Washington Post Begs Bezos to Change Course in Striking Petition

Journalists at The Washington Post are sounding the alarm over a crisis at the newspaper.

More than 400 reporters and editors on Tuesday evening sent a petition to the outlet’s billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, urging him to intervene and make changes.

“We are deeply alarmed by recent leadership decisions that have led readers to question the integrity of this institution, broken with a tradition of transparency, and prompted some of our most distinguished colleagues to leave,” the journalists wrote in the petition, which was first reported on by NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik.

The petition did not mention anyone by name, including the paper’s CEO, Will Lewis, who has faced criticism for his editorial decisions, as well as accusations of obstruction of justice from his time working more than a decade ago for Rupert Murdoch in England.

Since assuming the position in 2023, Lewis’s decisions have not been well received, including his choice of executive editor Robert Winnett, who ended up withdrawing from the position due to ethics concerns. Then, in October of last year, Lewis announced that the newspaper’s editorial board would not be making an endorsement in the presidential election.

This caused an immediate backlash, with the newspaper losing more than 250,000 subscribers days after Lewis’s announcement. The decision was seen as the paper trying to soften its coverage of Donald Trump, under the influence of Bezos. When a cartoonist for the Post, Ann Telnaes, decided to satirize Bezos and other tech leaders’ approach to Trump, her cartoon was spiked by an editor, leading to her resignation.

Shortly after the election, Lewis announced that remote work for Post employees was over and that staffers must return to working in the office five days a week, which couldn’t have earned him any deference at the newsroom.

In recent weeks, several high-profile editors and writers have departed the paper. Two political reporters, Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer, left for The Atlantic, while reporter Tyler Pager moved to The New York Times. Former managing editor Matea Gold, once considered a contender for executive editor, also left for the Times last month. And last week, the Post laid off 4 percent of its staff, comprising close to 100 people on the business side of the paper.

“We understand the need for change and we are eager to deliver the news in innovative ways. But we need a clear vision we can believe in,” the Post’s journalists wrote in their petition. It’s hard to see what Bezos will do, considering Lewis was his choice to take over as publisher and that he is likely the reason behind many of their grievances.

After Trump took office the first time, the Post adopted the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” Now that Trump is taking office again, and Bezos is cozying up to him, it seems that the Post’s journalists are making a last-ditch effort to live up to that slogan. The question is whether Bezos will listen.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. failed to report making hundreds of thousands of dollars off his anti-vaccine nonprofit, which he claimed he never took a cent from, The Daily Beast reported Wednesday.

The failed presidential candidate and Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services owned up to an “inadvertent error” in his financial disclosure forms that concealed the actual amount he was raking in from the Children’s Health Defense, a 501 nonprofit founded in 2007 under the name World Mercury Project.* The group pushes long-debunked misinformation linking vaccines to autism.

Tax filings for the group initially showed that Kennedy had made $510,000 in 2022, and $326,000 for his 15 weeks of work in 2023. But in a corrected filing last month, he revealed he’d actually made $836,571.25 in 2022.

In the filing, Kennedy claimed he’d mistakenly reported the net pay received, as opposed to gross wages.

When the Beast asked Trump’s transition team about the filing, an official said, “Bobby’s (personal financial disclosure) amounts were reported incorrectly.”

Trump transition spokeswoman Katie Miller confirmed that there had been an “oversight in the preparation of the PFD.”

Kennedy repeatedly claimed that he wasn’t making money off the group—in fact, he called it the “opposite of a profit motive” during an appearance on InfoWars in 2021, adding that his involvement with the group had damaged relationships with those in his family. In 2017, he told Tucker Carlson, “I’m getting unpaid for this.”

However, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Between 2017 and 2023, Kennedy earned $2.2 million, according to the group’s federal tax filings.

Kennedy had served as chairman and chief litigation counsel for the Children’s Health Defense since 2015, and in April 2023, he announced that he was going “on leave” to conduct his ultimately unsuccessful run as an independent candidate for president.*

*This story originally misstated the name of Kennedy’s nonprofit.

Pam Bondi tried to weasel her way out of admitting that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, during her confirmation hearing for U.S. attorney general Wednesday.

Bondi, who received the nomination only after Matt Gaetz was canned for being a sexual predator, faced some questioning from Senator Dick Durbin regarding her past loyalty to the president-elect.

“Ms Bondi, you are one of four Trump personal lawyers that he has already selected for top positions in the Department of Justice. You joined Mr. Trump in working to overturn the 2020 election. You repeatedly described investigations and prosecutions of Mr. Trump as ‘witch hunts,’” Durbin told Bondi.

“To my knowledge Donald Trump has never acknowledged the legal results of the 2020 election,” he continued. “Are you prepared to say under oath without reservation that Donald Trump lost the presidential contest to Joe Biden in 2020?”

“Ranking member Durbin, President Biden is the president of the United States. He was duly sworn in, and he is the president of the United States,” Bondi replied, avoiding a straightforward answer. “There was a peaceful transition of power; President Trump left office and was overwhelmingly elected in 2024.”

Durbin then reframed the question, asking Bondi if she “had any doubts” that Joe Biden won the Electoral College in 2020.

“All I can tell you as a prosecutor is from my first-hand experience.… When I went to Pennsylvania as an advocate for the [Trump] campaign … I saw many things there. But do I accept the results? Of course I do. Do I agree with what happened? I saw so much,” Bondi rambled. “No one on either side of the aisle should want there to be any issues with election integrity in our country. We should all want our elections to be free and fair, and the rules and the laws to be followed.”

“I think that question deserved a yes or no,” Durbin bluntly replied. “And I think the length of your answer is an indication that you weren’t prepared to answer yes.”

Durbin continued. “Have you heard the recording of President Trump on January 2, 2021, when he urged the secretary of state of Georgia to quote ‘find 11,780 votes’ and declare him the winner of that state?”

“No, I’ve heard about it through clips, but no, Senator …” said Bondi.

“What was your reaction to President Trump making that call?”

Bondi stumbled a bit. “I would have to listen to the tape, Senator.”

“Well that quote that I give you is exact. He said to the Georgia secretary of state, ‘Find 11,780 votes.’

Bondi said that the call was long and the quote may have been taken out of context.

Bondi is a former lawyer for Trump, representing him during his first impeachment trial.

A second administration under Donald Trump apparently looks like a free-for-all for punishing liberal-minded states for their ideological differences.

On Tuesday, Ohio Representative Jim Jordan agreed that the incoming forty-seventh president should consider moving the 2028 Olympics, currently slated to be held in Los Angeles, to a deep red state.

“I’m wondering if you think the Trump administration should seriously look at moving the Olympics to a red city where you know things are gonna be run properly, like a city in Florida, maybe Miami, or maybe Dallas in Texas, or maybe a city in your home state of Ohio,” started Newsmax host Rob Finnerty. “I’m not convinced that California can manage the Olympics, the World Cup, and the Superbowl, all within a year of each other.”

The network then cut to footage of the Los Angeles wildfires, which so far have torched an area double the size of Manhattan, killed at least 25 people, and razed more than 12,000 structures and thousands of homes around the city.

“Yeah, especially when they’re spending time quote ‘Trump-proofing’ their state, looking for ways to set up barriers and obstacles to what the American people elected us to do, particularly I think when it comes to this whole immigration and repatriation issue,” Jordan said. “So we’ll see. I’ll leave that up to President Trump and his team.

“But I do think the American people rightly see how poorly that state is being run,” Jordan added.

Republicans have transformed the national disaster into a political game, floating ideas of conditioning aid to California to force it to bend its ideological knee to conservative preferences. That could include atoning for “bad behavior” related to their land management and “broken tax policy” under a “liberal administration,” according to Iowa Representative Zach Nunn.

California operates as the single largest economy in the nation (and the fifth-largest in the world, according to the Public Policy Institute of California), contributing to 14 percent of America’s national gross domestic product.

An analysis from the Rockefeller Institute of Government showed that in 2022, California was just one of a small handful of states that gave more than it got to the federal government, contributing $83 billion more in taxes to the federal government than it received back.*

*This story originally misstated the amount California contributes in taxes relative to the federal spending it receives.

Corporations and rich donors are lining up to donate money to Donald Trump, even though he can’t run for president again.

Axios reports that Trump’s team expects the president-elect to raise about $500 million by the summer—unprecendented for a president entering their second term in office. What will the president-elect do with all of the cash? Lord it over people, of course.

“The money is just pouring in at Mar-a-Lago. Trump doesn’t have to lift a finger. Everyone’s coming to him,” one anonymous Trump adviser told the publication. According to Axios, donors are sending money to Trump’s inauguration account, the MAGA Inc. super PAC, the pro-Trump nonprofit Securing American Greatness, the Republican National Committee ,and Trump’s presidential library fund.

Donors from the cryptocurrency industry are giving as much as $10 million to $20 million, according to the adviser, causing other wealthy individuals to increase their donations.

“If the tech guys are giving big, it makes everyone give,” said another Trump adviser.

Four years ago, many corporations and wealthy donors pledged to stop donating because of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. While many of them eventually resumed their donations, Trump made a list of those who didn’t and is reminding these donors that he still won the election without their help.

“You guys made this amount of money last year and you’re gonna make so much more now because of me,” Trump said to one company’s representatives, according to one source. “But when I needed you, where the f**k were you? You weren’t with me and maybe you were with [Kamala Harris].”

With the windfall of cash, and the ability to keep raking it in, Trump can help his allies, punish his foes, and help keep Republicans in power in Congress. He can position himself as kingmaker, not only for his four years in office, but long afterward if he so chooses. He can also keep businesses and industries from going against his agenda.

Trump having the ability to use money as leverage against anything he doesn’t want doesn’t bode well for the country. He already has escaped accountability from the legal system, and now he can further create an atmosphere where people are afraid of crossing him. Do Democrats have a plan to deal with an emboldened, wealthy Trump?