Sometimes I’d rather not be right. In January, reacting to Donald Trump affectionately referring to the trio of tyrants Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong Un as “very fine people,” I wrote that two constants in the Trump Era are his affection for murderous authoritarians and Russian efforts to screw with American politics. The former is well-known, the latter, less recognized. Moscow mounted information warfare operations to boost Trump during both the 2016 election—most notably, the hack-and-leak attack in which Russian cyber-operatives swiped Democratic emails and documents and WikiLeaks released them—and the 2020 election, when Russian intelligence operatives spread disinformation about Joe and Hunter Biden and Ukraine. The first op helped the Putin-friendly Trump reach the White House; the second failed to keep him in office, but it had the side-benefit of fueling the House Republicans’ baseless (and now fizzling) impeachment crusade against President Biden. Putin went one for two.

I noted in that Our Land issue: “[I]t's a good bet that Putin this year will try once again to mess in an American election… [As Putin] continues to commit horrendous war crimes in Ukraine, he has even more reason to clandestinely boost Trump and win the rubber match.” At long last, official warnings have arrived.

On Wednesday, Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee that Russia remains “the most active foreign threat to our elections.” She noted that the Kremlin’s “goals in such influence operations tend to include eroding trust in US democratic institutions, exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the United States, and degrading Western support to Ukraine." All of this, obviously, would be to Trump’s benefit. She pointed out that artificial intelligence and deepfakes will presumably be deployed in this effort, and she cited China and Iran as other threats.

Russia’s latest attack on the United States is already underway. As the Associated Press reported in March:

Russian state media and online accounts tied to the Kremlin have spread and amplified misleading and incendiary content about US immigration and border security. The campaign seems crafted to stoke outrage and polarization before the 2024 election for the White House, and experts who study Russian disinformation say Americans can expect more to come as Putin looks to weaken support for Ukraine and cut off a vital supply of aid.

The New York Times reported this week that a disinformation operation—most likely mounted by Russians—has been circulating a video that purports to disclose the existence of a troll farm in Ukraine that is being run by the CIA and targeting the US election to prevent Trump’s election. It’s a clever instance of cyber-gaslighting, for it is Russian trolls who are disseminating fakery to hurt Biden and help Trump.

Microsoft, according to the Times, concluded this video “came from a group it calls Storm-1516, a collection of disinformation experts who now focus on creating videos they hope might go viral in America. The group most likely includes veterans of the Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin-aligned troll farm that sought to influence the 2016 election.” Another recent video from this gang—or a similar one—claimed to show Ukrainian soldiers burning an effigy of Trump and blaming him for delays in military aid shipments to Ukraine. The aim was to bolster MAGA’s opposition to aid for Ukraine. (You can’t send money to those anti-Trump ingrates!) Alex Jones’ conspiracy site posted the video that was not hard for experts to spot as a ruse. (The Ukrainian soldiers had Russian accents.)

At the Senate hearing, Haines testified that combatting disinformation “from foreign influence or interference is an absolute priority for the intelligence community” and that the US government is prepared “to address the challenge.” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the chair of the intelligence committee, said, “We’ve got to do a better job of making sure Americans of all political stripes understand what is very probably coming their way over the next…less than six months.”

In fact, disinformation experts in and out of government regularly say a crucial element in thwarting such operations is to alert the public that it is being targeted by bad-faith actors with false messages. Basically, you have to educate people about the big picture and then try to counter the specific instances as they occur. Here’s the rub: In a time of political division, not all major players are keen to do this. Especially when they, too, are engaging in similar activities.

Let’s rewind to the summer of 2016. When the Obama administration determined that Russia was covertly assaulting the US election, the White House reached out to Sen. Mitch McConnell, then the majority leader, to form a united front against the Kremlin’s interference. McConnell told President Obama to take a hike. At the time, Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, was falsely claiming there was no Russian intervention underway. McConnell didn’t want to cross-swords with Trump, and, ever the cynical political operative, he suspected the White House wanted to use this issue to undermine the Republicans. Consequently, he took a powder and placed party over country.

