BOGUS

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NOTE BS GOP REBOOT LOUDERMILK

see retaliation LIE GASLT REVIS // FASCISM

OMFG

AN 9 25

WASHINGTON — At the insistence of President Donald Trump, U.S. House Republicans launched a new Jan. 6 investigation earlier this month. This time, though, the GOP is investigating the investigators, namely the bipartisan Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, which finished its exhaustive work two years ago.

“I want to see all the docs and find out how many lies were told by the people that were sitting on that committee,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) — who was referred to the Ethics Committee after refusing a request to testify from the first Jan. 6 panel — told Raw Story. “That's what I want.”

While the vote setting up the initial Jan. 6 select committee was bipartisan, earlier this month the new Select Subcommittee on January 6 was approved on a party line vote.

“Trying to rewrite history, that's just kind of clearly what they've done since January 6th, so this all fits the narrative,” Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA), who served on the initial committee, which disbanded before the GOP took the House in 2023, told Raw Story. “It’s dangerous.”

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It’s not just Democrats waving warning flags. Moderate Republicans say their leaders are making a mistake.

“I just feel like both sides lost their minds, because having the debate again is kind of bad for the nation,” retiring Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) told Raw Story.

Regardless, Trump wants it.

Unlike a GOP-led J6 investigation in the last Congress, this time House Republicans have subpoena power and are promising to use it.

‘What are they looking for?’

Before releasing their 845-page report in 2022, the bipartisan Jan. 6 committee interviewed upwards of 1,000 witnesses and reviewed more than a million pages of documents.

That’s why its chair, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), and other former members decry the new GOP effort.

“The question is what are they looking for? We have no idea. We stand by the work of the committee. Anybody — whoever — wanted to come talk to us, we invited them,” Thompson told Raw Story before dismissing what he sees as an effort to change the narrative.

“They're trying to, but it doesn't change the facts,” Thompson said.

Republicans beg to differ.

“The sham committee did an injustice,” Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) told Raw Story. “The only thing they did is they wanted to blame Trump for everything. They weren't out there to seek the truth. We have an opportunity now to help kind of clear the air and let the American people know.”

On Jan. 6 2021, Trump told supporters to “fight like hell” in support of his lie that the 2020 election was stolen. They then marched from the White House to the Capitol, most seeking to block certification of Joe Biden’s win.

Nine deaths have been linked to the riot, including law enforcement suicides. After returning to power, Trump issued more than 1,500 pardons or acts of clemency, affecting convictions for offenses as serious as seditious conspiracy.

*Nehls is one of five Republicans on the new J6 subcommittee. He’s already come to many conclusions, as laid out in his 2022 book, The Big Fraud: What Democrats Don’t Want You to Know about January 6, the 2020 Election, and a Whole Lot Else.

“Why was the Capitol so ill prepared that day?” Nehls asked Raw Story. “I tell you why, because the leadership of the Capitol Police and others didn't want to share the intelligence reports, and they were f------ clear.

“It was quite clear that things were going to get stupid up here.”

Nehls isn’t the only Republican pushing a narrative. In December, the new subcommittee chair, Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA), released a report recommending former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), a member of the original J6 panel, be investigated by the FBI “for potential criminal witness tampering.”

"Right now, we're casting a pretty broad net trying to bring in any documents that were not preserved or we don't currently have," Loudermilk said. “Basically going out to all the organizations that provided information to the original select committee.”

“How much is your job, as you see it, or your mandate, to investigate the original J6 committee?” Raw Story pressed. “Or how much is your job investigating what happened Jan. 6, 2021?”

“It's both,” Loudermilk said, “because there are decisions being made in some elements based off that report that should not be made. In fact, because that's the official report, they've literally ruined people's lives from that.”

Loudermilk has plenty of questions.

“Did the FBI have actionable intelligence that this was happening? And what did they do with it? Did they pass it to Capitol Police? Was it passed on? Same with Homeland Security. We're investigating there, and we have reason to believe they had intelligence, it wasn't passed on.”

After an 18-month investigation, the bipartisan committee referred Trump to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution. Loudermilk and other Republicans claim much remained unanswered.

