KWBaker

Tracklist: 1. Side 1 2. Side 2.

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Tracklist: 1. The Funny Side Of Rudy Vallee Side One 2. The Funny Side Of Rudy Vallee Side Two.

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Tracklist: 1. Let Me Entertain You; Mother-Daughter Talk "Don't Do It"!; "I Like It" Girls; It's Mine......; A Good Man Is Hard To Find 2. Those Stairs Are Killing Me!; Rusty For President?; Growing Pains; Life Is Just A Bowl Of Cherries.

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Tracklist: 1. I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate; In the Family Way 2. Frankie & Johnny; Knockers Up!; You’re Nobody Til Somebody Loves You.

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Tracklist: 1. Side 1 2. Side 2.

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Tracklist: 1. There's A Genie In My Soul 2. Cool Mix 3. Walking Shoes 4. I Wanna Go Where You Are 5. That's Oona 6. Love For Sale 7. Mangos 8. You Stepped Out Of A Dream 9. The Thrill Is Gone 10. Tune Up.

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Tracklist: 1. White Field 2. Sack 5 3. The Hierophant 4. Chromos 14 5. 4 Serge 6. Drum Solo 7. Convergence.

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Tracklist: 1. La Virgen De La Macarena 2. España Cani 3. Toque Torero 4. Toreador Song 5. Cielo Andaluzia 6. El Relciario 7. Novillero 8. El Gato Montez 9. Toque 10. La Sorello 11. Banderillero 12. Angelina 13....

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Tracklist: 1. Suite In A Minor For Flute & Strings: Overture 2. Suite In A Minor For Flute & Strings: Les Plaisirs 3. Suite In A Minor For Flute & Strings: Air À L'Italien 4. Suite In A Minor For Flute & Strings: Menuet I & II 5....

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For the first time in almost two decades, CD sales are actually on the rise. So, why are people buying (and listening to) CDs again?

Before it made sunglasses, goggles, helmets, outerwear, backpacks and NFL face shields, Oakley was just a man and his car.

Apple Music is the one of the most popular music streaming services. We've rounded up the best tips and tricks to turn you into a power user.

The Land Cruiser's 70th anniversary comes this August, which could make it a fitting date to reveal the new model.

From Biden's '67 Corvette to Johnson's Amphicar and Reagan's Subaru BRAT.

Not all power banks are created equal, and it's worth springing for the best.

Yes, Toyotas led the way for longtime ownership. But you may be surprised by which one landed on top.

Baker's Bourbon came back from a study abroad trip with renewed purpose (and abs). Here's hoping nobody notices.

It’s all about the speaker-and-amplifier combo.

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Elegant bookmark
I was coveting this Swedish anchor bookmark ($40) back when it was just a Kickstarter and this year I finally bought one for myself. The Page Anchor is made from 316L stainless steel and weighs about 8 ounces and has only one purpose — to hold a book open perfectly flat. The craftsmanship is so beautiful that it feels like owning a piece a jewelry. — CD

Great university courses
I’ve long been a huge fan of The Great Courses. These are the best university courses on all manner of diverse subjects, taught by the best university professors, recorded for home consumption. Years ago the courses started out as very expensive audio sets on cassette tape (I audited many courses while commuting), then migrated to CDs, then to audible files, and now are on video. All along, they were premium priced, if not a bit over-priced, but I found them to be worth it without exception. There’s a lot of history and science. I have enjoyed and benefited from too many courses to list, including a memorable one of 48 lectures on Ancient Egypt by Bob Brier, and another on appreciating classical music by Robert Greenberg. Now, yeah!, select courses are available free on Amazon Prime video. A search on Amazon will bring up all the current Great Courses. But to my frustration, courses will be free for limited times and then revert to paid episodes. For instance the really tremendous course on the Ancient Civilizations of North America is free now. It methodically describes the vast and sophisticated civilizations that existed in my backyard, which I was not taught about. But it will only be available until January 31, 2021, so watch now. (Or I could subscribe to the new Great Courses channel on Amazon for $8/month.) So far I’ve happy to watch the excellent ones that come up free each month. — KK

