In an effort to secure more support from male voters before Election Day, vice-presidential candidate Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., played Madden NFL together on the live-streaming platform Twitch on Sunday.

‘Sundays are for football! Game on, AOC,’ Walz wrote in a post on X.

The pair jumped on the streaming service Sunday afternoon, during NFL Sunday games, to discuss the upcoming election.

Ocasio-Cortez opened the session explaining that her and Walz agreed to do the live-stream a couple of weeks ago when he expressed interest in doing a game stream with her. They agreed to play Madden because he used to be a football coach, and he was familiar with the game, having played it with his children in the past. 

Walz joined the stream after 30 minutes, wearing a camouflage Minnesota Vikings hat, prior to attending a campaign rally in Nevada. 

The duo wasted no time in throwing jabs at former President Donald Trump and emphasized the importance of Democrats taking control of the House and keeping majority control of the Senate.

‘We don’t all share the same politics, we don’t all share the same views, but the need to defeat Trump this year has been my number one priority,’ Ocasio-Cortez said.

During the live-stream, Walz told Ocasio-Cortez that if he and Kamala Harris win the election, he would make her the Speaker of the House. 

‘We’re gonna win this election. We’re gonna make you put a gavel in your hand in the House,’ Walz told Ocasio-Cortez

The two continue to game and chat about a Harris-Walz administration, with Walz eluding that they would eliminate the filibuster.

‘The Senate has their own things. They have, kinda their ‘norms and their customs,’ but in order..’ Ocasio-Cortez said before Walz cuts in.

‘Maybe, maybe, some of those norms, I’m just gonna say I don’t know where you stand, but I’m guessing you and I are probably the same on the filibuster?’ Walz asks.

‘Oh yeah, we gotta get rid of that thing,’ Ocasio-Cortez replies. 

The filibuster is a Senate rule that allows a minority to block legislation pending a supermajority vote.

While Harris first said she would support ending the filibuster to reinstate Roe v. Wade era abortion legislation in 2022, she has since made abortion a major issue in her Democratic bid for the presidency this election cycle. She also supported ending the filibuster to pass the progressive Green New Deal climate legislation in 2019. 

Walz and Ocasio-Cortez also talked about the importance of access to Social Security, bonding over their mutual losses of their dads when they were teenagers.  

‘Gov. Tim Walz and I both lost our dads when we were teenagers. A lot of people don’t know that Social Security also helps you if you lose a spouse (or parent, if you’re a kid). It’s so important we defend and expand it,’ Ocasio-Cortez wrote on X following the live stream.

During a campaign rally in North Carolina earlier this month, Walz claimed that his mother has to wait for her social security check every month to feed herself and that Trump and all his ‘rich friends’ don’t care or even worry about Social Security. 

‘When my mom looks for that Social Security deposit to be made in her bank account, that’s how she’s going to feed herself. That’s how she’s going to get things done. He [Trump] doesn’t give a damn if his Social Security check comes or not,’ Walz claimed. 

Walz touted that a hundred million Americans under Kamala Harris as president would see a tax cut.

Walz and Ocasio-Cortez finished their game after playing one half. Walz played for the Minnesota Vikings, while Ocasio-Cortez played for the Buffalo Bills. The final score was 0-0. 

Walz then campaigned in Las Vegas. He attended a ‘Latinos con Harris-Walz’ get-out-the-early-vote event and watch party for the Las Vegas Raiders vs. Kansas City Chiefs game with Congressman Steven Horsford and Congresswoman Teresa Leger Fernandez on Sunday afternoon.

The Harris-Walz campaign said they have placed an emphasis on building a network of trusted allies to mobilize their male-driven audiences – including a program called, ‘Athletes for Harris,’ which is co-chaired by NBA players Stephen Curry and Chris Paul, and former NBA legend Magic Johnson.

During an interview with NBC News last week, Harris dismissed her diminishing support among male voters who pressed her on why former President Donald Trump had a 16-point lead over the vice president in the key voting bloc. 

‘Why do you think there is a disconnect for you with men right now?’ NBC’s Peter Alexander asked Harris during an interview in Michigan that aired on Saturday.

An NBC poll conducted in early October found that while Harris leads Trump among women voters, 55% to 41%, Trump leads Harris 56% to 40% among male voters.

MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell also called out Harris’ issues with male voters during an appearance on NBC’s ‘Meet The Press’ earlier this month.

Fox News’ Hanna Panreck and Jamie Joseph contributed to this report. 

Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance, of Ohio argued that his running mate, former President Trump, has clashed with former Pentagon officials for refusing to enter ‘ridiculous wars,’ arguing that this was the reason why former officials like ex-White House chief of staff John Kelly have spoken out against him.

In a sit-down interview that aired on CNN’s ‘State of the Union’ Sunday morning, Vance sparred with host Jake Tapper over recent allegations brought by Kelly, who said Trump is the ‘definition of a fascist.’ 

Vance charged that Kelly and other critics like former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney disagree with Trump on policy and are ‘conservative in the sense that they want America to get involved in a ton of ridiculous military conflicts – they wanted America to police the world, and Donald Trump wasn’t.’ 

Tapper pushed back on this, noting that Kelly’s son died in the war in Afghanistan. Vance, a Marine veteran, defended his position, saying, ‘I know John Kelly’s worldview,’ and stating that while he honors Kelly’s son and his family’s sacrifice, ‘that doesn’t mean he wasn’t wrong about policy.’ 

‘Donald Trump wouldn’t listen to the leadership of the military when they wanted him to start ridiculous conflicts,’ Vance said. ‘A lot of former members of the Pentagon bureaucracy, a lot of neoconservatives, they have a fundamental difference with Donald Trump on the question of peace and war.’ 

‘I believe Donald Trump is the candidate of peace. I think the record supports that. The reason these guys go after him so vociferously, I don’t think it’s about his personality, Jake,’ Vance said. ‘I think that it’s about they don’t like that Donald Trump said no when a lot of them want to start a ridiculous war.’ 

Tapper challenged Vance on what he was basing this assertion on. Vance said that it was ‘based on people that I’ve talked to in the Trump administration.’ 

Tapper also cited other former Trump administration officials, including former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, former Vice President Mike Pence, former Defense secretaries James Mattis and Mark Esper, and former White House national security adviser John Bolton, who criticized their ex-boss. 

‘You know one reason why Kamala Harris doesn’t have as many people criticizing her?’ Vance said. ‘Because she doesn’t fire people who fail. That’s why we haven’t had a real audit of the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal is because Kamala Harris protects failures in government. Donald Trump fires them, and I’d much rather have a president who fires people who screw up.’  

Vance lambasted Tapper for not asking about the cost of groceries, housing and other issues impacting Americans’ livelihoods. 

‘They didn’t think he was unfit for office until they had a falling out with him because he fired them, and we’re not talking about the public policy,’ Vance added. ‘Can we talk about how Americans can’t afford groceries? Can we talk about how Americans can’t afford the cost of housing? Can we talk about the fact that a lot of people out there in Erie, Pennsylvania, they’re the ones that suffer and die when people like Mark Esper and Mark Milley don’t obey the commander in chief’s orders?’ 

Vance charged that Tapper would ‘much rather talk about what Donald Trump allegedly said than what he did in office.’ He said his running mate ‘wants to use American troops sparingly, he wants peace through strength’ and denied that Trump ever said he would use the U.S. military against the American people. 

In regards to Trump’s ‘enemy from within’ comments, Vance said Tapper was conflating Trump’s stance on ‘far-left lunatics’ and people who would riot in the wake of an election or who burned down American cities in the summer of 2020, adding that federal law enforcement should respond in those cases. 

Vance also appeared on CBS and NBC Sunday shows. 

On foreign policy, Vance told NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ that Trump would stay in NATO, but other countries should pay their share, and that Russian President Vladimir Putin is ‘clearly an adversary’ but the United States needs to be ‘smart about diplomacy too,’ especially to end the war in Ukraine. 

‘Of course we’re going to honor our NATO commitment, but I think it’s important, Kristen, to recognize that NATO is not just a welfare client, it should be a real alliance,’ Vance told NBC’s Kristen Welker. ‘Donald Trump wants NATO to be strong. He wants us to remain in NATO. But he also wants NATO countries to actually carry their share of the defense burden.’

Sen. Lindsey Graham on Sunday said John Kelly’s ‘fascist’ comment about former President Trump, under whom he served as White House chief of staff, was a sign of desperation for the Harris campaign with just over a week to go until election day.

Graham, R-S.C., appeared on ABC’s ‘This Week,’ where he was asked about how Kelly insisted Trump met the ‘general definition of a fascist’ and would govern like a dictator if allowed during an interview with The New York Times last week. 

