Two linked chunks: Christian nationalism; Pseudoscience and racist radical right billionaires

America is changing in fundamental ways. Christina nationalism is making inroads into government and the law. That is a cherished goal of what used to be extremist crackpots, but it's now mainstream among the far right elites who control the authoritarian radical right Republican Party. Slate writes about a current example of authoritarian Christian nationalist extremism:

Texas Republicans Cite Noah’s Ark in Lawsuit Over 

State’s Right to Wage War With Mexico

Texas Republicans have no good argument to justify the state’s construction of buoys separated by circular saw blades in the Rio Grande. This dangerous stunt is a clear violation of federal law, which grants the federal government—not Texas—control over the river. So GOP lawmakers and lawyers have fallen back on a series of claims that run from disturbing to comical. They say the Rio Grande, which law enforcement navigates every day, is not “navigable.” They assert that Texas is under “invasion” by “thousands of aliens” that warrants the use of force to repel migrants, and potentially merits the invasion of Mexico by state law enforcement. And they fall back on the story of Noah’s Ark to bolster their defense. Yes, the tale of the divine deluge has been invoked in support of a death trap meant to turn back migrants fleeing violence and poverty. Just as the Bible intended.

The Department of Justice promptly sued, citing the Rivers and Harbors Appropriation Act of 1899, which prohibits “the building” of any “structure” or “obstruction” in a “navigable river” without permission from the federal government.

Abbott’s lawyers, aided by a group of mostly Texan GOP congressmen, filed their response on Wednesday, and it is, to put it mildly, not the work of serious people. .... the law prohibits all unapproved “structures” in the Rio Grande, regardless of whether they interfere with navigation.

The DOJ’s “theory” that a river is still “navigable” even when some parts become unnavigable, they declare, “would lead to absurd” outcomes because “most of Texas was once covered by seas.” But don’t just trust the geological record; also consider “the Book of Genesis,” which, taken “literally,” says “the entire world was once navigable by boats large enough to carry significant amounts of livestock.” For support, the brief cites Genesis 7:17–20, which tells the story of Noah’s Ark. Checkmate, libs.

Unauthorized border crossings, the state’s lawyers write, is tantamount to an “invasion,” and Texas “has the constitutional power to repel that invasion” to “protect the health, safety, morals, and general welfare of its citizens.” They cite a provision of the U.S. Constitution that bars states from “engag[ing] in war” without congressional approval “unless actually invaded.”

Until DJT came on the scene and accelerated and normalized the ongoing radicalization of the anti-democracy, anti-inconvenient truth GOP, radical crackpots citing Genesis in a lawsuit would not have happened. Radical Christian nationalist moral and intellectual rot is slowly but persistently eating away at democracy, the rule of law, civil liberties and secular society, at least among many of those on the political right.  

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Pseudoscience, racism, vicious propaganda -- the radical's plan for the rise of tyranny

The NIH describes the concept of eugenics and scientific racism like this: 

A NYT opinion by Jamelle Bouie, Why an Unremarkable Racist Enjoyed the Backing of Billionaires, . Bouie writes: 

.... “John D. Rockefeller Jr., the world’s wealthiest man, funded scientific research into how what he called the ‘defective human’ could be bred out of the population.” Or that, as Edwin Black explains in “War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race,” eugenicists drew from “almost unlimited corporate philanthropy to establish the biological rationales for persecution” of the so-called unfit.

I mention all of this as context for Richard Hanania, a rising star among conservative writers and intellectuals. For years before appearing in the pages of newspapers and publications like this one, Hanania wrote articles for white supremacist publications under a pseudonym. According to a recent investigation by Christopher Mathias of The Huffington Post:

[Hanania] expressed support for eugenics and the forced sterilization of “low IQ” people, who he argued were most often Black. He opposed “miscegenation” and “race-mixing.” And once, while arguing that Black people cannot govern themselves, he cited the neo-Nazi author of “The Turner Diaries,” the infamous novel that celebrates a future race war.

Hanania no longer writes for those publications. And though he may claim otherwise, it doesn’t appear that his views have changed much. He still makes explicitly racist statements and arguments, now under his own name. “I don’t have much hope that we’ll solve crime in any meaningful way,” he wrote on the platform formerly known as Twitter earlier this year. “It would require a revolution in our culture or form of government. We need more policing, incarceration, and surveillance of black people. Blacks won’t appreciate it, whites don’t have the stomach for it.” Responding to the killing of a homeless Black man on the New York City subway, Hanania wrote, “These people are animals, whether they’re harassing people in subways or walking around in suits.” 

