CULT WAR 3 WEDGE

===

estb 12 24

MERRI OK

see drag

see war on xmas/xian

--> fascism Drag 2nd class legally

SEE CULTURE CAPTURE ~ PC4 WOKE

SEE TROLL CAUCUS MTG MACE

note big racial component eg DEI in DOGE COUP

SEE GRIEVANCE WHITE MALE REVERSE DISCRIM PROJECTION

SEE PUTIN // BUCHANAN

wnba FAUCI?

BAK

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9 26 RWW

Alec MacGillis @ ProPublica: How the Smithsonian Became the Latest Front in Trump’s Culture War

Trump tried to fire one Smithsonian official and, after finding “ideological capture,” plans to install anti-woke warning signs outside the history museum.

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AN 11 26 REBOOT?

KATIE MILLER FIND YR ANNIKIN?

The Blaze reports a growing cohort of scorned young conservative men are trying to commandeer major franchises and famous brands and twist characters into MAGA champions.

“Over the last several months, we’ve seen this very strange kind of happening online where some of the biggest franchises in entertainment, whether it’s 'Star Wars,' 'Harry Potter,' other franchises,” said far-right BlazeTV host John Doyle. “These are now being reimagined by young guys on the right who are taking characters once celebrated by liberals and turning them into symbols of something completely opposed to the values of just contemporary society.”

One such repurposed character would be the reimagined female version of Harry Potter’s Draco Malfoy, called “Malfoid.”

“People were asking this [artist] to make a version of Malfoy that was trans or lesbian, and the artist completely refused, and they were like, ‘I drew this to make guys yearn again,’” Doyle said, allegedly to appeal to “sensitive, young” MAGA men.

Wired.com reports Trump’s Department of Education is even promoting the “Malfoid” meme.

Another character, said Doyle, would be the MAGA-tized version of Anakin Skywalker, a good guy gone bad — but only because of the universe’s perceived “rejection of young white men in favor of third-world immigrants,” he argued.

“[Skywalker] wanted to bring order to this corrupt and dysfunctional society. He wanted to have it all, right? A beautiful wife, a family, the power to actually protect the people he loved who were being harmed,” said Doyle. “But instead, he’s surrounded by incompetent politicians, hypocritical religious authorities, and this disgusting, decaying republic that can’t actually accomplish anything. … And so eventually, yeah, he decided that he’s had enough.”

Anakin Skywalker’s character eventually massacred a whole class of small Jedi children, but Doyle said that despite his “bad guy” label there’s a great reason so many young men relate to the mass murderer.

“If you’re telling a story about a naturally gifted young man who is prevented from reaching his potential by old people who are lecturing him but ultimately refusing to answer his questions or address the problems he’s facing, yeah, it’s called being a young white guy,” said Doyle. “… He’s withheld from positions which he has actually earned by merit. He’s told that he can’t have things that he looks for, such as, you know, a girlfriend, for these vague and silly reasons … [and] he’s tortured and harmed by weird alien freaks that society doesn’t actually bother with meaningfully dealing with.”

“And all of this is in the wake of literally decades of the young, straight, white male being demonized, being talked about as a threat, something to be dealt with,” Doyle said, while adding that “unsurprisingly liberals are not taking [the movement] well.”

“Naturally, this has made a lot of people very angry because in their mind, only they get to reimagine what these characters were supposed to be for, what these franchises are supposed to be about, the new DEI sequels and revamps and so on,” he said.

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The negative space in Fox News coverage

09/22/26

MATT G , MSNOW

Fox News’ MAGA stars have spent Donald Trump’s second term lavishing praise on the president and his purported accomplishments, denouncing his opponents in vitriolic terms and telling their viewers which culture war enemies to hate.

But any understanding of the goals of a political outlet like Fox is incomplete without considering the stories it doesn’t cover: a list that, as of late, includes the Iran war, the Trump family’s alleged corruption and the president’s unpopularity. This negative space in Fox’s coverage largely emphasizes its hosts’ choices, just as an artist’s use of the empty area around a subject is part of their work (though at times, the network’s executives seem to be calling the shots).

And while it’s hardly novel for Fox to dodge bad news for Republicans, the network’s hosts are going to remarkable lengths in Trump’s second term to avoid what should be important subjects.

When Fox ignores a story, it represents information that is not making its way to the president through his television.

Within Fox’s negative space are stories that the network’s stars seem loath to defend or even acknowledge to their viewers. That’s a high bar, considering that Fox hosts eagerly covered the various indictments of Trump for storing highly classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and fomenting an insurrection. Yet network stars like Sean Hannity won’t even try to explain, for example, why it is appropriate for a Russian oligarch to bankroll the president’s son’s wedding. These omissions speak to just how damning Fox talent may consider such narratives for the MAGA movement and Republican Party.

Fox’s negative space also has implications for the political and public policy arenas. Trump’s worldview is shaped by the Fox content he regularly consumes, and he has often taken action in response to what he sees from the trusted figures on his television. When Fox ignores a story, that represents information that is not making its way to the president through his television.

Play

New poll shows Americans’ most-used word for the Trump administration: ‘Corrupt’September 18, 2026 / 07:15

Consider, for instance, the war with Iran. In the run-up to the conflict, the network’s biggest hawks urged Trump to attack. Other voices went silent, rather than point out, say, that Iran might close the Strait of Hormuz.

When Trump launched the war, the network moved in lockstep to support it and praise him. As the conflict became increasingly unpopular and settled into a quagmire, the network’s on-air talent toggled between calls for risky escalations to finish the fight and declarations that the United States was already on the verge of victory. Skeptical statements that the war may have been a mistake were rare. Eventually, Fox largely stopped talking about the war. On five of the network’s most influential programs, mentions of Iran fell 78% from June to August.

In place of these news stories, the network increased its already frequent culture war programming.

Gone missing, as well, is coverage of conflicts of interest and the business dealings of the president and his family. Fox spent years drowning its audience with coverage of the foreign business interests of Hunter Biden. Its stars regularly — and baselessly — accused former President Joe Biden of profiting from his son’s dealings or rewarding Hunter Biden’s partners with favorable government action. After Trump returned to the White House, he and his sons saw their wealth soar thanks in part to sprawling international business deals and even contracts and other administration policies. Yet Fox’s interest in presidential ethics simply vanished.

Most recently, ProPublica’s bombshell report that a “lavish, three-day party held across a pair of ultra-exclusive private islands” to celebrate Donald Trump Jr.’s May wedding “was heavily funded by a secret benefactor: Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin.” (Trump Jr.’s wife, Bettina, confirmed the report but said, “Generosity doesn’t automatically come with an agenda.” The president said his son had paid back Kremlev.) In the two days after its publication, the story received just three minutes of coverage on Fox — all from a single show, “Special Report.” That show’s host, Bret Baier, even noted that “in a Democratic administration, there would have been a lot of coverage of this.”

More articles

Trump and Fox News are trapped in a doom loop on Iran

Matt Gertz

Maria Bartiromo out at Fox News Media after 12 years

Hayley Meissner

Play

Toxic Trump distracts from plummeting polls with media threats: ‘He wants people to be afraid’September 18, 2026 / 07:15

Nowhere, however, is the silence louder than Trump’s polling. With six weeks to go to the midterm elections, perhaps the most salient fact in American politics right now is that Trump is broadly unpopular. Poll aggregators show the president’s job approval below 40%, at or just above all-time lows. Those figures, analysts warn, could prove cataclysmic for Republican candidates and incumbents.

But Fox consistently hides the president’s unpopularity from its viewers, with hosts talking up Trump’s performance and dodging signs of dissent. The network’s most recent poll, published Wednesday, Sept. 16, found the president with a 39% job approval to 61% disapproval. Fox did not mentioned that headline figure once through noon on Friday, however, even as the network covered other numbers from the survey.

These are just three areas where Fox has avoided delivering bad news to its audience — including the president. We at Media Matters have observed the network also giving short shrift to rising inflation and gas and diesel prices; health crises like the summer’s outbreaks of measles and cyclospora; reports that the Trump administration denied disaster requests and canceled energy grants to states because they had voted for Democrats; Republican scandals like Rep. Max Miller’s alleged domestic abuse and Texas candidate Bo French’s bigotry; and the reality that most immigrants targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement have no criminal record.

In place of these news stories, the network increased its already frequent culture war programming. In August, Fox’s evening shows mentioned “socialism” 730 times, the WNBA 238 times and Dr. Anthony Fauci 193 times. On Monday alone, Fox covered an essay by New York Times reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones in eight separate segments between the 7 a.m. hour and the 9 p.m. hour.

But though such segments may fill airtime, they don’t fill in viewers on how this MAGA administration is unfolding. Only by observing what Fox ignores do the contours of Trump’s second term — the dangerous incompetence, blatant corruption and cratering popularity — snap into focus.

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RWW 9 26

Finally, Brenden Dilley appears to be panicking about the GOP's prospects in the midterm elections: "THE DEMS WERE CUTTING KIDS DICKS OFF, ALLOWING ILLEGALS TO INVADE, MURDER AND LIVE OFF OF YOUR TAX DOLLARS, ALL THE WHILE THE MILITARY WAS IN TOTAL WOKE DISARRAY! FUCK YOUR GAS PRICES! IT'S REPUBLICAN OR COMMUNISM!"

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MMA 9 26 IRAN WAR

...Each individual program had more “socialism” mentions than “Iran” mentions in August. Ingraham’s show had the most “socialism” references that month, with 203 against just 25 “Iran” references. Hannity, Jesse Watters Primetime, and The Five each had more than 100 “socialism” mentions and 50 or fewer “Iran” ones. On Gutfeld!, “socialism” was referenced 9 times more frequently than “Iran.”

They’re all speaking from the same hymnal, as a sampling from their voluminous commentary shows.
Watters warned in June that victories by two democratic socialists in Democratic congressional primaries in New York City were “dangerous,” saying of them: “You're coming for us. You're coming for our money, you're coming for our people, you're coming for our way of life. It's not socialism, guys. This is communism. You can't reason with these guys. You have to crush them. And we will.”
“We're not going to let our civilization get destroyed,” he added. “These people are going to steal from us. These people want to hurt us.”
Hannity said in July that the “extreme positions” of Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong, a self-described democratic socialist, were “the perfect illustration, representation of the socialist base, the radical communist base now, that is the Democratic Party.”
(Hong subsequently lost the primary to Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, a “moderate Democrat.”)
Discussing Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan and a self-described capitalist, Gutfeld claimed in August that “America is not going to become a socialist country, but the Democrat Party could become a socialist party,” adding: “I resent having to debate over ideologies that have not only failed, but killed millions.”
“Every Democrat should be condemning this language and this movement, but they're not, because above all, they want to win and they're afraid of losing,” Ingraham added later that month. “So, for all you job creators, all you entrepreneurs out there, sorry, because if the DSA-ers tolerated by the Democrat Party have their way, it's confiscation time.”
Trump’s symbiotic relationship with the network’s coverage has been on full display.
Trump “has seized on ‘communism’ as his new favored line of attack against Democrats, having invoked the word more than 100 times since late June as he tries to rouse voters and preserve a narrow Republican congressional majority in the upcoming midterm elections,” NBC News reported on August 21.
Speaking at Mount Rushmore on July 3, the president warned of “a resurgence of the communist menace in our land” and promised to “vanquish communists quickly” and “send them into exile.”

No war but the culture war — as Iran coverage fades, a new focus on WNBA, Fauci

As the summer wore on, familiar culture war fixations joined fearmongering about socialism as major topics on Fox’s evening “opinion” shows.
The WNBA suddenly became a regular topic of discussion across the network beginning in late June and continuing through the summer (with no end in sight).
Much of the debate revolved around criticizing the league over issues pertaining to race and trans inclusion, with the network’s stars devoting significant airtime first to whether Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark received hard fouls because she is white, and eventually to a monthslong firestorm over the possibility of trans athletes in the WNBA, kicked up by comments made by the Fever’s Sophie Cunningham and subsequently accelerated by former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom’s antics (even though, as Wired noted, “no transgender women have ever played in the league”).
The deluge of coverage led Watters to comment during a segment on The Five: “I don’t want to cover women’s basketball. … We have to do this again, really?”
Meanwhile, the Fox hosts devoted significant time to relitigating the response to the COVID-19 pandemic after Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) released over 1,000 pages of entries from former public health official Anthony Fauci’s diary written from 2019 to 2022, and Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment rather than giving testimony at a subsequent hearing before Paul’s committee.
Hannity’s show, which played a key role in encouraging Trump to attack, mentioned “WNBA” nearly twice as frequently as it did “Iran” in August (93 to 50). Gutfeld! and The Ingraham Angle also had more “WNBA” mentions than “Iran” mentions. Gutfeld!, Jesse Watters Primetime, and The Ingraham Angle had more “Fauci” references than “Iran” mentions.

