American history through the eyes of the Natives

The Sunday Detroit Free Press has expanded its arts coverage, which is how I learned about a play at a live theater and went out to see it Thursday evening. The play is Broke-ology or the science of being broke. It is at the Tipping Point Theatre in Northville. Alas, it finishes its run on Sunday. The story is about three black men in Kansas City. William is suffering from MS and is getting worse. His sons Ennis and Malcolm are trying to work out how to care for him. Occasionally, their mother Sonia appears, usually in William’s dreams. Ennis is older, his wife is about to have a baby, he is working at a wings restaurant, and is feeling stuck. Malcolm has just gotten his master’s degree at U Conn and his afraid of staying too long and becoming stuck in Kansas City. He has a job waiting for him at U Conn. But Ennis wants Malcolm to help with the burden of caring for their father. It’s a messy situation with no easy solution. Having little money doesn’t help. The title comes from Ennis teasing Malcolm about having a graduate degree. Ennis considers himself an expert in broke-ology and has even come up with equations for how it all works. People with parents near the end of life know these issues. That includes me. The acting by all three men was excellent. I was particularly impressed with the guy who played William who had to keep the physical symptoms, especially the tremors, of MS going through nearly all of the play. Alas, there were only three dozen people in the audience. I finished the book The Rediscovery of America, Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History by Ned Blackhawk. It is a history of America from the viewpoint of the Natives starting with first contact with Europeans. We’ve learned the basics in history lessons in school, but with the view that Europeans and their descendants were supposed to rule the continent and those pesky Natives should just get out of the way. So reading the story from the Native side is refreshing. For that I highly recommend the book. But it is also hard. Even with our knowledge of just high school history we know this is an endless cycle of violence and disease that killed off a great deal of the Native population, of treaties made and broken. Of course, I learned a lot. I wrote close to 3 pages of things I had learned. I can’t put all those points into this post, but I will include quite a few. I knew the Spanish had been in the Southwest. I hadn’t realized it was a full century before the Pilgrims. That contact and subjugation was mostly in the Pueblo communities in New Mexico. The reason for the violence was labor for mineral extraction, mostly silver. There was an uprising by the Pueblo Natives and there was an uneasy truce afterward. It is why the culture of that region is a mix of Native and Spanish. By the time the Pilgrims (English) arrived in 1621 there had been a lot of trading between Europeans and Natives and a lot of Native death from European disease. The Pilgrims wouldn’t have been able to move in if the Native population was at full strength. At a time when Africans were brought to America to be slaves more than 600,000 Natives were taken as slaves to England, Spain, and around the world. Pilgrims didn’t enslave – their religion said labor was good for them. But their religion also said it was the best religion and Natives should be converted. We think of the Pilgrims being concentrated around Massachusetts Bay, but there were a lot of settlements and violence against Natives along the Connecticut coast, an area sheltered by Long Island. The French came to trade, not so much to colonize. They had a presence in about 2/3 of North America – Canada, Great Lakes and down to the Ohio Valley, and west of the Mississippi. Their fiercest opponent was the Iroquois federation. The French agreed to a Great Settlement in 1701 that brought peace to the region. Thousands of tribes sent representatives. There is no coincidence that Detroit was founded that year. The English moved in on the French. The English took over a fort on an island near the entrance to the St. Lawrence River, which meant the French lost their ability to bring in goods to trade. A part of this long conflict was called the French and Indian War, but was really a French – English war. The French wanted to trade and the Natives tolerated that. The English wanted to the land to settle on, and the Natives didn’t want that. I was puzzled by one thing. The book said the French lost control of all of their North American holdings at the end of the French – Indian War. But didn’t we buy the Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803? We’re used to thinking of the area west of the Appalachian Mountains as the frontier. To the Natives, this was the Interior. As settlers moved there the English tried to block the move. The English wanted peace, which many settlers saw as siding with the Natives. That was an important reason for the American Revolution. Pennsylvania created a Constitution in 1776. Most of the delegates were settlers. One important idea from it became important when the US wrote a Constitution 11 years later. That idea is that a central government is needed to subdue the Natives. That’s the reason why the Articles of Confederation didn’t work. The Constitution said nothing about the new US being able to buy land to make it part of the country. President Thomas Jefferson and to create a legal justification. He also had to justify turning the white residents into citizens. Georgia wanted the Choctaw to be removed. Congress said they were protected on their land. Then President Andrew Johnson sided with Georgia, leading to the Trail of Tears. I hadn’t known there was significant trading along the Pacific coast starting about 1760. The traders were Spanish, English, Russian, and a few others. Of course, the Natives were hit with violence and disease. And colonial extraction was at work as the traders wanted pelts, primarily otter, and fish, primarily salmon, which reduced the animal populations. I hadn’t known that before the railroads, when travel was on foot, horseback or stagecoach, a gathering of thousands of Natives meant there would be tens of thousands of horses. While much of the East was preoccupied with the approaching Civil War settlers poured into the West. Worse than all those people were the mines, which were quite good at polluting the environment. Mining camps were mostly male and mostly Anglo-Germanic, and also highly supremacist. Approaching and during the Civil War US soldiers stationed at forts in the West felt they were missing out on the important battles. They were brutal in their treatment of Natives. After the war settlers assumed they were to displace the Natives. The Senate ratified treaty after treaty, usually taking land while granting rights to Natives. Ratification didn’t include the House, which began to pass bills limiting and overturning treaties, though the Constitution does not give them that power. It meant treaties were violated and then replaced with something more advantageous to white settlers. From the Civil War to about 1910 the goal was to assimilate the Natives, which included extensive boarding schools that worked to separate the Native child from their heritage. Between 1910 and WWII assimilation efforts ended and tribes had a time of their own sovereignty. The expansionist policies of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were inspired by the US treatment of Natives. A German official said, “The native must give way” to the colonizer as Germany looked eastward. After WWII assimilation resumed, but in a different way. The US government offered to buy tribal land. But they made that offer to tribal members, not to the tribe leadership. That set up a conflict between a member and their community. Members were offered travel expenses to cities with a promise of a much better life. But an urban Native was usually as much in poverty as a reservation Native. Native self-determination efforts began in the late 19th century. They began to seriously change thinking of those in the federal government about 1970. Since then the federal government has recognized tribal sovereignty and able to tell states to keep their hands off. Many tribes do quite well with gaming, but many other tribes and their members remain in poverty. The book is 450 pages of text plus another 100 pages of notes. Blackhawk relied on growing scholarship of what Native life was like. Even with leaving much out my two pages of notes came out to two pages of full sentences and paragraphs. In the pundit roundup for Daily Kos for Friday a week ago Greg Dworkin quoted a tweet from Sam Stein:

Shot: Pentagon demanding Anthropic drop insistence that its AI model not fire weapons without some form of human sign off Chaser:

The chaser is a headline and subtitle from New Scientist:

AIs can’t stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations Leading AIs from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google opted to use nuclear weapons in simulated war games in 95 per cent of cases

An article in Axios adds:

"The contract language we received overnight from the Department of War made virtually no progress on preventing Claude's use for mass surveillance of Americans or in fully autonomous weapons," Anthropic said in a statement.

Dr. Catharine Young tweeted the cover of The Lancet which has this text:

The destruction that Kennedy has wrought in 1 year might take generations to repair, and there is little hope for US health and science while he remains at the helm.

In the comments Eastsidebill posted a list he got from a friend. The list of 100 entries is things the nasty guy has done. They’re mostly in alphabetical order. Here’s just some of it:

1. $25M judgment 2. “Do us a favor” 3. “Find 11,780” 4. 34 felonies 5. Atlantic City Bankruptcies 6. Bible sales 7. Big Lies 8. Birtherism 9. Black tenants 10. Branded Bibles 11. Cabinet corruption 12. Casino fines 13. Census meddling 14. Central Park Five 15. CFPB neutered 16. Charity fraud 17. Civil fraud 18. Classified files 19. Coin schemes 20. Comey firing

Nasty, rude, divisive, and as always, full of lies

Brother comes for a visit tomorrow. I probably won’t post again until the middle of next week. The nasty guy gave his State of the Union speech Tuesday night. Of course, I didn’t watch or listen. He set the record for the longest of such speeches, another reason not to listen. Daily Kos has several articles about the speech. Go find them there or at your favorite news source if you really need more information. I’ll stick to just three articles. The first is by Kos of Kos. His major point is Republicans really need to have something to run on for the November midterm election. And the nasty guy very much did not give them that. Kos took a few paragraphs to highlight why the nasty guy’s approval rating is so low – voters definitely do not agree that now is “the golden age of America,” the phrase the nasty guy used to open his marathon speech.

But Trump didn’t just fail to connect with voters’ economic anxiety. He was nasty, rude, divisive, and as always, full of lies. At a time when the nation is still basking in the warm sportsmanship of American athletes at the Olympic Games in Italy, Trump lashed out at his perceived enemies, taking repeated and nasty shots at the Democrats, blue states and cities, and various ethnic groups. ... If anything, Trump’s overall message was, “The country has never been better, but WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!”

