The Angry Files
A roundup of the stories, arguments, races, media, and political fights we are watching across Ohio and beyond.
Hey, Angry Patriots.
We’re trying a new article format inspired by a few Substacks we follow, including The Rooster and its Mailbag series. We’re calling ours The Angry Files.
These are stories, ideas, and updates that we want to put in front of you but may not need an individual email. Instead, we’ll collect them into one larger post covering several things we’ve been watching and thinking about over the past week.
Once we get rolling, we plan to publish The Angry Files a couple of times each month.
I hope you enjoy it.
Stay Angry.
Laura Rodriguez-Carbone wrote an article arguing that the Democratic Party & Bernie Sanders new effort to win back men is mostly vibes. Even the candidate said so.
There has been plenty of pushback online. People called her bitter and tried to turn the whole thing into a personal grievance. But what Laura wrote was also something we saw firsthand during the primary.
Laura was 100% right to write that article.
We are not going to keep rehashing the same arguments or replying to every person online, so you will not get every back-and-forth in your inbox. But if you want to know what I think about the Democratic Party’s inauthentic push to win back white men, or men generally, read this.
Election Fraud?
Donald Trump said there was election fraud and outside interference in the 2020 election. He recently released declassified intelligence documents from agencies including the CIA, NSA, and ODNI that he says support those claims. I uploaded the documents from the White House so anyone can read them and come to their own conclusions.
Some of the broad themes that appear throughout the documents include:
Intelligence reporting discusses foreign influence efforts by countries including China, Russia, and Iran aimed at shaping U.S. politics and public opinion.
Several documents reference concerns over foreign access to voter registration data and other sensitive election-related information.
Internal emails show disagreements among intelligence officials over how foreign election-related activity should be analyzed and described in official assessments.
The released material includes intelligence assessments, internal emails, and heavily redacted reports, but much of the underlying evidence remains redacted or unavailable for independent verification.
With extraordinary claims comes extraordinary evidence.
I’m not going to dismiss this because it’s Donald Trump. I’m also not going to embrace it because it is Donald Trump.
Words on a page are not enough. Redacted intelligence reports are not enough.
I want digital fingerprints. Digital evidence. I want independent cybersecurity experts and third-party investigators, working separately, arriving at the same conclusions.
Until then, I’m staying agnostic. Open-minded. Cautious. Paying attention. Head on a swivel. But I’m not jumping to either side without evidence.
What are your thoughts?
When Debate Dies
This next piece comes from Dani Pajak
One thing Dani and I have talked about at length is the nonstop whataboutism coming from every side of every political argument. Instead of substance, constructive thought, or even a real understanding of the issue, we get people screaming about what the other side did first or did worse.
That does not move anything forward. It just keeps us stuck blaming the other team while lowering our own ethical, moral, and behavioral standards because they stooped to a new low.
At some point, we have to ask: What do we actually believe? What are we willing to defend? And what would incremental improvement even look like?
What are your thoughts on Dani’s article?
When Debate Dies, Democracy Weakens
The following is an op-ed from Dani Pajak, who has written for The Angry Ohioans before.
The Rooster
D.J. Byrnes is one of my daily go-tos when I want to see what is happening in other parts of Ohio. He occasionally covers Northeast Ohio too, which I always appreciate.
Check out his Mailbag, where he puts several different thoughts and updates into one post.
I especially wanted to point out his coverage of races around the state, where he highlights the candidates, the race, and the Democrat on the ticket.
Always worth a read.
This next piece comes from Andrey J. Martinichin, a write-in congressional candidate in Ohio’s 7th District.
Andrey takes a hard look at private equity’s growing role in nursing education, including how for-profit schools can load aspiring nurses with massive debt while offering programs that may leave them with limited options afterward. It is a sharp piece on what happens when Wall Street sees people trying to better their lives as a business opportunity.
Flock No?
This week, Cleveland City Council voted 9-6 to keep the city’s Flock license-plate reader cameras for another six months.
The problem is not that Cleveland wants to reduce crime. Cleveland has real crime problems, and residents deserve safety. The problem is handing over more of our privacy to a private surveillance company that collects and stores data about where people drive and when.
Council did add restrictions, including cutting off the Northeast Ohio Regional Fusion Center’s access to Cleveland’s Flock data. But this still deserves serious scrutiny. We should not casually accept a future where private companies build searchable databases of our movements and call it public safety.
Read the Cleveland.com story: Cleveland to Keep Flock Cameras After City Council Vote.
