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I know they're on different steps of an escalator, but I'd like to pretend this is their actual height difference
#Nick Fuentes#Jaden McNeil#Louis Theroux#Forbidden America#Extreme and Online#Naden#height difference#groypers#escalator#America First#AFPAC#America First Political Action Conference#groyper#NIcholas Joseph Fuentes#Jaden Patrick McNeil#Nickblr#Nickstorian
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"On his first day back in the White House, president Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders, including rescinding Biden-era executive actions and withdrawing the US from the Paris climate accord.
Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity during his campaign that he would be a dictator only on “day one” and use his presidential powers to close the southern border with Mexico and expand oil drilling.
“After that, I’m not a dictator,” he said.
As executive orders rolled in on Monday, the accelerated pace amounted to a shock-and-awe campaign. Trump promised in his inaugural speech that these orders would amount to a “complete restoration of America”.
Here’s what we know so far about themost significant executive orders and actions Trump signed on Monday.
Ending birthright citizenship
The order: Along with a slew of immigration-focused orders, Trump is targeting automatic citizenship for US-born children of immigrants in the country illegally, to begin 30 days from today.
What Trump said: The order specifies that it would limit birthright citizenship if a person’s “mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth”, or “when that person’s mother’s presence in the United States at the time of said person’s birth was lawful but temporary”.
What it means: Birthright citizenship, which guarantees citizenship to anyone born on US soil, is protected by the 14th amendment and any attempt to revoke it will likely bring immediate legal challenges. The order attempts to deny documents recognizing US citizenship for individuals who meet that criteria and are born in the US 30 days after the order was signed.
-via The Guardian, January 20, 2025. Article continues below.
Leaving the World Health Organization
The order: Trump signed an order to have the US exit the World Health Organization (WHO).
What Trump said: “World Health ripped us off, everybody rips off the United States. It’s not going to happen anymore,” Trump said at the signing. He accused the WHO mishandled the Covid-19 pandemic and other international health crises.
What it means: The US will leave the WHO in 12 months’ time and stop all financial contributions to its work. The US is biggest financial backer to the United Nations health agency.
Renaming the Gulf of Mexico
The order: Trump ordered two name changes: the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s Mount Denali.
What Trump said: “President Trump is bringing common sense to government and renewing the pillars of American Civilization,” the executive order said in part.
What it means: Trump ordered the Gulf of Mexico to be renamed the “Gulf of America”, something he promised earlier this month at a press conference. He will rechristen Alaska’s Mount Denali as Mount McKinley, a change first made by former president Barack Obama in 2015 to reflect the traditions of Alaska Natives as well as the preference of many Alaska residents.
It will have no bearing on what names are used internationally.
Revoking electric vehicle targets
The order: Trump revoked a non-binding executive order signed by Biden aimed at making half of all new vehicles sold in 2030 electric.
What Trump said: “The United States will not sabotage our own industries while China pollutes with impunity,” Trump said on Monday afternoon.
What it means: Part of an effort to repeal Biden’s environmental protections, Trump has also promised to roll back auto pollution standards finalized by Biden’s administration last spring.
Reclassifying federal employees, making them easier to fire
The order: Trump’s executive order reclassified thousands of federal employees as political hires, making it much easier for them to be fired.
What Trump said: Aides to the president have long heralded mass government firings as part of an attack on the so-called “administrative” or “deep” state.
What it means: Trump effectively reinstates “Schedule F”, an executive order he signed in the last year of his first term, seeking to reclassify tens of thousands of federal workers. (Biden rescinded the order.)
Key aides to Trump have called for mass government firings. Project 2025 made attacks on the deep or administrative state a core part of Trump’s second term. The rightwing playbook called for civil servants deemed politically unreliable to be fired and replaced by conservatives.
Declaring a national energy emergency
The order: Trump declared a national energy emergency as part of a barrage of pro-fossil fuel actions and efforts to “unleash” already booming US energy production that included also rolling back restrictions in drilling in Alaska and undoing a pause on gas exports.
What Trump said: The order means “you can do whatever you have to do to get out of that problem and we do have that kind of emergency,” Trump said at the White House late on Monday.
What it means: The declaration would allow his administration to fast-track permits for new fossil fuel infrastructure. It is likely that the order, part of a broader effort to roll back climate policy, will face legal challenges.
Creating a policy recognizing only two genders
The order: Trump signed an order to remove “gender ideology guidance” from federal government communication, policies and forms. The order makes it official policy that there are “only two genders, male and female”.
What Trump said: “Agencies will cease pretending that men can be women and women can be men when enforcing laws that protect against sex discrimination,” the order states.
What it means: The order reverses a Biden-era executive action on the acceptance of gender identity.
Pausing the TikTok ban
The order: Trump signed an executive order temporarily delaying the enforcement of a federal ban on TikTok for at least 75 days.
What Trump said: “I guess I have a warm spot for TikTok that I didn’t have originally,” Trump said at the White House, as he signed executive orders according to the New York Times.
What it means: Trump ordered his attorney general to not enforce the law requiring TikTok’s sale. Trump says the pause allows for time to chart an “appropriate course forward” to protect national security and not abruptly shut down the popular app. In his first term, Trump favored a TikTok ban, but has since changed his position due to factors including his own popularity on the app.
Rescinding 78 Biden-era executive actions
The order: Trump ordered 78 Biden-era executive actions to be rescinded, including at least a dozen measures supporting racial equity and combating discrimination against gay and transgender people.
What Trump said: “I’ll revoke nearly 80 destructive and radical executive actions of the previous administration,” Trump told a crowd in Washington after his inaugural speech. He also said he would end policy “trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life” and push for a “color blind and merit-based” society.
What it means: The orders signal a reversal of Biden-era policy that prioritized implementing diversity measures across the federal government. Trump repealed orders signed by Biden advancing racial equity for underserved communities and the aforementioned order combating discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation.
Declaring a national border emergency
The order: Trump signed an order at the White House declaring an emergency at the southern US border, along with several other immigration-related policies.
What Trump said: “All illegal entry will immediately be halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came,” Trump said in his inauguration speech.
What it means: The executive action paves the way to send US troops to the southern border and makes good on campaign promises to implement hardline immigration policies. There are limited details about how the administration planned to execute its sprawling set of immigration actions that were all but certain to face legal and logistical challenges.
Immigrant communities across the country are bracing for Trump’s promise to carry out the “largest deportation program in American history”, beginning as early as Tuesday morning.
Issuing pardons for January 6 defendants
The order: Trump issued pardons for offenders and commutations related to the January 6 attack on the Capitol. He will direct the Department of Justice to dismiss cases currently in progress.
What Trump said: “I’m going to be signing on the J6 hostages, pardons, to get them out,” Trump said during his rally speech. “We’ll be signing pardons for a lot of people, a lot of people.” Trump said he has pardoned about 1,500 defendants charged in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol and issued six commutations.
What it means: Trump made his pledge to issue pardons for those with convictions related to the January 6 Capitol attack a core part of his re-election campaign. On the campaign trail, Trump often featured the national anthem sung by prisoners in a Washington DC jail. There are more than 1,500 people federally charged with associated charges.
With Trump back in the White House, justice department investigations into January 6 crimes are expected to cease.
Withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement
The order: Trump issued executive action withdrawing the US from the 2015 Paris agreement, along with a letter informing the United Nations of the decision.
What Trump said: “I am immediately withdrawing from the unfair, one-sided Paris Climate Accord rip off” Trump said during a rally at the Capital One Arena. In his inaugural speech, Trump said he would use executive action to “end the Green New Deal”.
What it means: In 2017, Trump exited the Paris agreement. Upon taking office in 2021, Biden rejoined. Monday’s order makes good on a Trump election promise to withdraw from the 2015 global treaty seeking to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis.
Exiting the Paris agreement is part of Trump’s broader efforts to roll back climate protections and policy. Trump has described Biden’s efforts to grow the US’s clean energy sector as “the green new scam”.
-via The Guardian, January 20, 2025
#fuck trump#us politics#american politics#united states#uspol#republicans#executive orders#us government#donald trump
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In the face of this crisis of confidence in America’s democratic institutions, President Biden is calling for three bold reforms to restore trust and accountability:
No Immunity for Crimes a Former President Committed in Office: President Biden shares the Founders’ belief that the President’s power is limited—not absolute—and must ultimately reside with the people. He is calling for a constitutional amendment that makes clear no President is above the law or immune from prosecution for crimes committed while in office. This No One Is Above the Law Amendment will state that the Constitution does not confer any immunity from federal criminal indictment, trial, conviction, or sentencing by virtue of previously serving as President.