“How did this Capitol get breached? Regardless of who did it, it should have never been breached,” Loudermilk said.

“An unarmed mob was able to get in the Capitol, you can't find anything in their report about that. ‘Pipe bombs’ are mentioned five times only in passing, but ‘Donald Trump’ was mentioned over a thousand. So that's why we're looking into it.”

In fact, court records show rioters were armed with weapons including firearms, tasers and knives, as well as makeshift implements used to attack police.

Loudermilk was investigated by the initial Jan. 6 committee after video surfaced of him giving a Capitol tour the day before the attack. Like other Republicans, he refused to sit for an interview.

‘Run the tape’

Democrats plan to hammer home that Loudermilk and other Republicans repeatedly rebuffed fact-finding efforts.

“We can go back to some of the people who didn't testify before and who blew off their subpoenas to see if they're ready to testify,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) told Raw Story.

Since serving on the initial Jan. 6 committee, Raskin has become top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, making him an ex-officio member of the GOP’s new panel.

While he dismisses the investigation, Raskin promises to use his perch to highlight the terror of Jan. 6, 2021.

“It's going to be an opportunity for us to talk about the tremendous damage inflicted on the police,” Raskin said.

While Raskin is the only carryover from the initial select committee, other alumni also see Trump’s effort to rehash Jan. 6 as a chance to remind the nation of the attempt to overturn the will of the people that culminated in the brutal attack.

“Ridiculous, but it will give us an opportunity to run the tape over and over again. Why do they want to do this?” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) told Raw Story.

“We found the facts. We posted them. It's terabytes of information. Anyone can get it. They're trying to erase history.”

‘Whitewashing’

Even some in Trump’s own party are questioning his goal.

“Why can't we just say those who hurt cops, they were wrong?” Bacon told Raw Story.

“They deserve to be punished — 140 cops were injured. I don't know why we can't have just some honesty, that there were some bad apples in this whole crowd. They deserve to be punished.”

Not according to Trump, who granted blanket pardons. Democrats see the new committee as an extension of that effort.

“The president, on day one, pardoning 1,500 insurrectionists, criminals — violent criminals — was a whitewashing, an attempt to rewrite history,” Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA) told Raw Story. “Most importantly, he was pardoning himself. This is a continuation of that.

“It's so infuriating. Just distraction, that's what the administration wants. A little more whitewashing. Absolutely.”

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7 25 raw

U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) is joining a wave of Republican voices reviving criticism of the FBI’s Clinton email investigation—calling it “rigged” and saying it will be “fun” to watch Democrats “lawyer up”—as media scrutiny intensifies around Donald Trump’s ties to the late, notorious sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein and his refusal to release the files.

Fox News on Monday reported that the FBI, under then-Director James Comey, “botched” the Clinton emails investigation in 2016, citing a press release from U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA).

The FBI “failed to perform fundamental investigative work and left key pieces of evidence on the cutting room floor,” Senator Grassley alleged. “The Comey FBI’s negligent approach and perhaps intentional lack of effort in the Clinton investigation is a stark contrast to its full-throated investigation of the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, which was based on the uncorroborated and now discredited Steele dossier. Comey’s decision-making process smacks of political infection.”

ALSO READ:'Sick of it': House GOP fury rises as Trump ally Johnson dodges Epstein debate

On Tuesday, Senator Tuberville told Newsmax (video below), “James Comey’s FBI rigged the Hillary Clinton investigation so we would, you know, we would never know how badly she damaged our national security when they didn’t probe those crucial thumb drives.”

“What a colossal cover-up this has been,” Tuberville alleged. “It is a huge cover-up.”

“They’ve tried to push a narrative that basically they want to change our country that’s something it’s not. They wanted to take all the ability of us as Republicans, as Americans, to try to keep our country going in the right direction,” he said. “But the mainstream media, the Democrats, and a few Republicans have pushed this narrative of, ‘Let’s do it the right way. Let’s make sure we’re doing the right thing.'”