Since then, it’s only gotten worse. Republicans have generally waved away concerns about Putin’s war on US elections, echoing Trump’s phony assertion—disinformation—that it’s a big hoax concocted by Democrats and the media. Moreover, as noted above, many Republicans have gone further, embracing and amplifying Russian disinformation about both Biden and the war in Ukraine. Don’t take my word for it. Recently, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, groused, “Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately, and it’s infected a good chunk of my party’s base.” And Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, complained that anti-Ukraine messages from Russia are “being uttered on the House floor.”

Theirs is a minority position. Most Republicans don’t want to broach the subject of Russian meddling. Putin’s operations are useful for these useful idiots. And their Dear Leader certainly desires no discussion of this. Any such talk is a reminder of how he slid into the White House with Russian assistance, which, in an act of grand betrayal, he aided and abetted by claiming no such thing was happening. Of course, conservative media and ex-lefty Trump-Russia denialists (Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, and others) will pooh-pooh this and pump up the conspiracy theory that countering Russian disinformation is a scheme to impose state-sponsored censorship.

Given all this, how can a strategy to counter Russian information be implemented? If the Biden administration or congressional Democrats elevate these concerns, Trump and his minions will insist this is a plot to undermine him. The Trumpers don’t need to win the argument; they succeed if they turn this matter into yet another political mud-wrestling match that confuses or confounds voters. Still, Haines and others ought to keep trying.

The media has an important role to play. The more attention it can cast upon the Russian efforts, the greater the odds that a slice of the electorate will comprehend the threat and perhaps be inoculated from being unduly influenced by these operations. But how many of you saw coverage of this hearing? How about of the recent Russian actions? The New York Times did not consider this threat to American democracy front-page news, and buried its account of that phony video and the hearing on the bottom of page A19. (The Washington Post did not assign its own reporter to the hearing; it ran an AP account.) My hunch is that Trump’s ceaseless grousing about the “Russia hoax” has made some in the media gun-shy about this stuff.

As McConnell demonstrated eight years ago, it is tough to devise an effective and nonpartisan counter to a foreign threat when an entire political party denies that threat or, worse, sees benefits from it. The Russians aren’t coming, they’re here. Preserving democracy could depend on making sure Putin doesn’t win this round.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.

Nine years ago, my family’s dear friend Sonya Cohen Cramer passed away from cancer at the age of 50. She was one of the best persons I’ve ever known, a confidante, a comrade, and a de facto aunt and guardian angel for my children. She was the heart and soul of a group of neighborhood families that formed a small village of our own. A talented graphic designer and artist, she was a wonderful parent to Dio and Gabel Cramer. And she was a terrific singer who possessed a crystalline and confident voice.

That was no surprise. She hailed from folk music royalty. Her father John Cohen, an artist, photographer, and documentarian, was a member of The New Lost City Ramblers, a folk revival group popular in the late 1950s and early 1960s. (Bob Dylan cited them as an early influence.) Her mother Penelope Seeger, a potter, was the sister of musicians Pete Seeger, Mike Seeger, and Peggy Seeger. When Sonya was a few days old, her parents took her to the 1965 Newport Folk Festival where Uncle Pete played a recording of her gurgling and dedicated the evening's performance to her, noting she represented the hope for the future. That night Dylan went electric.

Music was in Sonya. She never committed herself to pursuing it as a career. But she engaged in musical projects throughout her adult life and informally practiced at home to perfect her technique. She was the vocalist for Last Forever, a fusion-folk group founded by composer Dick Connette that produced several albums. New York Times music critic Stephen Holden cited its 1997 disc as one of the top-ten records of the year. He wrote that that Sonya’s “plain, twangy voice embodies the spirit of Mr. Connette's austere, beautifully constructed rural ballads. A haunting evocation of American prairie life in an era before television.” She occasionally sang with the Roche Sisters. (Yes, she was that good.) Her admirers included Jeff Buckley, Loudon Wainwright III, Meredith Monk, and Kate and Anna McGarrigle. As her husband Reid Cramer puts it, “With a clarity of voice and an appreciation for the depth and breadth of folk music, Sonya made fresh sounds out of the oldest songs of the American musical canon.”