In the second article Lisa Needham of Kos noted the nasty guy did not mention Minneapolis and his “success” in removing the “worst of the worst.” Could it be because the effort was so massively unpopular? He did mention Minnesota, as in accusing massive fraud by Somali-Americans in child care subsidies for low income families. Of course, he used numbers ridiculously high. I heard about this in the morning news with NPR host A Martínez talking to reporter Matt Sepic. It again left me puzzled. When Republicans accuse federal programs of fraud they move to stop the funding, not to offer help in combating the fraud. In this case Gov. Tim Walz says they are already working to minimize the fraud. But they are having difficulty because most of the experts in combating fraud in the FBI have left in protest over the nasty guy’s actions after the killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. In the last article I’ll bother with, Oliver Willis of Kos discussed the sanewashing perpetrated by mainstream media. They excused his behavior by saying he “put on a show” and had a “showman’s theatricality.” His blatant lies were described as a “reframe.” The low approval rating showed voters were merely “dissatisfied.” Republicans were said to be “breathing a sigh of relief” – well, they did praise the speech. Willis described the speech, saying, “When he wasn’t lying he was being racist.”

Since 2015, the mainstream press has worked overtime to present an image of Trump that doesn’t match up with reality. They simply omit his worst offenses or summarize his statements and actions without providing context to their audiences. When he makes disastrous mistakes, they are morphed into mere “blunders” and at moments like the State of the Union this drive to clean up after Trump goes into overdrive. Fortunately, this strategy isn’t really working among the public at large.

Needham looked at the Supreme Court decision that overturned some of the nasty guy’s tariffs. The whole thing was 170 pages, though the actual ruling was rather short, no more than 44 pages. It was the side commentary and dissents that added to the page count. Needham described those extra pages. Kavanaugh took 62 pages to show how smart he is, to flatter the nasty guy, and to offer a guide on how to keep tariffs going after the rest of the justices called them unconstitutional. Gorsuch, though in the majority, wrote a concurrence that “is pure whine and snarl, lashing out at everyone for not being as amazing and smart as he is. For 46 pages.” Part of it was complaining that Congress needs to “get off their butts” as Needham paraphrased it. Odd, coming from a guy who has been giving the nasty guy all he wants so that Congress isn’t necessary. Thomas, in a brief 18 pages, explained how the nasty guy could institute tariffs without Congress. That was some mangling of definitions so Congress could give away its power. “That’s horrifying, ahistorical, and too weird even for Alito.” Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that we know the FBI and Justice Department haven’t released all the Epstein files. We know that through reporting by NPR and confirmed by MS Now. We know it because one witness, who accused the nasty guy of sexual assault when she was 15 or younger, was reportedly interviewed by the FBI four times in 2019. However, only one of those interviews appears in the files that have been released. No surprise that the one that was released doesn’t mention the nasty guy. Einenkel provided a link to the NPR story, which is here. The audio is 3 minutes (I didn’t listen), though the associated article appears to be much longer. From the article:

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have already been investigating this allegation against the president and will now open a parallel investigation into the DOJ's decision not to release these particular documents. ... In a Feb. 14 letter to members of Congress first reported by Politico, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche insist that no records were withheld or redacted "on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary."

Kos of Kos discussed the latest from the Make America Healthy Again movement headed by Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy, Jr. They want support from the full Republican Party and to do that MAHA Action president Tony Lyons is trying to find the right message to turn “a toxic brew of wellness culture and institutional distrust” into an actual winnable coalition. So far they seem to relying on polls built on...

That’s “message testing.” You write a paragraph that makes your side sound like common sense and the opponent sound reckless, strip away party labels and governing records, and then treat the results like a revelation. ... If MAHA was truly a transformative political force, Republicans wouldn’t need to tiptoe around its core message—they’d be running on it. Instead, the memo urges nuance and careful phrasing, because they know the raw version doesn’t sell. Ultimately, the things MAHA claims to champion—safer drugs, healthier food, fewer environmental toxins—aren’t partisan tenets. This is generic stuff everyone cares about. The real divide shows up when it comes to science, regulation, and who actually confronts industry power in the real world.

In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Jennifer Weiss-Wolff of The Contrarian. The quote is long so here’s my summary: When pregnant children are apprehended by immigration enforcement they are being sent to a facility in San Benito, Texas. Pregnant children were likely raped and likely have sexually transmitted diseases that make pregnancy dangerous. At San Benito they are less likely to get the care they need. Why San Benito? According to the Project 2025 playbook it is because Texas has banned abortion. Here’s another summary of a quote by Timothy Snyder writing in his “Thinking About…” Substack. “Fascism demands a chosen enemy, and victims.” But, the current attack on immigrants has produced stasis, not the jump from “competitive authoritarianism” to outright fascism. It has also produced sustained protest. So the nasty guy needs more:

To complete the fascist transition, Trump has to give the country a war it does not want, and win it, and transform the society. He has brought us to the doorstep of a major war with Iran: but in the State of the Union, speaking about war preparations, he was looking around hopelessly and waving his hands. He is happy to talk about war with Iran, and hope somehow that others will deliver it. But he cannot do it himself. Americans do not want such a war. But that is not exactly Trump’s problem. Germans did not want a war with Poland in 1939, either. But Hitler fought one anyway, and won it quickly. Trump’s problem is that he does not know how to fight a war. And he flounders.

Snyder says the nasty guy must win that war. Snyder also says he doesn’t know how to fight one. That suggests if he does start one he’s likely to lose. I guess that’s a blessing? In the comments kurious linked to two news articles about the corruption in the nasty guy administration. One is from Bloomberg, the other from Daily News. Then he has a quote box, though doesn’t say which article he is quoting. Perhaps both. The box does list the corruption and crimes and some of them have links to sources. Murdered Renee Good and Alex Pretti, slandered them, and allowed their killers to go free. Violated the rights of citizens and non-citizens. Killed dozens on the high seas. Released the hundreds of Jan. 6 felons. Threatened to seize Greenland, a NATO ally. Called for the execution of members of Congress for telling military personnel of their duty to disobey illegal orders. Repeatedly violated court orders. Shaken down large universities.

Viewing the Trump administration as a massive crime syndicate allows us to be clear-eyed about what is coming down the road, and to plan accordingly. To take the most urgent example, there ought to be no question as to whether Trump will try to steal the midterm elections. Of course he will try to steal them. Criminals gonna crime. It is every patriotic American’s duty to oppose the coming effort to nullify the will of the voters.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, listed the winners of the Minnesota Department of Transportation contest to name its snowplows. Some of this year’s winning names:

Oh, for Sleet’s Sake Flurrious George K Pop Blizzard Hunter. O Brother, Where Art Plow? Minne-Snow-ta

The right has a great deal more “pearl-clutching energy”

I finished the book Following the Equator by Mark Twain. Through more than 700 pages and with lots of photos and drawings he describes his year-long trip around the world. The trip may have started in Southampton, England, which he doesn’t mention until the end and doesn’t include the trip across the Atlantic and across America. Most of the book is his visits of several months each to Australia, India, and South Africa. He also describes visits to Fiji, New Zealand, and Mauritius. He couldn’t go ashore in Hawaii because of a cholera outbreak. He took this trip in 1895-96 to give lectures, which was a major source of income. In the book he rarely mentions the lectures and doesn’t describe what he said. At the beginning of the book he mentions the date but not the year. He does mention seeing a lunar eclipse on September 4, and an online NASA catalog showed an eclipse on that date in 1895. In each place he describes his travels by train and ship and includes encounters with locals and descriptions of local customs and history. A regular travel book. When an incident jars his memory he’ll tell a story about something that happened in England or America. Along with that he includes much praise of the indigenous people and some condemnation of the European colonizers. Some of the highlights of the story: His condemnation of the Queensland, Australia slave trade. South Pacific islands were raided to supply workers for the sugar cane fields of Queensland. This is brutal work. The only good thing is the slavery was for three years rather than life. Twain says the Australians claim the experience “civilized” those they enslaved, but such “civilization” didn’t last long. That doesn’t mean the freed men returned to savagery, but that the definition of civilized was meaningless. Twain tells the story of Cecil Rhodes in Australia finding a newspaper clipping in a shark that told of impending war. The shark had come from England a lot faster than a ship could. Rhodes used the information to make himself rich. In South Africa he talks again of Rhodes, texplaining about how much he ruled over the country, both in and out of the government. So I looked up Rhodes in Wikipedia. It talks about how much Rhodes was involved in the formation of the De Beers diamond company, which became close to a worldwide monopoly. The man created Rhodesia and is buried there, though modern locals aren’t too happy about that. Wikipedia also says there is evidence to say Rhodes was gay. The page mentions Twain writing about Rhodes in this book then adds a footnote saying the story of the shark was not true. Yup, not all of the stories and incidents Twain tells are true (a shark that visits both England and Sydney in a week?). And that’s not really a surprise, though it leaves one wondering which stories were not true. In India Twain describes over many pages the Thuggees, a group that worshiped a god that demanded they murder. They committed many (tens of thousands?) in the early 1800s. Twain credits the British for stopping the Thuggees, and goes on to say that’s why the British rule of India was a benefit. He takes a train trip into the Himalayas. That was nice. What was better was the trip down. It was by handcar where the only control was the brake. The 35 mile downward ride was the delight of the year. I enjoyed the book, though by the end I felt it was too long. It does have a lot of Twain’s dry humor and I’m pleased at his support for indigenous people, who in his telling don’t seem so backward and inferior as the white people justifying colonization claimed at the time. During 2025 I read 44 books. Lake Superior State University released its annual list of words that should be banished for “mis-, mal-, over-use, or general uselessness.” 2026 marks the golden anniversary of the list. This year’s offenders: 6-7, that popular phrase that has no meaning. Massive, for incorrect use and overuse. Incentivize, where motivate should be enough. Full stop, where a period should be enough. My bad, an infantile way to apologize. And for general overuse: Demure, Cooked, Gifted, Perfect, and Reach out. This year LSSU included a list of repeat offenders, words that refused to stay banished. Banished three times is the phrase, At the End of the Day. Words and phrases banished twice are: Absolutely, Awesome, Game Changer, and Hot Water Heater (water already hot doesn’t need to be heated, it’s just a water heater). At the start of last week Jacob Wendler of Politico reported that a dozen staffers of the Heritage Foundation, the people who created Project 2025, left that group and went to Advancing American Freedom, which was founded by former vice nasty Mike Pence. Those that left were the heads of the legal, economic, and data analysis teams and several members of their teams. The reason for their departure stems from Tucker Carlson airing a friendly interview with Nick Fuentes in October. Fuentes is a strong antisemite. Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation stood by Carlson’s decision to interview Fuentes. Several conservative voices rebuked Roberts. That turned into an internal squabble at HF, with some saying antisemitism has no place there and others saying only so much dissent is permitted at HF. Some reports imply those who left HF were terminated, others say the departures were voluntary. Even so, an HF spokesman seems glad they’re gone and replacements will make them stronger. However, the infighting is reverberating through the Republican Party. Kate Plummer of Newsweek explains the situation in more detail and used the headline “The Heritage Foundation is Imploding.” I would be delighted if the Heritage Foundation fell apart. But I’m skeptical it will happen soon. Steve Inskeep of NPR spoke to Republican strategist Marc Short, who is also described as the chairman of AAF. Short described the HF story from the AAF viewpoint. He went on to describe general conservative goals. As a part of those goals Short complained about the government “picking winners and losers.” They want “a limited role of government in the economy and allowing the marketplace to thrive.” My first reaction to that is they want limited government because government protects the little guy. And I guess “thrive” now has a definition of making money any way they can, including fleecing customers and polluting the environment. My second reaction goes back to a post in November where I discussed late-stage capitalism. Democracy and capitalism exist together only when democracy tightly controls capitalism. Short is saying an important part of conservatism is rejecting those tight controls and letting capitalism continue to its end stage where billionaires control everything. Alas, conservatives have a few key phrases they repeat whenever they can and media, including NPR, don’t delve into what is meant by that. The way conservatives say it limited government is a good thing. But, as we’ve seen in the last year, limited government in practice means no consumer protections (goodbye CFPB), no environmental protections (goodbye EPA), and no safety net for the poor (goodbye affordable care act premium support). And Inskeep didn’t delve into that. This seems to fit right in. Two weeks ago Oliver Willis of Daily Kos, as part of his series of Explaining the Right wrote about Why Republican scandals and misdeeds get a pass. I’m sure I’ve written many times of something the nasty guy or Republicans did and note that if Biden or Obama had done them they would have been quickly impeached and convicted, while Republicans remain unscathed. Willis gives other examples of other Democrats who faced tough scrutiny that sometimes ended their careers for things that were much less severe than what Republicans now commit seemingly daily.