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rww

08/24/2026

Kyle Mantyla

Robert Jeffress accuses James Talarico of attempting to "prostitute the name of Jesus Christ, to turn the Jesus of the Bible into some woke Messiah that is contrary to what the Bible teaches."

William Wolfe was very offended by the latest Toy Story film: "It was feminist slop with Jesse as the 'girl boss' and Buzz Lightyear totally emasculated."

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no lnx

America's point of no return: Inside Trump's irreversible damage — and what comes next

John Stoehr July 13, 2026

Don't kid yourself. The sphere of freedom is shrinking. Trans people wanted to live their lives, but the political right, in the form of Donald Trump, made them demons and the political center, in the form of respectable white people, made the right's demonization seem respectable. Kamala Harris wanted America to choose liberty. "We're not going back," she said. Many of us agreed, but we are. The pulling back of trans rights could lead to the pulling back of other rights – birth control, gay marriage, inter-racial marriage, and more.

Yet the future is unknown. People will fight. More importantly, they will find joy in the struggle. That's the spirit I found in the interview below with Evan Urquhart. After writing extensively for The Atlantic, Vanity Fair and others, he set up Assigned Media in 2022 to report on transgender news. He told me that hope can be found in the fact that for all the bigotry trans people are facing, they still face less than they used to. Moreover, there's greater awareness, which means more chances for normalizing trans life. But most of all, he said, trans people just know themselves, and "you can't put toothpaste back in the tube. We're out, we're everywhere, and even if our lives are harder, we're not going away."

Even so, things will get worse before they get better. "The presidencies of Donald Trump represent a phase shift for American democracy, one that has made it impossible to return to the way things were," Evan told me. "I think if you look at the totality of the actions of Trump himself, his administrations, and his judges, that's an inescapable conclusion. ... It's too unsettling ... so people tell themselves this is just trans issues stuff, nothing to do with them."

SCOTUS ruled that states can ban transgender athletes. The number of such athletes is vanishingly small. Yet states are targeting people without much power. What's going on?

Trans women's participation in women's sports was identified as a perfect wedge issue by conservatives, in part because the stakes feel relatively low, because playing sports isn't required for survival, and because fairly few trans people play sports.

The right has since moved on to targeting trans people in every part of our lives, from identity documents to restrooms to stripping any mention of trans women out of rape protections in federal prisons, but sports has been around the longest, which is why it had the time to make it to the Supreme Court.

As a wedge, it works to cement the idea in people's minds that trans people should be treated as members of our birth-assigned sex, in order to slowly roll up the idea that treating us equally means making room for us to live as our authentic selves.

What do you see being done about this among Dems and allies? What are the obstacles?

I think that the consensus among Democrats and allies, and even among many trans people, has been to let this one go. The majority of Americans have been convinced to see this as a common sense issue of keeping men from steamrolling women's sports, and since it really is such a tiny group of people being impacted, the thinking is to retreat and regroup.

I personally think there's a bit of a lost opportunity here, though. Because sports is lower stakes, there's actually room to get people curious about the science, about the ways hormones influence our bodies, about the vast differences between trans people and cis members of their birth sex. In all the years trans women who'd medically transitioned were allowed to participate, not one dominated a single sport. That's interesting and unintuitive for a lot of people, and I think you can activate the part of people's brains that gets curious and wants to know more about this issue, which can be useful for education. It's different with questions that are more emotional, like whether to allow your 14 year old to start a hormonal medication. On those questions, I see people's curiosity give way to fear.

On transitioning, I think what are called radical centrists are largely responsible. They pushed fear over liberty. They pretended that rightwingers are only reacting, not making the choice to punch down. What can be done? What historical models are there?

Centrists want easy answers to the challenges we're facing. They want an easy answer to the challenge of having a completely unsuitable, unethical, mendacious person attain the US presidency, and to other challenges like climate change and increasing inequality as well. They want to believe we're still living in the 1990s, an eternal 1990s where the Overton Window is extremely narrow, our political parties agree and work together on a lot of things, and voters reward them for that.

To someone with that mindset, it's very appealing to think there's a minority (one who people in their social set largely agree are a little weird) who they can just change positions on with no pain. If that's true, you can just tweak your platform at the margins and avoid the hard question: Why are Americans so desperate for change they'll vote for a fascist in one election and a socialist in the next?

But the damage is not going to be limited to one subset. Some say the trans ruling is softening the ground toward striking down gay marriage, birth control and perhaps inter-racial marriage. The sphere of freedom is shrinking. Is there enough awareness of that?

In my view, the presidencies of Donald Trump represent a phase shift for American democracy, one that has made it impossible to return to the way things were. I think if you look at the totality of the actions of Trump himself, his administrations, and his judges, that's an inescapable conclusion.

It's also a very scary conclusion, which is why people don't want to look at these precedents on trans rights and ask, if a state legislature can ban a safe and effective treatment for trans people, does that mean they can ban vaccines? Does that mean they can ban antidepressants, birth control, and ADHD medications? They want the disturbance to stay with the trans community, not necessarily because they hate us but because it's quite scary to imagine the consequences of, for example, a far-right court deciding that equal protection just doesn't apply to trans people in sports because there aren't that many trans people in sports.

Who else might they decide equal protection doesn't apply to? It's too unsettling to ask the question, so people tell themselves this is just trans issues stuff, nothing to do with them.

Here in Connecticut, the state GOP is trying to ban trans women from women's sports, but their effort is falling in deaf ears. That seems indicative of the future, where some states and regions honor and protect equality under law while others savage it. Legally speaking, the same person in Connecticut is different in Alabama. Is that our future?

Blue states have largely circled the wagons around their trans communities, in a way that's lovely to see. I think that the far right really wants to federalize fascism, and make it impossible for states to protect trans people, but that project may be more difficult than they thought.

As difficult and scary as it is to see my rights being chipped away, a lot has changed. Part of that is that more people know trans people, and even with a bit of backsliding the prejudice isn't nearly what it was when I was young. Another part is that trans people have more ways to know themselves and express themselves than they ever did. I can't predict the future, but I know you can't put toothpaste back in the tube. We're out, we're everywhere, and even if our lives are harder, we're not going away.

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AN 6 26

MAGA erupts as Pope Leo meets with Bad Bunny

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HNN 4 26

The Origins of Culture Wars

Robert D. Priest

How the concept of culture wars rooted in the social and political struggles of nineteenth century Germany. (History Workshop)

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BIG PIX 4 26 PSEUDO POPULISM

Why the Right swapped economics for culture wars | Martin Wolf

The Institute of Art and Ideas

15,427 views Apr 7, 2026 #capitalism #trump #politics

Martin Wolf analyses the rise of far right, populist parties, and their origins in the ruins left behind by neoliberalism. Was the 2008 financial crisis the defining moment of the postmodern era? With a free trial, you can watch the full talk NOW at https://iai.tv/video/democratic-capit...Capitalism as we know it is in crisis. Slow growth, inflation and widening inequality makes for a worrying potion. But how do we fix this? Join chief economics commentator of the FT, Martin Wolf, as he offers his cure for this crisis. Hosted by Sergei Guriev, Provost of Science Po.

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'Irresponsible': MAGA enraged by new Leonardo DiCaprio film

Cast member Leonardo DiCaprio attends the London premiere for the movie "One Battle After Another" in London, Britain, September 16, 2025. REUTERS/Katie Collins

Thom Hartmann

October 10, 2025

This week has felt like one battle after another. We all watched video after video of ICE agents dropping from helicopters onto a Chicago apartment block, kicking in doors and terrorizing Black and Hispanic American and immigrant families, then trashing and stealing their possessions without ever presenting a warrant signed by a judge.

The GOP pushed the country to the brink again with another government shutdown threat while right-wing legislatures redrew districts to erase the votes of millions. We heard more talk of arresting journalists for doing their jobs, and watched as the military rolled through American cities as if people here are the enemy.

Each day has felt like a slow-motion assault on democracy itself.

Louise and I went to see Leonardo DiCaprio’s new movie, One Battle After Another, last weekend, and I was stunned. It’s a film of rare courage and artistry. From the first scene to the last, Paul Thomas Anderson reminds us that cinema can still tell the truth about power and conscience. It’s a film that demands attention, not permission.

The movie runs about two-and-a-half hours, but it’s so action- and drama-packed that it felt like it flew by in less than an hour. I knew people similar to those characterized in this movie when I was in East Lansing SDS back in 1968-69: seeing them portrayed like this was a hoot! This is truly brilliant film-making.

Predictably, conservatives rushed to condemn it. Some labeled it “irresponsible” or claimed it “glorifies violence.” What they really mean is that it unsettles them. They prefer art that flatters authority and soothes the comfortable. This film refuses to do either.

The world Anderson portrays is not a fantasy. When federal agents execute suspects, when protests are manipulated to justify repression, when truth is distorted by propaganda, that is not simply fiction. It reflects the deep anxiety of a society that’s watched Trump’s executive power become far too concentrated and way too cruel. Anyone paying attention to the news knows how real that danger feels.

The rightwing National Review published a piece titled “There Will Be Bloodlust in ‘One Battle After Another’” that accused Anderson of romanticizing 1960s radicalism. Yet DiCaprio, who stars in the film, called it a “timely satire.” Speaking to Reuters, he said, “It’s not a film where people are imposing any political beliefs on anyone else. It’s satire on both ends.”

That contrast says everything. Conservatives want to see chaos; Anderson and his cast are inviting reflection. The violence in the film is not triumphant; it’s painful, personal, and tragic. It shows what happens when injustice festers until ordinary people begin to break, as I saw in the people I knew in the Weather Underground back in the day.

History reminds us that art has always frightened the powerful. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was banned in the South because it forced them to confront slavery. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle was smeared by industrialists for revealing the cruelty of unregulated capitalism. Protest music of the 1960s and artists like Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger were condemned as “unpatriotic” by the same crowd that called Dr. King a radical.

When art tells the truth, power always howls.

Today the same pattern repeats. The same rightwing billionaires funding “outrage” over this film are working to silence teachers, censor libraries, and rewrite history to protect privilege. They fear a nation that can still feel empathy; they fear what happens when people start asking why power serves so few.

One Battle After Another is not a call to arms. It is, instead, a warning about what happens when corruption becomes normal and compassion becomes rare. It asks us to look at the machinery of cruelty and decide whether we’ll stand by or resist. That choice is the same one that generations before us have faced.

If this film makes people uncomfortable, that’s its purpose. Democracy doesn’t survive by comforting the powerful. It survives when ordinary people demand justice and truth, even when it stings.

One Battle After Another will be called divisive by those who profit from division. They’re wrong. The real division in this country is between those who believe art should serve power and those who believe art should challenge it.

I stand with the challengers, because when we fall silent, we serve power; when we speak, we hold it to account.

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RWW

10/06/2025

Kyle Mantyla

Josh Kovensky @ Talking Points Memo: The Trump Admin’s Mostly Unnoticed Move to Crack Down on the Opposition

Last month, the White House issued two executive orders that direct federal law enforcement to start cracking down on the political opposition. One of the two memos prompted some confusion and mockery for its attempt to designate “antifa” a terrorist organization. But the second has gone largely unnoticed in the mainstream press.

Ann Marie Shambaugh @ The Roys Report: Son of Covenant Eyes Co-Founder Arrested after Planning Sexual Encounter with 14-Year-Old

Back in 2000, a Michigan entrepreneur named Ron DeHaas co-founded Covenant Eyes, an anti-porn internet accountability software program that has since grown to more than 2 million users. The idea, he said at the time, was to protect his teenage stepsons from sexual temptation online. Its effectiveness has been lauded by many, including Speaker of the House Rep. Mike Johnson. But this past Aug. 13, one of those stepsons was arrested at a meeting spot in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he thought he would find a 14-year-old girl interested in having sex with him.

Andrew Perez, Asawin Suebsaeng @ Rolling Stone: ‘They Need to Suffer’: Inside Trump’s War on Dissent

After Charlie Kirk’s murder, Trump expanded his war on free speech, the left, and ordinary Americans. It’s going to get worse.

Jonathan Chait @ The Atlantic: Stephen Miller Is Going for Broke

The White House aide equates opposition to Trump’s agenda with terrorism—and pushes for the use of state power to suppress it.

John Fea @ ARC: The Christian Nationalist Rewriting American History

Douglas Wilson’s rising influence shows how the past is at the center of today’s culture wars.

Edith Olmstead @ The New Republic: Supreme Court Tells Laura Loomer to Shut Up Already

The Supreme Court refused to hear the far-right commentator’s censorship case.