“It has been—it’s been—something that I’ve been shocked at since I’ve been here, and now we’re finally seeing things start to leak out, the truth of really what happened,” Tuberville claimed, not offering any specifics.

“The American people are going to find out, it is going to be fun up here to watch all this start taking a narrative, a true narrative of what really happened, of the Democrats trying to change this country into a socialist communist country for the last four years,” he alleged, apparently referring to the Biden presidency, of which Hillary Clinton was not a part.

“These people need to lawyer up, and they need to find out really what it’s really like to be under the gun, putting her hand up, testifying in front of people all over this country because it’s gonna be, it’s gonna be much watched, as we look at all this narrative being brought forward.”

After she served as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton testified, under oath and television cameras, before Congress, for 11 hours in a single day in 2015.

On Sunday, Tuberville claimed that President Donald Trump’s bloated ankles are the result of him “fighting the radicals in this country.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

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AN 7 25

POlitical operative David Barton held up a thick Bible with years of wear on its dark brown cover and proclaimed its pages put Protestant Christianity at the center of the country’s very foundation.

*This story first appeared at The 74, a nonprofit news site covering education. Sign up for free newsletters from The 74 to get more like this in your inbox.

“This is actually printed by the official printer of Congress,” said Barton, a best-selling author and influential far-right Christian nationalist. Barton has spent the last 40 years arguing that the separation of church and state is a myth — and has built a multimillion-dollar media and lobbying operation to influence public opinion and shape laws around the belief that the United States was founded as a Judeo-Christian nation.

At [VID] in April, Barton appeared before the Texas House education committee and testified in favor of legislation, since signed into law, requiring that posters of the Ten Commandments be placed inside every classroom in the state’s nearly 9,100 public schools by September. With him, Barton brought a small collection of books he claims were foundational to the country’s public education system until the 20th Century.

Barton isn’t just a primary pitchman for the Ten Commandments law in Texas, his home state, an investigation by The 74 reveals. His fingerprints appear on 28 bills that have cropped up before the legislatures in 18 states this year. A data analysis of the bills exposes how their language, structure and requirements are inherently identical. In dozens of instances, they match model legislation pitched by Barton verbatim.

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At the Texas hearing, Barton’s eyes fixated on the cover of the rare 1782 Aitken Bible.

“It also says it’s ‘a neat Edition of the Holy Scriptures for the use of schools,’” he continued. “It has the Ten Commandments.”

In actuality, Barton lifted language from Philadelphia printer Robert Aitken calling on Congress to sanction a Bible that could also be for “the use of schools.” Christian nationalists have for years falsely claimed the Revolutionary-era printing includes a government promotion of Christianity. Barton has long been accused of taking historical quotes out of context, and in 2012, the Christian publisher of his bestselling book on Thomas Jefferson ceased its production because “basic truths just were not there.”

Texas is one of three states in the last two years to pass a law requiring that the Ten Commandments be posted in public schools. The mandates are part of a coordinated nationwide effort to overturn a 1980 Supreme Court ruling forbidding Kentucky from requiring Ten Commandments displays in classrooms.

As the influence of Barton and the burgeoning Christian nationalist movement find favor in state legislatures, the White House and with U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson — who cites Barton as a “profound influence” — the lobbyists and lawmakers behind the state Ten Commandments bills told The 74 they’re confident the current Supreme Court’s conservative super-majority is on their side, too.

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A Flourish table

The analysis by The 74 reveals how language in virtually every state bill matches model legislation created by Project Blitz, a Barton-steered Christian “bill mill” that’s long flooded statehouseswith legislative templates that promote Christianity in public schools, legalize discrimination against LGBTQ+ people and restrict abortion.

A dozen bills specify, for example, that the Ten Commandments displays must be hung in a “conspicuous” location. Another 11 specify they should be at least 11-by-14 inches in size. Nearly all of the bills — 25 — mandate a Christian version of the religious and ethical directives be displayed as a “poster or framed.” The 74 tallied 96 instances where bills introduced this year match Project Blitz’s model legislation, including template bills to require the Ten Commandments or the phrase “In God We Trust” in public schools.