Term Limits for Supreme Court Justices: Congress approved term limits for the Presidency over 75 years ago, and President Biden believes they should do the same for the Supreme Court. The United States is the only major constitutional democracy that gives lifetime seats to its high court Justices. Term limits would help ensure that the Court’s membership changes with some regularity; make timing for Court nominations more predictable and less arbitrary; and reduce the chance that any single Presidency imposes undue influence for generations to come.
President Biden supports a system in which the President would appoint a Justice every two years to spend eighteen years in active service on the Supreme Court.
Binding Code of Conduct for the Supreme Court: President Biden believes that Congress should pass binding, enforceable conduct and ethics rules that require Justices to disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity, and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest. Supreme Court Justices should not be exempt from the enforceable code of conduct that applies to every other federal judge.
I took a Legal Studies course literally one time and one of the things I remember the professor saying was that he supported 18 year term limits for the Supreme Court. Here’s the article he wrote about it at the time (2017).
This is supported by legal experts. It is possible and within reach to end lifetime Supreme Court appointments and enforce an ethics code. We just have to vote blue up and down the ballot because Republicans will never agree to regulating their own corrupt justices.
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Here's how Trump's vengeance machine works
He's the mob boss who keeps his hands clean while others do his dirty work.
ROBERT REICH
JAN 24
Friends,
Sorry to intrude on you again today, but now that we have come to the end of the first week of Trump II, there’s much to say about the new regime.
For one thing, Trump’s vengeance machine is even more dangerous than it was before.
The Biden administration had given security protection to Trump’s former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, his former top aide, Brian Hook, and Trump’s former national security advisor, John Bolton. That was because of credible intelligence showing all three in danger of being killed by agents of Iran. During the first Trump administration, they had authorized the drone strike that killed the powerful Iranian general Oassim Suleimani in early 2020, and Iran is out to get them.
The outgoing Biden administration privately told the incoming Trump administration that the threat against the three continued. “As recently as the end of last week, two separate government representatives, two separate government agencies called,” Bolton told The New York Times. “They said our current assessment is that the threat level remains the same.”
But on Tuesday, with no explanation, Tump revoked their security protection. They are now at the mercy of Iranian agents in America.
What had they done to deserve this treatment by Trump? They had committed the sin (in Trump’s mind) of being more loyal to America than to him.
Pompeo had warned Republicans at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2023 not to look to "celebrity leaders" with "fragile egos. Hook was part of the old Republican foreign-policy establishment (Trump fired Hook on Monday). Bolton had become an outspoken critic Trump.
If you think Trump’s nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, will protect them from violence, think again. All three are on Patel’s enemies list, which is basically Trump’s enemies list. (I’ll have more to say about Patel next week when he’s up for senate hearings.)
This is how the Trump vengeance machine works. Trump is the mob boss who keeps his hands clean while others do his dirty work.
Who else is likely to do Trump’s dirty work?
Trump has pardoned all the men who attacked the U.S. Capitol on his behalf on January 6, 2021. Trump says they were not violent and did not have weapons — but the world saw their violence; they were also caught on video. Nearly 175 used dangerous or deadly weapons, according to prosecutors.
They also threw Nazi salutes, posted they intended to start a civil war, vowed “there will be blood,” and called for the lynching of Democratic lawmakers.
They attacked police with flag poles, bear spray, and a metal whip. They choked officers with their bare hands. They were convicted for, among other things, “hurling officers down a flight of stairs and plotting to kill FBI agents investigating the attacks.”
A video shows them attacking Officer Michael Fanone, who suffered a heart attack and traumatic brain injury that day. Later he and his family received death threats after he testified in Congress on the incident. They beat Police Officer Daniel Hodges and crushed him in a door, his mouth filled with blood while he cried out for help.
Now, courtesy of Trump, all these thugs are back on the street. Does anyone really think they will live out the rest of their lives peacefully?
Some of the police officers, including those who testified in January 6 cases, have said they fear for their safety now that the insurrectionists have been released.
“I JUST GOT THE NEWS FROM MY LAWYER… I GOT A PARDON BABY! THANK YOU PRESIDENT TRUMP!!!” Jacob Chansley, dubbed the QAnon shaman as a reflection of his horned-animal headdress and body paint that day, posted on X. “NOW I AM GONNA BY SOME MOTHA FU*KIN GUNS!!! I LOVE THIS COUNTRY!!! GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!!”
Jackson Reffitt, who reported his father Guy’s participation in the January 6 riot and was a key witness against him, told reporters he fears for his life now that his father is free.
When Stewart Rhodes, leader of the Oath Keepers, was sentenced to 18 years in prison for his role in the riot, the judge said: “You are smart, you are charismatic and compelling and frankly that’s what makes you dangerous. The moment you are released, whenever that may be, you will be ready to take up arms against your government.” And, presumably, arms against Trump’s enemies.
How many nut-jobs does it take to physically attack someone whom Trump has deemed an enemy? Just ask Paul Pelosi.
Trump doesn’t deliver violence himself. He just says awful things about a person who has crossed him, like Nancy Pelosi, knowing this will be enough to trigger threats or actual violence by one of his followers.
Ask the judges and prosecutors who have tried to hold him responsible.
It doesn’t matter if the awful things Trump says about them are outright lies. In 2018, Trump tweeted a video of Rep. Ilhan Omar that falsely claimed she was dancing on the anniversary of 9/11. She received death threats.
Trump directs his mob with winks and nods. “You had some very fine people on both sides,” he says, reassuring violent bigots where his sympathies lie.
“Stand back and stand by,” he says, teeing up the thugs, and then: "Big protest in D.C. on January 6th Be there, will be wild!"
His henchman Elon Musk gives a Nazi salute and then denies that’s what he meant, but the neo-Nazis get the message.
Trump’s vengeance machine isn’t only about retribution. It’s also intended to intimidate Trump critics — force them to think twice before sounding any alarms, and chill public knowledge or debate about what Trump is doing.
Be warned. Be safe. And to the extent you can, protect people Trump slams.
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Opinion
By MICHAEL KAYE Published: FEBRUARY 28, 2024 03:04 THE WRITER speaks at a marketing conference in New York City wearing a #EndJewHatred T-shirt.(photo credit: COURTESY MICHAEL KAYE)
It’s been almost five months since October 7, a day that completely changed the lives of more than 15 million Jews around the world. But the aftermath of the attack is still present, months later. In many ways, it feels as though this nightmare just happened, while at other moments, it’s hard to remember what life was like before that day of terror.
I am not fluent in Hebrew. I do not wear a kippah. I have almost 30 tattoos. I am not your stereotypical Jew, but I have become a proud Jewish activist. But October 7 changed me, as it did many others. Who I was before is someone I can never be again. I cannot be complicit or silent. I donate to the Anti-Defamation League; I speak at conferences wearing an #EndJewHatred T-shirt; I never leave home without Jewish-themed jewelry; and I use my social media platforms to discuss the rising antisemitism on college campuses across the United States and around the world.
As someone who was educated at a Jewish school and learned about the Holocaust, I am no stranger to antisemitism or the dangerous impact it can have. My earliest memories include being taught by my parents to be proud but quiet about my Judaism, having swastikas carved on my school playground, being immediately evacuated on September 11, and always leaving my Star of David at home when traveling.
During my childhood and teenage years, I heard from and met many Holocaust survivors, including Elie Wiesel. I listened to their stories about how the world remained silent.
Today, it feels like the beginning of a second Holocaust. That is why I cannot remain silent.

A scary time to be Jewish
For this Jewish New Yorker, it’s a scary time to be Jewish. The American Jewish Committee’s State of Antisemitism in America report found that 93% of American Jews surveyed think antisemitism is a problem in the United States and 86% believe antisemitism in the country has increased over the past five years.
In November, I attended the March for Israel in Washington. Around me were Jewish people from Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Richmond, San Diego, and Queens. A man from Brooklyn put tefillin (phylacteries) on me; it was the first time I had worn tefillin in almost 20 years. I even got to meet Julia Haart and Miriam Haart from Netflix’s My Unorthodox Life, who grew up in a religious community not too far from me. While there, I realized this gathering had the most Jews I’ve been around since I was in Israel in 2006. It was the safest I had felt in years. But there were also allies, including Congressman Ritchie Torres and CNN contributor Van Jones. That day reminded me of why I am proud to be Jewish and why I cannot be silent about my Judaism any longer.
Since October 7, I have lost hundreds of followers on social media. I have received anti-Israel and anti-Jewish messages, even threats. But I am not alone. The AJC found that six in 10 people have come across antisemitic content online, and 78% of American Jews feel less safe as Jews in the United States since that horrific day.