Why does this happen, and with such regularity? The mainstream media has an institutional bias towards both-sidesism, which is the notion that the Democratic and Republican parties and the related liberal and conservative movements engage in outrages at the same pace. This simply isn’t true by any objective measure.

Another reason is that for over six decades the right has relentlessly been “working the refs,” hitting the media with false allegations of bias. The media now consistently rolls over for the right – yet still gets attacked for bias. A third reason is the right has a great deal more “pearl-clutching energy.” They remained outraged over liberal misdeeds with more noise and for a longer time than the left can maintain over conservative misdeeds. I’ll add a fourth reason – many mainstream media outlets are owned by billionaires or others who have a large stake in conservative goals. So they’re inherently biased. Willis wrote that media companies can take things only so far. They fail when Americans can see the truth with their own eyes. Right now no amount of spin can mask the problems in the economy. At the top of today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev included a photo of the midnight swearing in of Zohran Mamdani as the mayor of New York City. It was done a subway station that’s no longer used that leads directly into City Hall. It’s a pretty location. Mamdani had a second swearing in, this time during the day, on City Hall steps, and with the public able to attend. Kev quoted Hayes Brown of MSNOW discussing the many artists who have canceled gigs at the Kennedy Center, especially after the nasty guy added his nasty name to the building. Ric Grenell, president of the Center, called these artists “far-left political activists.” Brown wrote:

Grenell essentially accusing performers of being performative illustrates an utter lack of understanding about the arts and audience. It’s as though his mind cannot fathom why an artist might decide to withhold their work from certain audiences at certain venues. And as though there is not a rich tradition of art as protest in this country, either in boldly staging performances calling out injustice or in shunning stages that demanded segregated audiences.

Then Brown discussed Grenell’s focus on “sound fiscal policy.” He wants arts that actually sell tickets and make a profit. That misses the point of arts. It is why most arts institutions, including the Kennedy Center, are non-profit. Arts are important whether or not they make a profit. The Nation magazine reposted a 2015 essay from Toni Morrison that gives another reason for what Grenell is really up to.

Dictators and tyrants routinely begin their reigns and sustain their power with the deliberate and calculated destruction of art: the censorship and book-burning of unpoliced prose, the harassment and detention of painters, journalists, poets, playwrights, novelists, essayists. This is the first step of a despot whose instinctive acts of malevolence are not simply mindless or evil; they are also perceptive. Such despots know very well that their strategy of repression will allow the real tools of oppressive power to flourish. Their plan is simple: 1. Select a useful enemy—an “Other”—to convert rage into conflict, even war. 2. Limit or erase the imagination that art provides, as well as the critical thinking of scholars and journalists. 3. Distract with toys, dreams of loot, and themes of superior religion or defiant national pride that enshrine past hurts and humiliations.

In the comments is a tweet by Prof. Peter Hotez:

Year One MAHA: 1. Measles returns to America 2. Pertussis returns to America 3. Chronic hepatitis liver cancer returns 4. Pandemic preparedness gone 5. Swung & missed on autism 6. CDC disassembled 7. Biotech industry shutting down 8. Brain drain underway.

I see that as more oppression by the wealthy. Those near the top of the social hierarchy and most invested in their position make their lives appear better by making the lives of others worse. Killing others off through unrestrained disease is one way to accomplish that goal. That tweet was followed by one by Dan Diamond. It includes a link to a Washington Post article that is the source and includes a way for a person to look up the stats of their own county. Diamond wrote:

5 million-plus kindergartners now live in counties where schools don’t have “herd immunity” for measles, Washington Post reporters found.

A comment by pelagicray lamented the destruction of the federal executive branch, which included...

That came with significant deaths, many infant and children deaths, from USAID shutdown so chaotic medicine and food went bad in warehouses rather than into a final distribution. That is on us. We let it happen. While many of us voted for the good, collectively it is on all of us. A piece in the U.S. Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health notes

The Trump administration’s decision to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths from infectious diseases and malnutrition, according to Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Atul Gawande.

After all that something light and sweet. Rund Abdelfatah, host of NPR’s Throughline brought to All Things Considered and 8-minute segment on the history of chocolate. The link also has a transcript.

Demanding they abandon ethics and commit war crimes

Yesterday I mentioned that the nasty guy and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth required generals and admirals come from around the world to Virginia to be lectured by these two guys. Emily Singer of Daily Kos had excerpts of Hegseth’s speech. My summary of some of the things he said: The military is to use “punishing violence on the enemy.” No more “politically correct” rules of engagement. No more inspector general process. Those that complain about abusive colleagues and superiors will have nowhere to turn. Basic-training drill sergeants may beat up recruits. No “toxic ideological garbage” as in nothing remotely related to DEI or anything Hegseth might consider “woke.” I read through that and thought again he’s acting like a supremacist and wants to turn his military into supremacists. Yeah, that he is a supremacist was apparent as soon as he appeared on the scene. One major part of supremacy is that it is maintained by violence. Put another way, all violence is in support of supremacy and the social hierarchy. And Hegseth is demanding his military be as violent as possible. Not just the usual military violence to subdue the opponent, but violence to crush and eliminate the opponent. As part of that he is demanding the hierarchy of the military be maintained not just by rank, but also by violence. Singer said that the way Hegseth is demanding his military fight is demanding they abandon ethics and commit war crimes. Singer also reported on the nasty guy’s speech, which came after Hegseth’s. He wasn’t going to let an underling get all the glory. I hear he talked for more than an hour and other observers said his dementia was showing. What Singer reported is the nasty guy wants to use the military against American citizens. Not a surprise the generals were silent. About ten days ago the nasty guy, with Robert Kennedy Jr. as backdrop, attacked the use of Tylenol, claiming its use during pregnancy caused autism. Yeah, that has long been debunked. As part of his rant the nasty guy said “There’s no downside” to avoiding Tylenol while pregnant. Madison Czopek of PolitiFact, in an article for KFF Health News posted on Kos, wrote yes there is a downside, a big one. Tylenol is the only available treatment for fever when pregnant and untreated fever can cause significant damage to both parent and child. An Associated Press article posted on Kos a week ago reports on the indictment of James Comey for making false statements to the Senate and obstruction. This appears to have happened because the nasty guy demanded his Attorney General file charges against Comey even though Department of Justice lawyers said the case was flimsy. The nasty guy hates Comey because he is connected to the investigation of Russia interfering in the 2016 election, which the nasty guy declares didn’t happen and lots of evidence shows that it did. The nasty guy had demanded chief prosecutor Erik Siebert of the Eastern District of Virginia file the charges. He refused and was fired. So the nasty guy said he would nominate Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide, to take Siebert’s job, though she has no prosecution experience. She rushed a basic case so that it would be filed before the statue of limitations expired on September 30. Since the accusation is lying to the Senate Steve Inskeep of NPR spoke to Sen. Tim Kaine. Kaine said he doesn’t think Comey lied to him during that testimony. This is a distraction from all the things the nasty guy said he would do and has done the opposite. Inskeep noted this indictment includes no evidence. Kaine expanded that:

Pam Bondi put out a press statement that was highly unusual when this indictment was announced. And the last line in the press statement was, we will follow the facts in this case. You follow the facts before you indict somebody. You understand the facts before you indict them. You don't indict them on a two-page lack of details and then say you're going to follow the facts. This is a political hatchet job. I think the concerns about selective prosecution are significant. I think Lindsey Halligan, she's not a prosecutor. She's never had any experience in Virginia. I think even the circumstances of her appointment raise legal questions.