‘[Kelly’s] undermining a concept that’s been good for America,’ Graham said. ‘I think our generals have sort of been apolitical. He’s entitled to his opinion. I just categorically reject it.’

‘Three weeks before the election, you’re calling basically Trump Hitler, a fascist, is not going to resonate,’ the senator continued. ‘What happened to joy on the Democratic side? They went from joy to now Trump is Hitler. Well, that’s desperation.’

Graham further struck back on Kelly’s ‘fascist’ comment, asking Americans to look at Trump’s record as ‘a friend of Israel unlike any other’ and how he helped put Israel ‘in the strongest position they’ve been in.’ He also said there were no wars, the border was at its most secure and inflation was down, all on Trump’s watch.

‘I think General Kelly’s criticisms are not based on facts,’ the senator said. ‘I think it’s emotional, it’s sad, and it’s not going to matter.’

Graham was also asked about criticisms that retired four-star Gens. Mark Milley and Jim Mattis, who both served in the Trump administration, also made about the former president.

‘That shows you how desperate this campaign is, you’ve got three retired generals who have been out of the game for a while, three weeks before the election and trying to replace joy with fear,’ Graham said.

Graham also noted that he does not think Harris is a fascist or communist either when commenting about the war of words between Trump and Harris.

‘Do I think Kamala Harris is a fascist? No. [Do] I think she’s a communist? No. I think she’s the most liberal person ever to be nominated by a major party. I think she’s ineffective. I think she’s incompetent,’ Graham said.

Election lawyers and experts say it is unlikely the U.S. Supreme Court will take up an election-related case after Nov. 5, let alone cast the deciding vote.

‘It’s got to be super, super close,’ Jason Torchinsky, partner at Holtzman Vogel, told Fox News Digital. ‘If you look at the history of post-election litigation, the only places where it has been successfully outcome-determinative really are in places where the vote is just super close.’

‘If there’s a real issue, the Court will take it. If it’s something that the Court doesn’t think merits a higher-level view, then they’ll summarily affirm,’ Torchinsky said. 

Congress amended the Electoral Count Reform Act in 2022 (ECRA) which expedites potential litigation and specifying that the vice president’s role during the joint session is ‘ministerial in nature.’ 

The statute says ‘any action brought by an aggrieved candidate for President or Vice President’ will be heard by a district court with a three-judge panel. It is then ‘the duty of the court to advance on the docket and to expedite to the greatest possible extent the disposition of the action.’ 

Parties are then allowed to directly request review of the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court on an expedited basis. 

‘It does kind of create a new route into the federal court for a specific limited set of issues being raised under the Electoral Count Act,’ said Greg Teufle, founder of OGC Law. ‘There are very limited issues that can be raised under that Act, though. So it’s not a broad expansion or increase in the likelihood of litigation, either in federal courts or litigation that reaches the U.S. Supreme Court, under the Electoral Reform Act.’

Teufle noted that for an election case to be taken up by the Court, ‘there would have to be significant and provable fraud allegations or other serious violations of the law in the manner that elections are conducted or votes are processed.’

Republicans and Democrats alike have initiated a flurry of election-related lawsuits ahead of Nov. 5, including a recent Georgia case finding that county election officials must certify results by the legal deadline despite suspecting fraud or mistakes. 

Joseph Burns, partner at Holtzman Vogel, did note that Republicans may prove successful in election litigation based on the makeup of the Court. 

‘In terms of the makeup of the court, there’s no question you’ve got six appointees of Republican judges at this point,’ Burns said. ‘And these are generally people who, I think, are going to interpret what needs to be interpreted, whether it’s a state statute or a federal statute. Their general philosophy is to adhere as closely as possible to the words of the statute.’

‘You have a more conservative-minded Supreme Court in that respect,’ Burns continued. ‘And you certainly have Republicans generally making those types of arguments about courts interpreting statutes or state constitutions, for instance, in a stricter manner. So I think in that respect, given the arguments that each side generally makes, Republicans would be in better shape.’

John Hardin Young, counsel at Sandler Reiff, however, told Fox News Digital he believes it is highly unlikely that the Supreme Court could decide the 2024 election, especially noting the conservative majority. 

‘I think that there’s now a sensitivity among the nine justices not to get involved unless it were absolutely necessary,’ Young said. ‘There is, I think, somewhat of a bias in the majority on the Supreme Court to get involved if they believe that process is being corrupted or people who aren’t following the rules because the majority is, I think, very sensitive to democracy depending on people following the rules.’

