Civil Rights
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
q2K BHP
Black History Portal
THE BHP WIRE —
HIDDEN TRUTHS
What's New!
Explore the people, places, events, achievements, struggles and stories that shaped our journey.
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
Innovation, patents, science, technology and world-changing contributions.
Pioneers, champions, Negro Leagues, records, activism and excellence.
Meet the people whose lives, choices and achievements shaped the journey.
Black towns, communities, institutions and places where history happened.
Moments that changed communities, movements, institutions and the nation.
In 1968 Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress. In 1972 she launched a campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, breaking another political barrier.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
 | |
| Founded | March 2020 |
|---|---|
| Founders | Ben Meiselas Brett Meiselas Jordan Meiselas[1] |
| Type | Media organization |
Key people | Ron Filipkowski (editor-in-chief)[2] |
| Website | meidasnews |
| Substack information | |
| Newsletter | |
| Subscribers | 822,000 |
| TikTok information | |
| Page | |
| Followers | 2.5 million |
| YouTube information | |
| Channel | |
| Genre | Commentary |
| Subscribers | 6.03 million |
| Views | 8.4 billion |
| Last updated: December 26, 2025 | |
MeidasTouch (pronounced "Midas touch")[3] is an American progressive[4][5][6][7] media company. The network describes itself as doing pro-democracy journalism.[8][6]
Previously, the MeidasTouch name was used by its founders for a liberal American political action committee formed in March 2020 with the purpose of stopping the reelection of Donald Trump in the 2020 United States presidential election.[9][10][11][12] The SuperPAC aligned with the Democratic Party in the 2020 United States presidential election, the 2020–21 United States Senate and United States Senate special elections in Georgia.[13][14][15]
The PAC changed its name to Democracy Defense Action in 2023.[8] The MeidasTouch name continues to be used by the MeidasTouch Network, the news organization.[2]
The committee was founded in March 2020 by Ben, Brett and Jordan Meiselas, three brothers from Long Island, while in quarantine due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[16][17] The group name and slogan come from their mother and father, combining their surname and their mother's maiden name, Golden,[17] alluding to the mythological Greek king Midas known for his ability to turn everything he touched into gold.
On July 21, 2023, MeidasTouch filed paperwork to rename itself to Democracy Defense Action,[18] and later that year, news reporting indicated the MeidasTouch name was being used for a news network called MeidasTouch Network.[19][20][2]
On April 22, 2020, the committee released their first video, titled "Are You Better Off?", an allusion to Ronald Reagan's famous line in the 1980 general election presidential debate,[21] which criticized Trump's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States;[22] The committee shared the video in a Twitter reply to George Conway, which was then retweeted by him.[17]
On June 6, 2020, another video was released, called "Bye Ivanka"; it took parts out of her commencement speech and focused on her relation with China and criticized Trump's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.[23] Her Wichita State University Tech speech was canceled due to student and teacher pressure.[24][25]
On June 17, 2020, another video was released, "Gop Cowards", which accused Republican senators of being cowards. Near the end of the video, followers are urged to vote 11 Republican legislators out.[26]
On June 23, the committee released a video called "Trump Kills US".[27] The video focuses on Trump's comment at his Tulsa rally which urged doctors to "slow the testing down".[28] MeidasTouch called it "Mass murder on a national scale".[29]
On July 8, a new video was released called "Creepy Trump". It compiled Kellyanne Conway's comments on Joe Biden and put it together with Trump statements.[30] The ad uses clips of Conway's comments and remarks Trump has presented about women, and was played on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC.[31]
On July 14, another video was released called "#ByeDonJr". It takes Donald Trump Jr.'s comments on Fox News about Biden and applies them against Trump. The video also further criticizes the older Trump's handling of the pandemic.[32][33]
