Marc Elias. (Photo by David Jolkovski for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Earlier this month, Marc Elias, the prominent Democratic lawyer turned media entrepreneur, was at his home just outside Washington when the milestone arrived. The outlet he founded in 2020, Democracy Docket—a digital news organization that covers voting rights, elections, and the courts from an unapologetically pro-democracy standpoint—had been inching toward 50,000 paid subscribers. The team didn’t expect to cross that line until after Labor Day. But a stronger-than-anticipated August put the number suddenly within reach, only 17 months after launching a premium membership program.
“Every day I would ask, ‘When do we think we’re going to hit it?’” Elias told me by phone on Thursday.
Then, on Wednesday, August 13, his phone buzzed with a text from managing director Allie Rothenberg. She sent a screen shot showing the paid subscriber tally at exactly 50,000. Elias, describing it to me as a “momentous and meaningful” marker, immediately emailed the team with the news. Two weeks later, Democracy Docket celebrated again, this time surpassing 500,000 subscribers on YouTube.
For Elias, the success has been vindicating. From the start, he believed there was a sizable audience hungry for in-depth coverage of the legal and political battles shaping American elections. “When Democracy Docket started,” Elias recalled, “I’d tell people, ‘I’m going to build a media company.’ And they’d shoot back, ‘You’re definitely not going to do that.’ And I’d respond, ‘No, I am.’”
Today, Democracy Docket is thriving. At $120 per year, its 50,000 subscribers translate to…
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Laura Ingraham attacks the trans community. (Screen grab via SnapStream)
Targeting the Trans: One day after the deadly shooting at a Catholic school in Minneapolis, right-wing media turned up the anti-trans rhetoric, weaponizing the suspect’s gender identity against the entire community. Outlets and personalities sought to frame the violence as proof that transgender people pose a public threat. That line of attack (shamefully) reached the White House briefing room on Thursday, when a Daily Wire figure pressed press secretary Karoline Leavitt on whether the FBI should “institute a new class of domestic terrorism that involves trans ideology.” The same individual asked if the administration would support such a move. Leavitt replied she would need to “check with the appropriate people.”
Meanwhile, Fox News got in on the action, with Laura Ingraham railing against what she called the “trans cult” and airing banners like: “TRANS MAINSTREAMING, TRAGIC RESULTS.” And across the right-wing ecosystem, sites such as Breitbart and The Gateway Pundit emphasized the suspect’s gender identity and linked it to the horrific violence, as if identity itself were responsible.
👁️ Turning a blind eye: While CNN and MSNBC led their prime time programming with the disturbing exodus playing out at the CDC, Fox News largely opted to turn a blind eye to the situation, only briefly covering the situation from a vantage point sympathetic to the White House.
Matt Gertz wrote about how Fox News let Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spin on "Fox & Friends": "There are fewer senior leaders at CDC to stand up to Kennedy and his conspiracy theories. And after this morning, we can expect Fox to be in his corner." [MMFA]
Cracker Barrel quietly deleted its webpages dedicated to D.E.I. and LGBTQ Pride after the right-wing media uproar over its new logo. [CNN]
Triggered? Sean Hannity spent much of his day…
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