eisen, Claudine Schneider & Fern Smith, Just Security (2023, Reiss Center on Law and Security, NYU School of Law)

• “​​GoodRx Concurring Statement of Commissioner Christine Wilson,” then-FTC Commissioner Christine S. Wilson’s letter announcing Federal Trade Commission settled with GoodRX (Feb. 1, 2023)

• Social Media, Freedom of Speech, and the Future of our Democracy, Lee C. Bollinger & Geoffrey R. Stone (2022, Oxford Academic)

• Political Problems and Personalities in Contemporary Maryland, Theodore F. Sheckels & Carl T. Hyden (2022, Bloomsbury Publishing)

• The Long Red Thread: How Democratic Dominance Gave Way to Republican Advantage in US House Elections, Kyle Kondik (2021, Ohio University Press)

• The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health--and How We Must Adapt, Sinan Aral (2020, Crown)

• Corporate Citizen: New Perspectives on the Globalized Rule of Law, Oonagh E. Fitzgerald, ed. (2020, McGill-Queen’s University Press)

• Internet Law (Reference Shelf), H.W. Wilson Co. (2020, Grey House Publishing)

• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: A Biography, Laurie Collier Hallstrom (2020, Bloomsbury)

• “Behavioral Health Politics in Texas: Lessons from Austin and the 86th Legislature,” Alexander Gajewski, University of Texas at Austin Repositories (2020, Lyndon Johnson School of Public Affairs)

• “Unitary Executive Theory: Is it Constitutional?” Sayd Hussain & Robert Marriaga, Undergraduate Law Journal (2019, Florida Atlantic University Libraries)

• “Effect of the Two-party System on Voter Turnout in the United States of America,” Andrey Beregovskiy (2019, Johns Hopkins University)

• 2018 International Existing Building Code Handbook, Chris Kimball, (2019, McGraw Hill)

• Our Best Defense: Shelling the Naval Base, Virginia, Rick Van Noy (2020, University of Georgia Press)

• The King’s New Body, Anne Norton, Theory & Event (2017, JHU Press; Project MUSE)

• Virginia Politics & Government in a New Century: The Price of Power, Jeff Thomas (2016, Arcadia Publishing)

• “Beyond Polarization: Fragmentation, cyberBalkanization and the Politics of Faction,” Andrew Schmidt (2016, Johns Hopkins University)

“Sexism in Politics 2016: What can we learn so far from media portrayals of Hillary Clinton and Latin American female leaders?” Raiesa Frazer, www.COFA.org (2016, Council on Hemispheric Affairs)

Mass shootings, 2nd Amendment — 8+ review, think tank citations

• “When Thoughts and Prayers are Not Enough: Why Age-Based Restrictions on Purchasing Firearms Pass Constitutional Muster,” Madeline P. Fuller, American University Law Review (2021, American University Washington College of Law)

• “Any Safe Harbor in a Storm: Sesta-Fosta and Future of § 230 of the Communications Decency Act,” Charles Matula, Duke Law and Technology Review (2020, Duke University School of Law)

• “Gun Safety Under Threat: How Extremist Judges are undermining Gun Laws,” Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence (2020, GiffordsLawCenter.org)

• “Another Shot at Rectifying the District of Columbia v. Heller Ambiguities: The Constitutional Right to Arms, the Nonconstitutional Right to Arms, and the Commerce Clause,” Noah Gaarder-Feingold, San Diego Law Review (2019, University of San Diego School of Law)

• “Misinformation Contagion: A view through an epidemiological lens,” Scott C. Fenton, Calhoun: The NPS Institutional Archive DSpace Repository (2019, Naval Postgraduate School)

• “Guns and Violence Against Women: America’s Uniquely Lethal Intimate Partner Violence Problem,” Everytown Research & Policy (2019, Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund)

• “Rolling Stone Gathers No Credibility,” National Shooting Sports Foundation (2017, NSSF — “The Firearm Industry Trade Association”)

“Next Stage of Police Accountability: Launching Police Body-Worn Camera Program in Washington,” Marielle A. Moore, Seattle Journal for Social Justice(2016, Seattle School of Law)

“War on drugs,” race, opioids — 25+ law review & book citations

• “Bipartisan Solutions to Federal Cannabis Policy Challenges: 2025 National Cannabis Policy Summit,” Brooke Sanders, www.ssdp.org (2025, Students for Sensible Drug Policy)

• A Potent Moment: Building Social Equity into Cannabis Legalization, Jeffrey Moyer, Lexington Books (2023, Bloomsbury Publishing)

• “The Legalization of Cannabis and the Question of Reparations,” Kojo Koram, Journal of International Economic Law (2022, Oxford University Press)

• “Criminalized Students, Reparations, and the Limits of Prospective Reform,” Amber Baylor, Juvenile Law & Law Enforcement and Corrections Commons (2022, Columbia Law School)

• “The Regulatabilization of Cannabis,” Donald J. Kochan, Fordham Urban Law Journal Fordham Urban Law Journal (2022, Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History)

• “Race, Class, and Socioeconomic and Sentencing Laws in Opioid Cases,” Phaedra Denise Jackson, Walden University ScholarWorks (2021, Walden University)

• “Health Equity, Federalism, and Cannabis Policy,” Nicole Huberfeld, Boston University Law Review, (2021, Boston University School of Law)

• WE Matter! Intersectional Anti-Racist Feminist Interventions with Black Girls and Women, Wendi S. Williams (2021, Routledge)

  • Chapter cited in: “Black Women: Then and Now,” Diane M. Adams & Elana H. Lott

• “Retroactive Legality: Marijuana Convictions and Restorative Justice in an Era of Criminal Justice Reform,” Deborah M. Ahrens, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (2020, Northwestern’s Pritzker School of Law)

• “Criminal Justice Reform in the Fentanyl Era: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back,” Michael Collins & Sheila P. Vakharia, Prison Policy Initiative (2020, Drug Policy Alliance)

• “Pot, the First Amendment, and Taxes: The IRS’s Denial of 501(C)(6) Tax-Exempt Status to Marijuana Advocacy,” Luke Scheuer, Widener Law Review (2020, Delaware Law School)

• “Black Lives Matter at five: limits and possibilities,” Adam Szetela, Ethnic and Racial Studies Review (2019, University of Surrey).

• Migrating for Medical Marijuana: Pioneers in a New Frontier of Treatment, Tracy Ferrell (2019, McFarland)

• “Cory Booker on Drug Decriminalization,” www.iowaharmreductioncoalition.org (2019, Iowa Harm Reduction Coalition)

• “​​The STATES Act: A Response to the Rescission of the Cole Memo,” Norman M. Vigil, Review of Banking & Financial Law (2019, Boston University School of Law)

• “Matt Laslo: Marijuana-loving former politicians are lining up to profit off the end of their war on drugs,” Marshall Project links to Laslo op-ed (2019)

  • “From John Boehner to Joe Crowley, the same men who could’ve helped end the prohibition on cannabis now aim to make money off it”

• “Taxing Cannabis,” Carl Davis, Misha E. Hill & Richard Phillips; Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy (2019, ITEP)

• Presidents and Mass Incarceration: Choices at the Top, Repercussions at the Bottom, Linda K. Mancillas (2018, Bloomsbury Publishing)

• “New Mexico Tribal Cannabis: Policy, Politics, & Guidance for Government-to-Government Cooperation in State-Tribal Cannabis Compacting,” Matthew Ramírez, Natural Resources Journal (2018, University of New Mexico)

• “Exploring Racism Trauma and Hope Narratives in the 2015 Baltimore City Uprising,” Jessica Haas, The Emerging Professionals and Scholars Conference (2018, Nova Southeastern University)

• “Color-Blind Stancetaking in Racialized Discourse,” Abigail Christine & Tobias-Lauerman, TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange (2017, University of Tennessee)

• “Medical Marijuana: Does cannabis offer health benefits?” Barbara Mantel, CQ Researcher (2017, CQ Press)

• “Chelsea’s in Rolling Stone,” The Greener Side (2017, Eugene, Ore.)

• Introduction to the Practice of African American Preaching, Frank A. Thomas (2016, Abingdon Press)

• Boy @ The Window: A Memoir, Donald Earl Collins (2014, self-published)

• “​News 2012-2013,” National Center on Domestic and Sexual Violence (2012-13)

  • “Without Federal Funding, Shelter for Victims of Domestic Violence Struggles,” Matt Laslo, WAMU 88.5 (October 7, 2013)

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Jan. 6, 2021 attack on US Capitol — 15+ interviews, profiles, quotes

• “‘How are we going to defend ourselves?’ Inside the Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection,” Sarah D. Wire, Los Angeles Times (2024)

• “On Edge: What the US election could mean for journalists and global press freedom,” Katherine Jacobsen, Committee to Protect Journalists (2024, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Press Freedom Center)

• Losing is Democratic: How to Talk to Kids About January 6th, Kitty Felde, Chesapeake Press (2024)

  • “...losing is a part of the DNA of any democracy — or it should be. “Losing is Democratic” by Kitty Felde is a fun, adventure-filled lesson for the next generation about the pitfalls of pride and heroism of humility,” reads Matt Laslo’s review, published alongside Sen. Adam Schiff & Rep. Adam Kinzinger’s endorsements

• “Indictment of a President,” The Debrief, Scripps News (Aug. 4, 2023)

• “The Quiet Insurrection the January 6 Committee Missed,” Matt Laslo, WIRED (Oct. 2022)

• “Social Media and the Weaponization of Free Speech,” Dr. Mary Anne Franks, House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (2022, Statement for the Record)

• “Rep. Bennie Thompson’s Mississippi Colleagues Have No Comment on his Jan. 6 Hearings,” Bobby Harrison, Mississippi Today & Clarke County Tribune (2022)

• “So, So Angry’: Reporters Who Survived the Capitol Riot Are Still Struggling,” Cameron Joseph, VICE News (2021, VICE Media)

• “It Was Terrifying.” Reporter Describes The Attack On The Capitol,” Bob Beck, Wyoming Public Radio (2021, Wyoming Public Media)

• “25 Terrifying Tweets That Members Of Congress And Journalists Actually Had To Send During Trump’s Capitol Riot,” Stephen LaConte, Buzzfeed (Jan. 7, 2021)

• “Congress certifies Biden as next US president – as it happened,” Tom McCarthy, Vivian Ho & Joan E Greve, The Guardian (Jan. 6, 2021)

• “Chaos at Capitol as Trump Supporters Battle Police, Buildings Evacuate Chamber Recess,” Rosa Cartagena, Washingtonian (Jan. 6, 2021)

• “Trump Supporters Storm Capitol in Washington After President Incites Riot, One Person Dies,” Jay Barmann, SFist (Jan. 6, 2021)

• “Trump supporters storm Capitol, breach building to protest election results,” Geoff Herbert, The Post Standard (Jan. 6, 2021, via Syracuse.com)

• “‘They breached the Capitol’: Journalists in D.C. show the world what’s happening,” Kristen Hare, Poynter Institute (Jan. 6, 2021)

• “Lawmakers, Hill staffers, and reporters recount the harrowing experience as a violent pro-Trump mob broke into the Capitol to protest the electoral-vote count,” Business Insider (Jan. 6, 2021)

Reference

Magazine feature writing used in 20+ Merriam-Webster examples:

academia, academic, accurately, attune, cosponsor, clampdown , cramp, daft, drought, forensic, grandkid, in due time, partisan, pore over, private , proverbial, put an end to (something), senatorial, the Senate, tenet, triple, etc.

• clampdown — Merriam-Webster (2025)

• partisan — Merriam-Webster (2024)

• private — Merriam-Webster (2023)

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Wikipedia — 20+ citations

• A.I. Insight forums

  • “Inside the Senate’s Private AI Meeting With Tech’s Billionaire Elites,” Laslo, WIRED (Sept. 2023)

• Problem Solvers Caucus

  • “U.S. House Democrats say squabbles are healthy sign as they move past 100 days,” WHYY, Philadelphia NPR (April 2019)

• Gun violence

  • “The CDC could totally study gun violence – It just needs money,” WIRED (Aug. 2019)

• DHS media monitoring services

  • “Commentary: A bigger data threat than Facebook?” Reuters (April 2018)

• Cannabis legislation proposals in the United States

  • “​​Medical Marijuana: How Six Senators Are Leading the Fight,” Rolling Stone (June 2017)

• STATES Act

  • “Elizabeth Warren: Jeff Sessions Acted as “Catalyst” for Weed Legalization,” Rolling Stone (Aug. 2018)

• “War on drugs”

  • “Pot Showdown: How Congress Is Uniting to Stop Jeff Sessions’ War on Drugs,” Rolling Stone (2018)

• Patricia Taft — Educator; granddaughter, US Senator Robert A. Taft; great-granddaughter President William Howard Taft

  • “Patricia Taft is the Black great-granddaughter of a U.S. president — and she’s taking on Washington,” Raw Story (April 2023)

• Comstock Act of 1873 — anti-vice law aimed at new medium of their day: Mail

  • “The Fight Over Section 230—and the Internet as We Know It,” WIRED (Aug. 2019)

• Russian interference in the 2020 United States elections

  • “Russia Is Going To Up Its Game For The 2020 Elections,” WIRED (July 2019)

• David Grusch UFO whistleblower claims

  • “UFO Whistleblower, Meet a Conspiracy-Loving Congress,” WIRED (June 2023)

• Liz Cheney — fmr. Wyoming Congresswoman; Vice Chair Select Jan. 6, 2021 Committee

  • “Cheney Is A Strong Supporter Of Opioid Legislation While Others Aren’t So Sure,” Wyoming Public Media (June 2018)

• Cory Gardner — then-Colorado’s junior US Senator

  • “How a Republican Senator Became the Biggest Cannabis Power Broker in Congress,” Playboy (Spring 2020 issue — RIP, last print edition ever)

• Jim Himes — Ranking Member, US House Intelligence Committee (HPSCI)

  • “EXCLUSIVE: Top Dem on House Intel “skeptical” of UAP whistleblower,” Ask a Pol (June 2023)

• 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries

  • “Fox News is key to the 2020 election, whether liberals like it or not. Denying it a debate only hurts Democrats,” NBC Think (March 2019)