Colorful cocktail recipes
Since March of last year, my sister Wendy has been posting a creative cocktail recipe on her Instagram channel, The Quarantini. Even if you don’t drink alcohol it’s fun to see the unusual drinks she has concocted, like The Cure, which pays homage to the Covid-19 vaccine. Bottoms up! — MF

Searching by date
A really useful, but non-obvious, shortcut to search Google calendar for a particular date is simply to hit the letter G while on the calendar page. Instead of scrolling back month by month, you hit < g > and then enter the date you want. — KK

Instantly search 2 million recipes
This search engine pulls from more than 2 million recipes that you can filter by ingredients. I’m not a step-by-step recipe follower, but this is great for discovering variations of a recipe and inspiration for ingredients I hadn’t thought of. I’m also impressed that it found two different recipes for my parent’s homeland dish: Sopa Tarasca — CD

Tasty coffee additive
Someone recently made me a hot drink containing cinnamon, espresso, oat milk, and lion’s mane mushroom powder, and it was delicious. Now I make my own, using KOS Organic Lion’s Mane Powder. I use one included scoop of lion’s mane powder, one teaspoon of Ceylon cinnamon powder, a cup of hot oat milk, and a double shot of espresso. Then I whip with a stick blender. It’s a perfect afternoon pick-me-up. — MF

-- Kevin Kelly, Mark Frauenfelder, Claudia Dawson

I didn’t think we had a moth problem. You don’t really notice them, and if you do see one, a flyswatter is a quick solution. I’d been looking at these Dr. Killigan’s Pantry Moth Traps for a while, and I thought, why not put one in the pantry, just to be sure a stray moth doesn’t sneak in.

To my surprise, the first week I had over a dozen meal moths in the trap. An investigation revealed an old box of cereal that was infested with moth larva. I disposed of the moth nursery, but the trap continued capturing moths for weeks. This was several years ago, eventually, the moth infestation disappeared, but I always keep one of these traps in the pantry, renewing it a couple of times a year.

With the stockpiling of staples during the Covid-19 era, protecting our pantry is more important than ever. My traps still collect the occasional moth, presumably arriving in a compromised food package, and I feel like these traps have blocked a number of potential moth infestations.

The last time I ordered a supply of the pantry moth traps, I noticed that the same manufacturer also makes Dr. Killigan’s Clothing Moth Traps. Since I was so happy with the pantry moth traps, I thought I’d give the clothes moth traps a try. Low and behold, I had another type of unseen infestation. This time, the source was the fur ruff on the hood of an old winter parka. Removing the offending article did not end the infestation. I never did find where the offspring from the original infestation had re-located, but the traps continued to do their work, and eventually, the supply of new moths dwindled.

I keep one of these traps in each of the closets where we store our woolens. Every now and then, a moth shows up in the trap. I assume they sneak in as eggs on second-hand wool articles, or perhaps just stray in from outdoors.

These traps work, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get moths. The traps work by luring male moths into the traps with pheromones. But a mated female moth could arrive and lay eggs, or you could buy a product that has moths (or their eggs) inside, and you wouldn’t know until its male offspring shows up in your trap. For this reason, I consider the traps a necessary line of defense, no matter how clean your pantry is.

These moth traps don’t exactly improve my sleep, but it is comforting to know that I have a defense against these winged invaders. I like these traps because they’re inexpensive and easy to set up, but most of all, because they work.

-- Runciblefish

Dr. Killigan’s Premium Pantry and Clothing Moth Traps with Pheromones

Available from Amazon

"Goodbye. We love you. We will be back in some form," Donald Trump said at the end of his final speech as president of the United States. "Have a good life. We will see you soon."

But how soon? And in what form?