To many of us, the current climate feels different. We’re feeling angry, confused, and isolated. In my lifetime, I have watched the nation unite after domestic and foreign terrorist attacks, social justice actions, and wars. Rarely, outside of politics, have I seen us this divided: the Jewish community against everyone else. Overnight, people who had never spoken about any Middle Eastern wars became experts on the conflict. Disinformation spread like wildfire across social media, and much of it felt aimed at damaging or discrediting Jews and Zionists. Almost immediately after October 7, it was not only taboo to express sympathy for the Israelis who were captured or murdered; it was discouraged and forbidden, often met with attacks, both physical and verbal.
BUT THROUGH these painful months, there have also been glimmers of light.
During this period of mourning, I have watched people of all backgrounds come together – to educate, to grieve, to hope, and to pray. A Christian connection on social media thanked me for sharing educational resources. Jewish friends from elementary school and high school reached out. A Muslim friend held my hand as I cried, and another has been checking on me periodically for months. These are the moments I have chosen to cling to.
Our future is not where one side loses and another wins. It’s where we all unite.
The writer is an award-winning communications strategist, data storyteller, purpose-driven marketer, and educator based in New York City. He often speaks about antisemitism, LGBTQ+ rights, and social justice issues.
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The past three weeks have been auspicious for the anti-vaxxers. On June 9, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. purged the nation’s most important panel of vaccine experts: All 17 voting members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which sets recommendations for the use of vaccines and determines which ones must be covered through insurance and provided free of charge to children on Medicaid, were abruptly fired. The small, ragtag crew of replacements that Kennedy appointed two days later met this week for the first time, amid lots of empty chairs in a conference room in Atlanta. They had come to talk about the safety of vaccines: to raise concerns about the data, to float hypotheses of harm, to issue findings.
The resulting spectacle was set against a backdrop of accelerating action from the secretary. On Wednesday, Kennedy terminated more than $1 billion in U.S. funding for Gavi, a global-health initiative that supports the vaccination of more than 65 million children every year. Lyn Redwood, a nurse practitioner and the former president of Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine organization that Kennedy used to chair, was just hired as a special government employee. (She presented at the ACIP meeting yesterday.) A recently posted scientific document on the ACIP website that underscored the safety of thimerosal, an ingredient in a small proportion of the nation’s flu vaccines, had been taken down, a committee member said, because the document “was not authorized by the office of the secretary.” (A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services told me in an email that this document was provided to the ACIP members in their meeting briefing packets.)
What’s clear enough is that, 61 years after ACIP’s founding, America’s vaccination policy is about to be recooked. Now we’ve had a glimpse inside the kitchen.
The meeting started with complaints. “Some media outlets have been very harsh on the new members of this committee,” said Martin Kulldorff, a rangy Swedish biostatistician and noted COVID contrarian who is now ACIP’s chair. (Kuldorff was one of the lead authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, a controversial proposal from the fall of 2020 to isolate seniors and other vulnerable people while reopening the rest of society.) In suggesting that he and Kennedy’s other appointees are opposed to vaccination, Kulldorff said, journalists were misleading the public, weakening trust in public health, and fanning “the flames of vaccine hesitancy.”
This was, in fact, the most pugnacious comment of the two-day meeting, which otherwise unfolded in a tone of fearmongering gentility. Robert Malone, a doctor and an infectious-diseases researcher who has embraced the “anti-vaccine” label and published a conspiracy-theory-laden book that details government psyops against the American people, was unfailingly polite in his frequent intimations about the safety of vaccines, often thanking CDC staff for their hard work and lucid presentations. With his thick white beard, calm affect, and soldierly diction—Malone ended many of his comments by saying “Over” into the microphone—he presented less as a firebrand than as, say, the commanding officer of a submarine.
When Malone alluded to the worry, for example, that spike proteins from the mRNA-based COVID vaccines linger in the body following injection, he did so in respectful, even deferential, language, suggesting that the public would benefit from greater study of possible “delayed effects” of immune-system activation. The CDC’s traditional approach—its “world-leading, rigorous” one, he clarified—might be improved by examining this question. A subject-matter expert responded that the CDC has been keeping tabs on real-world safety data on those vaccines for nearly five years, and has not detected any signs of long-term harm.
Later, Malone implied that COVID or its treatments might have, through some unspecified, bank-shot mechanism, left the U.S. population more susceptible to other illnesses. There was a “paradoxical, sudden decrease” in flu cases in 2020 and 2021, he noted, followed by a trend of worsening harm. A CDC staffer pointed out that the decrease in flu during those years was not, in fact, a paradox; well-documented shifts in people’s health behavior had temporarily reduced the load of many respiratory illnesses during that same period. But Malone pressed on: “Some members of the scientific community have concern that they’re coming out of the COVID pandemic—exposure to the virus, exposure to various countermeasures—there may be a pattern of broad-based, uh, energy,” he said, his eyes darting up for a moment as he said the word, “that might contribute to increased severity of influenza disease.” He encouraged the agency to “be sensitive to that hypothesis.”
Throughout these and other questions from the committee members, the CDC’s subject-matter experts did their best to explain their work and respond to scattershot technical and conceptual concerns. “The CDC staff is still attempting to operate as an evidence-based organization,” Laura Morris, a professor at the University of Missouri School of Medicine, who has attended dozens of ACIP meetings in the past and attended this one as a nonvoting liaison to the committee from the American Academy of Family Physicians, told me. “There was some tension in terms of the capacity of the committee to ask and understand the appropriate methodological questions. The CDC was trying to hold it down.”
That task became more difficult as the meeting progressed. “The new ACIP is an independent body composed of experienced medical and public health experts who evaluate evidence, ask hard questions, and make decisions based on scientific integrity,” the HHS spokesperson told me. “Bottom line: This process reflects open scientific inquiry and robust debate, not a pre-scripted narrative.” The most vocal questioner among the new recruits—and the one who seemed least beholden to a script—was the MIT business-school professor Retsef Levi, a lesser-known committee appointee who sat across the table from Malone. A scruffy former Israel Defense Forces intelligence officer with a ponytail that reached halfway down his back, Levi’s academic background is in data modeling, risk management, and organizational logistics. He approached the proceedings with a swaggering incredulity, challenging the staffers’ efforts and pointing out the risks of systematic errors in their thinking. (In a pinned post on his X profile, Levi writes that “the evidence is mounting and indisputable that mRNA vaccines cause serious harm including death”—a position entirely at odds with copious data presented at the meeting.)
Shortly before the committee’s vote to recommend a new, FDA-approved monoclonal antibody for preventing RSV in infants, Levi noted that he’d spent some time reviewing the relevant clinical-trial data for the drug and another like it, and found some worrying patterns in the statistics surrounding infant deaths. “Should we not be concerned that maybe there are some potential safety signals?” he asked. But these very data had already been reviewed, at great length, in multiple settings: by the FDA, in the course of drug approval, and by the dozens of members of ACIP’s relevant work group for RSV, which had, per the committee’s standard practice, conducted its own staged analysis of the new treatment before the meeting and reached consensus that its benefits outweighed its risks. Levi was uncowed by any reference to this prior work. “I’m a scientist, but I’m also a father of six kids,” he told the group; speaking as a father, he said, he personally would be concerned about the risk of harm from this new antibody for RSV.
In the end, Levi voted against recommending the antibody, as did Vicky Pebsworth, who is on the board of an anti-vaccine organization and holds a Ph.D. in public health and nursing. The five other members voted yes. That 5–2 vote aside, the most contentious issue on the meeting’s schedule concerned the flu shots in America that contain thimerosal, which has been an obsession of the anti-vaccine movement for the past few decades. Despite extensive study, vaccines with thimerosal have not been found to be associated with any known harm in human patients, yet an unspecified vote regarding their use was slipped into the meeting’s agenda in the absence of any work-group study or presentation from the CDC’s staff scientists. What facts there were came almost exclusively from Redwood, the nurse who used to run Kennedy’s anti-vaccine organization. Earlier this week, Reuters reported that at least one citation from her posted slides had been invented. That reference was removed before she spoke yesterday. (HHS did not address a request for comment on this issue in its response to me.)
The only one of Kennedy’s appointees who had ever previously served on the committee—the pediatrician Cody Meissner—seemed perplexed, even pained, by the proceedings. “I’m not quite sure how to respond to this presentation,” he said when Redwood finished. He went on to sum up his concerns: “ACIP makes recommendations based on scientific evidence as much as possible. And there is no scientific evidence that thimerosal has caused a problem.” Alas, Meissner’s warnings were for nought. Throughout the meeting, he came off as the committee’s last remaining, classic “expert”—a vaccine scientist clinging to ACIP’s old ways—but his frequent protestations were often bulldozed over or ignored. In the end, his was the only vote against the resolutions on thimerosal.
