The Salty Live

This is our last Pax Americana show of the year, so this is a great time to thank you for all your incredible support for our various Pax projects in 2024.

From our Active Measures series on Russian election interference to our Disinformation and How to Counter It seminar to the weekly Thursday show, Olga Lautman and I have been so touched by how quickly this community has grown. It turns out that thousands of you are concerned about what is happening to the United States and how it impacts both this country and the rest of the world. We’re so glad that you have joined us as we have broken it down together.

Olga and I will be back on January 8th for the first Pax Americana episode of 2026 and are also working on additional programming and seminars for the first quarter of the year. Stay tuned for an announcement on that.

In the meantime, have a wonderful rest of the year and happy holidays to you and to everyone you care about.

Julie

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Check out my conversation with Dana DuBois of the Daily Whatever Show, who has an absolutely insane story of online dating in the age of AI.

If you’re out in the dating world, you need to watch this. If you aren’t, you need to watch it too, if only to share this information with friends who are. And if you work for Meta, you have some explaining to do.

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Thank you to many of you for joining Olga Lautman and me for our weekly Pax Americana show yesterday. We had a lot to get through — including the militia that Pete Hegseth is set to unleash on American streets, its parallel to the Soviet Union and the Russian co-opt of Germany’s far-right party.

Check it out above and let me know your thoughts in the chat.

Show Notes:

* According to internal Defense Department documents reviewed by The Washington Post, the newly established “quick reaction force” within the Guard must be fully trained, equipped, and ready for deployment by January 1. The 200-person unit will be drawn from specialized National Guard elements traditionally assigned to disaster and counterterrorism response—now repurposed for civil unrest. A parallel structure, the National Guard Reaction Force, is slated to complete its own riot-control training and become fully operational by April 1.

In total, the force will comprise roughly 23,500 troops across all fifty states and three U.S. territories, with most states contributing about 500 personnel.

* Lawmakers accuse AfD of spying on German army on behalf of Russia

Senior German officials say the far-right AfD has been systematically using parliamentary inquiries to gather detailed information on Germany’s military, cyber defenses, and critical infrastructure—information they fear is being funneled to Russia. Defense and intelligence leaders warn that the questions mirror Kremlin interests, with some calling the behavior aligned with “tasks assigned by the Kremlin” and raising the possibility of high treason.

Source: EuroNews

* A new system to identify and take down Russian drones is being deployed to NATO’s eastern flank

NATO has begun deploying the Merops drone-hunting system to Poland and Romania after a surge of Russian drone incursions exposed how easily Moscow could penetrate allied airspace. The AI-guided platform, small enough for a pickup truck, lets NATO shoot down cheap Russian drones without scrambling multimillion-dollar jets.

Source: Associated Press

* Drones spotted over Belgian military base for 3rd night in a row in suspected espionage

Belgian authorities reported drones over the Kleine Brogel Air Base—believed to store U.S. nuclear weapons—for three consecutive nights. Defense Minister Theo Francken said the flights were likely espionage linked to Russia, part of a surge in mysterious drone activity targeting NATO facilities across Europe. Police helicopters failed to intercept the drones.

Source: Kyiv Independent

* Poland will prepare 400,000 volunteers for war by 2027

Poland announced a massive national military-readiness program, “wGotowości,” aiming to train 400,000 citizens by 2027 in skills ranging from basic military training to first aid, survival, and cybersecurity. Framed as a response to the most dangerous security environment since WWII, the initiative accompanies record-high defense spending, rapid army expansion, new fortifications along the Russian and Belarusian borders, and efforts to deepen nuclear and U.S. security guarantees.

Source: TVP

* As U.S. ramps up pressure, Venezuela pleads with Moscow and Beijing for help

As the U.S. escalates its military presence in the Caribbean, Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro has quietly appealed to Russia, China, and Iran for urgent military aid—including missiles, radars, aircraft repairs, and long-range drones—according to leaked U.S. documents. Maduro framed U.S. pressure as a shared ideological threat and asked Moscow for financing and upgraded air defenses, while also coordinating Iranian drone shipments and requesting expedited Chinese radar systems.

* After Caracas stop, mysterious Russian plane flew to Cuba, Nicaragua

A Russian Il-76 cargo plane linked to sanctioned military transport networks made a discreet multi-country tour through Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua before returning to Russia, mirroring a similar circuit in August. The stops, across regimes aligned with Moscow and occurring as U.S.–Venezuela tensions spike, fuel suspicion that Russia is moving military equipment or supplies through Latin America while using circuitous routes to evade detection and sanctions.

