Everyone Has a Substack. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Substack is revolutionizing newsletters by breathing new life into a familiar yet tired formula, similar to how podcasts transformed radio. Now, writers can enhance their words with audio, video, events, merch and more. But with such a dynamic product comes risks. Given its myriad use cases and pockets of hyper-specific knowledge, Substack is also a place ripe for false narratives to spread. Without proper guardrails, the platform is headed for the same pitfalls we've seen with podcasting: Anyone can start one, and there is little to no accountability for what is going out to the public.
Things didn't start out that way. In the mid-to-late 2000s, podcasts were a niche endeavor born out of the radio era. If you thought of yourself as a history buff, you were listening to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History. Finance gurus tuned into NPR's Planet Money, while sports fans downloaded ESPN's The B.S. Report each week. Fast-forward to today, podcasts have blossomed into a primary news source for millions of Americans, especially impressionable young men. The format even played an outsized role in the 2024 election, with both candidates appearing on various shows, including Call Her Daddy and The Joe Rogan Experience.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Politico
an hour ago
- Politico
Minnesota's slain Democratic leader lived the political divisions in the US every day
MINNEAPOLIS — Americans talk constantly about how their country is split down the middle politically. Melissa Hortman lived that every day as a Minnesota House member. Her unique perspective on politics came from her job as the House's top Democrat and its unusual challenge. She had to defend liberal priorities in a chamber divided 67-67 between Democrats and Republicans while working to see that the even split didn't keep the Legislature from funding state government. She and her husband were shot to death early Saturday in their Minneapolis-area home in what authorities are calling an act of political violence. Another prominent area lawmaker, state Sen. John Hoffman, was shot and wounded, along with his wife, in their home about 15 minutes away. Hortman had served as House speaker for six years when the 2024 elections cost Democrats their slim majority. She led fellow Democrats in boycotting House sessions for almost a month, starting in mid-January, to prevent the GOP from using a temporary vacancy in a Democratic seat to cement control over the chamber, forcing Republicans into sharing power. She wanted to protect state health coverage for adult immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, a liberal policy enacted on her watch as speaker in 2023. But when the only budget deal that she could broker included a GOP bill to cut that coverage, she provided the single Democratic vote in the House, securing its passage so that state government would remain funded for the next two years. 'She battled fiercely, but never let it impact the personal bond that we developed serving as caucus leaders,' GOP House Speaker Lisa Demuth said in a statement. 'I am beyond heartbroken by her loss.' The shootings shocked a state that prides its politics as being 'Minnesota nice,' even despite higher partisan tensions in recent years. To outsiders, Minnesota looks blue. The state hasn't voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1972, and all of its statewide elected officials are Democrats. Yet the Legislature is now almost evenly split, with Democrats clinging to a 34-33 majority in the Senate. Republicans are still frustrated with how Democrats used their slim majorities in both chambers in 2023 and 2024 to roll over them and enact a sweeping liberal agenda. In 2023, Democrats had an ambitious wish list and passed practically everything on it, with Hortman a key player. The measures included expanded abortion and trans rights, paid family and medical leave, universal free school lunches, child care credits and other aid for families. But on Saturday, the mourning for Hortman, Hoffman and their families was bipartisan. Hoffman, 60, is chair of the Senate Human Services Committee, which oversees one of the biggest parts of the state budget. He lives in Champlin, in the northwest part of the Minneapolis area, and owns a consulting firm, and he and his wife, Yvette, had one daughter. He previously was marketing and public relations director for a nonprofit provider of employment services for people with mental illnesses and intellectual and developmental disabilities and supervised a juvenile detention center in Iowa. He was first elected to the Senate in 2012. In 2023, Hoffman supported budget legislation that extended the state MinnesotaCare health program to immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, starting this year. On Monday, he voted against a bill to end that coverage for adults on Jan. 1 — a GOP goal that was a key part of the budget agreement that Hortman helped broker. Last year, Hoffman sponsored a bill designed to prevent courts from blocking people with disabilities from adopting children, and in 2023, he proposed an amendment to the state constitution to create a fund to pay for long-term care by taxing the Social Security benefits of the state's wealthiest residents. Hortman had served as the House Democrats' leader since 2017, and six years as speaker, starting in 2019. Under a power-sharing deal, her title became speaker emerita. She and her husband, Mark, lived in Brooklyn Park, another suburb in the northwest part of the Minneapolis area. They had two adult children. A lawyer, she twice lost races for the House before first winning her seat in 2004. U.S. Sen. and Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar recalled campaigning door to door that year with Hortman, when Klobuchar was the elected chief prosecutor for Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis. Klobuchar praised Hortman's support for free school lunches, women's rights and clean energy, calling her 'a true public servant to the core.' Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, who attended the University of Minnesota's law school with Hortman, said: 'She was smart, savvy, strategic, kind, funny, brave, and determined.' Hortman became part of the Democrats' legislative leadership team in 2007, then House minority leader in 2017, before Democrats recaptured a House majority in 2019. Her proposals included state emission standards like ones imposed in California and a ban on the sale of products containing mercury. She also proposed studying the feasibility of ending state investments in fossil fuel companies. Demuth, the current Republican House speaker, said Hortman was a nationally recognized expert on energy policy. 'She wasn't only a leader — she was a damn good legislator, and Minnesotans everywhere will suffer because of this loss,' said Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin, a former Minnesota state party chair and a friend of Hortman's.
San Francisco Chronicle
an hour ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Will Democrats finally stop defending protesters who turn to thuggery?
This weekend marks the next step in a likely long hot summer of protest and the latest opportunity for Gavin Newsom and other Democrats to stop reflexively defending the 'peaceful protests' that have been occurring in Los Angeles and elsewhere without acknowledging that the rest of the country doesn't see them as entirely peaceful. If Democrats don't acknowledge the full picture of what's going on, the crew with trust issues with voters and a 38% approval rating, 5 points lower than the GOP — stands little chance of checking Donald Trump's fascistic rise. 'This is anarchy and true chaos,' Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., posted on X above an image of a burning car in Los Angeles. 'My party loses the moral high ground when we refuse to condemn setting cars on fire, destroying buildings, and assaulting law enforcement.' 'One of the great lessons of 2024,' Biden-Harris campaign strategist David Plouffe told the authors of the new bestselling book, 'Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-up and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again' is that 'never again can we as a party suggest to people that what they're seeing is not true.' (Even though Trump does that daily.) But Democrats risk doing it again if protest-adjacent vandalism continues unchecked over the critical next few months. And that will hurt Democrats' chances of rallying Americans outside their shrinking tent against Trump. Historian Heather Cox Richardson, author of the newsletter 'Letters from an American,' said this summer's protests will be a 'fight for public opinion' with the goal being to persuade 3.5% of Americans to oppose Trump's agenda. There is little margin for error — or for protest interlopers to hijack the message that Trump is dangerously grabbing the power of a king and using it to punish immigrants and further enrich the wealthy. 'People sometimes mistake the idea that protests are designed to fight back against the system, and the people in the system,' Richardson said in an online video. 'In fact, the minute that you start to demonstrate violence, you lose all those people you need on your team, because they were kind of apathetic to begin with, and they just don't want to have any part of it.' So Democrats can't tell America that, as Plouffe put it, 'what they're seeing is not true.' But still some persist. 'The reality is we see peaceful protests launching in Los Angeles,' Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., told NBC's 'Meet the Press' last week. 'And again, any violence against police officers should not be accepted.' 'Angelenos are standing up for their city in a peaceful way,' Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove, D-Los Angeles, told CNN last week, adding as an aside, 'There are some anarchists.' Said Cox Richardson: 'Nonviolence is important, because that brings (supporters) on board. The minute they see violence, they don't want any part of it. So the protests on our side to take back American democracy must be nonviolent.' During his nationally televised address last week calling out Trump's overreach in taking over the national guard, Newsom tried to broaden the tent saying, 'This is about all of us. This is about you. California may be first, but it clearly will not end here. Other states are next.' For Americans in other states to resist Trump, Newsom and other Democrats will have to simultaneously support the peaceful grassroots protests and sideline the thugs. It's the only way the movement spreads beyond the blue state choir. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is trying by framing the 8 p.m. curfew she implemented as remaining in effect 'to curb bad actors who do not support the immigrant community.' Demonstrations don't happen as often — or ever — in most of the U.S. Meanwhile, the Bay Area hosts demonstrations seven days a week. So for starters, the mere sight of thousands of people filling the streets is foreign, intimidating and a little bit scary to people who spent Saturday at Little League or cutting the grass in Kansas. As he assumes a larger profile on the national stage during this latest public tussle with Trump, Newsom needs to better explain the nuance of protests. Democrats to the left of Fetterman often call a protest 'peaceful' even if there are images of protesters lighting cars on fire and breaking windows and vandalizing businesses and property. Those acts are dismissed off-handedly as 'property damage' and not violence. (Tell that to the family businesses that have to replace their windows the next morning.) Yes, the vandals doing that damage constitute only a small fraction of the demonstrators, but they receive a disproportionate amount of air time — and that only helps Trump. Their actions need to be acknowledged more forcibly, called out as unlawful and very publicly prosecuted. Newsom understands this. 'If you incite violence — I want to be clear about this — if you incite violence or destroy our communities, you are going to be held to account. That kind of criminal behavior will not be tolerated. Full stop,' Newsom said in his nationally broadcast speech Tuesday, noting that 220 people had been arrested in Los Angeles and local law enforcement was reviewing video of the chaos 'to build additional cases and people will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.' His challenge is that parsing those differences between protesters is difficult and rarely done. I first wrote about those differences while covering dozens of Iraq War protests two decades ago. Many mass demonstrations in the Bay and L.A. often follow a similar arc: Thousands of people will peacefully and boisterously march in the streets for hours without incident. Chanting, waving signs, talking smack about the government (all protected under the First Amendment, as is waving a Mexican flag.) Then, in their wake, usually as the first wave of peaceful demonstrators is headed home, a 'breakaway' contingent of demonstrators unaffiliated with the main organizers will start breaking windows, tagging buildings with graffiti and engaging in other random acts of vandalism that have nothing to do with the theme of the demonstration other than being a different expression of rage. Often, they self-identify as anti-capitalist 'anarchists.' During the 2003 anti-war demonstrations, anarchists told me they were frustrated with conventional peace events and called for a breakaway march to 'bring some militancy' to the anti-war movement. 'What does (the main march) threaten? It can just be ignored like any other position people are taking,' said one anarchist, who asked not to be identified. Yet organizers of the main demonstrations rarely called out the thugs piggybacking on their protest. Some told me they were threatened when they did. So instead, when pressed, many often exonerated the splinter groups and their actions to me by saying, 'Let a thousand flowers bloom.' In other words, all kinds of protests are valid. There has long been a reluctance among activists to criticize fellow travelers, even those whose vandalism devalues the message the main demonstration is trying to send. Unless protest organizers do something to self-police these demonstration hijackers, their powerful, existential message — Trump is becoming a fascistic autocrat before our eyes — will be diluted. Or worse, ignored. It's time to pull the dandelions sprouting among the flowers. And while I'm hesitant to jump on the blame-the-media bandwagon, we own some responsibility here, too. Television coverage of these mass demonstrations, which provides most of the protest images consumed on all platforms, is rarely nuanced enough to draw the distinctions between the main marchers and the unaffiliated vandals gravy-training on their earnest intentions. TV reports invariably focus on the broken windows in the wake of an otherwise peaceful march rather than the message that the marchers were making about Trump's budding fascism. If it bleeds — or is broken — it leads on TV news. If Newsom and protest organizers don't mute the vandals this summer, then Trump wins the fight for public opinion. Those 'anarchists' will become Trump's best weapon as their behavior is contributing to the false narrative that American cities are out of control. Yeah, the anarchists are angry. A lot of us are angry. But burning and breaking stuff is damaging the common cause we share. We are right — and constitutionally endowed — to take to the street on behalf of law-abiding immigrants. But you're not helping if you're busting up stuff, or not calling out those who do. See something? Say something. And that starts with Newsom, who has to remember that he's now talking to the rest of America. Not just California.