Throughout the two-day meeting, Kuldorff kept returning to a favorite phrase: evidence-based medicine. “Secretary Kennedy has given this committee a clear mandate to use evidence-based medicine,” he said on Wednesday morning. “The purpose of this committee is to follow evidence-based medicine,” he said on Wednesday afternoon. “What is important is using evidence-based medicine,” he said again when the meeting reached its end. All told, I heard him say evidence-based at least 10 times during the meeting. (To be fair, critics of Kuldorff and his colleagues also love this phrase.) But the committee was erratic in its posture toward the evidence from the very start; it cast doubt on CDC analyses and substituted lay advice and intuition for ACIP’s normal methods of assessing and producing expert consensus. “Decisons were made based on feelings and preferences rather than evidence,” Morris told me after the meeting. “That’s a dangerous way to make public-health policy.”
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Donald Trump’s 75 minutes at CPAC talking about himself
Contemptuous and sure of himself, the US president boasted of his victories and taunted his enemies
God save the king. Drunk on power, Donald Trump spent Saturday afternoon before adoring fans, boasting of his victories, taunting his enemies and casting himself as America’s absolute monarch, supreme leader and divine emperor rolled into one.
Trump’s appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the National Harbor in Maryland began with country singer Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA and raucous cheers in a crowded ballroom that included January 6 insurrectionists.
Seventy-five minutes later, it concluded with the US president standing between two stars-and-stripes flags, pumping his fists and swaying to the Village People’s anthem YMCA.
What emerged in between was a man who has never felt so sure of himself, so contemptuous of his foes and so convinced of his righteous mission to make America great again, even if it means breaking china, cracking skulls and leaving global destruction in his wake.
As the title of Michael Wolff’s new book puts it, last November’s election was All or Nothing. Defeat meant ruin, disgrace and prison. Victory meant what Trump’s cheerleaders like to call the greatest comeback in political history. It also meant vengeance against his perceived tormentors in the justice department, Democratic party and media. As the martyr of Mar-a-Lago put it at CPAC two years ago: “I am your retribution.”
The message he took from that win over Kamala Harris was that he had broken his opponents, broken the checks and balances and broken reality itself. He was invincible.
“Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world/Like a Colossus,” Cassius tells Brutus in William Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, “and we petty men/Walk under his huge legs and peep about/To find ourselves dishonorable graves.”
This was the 15th time Trump has addressed CPAC, the biggest annual gathering of conservative activists. When he was out of power, his freewheeling speeches could be dismissed as the ravings – or “weavings” – of a madman. Even during his first term, his extremist rhetoric came with some expectation that the democratic guardrails would hold.
But as America and the world have discovered during his first month back in the White House, Trump is unbound, unhinged and looking for blood. He took the stage at CPAC brimming with confidence and basking in chants of: “USA! USA!”
The 78-year-old Florida resident describes his presidency as a game of golf in which he can match Arnold Palmer all the way: “If you golf, when you sink that first four-footer at the first hole, it gives you confidence, and then the next hole you sink another and now you go on to that third hole and by the time you get to the fifth hole you feel you can’t miss.”
To be here was to live in a world turned upside down. Trump said: “For years, Washington was controlled by a sinister group of radical-left Marxists, war-mongers and corrupt special interests,” which would have been news to Karl Marx.
But then, on 5 November, “we stood up to all the corrupt forces that were destroying America. We took away their power. We took away their confidence … and we took back our country.”
Trump should in fact have won by a bigger margin, he claimed without evidence, but Democrats “cheated like hell” only to find his victory was “too big to rig”. Later, he revisited his 2020 loss, too, assuring conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell that “now it’s OK” to say the election was “rigged”.
The president bragged about pardoning hundreds convicted of crimes in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, describing them as “political prisoners” and “J6 hostages”. Some of them were in the room, chanting “J6! J6!” and shouting “Thank you!”. They have gone from prison cells to being CPAC’s newest celebrities.
Trump also boasted about killing diversity, equity and inclusion programmes, denying the identity of transgender people, yanking the US out of the Paris climate agreement and sending undocumented immigrants (“monsters”) to Guantánamo Bay. He hailed Elon Musk’s evisceration of the federal government, including the international aid agency USAid.
Each time, the crowd cheered.
Up until then, CPAC had felt toned down this year, with few if any chants of “Lock her up!” or T-shirts portraying Joe Biden as Satan. After all, Republicans won and there is no obvious Democratic leader to target. Still, that did not prevent Trump unleashing the usual insults and lies at his opponents.
“Kamala,” he said, eliciting boos. “I haven’t heard that name in a while. Nobody ever knows her last name ... But think of it, I was beating Joe badly and they changed him. Think of it, I’m the only one who had to beat two people.”
The Biden presidency already feels like a millennium ago but Trump did not want his audience to forget, asking whether they preferred the nickname “Crooked Joe” or “Sleepy Joe”. For the record, “Crooked Joe” won.
Trump mocked Biden’s golf handicap and bathing suit and offered a baseless opinion: “He was a sleepy, crooked guy. Terrible, terrible president. He was the worst president in the history of our country ... Every single thing he touched turned to shit.”
Such magnanimity!
He took aim at the Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren over her past claims of Native American ancestry, recycling the “Pocahontas” nickname he once gave her and jibing: “She does not like me. She’s a very angry person. You notice the way she is? She’s always screaming. She’s crazy.”
And don’t get Trump started on liberal TV host Rachel Maddow: “I watch this MSNBC – which is a threat to democracy,actually – they’re stone-cold mean. But they’re stuttering. They’re all screwed up. They’re all mentally screwed up. They don’t know what – their ratings have gone down the tubes. I don’t even talk about CNN, CNN’s sort of like, I don’t know, they’re pathetic, actually.
“This Rachel Maddow, what does she have? She’s got nothing. Nothing. She took a sabbatical where she worked one day a week. They paid her a lot of money. She gets no ratings. I should go against her in the ratings because, I’ll tell you, she gets no ratings. All she does is talk about Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. All different subjects: Trump this, Trump, that. But these people are really, I mean, they lie. They shouldn’t be allowed to lie every night. They are really a vehicle of the Democrat party.”
Trump loves the rightwing media that populates CPAC, however. He smugly quoted conservative host Bill O’Reilly as saying that after four weeks Trump had become “the greatest president ever in the history of our country”, beating George Washington.
O’Reilly was hardly alone this week in building an image of Trump as a superman who thinks sleep is for wimps. How do they love him? Let us count the ways.
Dan Scavino, a Trump golf caddie turned White House deputy chief of staff, described his boss as “the greatest host in America”. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a former White House press secretary, said Trump is “maybe the most popular human on the face of the planet right now”, adding: “He doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t expect anyone to sleep either. He’s twice my age and has twice my energy.”
Mike Waltz, the national security adviser, confirmed that Trump works 21 or 22 hours a day and, along with the interior secretary, Doug Burgum, confidently forecast that Trump would receive the Nobel peace prize for his capitulation to Vladimir Putin masterful negotiations with Russia and Ukraine.
Border tsar Tom Homan called Trump “the greatest president of my lifetime”. Elise Stefanik, the US ambassador-designate to the United Nations, went one better by calling him “the greatest president in the history of our country”.
And the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, whose home state of South Dakota includes the ripe-for-addition Mount Rushmore, topped them all by just coming out with it: “Our president wakes up every day knowing he’s the greatest president of all time.”
When someone wakes up knowing that, when their self-aggrandisement is so monumental, they are like a golfer who believes they will never miss. But as Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine put it, Trump is living inside a disinformation bubble. The iron law of politics is that all bubbles burst.
Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?
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The Mises Institute recently hosted a "Revisionist History of War Conference" at its Auburn headquarters, featuring a variety of speakers, including the author of the article, who discussed "The True History of World War II." The conference aimed to challenge the commonly accepted narratives surrounding major conflicts, particularly World War II, which has been shaped by governmental propaganda and media narratives over decades. This dominant narrative, often referred to as "the Good War," remains influential in American politics and foreign policy, necessitating a critical reevaluation of historical facts to counteract the widespread misconceptions and biases that have endured since the war ended.
The author draws parallels between the historical context of World War II and the contemporary conflict between Russia and Ukraine. He suggests that the likely mischaracterization of Russia's actions in Ukraine as an "unprovoked invasion" mirrors the distortions surrounding the origins of World War II. The article highlights the significant role of Western media in shaping public perceptions and narratives, often ignoring the complexities and provocations that lead to conflict. Academic voices like John Mearsheimer and others have attempted to present alternative views on the Ukraine war, emphasizing the long-standing tensions and geopolitical maneuvers that preceded the Russian invasion, similar to how the narrative of World War II has been historically oversimplified.