But more interesting than either Hanania — whose recent notoriety has not lifted him too far from his previous obscurity — or his rancid views are his backers. According to Jonathan Katz, a freelance journalist, Hanania’s organization, the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology, has received at least $700,000 in support through anonymous donations. He is also a visiting scholar at the Salem Center at the University of Texas at Austin — funded by Harlan Crow. 

A whole coterie of Silicon Valley billionaires and millionaires have lent their time and attention to Hanania, as well as elevated his work. Marc Andreessen, a powerful venture capitalist, appeared on his podcast. David Sacks, a close associate of Elon Musk, wrote a glowing endorsement of Hanania’s forthcoming book. So did Peter Thiel, the billionaire supporter of right-wing causes and organizations. “D.E.I. will never d-i-e from words alone,” wrote Thiel. “Hanania shows we need the sticks and stones of government violence to exorcise the diversity demon.” Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican presidential candidate, also praised the book as a “devastating kill shot to the intellectual foundations of identity politics in America.” 

The question to ask here — the question that matters — is why an otherwise obscure racist has the ear and support of some of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley? What purpose, to a billionaire venture capitalist, do Hanania’s ideas serve? 

Look back to our history and the answer is straightforward. Just as in the 1920s (and before), the idea of race hierarchy works to naturalize the broad spectrum of inequalities, and capitalist inequality in particular. 

If some groups are simply meant to be at the bottom, then there are no questions to ask about their deprivation, isolation and poverty. There are no questions to ask about the society which produces that deprivation, isolation and poverty. And there is nothing to be done, because nothing can be done: Those people are just the way they are.  

This, in fact, has been the traditional role of supremacist ideologies in the United States — to occlude class relations and convert anxiety over survival into the jealous protection of status. The purveyors of supremacist ideologies have worked in concrete ways to bound the two things, survival and status, together; to create the illusion that the security, even prosperity, of one group rests on the exclusion of another. 

Why are billionaires backing an unremarkable racist as he tries to find a place in polite society? Because his interest in a hierarchical society built on racism serves their interest in a hierarchical society built on class — and ruled by capital.

It’s the same, then, as it ever was.

What the modern radical right Republican Party 

has done and wants to ultimately do

Points I want support by citing both chunks together in this post are:

1. Modern brass knuckles capitalism has a deep inherent streak of authoritarianism in it, just like old-fashioned laissez-faire capitalism of the late 1800s with its vicious robber baron plutocrats like Rockefeller (a capitalist Taliban, if you will); 

2. Radical American Christian nationalist elites have a deep, inherent streak of authoritarianism in them, just like radical Islamic Taliban elites have in Afghanistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia and radical Jewish Taliban elites have in Israel -- God's law is above man's law and God is cruel, bigoted and unforgiving;

3. Both the radical capitalists and the radical Christians in America rely heavily on (i) scapegoating target groups (usually prominently including, liberals and liberalism, racial minorities and the LGBQT community and "woke" policies), and (ii) dark free speech to distract, deceive, divide and foment distrust among the public; those targets and states of mind are enormously helpful to American authoritarians in making their run at far more power and wealth than they already control;  

4. Elites running the the modern Republican Party and their wealthy and/or powerful elite capitalist and Christian nationalist supporters have not just formed an intimate marriage to gain more power and wealth, the GOP has radicalized and embraced far right authoritarianism -- the party is now engaged in a vast, well-funded, coordinated propaganda and corruption effort to replace (1) meaningful democracy with deeply corrupt theocratic-plutocratic-autocratic authoritarianism, (2) principled, constitutional rule of law with rule of a corrupt Christian Taliban and corrupt plutocratic Taliban backed by a corrupt tyrant, (3) civil liberties with power flowing from the people to elites and special interests, and (4) a principled constitutional rule of law with an unprincipled rule of God, plutocrats and/or the tyrant; and

5. The radical right authoritarian plan for America is well underway and may already at a point where it is unstoppable, although a couple of powerful forces are beginning to mobilize in possibly meaningful opposition, e.g., American population demographics and attendant voting behavior seems to favor defense of democracy and popular civil liberties over radical right tyranny, oppression and corruption.

Q: Is that analysis wrong, flawed, hyperbolic and/or crackpot? 

Bits: The gun version of fentanyl; Theocracy rising in Israel; Global warming is a hoax?

Gun switches convert semi-automatic pistols to fully automatic machine guns.  