These questions prompted much speculative chatter Tuesday, after The Wall Street Journal published a short, anonymously sourced article stating that "Trump has talked in recent days with associates about forming a new political party," to be named the Patriot Party.

If serious (always a critical "if" with Trump), the former president's trial balloon has the potential to disrupt America's two-party balance in the most significant way since the Kansas-Nebraska Act split the Whigs in 1854, helping give rise to the Republican Party.

If the 45th president takes his ball and goes home, he won't be alone. While Trump's public approval has consistently been the lowest of any modern president—and closed with a thud—it remains high among Republicans: 79 percent, according to a January 15–17 Morning Consult poll. His average GOP approval rating during the past four years was a record-tying 88 percent, per Gallup. (Among Democrats, it was a record-shattering low of 7 percent.) Until further notice, he remains the most popular figure in the party. A January 15–18 Civiqs poll showed that Trump voters, by a two-to-one margin, preferred characterizing themselves as "Trump supporters" rather than Republican Party supporters.

Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) warned on Fox News last Friday that if GOP senators vote to convict Trump of impeachment, "it'll destroy the party. A third of the Republicans will leave." If so, that would likely include elected officials. Remember that just under half the GOP's congressional delegation voted on January 6—even after the violent siege of their workplace—against certifying Joe Biden's Electoral College victory, even though the theories behind their objections had been serially debunked, including by a number of Trump-appointed judges.

So the raw material for a Trumpian defection is there. But could he really do it? I see four main obstacles, beginning with the man himself:

1. It takes a lot of thankless, expensive drudgery without an immediate, flashy payoff. Not exactly what you'd expect from a leisure-loving 74-year-old corner-cutter who isn't exactly known for his lengthy attention span.

"At the risk of understatement," says Libertarian Party Chair Joe Bishop-Henchman, "starting a new political party is very hard. It requires a lot of money, a lot of work, a lot of volunteers. We'll see, but it's very difficult to do."

Aside from the ballot-access hurdles (on which more below), there is an important fundraising bottleneck at the beginning of a new party's life: The incumbents, including minor parties, that have "national committees" as recognized by the Federal Elections Commissions (FEC), are able to accept donations at $35,000 a pop. Individual campaigns along the lines of a prospective Trump 2024? Just $5,000.

And here's the catch about graduating to the big boys' fundraising club: The FEC won't grant national committee status until a political party holds a national convention, establishes national headquarters, sets up state party committees, and has a "sufficient number of party-designated federal candidates on the ballot in a sufficient number of states in different geographic areas." In other words, the Patriot Party better get cranking right now to compete in a whole bunch of 2022 House and Senate races; in the meantime, the candidates and the party will have to either self-finance (never a Trump specialty) or collect donations at a fraction of their competitors' size for a minimum of two years.

"You almost have to through an election cycle before you get that qualification," says Constitution Party Chair James Clymer, citing Ross Perot's experience self-financing his independent run in 1992 before forming the Reform Party. "The first time around, unless you have somebody who's willing to spend their own money in a big way, it makes it much more difficult to establish."

Trump? Willing to spend his own money in a big way? On other people?

The Constitution Party, founded in 1990 as the U.S. Taxpayers Party, already has a national committee, and it was on the ballot last year in more states (17) than hip hop billionaire Kanye West. But the party's ballot access, membership, and vote totals are all trending downward, and its 8th place 2020 presidential nominee, Don Blankenship, is more known for being the coal executive ex-con who coined the nickname "Cocaine Mitch" for Sen. Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.) than he is for competing against Joe Biden.

So it's little wonder that the right-of-center, tough-on-immigration party is flirting openly with Trump's not-quite-existent Patriots. "We would like to join forces with them, if that's possible, one way or the other," Clymer says. "I talked with some other people that are part of that, and…we're exploring what possibilities there may be to work in some kind of alliance with them. But this is all very much in the preliminary stages."