The author references A.J.P. Taylor's seminal work, "The Origins of the Second World War," which challenges the conventional accounts of the conflict's beginnings. Taylor argues that diplomatic failures and British policy decisions significantly contributed to the outbreak of the war, countering widely held beliefs about Germany's aggressive intentions. This historical perspective has faced backlash, leading to the marginalization of revisionist historians who attempt to provide a more nuanced understanding of the past. David Irving's extensive research on World War II is also discussed, highlighting how his findings contradicted established narratives and led to his professional ostracization, demonstrating the risks faced by historians challenging dominant narratives.
The article continues to explore the political and ideological undercurrents that shaped the events leading up to and during World War II. Figures like John T. Flynn are noted for their critiques of Franklin Roosevelt's foreign policies, suggesting that FDR's administration actively sought a pathway to war for economic and political reasons. The America First Committee, a notable anti-interventionist group, is highlighted for its significant grassroots opposition to U.S. involvement in the war. The discussion culminates in the acknowledgment of the complex interplay between media narratives, political agendas, and public opinion during this tumultuous period, emphasizing the need for ongoing historical inquiry and critical examination of accepted narratives about World War II and its lasting implications on contemporary geopolitics.
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The War Power Act explains, and lawmakers pushed Trump back President Donald Trump’s decision to order US airstrikes at three Iranian nuclear sites on June 22 raised immediate questions from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle whether he acted in his authority. Under Trump’s direction, the United States is effectively participating in the war that began 10 days ago when Israel began bombing Iran’s nuclear and military infrastructure. The president previously said that he did not want to be involved in conflicts in the Middle East, but that “Iran cannot have nuclear weapons.” Some lawmakers, including stubborn conservatives and well-known progressives, call the move a violation of the constitution. “The president’s tragic decision to bomb Iran without approval is a serious violation of the constitution and the powers of parliament in war,” D-New York’s Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote in a post on X. The Constitution places the power to declare war at the hands of Congress, and the war power of 1973 requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of military action. The law also limits the deployment of military forces for more than 90 days without a formal declaration of war. Asked at a Pentagon press conference when Congress noticed a strike on June 22, Defense Secretary Pete Hegses, allegedly, “we were notified after the plane was released safely. But we complied with the War Powers Act notification requirements.” R-Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie responded to Trump’s social media bragging about the attacks in Iran in a statement saying, “This is not the constitution.” California’s Massy and Democrat Locanna have submitted measures based on the War Forces Act on June 17, seeking to block “illegal hostility” in Iran. “Stop Iran from having a nuclear bomb is a top priority, but dragging the US into another Middle East war is not the solution,” Kanna said in a statement. “Trump’s strike is unconstitutional and puts Americans, especially our troops, at risk.” Some of Trump’s strongest supporters have also warned against foreign conflicts. “Every time America is on the crisis of greatness, we are involved in another foreign war,” Senator Marjorie Taylor Green wrote in a post just before the US bombing. Contribution: Kim Hujelmgaard, USA Today The post The War Power Act explains, and lawmakers pushed Trump back appeared first on US-NEA. Tags and categories: Politics via WordPress https://ift.tt/9iyfXTv June 22, 2025 at 03:36PM
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Fountain of Frogs, Chapter 8/9: Jin Chan
Fic summary:
It is the middle of covid shutdown and former student activist Jaden McNeil finds himself living with his new friend and colleague, right wing Internet provocateur Nick Fuentes, after being expelled from Kansas State over online statements considered inflammatory. Overtaken with the isolation, the two begin a physical relationship. While Jaden is convinced it is just a temporary dalliance to fill the void and means nothing, as the next two years roll on, he finds that Nick became a bit more attached than he had hoped.
Chapter summary: [may contain spoilers for the previous chapters]
Between his relationship with his new girlfriend and Nick's increasingly unpleasant behavior, Jaden has found himself disenchanted from America First. Though he is initially unsure of how he will escape financially, a surprise benefactor steps in to help him...for a price.
#Fountain of Frogs#Jin Chan#fanfiction#Nick Fuentes#Jaden McNeil#naden#groypers#America First#AFPAC#groyper#America First Political Action Conference#kick.com#sugaring#Jaden P McNeil#Jaden Patrick McNeil#internet streamers#cozy.tv#rumble#chapter 8#right wing#gay republicans#make america great again#traditional roles
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Mexico will have its first woman president following a landmark vote on June 2, 2024.
After an election period marred by violence, ruling Morena party candidate Claudia Sheinbaum, a former Mexico City mayor, emerged as the victor with about 60% of the vote – a larger share of the vote than her mentor and predecessor, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, won in 2018. Sheinbaum beat rival Xóchitl Gálvez, a senator for the center-right National Action Party, who trailed with less than 30% of the vote.
Acknowledging the significance of the occasion, Sheinbaum said: “For the first time in the 200 years of the republic I will become the first woman president of Mexico.”
But as scholars who study politics and gender in Mexico, we know that optics are one thing, actual power another. Seventy years after women won the right to vote in Mexico, is the country moving any closer to making changes that would give women real equality?
Uneven fight for gender equality
Women now represent half of Congress, after electoral reforms nearly a decade ago mandated gender parity in nominations to Mexico’s legislatures. And two women, Ana Lilia Rivera and Marcela Guerra Castillo, occupy the top posts in both chambers of Congress. Meanwhile, Norma Lucía Piña is the first woman to serve as chief justice of Mexico’s Supreme Court. Preliminary election night results also favor Sheinbaum’s Morena party, giving them a supermajority in Congress. As such, Sheinbaum will very likely have ample support for a feminist political agenda should she pursue one.
But electing women to high office doesn’t necessarily shift power in meaningful ways. It’s what experts on women in politics call “descriptive representation” – when political leaders resemble a group of voters but fail to set policies designed to protect them. In contrast, “substantive representation” occurs when officials enact laws that truly benefit the groups that they claim to represent.
Scholars who study the difference between the two, including Sonia Alvarez, Mala Htun and Jennifer Piscopo, have found that wins in public spheres, such as the right to vote or hold office, have rarely led to progress for women in private spaces – such as the right to reproductive freedom or protections against domestic violence.
In other words, Mexico may have surpassed many countries, including the U.S., in promoting women to political leadership positions, but it still hasn’t shed its stigma of machismo and its history of authoritarianism.
In the 1990s, a resurgent feminist movement throughout Latin America led to major breakthroughs in women’s rights. By the end of the decade, many countries had passed legislation against gender-based violence and reforms requiring gender quotas in party nomination lists. In the past 17 years, seven women have been elected president across Central and South America.
Yet the fight for gender equality has advanced unevenly. Mexico is a country still rattled by high rates of femicide. Government data shows that, on average, 10 women and girls are killed every day by partners or family members.
Government accused of harassment
A big question now is whether Sheinbaum will be able to address the issue of gender violence, which her predecessors failed to do.
Any skepticism surrounding the willingness of Sheinbaum’s government to implement a truly feminist agenda would be justified: Her campaign theme was one of continuity, and she has hesitated, to date, to deviate much, if at all, from López Obrador’s agenda.
Under López Obrador, Morena was accused of downplaying the extent of the femicide crisis, with at least one critic claiming that López Obrador was “the first president to outright deny” the violence.
Rather, López Obrador used his daily “mañanera” news conference to issue verbal assaults against women in office, including Sheinbaum’s defeated rival, Gálvez. In July 2023, the independent National Electoral Institute found López Obrador guilty of targeting Gálvez in derogatory statements related to her gender.
López Obrador also denounced Piña, the Supreme Court chief justice, in what Mexico’s National Association of Judges has described as hate speech and the federal judiciary condemned as “gender-based violence” and hatred against her. His statements at a rally in March incited his followers to burn Piña in effigy, prompting critics to suggest that such attacks don’t simply reflect López Obrador’s distaste for checks and balances but aim to undermine women in positions of power.
Mexico’s patronage politics
Observers see Sheinbaum as López Obrador’s handpicked successor: He publicly endorsed her, and she has vowed to continue his “fourth transformation,” a campaign promise to end government corruption and reduce poverty that’s had mixed results.
Sheinbaum’s record as mayor of Mexico City is equally mixed. She has publicly described herself as a feminist and has criticized state prosecutors for covering up the killing of Ariadna Lopez, a 27-year-old woman. At the same time, Sheinbaum attempted to criminalize participants of a mass protest over the thousands of women who’ve disappeared in recent years, claiming that these demonstrations were violent.
Political scientists have shown that even when the faces of politics change, the operatives behind the scenes can stay the same – especially in Mexico, where political parties are mired in patronage politics – when party leaders reward loyalty by deciding who gets to run for office and who gets to keep their jobs when the government is handed over to a new administration.