If a gun safety law that bans switches come into effect, it is reasonable to think that gun nuts would haul it into federal court court and eventually the radical right Republican US Supreme Court would find the ban to be an unconstitutional burden to bear arms. The new test is whether the weapon at issue was regulated according to the traditions and history of the US. By that easily cherry-pickable test, essentially all modern gun safety laws are unconstitutional burdens on citizen's right to bear arms. A NYT article comments:

The growing use of switches, which are also known as auto sears, is evident in real-time audio tracking of gunshots around the country, data shows. Audio sensors monitored by a public safety technology company, Sound Thinking, recorded 75,544 rounds of suspected automatic gunfire in 2022 in portions of 127 cities covered by its microphones, according to data compiled at the request of The New York Times. That was a 49 percent increase from the year before.

Switches come in various forms, but most are small Lego-like plastic blocks, about an inch square, that can be easily manufactured on a 3-D printer and sell for around $200.

“The gang wars and street fighting that used to be with knives, and then pistols, is now to a great extent being waged with automatic weapons,” said Andrew M. Luger, the U.S. attorney for Minnesota.

Oh great, killing technology advances. Some humans sure do know how to kill humans and enjoy it. It's probably been that way since a few centuries after the rise of modern humans, maybe sooner. Here's a fun 29 second video:

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A Taliban consisting of rabid Jewish extremist theocrats is forcing its way toward control of Israeli society. That movement looks a lot like its Christian counterpart in the US, Christian nationalism. As usual, deranged male ideologues dominate a push to move a modern society back to the Dark Ages. The NYT writes:

An ultra-Orthodox Jew walking past a sign in Bnei Brak, Israel, 

urging men to not look at women in the street

(I don't want to look at that anywhere)

The trains from Tel Aviv were packed one evening last month when Inbal Boxerman, a 40-year-old mother of two, was blocked by a wall of men as she tried to board. One of them told her that women were not allowed on — the car was for men only.

Ms. Boxerman was stunned. It was a public train operated by Israel Railways, and segregated seating is illegal in the country. The men stopping her appeared to be protesters going home from a rally supporting the governing coalition, which includes extremist religious and far-right parties pushing for more sex segregation and a return to more traditional gender roles.

“I said, ‘For real?’” said Ms. Boxerman, who works in marketing. “And my friend came up and she also said, ‘Are you for real?’ But they just laughed and said, ‘Wait for the next train — you can sit in the way back.’ And then the doors slammed shut.”

Public transportation is the latest front of a culture war in Israel over the status of women in a society that is sharply divided between a secular majority and politically powerful minority of ultra-Orthodox Jews, who frown on the mixing of women and men in public.  

Supporters of expanding the rabbinical courts’ jurisdiction — such as Matan Kahana, a former religious affairs minister who remains in Parliament but is not in the governing coalition — argue that as a pluralistic society, Israel should tolerate sex segregation in some arenas to accommodate the ultra-Orthodox, for whom it is a way of life.  

“I’m all for the rabbinical courts — they are a symbol of Israeli sovereignty in our own land and our eternal connection to Hebrew law,” he said on Twitter earlier this year.  

One of the first bills put forth by the coalition’s ultra-Orthodox Shas party proposed jailing women for six months if they visited the holy site of the Western Wall in Jerusalem in “inappropriate” or immodest clothing. Although the bill drew so much outrage that it was dropped, the coalition has taken other steps that worry women.

Q: What is the difference between what the Israeli Jewish Taliban and the American Christian Taliban are trying to do?

A: Religion and not much else. 

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Notice: Republican candidates running for president

The Hill reports:

GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy railed against climate-conscious business policy at an Iowa State Fair appearance Saturday.

In an fireside chat with Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, Ramaswamy said that environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) business policies are among the “grave threats to liberty,” and said “the climate change agenda” is a “hoax.”

“They’re using our money… to implement social and environmental agendas through the backdoor. Through corporate America,” Ramaswamy said. “Using your retirement funds and your investment accounts to vote for racial equity audits or Scope 3 emissions caps that you didn’t know they were using your money to do, and that Congress would have never passed through the front door.”

That's just a quick reminder that for the most part, the radical right Republican Party is pro-pollution, pro-climate change, pro-species extinction, corrupt, morally rotted, authoritarian, anti-climate science and some other bad stuff. At this point in view of all available evidence, one can argue that those are assertions of fact, not opinion.

Qs: Are those assertions fact or are they still in the realm of contested opinion? What additional evidence would be needed to move one, some or all of them from opinion to fact?  

Why some people are willing to believe conspiracy theories

 WASHINGTON — People can be prone to believe in conspiracy theories due to a combination of personality traits and motivations, including relying strongly on their intuition, feeling a sense of antagonism and superiority toward others, and perceiving threats in their environment, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

The results of the study paint a nuanced picture of what drives conspiracy theorists, according to lead author Shauna Bowes, a doctoral student in clinical psychology at Emory University.