2. Americans are third-partiers in the streets, duopolists in the sheets. "Majority in U.S. Still Say a Third Party Is Needed," went the headline over a Gallup poll in October 2018. Two weeks later in the midterm elections, third-party and independent candidates got smoked.

Pre-election polls persistently overcount third-party support by about a third, with many third-curious voters retreating to old habits in the polling booth. Over the past century, nontraditional presidential candidates have exceeded 15 percent of the vote—the minimum polling threshold to get into the duopoly-gatekept presidential debates—just twice: Progressive Robert La Follette's 16.6 percent in 1924, and Perot's 18.9 percent in 1992. Neither were within even 12 percentage points of second place.

The Trump political brand relies heavily on the concept of "winning." He just lost by seven million votes nationwide—and if he bolts the GOP, he'll split that coalition in two. Even given the unusual turbulence of contemporary politics, that does not seem like a formula for first place. Which would be hard for an ego that large to accept. But Trump wouldn't be the only politician facing a gut-check.

3. Ballot access is a huge pain for third parties in non-presidential races. Trump could pretty easily (if expensively) get on most or all ballots in 2024, but GOP defectors who came along would be faced with roadblocks they've never before encountered.

"Here's the most extreme example," says Richard Winger, editor of the indispensable third-party newsletter Ballot Access News. "The Georgia ballot access law for independent candidates and minor parties for the U.S. House was passed in 1943. So it's 77 years old, and in 77 years no minor party has ever been able to get on the ballot for U.S. House in Georgia if it's a regularly scheduled election." (There are lawsuits pending.)

So while one could easily imagine Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R–Ga.), a woman with a history of QAnon enthusiasm and Parkland massacre false-flaggism who has vowed to impeach Joe Biden, following her president out of the GOP, Greene would as the law stands likely not be able to run for re-election. Elected politicians generall prefer not to volunteer for unemployment.

"It's a mistake for anyone to think of ballot access as a package," Winger says. "It is radically different for president than it is for…offices like U.S. House and state legislature. For president, it's far easier. That's why you see the Libertarian Party four times has got its presidential nominee on the ballot in all jurisdictions, yet typically, you only see a fifth or a fourth of the U.S. House seats with a Libertarian running, maybe 5 percent of the state legislative seats up with Libertarians running….But for president, except for Texas and California, there's no really, really hard state."

To achieve national committee status, and thus lower the burn rate of initial cash necessary to build a viable electoral apparatus, the Patriot Party would have to convince a significant number of Republican elected officials to jump into a fundraising and ballot-access climate harsher than they've ever contemplated.

Would one-third of the elected GOP take that bet? I'll take the under, unless they go the merger route. But that way has its own challenges.

4. Taking over an existing third party requires you to…take over an existing third party. These are not mere empty vessels parked outside major-party national conventions with the engine running. They tend to be collections of idiosyncratic cusses who have painstakingly if shambolically crafted specific political organizations and cultures. Transplants are far from guaranteed to be absorbed by the host.

Who could the Patriots merge with? You can safely scratch off the left-wing parties: the Greens (fourth place for president in 2020), the Party for Socialism & Liberation (in sixth place), and all the scraggly groupings on a state ballot or two with "Socialist" or "Progressive" in the title. Kanye's Birthday Party (seventh) doesn't look built to last, and Brock Pierce (ninth) is an independent building something rather non-Trumpy.

Among the top 10 finishers in 2020, that leaves just four potential M&A targets for Team Trump: the aforementioned Constitution Party, the Libertarian Party (in third place for a third consecutive presidential election), the Alliance Party (sixth), and the American Solidarity Party (10th). Taking those in reverse order:

The American Solidarity Party (ASP) first attracted my attention in October when The American Conservative published its pre-election symposium of staff voting intentions, and three writers (Rod Dreher, Gracy Olmstead, and Howard Ahmanson) backed ASP nominee Brian Carroll. "When I read the platform of the ASP, I found that I didn't agree with everything," Dreher explained, "but the overwhelming majority of its pro-family, Christian Democratic (in the European sense) policies I could endorse."