Source: Defense News

* FBI Statement on Bomb Threats to Polling Locations

The FBI confirmed that multiple polling locations across several states received bomb threats sent from Russian email domains, triggering temporary shutdowns and evacuations at more than two dozen sites — including at least seven counties in New Jersey alone. None of the threats were deemed credible, and the bureau said it is working with state and local authorities.

* Putin sent Lavrov into disgrace after the collapse of the summit with Trump

Sergey Lavrov has reportedly fallen into disgrace after a failed call with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio derailed the planned Putin-Trump summit in Budapest. Lavrov was the only permanent Security Council member absent from a major Kremlin meeting, lost his role as head of Russia’s G20 delegation, and is being quietly sidelined after U.S. sanctions followed the summit collapse and Moscow’s refusal to agree to a Ukraine ceasefire.

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Friends,

If you want a spooky Halloween story — except this one happens to be true — please watch my conversation about the perils of AI with Dana DuBois and Lawrence Winnerman, who also host the Daily Whatever Show here on Substack.

This was truly an eye-opening discussion about AI and how it is set to change what we think, how we think and what we remember. If it sounds like something out of a dystopian book, it isn’t. This is real life — and it’s frightening as hell.

Check out our conversation and tell me what you think in the comments.

Happy Halloween!

Julie

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Hi everyone!

Check out my Live with Matthew Wollin as we discussed his must-read article highlighting the courageous Big Law attorneys who left their perches at white shoe firms to fight for democracy. These people are fighting in the trenches and they deserve to be much more recognized for their efforts.

It’s also the last Wednesday of the month, so I have a column out over at The Banter that you can read below.

Stay Salty,

Julie

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Sometimes it’s good to get out of the New York City bubble — so I decided to head to Bethlehem, PA for the No Kings rally today.

Half of Bethlehem is located in Northampton County, which is the swingiest county in the swingiest state in the nation. As goes Northampton, so goes Pennsylvania — in every single presidential election but three since 1920.

Let me tell you, this crowd was huge. It was joyful and filled with so much love. There were parents with kids in strollers, elderly people who helped each other walk, college students and middle-aged folks. This was truly a cross-section of America, in a mid-sized American city in a crucial bellwether state, all of whom deeply love their country.

I have not felt this energized since Donald Trump took office. Friends, there are more of us than there are of them — and don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. Our corporate media is so busy bending the knee and begging for access that it too often transcribes what Trump says without any analysis. And what MAGA wants you to believe is that resistance is futile. It’s not. Today proved it.

Here are some photos from my wonderful afternoon in Bethlehem. If the election were held today, no way would the swingiest county in the swingiest state elect Trump. That might be cold comfort almost a year after it voted to put Trump back in the White House but it should make you optimistic about our future.

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Thank you to everyone who joined Olga Lautman and me for our Live to discuss our latest Active Measures chapter: The Kremlin Probes America’s Election System.

You can read the entire Active Measures series here. In the meantime, thanks for tuning in.

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Thank you to everyone who joined Olga Lautman and me for our Active Measures Live today, where we discussed Chapter 11 of our Active Measures series: Cambridge Analytica, Facebook and the Kremlin.

If you missed yesterday’s deep dive into this installment, you can check it out below. To read the whole series, please visit the Active Measures series here.

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Thank you to everyone who joined Frederic Poag, Michelle Kinney and me for our final Taco Tuesday show yesterday. Don’t worry — we’re not going far!

Instead of Taco Tuesdays, we are launching Touch Grass Wednesdays. We’ll drop a new episode of Touch Grass at 4 PM ET every Wednesday over on the Mayday Network on YouTube. To subscribe, please click on this link, so you can follow this show and all the other new programming we will launch.

The point of Touch Grass is simple: we all spend every minute of every day with low-grade anxiety about what is going on with our country. For an hour each Wednesday, Frederic, Michelle and I invite you to join us as we all “touch grass” together. We will stow the politics and just talk about life. We are all pretty funny when we want to be and this is our opportunity to show it.

See you every Wednesday at 4 PM live over at the Mayday Network. If you miss it live, you can always watch it after it drops on our YouTube channel or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thank you in advance for checking out the Mayday Network. Catch the last Taco Tuesday above and get ready for Touch Grass Wednesdays, starting next week at 4 PM ET.

Julie

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Thank you to so many of you who joined Olga Lautman and me for our Active Measures Live yesterday. If you missed it, you can catch it above.

To read more about our latest chapter on how Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump win, you can visit the Active Measures page here.

I am writing over at the Banter today, so you can read my latest there below.

Stay Salty!

Julie

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit saltypolitics.substack.com/subscribe