One of my great joys in life was to make music with her. It was an honor to accompany her heavenly voice on the guitar. She lifted my journeyman-like playing to the level of dreams. A favorite tune for us was Richard Thompson’s “Waltzing's for Dreamers.” She knew just how to wrap her vocal cords around that melancholic melody, evoking sympathy and a slight dash of hope.

I tell you all this because Smithsonian Folkways this week released a magnificent album of Sonya’s singing called You’ve Been a Friend to Me. It features songs she recorded across her life, including tunes with the Seeger family and from her Last Forever days, as well as tracks from a recording session she held with musicians Elizabeth Mitchell and Daniel Littleton the year before she died.

Listening to the album is a bittersweet experience. It’s a reminder of special times for me and my family and of the deep loss we still feel nearly a decade later. It’s also an inspiring tribute to Sonya, full of that spirit that now others can experience. The collection includes stunning renditions of classic folk tunes, such as “In the Pines” and “Oh the Wind and Rain,” and a haunting version of the anti-war song “When I Was Most Beautiful,” a translation of a Japanese poem that Pete Seeger set to music in 1969. (He plays the guitar on this track.) She nails Townes Van Zandt’s “No Place to Fall.” The title track is a song that was published as sheet music in 1856 , and which the Carter family made popular with a 1936 recording.

The album ends appropriately with a home recording of “A Life That’s Good,” a song Sonya heard on the television show Nashville while she was suffering from cancer. The lyrics resonated with her: “Sittin' here tonight / By the fire light / It reminds me I already have / More than I should… Yeah, at the end of the day / Lord I pray /I have a life that's good.” That was her last recording. And she was right. She had a life that was good—and, most important, she helped all those who knew her pursue such a life. Her music is only part of her legacy, but it’s the piece that now can be shared widely.

I usually include items about music, films, books, and other cultural matters in the version of the newsletter that goes to premium subscribers to Our Land. But I’d like as many people as possible to hear what Sonya left behind. Please check out the album. It ought to now be streaming on Spotify and elsewhere. Many of the songs are also on YouTube. Below is a music video for “Oh the Wind and Rain” created by Dio, a skilled illustrator, graphic designer, and printmaker, who used a traditional storytelling form, the "crankie.” This short film captures Sonya’s artistic essence and shows that it lives on.

I grew up a New York Jets fan. I practically worshipped Joe Namath. But in recent years it’s been hard to root for them, with co-owner Woody Johnson, a Johnson & Johnson heir, a major funder of Donald Trump. (For all the money he raised for Trump, Johnson was rewarded with an ambassadorship to the United Kingdom.) Now there’s more reason to dump the Jets: Aaron Rodgers, the team’s quarterback. He drew much justifiable criticism for his vaccine opposition during the covid pandemic and for deliberately misleading the public and media about his vaccination status. This past week he went further in right-wing crackpottery by praising Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. In an interview with Tucker Carlson, Rodgers mentioned Carlson’s recent sit-down with Putin, “I’d love to see Joe Biden give an interview where he can speak on the history of the United States in the same way that Putin talked about the history of his country.”

Rodgers was referring to Putin’s long and tedious monologue about Russian history that supposedly supported his illegitimate claim to Ukraine. Much of it was bullshit, and Carlson lacked both the knowledge and fortitude to challenge Putin. As the BBC put it, “Historians say the litany of claims made by Mr. Putin are nonsense—representing nothing more than a selective abuse of history to justify the ongoing war in Ukraine.” Yet Rodgers fell for it, and, worse, used Putin’s talking points to assail Biden. He’s another useful idiot for Moscow.

