MAGA's cynical, morally corrupt rewrite of social science and history

When MAGA is in charge, social science and history just ain't what they used to be. An Inside Higher Ed article, Florida Introduces ‘Sanitized’ Sociology Textbook, makes clear a false history that MAGA elites want to con everyone into false beliefs about human history. 

Florida MAGA officials rewrote an introductory sociology textbook for public universities. MAGA's version of sociology is packaged on a drastically shortened, “sanitized” textbook that strips out core sociological content. Information about race, gender, sexuality, inequality and systemic power are mostly gone. For the course to retain “general education” status  in the Florida university system, this MAGA propaganda has to be used as the primary textbook. 

The new MAGA-approved textbook is a heavily edited version of an open-source Introduction to Sociology 3e. It is cut from 669 pages to 267 pages. Entire chapters on media and technology, global inequality, race and ethnicity, social stratification, and gender, sex and sexuality simply vanished. A section on government-led genocide of Native Americans was removed. Use of the term “transgender” drops from 68 uses to one, and “racism” from 115 uses to six. All discussion of systemic or structural racism, which faculty describe as a core concept of the field, is deleted in its entirety.  

Legal impetus for MAGA's perversion of history and sociology comes Florida’s 2023 Senate Bill 266. That law bans general-education courses from teaching “identity politics,” “distorting” historical events, or using theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression and privilege are inherent in U.S. institutions. State MAGA politicians have cynically attacked sociology as ideologically “hijacked,” “mushy,” and lacking the kind of academic rigor they falsely claim to want. This is just part of MAGA's broader attempt to hide, deny or delegitimize inconvenient sociology and history.

Death of democracy by thousands of cuts

Trump's grifter nominee for 

Surgeon General

The obscure example of the grifter Surgeon General

Trump recently nominated Casey Means as surgeon general, America’s top public‑health messenger. She is grossly unqualified for the job, but Trump likes her style. Means is a physician who left surgical training to become a wellness influencer and entrepreneur, building a brand on warning people not to trust mainstream doctors and promoting “root‑cause” health products and protocols with scant evidence. Reporting notes that she has sold supplements and other wellness products, aligned with anti‑vaccine figures like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. She allowed her medical license to lapse, even as she positions herself as a visionary who sees through “corrupt” conventional medicine. This obscure personnel move captures the larger catastrophic transition. The United States is drifting from flawed but mostly rule‑bound democracy toward a more openly corrupt, propaganda‑driven, authoritarian politics. That accelerating trend tracks closely with Trump’s rise since 2016. (link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4)

Trump’s nomination of Means reflects the broader MAGA demagoguery pattern. Sophisticated grifters and cranks who thrive on misinformation, crackpottery and conspiratorial rhetoric are elevated because they weaponize distrust of institutions and expertise. Her message that doctors and public‑health institutions are fundamentally untrustworthy fits with a media ecosystem where “disinformation doctors” exploit professional credentials to spread vaccine and other falsehoods, often for fame, power or profit. Public‑health experts now warn that coordinated health misinformation erodes trust, worsens outcomes, and makes it far easier for political demagogues to present themselves as lone truth‑tellers against a system that demagogues falsely claim is rigged and malevolent. (link 2, link 5, link 6)

The problem for democracy from too much distrust

American democracy depends on a critical mass of people believing that facts exist, that expertise is real, and that institutions, though imperfect, are at least somewhat accountable. Today that belief is being steadily hollowed out by a tidal wave of propaganda that intentionally blurs the line between truth and grift. Research on recent U.S. elections shows that systematic disinformation—amplified by social media and foreign and domestic actors—has fueled false beliefs about fraud, depressed confidence in vote counting, and deepened polarization. At the same time, broad public trust in the federal government has been stuck below 30 percent for nearly two decades, with recent readings in the teens and single digits for many groups. (link 7, link 8, link 9)

This trust collapse creates an opening for three interlocking flavors of kleptocratic authoritarianism. First, a personalized Trumpist dictatorship uses executive power for self‑protection and revenge, following the global pattern of “executive aggrandizement” that weakens oversight, attacks independent institutions, and normalizes election denialism. Second, a billionaire‑corporate oligarchy leverages deregulation, dark money, and captured media to tilt policy toward a tiny donor class, a trend supercharged by the Citizens United decision and subsequent campaign‑finance rulings. Third, a Christian nationalist project seeks to entrench minority rule under the banner of “taking back” a Christian nation, using structural biases like the Senate and Electoral College to impose the values of a shrinking faction on a diverse public. (link 10, link 11, link 12, link 13, link 14)