The American Conservative was co-founded by Pat Buchanan, and Buchananite paleoconservatism is widely understood as the intellectual and ideological forerunner to Trumpism. (At least its modern variant—when Trump briefly ran against Buchanan for the 2000 Reform Party nomination, he pronounced Pitchfork Pat's views "prehistoric.") So could the Transitive Property of Paleos apply to the ASP?

Not so fast, explains American Solidary Party Chair Skylar Covich.

"One of our big concerns is Trump's rhetoric. That's what got a lot of members interested in the party," Covich says. (The party was incorporated in 2016, attracting a lot of never-Trump Republicans and pro-life Democrats.) "There are also concerns about Trump's immigration policy, all of what went on with the detention camps at the border and the kids in cages, that sort of thing….We want to have the mindset of being welcoming and humane toward immigrants, and providing a path to citizenship." Sounds like a nonstarter.

I'm not sure many people could pick out the Alliance Party in a police lineup. Its 2020 presidential nominee, perennial candidate Rocky De La Fuente, has in the past five years run for at least five elected offices for at least five different political parties (Democratic, American Delta, Reform, Republican, and now Alliance, in roughly that order). De La Fuente has also secured the Reform Party nomination the past two presidential elections, in case you're wondering where Perotism went.

Alliance thus far is an amalgamation of independent minor parties pushing centrist mush and succeeding mostly in obtaining modest ballot access (15 states) for an ideologically promiscuous serial presidential candidate. (Not that there's anything wrong with that!) It's hard to visualize Planet Trump signing onto a platform warning about gun violence and "the existential threat of climate change," but then, it's hard to imagine more than a very small number of people knowing what the Alliance Party stands for in the first place.

Odds of a Patriot merger? Not high.

How about the political party that came in third place in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, that received a whopping 70 percent of the non-duopoly vote, whose members tend to share Trump's sporadic rhetorical distaste of "endless wars" and the "Deep State," and whose presidential nominations merely require achieving a 50 percent delegate vote in a national convention?

Well, the Libertarian Party is basically having its biggest January in years, says Bishop-Henchman. And not because of disaffected Trump supporters.

"We were out very quickly and very strongly denouncing what those people were doing at the Capitol," Bishop-Henchman says. "My phone's been nonstop since the Capitol from people who used to be in the Libertarian Party and quit it because they thought it wasn't going anywhere. They're coming back. A lot of people who are like, "I was holding out hope for the Republican Party, but I mean, the Trumpists control it."

So the anti-RINO faction isn't turning toward the Libertarians?

"I'm not really seeing that," he says. "I mean, Trump still has a 60 percent approval rating from the Republicans. If he were to run again, I think he'd still win the primary. The GOP's very much where Trumpists are still nowadays."

Aside from having all sorts of MAGA-incompatible planks in the party platform, the Libertarian Party right now would have some extra inhospitality due to Trump's final hours in office, when he declined to extend libertarian-favored clemency for Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, Reality Winner, and Ross Ulbricht.

As for some kind of infiltration or hostile takeover? "I think the Libertarian Party is pretty well protected," says Richard Winger. "It's age, partly. I mean, being over 50 years old, it has such strong traditions and a consistent policy of stances on the issues; it's really soaked in." You also can't exactly waltz into the party and immediately become a state delegate to the national convention. "There's rules," he said. "I mean, Libertarian have thought about this for a long time."

That leaves the Constitution Party as the most likely—and most willing—merger partner.

"I look very much at policy, and what he has done, we would be an agreement with 95 percent of that, I believe," party chair Clymer says. "I think we're certainly close enough that it would be a very good fit for both of us."