Among the architects of Project Blitz is the Barton-founded influence machine, WallBuilders. The flurry of state bills were introduced after WallBuilders — the name is an Old Testament reference to rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem — convened its annual national conference of state legislators in November where the model legislation was promoted.

After Louisiana passed its first-in-the-nation Ten Commandments law last year, new mandates approved in Arkansas and Texas this year follow the same Project Blitz template.

‘No such thing as separation of God and government’

Texas state Sen. Mayes Middleton is the joint author of the state’s new Ten Commandments law and the author of another new law permitting a daily prayer period and Bible readings in public schools statewide. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed both in June.

Middleton, whose district southeast of Houston includes his hometown of Galveston, acknowledged Barton’s influence over not just his own legislative agenda, but Texas’ broader conservative movement. Barton previously served as vice chair of the state Republican Party.

“Of course, WallBuilders is very supportive of the bill,” Middleton told The 74, as were the conservative legal groups Alliance Defending Freedom and the First Liberty Institute. “And, of course, all of their missions is to advance religious liberties, especially in the public realm where there is no such thing as separation of God and government.”

Founded by Barton in 1988, WallBuilders promotes theories — discredited by serious scholars — about Christianity’s central role in the formation of the United States through its podcasts, books and a museum with “one of the largest private collections of United States historical documents.”

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Through WallBuilders’ lobbying arm, the Pro-Family Legislative Network, Barton leads direct outreach to lawmakers and educators at its annual conferences at a four-star waterfront resort in suburban Dallas. It was at this gathering where Indiana Rep. J.D. Prescott, a Republican, got the idea for Ten Commandments legislation in his state, he told The 74.

Prescott proposed a bill requiring a “durable poster or framed picture” of the commandments in each library and classroom at all public schools statewide. The legislation ultimately failed to garner support. Bills in other states also failed to gain traction, including in South Dakota where the bill’s critics — including some Republicans — said a government mandate was the wrong way to spread Christianity and ran afoul of the Constitution.

“Our early common school system was really designed to teach biblical principles in the Bible, so it’s just getting back to that point,” said Prescott, who described himself as a “student of history.”

The Pro-Family Legislative conference offers lawmakers scholarships and discounted hotel rates to attend the event. In at least one instance, a New Hampshire state lawmakerfiled a disclosure form reporting that he had received $859.47 from the Pro-Family Legislative Network, including $500 reimbursing him for air fare, to attend the November 2024 conference.

Prescott told The 74, “I learned a lot of it at a WallBuilders conference hosted by David Barton. They’ve got a great conference for legislators down in Texas every November. I did look at the WallBuilders model legislation and it’s a good place to start.”

Not everyone’s Ten Commandments

Experts said the bills seek to do more than require “durable” Ten Commandments posters in every public school classroom. The campaign is part of a broader, well-organized and deep-pocketed assault, they argue, on the separation of church and state.

Although WallBuilders isn’t required to disclose its donors, the nonprofit Center for Media and Democracy analyzed federal tax filings with the Internal Revenue Service to bring its finances into focus. In 2021, WallBuilders reported $5.9 million in revenue and $6.3 million in total assets.

The group relies heavily on donor-advised giving, a tax loophole that allows anonymous supporters across the political spectrum to contribute to contentious causes without scrutiny. For example, donor-advised funds have been exploited by far-right activists to leverage global campaigns against the civil rights of women and the LGBTQ+ community, according to a 2023 investigation by openDemocracy.

Mercury One, a nonprofit founded by high-profile conservative pundit and media personality Glenn Beck, is both a WallBuilders donor and primary sponsor of Barton’s annual Pro-Family Legislative Conference to brief elected officials “on pressing issues from a constitutional perspective.”

Barton, who didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment, describes himself as a self-taught historian and the owner of the largest private collection of historical documents about the Founding Fathers. His critics pan the graduate of the Oral Roberts University as a discredited pseudohistorian and propagandist.

Barton is “the granddaddy of Christian nationalist disinformation,” constitutional attorney Andrew Seidel, who serves as vice president of strategic communications at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, told The 74.