• Shelley Moore Capito — West Virginia’s senior US Senator

  • “Steve King: I’m the Pied Piper of the Anti-Abortion Movement,” The Daily Beast (May 2019)

• Mike Enzi — then-Wyoming’s senior US Senator, RIP

  • “Sen. Enzi Gets A Gavel - The First Accountant Ever To Chair The Budget Committee,” Wyoming Public Radio (Jan. 2015)

• Doug LaMalfa — California Congressman

  • “In Wake Of Gay Marriage Ruling, Sacramento-Area Representatives Ponder Next Steps,” Capital Public Radio, Sacramento NPR (Dec. 2017)

• Jim Moran — then-Virginia Congressman

  • “Jim Moran Recounts Raucous Bipartisan Brawl,” Warren Rojas, Roll Call (Oct. 2014)

• Jennifer Wexton — then-Virginia Congresswoman

  • “New Virginia Democrats Deciding on House Speaker,” WVTF, Virginia Public Radio (Nov. 2018)

• List of presidential trips made by Donald Trump (2017)

  • “Motorcade entered Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia - though the sign falsely reads Washington, DC - at 9:38am. No further POTUS sightings,” White House Pool report #1 (July 2017)

• 2024 United States Senate elections in California

  • “Exclusive: Sen. Dianne Feinstein won’t announce 2024 plans — until 2024,” Raw Story (2023)

• Boycott of Maryland’s 1st congressional district

  • “Anti-Marijuana Congressman Andy Harris: ‘D.C. Made A Bad Decision,’” WAMU (Feb. 2015)

• “Magazine Article With Two Authors,” Chicago (17th ed.) Style Guide (2023, Ralph M. Besse Library, Ursuline College)

  

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60+ Keynotes, Guest Lectures, Panels (2009 — )

• AISNT; “Triple-checking isn’t enough: Era of actively distrusting AI (or we should be)” (April 2026)

• AI Show ’n Tell (AISNT); “Tips, tricks & traps: Adobe Podcast (beta) & 123 Apps are leveling traditional broadcast playing field in real-time,” independent journalist training session; inaugural meetup 8 people, 2 pups (March 2026)

• Washington Press Foundation; trained aspiring journalists on integrating AI into their digital “brand” | veteran feature writer panel moderated by Emmy-winning Shawna Thomas (Feb. 2026)

• American University; lecture on AI, tech & social media; tour of US Capitol (July 2025); PAID

• Covenant College; lectured on convergence of AI, media and hyper-partisanship (May 2025)

• National Cannabis Policy Summit; moderated panel “Polling: Bipartisan Solutions to Federal Cannabis Policy Challenges” (April 2025)

• Sunwater Foundation; senior Air Force officials; CANCELED by DOGE cuts (Mar. 2025); PAID

• Sunwater Foundation; lectured Air Force officers on roots of partisan press (Sept. 2024); PAID

• Public Media Journalists Association (PMJA) conference; “Make Politics Boring (Again): Outfoxing AI, deepfakes & the nationalization of local politics” (NPR HQ; June 2024)

• Johns Hopkins University (MA, Government & Public Policy); lecture on hyper-partisan algorithms are a throwback to nation’s partisan press corps in 1800 (Mar. 2024); PAID

• Johns Hopkins University (MA); recorded media lecture for core course (Oct. 2023); PAID

• Boston University; lecture on hyper-partisan printing presses of founding era (Sept. 2023); PAID

• TheCapitol.Net; lectured FAA officials on cameras impact on legislating (Aug. 2023); PAID

• Johns Hopkins University (MA, Government & Public Policy); lecture on historical underpinnings of today’s partisanship as told through lens of the press (Mar. 2023); PAID

• Boston University (Distance Learning Program, Washington); lecture on how today’s press has roots in hyper-partisan printing presses of founding era (Mar. 2023); PAID

• TheCapitol.Net; lectured Air Force “engineers, program managers, logisticians, contracting officers, analysts, and an executive officer” on how US press operate (Mar. 2023); PAID

• TheCapitol.Net; lectured government workers on evolving state of media (Jan. 2023); PAID

• TheCapitol.Net; lectured senior Air Force officials on new media (Mar. 2023); PAID

• TheCapitol.Net; lectured Wright-Patterson Air Force Base officers on press (Sept. 2022); PAID

• TheCapitol.Net; lectured government employees on evolving media (Aug. 2022); PAID

• IREX Georgian Media Partnership Program (GMPP); lectured 7 Republic of Georgia journalists on new media, partisanship & US media; host: Slate ‘s Mark Joseph Stern (2021)

• TheCapitol.Net; lectured senior FAA officials on hyper-partisanship (Dec. 2021); PAID

• Northwestern, Medill School (MS, Journalism); independent media panelist (May 2021)

• Johns Hopkins University (MA); moderated 2nd 2020 presidential debate (Oct. 2020); PAID

• Johns Hopkins University (MA); moderated presidential debate; 75 students (Sept. 2020); PAID

• Leadership Institute, How to be a Pundit w/ Daily Beast’s Matt Lewis; 40+ students (July 2020)

• TheCapitol.Net; media & politics workshop for 29 senior FAA officials (July 2020); PAID

• American University; lectured Comms students on bleak media landscape (May 2020)

• Johns Hopkins University (MA in Government & Public Policy); new media lecture (May 2020)

• Loyola University Maryland; lectured poli-sci students on pandemic coverage (May 2020)

• NYU; lectured BA public policy students on how President Trump – like his predecessors – has exploited weaknesses in the contemporary press corps (April 2020)

• University of Oklahoma; lectured BA in journalism students on how solid reporting is the only antidote to being labeled “fake news” and “the enemy” (March 2020)

• TheCapitol.Net; Capitol Hill workshop for 20 diplomats and federal workers; explored roots of today’s hyper-partisan Congress and media landscape (September 2019); PAID

• TheCapitol.Net; Capitol Hill workshop for 20+ senior acquisition managers at the FAA; explored the history of the media with an eye towards combating charges of “fake news” (Sept. 2019); PAID

• Aspen Ideas Festival; moderated “CBD: Hype or Hope?” panel; explored CBD myths & need for FDA regulations; only sold-out panel (June 2019); FREE TRAVEL & LODGING

• Historic: First-ever cannabis panel in history of Aspen Ideas Fest

• TheCapitol.Net; Capitol Hill workshop for 20+ FAA senior acquisition managers; explored underpinnings of today’s Reality TV Congress and Commander-in-Chief (May 2019); PAID

• Johns Hopkins University (MA, Government & Public Policy); Capitol tour & lecture debunking Golden Age Fallacy too often employed in political and media debates (May 2019); PAID

• TheCapitol.Net; Capitol Hill workshop for 20+ senior acquisition managers at the FAA; lectured on new media’s impact on government (March 2019); PAID

• TheCapitol.Net; Capitol Hill workshop for 20 senior acquisition managers at the FAA; lecture on the state of the contemporary media (Sept. 2018); PAID

• Boston University (Distance Learning Program, Washington); Delivered lecture entitled, Why Be Hysterical When You Can Be Happy? Trump isn’t Anything New (July 2018); PAID

• Cornell University (Cornell in Washington); Delivered lecture entitled, “The Myth of the Enemy: Roots of the Modern Press Corps” (July 2018)

• Institute of Political Journalism (George Mason University); Lectured students on the state of the contemporary press corps, putting today’s reporters in proper historical context (June 2018)

• TheCapitol.Net; Capitol Hill workshop for 25 senior acquisition managers at the FAA; lecture entitled “The Media: Before Trump and After Trump” (May 2018); PAID

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• TheCapitol.Net; 25 senior FAA acquisition managers; lecture: “Evolving Media & How It Covers Big Beats in Washington” on historical underpinnings of contemporary press (Dec. 2017); PAID

• Georgetown University (MA, Journalism); Freelancing for Journalists, panelist (Nov. 2017)

• George Mason University (Institute of Political Journalism); Lectured on how President Trump bypasses press corps w/ social media, much like FDR’s fireside chats (June 2017)

• Boston University; Lectured on President Trump’s first 100 days, with eye towards media’s (de)volving relationship with White House (April 2017); PAID

• Boston University (Distance Learning Program, Washington); Lectured students on the media’s role in Donald Trump’s rise to power (Feb. 2017); PAID

• Johns Hopkins University (MA, Government & Public Policy); co-moderated debate watch party with SAIS professor and former US Senate candidate Robert Guttman (Fall 2016)

• Boston University (Distance Learning Program,Washington); Lectured journalism students on the ins and outs of covering Congress (April 2016); PAID

• Paul Miller Washington Reporters Fellowship (Press Foundation); Capitol tour & history of DC press for 20 journalists; requested by National Press Club President Thomas Burr (Nov. 2015)

• American University (MA, Journalism); On panel with Tracy Jan of The Boston Globe, discussing tips and tricks to covering Congress (Sept. 2015)

• Institute on Political Journalism & U.S. Programs/ The Fund for American Studies (GW University); Lecture debunking calls for a virtual Congress (Summer 2015)

• Paul Miller Washington Reporters Fellowship (Washington Press Foundation); Guest lecture on changing relationship between contemporary press corps and today’s lawmakers (Oct. 2014)

• American University (MA, Journalism); Guest lecture on social media’s impact on Congress for NPR Senior Washington Editor Ron Elving’s course Public Affairs Reporting (Sept. 2014)

• Public Radio News Directors Inc. annual conference; On panel entitled “Covering Congress” with Ailsa Chang of NPR & Todd Zwillich of PRI (June 2014)

• Covenant College; Lecture: “Partisanship: How did we get here and is media complicit?” (2013)

• Leadership for Healthy Communities Conference; new media techniques panel (Fall 2012)

• WAMU 88.5 News; political conventions panel w/popular radio host Kojo Nnamdi (Fall 2012)

• Institute on Political Journalism (Georgetown); Lecture entitled “Contemporary Media Competition: You v. Your Subject” (Summer 2012)

• Eastern University; Lectured on political convergence reporting (Spring 2012)

• Public Radio News Directors Webinar; Lecture entitled “Keeping Watch on Capitol Hill: How to Expand Your Newsroom’s Congressional Coverage” (Spring 2012)

• Eastern Communication Association Convention; “There’s Power in Words” panel – training session to help communications professors become more media savvy (Spring 2011)

• University of North Florida; Lectured students on potential implications for democracy from the decline in Washington press corps over last few decades (Spring 2009)

Lecture delivered by veteran congressional correspondent and Johns Hopkins University Lecturer Matt Laslo at NPR’s Washington HQ on June 7, 2024 at the Public Media Journalists Association (PMJA) annual conference, "Local News, Strong Democracy.”

VIDEO: Watch Laslo lecture at NPR HQ

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Sneak peek: Slide I…

“These days, I don't think the problem is hyper-partisanship. We literally have lawmakers living in two different universes,” Laslo — who wrote his MA thesis at Johns Hopkins on hyper-partisanship — tells the local news directors, reporters and producers from across the nation. “They're not disagreeing with each other. They're not talking to each other. And that's what really worries me.”

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“Trust in the media kind of evaporated for at least with half the population. So yeah, I'm not very proud of what has become of this great experiment,” Laslo bluntly tells his peers. “Generative AI, think of it as a mirror, because it's literally just mining our recent past. And I think that's where we're f*****, because hanging out in the Capitol and being there in January 6 — which I'll get into — knowing that generative AI is gonna be a reflection of our society, should terrify us all.”

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“Adapt or die. The herd’s rushing to the slaughter. This is where I think you all can really stand out — enterprise pieces,” Laslo encourages the local journalists assembled in the nation’s capital. “But don't mimic us in the Washington press corps. Do the opposite of what we're doing. Like, we're terrible and a big reason that 50% of the nation doesn't trust [the media] — actually, the polls are better for us [regional outlets] — but the media industrial complex is killing America.”

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© Content posted at Lights, Cameras, Memes! is copyrighted.

Just over a month ago, this July, I asked House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, “Is impeachment now just the way of Washington?”

“If it is, it's because the Democrats impeached Donald Trump twice, and I blame this impeachment craze on the Democrats,” Comer replied, before adding. “So, we're in this situation—talking about impeachment—because the Democrats abused their impeachment power.”

Audio attached. Rough transcript below of Rep. James Comer (R-KY) at the US Capitol on July 20, 2023. Slightly edited for clarity.

Matt Laslo: “How does your party, on impeachments, avoid becoming the party that cried wolf? Because one of your members on Oversight [Committee] had ‘Impeachment Week’—that where every day she announced another member of the cabinet…”

James Comer: "Look, we've got a lot of members that want to impeach, and we've got some members that would probably rather not go down that route for the simple reason that they don't think the Senate’s going to do anything and it gobbles up valuable floor time.

"But, look, [Speaker Kevin] McCarthy’s gonna make that call. I think, you see that in recent days he's taken steps to move forward with impeachment on both [Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro] Mayorkas and [Attorney General] Merrick Garland. And I think they're waiting to see what more evidence we come up with in the Oversight Committee with respects to Biden."

Laslo: “Is impeachment now just the way of Washington?”

Comer: “Well, you know—if it is, it's because the Democrats impeached Donald Trump twice, and I blame this impeachment craze on the Democrats. And, I think, a lot of Republican voters are like, ‘you know, they impeached Trump twice, we should impeach Biden.’ And, again, that's irresponsibility on the Democrats' part. I think that Biden's committed a lot more suspicious activity than Donald Trump ever did. So, we're in this situation—talking about impeachment—because the Democrats abused their impeachment power.”

Laslo: “What about the idea of trying to make Congress better? And not being the lowest common denominator and doing what they did?”

Comer: “We represent the people and there are a lot of people out there that want impeachment.”

Laslo: “Yup. Preciate ya sir!”

NOTE: My wire service, The LCB, sold exclusive first publication rights of this interview to Raw Story, which published it on the day of the interview, July 20, 2023.

ME: Congressional reporter since 2006 for many outlets, but Lights, Cameras, Memes! is more WIRED magazine contributor me.

Since 2016, I’ve lectured on new media’s impact on government at Johns Hopkins University (MA in Gov’t). I’ve also been an op-ed contributor with Reuters, the Guardian, NBC Think and On Tap (craft beer). @MattLaslo on most social media.