Perusing the party principles and policies, there are indeed many overlaps, "whether it's border security, America first, populism…trade," Clymer says. Might be a snag or two in the party's foundational emphasis on "integrity" ("We are committed to restoring honesty, integrity, and accountability to government"). Then there's the whole "Constitution" part, which has never been Trump's strong suit.

But Clymer takes the hopeful view.

"I don't know that Trump himself, and I don't of the other people who follow him—I don't know that they're quite as grounded in the Constitution itself and…constitutional principles as what the Constitution Party is," he acknowledges. "But some of it I think may be just education and understanding."

Winger for one sees a possible fit.

"There's quite a few Constitution Party units that are on the ballot where it's rather difficult to get on," he says. "They're an asset."

Ultimately, the biggest determinant of whether Trump bolts, aside from his own energy for the project, may be whether he even has to. Most of the Republican Party's machinery remains in solidly loyalist hands.

Ronna McDaniel was unanimously re-elected to head the party just two weeks ago. The presidential re-election campaign and the Republican National Committee in 2018 effectively (and unprecedentedly) merged, installing Trumpists atop almost all state parties, cancelling contested primary elections, and not even bothering to produce a new party platform in 2020. Such is Trump's continuing pull that one of the safest jobs in politics—Mitch McConnell's control of the Senate Republican caucus—may be in jeopardy if the minority leader chooses to back impeachment.

Trump may be gone from the White House, but his potential ability to shape the landscape of two-party politics, and now third-party jockeying, remains high.

"In a few months, we'll have a much better sense of what's happening with these parties," former Libertarian congressman Justin Amash tells me. "Everything is in flux right now."

South of San Francisco, right on Linda Mar Beach, there's a Taco Bell. It's so close that surfers need a place to stow their boards while they go inside to each, so the restaurant has a surfboard rack on the front wall.

As you can see from the photos at Atlas Obscura, by Taco Bell standards, it's a remarkably beautiful place. If it was just a little closer to the water, it might be possible to have a surf-thru window.

Photos by Taco Bell.

Before Donald Trump began his run for president, there was a war against journalism in the United States. President George W. Bush used the Espionage Act and sought to jail reporters who refused to give up their sources, not to mention killing journalists in war zones. When President Barack Obama, a constitutional law scholar, came to power, he did so claiming that he and Joe Biden would represent the most transparent administration in history. But then reality set in. During his eight years in power, Obama’s Justice Department used the Espionage Act against whistleblowers more than all of Obama’s predecessors combined. They continued the Bush Justice Department’s war on journalists, including threatening to jail then-New York Times reporter James Risen if he did not testify against his alleged source.

Despite its prosecutions of whistleblowers, Obama’s administration understood that use of the Espionage Act was controversial and widely denounced by press freedom organizations. Attorney General Eric Holder sought to implement some guardrails against spying on journalists, though the administration maintained it had the right to do so in some circumstances. Still, Obama commuted whistleblower Chelsea Manning’s draconian 35-year prison sentence. During Trump’s tenure Manning was jailed again for nearly a year for refusing to testify in front of a Grand Jury. Obama’s administration also declined to indict WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and at least one other alleged whistleblower accused of leaking documents about the drone assassination program. Trump’s administration dug both cases out and moved forward with espionage prosecutions, which remain active.

Cyclists pass a truck with a protest sign reading “#FreeSpeech” with pictures of Chelsea Manning, left, and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, right, in Washington, D.C., on April 16, 2019.

Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

Trump came to power following a political campaign in which he attacked the free press, adopted fascist slogans to denounce reporters, and denied that basic facts were true. Trump harbored a Nixonian hatred of the press and lived in constant fear of leaks, particularly about his personal finances.