Conclusion

All three major strands of American authoritarianism now vying for long-term power, dictatorship, oligarchy and fundamentalist Christian theocracy, depend on the same dishonest information strategy. All three knowingly train people to distrust accountable expertise and democratic institutions while embracing charismatic figures who weaponize grievance and identity to deceive the public. Years of radical‑right demagoguery and organized disinformation have changed the mental environment that Americans live in. That has made sophisticated propaganda and organized grift feel normal and even virtuous to far too many Americans. They are deceived and betrayed. The Means nomination is just one corrupt, authoritarian cut among thousands. It exemplifies how far we’ve fallen when Trump’s morally depraved authoritarian government, awash in public‑health and democratic crises, selects as the nation’s doctor, a dishonest crackpot grifter whose career was built on persuading the public that its doctors cannot be trusted. (link 15, link 2)

State of the Union

 What are your predictions?

Will the Dems boycott? I don't think they should, they should attend, not create a fuss, but sit stoically silent. Might drive Trump nuts. Others think a boycott would send a louder message.

Should the men's gold metal hockey team boycott the State in solidarity with the women's gold metal hockey team who are going to boycott? 

Will he ridicule the Supremes? As they will have a front row seat.

Will he somehow be measured or go off the rails?

AND.............

Should we revisit this thread tomorrow to see how many of our predictions came true? 

Regarding the flow of wealth and power under Trump and MAGA politics

 Conclusion

Since taking office in Jan. 2025, Trump and MAGA elites in power have ruthlessly pursued a coherent, systematic transfer of power from working people, consumers, minority communities, and the general public to corporations, wealthy donors, and political elites. By defunding agencies (CFPB), stripping them of quorums (NLRB), revoking foundational legal authorities (EPA), weaponizing licensing (FCC), neutralizing enforcement (FEC, OSHA, HUD), rolling back civil rights protections (EEOC), and dismantling oversight institutions (Department of Education), the Trump-MAGA agenda has not merely shifted policy preferences. As promised in Project 2025, Trump/MAGA has structurally dismantled the institutional infrastructure that balanced private power against the public interest. The overwhelming beneficiaries are the wealthy and powerful who least need government protection. The clear losers are average Americans who most depend on it.

One could reasonably call what is happening to us, trickle-up economics and government. If that seems implausible, consider the following examples of what is going on.

The Great Upward Transfer: How Trump and MAGA Policies Shift Wealth and Power from the Public to Elites and Big Corporations

The second Trump administration, guided heavily by the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 authoritarian blueprint, has systematically weakened, defunded, or captured federal agencies whose core missions protected workers, consumers, minority communities, and the public interest. The net effect is an unprecedented, gigantic upward transfer of power and wealth from ordinary Americans to corporations, billionaires, and political allies.

National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)

On January 27, 2025, Trump fired NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox. She was the first Black woman to serve on the Board. He also terminated pro-union General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, leaving the agency without a quorum to decide cases. With the Board paralyzed, employers face no federal adjudicator for unfair labor practice charges. The new acting general counsel has moved to rescind Biden-era memos that had expanded protections against non-compete agreements and employer-led captive-audience meetings. A separate executive order stripped collective bargaining rights from over one million federal workers. The result: employers gain leverage, and workers lose their primary federal mechanism for organizing and resolving disputes. (link 1, link 2)

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)

Acting Director Russell Vought ordered all CFPB supervision, investigation, enforcement, and rulemaking to cease. DOGE associates shuttered the agency’s Washington offices, and by late 2025 Vought refused to request any funding from the Federal Reserve, threatening to defund the agency entirely. Since its creation, the CFPB had returned more than $21 billion to consumers and served as the sole independent federal enforcer of consumer financial law. Its dismantlement signals open season for predatory lenders and financial fraud. A coalition of state attorneys general has sued to block defunding, pointing out that it amounts to a huge handout by cheating American workers. (link 3, link 4)

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

In February 2026, the MAGA EPA moved to annul the 2009 Endangerment Finding—the legal foundation for all federal greenhouse gas regulation under the Clean Air Act. The White House called it “the most significant deregulatory measure in American history”. Throughout 2025, the agency rolled back 31 key environmental rules on clean air, clean water, and climate, revoked California’s vehicle-emissions waiver, and reconsidered wastewater regulations for oil and gas companies under the banner of “unleashing American energy”. The beneficiaries are fossil fuel producers and automakers, while the costs fall on public health and the climate. Rescinding the Endangerment Finding removes the legal basis for most federal greenhouse gas regulation under the Clean Air Act. That will lock in higher emissions and make national climate targets impossible to meet. Corporations and wealthy owners will accumulate hundreds of billions per year, while costs to consumers will be tens of billions/year. (link 5, link 6)

Federal Communications Commission (FCC)

Under MAGA Chairman Brendan Carr, the FCC removed net neutrality rules in July 2025 without public comment, stripping the agency of Title II authority over broadband providers. Carr has also weaponized the agency’s licensing power to coerce telecom giants Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T into abandoning DEI programs as a condition of merger and spectrum approvals. This transforms the FCC from a public-interest regulator into an instrument that enforces MAGA authoritarianism and benefits dominant carriers. By giving the largest carriers greater freedom to favor their own services and penalize rivals, while extracting anti‑DEI concessions as the price of regulatory approval, these moves channel additional monopoly/oligopoly revenues and political influence to corporate executives and investors, while leaving citizens with higher prices, fewer choices, and greater vulnerability to viewpoint discrimination online. (link 7, link 8, link 9)

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)

In January 2026, the EEOC voted 2-1 to rescind its comprehensive 2024 workplace harassment guidance without notice or comment. That move primarily targets protections for transgender and LGBTQ+ workers. Chair Andrea Lucas has declared that “biological sex is binary and immutable,” narrowing the reach of the Supreme Court’s Bostock decision. The rollback leaves employers without updated federal guidance and LGBTQ+ workers with diminished recourse against workplace harassment. In essence, MAGA policy has declared open season on LGBQT people, to the delight of anti-LGBQT bigots everywhere! (link 10, link 11)

Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)

OSHA workplace inspections dropped 20% over a six-month period in 2025 compared to 2024, and the agency lost nearly 300 employees. The administration froze pending regulations including the Heat Injury and Illness Prevention standard, proposed eliminating medical evaluations for respirator users, and sought to exempt “inherently risky” professions from general duty protections. Fewer inspections and weaker rules mean higher injury and fatality risks for workers, while employers enjoy reduced compliance costs. Employers are happy about this wonderful policy. (link 12, link 13)

Concluding remarks: If one does a little searching it is easy to see the same thing happening in every federal agency, just as Project 2025 promised. That includes the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (gutted worker protections), the Securities and Exchange Commission (killed corporate securities regulations and laws), the Federal Trade Commission (gutted anti-trust law enforcement), the Federal Election Commission (further legalization of corruption in elections), the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (gutted workplace harassment regulations; the LGBQT community targeted for legalized discrimination and harassment), the DOJ Civil Rights Division (all lawsuits over civil rights violations stopped dead in their tracks), the Internal Revenue Service (nearly all audits of large businesses stopped dead), etc. The list goes on and on just like this.

It is painfully obvious and undeniable that laws and protections for consumers, workers and the environment are being, or have been, gutted or eliminated. Trump and MAGA policies are transferring vast amounts of wealth and power from average citizens, workers and the public interest to wealthy or powerful individuals and businesses. Across the federal government, Trump has canceled 145 enforcement actions against 153 corporations in its first year. 40% of those involved consumer protection violations. Another 18 actions involved worker protection violations. This pattern of gutting enforcement while leaving laws intact constitutes a de facto authoritarian framework where corporate misconduct and law breaking faces no significant federal consequences. Trump and MAGA have declared open season on consumers, workers and the environment.

Q: Are Trump and MAGA elites in power in the federal government working to (1) protect and expand rights and protections for average citizens and democracy, or (2) are they shafting the masses while transferring wealth and power to elite people and businesses in pursuit of a kleptocratic MAGA dictatorship, or (3) something else?