Voted yes to extend Flock
Joseph T. Jones, Ward 1: 216-664-4944
Kevin L. Bishop, Ward 2: 216-664-4945
Deborah Gray, Ward 3: 216-664-4941
Richard A. Starr, Ward 5: 216-664-2309
Blaine A. Griffin, Ward 6: 216-664-4234
Kevin Conwell, Ward 9: 216-664-4252
Michael D. Polensek, Ward 10: 216-664-4236
Brian Kazy, Ward 13: 216-664-2942
Charles J. Slife, Ward 15: 216-664-4239
Voted no on the extension
Kris Harsh, Ward 4: 216-664-2943
Austin N. Davis, Ward 7: 216-664-2691
Stephanie D. Howse-Jones, Ward 8: 216-664-2908
Nikki Hudson, Ward 11: 216-664-4235
Tanmay Shah, Ward 12: 216-664-4233
Jasmin Santana, Ward 14: 216-664-4238
Contact the council members. Tell them what you think about how they voted. Holding them accountable matters.
What I’m Watching
I used to write a lot more about movies, television, and media. I may start doing that again, especially because so much of it eventually connects back to politics, culture, and how we think through the world.
There are two shows and one movie on my mind right now.
First, watch The Orville.
It is not officially a Star Trek spinoff, but let’s be honest, it is a full-on love letter to what made Star Trek great. Episodic stories. Characters you get to know. Ethical dilemmas where there is no clean answer and both choices can be awful in their own way. The trolly problem!
That was the brilliance of the original series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager. The best episodes did not lecture you. They gave you a problem, showed you multiple perspectives, and let you walk away thinking about it. Ten people could watch the same episode and have ten different opinions afterward.
That is what The Orville does well. Season one starts out more comedic, but by season three it becomes a serious, thoughtful science-fiction show. If you love old-school Star Trek, you should watch it. In my opinion, it is modern Star Trek, more than modern Star Trek.
The second is For All Mankind. It asks a simple question: What if the space race never really ended? What if we kept pushing human exploration, science, and technological advancement through all the political conflict, mistakes, costs, and human drama?
The show can drift into more drama than I personally want at times, but the bigger idea is worth it. It gives you hope and wonder about what humanity might be capable of if we actually decided to put our minds and resources toward exploration. It does not feel like some impossible warp-speed fantasy. Much of it feels close enough to reality that it makes you ask why we stopped dreaming that big.
And finally, Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey comes out this week.
There has already been plenty of online chatter trying to tear it down over casting and everything else people can find to fight about. But Christopher Nolan is one of the best directors of our generation, and, in my opinion, one of the best ever. His movies are not perfect. No movie is if you look hard enough. But the early reactions have me hopeful that this is going to be the epic people have been waiting for.
We (Laura and I) are seeing it this weekend. We will report back.
What Laura’s Listening To
I’m an audiophile, play multiple instruments (guitar, piano, drums), and am surprised I am not in a band at this point. But here’s what’s spinning on my record player:
The Guest List — on heavy rotation
A young Manchester five-piece who came up through TikTok and turned out to be the real thing. Their EP When The Lights Are Out is out now, with a debut album, Something Real, due this year. Frontman Cai Alty writes straight at the modern world — climate dread, mental health, male suicide, the low hum of everyone’s rage — over guitars that earn the Arctic Monkeys and Sam Fender comparisons without hiding behind them. Rolling Stone UK called the title track “reminiscent of Humbug-era Arctic Monkeys.” If you like a band that still believes a song can mean something, start here. If you were an Oasis fan or like the Smiths or Morrissey, this music is melodic and relatable.
Start with: “Something Real,” “Weatherman,” “Ruine” Listen: Spotify
The Airborne Toxic Event — my new-old discovery
How I slept on this LA band for this long, I can’t tell you. “Sometime Around Midnight” is the gateway — a slow-building, string-laced crescendo gut-punch about seeing an ex across a bar that goes exactly where you’re afraid it will. Behind it is a whole catalog, from 2008’s self-titled debut through 2024’s Glory, with literate, big-hearted rock led by Mikel Jollett (also worth knowing as the author of the memoir Hollywood Park). Come for the one song everyone knows; stay for the four you’ll wish you’d found sooner.
Start with: “Sometime Around Midnight,” “All I Ever Wanted,” “Faithless,” “Wishing Well” Listen: Spotify — “Sometime Around Midnight”
Brandon Flowers — Thrasher — listening with one eyebrow raised
Full disclosure: I’m not a country fan. I am a Killers diehard who’ll argue they’re the best rock band of the last twenty-five years. So this one’s a test of faith. Flowers’ first solo record in eleven years (out August 21) is a full country-western turn — cut at Nashville’s historic RCA Studio A with pedal steel, harmonica, and the ghosts of Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings, songs about family, loss, and small-town Utah. The lead single “Plans” is out now. I’m going in skeptical and hopeful in equal measure. Report to follow.
Start with: “Plans” (before you judge) Listen: Spotify — “Plans”
I hope you enjoyed this format instead of getting blasted with a separate email for every story.
Take your time, bookmark the pieces that interest you, and read through them when you can. We would love your feedback. Email us at admin@theangrydem.com, or email me directly at matt@theangrydem.com.
And, of course, please support our work. We spend hours every week, and honestly most of my day, looking into stories, talking to people, and figuring out how to cover more Northeast Ohio politics.
Thank you for supporting us and for being an Angry Democrat.