In a clear effort to send chills through the government and as a warning to any would-be whistleblowers, Trump’s Justice Department went on a rampage using the Espionage Act. Its first major prosecution was against a National Security Agency contractor named Reality Winner. The Justice Department accused Winner of leaking to a “news outlet” an NSA document that showed Russian efforts to penetrate software used in some U.S. voting systems in 2016. Other news organizations have stated that the outlet was The Intercept. Winner accepted a plea agreement to one count of felony transmission of national defense information and was sentenced to five years, the longest prison term of any whistleblower convicted under the Espionage Act. It was an unconscionable act by a vindictive administration.

The Trump Justice Department weaponized its indictment of Winner in an effort to smear The Intercept and to encourage the media to focus on other journalists rather than the contents of the NSA document in question or the unjust use of the Espionage Act. Unfortunately, many publications took the bait and played into Trump’s malignant anti-press crusade.

When indictments of whistleblowers happen and FBI investigations are launched, journalists should scrutinize and confront the actions of intelligence and law enforcement agencies and assess what these attacks mean for the freedom of the press. Instead, so many media outlets seemed to want to aid the Trump administration in making this about what journalists did or did not do — making the publication the target, instead of focusing on the secrets that whistleblowers exposed or the dangerous weaponizing of the Espionage Act by both Democratic and Republican presidents.

I believe that The Intercept made serious errors in its editorial process on the Russia story, and I advocated both publicly and internally for The Intercept to explain exactly what happened. I believe that some of these mistakes were preventable. At the same time, there were serious legal concerns that anything The Intercept said in public could be used against Winner and other sources, and our attorneys implored The Intercept’s editors to say nothing. I understood the legal logic. Our editor-in-chief ended up making a statement acknowledging that we had failed to live up to our standards and taking responsibility for the institutional failure.

This was a complicated situation, and I believe the facts make clear that Winner would likely have been arrested regardless of any mistakes made by The Intercept. She was one of just six people in the entire U.S. national security apparatus to print the document in question and the only one to use a government computer to send emails (which were unrelated to the Russia story) to The Intercept. That doesn’t absolve The Intercept, but it is an important part of this story that is seldom mentioned. And we all know the Trump administration prioritized punishing leakers and was willing to use the full force of the state to do so. It was disturbing that the overwhelming focus of the reporting on Winner by some media outlets was not on the contents of the document she allegedly revealed or that the Trump administration was wielding the Espionage Act like a weapon in order to threaten any would-be whistleblowers. The lead prosecutor made the outrageous statement that Winner was “the quintessential example of an insider threat.” The Intercept deserved criticism and scrutiny, but the problem was that it often came at the expense of holding the chief villains of the story accountable.

Joe Biden speaks with the press before departing Charlotte, N.C., on Sept. 23, 2020.

Photo: Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

President Joe Biden has an opportunity to right some of these wrongs. He should publicly commit to ending the use of the Espionage Act against whistleblowers. Congress could also amend or repeal the act so that it cannot be used for such purposes. Biden should also take actions to end the persecution of Assange and return to the Obama-era position that Assange should not be prosecuted by the United States. “We thought it was a dangerous precedent to prosecute Assange for something that reporters do all the time,” said Matthew Miller, an Obama Justice Department spokesperson. “The Espionage Act doesn’t make any distinction between journalists and others, so if you can apply it to Assange, there’s no real reason you couldn’t apply it to [the New York Times].” Biden should immediately pardon Winner and secure her release from a coronavirus-infested prison. He also should drop the case against former intelligence contractor and war veteran Daniel Hale, who is facing trial under the Espionage Act for allegedly leaking documents on the U.S. drone and assassination programs.

We have just seen the end of a dangerous administration that openly waged war against journalism. For four years, the president of the United States used the Justice Department as his personal law firm and a political cudgel against his perceived enemies, including the press. Even if Biden doesn’t agree with the principles I am advocating, he could declare these Espionage Act indictments to be the toxic fruit of the poisonous and discredited Trump Justice Department. And media outlets should remember the next time a whistleblower is arrested that the most important task for journalists is to hold those in power to account rather than allow themselves to be used in a government distraction campaign.

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