John Fea, an American history professor and history department chair at Messiah University, a private evangelical Christian institution in Pennsylvania, accused Barton of cherry-picking historical information to present a misleading portrayal of the past, one that bolsters his own present-day political agenda.

“This is clearly an attempt by Christian nationalists to try to advance their own version of what America should be,” Fea said, noting that even as historians challenge Barton, he’s amassed influence among Republican lawmakers interested in leveraging a distorted accounting of history for political gain.

“Barton provides that history for these lawmakers. It adds a certain depth, even though it’s hollow.”

Darcy Hirsh, the senior director of government relations and advocacy at the nonprofit National Council for Jewish Women, said the Ten Commandments laws present an attack on “the strict wall of separation” between church and state.

“Any efforts to perpetuate the falsehood that the United States is a Christian nation is something that we find deeply alarming,” Hirsh said. Requiring a protestant Christian version of the Ten Commandments in schools, she said, is “exclusionary and coercive” to children from diverse backgrounds.

“A Protestant interpretation of the Ten Commandments is different than the Jewish interpretation of the Ten Commandments, in fact, they are numbered differently,” she said. Constitutional protections separating church and state, she said, are critical to the country’s democratic society.

“It’s that protection that has really allowed the Jewish community and other minority faith communities to flourish in the U.S.”

The laws successfully passed in Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas now face lawsuits from parents alleging they violate the separation of church and state. The issue could soon appear again before the nation’s highest court. In June, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, among the nation’s most conservative, struck down Louisiana’s Ten Commandments display mandate, finding it “plainly unconstitutional.”

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Parents with diverse religious identities are being backed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State in challenging the laws. In a complaint filed in Arkansas, parents allege students will be “unconstitutionally coerced into religious observance” and “pressured to suppress their personal religious beliefs.”

Fea, the evangelical historian, told The 74 the far-right campaign isn’t about the Ten Commandments’ place in the nation’s founding but about advancing the influence of Christianity in society.

“They’re using this historical argument to disguise the fact that they believe that somehow — and I don’t know how this happens, by osmosis or whatever — a student sitting in a classroom where the Ten Commandments is displayed will somehow buy into those ideals and values and become more Christian,” he said.

‘The hostility is gone’

At the Texas House education committee hearing in April, Barton held up a second book. This one was much smaller than the first, but just as old and, Barton testified, just as significant.

Barton lectured the Republican-controlled state legislature on The New England Primer, a widely used Colonial-era reading text. The book, he said, drilled first graders with 43 questions about the Ten Commandments.

Then he introduced a third book, and a fourth.

“The courts have pointed to the Ten Commandments as the reason we have all types of laws,” Barton testified. “So there’s a lot of history and tradition for that document that’s not there for other documents.”

Barton’s prop-focused presentation isn’t just scripted — it’s well rehearsed. This year, the 71-year-old has traveled across the country with his books and a small team of collaborators to spread the gospel of Christian nationalism. Like the bills before the state legislatures, Barton’s speech was replicated again and again.

As Barton testified on the Ten Commandment bills nationally, legislative sponsors routinely parroted his talking points, not just about Christianity’s role in the country’s origin, but the Supreme Court’s support for their movement.

During his recent appearances in Nebraska and other states, Barton’s testimonies invoked the court’s 2022 opinion upholding the rights of a Washington state high school football coach to lead prayers with his team on the 50-yard line after games.

Prescott, the Indiana lawmaker, said he became interested in introducing his bill after learning of the implications of the coach’s Supreme Court victory.

To Barton and other members of his coalition, the court’s opinion in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District creates a clear path to require Ten Commandments in schools — and inject Christianity into other facets of public life — by proving they’re part of a longstanding traditional practice.

In finding for Coach Kennedy, the Supreme Court abandoned its 1971 opinion ruling that religious displays don’t violate the Constitution if they have significant secular or nonreligious purposes. The court’s new standard revolves around whether the religious displays are part of historical practices. In other words, the heart of Barton’s pitch.