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AHA VIOLATES JINGOISTIC NAT’L, MAN NOT COMPASSION

AN AH 7 25

ALTHO... es Gunn's new "Superman" movie is performing well at the box office, many right-wing media outlets are attacking it as "woke." The film touches on immigration, much to the chagrin of Fox News and others.

In an biting article published on July 21, Salon's Amanda Marcotte argues that right-wing media attacks on Gunn's film aren't just silly, but underscore their troubling view of the world.

"Every time there's a pop cultural phenomenon — a blockbuster movie, a chart-topping single, a hot new fashion trend — conservative media and MAGA influencers rush to denounce it as anti-American, anti-family or even demonic," Marcotte observes. "Labubu dolls are Satanic. The 'Barbie' movie is anti-male. Conservative men are being traumatized by rap songs informing them that women can experience sexual arousal — not that said conservative men are willing to believe it."

Marcotte continues, "The reasons right-wing pundits engage in this are transparent. The biggest is simple attention economics. Glomming onto popular topics is a good way to attract new audiences, especially those who may not be that political, and lure them into engaging with reactionary content. It also helps feed the paranoia that fuels the right, by propping up the narrative that all of pop culture is out to destroy them and their way of life."

IFrame Content

The "MAGA talking heads" attacking Gunn and his "Superman" film, Marcotte observes, are "mad" because "Superman is an immigrant" in the movie.

"My initial reaction when I saw right-wing media conduct its all-too-predictable tantrum over the new 'Superman' movie was that it’s just more of the same: Claim it’s 'woke' propaganda, work the audience into a tizzy of boycott threats and reap the reward of alienating their base further from the rest of society so that the MAGA cult is all they have left," Marcotte explains. "Which, to be fair, is bad enough. But the actual content of the complaints made this whole exercise even more sinister."

The Salon journalist continues, "The attacks on 'Superman' are part of a larger effort by the right to completely rewrite history, so they can pretend that being a patriotic American means embracing authoritarian values…. Immigrants and kindness are both canceled in Donald Trump’s America, so the right was outraged. Jesse Watters of Fox News 'joked' that Superman should have 'MS-13' on his cape…. There have been a lot of dutiful, fact-check-style responses pointing out that Superman is an immigrant and the character was always 'woke,' in that he has a history of fighting fascists and KKK members. But in a sense, that was unnecessary, because everyone already knows this. That's where this Fox News gambit goes from being stupid to deeply sinister: They are asking their audience to deny not just the facts, but a fact we all grew up with, something woven into the DNA of our American identity."

:{Amanda Marcotte's full article for Salon is available at this link.

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mma

July 10, 2025 edition of Fox News' *The Faulkner Focus

BEN FERGUSON (FOX GUEST): We've got a guy that is like a Marxist-socialist-communist all in one who doesn't want to apologize for being an antisemite. And this is — and I say it over and over again — this is not your parents' Democratic Party.

This is a civil war in the Democratic Party. It is being won by the Marxists, the socialists, and the declared communists. This is a guy who ran on abolishing the New York Police Department, abolishing prisons. He wants to abolish medical bills. He wants to abolish private health insurance. He wants to ban all guns. Just go around the world and see where that's worked out.

He also wants to legalize sex work in New York City. He says he wants safe injection sites that taxpayers would pay for. He says we should have no cash bail. He wants to decriminalize all drug possessions and end sentencing, as he calls it, enhancement. On top of all that, he says if you elect me, I will never cooperate with ICE. I will be a safe haven for illegal immigrants. And this is where the Democratic Party is now.

Now, that's a long list I just gave you. But this is a guy that is saying I'm with the Democratic new party. This is happening, by the way, in LA. This is not an outlier with the mayor there. It's happening in Chicago, Harris, with the mayor there. So you look at the grass roots of the Democratic Party right now. The Democratic Party is dead. This is who they are, and Hakeem Jeffries is now on the outside looking in.

HARRIS FAULKNER (FOX HOST): Look, I'm adding up some of the stuff you said. You talked about the drugs and, you know, legalizing prostitution. Crime and drug addiction, if you get enough of it in the streets and into the bloodstreams of the American people, they'll be easier to control. That —

FERGUSON: Sure.

FAULKNER: — is what I'm watching, Mamdani and those other districts that you are talking about who have mayors — the job that he wants next. That's what it looks like from the outside. This is punishment for the American voters.

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MMA

Fox News hosts launch extended unhinged attack on Superman’s message of kindness towards immigrants

07/07/25

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an new rep 6 25

The future trajectory of the Republican Party may be forecasted not by President Donald Trump, but by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), according to a recent analysis.

In a Wednesday essay for the New Republic, author Grace Byron argued that the three-term South Carolina Republican embodies both Trump's far-right politics and insatiable thirst for media attention, making her a unique figure who represents "the future of the Republican Party." And she's also proven herself to be capable of changing her political views on the fly, with Byron observing that the redrawing of her congressional district necessitated Mace shift from being a moderate feminist Republican who occasionally criticized Trump (as she did after January 6) to a strident MAGA acolyte "more or less overnight."

According to Byron, Mace has carved out a niche for herself as "Congress' most vociferous anti-trans culture warrior," frequently targeting Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.) — who is the first openly transgender person elected to Congress — for bullying and harassment. Byron also pointed out that Mace has a penchant for "theatrical displays of cruelty that capitalize on anti-trans sentiment" as a means of earning media coverage

"Mace offers a portal into the topsy-turvy world of Trumpian radicalization," Byron wrote. "She may have backtracked on LGBTQ rights, but she now feels compelled to discuss her belief in extraterrestrials and distrust of vaccines. Selective moderation is out; embracing crank conspiracy theories is in. Her transformation was obviously shameless, but in Trump’s Washington, shamelessness is in, too."

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Byron went on to opine that whether Mace — who she called a "brutally effective clown" — truly believes her extreme views matters less than her goal of garnering media attention. She described the South Carolina congresswoman as "desperate for recognition and not particularly interested in most aspects of governance," whereas Democrats like McBride are more focused on the largely thankless work of serving constituents and passing legislation.

The New Republic contributor also alluded to comments from former Mace staffers who described their workplace as less like a congressional office and more like a public relations firm for someone building a personal brand. But Byron made the point that Mace's personal ambitions and the GOP's goal of political dominance converge when it comes to denying government resources to people deemed undesirable by the far right.

"Stripping health care from trans people is, of course, a goal in and of itself for Republican lawmakers. GOP members have made it clear that they believe trans people are unwelcome in public spaces and even that they should not exist at all. But the denial of government funding for trans health care betrays a deeper, more insidious goal as well—it justifies austerity politics for everyone," she wrote. "By making the case that some people are fundamentally undeserving of material support, Republicans are undermining the idea that any government program could be universal. Health care, they argue, is a privilege, not a right."

Click here to read Byron's essay in the New Republic.

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aha not me replaced the cold war

an 5 25

More than 100 days into his return to the White House, the conclusion is stark: Donald Trump is no longer the same president he was during his first term. His familiar nationalist and populist rhetoric is now openly paired with an authoritarian turn – one without precedent in US history. He has adopted a neo-imperial view of the economy, treating the global order as a zero-sum contest of winners and losers. In this worldview, cooperation gives way to domination: what matters is power and the accumulation of wealth.

Having withstood two impeachment procedures, numerous lawsuits and at least one assassination attempt, Trump now governs with what can appear to be unchecked authority. To his followers, he has become a hero, a martyr – almost a messianic figure. He no longer sees democracy as a framework to be honoured, but as a tool to legitimize his hold on power. His decisive electoral victory now serves as a mandate to cast aside institutional limits.

Three key features define his style of governance: a radical centralization of executive power grounded in the theory of the “unitary executive”; the politicization of the Department of Justice, used as a weapon against rivals; and the manipulation of federal authority to target cultural, media and educational institutions. His playbook is chaos: unsettle opponents, dominate the media narrative and blur the boundaries of democratic norms. Impulsive and reactionary, Trump often governs in response to Fox News segments or trending posts on Truth Social. Instability has become a strategic tool.

But Trump is not a historical anomaly. While his 2016 victory may have seemed unlikely, his re-election reflects a deeper, long-term transformation rooted in the post-Cold War era.

From an external to an internal enemy

The collapse of the USSR – a structuring external enemy – redirected political confrontation toward the designation of an internal enemy. The culture war has become the dominant ideological battleground, driven by two closely linked forces. On one side, a religious radicalization led by nationalist Christian movements – such as the New Apostolic Reformation – seeks to roll back social progress and promote the vision of an outright theocracy. On the other, growing racial anxiety is fueled by fears of white demographic decline and resistance to civil rights gains.

The commentator Pat Buchanan saw it coming as early as the 1990s., he warned: “There is a cultural war going on for the soul of America… as critical as the Cold War itself.” Too radical for his time, Buchanan championed a white, Christian, conservative US hostile to cosmopolitan elites. Though marginalized then, his ideas laid the groundwork for what would become Trumpism.

Newt Gingrich, who served as Speaker of the House from 1995 to 1999, played a pivotal role in reshaping both the Republican party and US politics. A Republican group he chaired famously distributed a pamphlet to Republican candidates titled “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control”, advising them to use uplifting language to describe themselves, and inflammatory terms like “corrupt”, “immoral” and “traitor” to describe their opponents. This aggressive rhetoric redefined political rivals as enemies to be defeated – helping pave the way for a right-wing politics in which winning trumps democratic norms.

At the same time, the rise of a new conservative media ecosystem intensified polarization. The launch of Fox News in 1996, the growth of right-wing talk radio shows like Rush Limbaugh’s and the later explosion of social media gave the US right powerful tools to shape and radicalize public opinion. Today, algorithm-driven information bubbles trap citizens in alternate realities, where misinformation and outrage drown out reasoned debate. This has deepened polarization and fractured society as a whole.

Channeling anger

This ideological and media realignment has unfolded alongside a broader crisis: the unraveling of the post-Cold War neoliberal consensus. Promises of shared prosperity have been replaced by deindustrialization, deepening inequality and widespread resentment. Successive traumas – from 9/11 and the 2008 financial crash to the Covid-19 pandemic – and foreign wars without real victories have eroded public trust in the establishment.

Trump channels this anger. He offers a vision of a restored and idealized America, a rollback of recent social gains, and a reassertion of national identity grounded in religion and race. His populism is not a coherent ideology but an emotional response – born of perceived injustice, humiliation and loss.

Trump is more than a symptom of America’s democratic crisis: he is its most vivid manifestation. He embodies the legacy of the 1990s – a foundational decade of identity grievance, culture wars and media deregulation. Viewed as a political outsider, he has never been judged as a traditional politician, but rather embraced, by some, as the archetypal “self-made man” – a successful businessman and reality TV celebrity.

His rhetoric – transgressive, provocative and often cruel – gives voice to what had been repressed. The humiliation of opponents becomes part of the performance. For his supporters, it’s exhilarating. It breaks taboos, flouts political correctness and feeds the fantasy of reclaiming a lost America.

And he’s no longer alone. With the vocal support of economic and tech elites like Elon Musk – now a central figure in the radicalized right on X – Trumpism has entered a new phase. Together, they’ve outlined a new kind of authoritarian, cultural and digital power, where influence matters more than institutions.

The US re-elected not just a man, but a style, an era and a worldview built on dominance, disruption and disdain for rules. Still, history is unwritten: intoxicated by hubris and undermined by incompetence, Trumpism may yet crash into the wall of reality – with consequences far beyond America’s borders.

Jérôme Viala-Gaudefroy, Spécialiste de la politique américaine, Sciences Po

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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6 25

Wedge issue - Wikipedia

A wedge issue in politics is any issue used to create a division within a political party. These issues are usually employed as a tactic by a minority party against a governing majority party, with the aim of splitting the majority's electorate into two or more camps.^[1][2] Although any issue could potentially be used as a wedge, some of the most common examples are often concerned with social justice, such as abortion or civil rights.^[3][4][5] Due to the prevalence of social justice issues as a wedge, the tactic is often most effectively employed by Conservative parties against Liberal parties. American political strategist Lee Atwater has been noted as an early champion of wedge issue politics during the Reagan era.^[6]

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GGL 6 25

[### The Irresistible Effectiveness of Wedge Politics

_The Atlantic_

https://www.theatlantic.com › archive › 2017/12 › the-i...](https://www.theatlantic.com/membership/archive/2017/12/the-irresistible-effectiveness-of-wedge-politics/547946/)

Dec 8, 2017 — Abdallah Fayyad looks into the history of wedge issues, and finds that, while they do divide us, they can be powerful forces for social change.