Fox host Laura Ingraham almost made the winner’s circle two weeks in a row with this remark regarding the upcoming Biden-Trump debates:

All Trump has to do is stay calm and stay calm during the entire debate and let Biden rant and rave because Scranton Joe is looking and sounding meaner and more petty by the day. And then Trump, by comparison, he easily appears presidential, cool, confident, and, yeah, possessing a lot of common sense.

The judges were dumbfounded.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, the political action committee that tries to elect Republicans to the House of Representatives, issued an absurd tweet dripping with hypocrisy: “House Republicans will ALWAYS back the blue.”

Then why do they support a presidential candidate who wants to pardon convicted felons who assaulted police officers on January 6, 2021, during the insurrectionist riot at the US Capitol that left at least 170 cops injured?

Eric Trump, though, bested all these competitive entries with his comment about a rally his dad held in Wildwood, New Jersey, a week ago: “When you see Wildwood on Saturday where he has 100,000 people show up. One hundred thousand people. Bruce Springsteen can’t pull half of that.”

Once again, there was a Trump controversy over crowd size. The Trump camp tossed out the 100,000 figure. But local media reported the number of attendees was more likely between 20,000 and 35,000. In any event, Eric was very wrong on his math. At the end of last summer, Springsteen played three shows in a row at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, and packed the venue each night. The capacity for each show: 82,500. Don’t mess with the Boss.

The recent issue that focused on voter misinformation, recent polls, and media coverage that benefits Trump drew many sacks of mail.

Brandon Becker name-checked the attorney who handled Stormy Daniels’ hush money deal with Michael Cohen and Donald Trump. During the ongoing Trump criminal trial in New York City, prosecutors introduced a text message that Keith Davidson sent to the National Enquirer editor on Election Night 2016, in which he cried out, “What have we done?” Brandon wrote:

Just as Mr. Davidson bemoaned, “What have we done?” Messrs. Jamie Dimon [CEO of Chase] and Joe Kahn [executive editor of the New York Times] will rue the day they persuaded themselves a second Trump administration would be okay. False “both sideism” (or worse, everyone does it), in the name of journalistic integrity, is itself an abnegation of such integrity. It actually will be worse than the NYT facilitating the invasion of Iraq. See Adam Gopnik, “The Forgotten History of Hitler’s Establishment Enablers,” the New Yorker, March 18, 2024.

Mike Tompkins chimed in:

As always, I learn and grow reading your essays. In "America is Broken," you mention the loss of credibility of our basic institutions, government, media, judicial system, etc., and I'm thinking that a more concerted and coordinated effort by the "legitimate" media to re-establish the credibility of those institutions would be in order in these desperate days. This becomes especially vital given the lack of an adequate response to the looming death of the entire ecosystem of this planet.

With the media in much disrepute and our national political conversation poisoned by profound tribalism and division, I am not sure how credibility can be reestablished. I keep coming back to this central point: Tens of millions of Americans are lost in Trumpland. The rest of us need to pull together to prevent that bloc from driving us into authoritarianism.

John Peterson shared:

As I was reading your email, it occurred to me that there is a plausible argument that the media want another Trump presidency. Think about the non-stop headlines and the exhaustive coverage of every authoritarian executive order, appointment of a Trump lackey to the Justice Department, appointment of yet another right-wing, incompetent federal judge, pardoning of J6 prisoners, etc. Compare that to the mundanity of a Biden business-as-usual presidency. We and the media have become addicted to 24/7 “BREAKING NEWS” about every facet of Trump and Trump-world. If Trump loses, the gravy train stops along with all those millions of clicks. As is the case for most things, this is about power and money; those disappearing clicks represent both for the media.

I can understand why this notion might appeal to people. But being immersed in the media world, I can say that reporters for mainstream outlets are not actively trying to help Trump. The problems with the coverage occur for other reasons, such as the dominance of horse-race reporting and both-sidesism. That’s stuff for another Our Land issue.

Elisabeth Montgomery sent in this note:

Your article encouraged me to sign up for poll watching—something I never thought to do—but it is becoming clear that the assault of information against the voting system is systematic and determined to become violent. What is the plan to stop this? 