The discussion turned to Bondi’s confirmation hearing in which she said of her decisions as AG, “Politics will not play a part.” Kaine says he feels misled by that and knew at the time she wasn’t sincere. He thought everyone knew that. Inskeep then brought in a recording of an interview with Peter Navarro, who said the investigation into Comey needed to finish before the 2026 election because if Democrats regain the House they will open investigations into himself. Kaine responded by saying that shows the Comey case is political prosecution. I add this sounds like another case of a Republican accusation that is really a confession. Navarro is only afraid of Democrats holding political investigations of himself because he and other Republicans are currently doing that to Democrats and he’s afraid of payback. In last Saturday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a tweet from Kyle Cheney:

Trump’s inability to stop live commentary on Comey’s case could actually doom it. This isn’t just a broad “no one is above the law,” he’s doing legal analysis that Comey’s team will plug right into their selective prosecution motion to dismiss the indictment.

S.V. Date of HuffPost:

“No one from the White House should be saying anything about Comey or the indictment,” said Ty Cobb, a lawyer in the White House Counsel’s office during Trump’s first term and once a federal prosecutor. “But there are no guardrails there in this administration, no adults.” Prosecutors, who represent the state, are supposed to refrain from commenting publicly about criminal cases and present their accusations and evidence in court. In this case, Trump’s numerous previous attacks on Comey, his many campaign vows to seek retribution against those who investigated or prosecuted him and his social media post demanding that Attorney General Pam Bondi charge Comey and others already laid the foundation that Comey was charged only because of pressure from Trump.

In the comments there was link to a meme, now broken, that said if the case goes ahead Comey and his team can demand the nasty guy give depositions under oath. The nasty guy clearly hasn’t thought this through. In last Sunday’s roundup Chitown Kev quoted Amanda Marcotte of Salon:

This dynamic, where a talented female leader inherits a collapsing situation, is so common in the business world that experts have a name for it: The glass cliff. The phrase is a play on the “glass ceiling,” an older metaphor that describes how structural sexism keeps women from reaching the highest levels of leadership. In glass cliff scenarios, however, women do get to the top — but only after male leaders have screwed things up so badly that the situation may be unsalvageable. As Jordyn Holman of the New York Times described it in 2024, it’s “a phenomenon in which a company in crisis appoints a woman to turn things around, often setting them up for failure.” ... Williams laid out a number of reasons institutions turn to female leaders in times of crisis. The ugliest is plain old scapegoating. If the male leadership messed things up beyond all repair, they often find it’s easier to pass it off to a woman right before the final collapse, so they can blame her instead of themselves. Biden did this aggressively to Harris, even going on TV after her loss and insisting, preposterously, that he would have won. There’s also an expectation, Williams explained, that women have more soft skills, like empathy and morale-building, which people hope will save them in a crisis. We saw this play out with the “Momala” meme, when pundits and influencers openly hoped that Harris was maternal enough to unite a party that had been torn apart by Biden’s mismanagement.

Marcotte included several examples. One of them is Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors. She’s been there 11 years and some in the automotive press think she’s doing an outstanding job. Barra may have been given the job so leaders could blame the failure of GM on her, but GM didn’t fail. In the comments is a tweet by Acyn with a quote from Rep. Crow discussing the government shutdown.

There’s no consistency to any of it because there’s actually no ideology. Donald Trump doesn’t believe in fiscal conservatism. He doesn’t believe in conservative philosophy. He actually doesn’t believe in anything other than his own personal grievances—who he likes or dislikes on any given day—and his power. That’s what he believes in.

In today’s roundup Greg Dworkin quoted Paul Waldman writing for his The Cross-Section Substack. I’m leaving out the nasty guy’s quote and going straight to Waldman’s analysis.

In other words, Democrats say that they’re trying to keep Trump from cutting medical benefits, to which Trump basically responded: Yep, I’m going to cut medical benefits. When other politicians hand their opponents such a perfect talking point on a silver platter that way, it’s usually the occasion for a vigorous round of mockery and contempt, as both enemies and allies marvel at how only a spectacular idiot with no political skills would say such a thing.

NBC News reported that when the shutdown began Education Department employees set up their emails with out-of-office messages. Five of them told NBC News that their messages were changed without their permission to blame Democrats for the shutdown.

One person reported changing the out-of-office message back to the nonpartisan version, only to have it revert to the partisan wording later. “None of us consented to this. And it’s written in the first person, as if I’m the one conveying this message, and I’m not. I don’t agree with it. I don’t think it’s ethical or legal. I think it violates the Hatch Act,” this person said, referring to the law that limit federal employees’ political activity. “I took the statement that they sent us earlier in the week to use. And I pasted it on top of that — basically has a standard out-of-office,” another one of the Education Department employees said. “They went in and manipulated my out-of-office reply. I guess they’re now making us all guilty of violating the Hatch Act.”

Dworkin also had an excerpt from a post and I thought to share the whole thing. The nasty guy has said he needs to send troops to “war ravaged” Portland, Oregon. So Cliff Schecter of BlueAmp created a letter supposedly from a man caught in the war of Portland to his wife back at home. Do be wary of the video at the top showing a Portland street scene that seems to insist it must play with the sound on. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quoted late night commentary. A sampling.

"Republicans would like you to believe that Democrats shut the government down. But the bill they wanted Democrats to sign would knock out about 15 million Americans from health insurance. It's like going out to dinner and the waiter says, 'You must order lasagna. The chef made it today, and a bunch of you are going to get food poisoning from it. But if you don’t eat it, you've ruined the meal.' That's the Garfield version of what's going on right now." —Jimmy Kimmel "President Trump on Saturday ordered the Defense Department to deploy troops to Portland, Oregon to 'secure the city.' From what? Farmer's markets? The only crime in Portland is the price of locally-sourced honey." —Seth Meyers "Portland??? Did I miss Vancouver attacking Portland in a fierce battle of mellow artisans? 'Don't shoot until you see the whites of their cold-foam, half-caf latte art!' " —Jon Stewart

No recordings, no paperwork, no oversight

Eli Hager, in an article for ProPublica posted on Daily Kos, reported the full story of what happened when the Department of Government Efficiency (remember DOGE?) came to the Social Security Administration. Much of that story comes from Leland Dudek, who was the SSA administrator for about four months last winter and spring. The story opens with Dudek posting a scroll 4 feet by 20 feet on the wall. In tiny print and diagrams it describes what SSA does. But that’s not yet entirely reflected in the agency’s computer systems. The SSA is 90 years old. It’s software dates back to the 1980s and has more than 60 million lines of code. Many things are still done on paper. It has been talking of upgrades for two decades without it happening. So when DOGE called for efficiency and the elimination of waste and promised IT whiz kids to make it happen Dudek thought great, bring it on. Except the other part DOGE called for was the elimination of fraud. And that was much louder than all other goals. Every little discrepancy these green kids found was taken as fraud and blown into a scandal – see the stories of 120 year old people turned into dead people still collecting SS.

They could have worked to modernize Social Security’s legacy software, the current and former staffers say. They could have tried to streamline the stupefying volume of documentation that many Social Security beneficiaries have to provide. They could have built search tools to help staff navigate the agency’s 60,000 pages of policies. (New hires often need at least three years to master the nuances of even one type of case.) They could have done something about wait times for disability claims and appeals, which often take over a year. They did none of these things.

Every time Dudek tried to work around his bosses, which were people at the White House, he would get a call reminding him what he was really supposed to be doing, which was not to make the SSA better. He realized the problem wasn’t the DOGE kids, it was the senior leaders. One example was the SSA Office of Transformation, which had been starting the work of modernizing the SSA systems. He was told the office was wasteful and to cut it. So he started acting the part that the White House wanted, while trying to push what would actually help the SSA. About all that did was make him unemployable after he was forced out. And the turmoil frightened many of the people who depend on their SS checks. It also made their experience working SSA agents on the phone and in person worse. The only good thing is that SS benefits are still being paid. So far. Maria Godoy of NPR discussed the release of Robert Kennedy Jr.’s Make Our Children Healthy Again Strategy. It has 100 recommendations for improving children’s health. Some of the points are good, things like promoting exercise and fitness and teaching good nutrition. But there are also not good things, such as studying the root causes of autism (which aren’t the things he wants to prove) and producing a new vaccine framework (when there is nothing wrong with the old one). There are also loopholes, such as calling on the reduction of unsafe food additives while letting food companies determine the safety and while specifying no penalties for using additives known to be harmful. And there are contradictions, such as calling for fresh local produce in schools after the administration canceled the program that did just that. Leila Fadel of NPR continued the conversation with Barry Popkin, professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina. Popkin said yes, children’s health is bad. An example is the type of diabetes usually only seen in older adults is now seen in children and teens. But this list does nothing to fix that bad health. “It’s all promises but no teeth.” It’s all about “research, exploration, consideration, but nothing about any regulation or law to mandate change.” Nothing will happen, or at least nothing after Kennedy leaves office.