Sheinbaum will likely still be beholden to the Morena coalition and will rely to a large degree on López Obrador to help push through her policies.
A feminist future?
On the campaign trail, Sheinbaum, along with her rival, Gálvez, championed women and shared their experiences as women.
But in the closing stages of the campaign, neither Sheinbaum nor Gálvez offered much more than the “historic first” argument to potential voters. As a result, the extension of women’s rights under the new government remains uncertain.
Aside from front-line politics, women’s rights in Mexico have moved forward when leaders have committed to substantive change.
Notably, Mexico’s Supreme Court under Pinã has declared all federal and state laws prohibiting abortion unconstitutional. When Piña took office, she promised to take on women’s rights in her agenda. So far, she’s delivered.
If Sheinbaum hopes to have similar success, she’ll need to follow Pinã’s lead by centering her platforms on the issues that most affect women in their day-to-day lives, beginning with rising femicide rates. Women may be gaining political power in Mexico, but the question now is whether they’ll use it to fight for the women they represent.
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Clay Jones
* * * *
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
March 10, 2024
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
MAR 11, 2024
As predicted, last week was an important one for the Republican Party.
The Republicans’ rebuttal to the State of the Union on Thursday stayed in the news throughout the weekend. On Friday, independent journalist Jonathan Katz figured out that a key story in it was false. Senator Katie Britt (R-AL) described a twelve-year-old child sex trafficked by Mexican cartel members, implying that the young girl was trafficked because of President Joe Biden’s border policies.
Katz tracked down the facts. Britt was describing the life of Karla Jacinto, who was indeed trafficked as a child, but not in the present and not in the U.S. and not by cartels. She was trafficked from 2004 to 2008—during the George W. Bush administration—in Mexico, at the hands of a pimp who entrapped vulnerable girls. Jacinto has become an advocate for child victims and has told her story before Congress, and she met Britt at an event for government officials and anti-trafficking advocates.
Britt’s dramatic delivery of the rebuttal had already invited parody and concern about the religious themes she demonstrated. The news that a central image in it was a lie just made things worse. “Everyone’s f*cking losing it,” a Republican strategist told The New Republic’s Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling. “It’s one of our biggest disasters ever.”
On Friday, the Republican National Committee (RNC) voted to replace former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, who resigned effective Friday, with Trump loyalist Michael Whatley and Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump. They will co-chair the organization and have made it clear their primary goal is to put Trump back in the White House.
Friday night, on Newsmax, Donald Trump Jr. recorded a video announcing that the old Republican Party “no longer exists outside of the D.C. beltway…. The move that happened today…that’s the final blow. People have to understand that America First, the MAGA movement is the new Republican Party. That is conservatism today.”
Just what that means was crystal clear on Friday night, when Trump hosted Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán at the Trump Organization’s Florida property, Mar-a-Lago. The darling of the radical right, Orbán has spoken at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and hosted former Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson, and his policies inspired the anti-LGBTQ+ legislation Florida governor Ron DeSantis has championed.
The right wing’s fondness for Orbán springs from his having rejected democracy and replaced it in Hungary with what he calls an “illiberal state.” Orbán and other far-right leaders working against democracy maintain that the central principle of democracy, equality before the law, undermines society. It permits immigration, which, in their minds, dilutes the “purity” of a people, and it requires that LGBTQ+ individuals and women have the same rights as heterosexual men. Such a world challenges the heteronormative patriarchal world traditionalists crave.
Orbán’s takeover of the press, elimination of rival political parties, partisan gerrymandering, capture of the courts, and control of Hungary’s government are not just ideological, though, but also economic. Corruption and the capture of valuable factories and properties for cronies have allowed Orbán and his allies to amass fortunes.
“There’s nobody that’s better, smarter or a better leader than Viktor Orbán. He’s fantastic,” Trump said on Friday. Trump said that Orbán simply says, “‘This is the way it’s going to be,’ and that’s the end of it, right? He’s the boss and…he’s a great leader, fantastic leader. In Europe and around the world, they respect him.”
On Saturday, Republicans in Oklahoma County, Oklahoma, censured Senator James Lankford (R-OK) over his work negotiating the border security measure. In January, state Republicans claimed they had passed a resolution “strongly” condemning Lankford; others said the vote for the resolution was “not legitimate and definitely does not represent the voice of all Oklahoma Republicans.”
Lankford is a far-right senator whom Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) tapped to represent the Republicans in the negotiations. House Republicans had demanded the border security measure before they would allow a vote on a national security supplemental bill that funds Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s invasion.
Because the Democrats are desperate to fund Ukraine, they were willing to give up things they had never laid on the table before, including a path to citizenship for those brought to the United States as children, making the bill that emerged from the negotiations strongly favor the Republican position on immigration. The Border Patrol Officers’ union, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal all endorsed it.
But the House Republicans’ demand for a border measure appears to have been an attempt to kill the national security supplemental bill altogether. As soon as it became clear that there would be a deal, Trump came out against it. He demanded that Congress kill the measure, and his loyalists agreed.
Lankford, who had helped to produce the strongest border measure in years at the request of the nominal head of the party, has now been censured because he crossed Trump.
Meanwhile, on Saturday, Biden signed into law one of the consolidated appropriations bills that must be finished to fund the government. The other must be finished by March 22.
Biden has continued to ride the momentum built by Thursday’s State of the Union speech. His campaign has released a number of advertisements, and today he was in Georgia, where the largest political action committees representing communities of color—the AAPI Victory Fund, the Latino Victory Fund, and The Collective PAC—endorsed him and pledged $30 million to mobilize communities of color to vote in 2024.
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
#Heather Cox Richardson#Letters From An American#SOTU#election 2024#Lankford#CPAC#Right wing extremism#authoritariansim
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Civil War is not continuation of Age of Ultron
Here are my words from that reblog:
The MCU was good until 2015… Age of Ultron may not be a great movie, but that's where I draw the line… Old MCU/New MCU
Why am I not including Civil War…it's a good movie, it's not like Thor Ragnarok or Captain Marvel which confuse the chronology and start to reduce the entire franchise to pointlessness.
Civil War was supposed to show that the Avengers were responsible for their carelessness. Okay, this is a good thread. The only problem is how he does it. The writers won't think that Tony Stark taking Spider-Man on the team…doesn't work. Because Tony should make him realize that by supporting Tony…he supports signing up and taking off the mask. Peter doesn't know what he supports. He knows that Captain America has done something and he has to help because it's Tony Stark… How does this put the character of Tony Stark and the things he's come to understand in his previous films?
Also a political fact… suddenly the Accords are ratified and the Avengers are faced with a fait accompli. There should be a press conference something like at the end of Winter Soldier. They should present their case to the public… They should remind that Hydra recently infiltrated everything… and such a paralysis of their decision-making… may be beneficial for such entities…
Also, why did Ross blame the Avengers for the damage to New York… they were trying to stop the battle… It's not their fault, Loki is too smart. Not that it matters, I support Loki ruling Midgard;) But it's strange that the Avengers didn't remind Ross that this battle wasn't their fault. Maybe it's diplomacy's fault more… because they tried to fight and antagonize a being 1000 years older than them. Maybe if they sat down with Thor and Loki as mediators on the helicarrier… maybe the problems would be solved… or not… Loki, as usual, would be wiser. But at least they would try. (Yes, I'm a Loki fan… because first I'm a fan of Loki, and then I'm a fan of the rest of the MCU… Loki always comes first;)
I'm not sure how to rewrite Civil War to be more in line with earlier canon. Well…maybe remove Lagos and the Accords and start with the consequences for Ultron. Maybe some Senators want to take Tony's armor again. Maybe they'll decide the shield shouldn't be in Steve's hands. And in the background, involve this thread with Zemo and Bucky… Zemo could be this baron, an important figure from Sokovia who is publicly concerned about the fate of the world… and secretly works against the Avengers.
Civil War is a good movie… if we consider it the beginning of the New MCU Canon… which I allude to in this:
Because Civil War is not a good continuation of the threads of Age of Ultron. And neither is further MCU in general.
Age of Ultron threads
Hawkeye - having a family and a normal life, Laura tells him that in this world of gods and superhumans… he can make a difference… there is no continuation of this.
Thor - has a vision of destruction… what's more… it is said that he is guilty of it… how? Seeing at Thor Ragnarok, how can Thor be guilty of his father having an illegitimate daughter? What is Thor's fault in this? The vision talks about doom because of him, that he is a destroyer… that it is his personal fault… abandoned Loki plot?
Vision - is a consequence of Ultron's actions… and we don't have any storylines with it… how does he deal with it.