‘There are just so many unknowns that we have to see how things play out,’ said Jeff Weiss, professor at New York Law School. 

Although the ECRA attempted to clarify and revise the casting and counting of electoral votes, Teufle said the law as a whole could become the target of litigation after Nov. 5. 

‘The entirety of the act may come under challenge if it’s utilized in a way that impacts the outcome of the election in a way that people view as improper, unfair or unlawful,’ Teufle said. ‘Either side disappointed with how the electoral count goes could raise constitutional questions about the laws used and the process used to count the votes.’

Former President Trump blasted Vice President Kamala Harris Saturday over an appearance with Beyoncé at which critics say Harris and the media intentionally misled attendees into thinking the superstar would perform. 

‘Beyoncé went up and spoke for a couple of minutes and then left, and the place went crazy,’ Trump told a crowd in Michigan. ‘They booed the hell out of everybody. They thought she was going to perform. What happened was my opponent got up and started speaking, and they booed the hell out of her. It’s crazy. They have to use people to get people to come, and then they send buses. We don’t send buses. Everybody comes. We’re just going to make America great again. It’s very simple.’

Several media outlets, including MSNBC, promoted Beyonce’s appearance with Harris in Houston on Friday by saying that the music superstar would perform, prompting criticism from conservatives who accused Harris of intentionally misleading the public. Beyoncé did speak, but she did not perform. 

‘They lied to build a crowd,’ Trump senior adviser Tim Murtaugh posted on X. 

‘Promising a concert from a huge pop star who then did not perform is the most perfect metaphor for the Harris campaign that anyone could dream up, only it really happened,’ Murtaugh added.

‘Beyoncé really showed up at the rally only to speak for a few seconds and not perform, leaving Kamala Harris to be *booed* by her fans,’ Red State writer Bonchie posted on X. ‘Watching this campaign operate is like watching a naked man smear himself in honey and run through a bear cage.’

‘So will MSNBC and all the other outlets who ran with this burn their sources who falsely told them that Beyoncé would be performing at the Kamala rally?’ author and journalist Jerry Dunleavy posted on X. ‘Or did they just make it up?’

Videos circulated on social media on Friday night appearing to show some of the 30,000 fans in attendance booing and becoming disgruntled though it was unclear what the specific reason was. 

‘The Beyoncé concert featuring Kamala has devolved into a total and complete disaster in which Kamala is barely audible on the feed,’ an account run by the Trump campaign posted on X. ‘Humiliating!

The Harris-Walz campaign issued a press release on Saturday following Trump’s Michigan rally calling the former president ‘uhinged.’

‘As Vice President Harris draws record crowds and bridges divides, Trump showed again today that he is too busy trying to divide our country to lead it,’ Harris-Walz campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitika.

‘America can’t afford to let an unhinged and unchecked Complainer-in-Chief back into the White House to enact his revenge. While Trump adds to his enemies list, Vice President Harris is bringing voters together across party lines because she is focused on actually helping the American people as President.’

Beyoncé, whose hit song ‘Freedom’ has been adopted by the vice president as her campaign trail anthem, spoke ahead of Harris and introduced her at the event, which leaned heavily into reproductive rights.

‘It’s time for America to sing a new song,’ Beyoncé said as she formally endorsed the vice president in her White House race against Trump. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please give a big, loud, Texas welcome to the next President of the United States, Vice President Kamala Harris.’

And she emphasized that ‘I’m not here as a celebrity, I’m not here as a politician, I’m here as a mother. A mother who cares deeply about the world my children and all of our children live in. A world where we have the freedom to control our bodies.’

Fox News Digital’s Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.
 

Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance was in Georgia on Saturday morning. He rallied supporters and called out Vice President Kamala Harris for what he says is the suggestion that voters are bad people for supporting conservative policies.

‘Here’s my message to Kamala Harris,’ Vance told the crowd in Atlanta. ‘Stop censoring your fellow citizens, try to persuade them and you might actually get somewhere. Stop telling people they’re racist because they want their children to go to schools with kids who speak the English language.’

Vance continued, ‘Stop telling American citizens they’re bad people because they don’t want fentanyl flooding their communities. Stop telling the American people they don’t deserve to have smaller hospital wait times. Stop telling the American people they’re bad for wanting a secure southern border.’

Fox News Digital reached out to the Harris campaign for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

Vance’s appearance in Georgia came as early voting numbers have hit record totals in the key battleground state where election officials say the vote count has already exceeded more than half of 2020’s total turnout.