I’m glad to have had an impact, Elisabeth. Thanks for volunteering. The Democrats are lining up tons of lawyers to monitor possible voting shenanigans. The Republicans say they are doing the same, but their idea of shenanigans is quite different. They may try to send armed supporters to watch over the polls, thus increasing the odds of violence. 

This issue somehow made it on to the MAGA radar. I can tell when this happens because the Our Land inbox is flooded with angry missives often full of false information. Here are two examples. First, from Paul Evans:

The threat to America is democracy. More precisely, it's radical democracy where people with no skin in the game have a right to vote to transfer benefits to themselves. Young people, old people, non-citizens, government workers, non-taxpayers—none should have the right to vote. By the way, you're a lousy writer as well.

And Jarrod Ramsey joined this chorus:

Lol another liberal dueshe bag calling half the electorate morons and not informed. You will never learn wiil you. 

That’s the original syntax and spelling.

Jerry Peace commented:

Happy to see Tim Scott's continuing entry in Dumbass Comments of the Week. They say an addict will do anything, say anything, demean themselves, to get a fix. Tim Scott's the perfect example. And he's learned from Lindsey Graham's addiction to relevance. For Trump stooges, there is no bottom. 

The Dumbass Comment of the Week judges have complained to me that all their hard work draws not much response from the newsletter’s readers. I tell them that means they are making the correct choices.

Bax Ramspott responded to my recent dispatch from Hiroshima:

Thank you for your moving report from Hiroshima. It hit especially hard because of my late father's work with the American nuclear program. He was a geologist for the Department of Energy during much of the Cold War and wrote a book about his experiences with the Baneberry vent (when an underground nuclear bomb test for Operation Emery escaped and sent a radioactive plume into the atmosphere, which spread fallout across several western states). The sobering harm of nuclear weapons isn't limited to the cities we bombed. I recommend the Atomic Museum in Las Vegas, Nevada, if readers want a look into the domestic legacy of atomic weapons.

It's an even more complicated topic because nuclear energy remains one of our great underused resources in the fight against human-induced climate change. There are certainly issues with safe storage of fission waste products (which my father also worked on in his later years), but those problems are multiple orders of magnitude less threatening than the endless stream of carbon raising global temperatures and destabilizing global climate.

Let’s end with fan mail from Eileen McInerney:

I am so glad I subscribed and then began paying you for your newsletters. Thank you for your serious and amusing writings.

I am glad you are glad. It always helps to receive encouraging notes from readers. I hope you are sharing this sentiment with many potential subscribers.

“Moxie, I’m writing about our old friend Sonya.”
“If you take a picture of me right now, it will show the photos behind me that her father took of Bob Dylan and Red Grooms, the artist. Then you can put me in the newsletter.”
“You’re in the newsletter every week.”
“Oh, I didn’t know. I don’t subscribe.”

May 14, 2024: Paul Manafort and the metrics of shamelessness; 3 Body Problem’s obvious but understated tie to climate change; Neil Young and Crazy Horse keep a promise; and more.

May 11, 2024: America is broken, and the media ain’t helping; my fascinating trip to Japan; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Laura Ingraham); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more. 

May 7, 2024: Modern-day lessons from Hiroshima; Ed Zwick’s Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions; the virtues of Tokyo Vice; and more.

May 1, 2024: From the Our Land archive: Donald Trump, stochastic terrorist; and more.

April 24, 2024: From the Our Land archive: Take a walk; and more.

April 20, 2024: Ari Berman’s new book explains the GOP's grand plan: minority rule; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Sen. Tom Cotton and Kari Lake); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

April 16, 2024: Should there be presidential debates?; Peter Morgan’s Patriots lacks that ol’ Russian drama; the Beckham documentary scores on the fields of sports and celebrity; and more.

April 13, 2024: Sleepwalking toward the 2024 election; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Woody Johnson); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.