Thanos - already has the gauntlet. He has it. And he takes it from Asgard. I'm more betting on Loki offering it than war. But with a trick… Loki probably gave him the gauntlet, but he definitely kept the trick in his pocket.
Steve - sees Peggy's vision and knows that he has come to terms with the loss of what was… and he wants to continue building his life… completely abandoned plot.
Bruce - I don't know if Bruce was originally supposed to end up this far in space… Fury shows at the end of Age of Ultron that Hulk could have landed in the ocean, near the Philippines…
Also at the end of Age of Ultron, Thor says: someone has been playing an intricately game and has made pawns of us.
Another clue to Loki's abandoned plot? Because Thanos wants to destroy the Avengers at the end of Age of Ultron. Personally. There is no moral objection at all. He cannot be player making pawns. But Loki can. Because he was the one who played the game first and learned everything about the Avengers Team.
#avengers age of ultron#civil war#marvel meta#marvel cinematic universe#hawkeye#loki marvel#loki odinson#loki tom hiddleston#thor odinson#vision#thanos#bruce banner#steve rogers
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by Fuzzy Slippers
And it wasn’t enough for Abuhamdeh to just break off and do her own thing, so now she and a handful of Hamas-supporting Girl Scout troop leaders are actually demanding an apology from GSA and a change of the organization’s national policy that permits fundraising for “humanitarian aid.”
Fox 2 reports:
A group consisting of Girl Scout troop leaders and other advocates is pushing the Girl Scouts organization to issue a public apology to a St. Louis troop that disbanded last week and to take a stance in support of children in Gaza, among other demands. The former troop’s adult leader, Nawal Abuhamdeh, says the Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri warned her of legal action over a fundraiser plan to sell bracelets and donate money to a Palestinian children’s relief fund. . . . . In previous emails with Nawal, the local branch cited concerns that the fundraiser was political, partisan, and against Girl Scout policies. Nawal’s troop has since disbanded from Girl Scouts. The Girl Scouts of the USA organization offered a statement on Tuesday, noting that they “sincerely regret any hurt” caused by developments leading up to the warning. Officials described the situation as “a learning moment for our organization.” The Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) Missouri branch considers the statement a “positive first step” in addressing the situation. Nawal feels it wasn’t good enough. During a roundtable Zoom conference on Thursday, Nawal says the former troop’s girls, which included two of her daughters, “feel discouraged and unheard by Girl Scouts because no statements have been [directed] towards us, and our questions [about fundraising for causes in Gaza] were still unanswered.” “Their silence is very loud to us,” said Nawal. Tasneem Manjra, an adult leader for a northern California Girl Scouts troop also on the conference call, said, ‘To us, it looks like the Girl Scouts are backtracking because they got called out.” . . . . “The Girl Scouts celebrate young women finding their voices on causes they care about. Our council recognizes Troop 149 for identifying the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and creating a fundraiser to help. Our troops have always had the ability to support causes they care about, within the guidelines published by Girl Scouts. This has never been about the cause, but rather meeting Girl Scouts’ governing documents and maintaining our tax-exempt status. We were in communication with Ms. Abuhamdeh for several weeks and provided her with multiple options to find a way to continue the work, which are still available to this troop. We are sorry that Ms. Abuhamdeh chose to disband. We would welcome them back to the Girl Scout family.”
And of course they have a list of “demands.”
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Since returning to office in January, President Donald Trump has pursued a series of head-spinning moves to reorient U.S. foreign policy, from initiating a global trade war to threatening long-standing NATO allies to teasing a takeover of Canada. Political analysts like to say these shifts reflect Trump’s transactional, zero-sum worldview—an “America First” approach that prioritizes a narrow conception of national interest and deprioritizes moral concerns.
This approach seems a far cry from previous U.S. administrations, which espoused, to varying degrees, a commitment to values such as freedom, democracy, and human rights. While often criticized for hypocrisy or a failure to live up to such ideals, a “values-based” foreign policy remained a core component of U.S. policymaking in the decades after the Cold War.
Yet beneath the surface, the reality is murkier. Since taking office, key members of the Trump administration have, in fact, begun to pursue a values-based foreign policy of their own—albeit a very different one than before.
Vice President J.D. Vance’s remarks at the Munich Security Conference in February formed the blueprint for this new values-based foreign policy, which is now embraced, to varying degrees, by other Trump officials and allies. In his speech, Vance stunned European attendees by taking them to task for what he described as “the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values.” Vance argued that Europeans were failing to live up to shared commitments to democracy and free expression, highlighting the cancelation of Romania’s election results due to alleged Russian meddling and the suppression of right-wing voices across the continent.
At its core, Vance’s speech was a rejection of the interpretation of freedom and democracy that has been a mainstay of U.S. politicians and diplomats for decades, casting it as liberalism run amok. But it was couched in the language of those very ideals. Repeated references to “shared values,” a call for partnership in promoting “freedom,” and a commitment to standing up for “the people” bear striking similarities to prior U.S. foreign-policy pronouncements.
The speech represented a plea to embrace a new interpretation of “shared values” in guiding foreign relationships, not to throw them out entirely. In 2025, Washington has adjusted which values it prioritizes. LGBTQ rights and women’s empowerment are out; free speech absolutism, anti-“woke” censorship, and a defense of Western culture are in. While the approach isn’t fully consistent, it’s far more ideological than many pundits might have us believe.
Other U.S. officials such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio have since echoed these sentiments. And many of the Trump administration’s actions evince a similar ethos: the move to cut aid to South Africa in response to what officials allege are “serious human rights violations” related to its new land law, which critics have argued enables the expropriation of white Afrikaner property; an embrace of figures such as Javier Milei, Argentina’s aggressively libertarian president, who said that “the winds of freedom [were] blowing stronger” after Trump’s election; even a campaign against the European Union’s data privacy protections, which State Department officials have framed as an effort at “shutting down the global censorship-industrial complex.”
These are not the actions of policymakers following the hard-nosed logic of realpolitik. They represent instead a strong ideological undercurrent, at times at odds with the core material interests that Trump allegedly prioritizes. U.S. pressure on the United Kingdom to repeal hate speech laws initially emerged as a stumbling block at the outset of trade negotiations between the two countries in April, for example.
Washington is also redeploying the tools of the old values-based foreign policy toward new targets. Visa bans and revocations, traditionally used to punish rights-abusing regimes, have taken aim instead at prominent Trump critics. Meanwhile, as Trump threatens to deport various groups seeking safety from persecution in their home countries, his administration has harnessed refugee resettlement infrastructure to welcome white South Africans fleeing what Trump and others in his orbit have called “genocide.”
Even Trump’s embrace of Russia, which has upended long-standing U.S. policy, is consistent with a new values-based foreign policy, which sees Moscow’s championing of so-called traditional values and broadside against Western moral decadence as causes to be celebrated.
Similarly, it’s no secret that Trump and his supporters have long admired Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has reshaped his country as a model for the international conservative movement. Trump-aligned members of Congress have sought to defend Orban and reorient U.S. foreign aid to support rather than challenge his autocratic tendencies. But viewing support for Orban merely as an affinity for autocrats overlooks the deeper ideological motivations of Trump’s support. It is connected to an international right-wing movement that seeks to strengthen global freedom—so long as that freedom yields conservative policy wins.
Indeed, the new values-based foreign policy is largely unconcerned about seeming partisan or appearing to intervene in the domestic affairs of other states. “Lecturing” was a common accusation directed at proponents of the old values-based foreign policy. Autocratic governments complained that U.S. calls for reform and human rights were unwelcome barriers to collaboration, and advocates of transactionalism and restraint argued that the insertion of values weakened the United States’ capacity to achieve its goals.
Yet the policy approach embraced by leaders today is often unabashedly interventionist. Telling other countries how to police hate speech or run migration policy, for instance, has remained on the agenda. The Trump administration even declared the South African ambassador persona non grata for unofficial statements he made about white supremacy in the United States. Trump-aligned figures such as Elon Musk explicitly endorsed the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) before Germany’s February election and called the sitting German president an “anti-democratic tyrant” when he objected. When Germany’s domestic intelligence agency later labeled the AfD as “extremist,” it elicited a strong rebuke from Vance and Rubio, among others, who said the move amounted to “tyranny.”
Ultimately, the ideological struggle at home is permeating abroad. A battle to “own the libs” now motivates not only domestic politics but increasingly foreign policy as well. The struggle over foreign aid is case in point. Feeding the U.S. Agency for International Development “into the wood chipper” was about much more than cost savings (which turned out to be minimal). For those leading the charge—including Musk and Pete Marocco, the official who oversaw the dismantling of the agency—it was about challenging the “globalist” agenda and supporting an entirely different notion of “freedom” and “rights”—righting the ship of so-called American values that, in their eyes, had been set off course.
