Hasta La Gadget!

Fox News is embroiled in so many scandals these days that it’s hard to keep up.

At least nine advertisers have pulled their ads from “The O’Reilly Factor” this week after a New York Times investigation found that five women have received payouts totaling $13 million as a result of sexual harassment allegations against host Bill O’Reilly. 

Fox News’ toxic culture appears to extend beyond even that. A minimum of 30 women have accused O’Reilly, former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes or other Fox News employees of sexual harassment and discrimination, attorney Lisa Bloom said Monday at a press conference.

And yet O’Reilly and Fox News hold more power over American democracy and Republican voters than ever before. 

Fox News has been the most-watched cable news network since 2002, when it overtook CNN in the ratings. But in 2016, the network went one step further, beating out ESPN to become the most-watched network in all of cable.

In fact, only the four major broadcast networks ― NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox ― bested Fox News in terms of prime-time viewership last year. 

Fox News’ dominance in the cable news world has become unquestionable. In 2016, the network had 14 of the 15 most-watched cable news shows in the country.

Its influence has grown more in the new year. The network had its highest-rated quarter ever in the first three months of 2017, as total prime-time viewership grew 20 percent from the same time last year.

At the top sits “The O’Reilly Factor,” the network’s highest-rated show. Even with all the allegations surrounding him, the Fox News host is just days removed from breaking the cable news record for total viewership in a single quarter. 

Fox News has not been the only cable news network enjoying robust growth due to the country’s increased interest in politics. U.S. adults spent 6.5 hours every week watching cable news last year, up from five hours in 2015, Nielsen said in a report released this week ― a trend the company said showed no signs of abating as of January.

That has benefited CNN and MSNBC ― which both delivered record ratings in 2016 ― but the two networks have nowhere near the political influence of Fox News, according to a Pew Research Center study published in January.

When the researchers asked people who had supported Democrat Hillary Clinton in the presidential election what their “main source” of news was, they got back a diverse list of answers. CNN landed at the top, with 18 percent, and MSNBC was in second place, with 9 percent. 

When they asked people who had supported Republican Donald Trump, however, they found that 40 percent of his supporters said Fox News was their “main source” of news about the presidential election. In second place was CNN, but at a distant 8 percent.

That Fox News so dominates the news diet of Trump supporters would not be an issue on its own except for the network’s history of twisting the truth, if not outright lying. Of all the Fox News claims checked by Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking outlet PolitiFact, three out of five have registered as “mostly false,” “false” or “pants on fire” false ― a total rate of falsehood much higher than at MSNBC and CNN.

Those falsehoods compiled have consequences. Stanford University researchers recently found that watching just an hour every week of Fox News increased one’s likelihood of voting Republican by about 3.5 percent. 

One viewer in particular appears to be easily influenced by Fox News. In recent months, President Trump has repeatedly responded to the network over Twitter ― perhaps most notably in January, when one of his tweets mirrored information about the Chicago homicide rate that appeared on “The O’Reilly Factor” just moments before. 

Fox News has the president’s ear and the highest ratings on cable. Yet, even as the accusations pile up, the unsettling fact remains that, for now, O’Reilly and Fox News have never been more powerful.

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Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor knows that equality is not a one-size-fits-all concept.

In a conversation with the Aspen Institute Latinos and Society Program published Monday, Sotomayor broke down why it’s wrong to believe that everyone in the United States is functioning on a level playing field.

“There’s a continuing tension in America between the image of the person who pulls themselves up by the bootstraps, and the person who believes that you need a lift to get up sometimes,” Sotomayor told the program’s executive director, Abigail Golden-Vazquez. “Those people who believe that everyone must pull themselves up ― they don’t believe that people are entitled to help.”

“For those of us who understand that sometimes no matter how tall the heel on your boot is, the barrier is so high that you need a small lift to help you get over it ― they will understand that the inequalities in society build that barrier so high,” she continued. “Unless you do something to knock it down or help that person up, they will never have a chance. I had those things. I had a unique mother who was able to understand the benefits of education and encouraged me to use education as my liftoff. But not everyone knows that.”

The Supreme Court justice spoke about the important role that affirmative action had on her own life and career during a panel in the early 1990s, according to CNN. 

“I am a product of affirmative action,” she said. “I am the perfect affirmative action baby. I am Puerto Rican, born and raised in the South Bronx. My test scores were not comparable to my colleagues at Princeton and Yale. Not so far off so that I wasn’t able to succeed at those institutions.”

During the chat with the Aspen Institute, which centered on the importance of Latino civic engagement, Sotomayor stressed that not every child has the opportunity to pursue his or her dreams with the same resources.

“How many kids hear that they can’t go to college, that they have to support the family?” she asked. “That comes from a parent whose own life has constricted their understanding of opportunity. So for me, that’s a constant conversation. It’s not an issue about whether someone is willing to lift themselves up. There are so many barriers that we have to bring down before we can change the outcomes.”

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

A new environmental group was launched Tuesday with the goal of recruiting and electing staunch progressives to run for local government.

Lead Locally, founded by veteran climate organizer Whit Jones, aims to counter President Donald Trump’s fossil fuel-friendly agenda by helping hard-core clean-energy advocates win in city halls and county commissions across the country. The organization will hold a training session for potential candidates on April 30 in Washington, the day after the capital hosts a massive climate march.

“Traditionally, the environmental movement has not engaged deeply in local elections,” said Jones, a former campaign director at the advocacy group Energy Action Coalition. “We need to channel the energy that the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign has created and inject it into local elections.” 

Lead Locally is not just any liberal-leaning nonprofit. It is firmly in the ideological mold of Sen. Sanders (I-Vt.) and the staunchly progressive brand of grassroots activism energized by his presidential run last year.

For example, the group will not back proponents of an “all of the above” energy policy championed by former President Barack Obama and many other Democrats. It instead seeks community leaders firmly opposed to measures that facilitate additional fossil-fuel consumption or extraction, such as the construction of natural gas pipelines and fracking wells.

With the stroke of a pen, Trump has enabled the completion of the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines, both of which grassroots progressives, Native American tribes and, of course Sanders, fought bitterly.

But Jones pointed to recent victories against the fossil-fuel industry as evidence that focusing on local politics offers an opportunity to fight back.

In Whatcom County, Washington, progressive county commissioners helped defeat a planned coal export terminal in May that would have been the largest in North America, according to Jones. And many New York municipalities’ decisions to prohibit fracking contributed to the adoption of a statewide ban in December 2014, he said. 

Jones cobbled together money to start Lead Locally with modest private donations from family and friends, and said he hopes to replicate Sanders’ small-dollar online fundraising strategy. Lead Locally has already raised more than $4,000 of its initial $20,000 goal.

The candidate training later this month will receive financial support from Climate Hawks Vote and the Progressive Campaign Change Committee. Jones is also partnering with 350 Action, the Working Families Party, #AllOfUs and other groups to help identify and train candidates.

As a 501c4 nonprofit, Lead Locally is barred from donating directly to candidates. It will be able to use its funds to help candidates through canvassing, voter-turnout efforts and supportive advertising.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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