“That is the new standard, so the hostility is gone,” he testified. “Showing that this is something that is longstanding practice, you go back to The New England Primer.”

Bought and paid for — according to specs

Even as bill proponents championed states’ rights as one legal justification for their Ten Commandments display mandates, Middleton, the Texas legislative leader, said there is a key benefit to the near-identical requirements in the bills across the 18 states.

“We just wanted uniformity in these displays. We thought that was important,” the oil company president and cattle rancher told The 74. “Obviously, these are primarily going to be donated as well, so it’s probably going to be primarily private funds funding these.”

Project Blitz model legislation devises a funding scheme that revolves around donated displays without the reliance on public funds — a provision that appears in 16 states’ bills. Others invoke the model legislation by encouraging donated displays, but broaden the mandate so schools are also free to spend taxpayer dollars to comply.

Mirroring the Project Blitz model legislation, the new Arkansas law requires the Ten Commandments display be composed of a “durable poster or framed copy” of the document and that it be “prominently” positioned in each public classroom and library across the state. The law also stipulates that the posters should be donated by outside groups, meaning the same private entities who had a hand in crafting the specifications, supporting the bills and getting them on legislators’ radars, will also be the ones buying the versions of the Ten Commandments that wind up in schools.

Even as the Louisiana law is caught up in federal court, religious groups who lobbied for the law’s passage and have close ties to the WallBuilders have plans to donate the displays set to appear in classrooms across the state.

In April, First Liberty Institute and The Louisiana Family Forum announced that Patriot Mobile, which describes itself as “America’s ONLY Christian conservative wireless provider,” had donated 3,000 Ten Commandments displays “as part of a project to provide, at no cost to the Louisiana taxpayer, displays in schools throughout Louisiana.”[CHART]

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an 5 25

During President Donald Trump's four months back in the White House, tech CEOs who were critical of him in the past — including Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon's Jeff Bezos — have been trying to make peace with him. And Tesla/SpaceX/X.com CEO Elon Musk is among Trump's close allies.

Trump clearly views the tech world as an opportunity to make money. And in an article published by The Guardian on May 30, Brisbane, Australia-based journalist Matt Shea describes one of Trump's ways to fleece "gullible young men" via "fake money."

Trump, according to the article, is pushing a "get-rich-quick scheme."

Trump, in 2025, is much more bullish on cryptocurrencies, include memecoins, than he was in the past. Shea, in his article, makes it clear that he has a low opinion of the technology — and argues that Trump-related memecoins will be profitable for Trump himself more than those who buy them.

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Describing cryptocurrencies as nonsense and memecoins as "consciously" nonsense, Shea writes, "In their essence, memecoins distill the attention economy into a tradable asset, monetizing the ebb and flow of viral internet hype. This has created a system in which the biggest attention-seekers on the planet — Logan Paul, Andrew Tate, Elon Musk, Donald Trump — can bleed their followers for profit. The more controversial they are, the more viral they are; and the more viral they are, the more their memecoins increase in value."

"Most memecoins," according to Shea, "end up making money for the person who makes them as a 'rug pull' or a 'pump and dump'" — although in the long run, they aren't a good investment for those who buy them.

David Gerard, author of the book "Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain," described memecoins as "fake money," telling The Guardian, "They own the fake money, but they can't sell it until it's unlocked in tranches. Note that the limits are artificial. I mean, they could just 'print' more."

Journalist Sander Lutz describes memecoins as a "scam," arguing that some people are willing be scammed.

Lutz told The Guardian, "Another way of defining a memecoin is a cryptocurrency token that has an acknowledged inherent lack of value. The crypto world, outside of memecoins, is full of so many people who are trying to pitch you on tokens that are 'actually really profound' or 'represent a stake' in some kind of 'useful network,' but are equally worthless. What makes memecoins different is that there's none of that noise…. Crypto has been an ever-escalating series of get-rich-quick schemes, where a whole bunch of people think that they're smarter operators than the previous operator — and generally, they're not….. They think they'll hear about these scams before the rug is pulled — but actually, they're the suckers."