Call me old school, but I don’t like how social media posts are being used to build the case against former-President Donald Trump in Fulton County, Ga.

I also don’t like how local District Attorney Fani T. Willis has transformed extraordinary RICO—or anti-racketeering—statutes into the mundane, using them to go after artists, teachers and now political operations.

Meticulous investigations and aggressive prosecutions are one thing. Experimental legal theories are another, whether deployed by Trump on Jan. 6, 2021 or argued by Willis today. Like Trump, Willis isn’t listening to critics. 

“I’m a fan of RICO,” Willis told reporters last year. 

While Georgia’s stats are lower than the national average, state prosecutors still plea out upwards of half their cases, and the key to these sweeping RICO indictments is getting low level folks to flip on those at the top in exchange for a plea bargain. 

That’s the game Trump and his 18 co-defendants are now wrapped up in. 

“Their indictment alleges that rather than abide by Georgia’s legal process for election challenges, the defendants engaged in a criminal racketeering enterprise to overturn Georgia’s presidential election result,” Willis said as she unveiled the charges last week.

America’s a political powder keg. It exploded after the last presidential election and has been smoldering since. 

And, in a hyper partisan-era within a two-party system, treating top Republican officials like they’re members of a street gang seems destined to divide Americans further. 

But by the grace of God, there tweet I 

Broadly, in terms of social media being used to build legal cases, my fear is, basically: But by the grace of God, there tweet I.

Like most reporters, I spend too much time on social media. Like all people on social media, I regret some past posts. But more so, like all familiar with social media know, my fear stems from the ease with which social media posts can be taken out of context before being transformed into memes more memorable than reality. 

Now, specifically, when it comes to the 12 Trump tweets included in the Fulton County indictment, some strike me as dangerously odd, especially Acts 22 and 101. 

Act 22: “On or about the 3rd day of December 2020, DONALD JOHN TRUMP caused to be tweeted from the Twitter account @RealDonaldTrump, "Georgia hearings now on @OANN. Amazing!" This was an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy,” reads the indictment.

Act 101: “On or about the 30th day of December 2020, DONALD JOHN TRUMP caused to be  tweeted from the Twitter account @RealDonaldTrump, "Hearings from Atlanta on the Georgia Election overturn now being broadcast LIVE via @RSBNetwork! https://t.co/ogBvaKfqG." This was an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy,” the indictment reads.

Now, I’ve never been accused of being lawyerly—in knowledge or demeanor—but, to me, those tweets from the former president are more reminiscent of the TV Guide than they are a blueprint for “a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump,” as the introduction to the indictment reads.

Those tweets hit close to home, because, as a political journalist, I explicitly do not vouch for 100% of the events I cover. That includes my coverage of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol—my office of the last 17 years—the ensuing Senate impeachment trial or last summer’s select Jan. 6 committee proceedings. I covered them all via tweet—along with camera, mic and pen—yet not one as an endorsement. 

I regularly alert my followers to a lot of regular ole Washington BS, including—as a media professor—to what I see on, say, Fox, which has included an alarming real-time Tucker Carlson cam. 

Sure, some of Trump’s tweets included in the indictment seem indefensible—and I’m not here defending his use of the digital bully pulpit—but others from the then-president actually seem to be accurate statements. 

Act 128: “On or about the 5th day of January 2021, DONALD JOHN TRUMP caused to be tweeted from the Twitter account @RealDonaldTrump, "The Vice President has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors." This was an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy,” the indictment reads. 

By including that tweet as evidence, is the district attorney arguing that Vice President Kamala Harris is duty bound to certify fraudulently chosen electors sent to Congress after next year’s presidential election? I’d surely hope not.   

Or what about Trump’s own social media summation of his tawdry phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger? 

Act 114: “On or about the 3rd day of January 2021,DONALD JOHN TRUMP caused to be tweeted from the Twitter account @RealDonaldTrump, "I spoke to Secretary of State Brad Rafiensperger yesterday about Fulton County and voter fraud in Georgia. He was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the ‘ballots under table' scam, ballot destruction, out of state 'voters', dead voters, and more. He has no clue!" This was an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy,” reads the indictment.

Here I thought Raffensperger was unwilling to answer those baseless claims? And, constitutionally-speaking, he was unable to do what Trump was allegedly asking him, no?  

Yes, details do matter. And Willis and her team will set out to paint a full portrait at trial. But, from where I tweet—or X?—these days, I’d be outraged-to-litigious if a prosecutor built a case against me, my colleagues or students with similar social media posts. 

More than 2,000 people vetted, yet no jury

Some have praised Willis for her “ingenious” use of Georgia’s RICO—the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations—law, which attempts to put all of the disparate charges facing Trump and the other defendants under one sprawling umbrella prosecutors plan to present as a coherent and compelling narrative. 

Bringing RICO charges may tidy things up and be easier for jurors to grasp, but the case is far from a slam dunk. 

The federal RICO Act was initially used to dismantle the Mafia as America knew it in the 1980s, but Georgia legislators embellished on the federal measure and lowered the barrier for RICO prosecutions. 

“In order to be tried under RICO,” Tamar Hallerman and Christian Boone wrote in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution back when Willis launched her investigation in 2021, “two offenses—such as theft, bribery, murder, false statements under oath, or witness tampering—must occur. Those crimes must have been committed by two or more persons seeking to control or protect an institution, property or interest.” 

Willis—who was elected Fulton County district attorney in 2020—has surely seen some RICO victories. She first started making a name for herself as a part of the team who used Georgia’s statute to prosecute or punish Atlanta-area educators and administrators accused of falsifying standardized tests back in 2011. 

Publicly, Willis—who’s up for reelection next year—has voiced pride in how her office has sharpened RICO in recent years. 

“I have right now more RICO indictments in the last 18 months, 20 months, than were probably done in the last 10 years out of this office,” Willis told the Washington Post last year. 

There’s more to the story than that though. Just ask Grammy-winning rapper Young Thug who, as noted in my Raw Story coverage of the case, “has performed on Saturday Night Live and collaborated with the likes of Elton John, Nicki Minaj and Camilla Cabello” only to now find himself imprisoned for more than a year at the hand of Willis. 

Wielding Georgia’s RICO statute like a sword, Willis accused the artist group of “murder, assault and threats of violence”  

Initially, in May 2022, Willis and her team dropped a 58-count indictment—which turns the rapper’s lyrics, videos and social media posts against them—on Young Thug and 27 others, including Gunna who since copped a plea and was released on house arrest. He wasn’t alone. The initial group—or “gang” to Willis—of 28 defendants is down to just 10. 

There’s a major problem for Willis though: Jury selection in the star-studded case has now stretched past eight months in a case that, once it starts, is expected to last between six and nine months. 

More than 2,000 potential jurors have been vetted, yet there’s still no jury. Even so, at the end of July, an Atlanta judge denied Young Thug bond—the fourth time the superstar’s plea for freedom was rejected, even as the wheels of justice have yet to even start turning.  

The sweeping RICO case against Young Thug—which alleges his record label, YSL, is a front for violent street gang Young Slime Life, even as the artist claims it stands for Young Stoner Life—brought by Willis is stretching Atlanta’s judicial system to the brink. 

Refer a friend

That’s right. Willis was testing the limits of Georgia’s own statute long before alleging Trump and 18 others comprise a “criminal organization” collectively staring down 41 charges connected through one RICO statute.

In Fulton County, one would-be-blockbuster of a trial has already devolved into a quagmire, yet last week Willis once again came out swinging on the national—international, really—stage.

As someone trapped in the Capitol Jan. 6, 2021, I don’t defend anyone who perpetrated a crime that day—whether enthroned in the White House or not—but more than justice, I long for healing. Healing for us all.

While it’s surely novel to accuse the former president and 18 other Republicans of engaging in a "criminal enterprise" from the White House, the nation is in dire need of normality—whatever our collective new, new normal is once we (or is it, ‘if we’?) get to the other side of these four historic post-presidency indictments. 

Before the nation can get through Trump’s upcoming trials, tomorrow, the former president first must do what thousands of minorities do monthly and surrender himself to the Fulton County Jail—a prison system under investigation by the Department of Justice over alleged civil rights violations among its 87% Black population.  

Like most white folks who check into the Fulton County Jail, on Thursday, barring an epic meltdown, Trump will walk in and out of the complex. Unshackled. Free, if haunted by the specter of his RICO future.

A jury of his fellow citizens will decide Trump’s fate in the coming months or, possibly, years, but in the meantime he’ll be jet setting, golfing or battling to retake the White House—the starkest of contrasts to Young Thug, a 32-year-old father of six. 

While both are facing off against DA Fani Willis and her expansive use of RICO, one has been locked up for more than a year, shackled like his forebears; the other seems to still be doing whatever he wants. For now, at least. 

I’m a WIRED magazine correspondent, et. Since 2016, I’ve lectured on new media’s impact on government at Johns Hopkins University (MA in Gov’t). I’ve been an op-ed contributor with Reuters, the Guardian, NBC Think and On Tap (craft beer). @MattLaslo on most social media.

The US Capitol is one big game of telephone — and the press corps plays the cables, as you’ll hear in my interview with Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) where he reacts to my description of the AI positions of Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Marco Rubio (R-FL).*

Hawley comes out swinging, but not so much at his fellow Republicans — he’s dumbfounded by the notion of anyone trusting Silicon Valley firms to be good actors after years and years of them breaking their promises to policymakers as they trade our private data as if it’s stock.

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*Rebuttal: Hawley is reacting to what Rubio told me in Ep. 2 of Laslo Lecturing Lawmakers, which is here. That Rubio interview turned into this feature for WIRED magazine, The Ghost of Privacy Past Haunts the Senate’s AI Future.

I’m a WIRED magazine congressional correspondent. Since 2016, I’ve lectured on new media’s impact on government at Johns Hopkins University (MA in Gov’t). @MattLaslo on most social media.

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This exchange in the basement of the Senate with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) was the lightbulb that transformed into my latest WIRED magazine feature, The Ghost of Privacy Past Haunts the Senate’s AI Future.

My job, as a journalist, is to listen. So I do. But I guess I can’t stay totally mum at this pivotal AI moment.

“AI is going to take all of our personal data that they have in Silicon Valley right now, because y’all haven’t acted,” I had to inform the senator.

The exchange occurred during the first classified all-Senators AI briefing in American history, according to Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Both Rubio and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) left partway through — which was noticed by their colleagues — and both came out sounding a similar tune.

A tune that, as you hear in the podcast, their fellow Republican, Sen. Josh Hawley, literally laughs out loud upon hearing.

In WIRED we delve into how Silicon Valley is now everywhere. Hell, they all but replaced NASA. A mere trophy.

Upon hearing his fellow Republican’s positions, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) literally laughed out loud, as I reported and as you can hear for yourself in our next episode of LLL.

WIRED magazine congressional correspondent. Since 2016, I’ve lectured on new media’s impact on government at Johns Hopkins University (MA in Gov’t). @MattLaslo on most social media.

Just before Congress left Washington for lawmaker’s monthlong August recess, Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) was being interviewed by Bloomberg Government journalist Jonathan Tamari (who only recently served with me on the board of the Regional Reporters Association).

I waited in the wings — while eavesdropping, of course — until they wrapped. Then I politely pounced.

“I’ve got a random one for you,” I tell Cramer.

“You never do have a random one,” Cramer laughs. “He’s always never random. Weirder than a three dollar bill.”

“This guy always does!” Tamari quips.

“That’s professor! Take one of my courses,” I reply.

“I'd like to take one of your courses,” Cramer says.

“Mark Meadows told me that,” I recount of my last conversation with Meadows in the Speaker’s Lobby — as a wood burning fireplace crackled and the hours ticked down to a government shutdown Meadows helped orchestrate — weeks before former President Donald Trump tapped him to be his chief of staff. “I was like, ‘If you come to my course, you’re going to have to speak a little bit, sir.’”

I’m a veteran congressional correspondent. Since 2016, I’ve been a Lecturer at Johns Hopkins University (MA in Gov’t). On most social media I’m @MattLaslo.

Take typos up with Congress (and ping me ASAP, please!).

It’s embarrassing being a part of the once-iconic Washington press corps these days. We’re failures parading about as conquerors. It’s a bit much. Just ask most Americans who have tuned us out or the half of the public who think we’re intentionally out to mislead them. 

“Fifty percent of Americans feel most national news organizations intend to mislead, misinform or persuade the public,” Gallup and the Knight Foundation reported earlier this year. 

That happened on our watch. What are we doing about it? Nothing, it seems. We’re focused on follower counts, likes, TV hits, book deals and promotions—all while perpetuating a broken system that has alarmingly alienated half of our neighbors. It’s a crisis. 

It’s front and center, whether we recognize it or not. And it seems most political reporters have muted their critics, otherwise we’re all just tone deaf. Couldn’t come at a worse moment, as AI is well-positioned to replace tens of thousands of our jobs in the next couple years. 

In the midst of—or, maybe, because of—the political and technological revolutions witnessed over the past few election cycles, we’ve continued business as usual. Americans have rejected our increasingly selfie-oriented personas, self-righteous tones and empty pop political coverage. Our sensational, herd-like reporting is easily replicated by bots, so now is the time—potentially our last chance—to try something new: we should make politics boring again.  

Even as Americans are crying out to be heard, seen and reflected in Washington reporting, today’s press corps is unthinkingly reactive. We’ve become meme machines, as we reward congressional outliers with the spotlight they crave. 

Americans seem to know we’re selling a myth. 

And, sadly, many are fine living big little lies.

A few years back, a CNN White House correspondent told me and others in the Senate Radio-TV Gallery that he coaches his mom to only watch the network when he’s on at the top of the hour to protect her from the misleading punditry that fills the rest of the hour.  

It’s not just going along to get on TV, a house, cars or whatever TV folks do with their “Trump bucks,” as at least one CNN executive called the network’s influx of cash in 2016 (according to what one of the best political reporters around told my students).

A flaw in the press—one that makes us stand out from our predecessors—is that few journalists know history these days. It shows. 