San Francisco Chronicle
2 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
A record number of people are claiming Social Security — but what's really the best age to start?
Elon Musk may have made a recent dramatic exit from DOGE, but the impact of his cost-cutting crusade in the federal government is still being felt widely — including among Social Security recipients. DOGE cuts to Social Security staff, closures of field offices and restrictions on filing by phone caused confusion and fear among recipients and applicants. The uproar was so great that the agency walked back many of the changes. But rising concerns about the future of the program may be driving many people to apply for their Social Security benefits earlier than they otherwise would have — and that can have permanent, long-term consequences for their financial well-being, according to experts. More Americans than ever filed for Social Security benefits in the first half of the fiscal year. According to Social Security data, the Urban Institute found 267,000 more claims filed from October to April than in that time period in the previous year, and found more seniors were claiming it early — before the full retirement age of 67. That amounts to a 13% year-over-year increase in claims. Over the decade before that, claims typically only grew by 3% a year. While the institute said an increase in eligible recipients from the baby boomer population and new notification requirements were likely factors, those did not fully explain the recent surge in early filing. The acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration said fear and confusion over DOGE cuts were at play, with calls to the SSA and visits to field offices also on the rise. Laura Quinby, who studies Social Security and other topics as the associate director of research for the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, said if people think the program isn't going to exist or is going to be cut in the near future, it makes them want to pull money out of it while they still can. In 2021, she co-authored a report showing that anxiety about the future of Social Security as perceived through headlines drove people to say they'd claim their benefits earlier than they would have otherwise. A reader named Marie wrote to me to say the election had influenced her decision to go ahead and apply for her benefits. Though she'd initially planned to wait until she turned 70 in 2026 to claim Social Security, 'with Trump being elected it seemed like the difference between collecting this year versus next year wasn't worth it.' She said she started taking it in February. But claiming early — even by one year — comes with a downside: Though you're eligible to claim Social Security benefits as early as 62, you get an 8% increase in benefits for every year you wait, up to age 70, when the maximum benefit kicks in. The maximum monthly benefit if you start claiming at age 62 in 2025 is $2,831. If you waited until age 70 to start claiming this year, your monthly benefit could be as high as $5,108. 'Fear has really started to set in among seniors who are jumping on to Social Security at the age of 62 in record numbers because they feel like, 'I've got to get on this thing because it might be gone,' and people weren't thinking that way until this year,' said Chris Orestis, the president and founder of Retirement Genius. 'You had skepticism, but you didn't have fear.' Fear is rarely a good reason to make a decision as life-altering as when you claim Social Security. So how should seniors be thinking about this choice? Here's what experts say. Should people be worried about the future of Social Security? People are concerned about the future of the program, one of the bedrocks of retirement in America since it began in 1935. Quinby was specifically studying how people responded to headlines about the potential future insolvency of the program as it is structured now. The most recent report from the Social Security Trustees, issued in May, indicated that the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund 'will be able to pay 100 percent of total scheduled benefits until 2033.' But that doesn't mean Social Security is doomed to disappear in eight years. If the program kept running as it does now with no changes, the report said Social Security would still be able to pay out 79% of current benefits starting in 2033. And there are many tools at the government's disposal to tweak Social Security and bolster that trust fund or otherwise augment the program, said Christine Benz, director of personal finance and retirement planning for Morningstar and author of the book 'How to Retire: 20 Lessons for a Happy, Successful and Wealthy Retirement.' Those could include lifting the current cap on income that's taxed for Social Security, adding means testing for recipients, increasing the payroll tax, upping the age you can claim, or a variety of other instruments. Benz said she sometimes hears from young people who tell her they just assume they'll never get a dime from Social Security. She said she doesn't think that's true. The program will have to be changed to maintain the current level of benefits, but it's highly improbable that it will go away in any of our lifetimes. She said for people who are currently age 55 or older, she wouldn't anticipate any changes to benefit amounts. 