The group continued its activities after the November 3 elections. On November 27, it claimed credit for making #DiaperDon the top Twitter trending topic in the US, via a tweet that mocked (as summarized by The Independent) a "press briefing ... which saw [Donald Trump] furiously assail a reporter from behind a surprisingly small desk", and provoked Trump into calling for the immediate abolishing of Section 230 "for purposes of National Security".[34]
The SuperPAC targeted Republican candidates in the 2020–21 United States Senate election in Georgia and the 2020–21 United States Senate special election in Georgia with several televised attack ads, billboards, direct mailings and door-to-door canvassing efforts.[13][14][15]
Most notably, MeidasTouch aired an advertisement called "The Grinches of Georgia." CNN said of the ads, "Humor is the chosen route for Democrat-backed Meidas Touch. Their television ads show Perdue and Loeffler with green faces and Grinch-like features. A nursery rhyme narration includes the verse, "Their stockings were stuffed from the stocks that were sold, when they heard Covid was coming, before we were told."[35] The Hill credits MeidasTouch as framing the Republican candidates Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue as "Looting Loeffler" and "Chicken Perdue," respectively. "The ad takes aim at the senators—dubbed 'Looting Loeffler and Chicken Perdue'—and highlights the controversies surrounding their stock purchases," The Hill said.[14] The "Grinches" ad campaign also included matching billboards and mailers.[36]
On July 22, 2024, shortly after JD Vance was named Donald Trump's running mate, MeidasTouch editor-in-chief Ron Filipkowski posted a clip from a 2021 Fox News interview in which Vance stated, "we are effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too." The resurfaced remarks from Vance sparked viral outrage against the candidate across social media, with many celebrities weighing in, including Jennifer Aniston and Taylor Swift.[37][38][39] Swift, referencing Vance's comments, signed off her post endorsing Kamala Harris as a "childless cat lady."[40]
In 2024, Adam Mockler joined MeidasTouch as a contributor, anchoring coverage and commentary.[41] By 2026, he was being invited to sit on panels for television network programs.[42][43]
Following the 2024 presidential election, prominent Democratic politicians such as Joe Biden, Hakeem Jeffries, Elizabeth Warren, and Adam Schiff have made appearances on the podcast.[6] As of March 2025, the network had 12 full-time employees and 30 regular contributors.[6]
MeidasTouch has also weighed in on Canadian politics, with New Democratic Party MP Charlie Angus appearing as a guest commentator.[44] In September 2025, Angus launched MeidasTouch's Canadian channel, MeidasCanada, on Labour Day.[45]
In July 2025, MeidasTouch unearthed a video clip of a 2010 deposition by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, in which he was asked if he had socialized with underage girls in the presence of Donald Trump.[46][47]
In October 2025, MeidasTouch broke the news that Donald Trump planned to fire munitions over the Interstate 5 in California, causing the interstate's closure, during the No Kings Protests.[48][49] The Trump administration initially denied the reporting.[50] The San Francisco Chronicle later reported on munitions striking two California Highway Patrol vehicles on October 18, 2025.[51] An investigation by the U.S. Marines Corps described the incident as the result of a "one in a million" malfunction. The report determined that the explosion was "highly improbable; beyond reasonable expectations and should not have happened, but it did."[52]
In March 2026, Forbes described MeidasTouch as using "a 'trial lawyer approach,' combining legal analysis (by attorney Ben Meiselas), media commentary and brotherly banter to explain complex political issues—setting it apart from, for instance, CNN or other cable news opinion-based roundtables."[53]
The Meiselas brothers grew up on Long Island.[54] Their father, Kenny Meiselas, is an entertainment lawyer who has represented Lady Gaga, The Weeknd, Nicki Minaj and Sean "Diddy" Combs.[55][54]
Brett Meiselas (born 1989 or 1990)[54] is an Emmy-winning video editor who worked for The Ellen DeGeneres Show.[56] Jordan Meiselas (born 1992 or 1993)[54] is a marketing supervisor living in Brooklyn, New York.[56]
Ben Meiselas (born May 19, 1985)[57][54] is a former attorney.[54] His bar mitzvah party was held at Justin's, a now-defunct restaurant owned by Sean Combs.[55] Ben studied law in Georgetown,[54] and worked as an intern for Steve Israel, Hillary Clinton and Sean Combs.[58][54]