I was so intimidated when I arrived in Washington, I bought the Complete Idiot's Guide to American Government! After quickly realizing I knew all that, I moved on to The House: The History of the House of Representatives by former House Historian Robert V. Remini. 

There are few great works on Congress, but I wanted to know more. Every president has had to deal with lawmakers on Capitol Hill, so I then started reading a biography on every president before starting my MA in Government and Public Policy at Johns Hopkins University (where I’ve taught since 2016). While in the midst of the study, Josh Rogin and David Weigel asked me about my study within earshot of other reporters. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever read a biography,” a writer for an online outlet with tens and tens of thousands of Twitter followers said, half to herself. 

She’s now an editor. I have no idea if she ever felt guilt-tripped into reading a biography (and I don’t even like biographies! I just love Congress, hence the study), but lack of historical knowledge is regularly on display here in Washington. 

In the lead-up to last summer’s select Jan. 6 committee proceedings, Watergate comparisons dominated the headlines. Even as the analogy was everywhere, it seemed off.  

So I tested it by interviewing all 50 Senate Republicans in the 117th Congress and found there was no Watergate comparison. Turns out, only eight of Senate Republicans reported even tuning in, and 58 is far short of the 2/3rds needed to impeach. History matters. At least it used to. 

Politics is people—and no, not AOC or MTG—or at least it used to be.  

March 19, 1979 is a day that lives in infamy—it’s the day C-SPAN’s cameras first rolled live coverage of the US House of Representatives. Before then, few lawmakers even needed press secretaries, because few lawmakers mattered to a national audience. With precious little air-time, there was little noteworthy about one rank-and-file politician plucked from a sea of 535 of them. 

After TV killed the radio star, 24-hour news came to town and made day-time television stars out of congressional backbenchers who the networks parade about as representatives of their parties, even as many barely even speak for their districts anymore, now that all politics is national. 

When I arrived in Washington in 2006, CNN had two producers at the Capitol. They’ve now got at least three on-camera reporters—often accompanied by a producer and camera operator—roving the marble halls on most days. Hell, TMZ is now at the Capitol. 

In 2016, reality TV star Donald Trump rewrote the rules, stripping press credentials from the likes of Univision, Buzzfeed, CNN, Washington Post, The Daily Beast, Des Moines Register, Politico, etc. 

Back then, I tried to spearhead an effort for news outlets to band together and boycott Trump rallies until he reinstated each outlet. Leaders at the National Press Club went a different route; writing respectable letters, seemingly, from a bygone era. And it was one of the few ideas I ever had rejected by The Guardian, where I penned op-eds at the time (under my professor cap), which likely didn’t want its own reporter’s credentials to be yanked.  

Trump then became president and it was too late: He’d already been allowed to rewrite the rules, and he’s continued to do so, using the bully pulpit of the White House and his social media feeds to redefine the nation’s press corps to millions.  

In 2018, we sold Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and The Squad to viewers, while these days we’re chasing Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), George Santos (R-NY) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO). They’re not representatives of the House of Representatives; they’re brands and we, it seems, their greatest brand ambassadors, as we regularly sell them to our respective audience. 

Heading into 2024, it seems many news organizations are tripling down on their failed 2016 playbooks, even as there’s one sweeping change they’ve failed to account for: We’ve lost the American people. 

With trust in the media at historic lows and with AI here—likely already working on a command to rewrite all our similar headlines quicker and cleaner than our collective groupthink will ever be—it’s time to try something new, if vintage: leading with reality; not reality TV. 

We’ve evolved into predictable, thus replaceable, memes. 

We need to retire our self-righteous tones, in the realization that we’ve been tuned out. If anything, we should come from a place of humility, apologizing and begging forgiveness of the millions we’ve alienated. 

An obvious way to do that is to go where our audience is. They’re not in the nation’s Capital. In fact, they’re barely even afterthoughts in today’s Washington. We can help change that by regularly reminding the nation’s politicians of the people they were elected to serve; not the interests they bow to. 

There are now two Americas. Silicon Valley’s finest algorithms now view our work like the American people do: as left or right. We keep fitting their molds.  

It’s time to break out of the molds we’ve made for ourselves and rethink Washington coverage, unless we’re content being the tropes we’re now dismissed as.  

About me: I’ve been covering Congress since 2006 and teaching political communications at the Johns Hopkins University (MA in Gov’t) since 2016. I’ve previously been an op-ed contributor with The Guardian, Reuters, NBC Think and On Tap Magazine. 

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While researching internet privacy laws, I stumbled on my name. As a lapsed narcissist, I Googled down the rabbit hole and stumbled on a trend.

Turns out my tech coverage for WIRED magazine is cited in 20+ law reviews, including Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, Duke Law and Technology Review, University of Chicago Legal Forum, etc.

Guess, it’s also referenced in letters to the FCC, Congress, quoted in books and assigned at UNC, NYU, DePaul, etc.

Most scholars cite my coverage of Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which remains a shield for tech firms. Here’s how I described it in WIRED:

Through inaction, our contemporary Congress has transformed our private data into the hottest commodity around. On Capitol Hill, many continue walling AI off from the internet as we fund it, with our personal data.

Being seen was one thing—one that sent shivers up many a mind. That’s yesterday. We’re about to be known—our era’s great unknown.

Below are

Me: I’m a Washington-based WIRED contributor, covering the intersection of technology and politics with an eye towards today’s AI revolution. I’m also an adjunct political comms. professor at Johns Hopkins (MA) where I lecture on new media’s—and medium’s—impact on politics.

Apologies: The works are academic and technical, though, hopefully, also illuminating, if deeply unsettling.

Law reviews that cite Laslo’s privacy reporting

1) University of Chicago Legal Forum — The Internet as a Speech Machine and Other Myths Confounding Section 230 Reform, by Danielle Keats Citron Mary Anne Franks

2) Cornell Law Review — COMPELLING CODE: A FIRST AMENDMENT ARGUMENT AGAINST REQUIRING POLITICAL NEUTRALITY IN ONLINE CONTENT MODERATION, by Lily A. Coad

3) Harvard Journal of Law & Technology — ENJOINING NON-LIABLE PLATFORMS, by Maayan Perel

4) Duke Law and Technology Review — ANY SAFE HARBOR IN A STORM: SESTAFOSTA AND THE FUTURE OF § 230 OF THE COMMUNICATIONS DECENCY ACT, by Charles Matula

5) University of Illinois Chicago Law Review — Is Truth Hanging on by a Thread?, by Thomas Ryan

i. DEEP FAKE FUTURE NOW: “a fabricated quote from the Broward County

Sheriff…article was completely fake,” writes Thomas Ryan

6) Illinois Law Review — THE INTERNET OF CHILDREN: PROTECTING CHILDREN’S PRIVACY IN A HYPER-CONNECTED WORLD, by Eldar Haber

7) Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law (Caruso School of Law at Pepperdine Univ.) — Customer Transparency Can Dampen the Growing Human Trafficking Problem, by Colin Martell

8) Connecticut Public Interest Law Journal — Policing the Digital Public Square: The Duty of NonManipulation as an Alternative to Free Speech Restrictions on Social Media, by Ben Kabe

9) San Diego Law Review — Another Shot at Rectifying the District of Columbia v. Heller Ambiguities: The Constitutional Right to Arms, the Nonconstitutional Right to Arms, and the Commerce Clause, by NOAH GAARDER-FEINGOLD

10) Brooklyn Law School, BrooklynWorks — Mad about the First Amendment, Our Beacon for Liberty, Equality and Democracy, by Nicholas Allard

11) Hastings Communications and Entertainment Law Journal — Combating Fake News with “Reasonable Standards”, by Tawanna D. Lee

12) Cleveland State Law Review — Changing Counterspeech, by G.S. HAN (Vanderbilt Law)

13) Journal of Law and Technology at Texas — CONSTRAINING THE CYBERMOB: USING A DOXING NOTICE AND TAKEDOWN REGIME TO OPTIMIZE THE SOCIAL UTILITY OF ONLINE SHAMING, by Erik Money

14) JURIMETRICS (Arizona State Univ. Law) — SOFT LAW IN U.S. ICT SECTORS: FOUR CASE STUDIES, by Adam Thierer

15) Pace Law Review — SECTION 230: THE VALYRIAN STEEL FOR WEBSITE OPERATORS, AND WHY A TAX CREDIT IS THE BEST SOLUTION TO A SAFER INTERNET, by Noah Hale 

16) Washington University Law Review — HOW CONTENT MODERATION MAY EXPOSE SOCIAL MEDIA COMPANIES TO GREATER DEFAMATION LIABILITY, by Tanner Bone (Washington University School of Law)

17) Touro Law Review (Touro Law Center) — Deplatformed: Social Network Censorship, The First Amendment, and the Argument to Amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, by John A. LoNigro

18) GW University Law School — In Antitrust We Trust?: Big Tech Is Not the Problem—It’s Weak Data Privacy Protections, by Olivia T. Creser

19) INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION FOUNDATION — Overview of Section 230: What It Is, Why It Was Created, and What It Has Achieved, by ASHLEY JOHNSON AND DANIEL CASTRO

20) Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review (Digital Commons; Marymount University Law School) — Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act: Why California Courts Interpreted It Correctly and What That Says About How We Should Change It, by E. Alex Murcia

21) SJ Quinney College of Law, University of Utah — Freedom of Thought in the United States: The First Amendment, Marketplaces of Ideas, and the Internet, by John G. Francis Leslie Francis

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Required reading: Syllabi

1) NYU, Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service — The Politics of Public Policy

2) UNC (Chapel Hill), School of Media and Journalism — Introduction to Media Law

3) DePaul — The Internet, Technology, and Politics

4) Johns Hopkins, Advanced Academic Programs — Politics and Media

5) UT Austin School of Law — Tarlton Law Library Jamail Center for Legal Research

i. “This guide provides researchers with a curated selection of resources on Big

Tech and social media regulation.”

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Book citations (partial)

1) Social Media, Freedom of Speech, and the Future of Our Democracy (Oxford Univ. Press, 2022); edited Lee C. Bollinger, Edward H. Levi, Geoffrey R. Stone

2) Corporate Citizen (Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI)): edited Oonagh E. Fitzgerald

3) Deplatforming Misogyny: Report on Platform Liability for Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence; by Cynthia Khoo (Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF))

4) Internet Law — Grey House Publishing (2020) Auburn Hills Stacks

5) Decline of Free Speech on the Postmodern Campus: The Troubling Evolution of the Heckler’s Veto; by Kenneth Lasson (Univ. of Baltimore School of Law)

a. Quotes Laslo op-ed: Sinclair’s ‘Fake News’ Script Put Its Viewers’

Trust In Their Local News At Risk

6) What’s New in Publishing; by Damian Radcliffe

a. Quotes Laslo op-ed: Coronavirus revealing why local news is so

important. It’s also killing it

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Laslo cited in policy making

1) Letter to Federal Communications Commission

a. Quoted: Access Now to FCC; by Eric Null, Isedua Oribhabor, &

Jennifer Brody

2) Letter to House Committee on Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce

a. Quoted: Computer & Communications Industry Association (2020)

3) Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI)

a. Could Trade Agreements Help Address the Wicked Problem of Cross-Border

Disinformation?, by Susan Ariel Aaronson (2021)

4) Benton Institute for Broadband & Society

a. Links: Section 230 article (2019)                       

5) Federal Communications Law Journal

a. In Antitrust We Trust?: Big Tech Is Not the Problem—It’s Weak Data Privacy

Protections (2021)

6) Ohio State Technology Law Journal

a. WEB OF LIES: HATE SPEECH, PSEUDONYMS, THE INTERNET, IMPERSONATOR

TROLLS, AND FAKE JEWS IN THE ERA OF FAKE NEWS (2021)

b. By YITZCHAK BESSER, “law clerk for Senior US District Judge Glen H.

Davidson of the Northern District of Mississippi”

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Tech-focused media appearances (partial)

1) WritersandEditors.com

a. From Section 230 to The EARN IT Act and still controversial  

2) TECH NEWS WEEKLY

a. Episode 96

3) KERA, Dallas NPR

a. With Roe overturned, are privacy rights over?

ii. Laslo’s: “The Shaky Future of a Post-Roe Federal Privacy Law”

4) !FEXE – Ideas for Execution

a. Link: WIRED Section 230 piece

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Dissertations, thesis’ citations (partial)

1) University of California, Berkeley dissertation (philosophy)

a. The Mice that Roar: What Small Countries Can Teach Great Powers About

National Cyber-Defense

2) Cornell dissertation

a. file:///C:/Users/matt/AppData/Local/Temp/Abebe_cornellgrad_0058F_11821.pdf

3) Johns Hopkins thesis

a. Look inside How Internet Changed Middle East Policy                

4) Walden University dissertation

a. Race, Class, and Socioeconomic and Sentencing Laws in Opioid Cases, by

Phaedra Denise Jackson

5) Brill (paywalled)

a. Freedom of Thought in the United States: The First Amendment, Marketplaces

of Ideas, and the Internet, by John Gregory Francis and Leslie Francis

This is Lights, Cameras, Memes!—a newsletter tracking tech, Big Tech and AI’s influence on today’s politics, pulling the veil back on both politicians and today’s piranha-like press corps.

We’re not the revolutionaries we think we are. Sure, these days, novelties abound—faster, shinier, faster, sleeker, faster—but there’s nothing new under the sun; if Solomon is to be trusted.

Thing is, no one’s trusted today—especially not the self-righteous press. And the Washington press corps, myself included, are the worst. At some point we stopped reading and selfied ourselves to irrelevancy.

If anything, today’s press corps has devolved into a mirror image of our belligerent forebearers. Dripping quills penned sharp barbs before typewriter ink dislodged a president. Video killed the radio star before endorphin-pumping screens killed reality.

‘Debates’ have morphed into dunking. Algorithms turned us all asinine. Duels replaced with doxing.

Who needs bullets when we have memes?

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Not all is bleak, though. Technology is exciting, as I write about in WIRED magazine. Even as it’s scary, as I also write about for WIRED.

At Johns Hopkins University (MA), I lecture on how technology has impacted politics over time, especially with an eye towards how political rhetoric has adapted to new mediums.