[### Wedge Issue

Political Dictionary

https://politicaldictionary.com › words › wedge-issue](https://politicaldictionary.com/words/wedge-issue/)

A wedge issue is a highly divisive political or social issue. It can create divisions between a candidate's supporters or between members of the same political ...

[### an historical perspective on wedge issues in california ...

UCLA Anderson School of Management

https://www.anderson.ucla.edu › 09-mitchell-1999](https://www.anderson.ucla.edu/documents/areas/fac/hrob/09-mitchell-1999.pdf)

PDF

During the 1990s, various questions have been put to California voters which were often labeled "wedge issues" by the media.

[### Wedge Issues on the Ballot

Pew Research Center

https://www.pewresearch.org › 2006/07/26 › wedge-iss...](https://www.pewresearch.org/2006/07/26/wedge-issues-on-the-ballot/)

Jul 26, 2006 — The most famous example came in 2004, when — legend has it — President Bush owed his reelection at least in part to ballot initiatives to ban ...

Missing: HISTORY ‎| Show results with: HISTORY

[### Wedge issue Media Manipulation Casebook

https://mediamanipulation.org › definitions › wedge-issue](https://mediamanipulation.org/definitions/wedge-issue/)

Wedge issues are political or social topics of public debate that are both polarizing in nature and incredibly salient among the mass public.

Missing: HISTORY ‎| Show results with: HISTORY

[### Silver vs. Gold: William Steinway's wedge issue of the 1896 ...

National Museum of American History

https://americanhistory.si.edu › explore › stories › silver...](https://americanhistory.si.edu/explore/stories/silver-vs-gold-william-steinways-wedge-issue-1896-election)

Oct 29, 2014 — A fascinating story of political drama brought Steinway to vote for Republican candidate William McKinley in the last weeks of his life ( ...

[### The Evolution of American Microtargeting: An Examination ...

Butler University

https://digitalcommons.butler.edu › viewcontent](https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=bjur)

PDF

by L Bunting · 2015 · Cited by 11 — These issues are commonly referred to as wedge issues, as they are used to drive a wedge between a voter and his or her party (Hillygus et al. 2008). The ...

[### Explainer: How abortion became a divisive issue in U.S. ...

Reuters

https://www.reuters.com › world › how-abortion-becam...](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/how-abortion-became-divisive-issue-us-politics-2022-06-24/)

Jun 24, 2022 — Wade decision legalized abortion nationwide in 1973, the issue has become one of the defining fault lines in U.S. politics, with Democratic ...

[### Could wedge issues be the cure for polarized politics?

Los Angeles Times

https://www.latimes.com › opinion › story › wedge-issu...](https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-04-05/wedge-issues-polarization-politics-democrats-republicans)

Apr 5, 2022 — For decades, wedge issues were associated with race and other fraught cultural issues that typically divided Democrats, surely one reason why so ...

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an 4 25

After Republican Donald Trump defeated Democrat Kamala Harris in the United States' 2024 presidential election, articles on Americans becoming expatriates in Europe, Australia and other parts of the world were not hard to find. Liberal American actress Rosie O'Donnell, for example, is now living in the Republic of Ireland and plans to stay there indefinitely now that Trump is back in the White House.

American political refugees don't necessarily leave the U.S. altogether; some move to more liberal states.

In an article published on April 23, The Guardian's Ed Pilkington takes a look at Americans who moved to other states for political reasons.

"America is on the move," Pilkington explains. "Hundreds of thousands of people are packing up boxes, loading U-Hauls, and shipping out of state in an urgent flight towards safety. They're being propelled by hostile political forces bearing down on them because of who they are, what they believe, or for their medical needs. All are displaced within their own country for reasons they did not choose. They are the new generation of America's internal refugees, and their ranks are growing by the day."

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New England schoolteacher John Dube, for example, looked at job opportunities in Vermont after New Hampshire passed a law outlawing the teaching of "critical race theory" in public schools. Dube, according to Pilkington, was "angered by the edicts of Orwellian thought police in a state whose motto is 'Live free or die.'"

Because of a strict abortion ban in Idaho, Kylie Cooper moved to Minnesota. And a former Texas resident identified as "Sandra" in Pilkington's article moved to the West Coast because of an anti-transgender law.

Kristy Lewis left Florida for Rhode Island because of far-right Gov. Ron DeSantis' policies, including the "Don't Say Gay" law and his attacks on academia. Now, she is a scientific researcher at the University of Rhode Island.

But Pilkington notes that if oppressive laws are passed at the national level, moving to another state may not be enough.

"This month, (Lewis) received a letter from the Trump Administration informing her that two federal grants she had already been awarded for research into offshore wind energy, amounting to $1.5m, had been cancelled," Pilkington reports. "They no longer met 'funding priorities,' she was told. Lewis fled Florida to escape the attack on her science. Now there is nowhere left to hide."

*Read Ed Pilkington's full article for The Guardian at this link.

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4 25

REF NyT MAG

NO LNX

What explains the Trump administration’s radical reversal toward Moscow?

By Jonathan Mahler

April 12, 2025

In 1989, shortly before the fall of communism, Boris Yeltsin — the reformer who would soon become the first freely elected president of post-Soviet Russia — visited a supermarket in Houston, Texas, and was overwhelmed by the dizzying array of meats and vegetables on offer. “What have we done to our poor people?” he later asked an associate traveling with him. The story became instant fodder for the crusade to convert Russia to capitalism.

Now jump ahead to last year, when the right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson provided a mirror image of Yeltsin’s supermarket visit, only this time the supermarket was in Moscow. Carlson was in Russia to conduct a sympathetic interview with President Vladimir Putin. While he was there, he went grocery shopping and professed to be similarly overwhelmed by the range of options and affordable prices. The superpowers had traded places. It was America that now apparently needed to be converted — to Putinism. “Coming to a Russian grocery store — ‘the heart of evil’ — and seeing what things cost and how people live, it will radicalize you against our leaders,” Carlson said after passing through the checkout line. “That’s how I feel anyway — radicalized.”

President Trump, it seems, has also been radicalized. During his first term, he made no shortage of startlingly pro-Putin comments, and even sided with Russia’s president against his own intelligence agencies. But in the first few months of his second term, Trump has gone much further, overturning decades of American policy toward an adversary virtually overnight. He has claimed that Ukraine was responsible for its own invasion by Russia and berated Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, during a televised meeting in the Oval Office. His administration also joined North Korea and several other autocratic governments in refusing to endorse a United Nations resolution condemning Russia for the attack. And he has filled his cabinet with like-minded officials, including his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who has been described as a “comrade” by Russian state TV.

It’s almost impossible to overstate the magnitude of this pivot, as Sasha Havlicek, the chief executive of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a nonpartisan think tank that analyzes global extremism and disinformation, points out. “If, in fact, we are witnessing a total ideological shift of America away from its post-World War II role as guarantor of the international order and an alignment with Putin and other authoritarian nationalists against the old allies that constituted the liberal world order,” she says, “there couldn’t be anything more dramatic than that.”

Russia has long served as much more than a geopolitical rival for America. It has been an ideological other, a foil that enabled the United States to affirm its own, diametrically different values. In the words of the historian David S. Foglesong, Russia is America’s “imaginary twin” or “dark double,” the sister superpower that the United States is forever either demonizing or trying to remake in its own image. Or at least it was. Trump’s policies and rhetoric seem aimed at nothing less than turning America’s dark double into its kindred soul.

Some administration officials and their allies have characterized this as a strategy — a “reverse Kissinger.” Rather than trying to undermine Russia by making peace with China, the argument goes, Trump is trying to isolate China — an even more daunting rival — by building closer ties to Russia. It’s the America First version of realpolitik. As Vice President JD Vance has said, it would be “ridiculous” for the United States “to push Russia into the hands of the Chinese.”

Others see it as primarily personal. Trump has never made a secret of his affinity for Putin, and the Justice Department’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election only brought the two leaders closer together. “Let me tell you, Putin went through a hell of a lot with me,” Trump said during his meeting in the Oval Office with Zelensky. Putin has worked the personal angle. Last month, he told Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, that he went to his local church to pray for Trump when he was shot last summer and gave Witkoff a portrait of the American president that he had commissioned. Witkoff, in turn, eagerly shared these stories in an interview with Tucker Carlson.

Seen through a different lens, though, the reorienting of America’s relationship with its imaginary twin is not about geopolitical maneuvering or the president’s personal proclivities. It’s about the improbable triumph of a set of ideas — political and cultural — that have been bubbling up on the American right for years.

‘The Focus of Evil in the Modern World’

Before Trump’s recent reset, the dark-double framework defined the Russia-U.S. relationship going back to the last decades of the 19th century, when the United States first took up the cause of trying to redeem Russia. In the summer of 1882, an American journalist named James Buel traveled across the country and returned with an account of a “barbarous” nation that desperately needed to be freed from tsarist oppression — “whether with bayonet or psalm-book,” he wrote.

In the decades after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, when Russia became the Soviet Union, it morphed into a different, more menacing other — “not just despotic but diabolical,” as Foglesong writes in his book “The American Mission and ‘The Evil Empire’” (2007). The Bolshevik ideology of global revolution represented the ultimate threat to the United States, spurring the paranoia that fueled Senator Joseph McCarthy’s infamous witch hunts. The specter of nuclear warfare only intensified the panic over the Red Menace — or, as President Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union in 1983, “the focus of evil in the modern world.”

The collapse of the Soviet state over the next decade brought a fresh campaign to Americanize Russia by cajoling it to build its post-Communist future around the beacons of democracy and capitalism. Things didn’t work out as either Russia or the United States hoped. By the end of the 20th century, Russia’s G.D.P. had collapsed, its new stock market had crashed, it had defaulted on its foreign loans and a former K.G.B. spy — Putin — had become president.

After his re-election as president in 2012, Putin took Russia in a new direction. He adopted a crusade of his own against Western “decadence” and “the destruction of traditional values,” beginning with a ban on L.G.B.T.Q. “propaganda,” part of an effort to win over conservative Russians who had been disillusioned by their country’s post-Soviet turn toward the West. The familiar pattern seemed destined to repeat itself, and for a while it did. The United States had a new foil, and it was an old foil. Asserting America’s moral superiority in response to Putin’s crackdown on gay rights, President Obama included three retired gay athletes in the official American delegation to the Olympic Games in Sochi in 2013.

Putin has since done just about everything in his power to reinforce Russia’s identity as America’s spiritual adversary, even describing the West as “satanic.” Harking back to the Cold War, he embarked on a global campaign to upend the United States-led international order, creating troll farms that flooded the internet with social media posts designed to spread misinformation and sow discord. At the same time, he reasserted Russia’s imperial ambitions, first annexing Crimea in 2014 and then invading the rest of Ukraine.

And yet with Trump now back in the White House, the cycle of history may finally have been broken.

An Alliance Against Liberalism

Whether he knew it or not when he began his campaign to defend traditional values in 2012, Putin was aligning himself with a small cadre of conservatives inside the United States who shared his disdain for modern liberalism. That common cause would become a genuine alliance.

Its roots can be traced back to 1995 — before Putin was even president — when two Russian sociologists, Anatoly Antonov and Viktor Medkov, summoned Allan C. Carlson, an academic and the president of a conservative think tank in Illinois, to Moscow. Carlson had published a book in defense of traditional families, “Family Questions: Reflections on the American Social Crisis.” Antonov and Medkov were worried about the population decline in Russia, and were convinced that the solution was contained between the book’s covers.

Out of this meeting sprang a new organization, the World Congress of Families, whose aim was to foster a global network of like-minded conservatives to fight feminism, homosexuality and abortion.

In America, this fight had a prominent spokesman: Patrick J. Buchanan, a veteran of the Nixon and Reagan White Houses and a Republican presidential candidate in 1992, 1996 and 2000. Buchanan represented the paleoconservative wing of the party, which was articulating a very different vision of the post-Cold War world from that of its neoconservative rivals.

As Buchanan saw it, the great struggle of the 21st century wasn’t a geopolitical battle between East and West, or freedom and oppression. It was a cultural battle between traditionalists and the secular, multicultural, global elite. In this context, America’s crusade to spread democracy was bound to lead it astray. “If communism was the god that failed the Lost Generation,” he wrote in the early ’90s, “democracy, as ideal form of government, panacea for mankind’s ills, hope of the world, may prove the Golden Calf of this generation.”

Buchanan had a following, but he was very much on the margins of a party dominated by neocons, who saw America’s victory in the Cold War as the decisive triumph of liberal democracy. The post-Cold War world order appeared to be set; history had ended. The attacks of Sept. 11, and the overwhelming bipartisan support for America’s military response to them, only reaffirmed the urgency and righteousness of the cause.