“Conspiracy theorists are not all likely to be simple-minded, mentally unwell folks—a portrait which is routinely painted in popular culture,” said Bowes. “Instead, many turn to conspiracy theories to fulfill deprived motivational needs and make sense of distress and impairment.”

The research was published online in the journal Psychological Bulletin.

Previous research on what drives conspiracy theorists had mostly looked separately at personality and motivation, according to Bowes. The current study aimed to examine these factors together to arrive at a more unified account of why people believe in conspiracy theories.

To do so, the researchers analyzed data from 170 studies involving over 158,000 participants, mainly from the United States, the United Kingdom and Poland. They focused on studies that measured participants’ motivations or personality traits associated with conspiratorial thinking.

The researchers found that overall, people were motivated to believe in conspiracy theories by a need to understand and feel safe in their environment and a need to feel like the community they identify with is superior to others.

Even though many conspiracy theories seem to provide clarity or a supposed secret truth about confusing events, a need for closure or a sense of control were not the strongest motivators to endorse conspiracy theories. Instead, the researchers found some evidence that people were more likely to believe specific conspiracy theories when they were motivated by social relationships. For instance, participants who perceived social threats were more likely to believe in events-based conspiracy theories, such as the theory that the U.S. government planned the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, rather than an abstract theory that, in general, governments plan to harm their citizens to retain power.

“These results largely map onto a recent theoretical framework advancing that social identity motives may give rise to being drawn to the content of a conspiracy theory, whereas people who are motivated by a desire to feel unique are more likely to believe in general conspiracy theories about how the world works,” according to Bowes.

The researchers also found that people with certain personality traits, such as a sense of antagonism toward others and high levels of paranoia, were more prone to believe conspiracy theories. Those who strongly believed in conspiracy theories were also more likely to be insecure, paranoid, emotionally volatile, impulsive, suspicious, withdrawn, manipulative, egocentric and eccentric.

The Big Five personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness and neuroticism) had a much weaker relationship with conspiratorial thinking, though the researchers said that does not mean that general personality traits are irrelevant to a tendency to believe in conspiracy theories.

Bowes said that future research should be conducted with an awareness that conspiratorial thinking is complicated, and that there are important and diverse variables that should be explored in the relations among conspiratorial thinking, motivation and personality to understand the overall psychology behind conspiratorial ideas.

https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2023/06/why-people-believe-conspiracy-theories

Science bits: Pressures on adolescents; Increasing male sex drive! 😮; Making mosquitos deaf

A social science research paper, The Perils of Not Being Attractive or Athletic: Pathways to Adolescent Adjustment Difficulties Through Escalating Unpopularity, considers factors that appear to lead some children into unpleasant feelings and situations:

Adolescents who lack traits valued by peers are at risk for adjustment difficulties but the mechanisms responsible for deteriorating well-being have yet to be identified. The present study examines processes whereby low athleticism and low attractiveness give rise to adolescent adjustment difficulties. .... The results indicated that the possession of stigmatized traits predicted escalating unpopularity, which, in turn, predicted increasing adjustment difficulties. Similar indirect associations did not emerge with rejection as a mediator, underscoring the unique role of power and prominence (and the lack thereof) in socioemotional development. The findings underscore the adjustment risks and interpersonal challenges that confront children and adolescents who lack traits valued by peers.

I suppose this is not a surprise. What is surprising is that, if this paper is a good indicator, this line of research is a lot less advanced than I imagined. This is puzzling.

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Researchers have found two clusters of neurons in the brain of mice that mediate male sex drive. The Messenger writes: 

A Discovery in Mice Brains Could Solve Sexual Disorders in Men

The study found that stimulating a neural circuit makes mice try to mate with whatever is nearby—including inanimate objects

A neural connection in mice may hold the key to helping men struggling with sexual disorders like libidos that are too high—or too low.

While different parts of the brain have long been known to play a role in sexual behavior, Stanford Medicine scientists have found a single circuit involving two different neural clusters that they say plays an integral role in the mating behavior of male mice.

“The circuit seems to be the central component of male sexual behavior that also elicits desire and also leads to reward or pleasure-type behavior,” said Professor Nirao Shah, the study’s lead author.

The two clusters are POATacr1, a region in the preoptic hypothalamus (a portion of the brain known to be involved in sexual behavior, as well as bodily functions like temperature regulation) and BNSTprTac1, which is in the amygdala (the part of the brain that regulates emotions and plays a role in recognizing potential mates).

By stimulating the connection between POATacr1 cells and BNSTprTac1 cells, the researchers found that the mice would try to mate with whatever was nearby—including other male mice or even inanimate objects. They found this was the case even if the mice had just ejaculated; normally, male mice have a refractory period that lasts five days after mating, but in the experiment, that period was shortened to a single second.  