I know it often feels like we’re in hyperdrive—with AI already outpacing itself while lapping humanity—but it doesn’t have to.

I hope to—and plan to—make you rest a little easier. History helps us understand things aren’t worse than ever: They’ve always been terrible!

Now, please, come along with me; let me show you behind-the-scenes of how the reality show we call contemporary American politics is produced.

Knowledge is power. And transparency is what I do.

Cheers,

Prof. Laslo

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Managing editor Matt Laslo is proud to unveil 50 at 50 - a series of essays written by current and former prisoners whose lives were upended by the soon-to-be 51-year-old War on Drugs. But before we move past this year’s historic half-century anniversary we are — in partnership with the CAN-DO Foundation and Prison Journalism Project – is dropping one personal work a day through New Year’s Day. It’s the voices of those who must intimately know the costs and scope of the War on Drugs.

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If you knew me in high school, you’d be surprised learning I’ve skirted prison all these years. Back then — two decades, a stint as a Bible-thumping evangelical, a slew of degrees and accolades ago — my nickname was “Junkie,” which proved prophetic.

As I’ve written about previously, as a teen I was snorting tens of thousands of dollars worth of the emaciating white powder you call “cocaine,” I called it “daddy,” basically or whatever else it demanded of my then-sunken and frail frame. Before winding up homeless (living out of my baby-blue ‘82 Cadillac Coupé de ville, which I, of course, outfitted with a sound system worth more than the classical whip), I was the goofy one. I didn’t say “No,” only “I’ll take another.”

And I took lots of “others” – all of ‘em I could snort, smoke, dissolve or ingest; often all of ‘em at once, life when I “invested” a few grand in a pound of ‘shrooms and took two weeks off work for fungi- and eight ball-fueled trip. I lived up to my nickname, even once snorting an entire gram of coke before heading to the basketball courts. (I dunked over some cats that day, and thankfully, my heart didn’t give out.)

Near the end of my bondage, my coke dealer sensed I was in trouble; well, financially at least. He encouraged me to get a second job to support my then-vacuum-like nostrils. I took his counsel and entered one of the darkest chapters of my life, as I sauntered into the Abercrombie & Fitch at our local mall and asked for the job they offered my ripped and tan teenage self earlier in the summer.

With their annoying corporate-approved techno blaring, I learned to fold shitty shirts like a motherfucker. I’d snort coke before my shift, during diversionary restroom breakers and for dinner (the 40-oz. Budweiser was the only carbs I consumed). Once done, I’d go straight back to my dealer’s crib to re-up.

Even through my cloudy, drug-fueled state, I knew my second job wasn’t working, because I’d snort my paycheck before earning it. I lasted a mere three shifts.

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Privilege Comes Cloaked In Many Forms

I come from a family of small-business owners, so we know other business owners. Thus, I never had to resort to stealing. While my brief stint in retail hell is embarrassing, they don’t lock you up for having shitty teenage tastes.

The one time I landed in a jail cell, officers didn’t even close it. I was at a rager with my older brother’s friends (and, of course, my dealer), along with a few of his enemies. Around 4 a.m., dude some 10 years my senior and I were in the basement fighting humid coke, trying to chop our shared stash back into powder after the summer’s sticky air basically ruined our bag, rendering it useless clumps of what can best be called “a substance formerly known as cocaine.”

Before hopping downstairs to dance with those nostril-cutting clumps, we saw one of my brother’s buddies being a despicable jackass to some ladies. Some other dudes had an eye on him and his ignorant tongue.

After a few minutes in the basement, a thunderous thud shook the floor. The asshole addicts we were, we quickly finished the substance formerly known as coke before bolting upstairs. That’s when we saw what we heard: My brother’s friend splayed out, getting pummeled by five or six dudes.

After watching him take a few well-deserved licks, we broke in and ushered him toward the suburban McMansion’s expansive foyer. Dude wasn’t just a sexist idiot; he was also a shitfaced masochist. His head had already started morphing into a misshapen pumpkin, yet he wouldn’t stop accosting the girls.

As we got him over the threshold, he yelled more hateful words. The pack of furious fists were eager for round 2. The older cat and I let him get some licks in. Once we feared he’d lose his life — or more of those brain cells he couldn’t afford to lose — we hopped in, yanking amateur boxers off…

With punches coming from 10 to 12 fists, we naturally returned some blows, trying to salvage what was left of his newly redesigned face.

My fist caught the cheek of a dude I soon learned was the younger brother of a guy who recently brutally jumped my brother — my bro then broke his hand on one of these guy’s faces.

“Little Laslo punched my brother,” I heard. “Get that motherfucker!”

I instinctively backpedaled a few paces, to ensure the testosterone, cocaine and warm keg beer-fueled mob couldn’t easily turn me into a pumpkin-head.

I’m not even sure what happened next. I ripped a tendon in my left ring-finger at eve, which still won’t bend on its own. Though that was likely from pulling idiots off an asshole. When sirens and flashing lights overtook the neighborhood, everyone rushed back inside. Music and lights dutifully killed.

All I could muster was crawling under my Coupé de ville. Worked for about 30 seconds; then Maglite beams hit me.

Officers dragged me out and propped me up a tree where I coughed up blood for the next few minutes. That turned the officers all paternalistic. They tried calling an ambulance, but my uninsured-self wasn’t having that.

We were miles away from the coach I was crashing at. I was drunk, high, disoriented and bleeding internally. The officers wouldn’t let me drive, but they never breathalyzed my underage-self or searched me. Eventually, the officers basically gave me one option: come to the station for a nap.

Two Americas; One War On Drugs

That’s the only time I’ve ever slept in a jail cell — and they didn’t even shut the door. I can’t help but wonder what the outcome would have been had I, say, Black. Well, we actually do know. Or we all should.

When my bro picked up my one-shoed-self the next morning, I fumbled for my keys and realized I had coke on me. Guess, “Junkie” kept a personal stash.

Had those officers treated me like they have millions of our Black and Brown neighbors, that cell cage would have been locked and I would’ve remained there for several days or possibly even months. That rap sheet would have never come off. It likely would have prevented me from writing for some of the world’s top publications, while closing other doors that eventually opened, enabling me to lecture at some of America’s top universities.

The kindness (or preferential treatment?) of those cops saved me not only from the mob but from myself.

The War on Drugs hasn’t been so kind to millions of my addiction-ridden peers, or even just the entrepreneurs scraping together a living off with America’s insatiable demand for drugs. Over the next 50 days, The News Station — in partnership with the CAN-DO Foundation and Prison Journalism Project — is publishing a personal essay a day from 50 prisoners of the War on Drugs who didn’t get the break(s) I got.

Rather, many of the contributors to our 50 at 50 series — in which we’ll wind down 2021 and this 50th anniversary of the War on Drugs with the voices of the casualties of this seemingly unwinnable war — have been forever changed by the system that spared my pale ass.

These prisoners and former prisoners are asking you to hear them and join their chorus — their unique redemption songs. The political class launched the War on Drugs, propped it up with an estimated $1 trillion and remains largely content with the status quo they erected. Hell, President Joe Biden wrote the status quo of mass incarceration as a senator. He wasn’t alone. He isn’t alone.

Still, in spite of the formidable resistance the prison industrial complex puts up, the war is slowly being unwound, but — as exemplified by my lack of prison time — there’s no equal justice in America. People are currently serving life sentences for substances I legally consume here in the nation’s capital.

Lending these prisoners — our neighbors, family members, acquaintances, lovers and friends — your attention is all they ask. They trust you to do what the government has failed to do: Hear them, and then treat them as you want to be treated.

A rather irreverent White House pool report just arrived in our inbox, written by Matt Laslo, a freelance reporter who covers Congress and founded “Bills and Brews,” which is a website that promises “a chance to get to know lawmakers, their regions and craft breweries.”

We thought it odd when one report’s subject line was “Rockefeller ya’all!”, but his fifth report really caught our attention.

POTUS left the Rockefeller’s fundraising round table at 5:45. Sen. Rockefeller and a lady wearing a massive string of pearls (believed to be the senator’s wife) saw POTUS off at the door.

POTUS does not seem to have changed outfits while inside. And no bulging envelopes of cash could be spotted from the pool.

No response from DNC to the question I asked that’s on everyone’s mind: “Any word on how many times he said ‘Mitch McConnell’ in there?”

We also have no word on whether POTUS drank any craft beer in there, though West Virginia has some good local brews.

Now that the pool knows what real money looks like (from the outside at least), we’re going back to the cramped press room at the White House to question why we ever became journalists and not, well, Rockefellers.

Motorcade rolling at 5:46.

Mr. Laslo’s reports were part of in-town pool duty, which is on a strict rotation. He is listed as being on the board of the Regional Reporters Association and has contributed to National Public Radio and several national publications.

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The original New York Times write-up can be found here.

Throughout this year’s concert season most all live venues across America remain shuttered. It’s been like this since March. But now hundreds and hundreds of venues fear they’re going to have to close permanently, because they were excluded from government assistance in the initial rounds of coronavirus aid packages. But Congress and the Trump White House still have a chance to salvage what they helped break.

It’s not just venues themselves – or the musicians that scuff their stages and chip the paint off their formerly green rooms – but it’s also all the businesses tied at the hip to venues: The restaurants, dispensaries, bars and late-night taco stands. That’s been a central part of the pitch to lawmakers at the US Capitol from the National Independent Venue Association or NIVA, which didn’t even exist in January. Even so, now they represent 2,500 venues nationwide, and those venues leaned on their fans and music industry connections to drive that point home to lawmakers in Washington.

Until this week, those calls were rejected by the White House, but now Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is reportedly open to assisting American music, but that’s only if they get a deal with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She and other Democrats also support the effort to try to salvage venues, but they’re currently haggling over the price tag of the overall measure.

The fact it’s taken this long to even get venues and musicians to be included in negotiations has unsettled many musicians, especially Wesley Schultz, the lead vocalist and guitar player for the Lumineers.

“These places won’t survive without help and assistance,” Schultz told me. “Otherwise, you’re left with sort of the giant places or the chains. So you have like Hard Rock Cafes and arenas.”

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While Schultz doesn’t seem to be a fan of those chain “cafes,” his band now fills arenas. But he says this fight – that he, his fellow Lumineers co-founder and drummer Jeremiah Fraites and more than 600 other artists have engaged in – isn’t about big acts like them.

NIVA polled its members and got a stomach-churning response: A full 90 percent of local, independent venues predict they’ll be forced to close permanently without assistance from the federal government. That’s not only because they’ve been forced to close their doors since the spring, but also because they were excluded from the previous rounds of stimulus funding because those federal dollars required the money go to maintaining a workforce. But without concerts, and the revenue they bring in, there was no way these venues could pay their workers to stand around for some six months now. The fate of those clubs is weighing on Schultz these days.

He says the Lumineers couldn’t be filling stadiums unless they went through the sometimes awkward, often grueling and always exhilarating smaller club circuit. Schultz is worried politicians in Washington are ripping that same opportunity away from tens of thousands of young artists nationwide.

“I thought about it, like, if you’re a painter and they were like, ‘Okay, you can get into the Guggenheim or you’re done.’ You don’t have a shot – you go here or you go there; there’s nothing in between,” he bemoaned.

Schultz says he was prepared to open up for U2 on their 30^th anniversary tour back in 2017 – crowds that surely weren’t there to see the Lumineers – because earlier in their careers they’d played house shows and small clubs, which didn’t always have much of an audience at all, let alone an audience there to see them.

“I think performers have done things like busking and played coffee shops and small gigs. So when they get to the bigger stages, they basically attempt to recreate that intimacy. But if you don’t, you don’t know that you’ve not spent a lot of time in it. I think you’re at a big disadvantage,” Schultz says. “You know, you have a guitar player, you have so-and-so on bass and you have so-and-so on drums, you also have an audience. The audience is like a member of the show, if you treat it that way.”

The ripple effects of taking away that audience-induced tutorial – whether it’s eye rolls or the intimacy – from young acts will be felt by all of us, because the majority of bands never play a 200-person venue, let alone a stadium. Which is why Schultz fears Trump and Congress are making grave missteps for American culture by neglecting venues of all sizes in their time of dire need.

“You’re almost wiping out, like, a musical middle class by taking this away. Like, you’re saying, ‘you’re either below the poverty line or you’re like living high on the hog,’ you know?” Schultz said. “If you don’t offer that, there’s no real ladder to climb. There’s no where to go. It’s kind of like you’re creating a pretty oppressive haves and have-nots environment. Verses having all these clubs that serve different-sized audiences.”

The dominoes were already toppling before President Donald Trump and his top advisors gave up on negotiating a bipartisan solution with Democratic leaders in August. Beloved venues across the states have already closed for good. In Denver, the 3 Kings dive club went under. Threadgills in Austin– where Janice Joplin got her start – is now permanently shuttered. And Boston lost the rock venue Great Scott, which had been around for 44 years. That’s just to name a few, and more closures are expected soon.

Trump and most Republicans don’t seem to have seriously considered a broader economic rescue package to help resuscitate these clubs that are drowning in red ink. And the four executive orders Trump signed from his New Jersey golf course this Saturday – including an effort to provide an extra $400 to people on unemployment (even if Congress initially made that $600) and a call for his agencies to consider banning evictions – are all viewed as unconstitutional by most legal scholars.

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With both the U.S. House and Senate now prepared to gavel out until after November’s election – even as America hit the mind-boggling 5 million mark for COVID-19 cases this weekend – fear is growing that local venues everywhere are going to slowly board up their windows and doors. That would be a punch in the gut for musicians but also for the local communities they’ve been one with for years or even decades.

“They kind of define cities, a lot of these venues. You know, for me, I think of a few clubs in Denver that we still go back to and play like secret shows at,” Schultz said (and no – we’re not sharing those venues with you, but nice try).

That’s when Schultz got nostalgic. While he now calls Colorado home, he’s a Jersey boy, and that means he cut his teeth in New York City venues. He used to play the Bitter End – a small venue that’s been around since 1961 that was a pivotal steppingstone in the careers of Joni Mitchel, James Taylor and even Lady Gaga – and remembers it fondly.

“Everybody starts somewhere, and that somewhere is clubs,” Schultz said. “Even then, I mean, that was so – it was so hard to get into those clubs. It was such a sought-after thing.”