And you can see that, really, that the food and agriculture sectors that really profit highly from the ultra-processed food they're selling to our children and killing them at the same time, really have gotten to the government so that they had nothing in this document that will lead to any meaningful regulation, law or guideline that will improve America's health.

One thing that would help the health of children is money ffor school food programs that pay for eliminating ultra-processed foods and regulation to require it. But that won’t happen. Alix Breeden of Kos adds a bit more:

According to Marion Nestle, New York University professor emerita of nutrition, food studies, and public health, the report doesn’t have much substance. “The report seems to twist itself into knots to make it clear that it will not be infringing upon food companies,” Nestle said in an email to NBC News. “MAHA has so much bipartisan support. This was the time to regulate food marketing to kids — not ‘explore.’” She went on to say that the report is “short of specifics and weak on regulatory actions,” echoing a similar sentiment from professionals when the preliminary report leaked.

At the bottom of the article is a quote from Kennedy:

We had lots of guns when we were kids. Kids brought guns to school and were encouraged to do so. And nobody was walking into schools and shooting people. There are many things that could explain this. One is the dependence on psychiatric drugs.

I’m pretty sure my student handbook for high school said that a student caught with a gun at school would be expelled. I never saw a gun at school (or anywhere else, though I didn’t go into the town gun shop because my family didn’t hunt). I never heard of a bring your gun to school day. So I rate his first two sentences as false. That bit about nobody shooting people in schools is true. We didn’t practice lockdowns and didn’t need to. But at the time the rate of gun ownership was quite low. At the ending of this quote is Kennedy trying to link psychiatric drugs given to students with school gun deaths? The kids aren’t doing the killing. Fadel spoke to reporter Adrian Florido about the recent Supreme Court order that lifted the temporary order that banned ICE from doing aggressive immigration sweeps in Los Angeles. The order was brief, unsigned, and included no reasoning, meaning it was from the shadow docket. The order means ICE can resume targeting people based solely on skin color, accent, and occupation; what the ACLU called blatant racial profiling. Florido said:

In a concurrence, Justice Brett Kavanaugh cited an estimate that 10% of LA's population is undocumented and said race can be relevant when agents are determining whether they suspect someone is in the country illegally. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissent. And she wrote, quote, “we should not have to live in a country where the government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish and appears to work a low-wage job.”

A reminder that Sotomayor is Latina. There is an underlying court case. The lower court said these sweeps cannot happen while the case proceeds. The Supremes said the sweeps can. And the order will probably affect what ICE does in Chicago and other cities. Fadel and Steve Inskeep then spoke to Sarah Isgur, editor of SCOTUSblog, who recently interviewed Justice Amy Coney Barrett about the shadow docket. A Supreme Court case takes time to read through the briefings, hold oral arguments, and write the opinions. That takes several months to a year or two. The purpose of the emergency (shadow) docket is what should the law be between now and when the case is officially decided. Even so this can have permanent effects that can not reversed even if the eventual decision goes the other way. An example is a person deported now. Other examples are everything the nasty guy does through executive order, such as whether he can fire the head of the Federal Trade Commission. A problem is the orders are not explained and they usually (almost always?) favor the nasty guy. These orders leave lower courts caught between previous Supreme precedents and what these order say. This post includes a bit of that Barrett interview. She admits the emergency docket does not allow the justices to think about the issue, there is less information, and no time for reasoned opinions. Isgur says these nine people don’t really know how to handle the emergency docket and with the start of their term next month they’re going to be hit with a lot of cases coming from all those executive orders, cases like can the president invoke tariffs or fire a Federal Reserve governor. Another issue is what should be the status quo. The emergency docket is supposed to protect the status quo while the case is being decided. Is the status quo what was in effect before the president took office? Or, as the nasty guy’s team claims (and has Biden’s team claimed before them), since he is voted in by the people and is there only four years should his orders be status quo? Lisa Needham of Kos added her take on the Supreme Court orders.

The now familiar 6-3 lineup at the United States Supreme Court just threw out decades of settled law so that President Donald Trump’s roving bands of masked federal agents in Los Angeles can engage in a little light racial profiling, as a treat, and can continue scooping up people based on nothing more than looking Latino, speaking Spanish, and working at a low-wage job like a car wash. You know the drill. A lower-court judge wrote a detailed, thoughtful, lengthy opinion about how this practice was 100% racial profiling and ordered the government to stop doing it. The Trump administration ran to the Supreme Court to say that the world would crumble if they couldn’t racially profile brown people in Los Angeles right away, and the Supreme Court obliged by staying the lower court’s order. That stay prevents the lower court’s order from going into effect, so federal agents can continue this straight-up racist, unconstitutional behavior. ... Does arresting or detaining people for no reason at all violate the Fourth Amendment’s requirement that probable cause is required to search or seize someone? It sure does! If a police officer wants to stop someone on the street and search them, they have to have a level of reasonable suspicion about that particular person, such as believing they are armed and about to commit a crime. Law enforcement officers have to be able to justify stopping specific people based on specific concerns rather than being able to stop whole groups of people based on shared characteristics. ... Justice Sonia Sotomayor pulled no punches, even refusing to engage in the faux-civility of the tradition of saying “I respectfully dissent.” Nope, here it is just “I dissent.” While that may seem like a nerdy, legalistic, tiny thing to focus on, in the context of how the justices communicate with one another through their opinions, it’s Sotomayor saying the actions and reasoning—or lack thereof—of her colleagues are not worthy of respect.

Needham also reported some of the ICE ways of doing business have changed for the worse. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem says ICE agents are facing assaults (what the rest of us would consider freedom of speech). Filming of ICE agents isn’t allowed. No Supreme Court ruling has said one way or the other, though numerous state courts have rules that is a protected right. ICE agents used to be required to document the specific person they want to arrest, giving lots of details, and getting supervisor approval. Now they just arrest who they please. DHS is blocking members of Congress from doing their ICE facility oversight duties without prior approval, while the law says approval can’t be required. And DHS has shut down the oversight office, freezing 500 civil rights cases.

No recordings, no paperwork, no oversight. DHS is systematically eliminating every way we have to keep tabs on law enforcement to ensure that Trump’s immigration crackdown, no matter how illegal or violent, can’t be stopped.

In Tuesday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Politico:

The justices, who apparently divided 6-3 along ideological lines, put on hold a federal district judge’s order that reined in what critics called “roving” raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That judge had found the tactics were likely unconstitutional because agents were detaining people without probable cause at car washes, bus stops and Home Depot parking lots based on stereotypes. The high court’s majority offered no explanation for its decision to grant the Trump administration’s emergency appeal to block the district judge’s order. However, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote separately in support of the decision, saying it was reasonable to briefly question people who meet multiple “common sense” criteria for possible illegal presence — including employment in day labor or construction, and limited English proficiency.

That little bit about “common sense” is partly why Sotomayor lost respect for the decision. In the comments Matt Davies posted a cartoon titled “Supreme Court guide to use of race in admission:” Over the entrance to a university is “Not OK.” Over the doors of an ICE detention van is “OK.” David Wolfe tweeted, “Children are born perfect without the need for toxic injections. Once vaccinated, the brain and body are harmed forever.” Dr. Neil Stone, infectious diseases doctor, responded, “Before vaccines, 1 in 5 kids never made it to their first birthday.” I add: What’s the evidence that the brain and body of an infant are harmed? Every vaccine must document they aren’t harmful to the vast number of people who take them. Acyn tweeted a quote from the vice nasty, “The bad news is...one of the pollsters once told me, anger usually wins midterm elections and because we done so much of what we said we are going to do, people are angry.” Gavin Newsom responded: “JD Vance admits he policies are wildly unpopular on national television.” In the comments of Wednesday’s roundup is a meme by Dan Pfeiffer,

There are only two possibilities – John Roberts is so afraid of a constitutional crisis that he will give Trump everything he wants, or Roberts is 100% in on the MAGA project to destroy our democracy.

Or both? Way down in the comments is a cartoon by the Naked Pastor. Under a banner saying these are the “Lost sayings of Jesus” Jesus is talking to a group of women. “Beware when men write something and claim it is inspired by God, for then you can’t dispute it.”