Lutz added, "Crypto is full of people who think they're the scammer, not the sucker."

*Read Matt Shea's full article for The Guardian at this link.

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Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” Commission report is filled with errors and broken links, reports NOTUS. The paper, released under the administration of President Donald Trump, also cites seven sources that do not appear to exist.

NOTUS spoke to Epidemiologist Katherine Keyes, the MAHA report lists as the first author of a study on adolescent anxiety. Only Keyes claims she didn’t write the paper the report uses.

“The paper cited is not a real paper that I or my colleagues were involved with,” Keyes told NOTUS via email. “We’ve certainly done research on this topic, but did not publish a paper in JAMA Pediatrics on this topic with that co-author group, or with that title.”

NOTUS reports it could not confirm iF? anyone wrote the study “Changes in mental health and substance abuse among US adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic,” complete with a nonfunctional link to the study’s digital object identifier. The citation claims the study appeared in the 12th issue of the 176th edition of the journal JAMA Pediatrics, but that issue doesn’t include a report with that title.

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Similarly, NOTUS reports two other studies pertaining to direct-to-consumer drug advertisements for ADHD medications and antidepressants for kids appears nowhere “to be found.”

NOTUS included these two citations:

*Shah, M. B., et al. (2008). Direct-to-consumer advertising and the rise in ADHD medication use among children. Pediatrics, 122(5), e1055- e1060.

*Findling, R. L., et al. (2009). Direct-to-consumer advertising of psychotropic medications for youth: A growing concern. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, 19(5),487-492.

“Those articles don’t appear in the table of contents for the journals listed in their citations,” write NOTUS reporters Emily Kennard and Margaret Manto. “A spokesperson for Virginia Commonwealth University, where psychiatric researcher Robert L. Findling currently teaches, confirmed to NOTUS that he never authored such an article.”

The author of the first study doesn’t appear to be a real ADHD researcher, according to a Google Scholar profile.

In another section titled, “American Children are on Too Much Medicine – A Recent and Emerging Crisis,” the report claims 25% to 40% of mild cases of asthma are overprescribed. But searching Google for the exact title of the paper that section cites to buttress that figure — “Overprescribing of oral corticosteroids for children with asthma” — leads to only one result: the MAHA report itself. The corticosteroids study’s alleged author, pediatric pulmonologist Harold J. Farber, denied writing it to NOTUS, or working with other authors listed in the study. He also described the MAHA report’s conclusions are “clearly an overgeneralization” of findings.

“It is a tremendous leap of faith to generalize from a study in one Medicaid managed care program in Texas using 2011 to 2015 data to national care patterns in 2025,” Farber told NOTUS in an email.

Read the full NOTUS report at this link.

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an 11 24

President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance have both upheld Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán's regime as a model for Trump's second term in the White House. One former member of Hungarian parliament who witnessed Orbán's ascent is now pointing out ways Democrats can avoid the mistakes of Hungary's opposition.

In an essay for Politico, former Hungarian MP Gábor Scheiring noted that there are numerous similarities between Orbán and Trump. Both men are authoritarians bent on expanding executive power and crushing institutional opposition. Both are former presidents who lost elections and then returned to power. And both are strident culture warriors who are intent on dominating the media. Scheiring wrote that Orbán deployed populist "software" and "hardware" that paved the way for his far-right power grab, and alerted readers to watch for certain things that Trump will borrow from Orbán in the coming years.

In describing the "software of autocracy," Scheiring noted that the Hungarian leader exploited a "folksy outsider" label allowing him to pose as a populist hero of the working class, and noted that Trump has done the same on multiple occasions – like donning an apron and working the drive-thru window at a McDonalds restaurant. Orbán and Trump also share an intense anti-immigrant platform, and demonize immigrants as a means of dividing and conquering the working class while simultaneously playing on racist and xenophobic sentiment.

Another critical piece of "software" is "economic nationalism," with both Orbán and Trump combining cultural grievance politics with palpable frustration among their nation's working-class voters about economic insecurity. Scheiring observed that "right-wing populists glorify 'makers' over 'takers,'" which he said resonates with "working-class voters who value hard work."