Although internal incoherence within the MAGA coalition may stymie its advance, the new values-based foreign policy could quickly become more intrusive, more partisan, and more willing to take sides than the old version ever was. A move back toward a world where sovereignty norms are sacrosanct seems less likely by the day.
Nevertheless, the new values-based foreign policy has thus far remained parochial, concerned much more with the West than with the “rest.” Indeed, it has relatively little to say about countries and regions beyond Europe and the Americas. The ideological landscape of other places, such as Southeast Asia and the Middle East, is more challenging to pin down and, perhaps, uninteresting to many in Trump’s orbit. This may put countries in these regions at an advantage, as they are less likely to attract the ire of U.S. officials.
But it also may undermine the capacity of actors within these countries to appeal to the administration on “values-based” grounds—which may be frustrating for Iran or China hawks, who have long relied on moral framing to make their case. In the case of China, the result has been inconsistency: no clear strategy, just an ambient desire to win, absent the ideological scaffolding that shapes the administration���s antagonistic posture toward the West.
The new values-based foreign policy is neither entirely coherent nor the sole driver of decision-making within the new administration. At times, Trump himself seems happy to focus on cold-blooded dealmaking, absent sentimentality or the squishiness that comes with ideological sacred cows, as he exhibited on his recent trip to the Gulf. Nevertheless, values have clearly crept in, and it is increasingly difficult to understand the foreign policy of the current administration without an ideological lens. Even for an America in transition, old habits can be sticky.
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Latin America’s New Hard Right: Bukele, Milei, Kast And Bolsonaro! Crime, Abortion and Socialism, Not Immigration, Are The Issues That Rile Them
— April 1st 2024| Santiago, Chile 🇨🇱

A montage of right-wing Latin American leaders on a red and blue background with Donald Trump throwing maga hats at them. Illustration: Klawe Rzeczy
“Mr president!” Javier Milei could barely contain himself when he met Donald Trump at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) near Washington in February. The pair embraced and exchanged slogans, with Mr Trump intoning “Make Argentina Great Again” several times and Argentina’s new President yipping “Viva la Libertad, Carajo” (“Long Live Freedom, Dammit”) in response.
Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s Popular Autocratic President, had already addressed the conference. “They say globalism comes to die at CPAC,” he told enraptured Republicans. “I’m here to tell you that in El Salvador, it’s already dead.” Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s Hard-Right Former President, was a star guest in 2023. He, like Mr Trump, claimed without evidence that his bid for a second term was thwarted by fraud. His supporters also attempted an insurrection.
These scenes suggest a seamless international alliance between Mr Trump and the leaders of Latin America’s hard right. Its members also include José Antonio Kast of Chile, who has spoken at cpac in the past too. This new right basks in Mr Trump’s influence. It has turned away from a more consensual form of conservative politics in favour of an aggressive pursuit of culture war.
Its ascent began with the surprise victory of Mr Bolsonaro in Brazil in 2018, followed by that of Mr Bukele in 2019. In Chile Mr Kast, the founder of a new hard-right Republican Party, got 44% of the vote in a presidential run-off in 2021 and his party won an election for a constitutional council in 2023. Mr Milei won his own surprise victory in November. Would-be leaders of the radical right jostle in the Politics of Peru and Colombia.
Unlike its older European and North American equivalents, the Latin American hard right does not have roots in the fertile soil of public anxiety about uncontrolled immigration (although this has become an issue recently because of the arrival of millions of Venezuelans fleeing their country’s rotten dictatorship).
The new group shares three hallmarks. The first is fierce opposition to abortion, and gay and women’s rights. “What unites them is an affirmation of traditional social hierarchies,” as Lindsay Mayka and Amy Erica Smith, two academics, put it. The second hallmark is a tough line on crime and citizens’ security. And the third is uncompromising opposition to social democracy, let alone communism, which leads some to want a smaller state.
There were common factors in their ascents, too. They were helped by a sense of crisis—about corruption and economic stagnation in Brazil and Argentina, gang violence in El Salvador and the sometimes violent “social explosion” in Chile.
Cousins In Arms
But each leader has adopted a different mix of these ideological elements. The hard right in Latin America are “cousins, not brothers”, says Cristóbal Rovira of the Catholic University of Chile. “They are similar but not identical.”
Mr Bolsonaro’s constituencies were evangelicals, to whom he appealed with his defence of the traditional family, and the authoritarian right in the form of the army, the police and farmers worried about land invasions and rural crime. But he was lukewarm about the free market and fiscal rigour. Mr Bukele made security the cornerstone of his first presidential term, overcoming criminal gangs by locking up more than 74,000 of El Salvador’s 6.4 Million Citizens. His economic policy is less clear and, despite his claim at CPAC, is not self-evidently “anti-globalist”.
Mr Milei was elected for his pledge to pull Argentina out of prolonged stagflation and to cut down what he brands as a corrupt political “caste”. A self-described “anarcho-capitalist”, he is a fan of the Austrian school of free-market economics. Unlike Mr Trump, he is neither an economic nationalist nor protectionist on trade. He has only recently adopted his peers’ stance on moral issues. His government supports a bill to overturn Argentina’s abortion law, and says it will eliminate gender-conscious language from public administration. Mr Bukele followed suit.
Mr Kast attempted to put conservative morality in the constitutional draft his party championed, which was one reason why it was rejected in a plebiscite. He wants tough policies on security and against immigration. “We should close the borders and build a trench,” he says. He wants to “shrink the state and lower the tax burden”. Whereas Mr Bolsonaro is a climate-change sceptic and anti-vaxxer, Mr Kast is not.
Democracy For Thee, Not For Me
Right-wing populists also have differing attitudes to democracy. With his attempt to subvert the election result, for which he is under police investigation, Mr Bolsonaro showed that he was not a democrat. Mr Bukele is contemptuous of checks and balances. His success at slashing the murder rate made him hugely popular, allowing him to brush aside constitutional term limits and win a second term in February.
Mr Milei’s “disdain for democratic institutions is clear”, says Carlos Malamud, An Argentine Historian, citing Mr Milei’s break with convention by giving his inauguration speech to a crowd of supporters, rather than to Congress. But, Mr Malamud adds, Mr Milei may yet learn that he needs to include the parliament in government.
“I’m a democrat,” insists Mr Kast, and his opponents agree. “On security and shrinking the state, we share views with Bolsonaro,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean that we are the same as Milei or Bolsonaro or Bukele.” As Mr Kast notes, policy choices are shaped in each country by very different circumstances.
So are the prospects of the various leaders. Mr Bukele is by far the most successful, with would-be imitators across the region and no obvious obstacles to his remaining in power indefinitely. In contrast, Mr Bolsonaro’s active political career may well be over. The electoral court has barred him as a candidate until 2030 (when he will be 75) for disparaging the voting system at a meeting with foreign ambassadors. He may be jailed for his apparent attempt to organise a military coup against his electoral defeat; he denies this and claims he is a victim of political persecution.
Mr Milei’s future is up for grabs. Succeed in taming inflation, and he could emerge strengthened from a midterm election in 2025. But if he refuses to compromise with Congress and provincial governors, he may be in trouble before then. In Chile, Mr Kast seemed to overplay his hand with the constitutional draft. The election in 2025 could see the centre-right take power. One influential figure of that persuasion argues that Mr Kast is unable to represent the diversity of modern Chile.
Ultimately, the group is bound by an international network built around common political discourse and cultural references. Mr Kast chairs the Political Network for Values, an outfit previously led by an ally of Viktor Orban, Hungary’s Populist Leader. Vox, Spain’s hard-right party, organises the Foro de Madrid, a network of like-minded politicians mainly from what it calls the “Iberosphere” in Latin America.
These gatherings offer a chance to share experiences and sometimes a bit more. Mr Bukele has advisers from Venezuela’s exiled opposition. Mr Trump’s activists have shown up at Latin American elections. Recently, Mr Bolsonaro took refuge in the Hungarian embassy in Brasília for two nights when he feared arrest.
But there are no signs of central direction or co-ordination. The right in Latin America has long claimed that the Foro de São Paulo, a get-together of Latin American left-wingers, is a highly organised conspiracy. All the evidence is that it is a loose friendship network. That seems to be true of its right-wing peer, too. ■
— This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline "The Anti-communist International"
#The Americas | The Anti-Communist International#Brazil 🇧🇷 | Argentina 🇦🇷 | El Salvador 🇸🇻#Latin America’s New Hard Right: Bukele | Milei | Kast | Bolsonaro#The Issues: Crime | Abortion | Socialism#Immigration#Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)#The Economist
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