In 2013, Buchanan turned his gaze toward Russia. He had recently published his best-selling book “Suicide of a Superpower,” bemoaning what he saw as America’s ongoing social, moral and cultural disintegration. It was an apocalyptic warning about the country’s declining birthrates, the diminishing influence of Christianity, the vanishing nuclear family and what Buchanan called “third world” immigration. Chapter titles included “The End of White America” and “The Death of Christian America.”

Against this backdrop, Buchanan saw Putin as an inspiration. While Obama condemned the Russian president as an enemy of American values, Buchanan embraced him as one of his own. “Is Vladimir Putin a paleoconservative?” he wrote in 2013 in The American Conservative. “In the culture war for mankind’s future, is he one of us?” When Russia annexed Crimea the following year, Buchanan characterized the invasion as part of Putin’s divine plan to establish Moscow as “the Godly City of today and command post of the counterreformation against the new paganism.”

Mainstream conservatives distanced themselves from Buchanan — and Putin — but the ground was shifting beneath them. A backlash was brewing on the right against immigration and progressive social change, as well as America’s misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan and the American project to export liberal democracy. A new generation of nativist, reactionary thinkers gravitated toward Putin’s Russia as an ally in their culture war to turn America instead toward an antiglobalist nationalism. Putin’s critiques of Europe’s liberal immigration policies and his talk of rebuilding a Russia with citizens who felt “a spiritual connection to our Motherland” resonated. “In 20 years, Russia will be the only country that is recognizably European,” the right-wing commentator and author Ann Coulter said in 2017.

During Trump’s first term, many of the ideas that Coulter and her fellow reactionaries were expressing began migrating toward the Republican Party’s power center. This new, more favorable vision of Russia was developing its own intellectual architecture, one that married isolationism, nationalism and traditionalism with a growing appreciation for autocratic strongmen who were bending their countries to their will.

Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister who has cracked down on immigration and put in place policies to raise birthrates, has been the most widely and openly admired of these European strongmen. But Putin, too, has his admirers, and they are no longer just fringe characters.

In 2017, Christopher Caldwell, now a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, a think tank closely aligned with the Trump movement, paved the way with an address at the conservative Christian Hillsdale College titled “How to Think About Vladimir Putin.” He praised Putin’s refusal to accept a “subservient role in an American-run world system drawn up by foreign politicians and business leaders,” and described him as “the pre-eminent statesman of our time.”

Soft Power Pays Hard Dividends

Putin originally embraced the conservative side of the culture war for domestic reasons. It was a way to reassure Russians that he was attuned to their concerns about a rapidly changing world, and to provide a new binding ideology for generations weaned on communism. But this morphed into what Mikhail Zygar, an exiled Russian journalist, has called “a form of statecraft” — a means by which to build support on America’s far right and, in so doing, undermine its politics from within.

Putin’s rhetoric and policies are designed, in part, for American consumption. “He is, in essence, forming a kind of Far-Right International, similar to the Communist International, which promoted the Soviet revolution in the first half of the 20th century,” Zygar wrote last year in Foreign Affairs.

The strategy seems to have worked out better than even Putin could have imagined. In the many years since Buchanan first praised the Russian president, his fans have moved from the margins of conservative media to the center of White House decision-making. The soft power is paying hard dividends as American foreign policy bends in Russia’s direction.

As ambitious as it is, though, the Trump administration’s Russia reset may have its limits. According to a Quinnipiac poll released in mid-March, only 7 percent of American voters have a favorable opinion of Putin, while 81 percent have an unfavorable opinion of him. Similarly, 55 percent of American voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of the war in Ukraine, and only 38 percent approve of it. Trump and his cabinet may look at today’s Russia and see a kindred soul. But most of America still sees a dark double.

The right-wing politicians and pundits who view Russia as an ally appear to be a disproportionately powerful minority driving an agenda that is out of step with most of the public they represent. As radical as this particular agenda may seem, the broader phenomenon is one that the United States has seen before. “America’s foreign policy is conducted by elites,” says Jacob Heilbrunn, the author of the 2024 book “America Last,” a history of America’s modern romance with foreign dictators. “You’ve just got a new one that has come into power now.”

The reorientation of America’s Russia policy, then, may say less about the persuasiveness of a set of beliefs than it does about the takeover of the Republican Party by a group of ideologues who have been welcomed in from the fringe. In this sense, they are no different from the neoconservatives and globalists who drew Buchanan’s wrath 20 years ago by committing the United States to unpopular wars in the name of ideology.

Jonathan Mahler, a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, has been writing for the magazine since 2001.

See more on: Vladimir Putin, Russia-Ukraine War, Republican Party, Patrick J Buchanan, Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump

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Right-wing media cheer Trump's anti-Christian bias task force after years of laying the groundwork

Right-wing commentators have spent years claiming that the Biden administration was “waging spiritual warfare against Christianity” and that “the left wants to drive Christians out of the public square”

Written by Payton Armstrong

Published 02/27/25 mma

A task force created by President Donald Trump to eradicate alleged “anti-Christian bias” is drawing praise from right-wing media figures — some of whom have spent years baselessly claiming that Christians are a persecuted group in the United States, even though experts say there’s no such widespread bias.

Right-wing commentators celebrated Trump’s task force as “a cultural resurgency” and declared that “this is the counter-revolution against their color revolution that occurred in the summer of 2020.”

In one instance, Christian nationalist media figure Lance Wallnau joined Steve Bannon’s podcast to praise the task force as the first step in the “recapturing of institutions,” naming education, media, business, and government among the institutions he wants to infuse with “the ideas of Western civilization, which is the ideas of Christian civilization.” This appears to be a reference to the Seven Mountain Mandate popularized by Wallnau, which instructs Christians to impose fundamentalist values on American society by conquering the “seven mountains” of cultural influence in American life: government, education, media, religion, family, business, and entertainment.

Experts have argued “there is no widespread anti-Christian bias in our society" and that Trump’s anti-Christian bias task force is actually “enshrining Christian privilege in our society.”

Trump issued an executive order on “eradicating anti-Christian bias,” but experts say “there is no widespread anti-Christian bias in our society”

Trump first announced the task force during a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast in early February, saying it will “protect Christians” and bring “our country back together as one nation under God,” and he later issued an executive order listing examples of supposed bias under the Biden administration.The executive order — titled “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias” — claimed that “the previous Administration engaged in an egregious pattern of targeting peaceful Christians, while ignoring violent, anti-Christian offenses.” The executive order claimed, “The Biden Department of Justice sought to squelch faith in the public square by bringing Federal criminal charges and obtaining in numerous cases multi-year prison sentences against nearly two dozen peaceful pro-life Christians for praying and demonstrating outside abortion facilities.” The Hill, [2/6/25; White House, 2/6/25]

The Associated Press reported that “critics said Trump is claiming to see persecution in distorted case descriptions, a calendar coincidence and other situations that, while raising concerns, don’t add up to a pattern.”As noted by the Associated Press, “Christianity is by far the largest faith in America, and Christian conservatives have a strong grip on the levers of government.” The Associated Press, [2/13/25]|}:

- On CNN, religious extremism expert Matthew Taylor argued “there is no widespread anti-Christian bias in our society,” noting that claims of anti-Christian persecution can “become a pretext for them persecuting actual minority groups.”Taylor urged that “we need to recognize that there is no widespread anti-Christian bias in our society,” and said, “It's striking that given the widespread realities of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, and as you said, mosques and synagogues tend to have more attacks than churches per capita, there's no task force on rooting out anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. Instead, this is enshrining Christian privilege in our society.” CNN, *CNN Newsroom*, [2/9/25]

- Multiple Republican-led states have moved to require Bible instruction or a display of the Ten Commandments in all public schools.Last year, Louisiana became the first state to require all public schools to display the Ten Commandments. Soon after, Oklahoma’s state superintendent directed all public schools to teach the Bible, including the Ten Commandments, and conservative media figures promoted the policy as a way to “impose Christian values” and encouraged other states to follow suit. At the start of the 2025 legislative session, Alabama Republican lawmakers proposed mandates to display the Ten Commandments in public schools and give students the “opportunity to participate in daily prayer” or risk losing some state funding. PBS, [6/19/24; New York Times, 6/27/24; Media Matters, 7/8/24; AL.com, 2/15/25]

- Right-wing media and extreme anti-LGBTQ groups have a long history of conflating criticism of anti-LGBTQ positions with anti-Christian hostility.They’ve said that Democratic senators have anti-Christian bias for questioning federal judicial nominees’ anti-LGBTQ statements or ties to bigoted groups, and they’ve described basic legal protections for LGBTQ people as anti-Christian. Media Matters, [11/8/19, 5/20/14]

### During the Biden administration, right-wing media personalities baselessly claimed Christians were targeted by the government and “the left”

* When Transgender Day of Visibility coincided with Easter in 2024, right-wing media figures — especially on Fox News and Newsmax — claimed that the Biden administration was attacking Christians.Right-wing media used the day to warn Christians that they were under attack after Biden’s statements recognizing Transgender Day of Visibility, with Fox’s Jesse Watters arguing that Biden is “waging spiritual warfare against Christianity.” Between Fox and Newsmax, the networks combined aired more than 4 hours of coverage and nearly 80 segments, slamming Biden for his “demonic” remarks which they said amounted to an “attack on Christian faith.” Media Matters, [4/2/24, 4/2/24]

- On his network, former Fox News star Tucker Carlson hosted anti-abortion protester Paul Vaughn — who was arrested for blocking access to a clinic — and falsely claimed that Vaughn was facing prison time for merely singing hymns and praying.Carlson said that Vaughn “had dared to pray and sing hymns in the hallway of an abortion clinic. In other words he did what the Biden administration really fears, he prayed. And for doing that, he faces 11 years in prison.” USA Today fact checked Carlson’s claim, noting that: “Vaughn was arrested for physically obstructing access to an abortion clinic, not for praying,” highlighting that “the law in question explicitly protects First Amendment speech and also includes language ensuring free access to houses of worship.” [Tucker Carlson Network, *Tucker Carlson [vid] Uncensored,; USA Today, 4/1/24]

Carlson again falsely claimed that Vaughn was facing felony charges “from the Biden administration for praying at an abortion clinic and daring to sing hymns,” adding that “from the perspective of the people who run the country there’s really just one enemy, and that’s faithful Christians.”During a Tucker Carlson Uncensored clip posted on X, Carlson said: “If you’re interested in who they really hate, well, look at what's happening. So Christian churches across the country have been burning and no one in the government is doing anything about it. Look at how Christian churches were treated during Covid … we talked the other day to a guy who is facing 11 years in prison, federal felony charges from the Biden administration, for praying at an abortion clinic and daring to sing hymns. So if you are a faithful Christian — not a fake Christian, David French Christian, but an actual Christian, of the kind this country has always had, of the kind this country was created to harbor actually — you are seen as an enemy by the people who run it.” Twitter/X, [4/18/24]|}:

Fox host Laura Ingraham repeatedly lamented the supposed anti-Christian bias of the Biden administration, including in an interview with Vaughn where she suggested that “singing hymns and peacefully expressing your traditional Christian beliefs can get you thrown behind bars.” During the interview, Ingraham’s show displayed a chyron that read: “Liberals fighting to wipe out Christian values.” FoxNews.com, [1/31/24]|}:

- Ingraham also complained that then-Attorney General Merrick Garland was not addressing a “growing anti-Christian bias in the United States and criminal activity geared towards Christians.” The chyron read “to the left, Christians are the emerging enemy” and Ingraham claimed that “pro-life centers across the country” and “churches have been attacked,” adding that to the left, “if you’re a Christian, a bible-believing Christian, you’re a terrorist.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [3/29/23]

Following a deadly shooting at a Christian private school in Nashville, Tennessee, Ingraham claimed the Biden White House and “the left” had been “ginning up anti-Christian sentiment” by allegedly teaching kids “to treat Christians as haters and mortal threats to their existence.”Ingraham told her audience: “Isn’t it also the case that the left in America — and even this White House — is ginning up, without saying the words necessarily, but ginning up anti-Christian sentiment by referring to trans activists as heroes and their bravery for standing up against the intolerant class, the haters. So these kids are learning to treat Christians as haters and mortal threats to their existence.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [4/11/23; Media Matters, 4/12/23]|}:

Sean Davis, CEO of The Federalist, argued that by charging anti-abortion protesters under the FACE ACT, “the Biden regime clearly desires to make being a pro-life Christian a crime.” As documented by Media Matters, anti-abortion figures baselessly accused the Biden Department of Justice of weaponizing the FACE Act against protestors convicted of harassment at abortion clinics. Twitter/X, [6/21/24; Media Matters, 6/11/24]|}:

### Right-wing media spent years launching hyperbolic accusations of Christian persecution, especially amid growing LGBTQ inclusion