Drowning out their voices with an Air Force flyover

Kos of Daily Kos reported that the MAGA faithful do have limits. When the nasty guy posts to his Truth Social account there are a lot of responses that praise him for whatever he said. But this time not. The nasty guy posted that prices are way down. The faithful, who can see that prices at the grocery store, gas pump, rent bill, and insurance bill are still quite high, actually disagreed with him. That means Democrats have an opening in proclaiming the nasty guy lied and his policies are doing the opposite of what he said. But Democrats actually have to walk through that opening – and then actually have to enact policies to lower prices (or boost pay). So far they haven’t been good at either. Oliver Willis of Kos reported that survivors of Epstein’s sexual abuse are speaking out, demanding the nasty guy end the coverup. They appeared on NBC’s Today show and ABC’s Good Morning America. They called on Congress to release the files. Democrats are on their side, Republicans say a release isn’t necessary. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos added that the survivors also held a press conference on the steps of the Capitol, calling for the release of the files. The nasty guy ordered an Air Force flyover to drown out their voices. Alix Breeden of Kos reported more than a thousand current and former Health and Human Services employees signed a letter demanding Robert F Kennedy Jr. resign as secretary. The letter says his actions compromise the health of the nation. The public version of the letter (and I imagine the copy given to RFK) did not list the names. The copies given to Congress did. RFK went before a senate committee yesterday. The reports I’ve read and heard have only given snippets of the three hour grilling. One such report is by Walter Einenkel of Kos. Congressional Republicans did not give Kennedy an easy time, though I heard that Republicans refused the Democratic demand that Kennedy give an oath that he’s telling the truth, and subject to perjury if he doesn’t. Breeden reported that about the only people still on his side are the two that count – the nasty guy and vice nasty. Yes, impeachment of cabinet secretaries is a thing, but not likely in this Congress. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin has a lot of quotes about Kennedy’s grilling, including this tweet from Larry Sabato:

I’ve watched 100s of congressional hearings over 55 years. Rarely if ever have I seen a witness so thoroughly destroyed as RFK Jr has been today.

There’s also an example that Kennedy lied, showing why Republicans didn’t want him under oath. In the comments are a few good memes and cartoons. One posted by paulpro, author unknown, shows three soldiers picking up litter in DC. One says, “Who would have guessed that some much of the trash we picked up in D.C. would be shredded paper with the name Epstein on them.” A tweet by Mickey Lenin commented on the jobs report released today: “Job growth missed expectations with only 22K created and nearly every sector losing jobs except healthcare. As an added bonus, June and July job numbers were revised lower yet again. Ketchup Alert Level 3.” A tweet by Tim Stevens discussed news I heard on NPR, though Stevens linked to one on BBC:

American Government to global automakers: We’ll make your cars impossibly expensive with tariffs unless you build them in the U.S. Also the American Government: Build a factory here and we’ll arrest the workers you bring in to get it operational.

From a tweet by Will Sommer: “Interesting: James O’Keefe put out a video today showing a DOJ official saying any Republicans would be edited out of the Epstein files.” The Naked Pastor posted a cartoon of Jesus holding a sign that says, “Free watermelon,” as he thinks, “I can’t believe I have to speak in code about an active genocide just so I don’t offend the very people who claim to follow me!”

The idea that scientific progress is the devil

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has been in the news this past week for three different issues and none of them are good. Renuka Rayasam, in an article for KFF Health News posted to Daily Kos, discussed the contradiction of the Republicans in Congress cutting food assistance, making healthy food more out of reach for poor people, as Kennedy pushes his healthy eating as the cure for America’s illnesses. In many grocery stores fruits and vegetables, the healthy stuff, are cheaper than highly processed food, now considered the unhealthiest. But stores that carry the healthy stuff are usually not in poor neighborhoods. Tiffany Terrell founded A Better Way Grocers in 2017 to bring fresh and healthy food to people who can’t travel to a grocery store. She bought a school bus, replaced the seats with shelves with produce, meats, and eggs and drives her mobile grocery to senior communities, public housing developments, and rural areas. It’s an important effort. But not enough to undo the harm of widespread cutting of food assistance. Stephanie Armour for KFF wrote the second Kennedy story posted on Kos. This isn’t about what Kennedy said recently, more about the whole effect of what Kennedy and his people at the Department of Health and Human Services are saying. The general message is: Have a chronic illness? It’s your own fault.

“This is at the heart of so much of our national problem with health,” said Robert Califf, who led the Food and Drug Administration during the Obama and Biden administrations. “It’s these two extreme views. It’s every health decision is up to the ‘rugged individual,’ versus the other extreme view that it’s all controlled by environment and social determinants of health. The truth is, it’s on a continuum.”

Some of the messages, many of which are quite harmful: Treat diabetes with cooking classes and not just throw insulin at people. My sister was diabetic and would have died as a child, decades before she did, without insulin. Birth control polls show a “disrespect for life.” Children diagnosed with ADHD are fidgety because they have sedentary lives, limited sunlight, and too much untraprocessed food. But those messages don’t take into account lack of access to healthy food, having too many jobs and no time to cook, or in a rough environment where outside exercise isn’t possible. These faulty messages are now affecting policy decisions.

“It’s impacting the kind of care and treatments patients will have,” said Andrea Love, a biomedical scientist and founder of ImmunoLogic, a science communication organization. “It sends the message that it’s your fault. It’s very much victim-blaming. It creates the idea that scientific progress is the devil, demonizes things that aren’t individually harming health, while avoiding addressing systemic issues that play a much larger role in health.”

The third article is by the Associated Press, posted on Kos:

The Department of Health and Human Services will cancel contracts and pull funding for some vaccines that are being developed to fight respiratory viruses like COVID-19 and the flu. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary and a longtime vaccine critic, announced in a statement Tuesday that $500 million worth of vaccine development projects, all using mRNA technology, will be halted. The projects — 22 of them — are being led by some of the nation’s leading pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer and Moderna to prevent flu, COVID-19 and H5N1 infections. The mRNA vaccines are credited with slowing the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. Kennedy said in the Tuesday statement that he wants the health department to move away from mRNA vaccines, calling on the department to start “investing in better solutions.” He provided no details on what those technologies might be.

A lot of health officials have said how wrong this decision is. More on the continuing saga of Democrats of the Texas House breaking quorum by leaving the state to prevent the Republicans from passing a more highly gerrymandered Congressional map. Emily Singer of Kos says Democrats are fighting back. They’ve found their spine. It’s the resistance Democratic voters have been yearning for since the nasty guy started wrecking the federal government. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has made a variety of threats against the absent Democrats, including expelling them and appointing their replacements. But legal experts say he can’t do either of those things. Various Democratic governors vow to gerrymander their states to favor their party, which would prompt other Republican states to do the same, a gerrymander war. One of those Democratic governors is Gavin Newsom. California was one of the early states to turn their redistricting to an independent citizen commission. To gerrymander Democratic seats in Congress he would have to work around or through them. Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois is hosting many of those Texas Democrats. He said:

“What do MAGA Republicans in Texas do when Donald Trump ignores, well, his oath of office and theirs, and they're taking it upon themselves to thwart the will of the American people?” Pritzker said. “When Donald Trump calls, they say, 'Yes, sir. Right away, sir. Happy to lick your boots, sir.' When Donald Trump says ‘Jump,’ [Texas Gov.] Greg Abbott and [Texas Attorney General] Ken Paxton say ‘How high?’ They don't care that they're violating the Voting Rights Act and racially gerrymandering their state. Well, they're hoping they can rob the bank and get away before anyone notices.”

I had heard Texans didn’t draw this map. The nasty guy’s minions did. And Texas is quite happy to approve it. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported on comments by state Rep. Ann Johnson, one of those Democrats not in Texas. She objected to being described as “running away.”

“Abandoning your job is going to Cancun in the middle of a deadly freeze, right?” Johnson said, referring to Sen. Ted Cruz. “Abandoning your job is cutting health care when people need access. Abandoning your job is cutting public education when we already have one of the worst education systems in the nation. What we are doing is the fundamental protection by our founding fathers in the Texas Constitution that says the minority party has the opportunity to break quorum when you know that the majority has really gone off the rails.” Johnson also compared what’s happening in Texas to how Georgia officials resisted Donald Trump's attempt to change the results of the 2020 election after he lost to former President Joe Biden. “They said, ‘No, sir. That's a step too far.’ But when he called Texas Republicans and said, ‘I need you to fill me five seats,’ they said, ‘Does July work for you?’” Johnson said. “This is not just about our voters—it's about the nation. And it's important for people to know. They have threatened us personally. They have threatened our arrest. They have threatened our jobs. They have threatened us. The solution is, if we show up today at 3:00 and sit and be quiet, then we get to keep ours. But it kills the voice of everybody in this country. And so we won't. We won't sit and shut up to have them shut up the voices of voters.”

I heard on NPR (no link handy) that the Texas legislature pay is minimal (it is also not full time). Members need an outside job. Which means Democrats can’t stay away forever. They will soon have to return to their jobs. So Republicans will likely win. Which is what happened the first time Republicans gerrymandered the state twenty years ago. Singer reported on the staffing problems at Immigration and Customs Enforcement in their efforts to arrest and deport 3,000 people a day. They were far from meeting that goal in June and arrests were down 20% in July. Another issue is ICE agents with a bit of humanity are quitting. They were told they would be arresting actual criminals, but to get their numbers up they are going after the easy cases – day laborers and farm workers. ICE needs agents. They need to replace the ones who have quit and add to the ranks to meet their quota. To help with recruiting efforts they have removed the age limit (I think it had been 55). They have also removed the requirement of an undergraduate degree. Singer wrote, “All uneducated racists are welcome!” To further entice people they are offering signing bonuses of up to $50,000 and offering student loan forgiveness. Singer concluded:

But relaxing standards for ICE agent hires is dangerous. History shows that doing this could increase misconduct in the agency—which is already abducting citizens off streets and holding them in detention facilities without charges. ... “Any time you have massive political pressure to beef up overnight, it never turns out well,” T.J. Bonner, former president of the Border Patrol agents union, told the Associated Press. “Too many corners have to be cut. Then when things go wrong, the fingers get pointed.”