‘So over 50% of the turnout for 2020 has already voted in Georgia,’ tweeted Gabriel Sterling, the chief operating officer for the secretary of state’s office. ‘So for people like Joe Biden & Stacey Abrams, you were wrong saying we had voter suppression here. It’s easy to register & vote in Georgia…and really hard to even try to cheat. Great job by our voters & counties.’

More than 2.6 million people in the Peach State have voted early, according to Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office. The total vote count in the 2020 election was barely under five million, with former President Trump narrowly losing to President Biden by a margin of just 11,779 votes. 

Vance told a reporter after his remarks on Saturday that he believes Republicans in Georgia have embraced early voting as opposed to past years, in part due to the election reforms the state has put in place.

Gov. Brian Kemp signed an overhaul of Georgia’s election rules into law in 2021, after Trump made unproven claims of widespread voter fraud that he said cost him the state’s 16 electoral votes in the last presidential election. Republicans said that new restrictions on absentee and mail-in voting, expanded voter ID requirements and prohibitions on non-poll workers from providing food and drink to voters waiting in line at poll centers were necessary to preserve election integrity.

Fox News Digital’s Chris Pandolfo contributed to this report

Former President Donald Trump held a rally in Michigan on Friday night where he slammed Vice President Kamala Harris for ‘partying’ while tension in the Middle East boiled over.

Trump spoke in Traverse City, as Israeli fighter jets were bombarding Iranian military targets and Harris was at a rally in Houston with Beyonce.

‘You know where she is tonight?’ Trump asked the crowd. ‘She’s out partying. So Israel is attacking. We’ve got a war going on, and she’s out partying. At least we’re working to make America great again. That’s what we’re doing. Kamala, Kamala, she’s the worst president in the history of our country.’

Israel launched its largest ever attack on Iran Friday in a wave of retaliatory airstrikes after the Islamic Republic fired a barrage of missiles toward Israelis earlier this month. 

Additionally, the Trump campaign put out a press release with a photo of Trump in Austin earlier in the day when he highlighted ‘the tragic human cost of Kamala’s border invasion’ and was joined by the mother of Jocelyn Nungary, whose daughter was murdered allegedly by illegal immigrants.

‘Kamala, meanwhile, will be partying with celebrities in Houston as she makes another desperate attempt to salvage her flailing campaign,’ the campaign said. ‘Don’t expect her to apologize to the families of Jocelyn Nungaray or any of the other American citizens victimized by illegals she imported into our communities — she couldn’t care less. In Kamala’s America, illegal immigrants are the priority as Americans are relegated to the second tier in their own country. The split screen tells you all you need to know.’

Harris was campaigning in Houston, Texas on Friday night at a rally where an estimated 30,000 people showed up to hear from the presidential candidate as well as music superstar Beyonce. 

Beyoncé, whose hit song ‘Freedom’ has been adopted by the vice president as her campaign trail anthem, spoke ahead of Harris and introduced her at the event, which leaned heavily into reproductive rights.

‘It’s time for America to sing a new song,’ Beyoncé said as she formally endorsed the vice president in her White House race against former President Trump. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please give a big, loud, Texas welcome to the next President of the United States, Vice President Kamala Harris.’

And she emphasized that ‘I’m not here as a celebrity, I’m not here as a politician, I’m here as a mother. A mother who cares deeply about the world my children and all of our children live in. A world where we have the freedom to control our bodies.’

Trump added during his rally that ‘Kamala is also in total freefall with the Arab and Muslim population in Michigan. She’s in a freefall. She sent their jobs overseas, brought crime to their cities and tonight in the Middle East, it’s like a tinderbox. It’s ready to explode. People are being killed at levels that we’ve never seen before and that’s taking place right now. In Michigan she is in literally a freefall. They’ve had it with her. Nobody’s in charge. Joe Biden is asleep. Kamala is at a dance party with Beyonce.’

Fox News Digital reached out to the Harris campaign for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

‘During his low-energy speech in Michigan tonight, @realDonaldTrump, Arrived 3 hours late and spoke to a dwindling crowd, Insulted Detroit, Attacked Beyoncé, said his handlers tell him women don’t like him,’ Harris spokesperson Sarafina Chitika posted on X on Friday night.

Fox News Digital’s Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report

As someone who used to write regularly for the newspaper, it has been a long time since I have had an occasion to say this but . . . Bravo, Washington Post.