When the European parliament displayed an LGBTQ Jesus, Steve Bannon lamented that “the Judeo-Christian West” is “anti-Christian by its leadership,” suggesting there will be “Diocletian” level persecution.He warned: “If you're prepared to accept it, it's going to get first-century Rome anti— it's going to get Diocletian. You're going to get to Diocletian anti-Christian and you're going to get there pretty quickly.” Real America’s Voice, *War Room*, [5/5/23; FoxNews.com, 5/7/23]

While hosting Jack Phillips — a Colorado baker who had been sued for refusing to make a trans-themed cake — Fox’s Laura Ingraham declared that “the left wants to drive Christians out of the public square.”Ingraham added: “You don't even have a right to have a small business if you're a Christian today. You certainly don't have any conscience right, you have no religious rights, you have no First Amendment rights, if you clash with what they believe to be, you know, the supremely protected among us.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [1/30/23; Associated Press, 10/8/24]|}:

Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk has relentlessly claimed that Christian values in the U.S. are under attack, claiming that they could be thrown in prison.At a 2023 TPUSA pastor’s summit, Kirk warned pastors that “if we continue theological disputes and don't focus on liberty, then we're going to be having those theological disputes from prison.” Ahead of the 2024 election, Kirk claimed that pro-choice Democrats would “create a secret police that will audit, intimidate, raid every single” pregnancy center in the U.S., saying that when that happens, “we'll be like, wow, I really wish that we Christians would have bought ourselves a little more time so that our nonprofits, our leaders, wouldn't go to federal prison.” NPR, [10/24/24; Media Matters, 4/27/23; Real America’s Voice, The Charlie Kirk Show, 8/16/24]|}:

Tucker Carlson suggested that the “trans movement is targeting Christians,” citing the Covenant school shooting.Carlson claimed that “the trans movement is the mirror image of Christianity and therefore its natural enemy,” declaring that “Christianity and transgender orthodoxy” are on a “collision course” and claiming that “one side is likely to draw blood before the other side.” Rolling Stone, [3/28/23]|}:

On Fox News, Oklahoma state superintendent Ryan Walters lamented that a Harris/Walz administration would “trans the kids“ and “push all faith out of the public square,” as now-White House faith director Paula White-Cain bragged that Trump was “promising in his second term to do even more for Christians as he shares the same values.”White-Cain called for national “revival” and “turning our hearts back to God” and Walters declared that a Harris/Walz administration would be the “most anti-Christian administration in American history.” FoxNews.com, [8/10/24; Religion News Service, 2/21/25]|}:

On Sebastian Gorka’s Salem Media podcast, Breitbart’s Thomas Williams said that the U.S. is a “post-Christian society, but in many ways an anti-Christian society.”Gorka — who is now the counterterrorism chief in Trump’s administration — replied, “right,” and Williams added, “We are a Judeo-Christian nation by its foundation, and in the value system that understands what the family is, what society is.” Salem Media, *America First with Sebastian Gorka*, [6/14/23; CBS News, 1/7/25]|}:

* Fox host Emily Compagno labeled the U.S. an “anti-Christian, anti-Judeo-Christian society.”Compagno cited backlash to a graduation speech from Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker that reportedly attacked the LGBTQ community and told “women to forget about a career and serve their man instead.” Fox News, *Gutfeld!*, [6/11/24; OutSports, 5/13/24]

Former Trump DOJ official Jeff Clark told Bannon that a second Trump administration needed a “beefed up” religious liberty task force to fight anti-Christian sentiment in the U.S., citing a story he heard about a “school district that was prohibiting bus drivers even from wearing Christmas regalia.” Responding to a campaign speech where Trump pledged to create an anti-Christian bias task force if elected, Clark said: “That's wonderful to announce, especially in an increasingly anti-Christian world. I mean, I'd seen a story about a school district that was prohibiting bus drivers even from wearing Christmas regalia to entertain the students a little bit. I mean things have gone into bonkers land. And look, in the first Trump term, we did have a religious liberty task force. And I think we need an even more beefed up one.” Real America’s Voice, *War Room*, [12/20/23; Fox News, 12/19/23]|}:

### Right-wing media heaped praise on Trump’s task force, celebrating Trump “proudly defending our heritage as inheriting the values of the Bible”

Charlie Kirk applauded the task force’s creation, declaring that “this is the counter-revolution against their color revolution that occurred in the summer of 2020.” He said, “We are proudly defending our heritage as inheriting the values of the Bible,” adding, “This is a cultural resurgency. No longer should you be afraid to share your faith. No longer should you be afraid to share your political values. This is the counter-revolution against their color revolution that occurred in the summer of 2020, and it is ascendant.” Real America’s Voice, *The Charlie Kirk Show*, [2/6/25]

- On her show, Ingraham celebrated that “we have a president who believes our nation has a divine destiny” and displayed a chyron declaring: “Trump restores faith in America.”Ingraham then hosted a teacher, Marisol Arroyo-Castro, who claimed she had been suspended for having a crucifix in her classroom. Ingraham told Arroyo-Castro that “they see you and your presence as a threat,” and said, “I don’t think it’s constitutional.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [2/6/25; CT Insider, 1/30/25]

- Praising the task force announcement, right-wing commentator Michael Knowles said, “I love that he [Trump] is saying anti-Christian hostility, anti-Christian bias in the government” rather than “squish Republicans” who say “we want to just generally and universally speaking protect all religions.”Knowles elaborated, saying, “There aren't really threats against all general religions kind of broadly, man. That's not the problem. America wasn't founded on the principles of just kind of all the religions generally, universally, man. The specific problem that we saw explode during the Biden administration was bias against Christians. … That's the problem that has to be addressed, and that's the specific problem Trump is addressing, and I love it.” Daily Wire, *The Michael Knowles Show*, [2/7/25]

Steve Bannon celebrated the announcement and hosted media figure Lance Wallnau — a “prophet” and self-described Christian nationalist — with the two discussing right-wing Christians’ “recapturing of institutions” including “education, of media, of business, of government.”Bannon and Wallnau discussed how the task force can be used “to seize the institutions of the federal government” with “the ideas of Western civilization, which is the ideas of Christian civilization.” Wallnau said that “there are three arteries that make this happen: legislation, litigation, and the shaping of public opinion,” adding, “because people like you, as long as we can shape the public opinion, the secret sauce is you've got to work with the awakening that's happening and move with it in such a way that you litigate and you legislate, but never get too far ahead of public persuasion.” Real America’s Voice, *War Room*, [2/7/25; Media Matters; 9/27/24; Rolling Stone, 9/29/22]|}:

Video

Citation

From the February 7, 2025, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

After Trump’s speech announcing his intent to create a task force, Bannon suggested that the president needs to “make sure they're going throughout the government because the administrative state is absolutely anti-Christian,” claiming that “the deep state is demonic.” Real America's Voice's chief White House correspondent Brian Glenn added, “Certainly we have seen how demonic this previous administration has been in terms of allowing religious freedom.” Real America’s Voice, *War Room*, [2/6/25]

Fox host Jeanine Pirro praised the task force’s creation and attacked the FBI and the Biden administration for supposedly targeting Catholics, a claim that was found to be baseless after an internal investigation.Pirro noted that Trump “went to two prayer breakfasts this morning and he talked about eradicating anti-Christian bias,” and complained about “when the FBI director Christopher Wray came out and really told us no one at the FBI was targeting Christians and Senator Hawley came out and they found that leaked memo that the FBI was investigating Catholics and priests were gone to so they could then inform on parishioners who were considered domestic terrorists.” The New York Times reported that “Republicans claimed the bureau’s memo was evidence of an anti-conservative strain among F.B.I. ranks, but an internal investigation failed to uncover any ‘malicious intent.’” Fox News, *The Five*, [2/6/25; New York Times, 4/18/24]|}:

### Trump and his MAGA allies increasingly embrace extreme prophetic media

05/30/24

### Trump scheduled to address right-wing media “prophets” and pastors who claim he’s “anointed to be King”

10/18/24

### Oklahoma state superintendent says pastor and right-wing commentator suggested his new Bible mandate in public schools

07/08/24

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'You have been gaslit': CPAC oozes MAGA's 'male inequality' agenda

People react as U.S. President Donald Trump (not pictured) addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) annual meeting in National Harbor, Maryland, U.S., February 22, 2025.

Matt Laslo February 23, 2025

NATIONAL HARBOR, MD — This just might be the year American men finally overcome centuries of political, cultural and marital oppression that have ravaged the gender and kept guys locked out of key policies, like the Violence Against Women Act.

That’s what one conservative vendor peddled at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference. And they’re not alone. The oft-repeated message being subtly driven into CPAC attendees – is that the era of male victimhood is over.

Culture wars are now king.

In years past, the conservative confab focused on fiscal responsibility and cutting federal spending. This year — even as Republicans in Congress and the White House debate trillions of dollars in budget cuts — leaders stoked gendered culture wars.

“Don't allow this broken culture to send you a message that you're a bad person because you're a man, because you like to tell a joke, because you like to have a beer with your friends or because you're competitive," Vice President J.D. Vance told CPAC attendees Thursday.

Eradicating diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives may have merely been a stepping stone. Conservatives have rallied behind a new, if antiquated, gospel of manhood as they work to turn back time and eviscerate what they call "wokeness" in real time.

At CPAC, this is truly a man’s world, or will be soon if the resurgent right succeeds.

“Male Inequality”

Masculinity is everywhere here at CPAC. It’s tangible, making this year’s conference feel more like an all-male retreat than the policy-focused escape the annual event was before President Donald Trump remade American conservatism in his image.

In these conservative confines, there’s no gender pay gap (even as statistics show women earn roughly 75 cents for each dollar a man makes). Women’s suffrage, practically speaking, is a fairy tale of a bygone era. While Bibles abound, the Book of Ruth and its strong, central female cast, is an afterthought (if a thought at all).

The real problem is “Male Inequality,” according to the newly launched Men’s Equality Network, or MEN.

‘Areas of Male Inequality’ — a pamphlet MEN are handing out at this year’s CPAC.

At CPAC, MEN seeks to drum up support for the hashtag #genderequalityformen, while also giving away free caps emblazoned with “Watchdog: Stop the gender agenda.”

MEN's tagline succinctly sums up the mission that drives the group: “assuring due process, fairness and equal opportunities for men.” And while they may only be a few weeks old, MEN has already attracted 18 partners, ranging from United Families International to the Child Custody Coalition.

The group is so new, it hasn't held its first meeting. But MEN soon plans to start hosting monthly training sessions with partner organizations, then storm the marble halls of Washington, demanding equality for men.

And MEN has allies in powerful places in Trump’s Washington.

"Our culture sends a message to young men that you should suppress every masculine urge, you should try to cast aside your family, you should try to suppress what makes you a young man in the first place," Vance opined from the CPAC main stage. He, like MEN, provided no evidence to support his contention.

While the group is surely easy to single out, it's far from alone in its drive to restore manhood to its properly patriarchal perch at CPAC but also throughout society.

"Go fu#% yourself Planned Parenthood”

Entering this year’s hall of vendors at CPAC, it’s seemingly impossible to miss the loud magenta “Go fu#% yourself Planned Parenthood” banner next to a cardboard cutout of President Trump.

Defund Planned Parenthood photo (Photo credit: Matt Laslo)

A few rows away, at first blush, the booth for "Date on the Right" seems dedicated to online romance for Republicans. But the material seems more focused on connecting hardline conservatives with their policy dreams.

Instead of promising long-term love, the group’s selling point feels more politically inclined than lifemate: “Dating for conservatives: only two genders – male and female allowed. No pronouns but male or female allowed.”

Other booths are dotted with free swag seeking to uproot political correctness — “I support free speech, not political correctness,” reads one sticker — through slogans like, “God, Guns and Girly Things” or “Woman: an adult human female.”

“We have an entire generation of young men who are smoking weed, watching porn, not getting married — not even pursuing women,” American Principles Project President Terry Schilling told CPAC attendees. “We have this thing called incels — involuntary celibates. It's terrible. And we can't become a great nation again — we can't make America great again — until our men are great again.” //TUCKER MAINSTREAM GRT?

“You’ve been gaslit to high heaven”

For attendees, conservatives are undeniably victims. The thousands gathered at CPAC are set on righting those past perceived wrongs.

“You’ve been gaslit to high heaven every time you picked up a newspaper in the United States,” conservative anchor Megyn Kelly told the crowd. “Every time you’ve turned on CNN. You’ve been lied to. You’ve been bullied — or seen others with lesser power — bullied by the media and the leftist Democrats. You have been a victim of overbearing and controlling leftists who think they are the final arbiters of what’s best for you and your life.”

While this may be MEN's year, conservative women aren’t going quietly.