Clay Bennett posted a cartoon on Kos. It shows the traditional costume of Uncle Sam with the shirt and coat on a hanger, the striped pants neatly folded, the stars and stripes tophat set aside. On top is a note:

Representing the United States of America has been a great honor, but after the embarrassment of the past six months, I am resigning my position effective immediately.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos commented on the shooting in Fort Stewart, Georgia, in which a few soldiers were injured (and expected to recover). Bill took on the NRA mantra of “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” But in this incident the soldiers who tackled and subdued the shooter were all unarmed. This is the 1100th post to this blog that I’ve tagged with “GOP.” That’s out of 5494 posts over 17 years. I’m pretty sure none of those 1100 posts were complimentary to Republicans. Other subjects most frequently tagged are: “Gay marriage/Marriage Equality” (name change partway through) – 711, “Donald Trump” – 672, “Supreme Court” – 403, “Michigan” – 400, “Gay acceptance” – 360, “Coronavirus” (the term used before reporting settled on COVID) – 348, “Racism” – 332, “Authoritarian Rule” – 304, and “Conservatism” – 303.

The myth of the self-reliant, salt-of-the-earth American

Last Thursday Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had instituted a policy that any departmental expense greater than $100,000 required her approval. That meant FEMA could not do its usual pre-positioning of its Search and Rescue crews ahead of the central Texas floods. The floods happened on a Friday and Noem didn’t give her approval until the following Monday. A DHS tweet bragged that by Tuesday FEMA had deployed 311 staffers to help with state-led rescue efforts. On Thursday Noem was on “Fox & Friends” and declared CNN’s reporting of the delay was fake news. Abrahm Lustgarten, in an article for ProPublica posted on Kos, discussed the flooding and said things will get worse. The effects of global warming are just getting started. Each small increase in average temperature means a large increase in the amount of water the atmosphere can hold, leading to a large increase in the destructiveness of the storms when that water is released. Lustgarten wrote that President Lyndon Johnson was briefed about the coming climate crisis way back in 1965. Here we are ten presidents later still discussing the problem and doing very little about it. And the current guy in the Oval Office has revoked funding for data collection and research into what the climate is doing. Kos of Kos wrote another article on a topic I’ve written about a few times.

One of the most enduring conservative myths is that of the self-reliant, salt-of-the-earth, rural-dwelling American who pulls himself up by his bootstraps, wrestles a steer before breakfast, and builds his own house out of patriotism and chewing tobacco because, by god, they sure do love America! If that were ever true, it hasn’t been for a while. These days, rural America is largely dependent on the federal government it claims to hate. In fact, far from self-reliant, rural America is subsidized by blue states. And it’s not even close.

Kos discussed several of the government programs rural areas depend on because so many young people have fled to the cities over the decades. The big ones are, of course, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Government benefits are a good thing, so none of this is inherently bad, per se. But it does mean those rural areas are dependent on the very social safety net that Republicans are gleefully hacking apart with their cuts on Medicaid, food assistance, and the like. They’re also poorer than expensive urban regions, so they rely more on federal food assistance to eat. But hey, that’s what these voters asked for. Rural areas lean heavily Republican, and farming-dependent counties voted for Trump at an eye-popping average of 78%.

George B. Sánchez-Tello, in an article for Capital & Main posted on Kos, reported on ICE and Border Patrol agents at MacArthur Park in Los Angeles. The park is in an area where a lot of people from Central and South America live and it has a lively scene. The agents thought the could sweep through the park and easily make their quota for the day. But the park was nearly silent.

The previous day, warnings appeared — single sheets of paper taped to light poles, trees and fences around the park — warning locals to stay away. They cited rumors of possible ICE raids at MacArthur Park. Word also spread on Instagram, as well as other social media apps such as Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp.

The park wasn’t completely empty. Local Spanish-language television crews were ready to film. Photographers from various newspapers were there. Dozens of organizers from anti-ICE rapid response teams and legal observers there there too, some using megaphones to warn people to stay away and to tell people their rights. By the time the agents had completed their sweep across the park they were surrounded by hundreds of people. Some yelled, “ICE out of L.A!” Many recorded the confrontation on their phone, livestreaming straight to social media. The agents retreated without making any arrests. Normal life in the park resumed. Signs had been taped to poles in the park:

Military Members Is this what you signed up for? Will you feel proud about what you’re being ordered to do when you look back on it? If you have concerns about mobilizing against civilians, you’re not alone. You have options. You have rights.

Lisa Needhan of Kos discussed the legal challenge to the nasty guy’s executive order banning birthright citizenship when parents are undocumented. The Supreme Court had ruled that lower courts (I think there were three of them) could not place a nationwide injunction against the EO without a class action suit. The previous injunctions were not based on class action cases. So the ACLU filed a class action case, covering the nation. And Federal District Judge Joseph Laplante quickly certified the case as one for a class of plaintiffs and issued a nationwide injunction. Isn’t that what the Supremes told him to do? Well, certifying a case as covering a nationwide class has rules that must be scrupulously followed. These rules take time. And Laplante couldn’t possibly have followed all the rules so scrupulously in so little time. Of course, it was Justice Alito that wagged that finger.

Getting nationwide relief this way is complicated, but it’s necessary. The plaintiffs are fighting the Trump administration, but lower court judges have also found themselves locked in a battle with a lawless Supreme Court, which essentially decided that lower courts are enemies who must be stopped from thwarting Trump. But the lower courts are the ones that are following the rule of law. Someone’s got to.

Oliver Willis of Kos wrote the nasty guy ranted on Truth Social that his base should not be criticizing AG Pam Bondi about the Jeffrey Epstein case. One reason is, contrary to claims the files don’t exist, the nasty guy claimed they were “written” by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. So his base should not waste their time on Epstein, “somebody that nobody cares about.” That Truth Social post brought out something quite rare – many more negative responses than positive. The base was not pleased. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Heather Digby Parton of Salon:

The appointment of Patel and Bongino — as well as Bondi, who jumped into pursuing the scandal with both feet, promising far-right influencers that she was personally overseeing the investigation — made MAGA true believers believe they were about to get their hands on what Glenn Beck called “the Rosetta Stone of public trust.” These new appointees were the very ones who had been chasing this scandal for years, and they were now in a position to blow the lid off the whole thing. All those who had mocked the MAGA movement as kooks would soon be proven fools. The Justice Department’s memo was a slap in the face to the MAGA faithful. They were stunned. And when Trump rudely dismissed their concerns in a cabinet meeting and then admonished them on Truth Social in a long rant blaming former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, demanding that his followers focus on the scandals he wants them to focus on, the crushing betrayal was personal. Never before has a Trump post received such a massive negative response on his own platform. Even his most loyal influencers, including popular MAGA commentator Benny Johnson and Fox News, were hostile. Trump’s loyal base has taken all that heat for so long, defending Trump through everything, and now it appears their Dear Leader is just another deep state operative covering up the crimes of his accomplices — and possibly his own. They are confused and angry and inconsolable. Have they had a mass epiphany and collectively awakened to the fundamental dishonesty and corruption of the man they worshipped for the past ten years? It’s hard to believe.

bear83 of the Kos community reported the Grand Canyon Lodge on the North Rim was destroyed by wildfire on Sunday. It was built in 1937. Dozens of other structures, including individual cabins, were also destroyed. The fire was started by lightning on July 4. It was initially managed as a controlled burn to clear away what could fuel a larger fire. But nine days later low humidity and strong winds and the fire was no longer under control. bear83 wrote that DOGE and the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service, terminated a lot of jobs, including people who would have helped prevent and fight wildfires. The nasty guy had said the Los Angeles fires wouldn’t have been so bad if communities would clear the combustible undergrowth. Which the crew at the North Rim were trying to do with perhaps not enough staff to do it safely. The North Rim website has a photo gallery of before. I was at the North Rim as part of a family vacation decades ago. We stayed at the campground near the lodge, though I’m sure we went past it to peer down into the canyon. On the long drive from the main road a large deer jumped onto the road and paused. We had to brake quickly and did not hit it. I’ve been to the South Rim a couple times, much more recently, though still decades ago. The Grand Canyon is a beautiful and impressive place. In Wednesday’s pundit roundup Greg Dworkin of Kos quoted a tweet by Matthew Cappucci, commenting on a tweet by Marjorie Taylor Greene. First Greene:

I am introducing a bill that prohibits the injection, release, or dispersion of chemicals or substances into the atmosphere for the express purpose of altering weather, temperature, climate, or sunlight intensity. It will be a felony offense. I have been researching weather.

She’s the one claiming that Democrats can control the weather and she’s referring to jet contrails that Robert Kennedy Jr. is calling chemtrails, the release of chemicals into the atmosphere to do dastardly things. Cappucci’s response:

It’s not a political statement for me as a Harvard-degreed atmospheric scientist to say that elected representative Marjorie Taylor Green doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about. She’d be equally qualified to fly a Boeing-737, practice nuclear medicine or train zebras.

Dworkin quoted Jack Jenkins and Smietana of Religion News Service discussing the recent IRS announcement that churches can endorse political candidates from the pulpit. This is in response to a lawsuit brought by two Texas churches and religious broadcasters.

Americans — including religious Americans — generally take a dim view of political endorsements in the pulpit. According to an analysis of 2023 polling provided to RNS by the Public Religion Research Institute, majorities of all major religious groups oppose or strongly oppose allowing churches and places of worship to endorse political candidates while retaining their tax-exempt status. That includes white evangelicals (62%) as well as Black Protestants (59%), white mainline or nonevangelical Protestants (77%), white Catholics (79%), Hispanic Catholics (78%), Hispanic Protestants (72%) and Jewish Americans (77%). Researchers noted opposition to the idea among white evangelicals remains virtually unchanged since 2017, when they last polled on the topic. There was one outlier, however: People labeled by PRRI as “adherents” to Christian nationalism — people who agree with statements such as “the U.S. government should declare America a Christian nation” — were statistically more likely (45%) to support endorsements from the pulpit, with only a narrow majority (51%) opposed.

