The Party of Family Values™

Efficiency!

An Update: I received an email canceling my contract as a columnist at @startribune.com after sharing this story publicly. (I had written columns past the one-year contract already + been asked to continue on in July).

Hours after Charlie Kirk was shot, I emailed my editors at a major American newspaper a potential column focused on the role of Christian Nationalism + radicalization of young white Christian men. They killed it. This is what they published instead. The last line: The Show Must Go On.

Oklahoma's already at 50th in the US on education, but I'm confident Walters can get the state to 52nd.

This is a transparent attempt to sane-wash the conspiracy theorists and anti-vax nutjobs in this administration. They didn't have any "carefully laid" plans. They are eugenicists, grifters, and outright lunatics. Trump just says the quiet part out loud. Come on, CNN.

Pretty sure that callous, crude, and controversial speech is almost all entirely First Amendment protected.

NEW: SCOTUS majority says Trump can ignore precedent if the majority doesn't like it. A 90-year-old precedent meant nothing to the majority allowing Trump to fire an FTC commissioner during litigation. This is no way to run a court, let alone a country. Tonight, at Law Dork:

Ya know, I think these Lions might be the real deal.

Are we taking bets on who's writing tomorrow's "The President of the United States giving a rambling, incoherent press conference blaming vaccines, Tylenol, and 'liquids' for autism isn't great, sure, but at least nobody told me their pronouns" op-ed for the NYTimes tomorrow?

Facts don't care about your feelings. (did I do that right?)

So many crazy details in Ben Terris's story about Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski, who we can confirm are not only dating but running DHS together: nymag.com/intelligence...

Important to point out here that two other justices signed on to Justice Eddins' concurrence — a majority of the Court!

Listen, I'm no fancy "historian" but I do know who was president in early January of 2020.

I am pleased to report that Hawaii Supreme Court Justice Todd Eddins has dropped another total evisceration of the Supreme Court. He says originalism is a fraud—and the Republican justices are shamelessly making up facts and history to impose radical Christian nationalism: slate.com/news-and-pol...

Thanks to @thebulwark.com for publishing my latest analysis of the leaked responses to a Project 2025 questionnaire for government jobseekers. Contra Sam Haselby, Pat Buchanan is not a “marginal figure.” The folks running the government appear to be his acolytes. www.thebulwark.com/p/the-trump-...

Christian nationalism under a different red hat.

The media allowing Trump plausible deniability on Project 2025 during the campaign is right up there with Iraq War stenography in craven, lazy disgracefulness

Feckless loser energy.

The idea that the combined MMR is dangerous but separately the vaccines are fine was created out of whole cloth by Andrew Wakefield, a disgraced former doctor who had a patent on a non-combined version of the MMR. We've known his research was bunk for almost 30 years.

The Party of Free Speech™

It's not just the authoritarianism — it's how shameless, how *gleeful* this administration is about it

Turns out it's a lot easier to turn it all into state media when there are like 5 media companies instead 5,000.

A grim reminder: these people will never be satisfied. There’s no point at which they will say “we’ve won, let’s enjoy life.” They will always be looking for someone else to punish, to revile, to dehumanize. They’re empty without that.

From Wired a few weeks ago. A lot of the people who I was told for years were the adults in the room are being asked how they want to be remembered, and that answer is very clearly "cowards." www.wired.com/story/uncann...

We cannot make the headlines blunter people www.theverge.com/policy/77979...

In the name of religious freedom

If these assholes make me utter the phrase "Ya know, I have to agree with Tucker here" I'm gonna absolutely lose my shit

Most pathetically, militantly anti-free-speech administration in my lifetime and not even close

Love when Christians engage in levels of blasphemy I couldn't hope to achieve

Wow who could have possibly predicted this

Protesting the president of the United States and hurting his feelings is now a crime.

Saying mean things to Donald Trump is not a RICO predicate act. Even YELLING at Donald Trump is not a RICO predicate act.

Religious freedom is core to this nation's history as is a strong education. There's a big difference between teaching about religion and teaching one particular religion, and there's also a distinction between being taught how to think vs being taught what to think.

She's right.

Weird that they apparently don't teach the law at the Stetson University College of Law

Just a reminder: they were never actually against cancel culture. They were against the cancellation of people they agree with or like. They’ve always been enthusiastically in favor cancelling people they don’t like. If you took them at their word you’re a useful idiot.

I think this point is far more important than we realize. The fact that we consume completely different media showing us completely different things is a huge driver of division.

Hard to say it any better than @jamellebouie.net (gift link)

We’re frogs in the pot about this, I think. We’re so hardened to eliminationist, fascist rhetoric from the right that it hardly makes a dent when a prominent host on a major network suggests exterminating a large group of people. But he did. And nobody on modern Right gives a shit.

I know these “interviews” with Justice Barrett are carefully scripted. But if she’s going to keeping urging Americans to “read the opinions,” and not just commentary, it sure would be nice if someone would ask her what we should do when—as is so often the case these days—there’s no opinion to read…

Ah yes. The Party of Free Speech™

Church/state separation has two new defenders on Capitol Hill. Rep. Kelly Morrison (D-MN) & Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE) have now joined the Congressional Freethought Caucus. www.friendlyatheist.com/p/the-congre...

Cosigned. The new series just premiered! Already available on YouTube! Don't even have to wait until Fridays anymore. 🥹

The Supreme Court majority moves as fast or as slow as it wants in order to achieve its political goals.

The Supreme Court really said

Trump minimizes domestic abuse during a talk at the Museum of the Bible: "Things that take place in the home, they call crime ... If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say this was a crime, see?"

Yes www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...