This week, the Post announced that not only would it not endorse a candidate this year, but it would not do so in the future. Over two decades ago, I wrote a column calling for newspapers to end the practice of all election endorsements. (Yes, before all things seemed to turn on how you feel about Donald Trump). I have continued to push the press to abandon this pernicious practice.

When I first came out against political endorsements, the media had not taken the plunge into advocacy journalism, which is now strangling the life out of this industry.

As former New York Times writer (and now Howard University journalism professor) Nikole Hannah-Jones has declared, ‘all journalism is activism.’

After a series of interviews with over 75 media leaders,  Leonard Downie Jr., former Washington Post executive editor, and Andrew Heyward, former CBS News president, reaffirmed this shift. As Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle, stated: ‘Objectivity has got to go.’

The result has been trust in the media plummeting to an all-time low. Revenues and readership are falling as outlets struggle to survive. Yet, reporters are still refusing to reconsider the abandonment of neutrality and objectivity.

Recently, Post owner Jeff Bezos brought in Washington Post publisher and CEO William Lewis, who promptly delivered a truth bomb in the middle of the newsroom. He told the staff, ‘Let’s not sugarcoat it…We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right? I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.’

The response was calls for Lewis and other editors to be canned. These reporters would rather give up their very jobs than their bias.

Now Lewis is under fire again after announcing, ‘We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.’

The Washington Post Guild immediately went ballistic at the thought of not openly supporting Kamala Harris, though many would point out that the Post has hardly been subtle in its coverage on that point.

The Guild expressed alarm at the thought of leaving readers to reach their own conclusions ‘a mere 11 days ahead of an immensely consequential election.’ According to the staff, the Post needs ‘to help guide readers,’ and ‘according to our own reporters and Guild members, an endorsement for Harris was already drafted, and the decision not to publish was made by The Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos.’

Perish the thought that the Post would start to raise free-range readers left to reach their own conclusions.

The Post and other papers are writing for each other and core Democratic readers. The rest of America is moving on to new sources of information on social media and elsewhere.

Former executive editor Martin ‘Marty’ Baron and others went into absolute vapors. Baron declared, ‘This is cowardice, with democracy as its casualty.’

Others retreated into anonymity to denounce their management, with some making precisely the case for not making such an endorsement: ‘It very disingenuously draws false equivalencies. This is not, for example, Kamala Harris vs. Mitt Romney. This is Kamala Harris against someone who tried to disenfranchise the electorate last time.’

It is ironic since, at the time, Romney was portrayed as a fascist, as were prior Republican nominees.

One of the most curious responses came from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders: ‘This is what Oligarchy is about. Jeff Bezos, the 2nd wealthiest person in the world and the owner of the Washington Post, overrides his editorial board and refuses to endorse Kamala.’

An oligarchy is defined as ‘government by the few.’ That is precisely what the public sees in an effective state media and why ‘Let’s Go Brandon!’ became a type of ‘Yankee Doodling’ of the political and media establishment.

Sanders’ objection is that the owner decided not to exercise the power of the few but instead left the choice to voters. According to Sanders, that is the definition of oligarchy in declining to act as an oligarch.

As discussed years ago, the decision of newspapers to engage in political endorsements has had a corrosive influence for years. It destroys the separation between newspapers and those who are supposed to be the subjects of their investigatory and journalistic work.

My prior column called for the termination of not just presidential endorsements, though it is a good start. There should be a commitment to total neutrality in all elections, from judges to senators to presidents.

The Washington Post is not alone. The Los Angeles Times has declined to make an endorsement, which also led to a staff revolt.

The decision not to endorse in this election could prove a critical moment for mainstream media in turning the corner on the era of advocacy journalism. While skeptical, I genuinely hope that Bezos has decided to reconsider the course of the Post. We need the Post and the rest of the mainstream media. The media plays a critical role in our democracy as a neutral source of information on government abuse and corruption.

However, that role also needs the trust of the public. Otherwise, as Lewis told the Post staff, ‘no one is reading your stuff.’

That is evident from the very closeness of this election. After years of unrelenting anti-Trump coverage and a billion-dollar war chest to sell Harris to the public, the country is still divided right down the middle.

The Post and other papers are writing for each other and core Democratic readers. The rest of America is moving on to new sources of information on social media and elsewhere.

For those of us who loved the old Post and want our ‘Fourth Estate’ to be strong, this is a meaningful start.

So Bravo, Washington Post.