2024: The Year in Newsfucking
Holy shit, Newsfuckers, we fucked so much news this year!
Happy end of 2024, Newsfuckers! Remember how this roller-coaster of a year started up kinda calm and then took that insane plummet when we saw Pres. Joe Biden try to debate notoriously bad debater Donald Trump?
And then we soared up again, propelled by pure vibes from the launch of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign? And then how we smacked into a red brick wall that was overwhelmingly white but had more non-white and younger bricks than we were expecting?
Well, along the way, TFN — and the Jonathan Larsen Substack where I post my original reporting — had a few things to say about it. That included analysis and unearthing previously earthed information.
As of this writing, since its Substack launch on Jan. 21, 2024, TFN has published 362 posts, including 56 podcasts. That’s the weekday morning newsletters, articles, commentary, and occasional navel-gazing. The Jonathan Larsen Substack has published 36 posts (some of them duplicated at TFN), each consisting of original, enterprise reporting.
All of them only came into the world only because you Newsfuckers supported me and TFN, in growing numbers. Especially because so many of you have joined in the newsfucking only recently, I wanted to take this arbitrary, calendrical opportunity to revisit some of the work, with an emphasis not on what might have made you laugh (through tears or otherwise) but on surfacing stuff that might otherwise have never come to light.
I hope new Newsfuckers will find value in the news we fucked before you joined in, and that the veterans will take some satisfaction in the reminder of just how much newsfucking we accomplished together. So here are some of the highlights, followed by my self-award for doofiest post of the year.
Jan. 24 – Exclusively reported on theocratic, bipartisan legislation to violate the separation of church and state by hosting the private, Christian, right-wing National Prayer Breakfast (NPB) in the Capitol Rotunda, the symbolic heart of America’s legislative branch.
Jan. 30 – Reported that Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) was responding to my exposés by pressing the Fellowship Foundation — the secretive group behind the NPB — for answers about its prayer breakfasts around the world. Especially the 2023 breakfast in Uganda, where Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI) urged that country to defend its Christian laws, including the new LGBTQ+ death penalty. (The Fellowship refused Pocan’s request for answers.)
Jan. 31 – Revealed that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) was letting the National Prayer Breakfast take place in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall, basically as close to the Rotunda as Jesus could get. So far, anyway. (We’ll see what happens in February 2025.)
Mar. 4 – Dropped three stories revealing the backgrounds (theocratic, Benghazi, Stephen Miller) of the top House staffers trying to impeach Homeland [sic] Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. (They failed.)
Mar. 11 – Warned everyone about what’s going to happen to Macy’s if all the corporate systemic incentives have their way.
Mar. 15 – Revealed Aaron Rodgers’ past affiliation with anti-LGBTQ+ Christian groups.
Apr. 2 – Revealed how The Fellowship was covertly using the Kennedy Space Centre for one of its recruiting events. (Serious followup revelations are coming soon-ish!)
Apr. 10 – Long before Savvy Beltway Insiders™ learned how evangelicals tied to The Fellowship lobbied Speaker Johnson to approve $61 billion in Ukraine aid, Newsfuckers found out about it here, before it happened.
Apr. 12 – Offered some context that corporate media weren’t sharing about why corporations can’t succeed at selling cheap crap at dollar stores.
May 23 – Revealed how Biden could close a regulatory loophole letting Wall Street drive inflation. Seems kinda important in retrospect!
June 21 – Guess which fucking news outlet flagged Trump’s early promise to let Big Tech hire non-American immigrants? Maybe you’re reading the wrong newsletters, MAGA fans!
July 1 – My Ukraine reporting kinda culminated in this piece, pulling together the threads of previous stories to show how Pres. Volodymyr Zelenskyy was making concessions to evangelicals backed by the U.S. far right.
July 26 – Remember how Trump’s ear almost got shot? Only one news outlet tracked the gun that almost ear-shot him back to the Trump appointee who made it.
Aug. 10 - Sept. 2 – In The Vance Files series, TFN found tons of shit Democrats and corporate media missed that Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) had said over the years, including his rampant onshitting of evangelical Protestants.
Sept. 6 – Cut up the lies about paying fast-food workers a slightly less embarrassing minimum wage.
Sept. 15 – Posted the first (only?) non-local account of Springfield, OH, officials probing unnamed companies for the influx of Haitian immigrants.
