We have 4 stories that we dove into for this conversation with Natalie Bencivenga. As you all know, the news cycle is relentless & it’s damn near impossible to cover everything, but these stories are the one’s we wanted to bring you.
Donald Trump is now saying he would “love” to serve a 3rd term as President
Obviously, this is a story I’ve covered a few times already this year & twice just this month, but I wanted to bring Natalie into the conversation. Especially since this time, it was Trump directly speaking about it, not just others on his behalf.
Really quick - if you’re not using the Substack app, I recommend downloading it, so you can listen to our full conversation. Email only users will not be able to hear the video.
Thank you
WillHotkiss, Carol, Jason Dyer, Jackie Kerr, Greg Owens, and many others for tuning into my live video with Natalie Bencivenga! Join me for my next live video in the app.
Trump Bans States From Removing Medical Debt From Credit Reports
This story is unfortunately personal for me. I am one of the millions of people in this country dealing with thousands of dollars of medical debt. Debt that has severely altered the course of my life.
So I’m sure it goes without saying, I had a lot to say about how unethical medical debt is, & how cruel this policy is.
Do you know someone struggling with medical debt?
ICE Expands Surveillance Of All Americans Social Media Use
This conversation turned into a bit of a debate between Natalie & myself…but probably not in the way you’re thinking. Spoiler - no, neither of us are in favor of government surveillance. You’ll have to tune in to see what our disagreement was.
U.S. Sends World’s Largest Aircraft Carrier Towards Venezuela
For those of you following me on Instagram, Facebook, or Tik Tok, you’ll know that I’ve been spending a lot of time this year harping on the absurdity that is Trump referring to himself as a “pro-peace” President.
In my opinion…
This is the most important story in the news cycle right now.
I started off this discussion with some background about this story, pieces of news that are not being covered in the mainstream, and finished with my case for why more people need to be talking about this story.
The news cycle is relentless & some days it feels overwhelming, but we will persist. Donald Trump and his fascist regime want you to feel exhausted and check out, which is exactly why we are not going to do that.
Before I close out today, I wanted to ask for your support. It is my goal to this work fulltime & bring you consistent news and analysis you can rely on.
In order to do that, I’ll need at least 500 paid subscribers of this newsletter to cover my expenses. Will you subscribe today & help me get closer to that goal?
More updates coming soon.
Until next time,
Desmond
Our last post is now the 2nd most liked post in the history of my newsletter!
I guess it’s safe to say that y’all are on board with the boycotts 😎
For those who missed it, here’s the link to the post
Quick closing thought — sometimes I forget which stories I discuss on which platforms. Which is a whole separate story of me (probably) trying to do too much. Currently, I make content on: Facebook, Substack, Instagram, Tik Tok, YouTube, & Threads. It gets a little hard to keep track sometimes…
I bring that up because I don’t think I’ve mentioned on here yet, just how inspired I’ve become by the rise of Zohran Mamdani. His candidacy has been a bright spot, on an otherwise dismal 2025.
Without going into a long diatribe, I will simply say this…
That’s the future I want to see for the Democratic Party.
And it could be theirs, if they had the courage to ditch the billionaires & corporations.
A conversation we’ll come back to another day.
For now, I will end by saying, that I hope the NYC voters who read this, go vote for Zohran. We could all use a win right now & his victory would be the shot of adrenaline, our tired coalition desperately needs right now.