CPAC may be a man’s world these days, despite all the powerful women in today’s GOP, like White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who, at 27, is the youngest person to ever hold the prestigious role.

On the CPAC stage this week, former White House communications director Mercedes Schlapp — wife of CPAC chair Matt Schlapp who a sheriff wrote up earlier this month for allegedly groping a man — asked Leavitt about being a woman in Trump world.

"Look at the White House and look at the exceptional Cabinet President Trump has put together," Leavitt said. "While we don’t care about identity politics…the president has appointed Susie Wiles, our first female chief of staff in United States history; Brooke Rollins heading up as our secretary of agriculture — look across the entire Cabinet. There are incredible women — Linda McMahon, leading the Department of Education — the list goes on and on."

As for her advice to young women, Leavitt departed from her party’s new man-centric mantra.

"Stay strong, speak the truth and don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t achieve your dream, or you can’t get to that next step. Just believe in yourself, because there will be a lot of people who don’t believe in you, who cast doubt on you, who talk bad about you," Leavitt said. "Screw ‘em. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter."

NOW READ: Whoever tries to tell you that Trump is Christian needs to look up this passage in the Bible

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newsmax host whines about Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl halftime show: “American culture used to not allow such gratuitous racism” 02/11/25

mma

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// gamergate lose shit when encroached upon?

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02/11/2025

Kyle Mantyla

When Kash Patel appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee for his confirmation hearing on potentially becoming director of the FBI, he was asked about the multiple appearances he had made on a program hosted by far-right conspiracy theorist Stew Peters. Predictably, Patel feigned ignorance, prompting Peters himself to declare that Patel was clearly lying.

Patel's effort to now distance himself from Peters is understandable, given that Patel was likely fully aware that Peters is a racist, anti-LGBTQ bigot who regularly uses his nightly program, speeches, and social media accounts to promote white nationalism and virulent antisemitism while spreading wild conspiracy theories, bigotry, and open calls for violence.

All of this was on full display during last night's program, where Peters spent a half hour ranting that the Super Bowl halftime show featuring Kendrick Lamar was "an anti-white shitshow."

"After several consecutive years of conducting satanic rituals on live television, the NFL went right back to doing what it does best: Giving a platform to degenerate blacks," Peters fumed. "Every single one of America's biggest entertainment platforms—from the fake and gay rigged sports entertainment leagues like the NFL, to the music industry, to all of our TV shows—has completely given into this degenerate black filth culture that was created by a bunch of subversive Jews and then weaponized against the American public."

"Even though your conservative uncle will tell you, 'It was totally based because Donald Trump was there' and they didn't have 'End Racism' spray painted across the end zones as they usually do, this was an anti-white shitshow," Peters ranted.

"Let's just cut down the brass tack here," he continued. "What this is is an opportunity for a bunch of Jews and their black minions and whatever other shades of foot soldiers they can find to address a captive audience of retarded white cucks who actually tune into this shit and then beat them over the head with their racism propaganda."

"That's what America has become, which is tragic because it was never supposed to be this way," Peters said. "America was always supposed to be a white country."

"They're doing this because they hate white people and they wanna steal and they wanna destroy all of the things that white people have built, including your country," Peters asserted. "And egging them on, putting the battery in their little backpacks are the demonic little subversives that opened our borders to these savages in the first place: the Jews."

"It really is that simple," Peters concluded. "And it makes it easy to understand why America's Founding Fathers, by definition, were white nationalists. Because they knew that this country couldn't exist as some kind of a degenerate melting pot or a hodgepodge of the world's fucking rejects; people who flooded in from cesspits from Hell all over the world where they couldn't figure out how to rub two fucking sticks together. This country was founded by white people and it was founded for white people."

Video URL

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Patel, of course, is not the only GOP leader who has appeared on Peters' show, as Peters regularly manages to get Republican leaders, elected officials, and candidates for office to appear on "The Stew Peters Show." On top of that, Peters himself has even participated in ReAwaken America events alongside various Trump insiders and members of the Trump family.

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NOTE CULT WAR PIVOT TO CEO CORP

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While Republicans claimed a bill restricting transgender girls' participation in school sports was aimed at protecting "our culture and civilization" on Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the legislation benefits the corporate class as it distracts from true life-threatening emergencies faced by communities across the country.

"Thank you for your concern about women for the first time that I've seen," said the New York Democrat on the House floor, noting that Republicans have consistently voted against the Violence Against Women Act and backed abortion bans that have stripped women of the ability to control their own bodies proven deadly.

But contrary to the GOP's claims that barring transgender girls and women from playing on sports teams that align with their gender will protect girls from assault, Ocasio-Cortez suggested, the biggest beneficiaries of the legislation include corporate executives whose companies do far more harm to American families than transgender athletes.

"I know who loves this bill," said the congresswoman. "Yes, bigoted folks love this bill. Assaulters love this bill. But also, CEOs love this bill. Because Los Angelesis on fire right now, and this is the number one priority this majority has."

The bill passed 218-206, with the entire Republican caucus supporting it and all but two Democrats voting no. If the legislation is signed into law, schools that receive federal funding would be barred from allowing transgender girls from playing on girls' sports teams.

Republicans have poured $111 million on political ads regarding the issue in the past year, as communities in the Southeast have suffered catastrophic hurricane damage andhomelessnesshas soared by 18%.

Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.) agreed with Ocasio-Cortez's comments about the distraction caused by the transgender sports bill.

"Republicans fearmonger about the trans community to divert attention from the fact they have no real solutions to help everyday Americans," said Bonamici. "Transgender students, like all students, they deserve the same opportunity as their peers to learn teamwork, to find belonging and to grow into well-rounded adults through sports."

Ocasio-Cortez added that the bill, which lacks an enforcement mechanism, would open the door to "genital examinations" of student athletes as it would force schools to confirm the sex assigned at birth of each member of a school sports team.

"What this also opens the door for is for women to try to perform a very specific kind of femininity for the very kind of men who are drafting this bill, and to open up questioning of who is a woman because of how we look, how we present ourselves, and yes, what we choose to do with our bodies," said Ocasio-Cortez.

The so-called Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act was the subject of a letter signed by more than 400 civil society groups on Monday, who urged members of Congress to reject the "discriminatory proposal."

"Although the authors of the legislation represent themselves as serving the interests of cisgender girls and women, this legislation does not address the longstanding barriers all girls and women have faced in their pursuit of athletics," said the groups, led by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. "We firmly believe that an attack on transgender youth is an attack on civil rights."

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A War on Christmas Story: How Fox News built the dumbest part of America's culture war

Propaganda works, and right-wing media have it down to an art form

Written by Parker Molloy

Published 12/23/19 mma

On December 3, 2004, Fox News’ now-defunct The O’Reilly Factor debuted a recurring segment called “Christmas Under Siege.” Though Christmas was not and has never been “under siege” in any meaningful way, disgraced former host Bill O’Reilly and Fox were set on pushing this victimization narrative, laying the groundwork for what became known as the “War on Christmas.” In the 15 years since, onlookers watched the very concept of objective reality fracture along political lines. Consumers of conservative media drifted ever deeper into a world where a school’s nonexistent ban on red and green clothing became national news and paranoid delusions were freely floated about a future in which people may be prohibited from displaying Christmas decorations.

For 15 years, cable news Don Quixotes have battled these windmills, rejoicing in their victories and basking in their acts of bravery while warning their audiences to remain vigilant. Imaginary culture war issues like the War on Christmas make for good politics, as the people arguing that these are real issues can at any time simply dust off their hands, declare victory, and pat themselves on the back for a job well done. Like, the protectors of Christmas are simply saving the holiday from nonexistent threats.

Deep down, they must know that there’s no actual “war” on Christmas, but it makes for good politics. Rather than having to address issues actually facing Americans -- such as health care, the economy, and climate change -- the fake battles in the fake War on Christmas give right-wing media a convenient way to manufacture divisions between the left and the right. The bombardment of misinformation playing up imaginary (or wildly overblown) examples of political correctness run amok are intended to scare and create a seeming sense of partisanship even on issues that are agreed upon nearly universally.

Of the many impacts of the War on Christmas, Donald Trump’s decision to run for president seems the most consequential.

In a 2016 interview, Eric Trump explained why his father ran for president (emphasis added):

He opens up the paper each morning and sees our nation’s leaders giving a hundred billion dollars to Iran, or he opens the paper and some new school district has just eliminated the ability for its students to say the Pledge of Allegiance, or some fire department in some town is ordered by the mayor to no longer fly the American flag on the back of a fire truck. Or, he sees the tree on the White House lawn has been renamed “holiday tree” instead of “Christmas tree.” I could go on and on for hours. Those are the very things that made my father run, and those are the very things he cares about.

Each of those claims is dubious at best, but the idea that the White House Christmas tree was renamed the “holiday tree” is flat-out false.

Claims that Christmas traditions are being threatened date back nearly 100 years, and it’s remarkable how little the arguments have changed.

In 1921, industrialist and notorious anti-Semite Henry Ford published a piece decrying the secularization of Christian holidays like Christmas and Easter:

Last Christmas most people had a hard time finding Christmas cards that indicated in any way that Christmas commemorated Someone's Birth. Easter they will have the same difficulty in finding Easter cards that contain any suggestion that Easter commemorates a certain event. There will be rabbits and eggs and spring flowers, but a hint of the Resurrection will be hard to find.

Ford’s sentiment is quite similar to that of O’Reilly in 2004:

All over the country, Christmas is taking flak. In Denver this past weekend, no religious floats were permitted in the holiday parade there. In New York City, Mayor Bloomberg unveiled the holiday tree and no Christian Christmas symbols are allowed in the public schools. Federated Department Stores, [that's] Macy's, have done away with the Christmas greeting, “Merry Christmas.”

And to the claims in this piece from conservative columnist Jay Nordlinger in 2010:

Some have said, “You just can't find cards that say ‘Merry Christmas.’ It gets harder and harder.” I know. Kind of like trying to find products not made in China (for who's to say whether they come from laogai, the gulag?). I gave up on the China front long ago. Shameful, I know. But have you ever tried to buy an umbrella not made in China? Also, globalization has done wonders for the average Chinese, gulag or no gulag. Kind of a thorny, upsetting issue.

I gave up on the “Merry Christmas” front too, where cards are concerned. I just get a pretty card that says “Season’s Greetings” or “Whass Happenin' on the Holidays?” or whatever. Life's too short to hunt down “Merry Christmas.”

While O’Reilly’s frustrations were aired during an episode of The O’Reilly Factor and Nordlinger’s were published in the National Review, Ford’s came in the second volume of a collection titled The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem, hammering home what the War on Christmas was actually about for Ford: antisemitism and Christian supremacy.

In 1959, the right-wing John Birch Society published a pamphlet titled There Goes Christmas?! in which its authors argued that the United Nations and communists were trying to “take Christ out of Christmas.” In 2000, white nationalist blog VDare published what’s thought to be the first online mention of the “War Against Christmas,” warning that Amazon’s use of the phrase “Happy Holidays” in an email was symbolic of “the struggle to abolish America.”

The out-groups supposedly responsible for attacking Christian traditions may have changed over the years, but from Ford to Fox, the backbone of the War on Christmas conspiracy theory has always been that of Christian nationalism.

A brief history of right-wing media’s War on Christmas:

With a series of lies, half-truths, and distortions, Fox News and other right-wing media figures have kept the Christmas culture war at the forefront of American politics for 15 years, maintaining a cache of examples they can pull from when they need to distract from an unfavorable news cycle. These stories are almost always framed around the idea that political correctness has gone too far and treat the issues brought up as though they are a development of recent decades.

2004: O’Reilly and other right-wing pundits falsely claim that a Washington grade school “banned” a production of A Christmas Carol. Fox Business host Lou Dobbs (then with CNN) claims that the words “Happy Holidays” “exclud[e] everyone who is celebrating Christmas.” Christian Broadcasting Network founder and host Pat Robertson tells people who don’t like Christmas to go to Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, or Sudan. Conservative commentators attack Target for “banning” the Salvation Army from its stores when in fact the store was just enforcing existing policy. Then-MSNBC analyst Pat Buchanan claims that minor controversies around parade names or store greetings amount to “hate crimes against Christianity.”

2005: O’Reilly promises to “use all the power” he has “on radio and television to bring horror into the world of people” who “diminish and denigrate the [Christmas] holiday.” Hebaselessly suggests that former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry would have “abolished” Christmas as a federal holiday had he won the 2004 election, replacing it with “winter solstice or something.” He declares “Happy Holidays” and “Season’s Greetings” offensive to Christians before taking the exact opposite position next month, saying, “‘Happy Holidays’ is fine. Just don't ban ‘Merry Christmas.’” O’Reilly compares Catholic leaders’ silence over the War on Christmas to the church’s handling of its pedophilia scandal. He bizarrely claims that Martin Luther King, Jr. “would be appalled” by “the attacks on Christmas.” He also pushes Samuel Alito’s nomination to the Supreme Court, claiming that he’d be an ally in the fight to protect Christmas. The Fox host falsely claims that the U.S. Postal Service no longer offers stamps with a “spiritual” theme.