"This narrative also serves to cement an alliance between plutocrats, billionaires and workers, which might seem paradoxical, but it isn’t," he continued. "They are all portrayed as hard-working value creators as opposed to 'lazy bureaucrats' and 'benefit scroungers.'"

Scheiring explained that the "hardware" of the far-right authoritarian state Orbán built in Hungary is fourfold: Strengthening executive power; disciplining the judiciary; changing election processes, controlling the media and controlling their political party. In accomplishing these four things, Orbán has managed to stay in power consistently since 2010. While Trump is almost 80 years old and is prevented from seeking a third term due to the 22nd Amendment, Scheiring warned that Trump copying his Hungarian counterpart could lead to MAGA cementing power for decades. He encouraged Democrats to focus their opposition on litigating Trump's policies in courts, fighting back at the state and local level and waging war in the media by inserting their own narratives.

"Hungary’s key lesson is you don’t protect democracy by talking about democracy — you protect democracy by protecting people," Scheiring wrote. "Only a democracy that works for the people is sustainable."

Click here to read Scheiring's full essay in Politico.

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MMA

Fox News is the loudest voice in media promoting trickle-down economics

Fox News personalities were the only prominent proponents of trickle-down policies in the second quarter of the year

Written by Craig Harrington

Research contributions from Zachary Pleat

Published 10/28/24

Nearly a quarter of Fox News’ prime-time economic news coverage in the second quarter of 2024 espoused or promoted so-called “trickle-down” economic theory, a discredited economic model that advocates for reduced tax and regulatory burdens at the upper end of the income, wealth, or profit spectrum in order to induce economic growth. A Media Matters analysis of three months of economic news coverage from April through June 2024 from broadcast evening and prime-time cable programs revealed that Fox News was by far the leading vector by which trickle-down talking points were injected into the news ecosystem.

## Fox News' trickle-down crusade

Fox News aired nearly as many economic news segments espousing trickle-down economic theory (16 of 66 total segments) as CNN aired total economic news segments (22) during the second quarter of this year — the latter cable network largely having abdicated its responsibility to cover the economy in prime-time. None of MSNBC’s qualifying coverage (54 total segments) was found to promote trickle-down economic theory.

In addition to advocating, in essence, that society should prioritize the top of the income, wealth, and profit spectrum in order to induce broader economic benefits that supposedly “trickle-down” to the rest of the economy, Fox's trickle-down proponents often also argued that fewer benefits should be provided to those at the bottom, inverting the logical fallacy at the center of trickle-down theory.

Of Fox’s segments espousing trickle-down, 12 included discussion of tax policy, and 12 also covered inflation. Wages were discussed in 10 of these segments. The following chart shows the economic topics Fox personalities were discussing when they espoused trickle-down economics.

The leading trickle-down misinformer in Fox’s prime-time lineup was frequent guest, Fox Business host, and former Trump administration official Larry Kudlow, who peddled trickle-down theory while slamming the economic agenda of the Biden-Harris administration and puffing up the accomplishments (and future promises) of disgraced former President Donald Trump.

During the 4 appearances in which he peddled trickle-down economics during the second quarter — Kudlow was the only guest to appear more than once in a segment identified as promoting trickle-down economics — he fearmongered about how future tax increases on the wealthy could undermine job creation and slow down economic growth and warned that increasing government spending would imperil the economy.

Fox News and Fox Business personalities Brian Brenberg and David Asman, Fox News host and former Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee, celebrity chef Andrew Gruel, South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott, and Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson were among the other prime-time Fox News guests who peddled trickle-down talking points during the second quarter, warning about looming tax increases, clamoring for renewed income tax cuts from a second Trump administration, or warning about the supposed threat posed by stricter government regulations or elevated minimum wages.

Media Matters identified multiple instances in which Fox's prime-time hosts themselves served as the vector peddling trickle down.

Fox prime-time star and informal Trump adviser Sean Hannity led the way with 4 instances of him promoting trickle-down talking points, followed by one instance apiece from hosts Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld....