Stuff You Should Consume - Oct 9, 2022

Welcome to this week’s edition of “Stuff You Should Consume” —a periodic email for Message Box subscribers with important and interesting political content.

“Grace” by Cody Keenan

My friend and former White House colleague wrote a beautiful book from the perspective of a speechwriter about the ten crucial days in 2015 that included the shooting in Charleston and the legalization of gay marriage by the Supreme Court. It’s a must read for anyone who wants to know what working in the White House is like and feel hope for the future. But don’t take my word for it, here’s what Barack Obama has to say about Cody’s book:

At a time when the meaning of America is up for grabs, Cody Keenan’s new book chronicles ten days that tested us and ultimately showed us at our best. It’s a captivating story about what’s worth fighting for, an antidote to cynicism that will make you believe again.”—President Barack Obama, via Twitter

“Gerrymandering Isn’t Giving Republicans the Advantage You Might Expect” by Nate Cohn, New York Times

Here’s one way to think about it: If you believe Democrats have a good chance to win the Senate, they ought to at least have a chance to win the House — even if Republicans are favored there.

Let’s start with a simple fact: On the new House map, 226 districts would have voted for Mr. Biden in 2020, compared with 209 for Donald J. Trump.

“Latino voters are being flooded with even more misinformation in 2022” by Christian Paz, Vox

Now, as the 2022 midterm elections pick up, researchers and academics tell me that the problem of false and misleading information in the Latino community is becoming more widespread — and that it’s getting harder to separate misinformation from standard political speech. Democrats, who have blamed misinformation for their party’s recent underperformance with Latino voters, risk further misunderstanding Latino voters by confusing the problem of misinformation with their own lack of strategy. Republicans, meanwhile, have been happy to weaponize misinformation and propagate these very same bogus claims.

“A majority of GOP nominees — 299 in all — deny the 2020 election results” by Amy Gardner, Washington Post

Candidates who have challenged or refused to accept Joe Biden’s victory — 53 percent of the 569 analyzed by The Post — are running in every region of the country and in nearly every state. Republican voters in three states nominated election deniers in all federal and statewide races The Post examined.

Although some are running in heavily Democratic areas and are expected to lose, most of the election deniers nominated are likely to win: Of the nearly 300 on the ballot, 173 are running for safely Republican seats. Another 52 will appear on the ballot in tightly contested races.

“Dr. Oz’s Scientific Experiments Killed Over 300 Dogs, Entire Litter of Puppies” by Kylie Cheung, Jezebel

Oz, the New Jersey resident who’s currently running for U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania, was a “principal investigator” at the Columbia University Institute of Comparative Medicine labs for years and assumed “full scientific, administrative, and fiscal responsibility for the conduct” of his studies. Over the course of 75 studies published in academic journals reviewed by Jezebel, Oz’s team conducted experiments on at least 1,027 live animal subjects that included dogs, pigs, calves, rabbits, and small rodents. Thirty-four of these experiments resulted in the deaths of at least 329 dogs, while two of his experiments killed 31 pigs, and 38 experiments killed 661 rabbits and rodents