Sept. 16 – Unearthed video of Vance — before his nomination — rejecting legal immigration status of Haitians in Clark County, OH, because he didn’t consider the Biden administration legitimate. Expect this to be a precursor for 2025 legal battles.
Sept. 25 – Exposed Vance’s lie that a third of Clark County’s health spending went for “free” health care for undocumented Haitian immigrants.
Oct. 12 – Reported (though I wasn’t first) that Ugandan Pres. Yoweri Museveni complained he’d been abandoned by The Fellowship, presumably including Rep. Walberg.
Oct. 20 – The office of Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) confirmed to me that he had cut ties with Pres. Museveni.
Oct. 22 – Sank TFN’s teeth into McDonald’s’ claim that it’s not political, showing there’s no meat to their claim and other burger puns.
Oct. 26 – Revealed new information about how then-Pres. Trump screwed over Georgia for storm relief in the aftermath of its governor not stealing the 2020 election for him.
Nov. 3 – Revealed that the Florida House chaplain is not, as advertised, a volunteer, but has been paid for years, sometimes in six figures, by The Fellowship.
Nov. 7 – Unpacked data revealing the absolute tippy-toppest Trump demographic in the election: White evangelicals. (Virtually unreported by corporate media.)
Nov. 13 – Recapped and possibly (I forget) added to what’s known about Secretary of State nominee Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and his connections to The Fellowship.
Nov. 20 – Deep-dove into the history of opposition (racist, obvi) to the Department of Education, which has its roots in the Civil War (obvi).
Nov. 21 – Revealed previously unreported ties of NATO ambassador nominee Matt Whitaker to The Fellowship.
Nov. 23 – Exposed how corporate media were eliding the theocratic records of Trump nominees even at the cabinet level.
Nov. 28 – Surfaced a Mexican news conference that went a loong way towards explaining why Trump suddenly declared the border crisis fixed.
Nov. 30 – Reverse-engineered how corporate media — not far-right outlets — pushed transgender issues into the presidential race based on absolutely zero reasons.
Dec. 1 – Dug up long-forgotten local reporting about the covert Christian theocratic record of Trump’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention nominee Dave Weldon.
Dec. 2 – Revealed that FBI nominee Kash Patel once defended a Palestinian who tried to ship arms to the West Bank, and one of the prosecutors in the case was Karen Gilbert — more recently deputy to special counsel Jack Smith. Put a pin in this story in case Patel goes after Gilbert.
Dec. 9 – Dug up video of Luigi Mangione’s high school valedictory speech, of admittedly questionable news value.
Dec. 22 – Revealed previously unreported ties between “The Apprentice” creator Mark Burnett — Trump’s “special envoy” to the U.K. — and The Fellowship.
Doofiest post of the year? Clearly my discovery of video of Trump’s Transportation Secretary nominee, Fox host (obvi) and former Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI), cavorting naked on a reality TV episode lost to the mists of time. Zero news value whatsoever. I’m not proud, okay?!?
And in case it feels like no one’s paying attention to our vigorous but tender and attentive newsfucking, I wanna remind Newsfuckers just who pays attention to what we together make possible:
It’s funny, I keep saying I’m recapping all this stuff to remind you Newsfuckers who support TFN financially that your support really does make a difference, but in compiling it I realized it was helping me come to the same conclusion. Thank you!
The New Year
There are several stories of original reporting in the TFN pipeline for 2025. And, of course, we’ll continue digging up context and adding historicity as the year unfolds and/or unravels. Job One is curating a sensible news diet, eliminating junk and adding nutrients (context, stupid jokes, and cursing), to fortify all you Newsfuckers for whatever the fuck lies ahead.
If TFN continues growing at its current rate, 2025 will be the year when it can become my job, The Thing That I Do.
That will, I hope, mean not just more reporting, but also better, smarter, more actionable newsfucking capable of expanding the Big Tent of reason. Sharing TFN with potential Newsfuckers will help TFN get there. So will your financial support, if you’re comfortable offering it, in the form of a donation or paid subscription.
Keep on fuckin!
Jonathan I’m delighted that I found you earlyish in your Newsfucking. I have one ask. Can we not call the Christofacists “The Fellowship”? I’m old enough that this conjures pleasant memories of reading Lord of the Rings and the imagery that pops into my head is of hobbits, elves and dwarves. And an old wizard. Maybe we could call them “Children of Mordor” or “Christofacists.”
Ps I know that’s what they call themselves and they can fuck off.