2006: In January, O’Reilly misleadingly claims that a Wisconsin elementary school changed the lyrics to “Silent Night” to be more politically correct during a 2005 Christmas performance. (The lyrics were from a Christmas play about a lonely tree lamenting its state to the tune of “Silent Night.”) O’Reilly claims that retailers Best Buy and Crate & Barrel are “still ordering their people not to say ‘Merry Christmas’” under threat of being fired even though neither store had any such policy. Conservative radio host Bob Newman misleadingly claims that the American Civil Liberties Union was suing a Tennessee school over Christmas carols.

2009:Fox News plays up a fabricated controversy focused on the inclusion of three controversial ornaments on the Christmas tree in the White House’s Blue Room, when in fact those three ornaments -- out of 800 on the tree -- had been among hundreds donated by local organizations. Anti-Muslim bigot Pamela Geller says that the Senate holding a vote on Christmas Eve is “an act of treason and blasphemy.” Fox’s “straight news” hosts misrepresent a Boston school’s policy prohibiting the sale of religious items in its gift shop as proof of the War on Christmas.

2010:Fox & Friends claims that the city of Tulsa’s decision to host a “holiday parade” instead of a “Christmas parade” is a “topic of national controversy.” Fox host Sean Hannity demands “tolerance” from his Jewish guest after talking about this topic. Fox & Friends pushes a bogus story about a central Florida school banning “traditional Christmas colors.” National Review writer Jay Nordlinger lies about a lack of Christmas greeting cards. Fox’s website accuses the NBA of attacking Christmas by scheduling games on the holiday, seemingly oblivious to this long-standing tradition. Fox claims that it’s anti-Christmas for lawmakers to work during the final weeks of December.

2011:Then-Fox host Gretchen Carlson suggests that debate moderators ask 2012 presidential candidates “how important would it be for you to address the political correctness in our society” including the war on Christmas and warns, “Maybe Christmas won’t be a federal holiday coming up if it continues down this path.” Carlson speculates that it may soon be illegal for her to display Christmas decorations in her home. Hannity and other conservatives criticize the Obamas for having too many Christmas decorations. Fox contributor Tammy Bruce accuses Obama of “pandering to Muslims” and showing “contempt for Christianity” by implementing a “Christmas tree tax,” which actually originated through an industry-led program under the Bush administration and was levied to establish a marketing campaign promoting the sale of fresh Christmas trees. Then-Fox host Eric Bolling implies Obama favors Islam over Christianity while a sign in the background says “Obama’s War on Christmas.” O’Reilly devotes more time to the War on Christmas than he does to actual wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Right-wing media rage that a child made an ornament saying “I love President Obama” for an unofficial Capitol Christmas Tree that the Obama administration had zero involvement with. Dobbs and Tony Perkins say Rhode Island’s “holiday tree” is an assault on religion. Then-Fox host Alisyn Camerota promotes the War on Christmas narrative by falsely claiming that “you can’t call a Christmas tree a Christmas tree in Rhode Island.” An article on Fox Nation declares, “We’re Winning the War on Christmas.”

2012: Fox & Friends interviews a professional “Santa” about Christmas being under attack. O’Reilly agrees with a guest who says that the War on Christmas is the left’s attempt to advance abortion and gay rights “because Christianity is against those things.” O’Reilly again devotes more time to the War on Christmas than he does to actual wars. Frequent Fox guest Ben Stein claims that people who don’t like Christmas are mentally ill.

2013: O’Reilly again says “secular progressives” want to ban Christmas to achieve policy goals including “unfettered abortion” and gay marriage. O’Reilly diagnoses the U.S. with “‘Happy Holidays’ syndrome.” Then-Fox host Megyn Kelly tells her audience that Jesus and Santa are both white, and O’Reilly backs her on his show. Fox’s Tucker Carlson warns during a “War on Christmas” segment that not believing in God leads to “killing a ton of people.” O’Reilly declares victory in the war. Radio host Rush Limbaugh baselessly says that the left “would totally eliminate” Christmas if given the opportunity. During the Veterans Day episode of his show, Hannity devotes twice as much time to the War on Christmas as to veterans of actual wars.

2014: O’Reilly invites a psychotherapist on The O’Reilly Factor to diagnose people who are supposedly waging a war on Christmas. After a school district opts to not list religious holidays on its school calendar rather than adding two major Muslim holidays, O’Reilly cites the decision as evidence that people are “wip[ing] out all our traditions” as part of a War on Christmas. O’Reilly once again declares victory. Fox & Friends hypes an op-ed written by actor Chuck Norris wrongly claiming that Obama hadn’t spoken out about his Christian faith, using as evidence the fact that Obama didn’t weigh in on a school district’s decision to remove all religious holidays from its calendar.

2015: Fox & Friends hypes the War on Christmas with a story about a town’s decision to continue displaying a nativity scene on public property. Then-Fox analyst Peter Johnson Jr. asks if the San Bernardino, California, terrorist attack is proof of a “literal war on Christmas.” Bolling falsely claims that a New York City school “banned parents and teachers from explicitly mentioning Christmas or Santa Claus at school functions.” Fox & Friends First claims Starbucks is trying to “bah humbug Christmas” by going with a more minimal red design, rather than Christmas images, for its annual holiday cup. Hannity guest Todd Starnes claims, “This year, the war on Christmas has really been waged on college and university campuses.” O’Reilly guest Dennis Miller says that an Ohio man’s zombie nativity display is proof that “it’s open season” on Christians.

2016: Fox & Friends Weekend, along with Starnes and Breitbart, report on the cancellation of one school’s production of A Christrmas Carol, causing the family at the center of the controversy to leave town temporarily for fear of doxxing.

2017: Dobbs says that thanks to Trump, he is “seeing far more in the way of Christmas displays, Christmas lights ... and so much obvious joy.” After the Metro rejected an ad from the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., because it depicted a religious scene, Fox & Friends claims, “The war on Christmas is gaining speed.”

2018: Fox & Friends guest Mike Slater laments people “abusing freedoms here” instead of “worshipping God” during a War on Christmas segment. On her radio show, Ingraham obsesses over a made-up story about people on the left wanting to “ban” Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer based on a video HuffPost published jokingly calling the 1964 Christmas film “the worst.” Fox News reports on the video as though it is a sincere call to ban the film and runs multiple stories about it online. Fox and a number of other right-wing media outlets run stories about a supposed push by some to make Santa Claus “gender-neutral,” based on an extremely dubious and leading poll by a graphic design company. Fox contributor Tammy Bruce and Tucker Carlson commiserate over a decision by a coffee shop in the Scottish Parliament building to no longer call its gingerbread cookies “gingerbread men.”

2019: The season began early with the Fox News invention of a new seasonal war, this time on Thanksgiving. But it's not as though there weren't Christmas grievances to air. Fox Business host Trish Regan became irate over the fact that Starbucks' annual holiday cups say “Merry Coffee” instead of “Merry Christmas,” a move she was convinced had been driven by political correctness. In an interview with Jeanine Pirro, Lara Trump celebrated the ability to “say 'Merry Christmas' again.”

For 15 years, right-wing media have been able to convince people of a war that has simply never existed. There’s a deeper lesson here.

Every so often, a prominent mainstream columnist will publish an op-ed making the case for people on the left to be less concerned with cultural issues. The argument goes, for example, that Democrats were too worried about trans rights in 2016, and that cost them the election. Or perhaps a columnist will write that Black Lives Matter is too divisive. The truth, however, is that people on the right seem particularly dedicated to latching onto culture war topics for electoral gain.

Following the 2016 election, there were a number of articles blaming the Democrats’ loss on an obsession with “identity politics.” It was Democrats who were supposedly obsessed with trans people and bathrooms; it was Democrats who sunk too much time, money, and energy into protecting abortion rights. In reality, what interest Democrats did have in these issues (which hardly made up a significant portion of their platform or campaign strategy) came in response to things Republican politicians did to restrict trans and reproductive rights. But there’s no real action that the War on Christmas is responding to -- it’s just a series of minor, trumped-up stories. In reality, this supposed “war” lives entirely in the minds of the people pushing the narrative. Its staying power and success have served as the blueprint for related “wars” on Easter and Thanksgiving.

The War on Christmas is the backdrop for a world in which“political correctness” will be forever running amok, the left’s goal will always be to “destroy everything that is wholesome in our country and in our Judeo-Christian civilization,” and Democrats will be stuck in a perpetual state of trying to ban your favorite hobbies and foods. Of course, none of this is true. The slightest resistance to right-wing culture creep will always be framed as a direct assault on their way of life, even if that resistance is just a defense of the status quo. What, if anything, has the left learned after 15 years?

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see funder get gigs plums //

an 12 24

President-elect Donald Trump pledged to fast-track permits and tamp down regulations, including environmental, for any entity that wants to invest $1 billion or more in America, while offering no specifics or parameters, including how the federal government could arbitrarily overrule state and local laws.

“Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals. GET READY TO ROCK!!!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social website.

During the campaign, Trump told oil and gas executives and lobbyists at a closed-door Mar-a-Lago fundraiser that if they invested $1 billion in his campaign, he would scale back or remove environmental regulations.

“Attendees included executives from ExxonMobil, EQT Corporation and the American Petroleum Institute, which lobbies for the oil industry,” The New York Times had reported in May. “The event was organized by the oil billionaire Harold Hamm, who has for years helped to shape Republican energy policies.”

Trump has announced his nominee for Secretary of the Interior will be North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum.

“Under the National Environmental Policy Act,” Forbes reports, “the federal government is required to conduct environmental reviews before approving energy production plans, infrastructure builds and other projects. How Trump will help investors get around regulations isn’t clear, but Trump has vowed to increase domestic production of oil and natural gas, projects that are often stymied or killed in the regulatory process.”

Critics blasted Trump’s statement.

314Action, which says it is “the only organization in the nation focused on recruiting, training, and electing Democrats with a background in science to public office,” wrote: “To tackle the climate crisis, Congress needs to pass and enforce bold, evidence-based legislation. However, Donald Trump doesn’t believe that billionaires should have to follow the law. In his world, they can pay-to-play and bypass crucial environmental protections. That’s why we’ll always fight to #ElectScientists who will fight back against his anti-science agenda and hold these bad actors accountable.”

“A government of oligarchs that will exist to solely serve the interests of oligarchs while distracting working people with culture wars. Foreign corporations & persons can loot & pollute the US and bypass regs that protect the health of Americans as long as they got lots of cash,” observed MeidasTouch editor-in-chief Ron Filipkowski.

Journalist David Leavitt asked, “How many animals will go extinct because of this? How much quicker will this hasten the destruction of our planet?”

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mma The Daily Wire take credit for stirring up Capitol Hill bathroom controversy

12/11/24

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BB 12 24

Slave to the attention economy, Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina had an award-winning foster youth advocate arrested for shaking her hand.

Folks who saw the event are shocked, confused, and outraged. The story goes that James McIntyre did nothing more than shake Nancy Mace's hand and let her know that children needed her support. Mace claimed physical assault and had McIntyre arrested.

The incident took place outside a House of Representatives office building following an event honoring the anniversary of a landmark child welfare law where Mace, a firebrand Republican, had given a speech. Three witnesses at the scene told The Imprint their accused colleague James McIntyre had done nothing more than shake the congress member's hand at the House reception, and asked her to protect the rights of transgender people.

But in a post on the social media platform X, Rep. Mace described a violent confrontation.

U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace

"I was physically accosted at the Capitol tonight by a pro-trns man. One new brace for my wrist and some ice for my arm and it'll heal just fine," she posted at 8:43 p.m. "The Capitol police arrested the guy. Your trns violence and threats on my life will only make me double down."

Imprint News

Attendees and organizers were shocked, a number of them have taken to social media and the press to decry Mace's performative attack on an innocent's credibility.

"I want to express deep disappointment in the fact that Congresswoman Nancy Mace came to a national foster youth event, told participating youth that it was a safe space — and literally had one of them arrested by Capital police for simply shaking her hand and asking about trans rights," said Lisa Dickson, a veteran advocate for foster youth from Ohio, in a Facebook post.

Remember that Nancy Mace is the congressperson accused of graffitiing her own home to fundraise.

Previously:

• GOP Rep. Nancy Mace goes full DARVO

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