And if a thousand – or possibly thousands – of venues go under because of this pandemic, it will be felt for years and years and years. And artists are hurting.

Earlier this month, Americans for the Arts – a nonprofit art and education advocacy group – released a report showing the unemployment rate for artists (of all stripes) was at 62%, which far outpaces the national unemployment rate of 10.5%. That’s why lobbying lawmakers in Washington for a lifeline for these venues has become a rallying cry for musicians and a bipartisan group of lawmakers.

Two proposals being pushed in the nation’s capital could help them, though. The RESTART Act would help finance venues and other businesses for a full six months, while the Save Our Stages Act would create a $10 billion grant program targeted specifically at the music industry.

They would go a long way, even in ways we can’t see right now. Schultz and the Lumineers have performed some charity live streams during the pandemic. And live streaming has surely been important for small, medium and big acts alike to stay in touch with, and hopefully expand, their fans during the pandemic. But streaming has nothing on the live concert experience.

“There’s a reason why concert DVDs don’t sell like movies do or like TV shows, and the reason is because it relies on that human connection. Actually being there makes a big difference. You don’t really get that same intimacy,” Schultz said.

It’s not just about the economy – though Schultz surely has been one of the biggest cheerleaders for his fellow artists during the pandemic – it’s also about mental health and community.

“Not to be overly heavy about this, but a huge part of, to me, the human existence is feeling alone, and I’ve felt so much less alone with people and not alone, I guess, when I’m at some of my favorite shows and those memories as a spectator and as a performer sometimes as well,” Schultz recounted.

That’s partly why Schultz thinks this recession offers an opportunity for all of us to rethink society’s relationship with painters, photographers and especially musicians.

“We kind of pride ourselves as a country on valuing the arts in some ways, but we actually make it a very rebellious choice to do that. And that’s just kind of like a contradiction, right?” Schultz bemoaned. “Like if you go to Germany, they’ve got all these grants for artists and paths to be an artist without needing to always mix that with commerce. They want art.”

Americans love art too, even if our government officials don’t fund it anywhere close to the level other nations do.

“This is doing everyone a disservice if even some of these venues closed down, because we’re all actually loving it, we just aren’t putting an onus on it right now. Because it’s hard, people don’t have food on the table. So they can’t pay their bills, they can’t pay the mortgages, their car payments – whatever it is, it feels like a luxury,” Schultz said.

But art isn’t a luxury – it’s life-giving, which Schultz thinks lawmakers in Washington have lost sight of in the midst of this pandemic, hence hundreds of venues are bracing for the worst.

“Once life resumes, this is such a huge part of life – it enriches our lives. It is why I think it was put on the back burner, but I think people are going to really miss this if they aren’t a little bit more, you know, thinking ahead – just one step ahead,” Schultz said. “We’re not going to be in this forever. This is a temporary thing, but these clubs, if they close, that could be forever on that – that might turn into something else.”

WASHINGTON – The pain, trauma and scars are still tangible for the police officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6. Many of their wounds remain invisible to the naked eye — but the pain is palpable to anyone who stops to listen to these heroes. That was on display today, as four Capitol officers testified for three and a half hours before the select committee charged with investigating the riot.

The pain isn’t just from the bear and wasp spray that burned many officer’s unmasked eyes. It’s also not confined to the physical reminders many will now wear for life after being wounded with an assortment of weapons, including – but not confined to – copper, lead or PVC pipes, bats, a 4 x 4, flag poles, metal bike racks, tasers or the array of projectiles — including a speaker and a fire extinguisher – hurled at them by former President Trump’s supporters.

Much of their pain is internal. It flows from being betrayed by many of the government officials they swore an oath to protect, which is why these officers are demanding answers. That stands in stark contrast to the bulk of those in today’s Republican Party who have whitewashed, dismissed or lied about the savage brutality unleashed on what was once a global symbol of freedom: The nation’s Capitol.

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“Even though there’s overwhelming evidence to the contrary, including hours and hours of video to photographic coverage, there’s a continuous shocking attempt to ignore and try to destroy the truth of what truly happened that day,” Sgt. Aquilino Gonell testified, sometimes through tears.

He emigrated to America from the Dominican Republic and served in the U.S. Army before joining the Capitol Police force, where he moved up the ranks.

DC Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone

“For most people, Jan. 6 happened for a few hours, but for those of us who were in the thick of it, it has not ended,” Gonell, like many officers who fought in hand-to-hand combat for hours that long day, told the lawmakers on the dais in front of him.

He’s not alone. Others are haunted, too, and not just the many Capitol officers who have quietly left the force since the siege.

“I was at risk of being stripped of and killed with my own firearm, as I heard chants of, ‘Kill him with his own gun,’” D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone testified. “I can still hear those words in my head today.”

Even with the GOP leadership’s boycott of the special committee, at one point Fanone demanded their attention.

“What makes the struggle harder and more painful is to know so many of my fellow citizens, including so many of the people I put my life at risk to defend, are downplaying or outright denying what happened,” Fanone, a former member of the Capitol police force, said. “I feel like I went to hell and back to protect them and the people in this room, but too many are now telling me that hell doesn’t exist or that hell actually wasn’t that bad.”

“The indifference shown to my colleagues is disgraceful,” he yelled as he smacked the table. “My law enforcement career prepared me to cope with some of the aspects of this experience. Being an officer, you know your life is at risk whenever you walk out the door, even if you don’t expect otherwise law-abiding citizens to take up arms against you. But nothing — truly nothing — has prepared me to address those elected members of our government who continue to deny the events that day and in doing so, betray their oath of office.”

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The bewildering thing to so many is they’ve now become political pawns, even as they rejected politics their entire careers and instead swore their allegiance to the Constitution.

“I don’t think our response to the insurrection should have anything to do with political parties,” Fanone testified, “I’ve worked in the city for two decades, and I’ve never cared about those things no matter who was in office.”

For Black officers, the day included getting called the N-word and fearing their lives would end at the hands of the mostly white mob clad in Trump gear.

Officer Harry Dunn

“Well, it’s not a secret that it was political. They literally were there to ‘stop the steal.’ So when people say it shouldn’t be political: It was, and it is,” Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn testified. “There’s no getting around that. Telling the truth shouldn’t be hard. Fighting on Jan. 6 was hard. Showing up Jan. 7 — that was hard.”

The mob scene astounded, terrified and appalled many Americans, but for those who work at the Capitol – me included– it was beyond unsettling because one of the most elite police forces in the nation was hung out to dry by the very officials they serve and protect daily.

“Until then, I had never seen anyone physically assault Capitol Police, or MPD, let alone witness the mass assaults they perpetrated on law enforcement officers,” Dunn recounted. “I witnessed the rioters using all kinds of weapons against officers, including flag poles, metal bike racks that they had torn apart, and various kinds of projectiles.”

The Republican Party’s indifference to the brutality of the brazen attack only makes the wounds harder to heal, which is why the officers gained some – though not much – solace in the presence of two members of the GOP on the panel.

“No member of Congress should now attempt to defend the indefensible, obstruct this investigation or whitewash what happened that day. He must act with honor and duty and in the interest of our nation,” Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) said. “Our children are watching.”

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Cheney was booted out of GOP leadership in the wake of the attack after she repeatedly — and quite publicly — held Trump accountable for stoking and inciting the insurrection. She’s joined on the panel by Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger.

“I’m here to investigate Jan. 6 not in spite of my membership in the Republican Party but because of it,” the Illinois lawmaker and Air Force lieutenant colonel said. “Not to win a political fight, but to learn the facts and defend our democracy.”

Their presence was welcomed by the tear-soaked officers who remain bewildered, abandoned and full of unanswered questions.

“I need you guys to address if anyone in power had a role in this, if anyone in power coordinated or aided or abetted or tried to downplay, tried to prevent the investigation of this terrorist attack, because we can’t do it,” Hodges implored the special committee. “We’re not allowed to.”

Sgt. Aquilino Gonell

That dark day for the nation remains ever-present for the heroes who gave their all to protect the very politicians who left them on the battlefield.

“More than six months later, Jan. 6 still isn’t over for me. I got to avail myself of multiple counseling sessions from the Capitol Police Employee Assistance Program, and I’m now receiving private counseling therapy for the persistent emotional trauma of that day. I’ve also participated in many peer support programs with fellow law enforcement officers from around the United States,” Officer Dunn testified. “I know so many other officers continue to hurt, both physically and emotionally.”

That’s also why these – along with so many other Capitol officers – are wondering why no security protocols have been overhauled since they sacrificed so the great American experiment would continue, even if just for one more day.

“Everything is different,” Dunn said, “but nothing has changed.”

Big Tech’s cosmetic changes ahead of the 2020 election are mere smokescreens. These Silicon Valley firms remain supersized and divisive actors in contemporary political discourse (if we can even call it ‘discourse’ anymore). These social media firms basically admitted the disservices they’ve knowingly peddled to us through our devices when they overhauled their advertising policies ahead of Tuesday’s presidential election.

But beware: Social media algorithms are still on the prowl. And they, seemingly, won’t stop until they manipulate you into hating family members, friends, or acquaintances who – in reality – are guilty only of clicking on different links than you.

“You start to think, ‘How can those people be so stupid? Look at all this information that I’m constantly seeing, how are they not seeing that same information?’” Justin Rosenstein, the former Facebook entrepreneur who ‘gave’ humanity the ‘like’ button while employed at the bubble that is Menlo Park, says. “And the answer is: they’re not seeing that same information.”

That’s the terrifying contemporary reality: social media has Americans literally consuming two different portrayals of the same world.

Rosenstein left Facebook in 2008, and is now a part of another venture making Wall Street salivate. His quote comes from “The Social Dilemma” — a new Netflix documentary about the pitfalls of social media. The docu-drama, which director Jeff Orlowski dropped earlier this fall, is particularly eye-opening because it’s told through the lens of a now regret-filled cast of former subtle giants of Silicon Valley.

The gist: it’s truly worse than you think.

Most of us have now, even if unwittingly, ceded much of our autonomy to Silicon Valley firms and their meticulously polished and expertly crafted algorithms that do our thinking for us. Sure, that sounds preposterous, but it’s not. It’s the system working. Because once we allow our data to be mined, these algorithms do what they’re designed to do: keep us locked into our screens. To do that Big Tech designed a system that gently guides users – through recommendations’ and the like – into ‘like-minded’ groups, which in practice means syphoning people into insular digital worlds that sometimes bear no resemblance to reality.

Facebook (ie, parent company Meta) works “the same way you would be manipulated by a magician. A magician shows your card tricks, says, “pick a card, any card.” What you don’t realize was that they’ve done a setup, so you pick the card they want you to pick. And that’s how Facebook works,” Roger McNamee, a venture capitalist who was an early investor in Facebook, says in the documentary.

“Facebook sits there and says, they, you pick your friends, you pick the links that you follow.’ But that’s all nice; it’s just like the magician: Facebook is in charge of your newsfeed.”

This is how America, only of late, trapped ourselves in this loop of hyper-partisan idiocracy. It’s not just reality TV; it’s our tech-sugar daddies.

Yet here, even the highly respected (for the moment at least…) PEW Research Center goes out of its way to note this historic anomaly: “Trump approval more polarized than for any other president since Eisenhower,” their headline from this August reads.

You don’t agree with your lovers, like-minded coworkers, or even friends as much as most Americans now innately agree – even in the face of distortions, half-truths, and whole lies – with whatever is being pushed by their chosen party on any given day.

“Since we all are operating on a different set of facts, when that happens at scale you’re no longer able to reconcile with or even consume information that contradicts with that worldview that you’ve created,” Rashida Richardson, director of policy research at A.I. Now Institute and a professor at NYU School of Law, argues. “That means we aren’t actually being objective, constructive individuals.”

The problem stems from these algorithms having almost unfettered access to most all of our data. Unlike our European allies, the American system leaves us seemingly powerless from the moment we boot up a new device for the first time, log-in and then start clicking “Accept” on all the small print. Across the Atlantic, our friends are truly empowered individuals: they get to opt-in to being tracked, while here in the ‘Live Free or Die’-States-of-America, we have to opt-out of becoming commodities – and wholly known, followed, monitored, spied on ones at that – that Silicon Valley’s brightest view as test dummies for their ever-evolving social experiment.

We’re trained to think these algorithms are flawless and understand us better than even we do, but Guillaume Chaslot, a former YouTube engineer, says that’s a convenient myth we’ve sold ourselves (with the help of Silicon Valley algorithms, of course).

“The algorithm is actually trying to find a few rabbit holes that are very powerful and try to find which rabbit hole is the closest to your interests,” Chaslot contends. “And then if you start watching one of those videos it will be recommended over and over again.”

Just four years ago, an online conspiracy led a North Carolina man to trek hundreds of miles to a family-friendly restaurant here in the nation’s capital. Then, while children were playing ping pong, he opened fire on the establishment’s locks with his AR-15. He was doing a righteous deed; at least according to the online conspiracy theories that Facebook directed him and countless hundreds of thousands – and potentially even millions – of people to, as if #Pizzagate was reality.

That whole terrifying fiasco was sponsored by Silicon Valley. While they’re the easiest whipping boy, they’re by no means outliers.

Many of us – this professor included – rolled our eyes around this gloriously round world when we heard NBA star Kyrie Irving had endorsed the flat earth conspiracy, even as NASA has gone out of its way for decades to teach us all that indeed, Galileo was right: the earth is a sphere.

Still, facts don’t matter when your brain is assaulted by Silicon Valley manipulators. Even Irving was caught off guard when he finally realized he’d been duped into going down a purposefully constructed “rabbit hole.” It wasn’t bunnies that constructed that black hole: It was YouTube.

“The flat earth conspiracy theory was recommended hundreds of millions of times based on the algorithm,” Chaslot sympathetically says from a place of knowledge, after helping engineer YouTube’s manipulation machine in a past life. “It’s easy to think that it’s just a few stupid people who get convinced, but the algorithm is getting smarter and smarter every day. So today, they’re convincing the people that the earth is flat, but tomorrow they will be convincing you of something.”

Twitter is also a culprit. For years now their business model – which is enshrined in their deceptively mysterious algorithms – has all but forced users into a false reality of their own making. As former Google design ethicist Tristan Harris points out in “The Social Dilemma,” a MIT study from 2018 revealed ‘fake news’ spreads, on average, some six times faster than real news.

“What is that world gonna look like when one has a six times advantage than the other?” a bewildered Harris asks.

He’s not alone.

“They tilt the floor of human behavior. They make some behavior harder and some easier, and you’re always free to walk up the hill but fewer people do,” Aza Raskin, a co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology and Earth Species Project, says.

“We created a system that biases towards false information; not because you want to, but because false information makes the companies more money. And the truth – truth is boring,” Harris says. “It’s a disinformation for profit business model, you make money, the more you allow unregulated messages to reach anyone for the best price.”

Put another way, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google, and the like allegedly make Trillions of dollars off spreading and even force-feeding lies to all of us.

Some politicians have gotten this but not many. Last year Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) unleashed what any good farmer would say as the Senate Commerce Committee heard testimony about Big Tech’s intrusion into people’s minds, tastes, and – of course – their politics.

Watch the hearing on Understanding the Use of Persuasive Technology on Internet Platforms here.

“I’m probably going to be dead and gone – and I’m probably thankful for it – when all of this shit comes to fruition,” Tester told witnesses, including Harris. “This scares me to death.”

It should scare you to death too, especially those of us who have gotten into bitter fights with friends or who have dismissed or banished family members over political disagreements.

I’m a political communications professor and a 14-year veteran of the congressional press corps, so I know politics. And politics – at least its former core – is people. And these algorithms have enabled, even encouraged, many of us to forget about the people right next to us, and instead cling to political tribes that benefit from the vitriol.

Contentious political issues rake in millions for both of today’s dominant political parties, so politicians of all stripes foment them. They’ve been doing that for centuries. But we’re now in the early stages of a vicious, potentially deadly storm as partisan fundraising goals are perfectly aligning with deceptive Silicon Valley software. Sadly, people seem left out of the algorithms, even when employed by well-intentioned politicians.

So in this election season, consider bucking the system and do the opposite of what these multi-billion dollar tech firms want you to do: Please, just listen to someone you disagree with. Reach out to a family member or friend who you’ve lost touch with – or blew up at – over politics run amok. Never forget: their heart is the same as yours and mine. It’s all of our minds that have been distorted by Silicon Valley.

Betrayal, backstabbing, enduring salacious gossip, exchanging nasty barbs with older colleagues and working through bitter tribal infighting are nothing new to Eliza Orlins. And no, she’s never served in Albany. She learned how to stay focused while enduring a constant onslaught from all sides while locked on Vanuatu – still bubbling volcanic islands located in the South Pacific – back in 2004 when she was 21-years-old and competing in front of millions on “Survivor.” Now 17 years wiser, she’s deploying those skills in her bid to become the top cop of New York City’s most powerful borough.

To win the Democratic primary, in the coming weeks Orlins has to overcome the money, attacks and ambitions of the three men in the race, along with the five female candidates also vying to claim the title of Manhattan’s first female district attorney in history. Things are heating up in the race on this cosmopolitan island that’s 15 times smaller than the one she was plopped on nearly two decades ago. But she likes, or maybe thrives in the pressure cooker. So to her political opponents and their powerful allies who don’t want this progressive to win, she says, “Bring it on.”

Politics is treated as a game by many in today’s political class of wannabe reality TV and perpetually fading Twitter stars, but Orlins isn’t a politician. Or at least she wasn’t until she ditched her power suits (well, most of ’em) for blue jeans and perfectly bright pink shirts emblazoned with her name since she launched her bid to challenge the powerful interests who run and manipulate New York. Heads aren’t turning just because of her campaign’s vibrant colors. As a public defender, she’s lived in back of the highly airbrushed veil city leaders have meticulously unfurled over the city throughout its storied 400+ year history. Unlike past and present power brokers, Orlins is firmly a red pill kinda gal – almost a pusher, of sorts, as she can’t help but feed those eye-opening pills to any and every audience she addresses — even an audience of one.

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“It’s not that the system is broken; it’s that the system is working as designed,” the now 38-year-old tells me within the first few minutes of our extended and exclusive interview.

She speaks with the surety of someone who has seen the light, even if the light was dark. For generations now, the city has been iconic for the image its leaders sold the world – from its funky fashion and fine-to-fatty food scenes to its trend-setting entertainment and iconic finance sectors. But there’s another New York not used in the city’s branding campaigns — one cloaked in law and order, even as victims are jailed while many abusive officers have been granted immunity from their alleged crimes against the citizens they swore oaths to protect, let alone serve. While many NYPD officers are heroic, many others in its ranks have been accused of being the real criminals — something the city’s top brass has enabled for years now.

That’s why this DA race is pivotal. Political leaders have used the city’s DA offices — spread across its five boroughs, though Manhattans is the most powerful and wide-reaching — to cover for much of the brutish, at times even thuggish and racist, tactics some of the city’s police officers have used to harass, abuse, drive through, beat, sodomize, target, rape and even kill unarmed residents, like when the department fired former officer Daniel Pantaleo for killing Eric Garner, even if no charges were ever brought.

Bad police are one problem. Poor prosecutors doing the bidding of those bad cops is quite another. Working and living inside of the system for years either makes you cynical, burned out or more impassioned and driven to change it than you ever thought imaginable.

“The heartbreak and anger and frustration at the way the system has always operated built up to a point where I was like, ‘OK, I have to do something,’” Orlins tells me.

She’s been a dutiful, behind-the-scenes operator in this perpetually unfolding tragedy through her more than a decade working with the Legal Aid Society. There’s only so much an overworked and underpaid public defender can do, and Orlins has ambitious goals.

“I felt extremely frustrated about the ways in which, you know, the prosecutor’s office operated,” Orlins says, adding that’s especially because prosecutors, of all people, should know where they’re sending convicts. “Prisons and jails right now are inhumane and dehumanizing and really violent institutions – I mean, just inherently punitive and terrible.”

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BEYOND THE BRIGHT LIGHTS

Times Square is almost a smokescreen, and those who live in the projects, or who work in the trenches, see through it. They inhabit the real, gritty New York — the one just beyond the bright lights and vacuous, if enticing, promises filling those famous flashing screens. While 337,000 New Yorkers have previously served time, the state’s prison population is currently comprised of more than 40,000 people; a lopsided 75% of whom are people of color, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

While New York is better than many states, it’s incarceration rate outpaces every nation on Earth except Cuba – yeah, the one infamous for arbitrarily imprisoning, brutally beating, horrifically torturing and detaining protestors before they even protest at the will or whims of its heavy-handed leaders and the security forces they control, according to Human Rights Watch.

As a public defender who’s been the only lawyer, advocate and, sometimes, counselor available to more than 3,000 low-income New Yorkers over the years, Orlins has reels of stories from the trenches. Still, there’s one incident that’s almost become a part of her, perfectly encapsulating what she’s promising to do if elected DA.

Earlier in her career she represented a 50-year-old Black man who, after some 25 years, worked his way up to assistant manager at the Gristedes grocery store in lower Manhattan, as Orlins tells it. One evening he purchased two bags of groceries with his employee discount before bringing the food to his family. He closed up the shop around 11pm and headed to the subway and boarded an uncrowded A train headed uptown. He then plopped his two grocery bags on the empty seat next to him and settled in for his usual, lonely and long trek home.

At the 125th St. stop two uniformed NYPD officers boarded the train car, grabbed his family’s groceries, dumped them on the disgusting floor and then arrested him on charges of taking up two seats on the mostly empty subway car, Orlins passionately recounts. He was booked and forced to spend the night in jail before Orlins secured his release the following day.

As much as Orlins burns with righteous anger at those officers, incidents like this are fueling her bid to upend the Manhattan DA’s office for not just being filled with enablers of injustices but also co-conspirators, of sorts, alongside many of the worst apples in the NYPD.

“The prosecutor has this absolutely unchecked power to make these decisions as to what crimes get prosecuted, what sentences get sought, whether someone gets held in jail pretrial — while they are presumed innocent on a bail that they’re too poor to afford to buy their freedom,” Orlins says.

Sadly, it’s not a one-off story: It’s daily life for too many in New York City.

“The anger and heartbreak and frustration about cases just like his — of which tens of thousands per year come through our criminal courts — it’s overwhelming and unbearable,” Orlins says.

Forget trickle-down economics – she’s focused on trickle-down injustice. She contends much of it is flowing from the criminal justice system itself, especially the DA’s office.

“These decisions that prosecutors make have a huge impact on the lives of millions of people,” Orlins contends. “These decisions that prosecutors make have a huge impact on the lives of, you know, millions of people, because it’s not just the person who’s charged with a crime. It’s their family members, you know, their loved ones. It’s their children who then maybe end up in foster care, or some lose their everything.”

The current Manhattan DA, Cy Vance, Jr., set up a Conviction Integrity Unit. Orlins laughs it off as “in name only,” something done to appease the many piranhas in the New York City press corps.

“It was bullshit. It just didn’t even begin to, like, really acknowledge and rectify the past wrongs,” Orlins bemoans.

That’s why she isn’t promising to fix a few broken windows. She’s vowing to destroy the system itself. But she’s tidy, so the other half of her pitch is to then work to rehabilitate the system, infusing it with the same warmth she — along with so many other public defenders across the nation — has shown to thousands of downtrodden clients.

She’s been dubbed as “radical” by some when it comes to drug policy. But she flips the script and argues, if anything, the current system is what’s truly insane and out of step with citizens.

In the last 40 years America’s anti-drug and anti-addict laws have given prosecutors license to rack up a 500% increase in the number of people imprisoned in the US, according to the Sentencing Project. With two million of our neighbors locked behind cold, unforgiving steel bars, we’ve earned the dubious title of global leader when it comes to locking up our own citizens, which we do more than any other nation. Orlins says it’s madness and nonsensical.

“When we lock people up for possessing drugs, we actually make our city less safe,” Orlins unashamedly argues. “If you just look at the data, it shows that in fact when you make sure people have services and help and treatment and all these things, like, then they’re less likely to re-offend or be involved with the criminal legal system again.”

The math is broken, especially knowing more than 760,000 people have died of an overdose since 1990, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. The stigma stemming from the ‘war on drugs,’ Orlins argues, is costing American lives.

“People are dying from overdoses because we don’t have the normalization of these things,” Orlins says. “We need to make sure that people are safe. Education is important. Incarceration is never going to help. Decriminalization is the right way to go.”

Besides better education, as opposed to the scare tactics the government has employed for half a century now, Orlins wants to make test strips for fentanyl readily available to all who want them, while also establishing syringe exchanges to protect addicts who currently use any dirty needle they can find.

As for the oldest occupation known to (Wo)man? It’s a job, Orlins is proud to tell audiences. So proud, she even eagerly does a call and response proclaiming the dignity of the profession.

“Sex work,” Orlins starts.

“Is work,” the crowd replies.

“Sex work,” Orlins shouts louder, revving up the audience which includes the trans sex worker who introduced her.

“Is work!” the increasingly enthusiastic crowd chants at Washington Square Park.

“Sex work!”

“Is work!”

As for reforming the NYPD? She doesn’t go as far as NWA, but Orlins is eager to be the prosecuting attorney who puts as many NYPD officers in cages as needed.

“Prosecute bad cops. The cops are, you know, systemically racist and they’re beating people up and assault people,” is something Orlins says she’s “been talking about forever.”

She’s progressive, not partisan. That means even some in her own party are fair game, and she names names. Rallying around US Attorney Preet Bharara after he was fired for investigating former-President Trump is one thing, but Orlins says no Democrat should idolize him because of the totality of his record.

“He’s like mass-incarcerator-in-chief. This is a person who has prosecuted people using racist gang conspiracy laws that disproportionately impact Black and Brown people,” Orlins argues. “And folks herald Preet as this resistance hero, and I’m like, ‘Is this the person you want to be idolizing? Really? Really?’”

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SURVIVAL PACK: TWITTER, CHECK. INSTAGRAM, CHECK. SMILE, CHECK.

The New York native has a lot of fight in her, but tearing down many of the most sacred cows in politics, namely police and members of her own party, can easily backfire. Orlins has found some of the same skills she fine-tuned surviving island living in the South Pacific, while also becoming a fan favorite, are proving handy in this latest fight.

Orlins didn’t spend all her college days enduring physical and metaphorical earthquakes on “Survivor” while rocking bikinis, even if those images are still some of the first to pop up when you Google her (along with a live MySpace page – Yeah, guess they’re still around. Who knew? — but her campaign says it’s not hers).

Back then, Orlins was also racking up impressive academic accolades, like making the Dean’s List each semester at Syracuse University before graduating summa cum laude in 2005. And, of course, she double majored in international relations and political science, while also minoring in Chinese. She also stood out at the Fordham University School of Law, graduating cum laude in 2008.

The public defender — the only job she ever really wanted — is more than her enviable brain and body, though. She also has insane reserves of energy, reminiscent of her political idol, Elizabeth Warren. When told this, the candidate — a self-proclaimed Warren Democrat — genuinely gushes.

“Awwwww, that’s like one of the best compliments ever. I love that,” Orlins says as her smile is felt through the phone, “The way she would run on to every stage — that would totally be me. You know, like, just running around taking selfies with everyone!”

Orlins’ energy, ultimately, seems fueled by her seemingly endless reserves of optimism. While it’s largely wasted on cynical veteran reporters, it’s been magnetic for her grassroots campaign to upend business as usual in NYC. That’s helped her attract swarms of volunteers.

“One of the quotes we use on the campaign is, ‘Enthusiasm is a force multiplier,’” Orlins enthusiastically says, “and I really feel like it’s true. You know, I’m very enthusiastic, obviously, and so are the members of my team, and so are our volunteers. And it just magnifies, and that’s why we’ve got this grassroots army.”

It’s working. She’s highly accessible and strategic on social media, where she’s amassed more than 120k followers on Twitter and another 28.7k followers on Instagram – an account she runs herself. I found this out some five minutes after following her. Her account followed me back, so I tested it with a simple message.

“How many people run this account? Impressed with how quickly the follow back was,” I cynically messaged, expecting a volunteer to respond.

“Me! Just me,” Orlins replied a few minutes later with her signature pep!

The infectiousness of her genuine heart, relatable message (at least to average New Yorkers, not so much the possees who run Wall Street, city hall and the police union, to name but a few) and tangible charisma helped her rake in more than $1 million from more than 10,000 individual contributors.

Reality TV living and being accessible and open on social media come with their own risks, as Orlins has learned over the years.

“That kind of opened up a world of being scrutinized and in the spotlight, publicly criticized and having to withstand public pressure and online hate and death threats and, you know, rape threats and all of the things that I’ve gone through over the last 17 years,” Orlins admits, before her optimism rears its happy, if fearless, head. “I’m uniquely situated to be like, ‘Yeah, who am I afraid of? I’m fearless. I will stand up to anyone. Bring it on.’”

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WHEN REALITY AND TV COLLIDE

No one could have known it at the time, especially not a young college student, but the success of “Survivor” put its producer, Mark Burnett, on the map. That gave him the perch to create and produce another hit show, “The Apprentice.”

As you know, the show’s former host eventually moved to Washington, where he (with the help of the conservative and alt-right media machines, spineless aides, conspiracy theorists, rejuvenated neo-nazis, worthless enablers, GOP leaders and the party’s unprincipled rank and file alike) transformed millions of American minds. Think “alternative facts,” which sadly now is a real thing because the memes have now moved beyond our screens and into our streets and even the nation’s majestic Capitol building. In its wake, the nation’s current political class, both federally and at the state level, now behave more like cast members on a shitty reality show than like the serious thinkers who preceded them.

“You were young, but, like, do you have any regrets about being a part of the reality-TV-ization of the American mind?” I ask. “And it’s a hard question — I’m a jackass.”

“I don’t regret having been on the show,” Orlins says without hesitation. “The show I was on was for entertainment…it’s not like I was doing a news show from Vanuatu. This is something very different than this current landscape of the way in which they’ve enabled certain people to infiltrate people’s minds.”

More so, Orlins is proud she stayed true to herself in spite of the often addictive lights and cameras.

“It never derailed my plans to become a public defender,” Orlins says with pride, “I have absolutely used my platform for good. It’s very different than, like, someone who’s gone from slumlord to “Apprentice” to whatever.”

She doesn’t say it, but she seems to wish us damn reporters would ask fewer questions about that portion of her resume and more on the diverse array of clients she’s devoted her adult life to serving.

“I spent far more of my life and my time in the courthouse — you know, in the trenches, fighting for people in front of judges — than I ever spent on TV,” Orlins says — a good line she’s used with other pesky reporters, “That was like a little tiny blip.”

Orlins isn’t one to dwell on the past, unless it’s America’s racist past, which she argues continues to taint everything — including foundational pillars of every American community, like our criminal justice, education, economic and health care systems.

In true Elizabeth Warren fashion, she’s doing everything at a brisk pace in these final days of the primary.

“I feel exhausted, but also the stakes are so high — people’s lives are, like, hanging in the balance,” Orlins tells me. “This election means so much that I don’t have a choice. Like, I have to stay focused and use my moral outrage to motivate me to keep going forward.”

One thing is undeniable: With Orlins fueled by moral outrage, win or lose she’s not going anywhere, because New York City is home to enough tragedy, injustice and mass incarceration to keep this fighter punching above her weight for decades to come.

WASHINGTON — When it comes to drug policy, the raging opioid crisis and mass incarceration, federal lawmakers aren’t just out of touch with average Americans of all political stripes, they’re so negligent as to be complicit in the pain felt by millions.

That’s why we’re excited to announce the relaunch of our new national alt-weekly [RIP]. Along with a complete redesign, our new site also includes new sections that embody a reinvigorated ethos: We do culture differently.

Some may wonder why a news outlet includes music, visual art, comic and poetry sections in the first place. What do those sections have to do with criminal justice and drug policy? The answer is simple: We cover American culture in all forms.

Yes, we often focus on legalization, but no, we’re not a pro-drug advocacy site. We just don’t have the luxury of wearing congressionally-approved blinders. We live in the real world, where the American people are rapidly unwinding the war on drugs in spite of congressional inaction.

Even as Congress has remained derelict, states and cities across the nation are acting swiftly to unwind federal prohibitions on an array of substances. So TheNewsStation.com is here, in part, to do what Congress has failed to do: Provide Americans resources on these increasingly mainstream substances.

I have a personal stake in this issue. I don’t want anyone to repeat my own mistakes.

Maybe it’s because, on top of being a congressional reporter for 15 years now, I’m also a professor, but I’ve been open about my use of marijuana for years. I only recently opened up about the slew of other substances I ingested over the years, but I left out some things.

Like the story of when I ran away as a 15-year-old. I took a Greyhound bus from Chicago to Santa Cruz, Calif., and it isn’t something I would recommend to anyone, especially not a teenager. But the ride didn’t end there. Once I was rescued by my loving family (which involved an intense foot chase, a gang of goth kids with chains beating me, and a swarm of confused Santa Cruz beat cops), I proceeded to get deep into cocaine.

In my late teens, I spent $15,000 to $20,000 on cocaine — a small fortune zapped in a matter of six months. Meanwhile I was also earning good money laying foundations for homes, but the money flew out because I couldn’t ever snort enough.

My dealer even convinced me to find a second source of income when the construction season slowed. Instead of seeking help, I listened and got a job at Abercrombie and Fitch. I lasted three days. I blew lines in the bathroom whenever possible, then danced to their shitty techno while folding preppy shirts at record-breaking speeds. My dinner breaks included drinking a 40-oz. brew and snorting a $40 bag of coke. When my shift ended, I’d go and buy another bag. Even a druggy knew the math didn’t work out, so, after a mere three days of retail hell, I walked out.

Soon after the A&F job ended and my money dried up, I became homeless, sleeping out of my baby blue 1982 Cadillac Coupe de Ville (the sound system was worth more than the car, which tells you everything).

I’m roughly 6’ 5” and at about 215 lbs currently, I’m fairly skinny. In that dark period in my life, I withered down to about 150 lbs: Pale, sickly, ghost-like, lonely, shackled to a substance and imprisoned by the false promise of a higher high.

We won’t get into details, but I escaped the bondage of coke with the help of family, friends and religion (yeah, I studied to be a pastor and gave sermons in my other past life), which is why it’s infuriating and heartbreaking watching states and local communities transition out of the “war-on-drugs” era without any assistance from the federal government.

Sure, marijuana is now recreationally legal in 18 states, here in the nation’s capital, and in some tribal lands and US territories, but that’s nothing. And not just because last month PEW reported some 90% of Americans are now OK with either medicinal or recreational cannabis.

Americans are moving past marijuana. In Oregon, possession of any and all drugs has been decriminalized (and, as we covered this fall, most voters supported decriminalization as a way to help stem the opioid crisis). Drugs were also decriminalized completely in Washington state for about the past four months, but now possession of harder substances is a misdemeanor, if still no longer a felony. Other cities are following suit.

Shrooms are now en vogue across America. While psilocybin (where the magic in “magic mushrooms” comes from) is now basically decriminalized here in the nation’s capital, Denver, Oakland, Santa Cruz, Cambridge, Mass., Ann Arbor, Mich., among others.

I’ve been a regular adjunct professor at John Hopkins University (MA in Government and Public Policy) since 2016, and even I was surprised to learn JHU is home to the Johns Hopkins Psychedelic Research Unit — surely America’s top research institute on the potential benefits of an array of federally illegal substances. They’re not alone.

Clinical trials have also taken place — or are underway now — at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Yale, the University of Wisconsin, Emory University, the University of Chicago, Stanford, Imperial College London, the University of Arizona, Washington University School of Medicine, etc. NYU and the University of California, Berkeley have their own centers devoted to psychedelics coming soon.

This is why TheNewsStation.com has a robust Health and Wellness section, where we simply take the new research coming out regularly on one substance or another that we then flip into a short, easily accessible piece.

We strive to step out of the way and let the research speak for itself, whether that’s showcasing a study revealing marijuana may threaten people with heart rhythm disorders or new research revealing the promise many researchers see in psilocybin for treating depression and anxiety.

Our pages are diverse. We haven’t been around long, and we’ve already had op-eds from the head of Nevada’s largest addiction rehab center and a pastor who manages a harm reduction center in Ohio. I even profiled a comic in Pennsylvania who turned his past debilitating heroin addiction into a brutally honest and kinda funny podcast about his past struggles and current habits. And we regularly publish prisoners, now often in tandem with the Prison Journalism Project.

The American people need Congress to join these conversations. The opioid crisis has ripped through every community in recent years, yet federal policies still cloak these substances — the ones millions of Americans obviously like — with stigma. These shouldn’t be taboo topics. They’re as American as Bruce Springsteen or Jay-Z.

Congress may dupe and lie regularly, but TheNewsStation.com is here to inform. Personally, I want to use our e-pages to provide a safe space for people to come and learn from experts, so others aren’t saddled with the regrets I am — along with all those regrets saddling so many of my congressional subjects, family members and friends — at least the ones still breathing.

The federal dereliction doesn’t stop there. With little to no federal action, the nation now has a more than $17 billion marijuana industry — one that remains federally illegal. That’s insane.

But as a storyteller, I’m excited about this beat, because this new industry is overflowing with amazing true crime drama.

We’re already telling the stories of grifters (like the marijuana behemoths allegedly trying to bribe Black marijuana businesses owners in Oakland for their equity licenses), corrupt politicians (take the top political consultant to the Texas agriculture commissioner who was charged recently with allegedly soliciting $150,000 as a part of a hemp licensing scheme), the lingering black market (which is only perpetuated by the federal prohibition), even Western corporations trying to monopolize farmers’ cannabis in the small African nation of Eswatini, etc.

When I was a Rolling Stone contributor in 2019, I was tapped to moderate a panel on CBD at the Aspen Ideas Fest. Turns out, it was the only sold-out event in the Health portion of the weeklong retreat, because CBD is popular everywhere (even in the evangelical south, as former CNN and Yahoo! reporter Chris Moody highlighted in a feature for us this month). I had to laugh.

Of course the Rolling Stone reporter is going to be all in, right?

I had three of the top CBD researchers in the nation at my disposal, so we spent the bulk of our time debunking CBD myths and pointing out many of the unproven claims today’s snake-oil sales folks are making about products in dire need of further testing. The poor, if wealthy, Aspenites who bought tickets and packed the room to hear about this new “wonder substance” all left the ballroom deflated. Sorry, but it would have been dishonest and a disservice to do it any other way.

I may live and work in Washington, but I don’t have the luxury of dwelling in the bubble the nation’s politicians erected for themselves.

I also know marijuana and other substances are not all there is to life. Cocaine was my life once. But it strangled almost all of the life out of me. Marijuana is something I use to alleviate chronic pain. Anyone who knows the ridiculous amount of caps I wear on the daily would never call me a pothead.

Sure, some winos and craft beer drinkers read publications devoted to their libation of choice, but the substances any of us consume regularly — or just on special occasions — do not define us. Hence, TheNewsStation.com has a scope of coverage as broad and diverse as the nation.

Our Feature section will mostly include content that has nothing to do with drug policy or criminal justice: Even as Congress pretends substances are all evil, we know life is more than substances.

That’s also why our new Lit. section is an exciting melting pot tucked inside of our news site. It’s basically an arts and literary journal we created to highlight the talent of established or currently unknown writers, visual artists, spoken word competitors, musicians and everyday culture makers. Co-mingling. In one space.

We love artists working in all mediums, so we’re giving them a platform to play around and produce amazing art.

We also love satire and art of all forms, hence we want to be a platform for starting-off and established comics and political cartoonists alike to push their envelope and expand their audience base.

Music is life (and yes, I used to cover music ages ago, and for 15 years I’ve honestly said, “I survive DC politics by embracing DC’s band scene.” Truth), so we want to introduce readers to new music from an array of genres. But we also want to reorient how people consume music: Music is art, thus we’re publishing artist’s lyrics next to some of the best poets in the world, along with works from some passionate prisoners.

News is often draining — but never here.

Our Lit. section is curated by talented author Traci O’Dea, who is also a literary editor. She’s so good, she tore down barriers on day one as she wedged a rabbi’s insightful poem between the works of a prisoner and a @Playboy correspondent — not to mention a talented rapper, Grammy-nominated singer and other renowned poets.

Our goal isn’t merely to inform you. Our spirit is exemplified across our new site: Let it and our diverse content areas rejuvenate your spirits. Play, learn and relax on our pages.

We’re different, because we want to mirror the nation itself in the diversity of topics, voices and artists we highlight.

Our model relies on local voices — an ever-expanding roster of veteran journalists, young contributors, established or aspiring comics, poets and funky artists spread throughout local communities across the nation. We know local journalists and artists tell their community’s stories best. Woven together, those stories make up the tapestry that is America.

Since I took over as managing editor last fall, as we’ve been quietly overhauling the site, we were also publishing pieces from more than 140 new contributors, including veteran journalists Ben Jacobs (frm. The Guardian), Thor Benson (frm. Daily Beast), Morgan Baskin (frm. VICE), Chris Moody (frm. CNN and Yahoo!), Daniel Newhauser (frm. VICE & National Journal), Jean Lotus (frm. UPI), Alex Thomas (Playboy), Leland Rucker (author, frm. Boulder Weekly), etc. That’s just a few, and more to come.

We’ve also been working on establishing relationships with local outlets across the nation. Since the fall, TNS has provided or published content from the Colorado Independent, Salt Lake Tribune, ProPublica, Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, Texas Tribune, News and Observer, Inewsource (San Diego), NC Primer, DigBoston, Prison Journalism Project, The Pitch (Kansas City), Random Length News (L.A. and Long Beach), Counterpunch, Mississippi Today, National Native News (NPR), etc. Just a start to the collaborations we have in the works.

If you like the site, share it! We’re new, and we need your help spreading the word. Because only with your help will the nation’s political class finally catch up to where so many communities already are: Living in the real world; the only one we know, blemishes and all.

Sincerely,

Matt Laslo

Managing Editor

First published in 2021.