Dworkin added that pastors are wary of splitting their congregations so tend to avoid blatant politics. In the comments is a cartoon by Bill Bramhall. It shows a job interview and behind the boss is a sign saying, “Disclosure: The content of this interview will be used to build a chatbot we will hire instead of you.” In Thursday’s roundup Kev quoted John Timmer of Ars Technica:

From a distance, the gathering looked like a standard poster session at an academic conference, with researchers standing next to large displays of the work they were doing. Except in this case, it was taking place in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill, and the researchers were describing work that they weren’t doing. Called "The things we’ll never know," the event was meant to highlight the work of researchers whose grants had been canceled by the Trump administration. ... Many of the grants were focused on STEM education, and it's extremely difficult to imagine that people will be better off without the work happening.

In Friday’s roundup Dworkin included a tweet from Echelon Insights:

Where do most American voters fall on the political compass? Using nine questions on cultural issues and nine questions on economic issues, we mapped voters onto a political compass.

This is the start of a thread on X I don’t have access to. However, here’s the summary of the results:

Liberals, both economic and social: 43% Populist, economically liberal and socially conservative: 22% Conservative, both economic and socially conservative: 31% Libertarian, economically conservative and socially liberal: 5%

Dworkin added:

This is why Democrats on occasion (and warily) try to recruit populists. Conservatives won’t play and libertarians are too few. But the name of the game is a majority.

Aaron Astor tweeted:

Ever wonder why the CDC is based in Atlanta? The reason: its forerunner was the WWII-era Office of Malaria Control, based in Atlanta to fight malaria around rapidly growing US military communities in the South.

In the comments Zoli Osaze posted a cartoon by Lalo Alcaraz showing an ICE agent confronting a farm worker holding a box of produce on his head.

Agent: Keep your hands up! Worker: Don’t worry, they’re busy holding up your economy.

Social media algorithms lead to swallowing the red pill

The ten handbell concerts I saw over the last four days were quite wonderful. I’m pleased livestream technology exists so that I could watch them. I got to know Anne Curzan through her weekly That’s What They Say segment on Michigan Public. The series has been going on for 13 years. Through the show I’ve learned a lot about the origin of many words and phrases – this morning’s discussion was about “pet peeves.” Curzan has a PhD in linguistics and has taught at the University of Michigan for at least thirty years. Over the last year the series mentioned Curzan has a new book and I just finished reading it. The book is Say’s Who? A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Words. Yeah, the word “funner” is in the title where I would have expected “more fun.” She has a chapter on that. In each of the 33 chapters she discusses some aspect of modern American English. She delves into the rules of grammar, who said they were rules, and why the rule does, doesn’t, or never did apply. Some of the topics are making verbs from nouns, how “literally” has come to also mean “figuratively,” the difference between “less” and “fewer,” whether “data” can be treated as singular, how to use the semicolon, and when the passive voice is appropriate. In the first chapter she introduces two words: Grammando, a combination of “grammar commando” as the voice in one’s head insisting on the correct bit of grammar. And wordie, the voice that marvels at new ways of using the language, even when the example doesn’t fit in the rules. Our language is always changing. These two voices are frequently at odds in our heads and in what we say to others. Curzan’s general take on grammar battles is: Does the meaning come through? Beyond that, keep your grammando quiet. Yes, there are more formal situations where a writer (and editors) need to be more conscious of the rules. But Curzan shows, in chapter after chapter, many of the “rules” have been out of date for a long time. The most important chapter to me is the one on PC language, the attempts to use a more inclusive language. And here I’ll quote the book:

Debates about language are almost always about more than language. In this case, debates about inclusive and sensitive language are about who has the power to call linguistic shots about what language is and isn’t inclusive and sensitive. It’s fundamentally a power struggle between groups that have historically held most of the political, economic, and social power – what I’m going to call having the biggest microphone – and historically marginalized groups whose voices are becoming more and more centered in the broader public discourse. It’s not that some of the language that today is deemed offensive is newly offensive; it’s that people who have been denigrated by this language have gained more power to call the language out as offensive. They have a bigger microphone than they have had in the past.

Curzan then noted the marginalized people have to be conscious of how they speak because there could be dire consequences. A wrong word could cost a job – or a life. The socially powerful “have had to worry less about consequences – making it seem like freedom of speech is the same as freedom from consequences for getting it wrong.” I found all of this fascinating – until about three-quarters of the way through the book. Then the repetitive nature of the arguments – the explanation of what’s really going on, the check of historical sources, the appeal to a quieter grammando – got to be a bit wearying. All of it was still interesting, but I enjoyed it less. I recommend the book if you are one who cares about words. Lisa Needham of Daily Kos reviewed all the ways Robert Kennedy Jr. is making the various parts of his Department of Health and Human Services have a more difficult time doing their jobs. I’ll let you read the rest and quote just the conclusion:

Fewer safety inspections, fewer guardrails on drug approvals, and conspiracy-fueled attacks on vaccines. Turns out, “Make America Healthy Again” means just the opposite.

And, I thought, “Make America Great Again” also means just the opposite. Nadra Nittle and Mariel Padilla, in an article for The 19th posted on Kos, discussed how easily young male teens on social media get hooked into misogyny. The society as a whole can make these boys feel insecure. Do they measure up to the expected profile of masculinity? Will they grow up to be man enough? They have “insecurities about their physiques, jawlines and even their hair.” So the boys, who feel no one knows them well, go into social media to find out what they can do to be more masculine. They might watch a “gym-bro” video on how to start increasing muscle size They might try videos on “looksmaxxing” to enhance their appearance. From there social media algorithms take over. Rachael Fugardi is a senior research analyst with the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, which tracks extremism.

Fugardi said that algorithms force-feed sexism to young people. “So much of this misogynistic content isn’t being searched out,” she said. Research from the United Kingdom revealed that 10 percent of boys ages 11 to 14 encountered harmful content, such as misogyny and violence, within 60 seconds of going online.

The videos might start with guides to gym workouts, or a bit of comedy in ways that rack up page views, but then start slipping in the misogynistic content. Even that might start small, as in the problems of being a weak “beta male” rather than an “alpha male.” And it goes downhill from there, eventually into violence against women. Along the way they are exposed to the claim that feminism curtails men’s rights. “They have swallowed the ‘red pill’ — a manosphere metaphor for embracing a reactionary and male supremacist worldview.” Fitness influencers resonate with the boys because of “Pew Research Center’s finding that 43 percent of teenage boys feel pressure to be physically strong.” Geoff Corey, director of Advocates for Youth’s sex education project AMAZE explained:

They are looking to make friends, to look better, to win over girls or become better people. Then, they discover that it seems like the only people creating content geared towards men are people who give them an easy answer for what they want, and that easy answer somehow leads to trickery, violence, unhealthy behaviors, bottling up emotions.

The counterpart to those videos are the ones promoting “tradwives” or the traditional wife who is quite satisfied with the role of making a wonderful home for her man. The women film themselves whipping up snacks from scratch while wearing stylish outfits with expertly applied makeup.

“Male supremacy appeals to women as well. And, of course, the white supremacist project demands the participation of White women in the production of White babies,” said Pasha Dashtgard, director of research at the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL) at American University. The tradwife movement “is for men,” he stressed. “It’s not for women. It’s cosplaying what men think would be the ideal woman.”

Sreshta Erravelli, 17, and who finished 11th grade and thinks the manosphere is nonsense, observed:

Rather than teach that rejection is a part of life, the manosphere links rejection to weakness, causing boys to lash out when girls don’t reciprocate their feelings, she said. “You’re calling girls weird names just because she didn’t give you her number the first 20 times you asked.”

What to do about it? Jessica Berg of Rock Ridge High School in Virginia created a gender studies class that uses history to show students how patriarchy became the norm. She has plenty of recent examples. The class has also taught the young women to advocate for themselves. Dashtgard has created resources to help the public “recognize radicalization before it occurs and engage youth without condemning or humiliating them.” Fugardi wants social media companies to do more to enforce their existing rules on content moderation and demand they protect youth over prioritizing profit. AMAZE has videos that present alternatives to the manosphere. Julie Scelfo, founder of Mothers Against Media Addiction has suggestions for how parents should help their kids. View content with them. If they repeat sexist ideas, ask where they heard them and talk about the meaning of the messages. I’m glad that AMAZE is producing alternative videos. I think more liberal groups need to do the same so that social media algorithms will turn to them as well. Recently I wrote that the 988 National Suicide & Crisis Lifeline will, as of July 17, no longer provide a direct link for LGBTQ (especially the T) to get help from sensitive counselors. That help is currently supplied by the Trevor Project. I’ve since learned that since the Trevor Project is being booted out of the government system it is also losing its government funding, a good size chunk. The Trevor Project will still exist, back to privately funded, to help LGBTQ youth in crisis. Paul Berge drew a cartoon appropriate to the situation. I first saw it in Between the Lines in their previous issue. I normally like to describe cartoons, but this one I won’t because I want you to see the full impact for yourself. Trevor Project LGBTQ Crisis Hotline: 1-866-488-7386 or text START to 678-678