'The idea that there would be meaningful changes to their promised benefits seems to me incredibly unlikely,' she said. 'I think Congress would open every cupboard and turn over every drawer before upending people's promised benefits.' It makes sense that the recent headlines have made people nervous, Orestis said. Currently, $700 billion in cuts to Medicaid and SNAP are on the table in the 'Big Beautiful Bill,' Trump's spending and tax package working its way through Congress. But unlike those programs, he said, Social Security and Medicare are supported by armies of lobbyists, activists, advocacy organizations and a committed voting base of senior citizens. Simply put: These programs are popular, and most politicians — who, unlike Musk, all need to be reelected at some point — won't want to risk the backlash to any serious cuts. While we should take Musk and his DOGE cohort at their word that they're looking to root out waste and fraud, Orestis said he thinks they're unlikely to find much in Social Security. The changes made by DOGE so far have faced immense pushback, and some, like cuts to phone service, have already been undone. And though the Trump administration and DOGE seem to be running the show now, Orestis said that insolvency date eight years from now is 'an eternity' in the world of politics. What's the best age to claim Social Security? When you choose to take Social Security, you're locking yourself in at that amount of monthly benefits. Apart from the yearly cost of living adjustment, there's no way to go back or 'pause' receiving benefits to take advantage of a later retirement age. For 40% of retirees, Social Security makes up more than half their income; for about a third, it makes up all of it. Therefore, it is generally to your benefit to delay taking it as long as possible, so that you maximize your monthly fixed income. Of course, what's broadly right for a lot of people isn't necessarily right for you. If you are unable to work and have no other means of income, then you need to claim Social Security. And if you have a family history of shorter lifespans, it could make more financial sense to claim earlier. Social Security distributes benefits with the assumption that the average person will have an average lifespan, currently 84 for men and 87 for women; up until that age, the total lifetime amount you collect from Social Security would be about the same whether you claimed at 62 or 70. If people in your family generally don't live that long, collecting on the earlier side could mean you bring in more income from Social Security overall than you would have if you'd waited longer, though you'd have less monthly income at your disposal in your later years. It's also OK to take your anxiety about the news into account as you make your decision, said Hal Hershfield, a professor at the UCLA Anderson School of Management who studies behavioral decision-making. 'If you feel like you're someone that will get value out of dialing down the uncertainty by taking the money now, but knowing full well that if you had waited, you might have actually worked out to have more money later, then maybe in that case it makes sense to claim earlier,' he said. So the 'best' age, according to financial experts, is likely still 'as late as you possibly can.' But personal finance is always personal. For people looking to delay taking Social Security but off-ramp from full-time work, there are options. Quinby said the Center for Retirement Research has looked at the so-called 'bridge option,' where people spend down their 401(k) or other savings in their 60s to facilitate delaying guaranteed inflation-protected Social Security income. Hershfield of UCLA said his parents opted to work part time. (If you continue working while claiming benefits, especially if you haven't reached full retirement age, your benefits will be reduced if you earn above a certain income level.) Orestis of Retirement Genius said even if you go on Social Security at 62, you aren't eligible for Medicare until 65. He tells people to do whatever they can to at least stretch their working years with employer-sponsored health insurance until they can access those government-provided medical benefits. He also recommended something everyone can do right now to protect their benefits: Log on to and create your account. From there, you can see your lifetime earnings from your very first paycheck. You can (and should) download those records so you have a hard copy in case anything ever happens to the federal government's database.