Ben represented former NFL player Colin Kaepernick[58] and the attendees of the Fyre Festival, together with his boss Mark Geragos.[59] In December 2022, he partnered with Geragos to form Engine Vision Media and acquire Los Angeles magazine from Hour Media.[60] In 2023, Ben quit his job as an attorney to devote his efforts to MeidasTouch.[54]
Ben married his longtime partner Xochitl Marin in May 2024.[61] They have a daughter.[54] Ben appeared in the Fyre Festival documentaries Fyre and Fyre Fraud, both released in 2019.[59]
MeidasTouch was described in October 2020 as "a viral video powerhouse" by The Hollywood Reporter. The magazine noted it "caught the attention of politically inclined Hollywood A-listers like Judd Apatow, Mark Ruffalo and Ken Jeong."[56] In October 2020, Variety described MeidasTouch's videos as "razor-sharp."[62]
In April 2021, Seth Hettena of Rolling Stone magazine criticized MediasTouch's $1 million advertising strategy as "nonsensical and a more effective tool for fundraising than for helping Democrats win elections" and raised concerns that donors were being misled by "grandiose self-promotion".[5]
In February 2022, singer-songwriter India Arie shared a compilation of podcaster Joe Rogan saying the racial slur "nigger" on The Joe Rogan Experience on Instagram.[63] Rogan apologized, calling his past language "regretful and shameful" while also saying that the clips were "taken out of context" and he only quoted the slur to discuss its use by others.[64][65][66] The footage in question was first published by the political action committee PatriotTakes,[67] an affiliate of MeidasTouch.[68] This resulted in allegations of a defamation attempt by MeidasTouch, which the founders denied in an interview with Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy, instead attributing the source of the footage to Alex Jones, who was a recurring guest on Rogan's show.[69] Rogan described the video compilation as a "political hit job".[70][71]
MeidasTouch has been characterized as progressive,[6][46][7] liberal[2] and left-wing.[72][47]
In June 2024, MeidasTouch was described in the Columbia Journalism Review as being made for social media, unlike a lot of more traditional left-leaning media outlets, and does a better job than most of exploiting the perception that the mainstream media was too sympathetic to Trump.[8]
In February 2025, Podscribe listed The MeidasTouch Podcast as the top podcast in its rankings of monthly downloads and plays for the period of January 1–February 12, beating out The Joe Rogan Experience.[41] Downloads and plays increased by 141% for the period of February 12–March 12, making The MeidasTouch Podcast the top podcast in that ranking, and the MeidasTouch Network the #2 podcast publisher by downloads and plays behind only Spotify.[73] While the number of listeners per episode and YouTube subscribers remains significantly lower than Joe Rogan due to MeidasTouch releasing so many 10–20-minute episodes, its growth since the reelection of Donald Trump has mirrored other progressive podcasts and online shows like Pod Save America and The Young Turks.[41]
In March 2025, Media Matters identified MeidasTouch as the 4th most-popular progressive online show across the most popular streaming and social media platforms, with 6.4 million total viewers.[74] That month, John Ross and Nathan J. Robinson, writing in Current Affairs, unfavorably compared the podcast to The Joe Rogan Experience and said, "Even though it is targeted at viewers who think Trump is dumb, the content is remarkably shallow, by which we mean that it doesn't dive seriously into topics like health care, criminal punishment, foreign policy, and inequality. It's the National Enquirer for Trump-haters." They also criticized MeidasTouch's lack of coverage of left-wing concerns such as environmental issues, the Gaza genocide and Trump's efforts to crack down on pro-Palestinian protests, as well as MeidasTouch's close ties to the Democratic Party.[75]
The MeidasTouch Podcast was awarded Podcast of the Year at the 29th Annual Webby Awards in April 2025. Journalist Molly Jong-Fast presented The MeidasTouch Podcast hosts with the award.[76][77] That month, Virginia Heffernan of The New Republic attributed the news group's success to embracing the kind of masculinity that stands up to bullies and speaks truth to power.[78]
Der Spiegel highlighted MeidasTouch's international coverage in its May 2025 issue, particularly as it relates to Donald Trump's threats against Greenland and Canada.[79]
In July 2025, The MeidasTouch Podcast overtook The Joe Rogan Experience for the first time on YouTube's weekly podcast ranking.[80]
In March 2026, Forbes noted that the show "has often supplanted Joe Rogan's long-running podcast for the top spot in Podtrac ratings."[53]
The MeidasTouch Podcast was awarded Best News Podcast at the 2026 IHeartRadio Podcast Awards, beating nominees including The Daily, The Megyn Kelly Show, Pivot, and Up First from NPR.[81] The show also won The Advertiser's Choice award at the 2026 Indie Podcast and Creator Awards held at the 2026 South By Southwest (SXSW) Conference by Oxford Road.[82]
A progressive Super PAC, MeidasTouch, is running an online video that claims Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has refused to condemn the insurrection at the US Capitol.
The group spent more than $1 million on an advertising strategy that it calls revolutionary but campaign veterans and independent experts say is nonsensical and a more effective tool for fundraising than for helping Democrats win elections... It's not hard to find examples of how MeidasTouch's grandiose self-promotion doesn't match reality... The arrangement was neither illegal nor uncommon, but was MeidasTouch — which bills itself as uniquely transparent and honest — misleading its donors when it said: "We are giving" money to the Biden campaign and "we are proud to have already chipped in"? The ones who were giving were Meidas' donors, not the Super PAC itself.
{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
The podcast host Joe Rogan has offered "sincere and humble apologies" after footage emerged of him repeatedly using the N-word on his hit show. The comedian, 54, who has a lucrative deal with the streaming giant Spotify, said it was the "most regretful and shameful thing" he has ever had to speak about, but stressed the clips were "taken out of context". Rogan has come under fire recently for sharing coronavirus misinformation on his hugely popular podcast The Joe Rogan Experience. Prominent musicians including Neil Young and Joni Mitchell have withdrawn their music from the service over its decision to continue hosting the show, which was reportedly acquired for more than $100m (£77m) in 2020.
Resurfaced Joe Rogan footage, shared by musician India Arie, shows the podcaster using the N-word multiple times. On Tuesday (1 February), the Grammy-winning singer said she was removing her music from Spotify because of Rogan's "language around race". She branded the podcaster "problematic", saying that she came to her decision as she felt she should "walk" through a door "opened" by Neil Young. The week before, Young asked that his music be removed from the platform due to its affiliation with Rogan, whom he said had spread "false information" regarding Covid-19 vaccines.
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
MeidasTouch (pronounced "Midas touch") is an American progressive media company. The network describes itself as doing pro-democracy journalism. Previously, the MeidasTouch name was used by its founders for a liberal American political action committee formed in March 2020 with the purpose of stopping the reelection of Donald Trump in the 2020 United States presidential election. The SuperPAC aligned with the Democratic Party in the 2020 United States presidential election, the 2020–21 United States Senate and United States Senate special elections in Georgia. The PAC changed its name to Democracy Defense Action in 2023. The MeidasTouch name continues to be used by the MeidasTouch Network, the news organization.
Scott MacFarlane is an American investigative journalist and broadcaster who is chief Washington correspondent and anchor at MeidasTouch. He worked previously for CBS News as a justice correspondent and at NBC Washington as an investigative reporter. MacFarlane is based in Washington, D.C. and his reports appeared on all platforms, including CBS Mornings, the CBS Evening News, CBS Saturday Morning, Face the Nation, CBS News 24/7, CBS Radio and in daily reports with major CBS TV and radio affiliates. He previously worked as an investigative reporter at WRC-TV, a local NBC affiliate in Washington, D.C. Prior to that he was a Congressional correspondent for the Cox-TV network. MacFarlane emerged on the national scene during his coverage of the prosecutions following the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.
Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American civil rights activist and Baptist minister who was a prominent leader of the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. He advanced civil rights for in the United States through the use of nonviolence and sometimes civil disobedience against Jim Crow laws and other forms of legalized discrimination, which most commonly affected African Americans. A Black church leader, King participated in and led marches for the right to vote, desegregation, labor rights, and other civil rights. He oversaw the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and was the first president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), leading the unsuccessful Albany Movement in Albany, Georgia, and helping organize nonviolent 1963 protests in Birmingham, Alabama. King was one of the leaders of the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech, and helped organize two of the three Selma to Montgomery marches during the 1965 Selma voting rights movement. There were dramatic standoffs with segregationist authorities, who often responded violently. The civil rights movement achieved pivotal legislative gains in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. King was jailed several times. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director J. Edgar Hoover considered King a radical and made him an object of COINTELPRO from 1963. FBI agents investigated him for possible communist ties, spied on his personal life, and secretly recorded him. In 1964, the FBI mailed King a threatening anonymous letter, which he interpreted as an attempt to make him commit suicide. King won the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolent resistance. In his final years, he expanded his focus to include opposition towards poverty and the Vietnam War. In 1968, King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D.C., to be called the Poor People's Campaign, when he was assassinated on April 4 in Memphis, Tennessee. James Earl Ray was convicted of the assassination, though it remains the subject of conspiracy theories. King's death led to riots in US cities. King was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and Congressional Gold Medal in 2003. Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established as a holiday in cities and states throughout the United States beginning in 1971; the federal holiday was first observed in 1986. The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was dedicated in 2011.
George Soros (born Schwartz György; August 12, 1930) is a Hungarian and American investor and philanthropist. As of September 2026, he had a net worth of US$8.6 billion. Soros has donated more than $32 billion to the Open Society Foundations. In 2020, Forbes called Soros the "most generous giver" in terms of percentage of net worth. Born in Budapest to a Jewish family, Soros survived the Nazi occupation of Hungary as a teenager and moved to the United Kingdom in 1947. He studied at the London School of Economics and was awarded a BSc in philosophy in 1951, and then a Master of Science degree, also in philosophy, in 1954. Soros started his career working in British and American merchant banks, before setting up his first hedge fund, Double Eagle, in 1969. Profits from this fund provided the seed money for Soros Fund Management, his second hedge fund, in 1970. Double Eagle was renamed Quantum Fund and was the principal firm Soros advised. At its founding, Quantum Fund had $12 million in assets under management, and as of 2011 it had $25 billion, the majority of Soros's overall net worth. Soros is known as "The Man Who Broke the Bank of England" as a result of his short sale of US$10 billion worth of pounds sterling, which made him a profit of $1 billion, during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crisis. Based on his early studies of philosophy, Soros formulated the general theory of reflexivity for capital markets, to provide insights into asset bubbles and fundamental/market value of securities, as well as value discrepancies used for shorting and swapping stocks. Soros supports progressive and liberal political causes, to which he dispenses donations through the Open Society Foundations. Between 1979 and 2011, he donated more than $11 billion to various philanthropic causes; by 2017, his donations "on civil initiatives to reduce poverty and increase transparency, and on scholarships and universities around the world" totaled $12 billion. His influence and activities helped set off the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and provided one of Europe's largest higher education endowments to the Central European University in his Hungarian hometown. Soros's extensive funding of political causes has made him a "bugaboo of European nationalists". Numerous far-right theorists have promoted claims that characterize Soros as a dangerous "puppet master" behind alleged global plots. These portrayals of Soros, a Holocaust survivor, have been denounced as antisemitic conspiracy theories. In 2018, The New York Times reported that "conspiracy theories about him have gone mainstream, to nearly every corner of the Republican Party".
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →The Greenwood District.