“We think this circuit does underlie male sexual behavior. I think there are going to be other components to the circuit naturally,” he said. “For example, we don't know which specific sensory neurons sense the external cues in the world. But what we've identified seems to be a central essential set of components.”

I always suspected that POATacr1 and BNSTprTac1 were the culprits. I need to buy some stock in male escort companies. Their stock is going to shoot through the roof, so to speak.

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Malaria researchers have found that if male mosquitos cannot hear females in flight, they cannot locate mating partners and the population collapses. The authors write:

The acoustic detection of mating partners in swarms by malaria mosquitoes constitutes a superb example of the adaptation of a sensory organ -the mosquito ear- to a transient change in the sensory ecology. Malaria mosquito swarms are brief and transitory aggregations of up to a thousand mosquitoes that take place every sunset. Within the swarm, mosquitoes are exposed to an acoustically challenging, noisy environment. It is against this noisy acoustic backdrop that male mosquitoes identify and locate the flight tones of their female mating partners. 

Using transcriptomics, we identify a complex network of candidate neuromodulators regulating mosquito hearing in the species Anopheles gambiae. Among them, octopamine stands out as an auditory modulator during swarm time. In-depth analysis of octopamine auditory function shows that it affects the mosquito ear on multiple levels: it modulates the tuning and stiffness of the flagellar sound receiver and controls the erection of antennal fibrillae. We show that two α- and β-adrenergic-like octopamine receptors drive octopamine’s auditory roles and demonstrate that the octopaminergic auditory control system can be targeted by insecticides. Our findings highlight octopamine as key for mosquito hearing and mating partner detection and as a potential novel target for mosquito control. 

In other words, researchers are now looking for insecticides that targets mosquito hearing. Instead of the typical poisons that are often or usually environmental toxins, it is possible that new insecticides might be less toxic, or maybe even non-toxic to most other animals. 

A radical right legal analysis drives stake into DJT's heart -- but is it credible?

After a years of research and analysis, two law professors who are aligned with the authoritarian, radical right Federalist Society (FS) are publishing a paper in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. The legal analysis concludes that DJT is ineligible to hold elected office unless congress grants him amnesty. The paper will be released next year (the abstract is here). The legal analysis conclude that DJT is ineligible to hold office in light of his role in the 1/6 coup attempt. The NYT comments on the paper: 

Two law professors active in the Federalist Society wrote that the original meaning of the 14th Amendment makes Donald Trump ineligible to hold government office

Two prominent conservative law professors have concluded that Donald J. Trump is ineligible to be president under a provision of the Constitution that bars people who have engaged in an insurrection from holding government office. The professors are active members of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal group, and proponents of originalism, the method of interpretation that seeks to determine the Constitution’s original meaning.

The professors — William Baude of the University of Chicago and Michael Stokes Paulsen of the University of St. Thomas — studied the question for more than a year and detailed their findings in a long article to be published next year in The University of Pennsylvania Law Review.

“When we started out, neither of us was sure what the answer was,” Professor Baude said. “People were talking about this provision of the Constitution. We thought: ‘We’re constitutional scholars, and this is an important constitutional question. We ought to figure out what’s really going on here.’ And the more we dug into it, the more we realized that we had something to add.”

He summarized the article’s conclusion: “Donald Trump cannot be president — cannot run for president, cannot become president, cannot hold office — unless two-thirds of Congress decides to grant him amnesty for his conduct on Jan. 6.” 
There is, the article said, “abundant evidence” that Mr. Trump engaged in an insurrection, including by setting out to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election, trying to alter vote counts by fraud and intimidation, encouraging bogus slates of competing electors, pressuring the vice president to violate the Constitution, calling for the march on the Capitol and remaining silent for hours during the attack itself. 

“It is unquestionably fair to say that Trump ‘engaged in’ the Jan. 6 insurrection through both his actions and his inaction,” the article said.

What reasonable minds can think when trust is lost

Necessary context is this: Dogma and tactics of the powerful FS organization are aggressive, radical right, morally corrupt (including deeply mendacious and opaque), authoritarian, theocratic and plutocratic. The FS apparently is mostly responsible for selection of all six of the radical plutocratic, Christian nationalist Republican judges now sitting bench at the USSC. Its power, influence and bigoted authoritarianism should not be underestimated, no matter how hard the FS denies this. How one can rationally see this is as follows: 

1. The radical right FS has concluded that DJT not only cannot win the election in 2024, he is seriously damaging the FS agenda to kill secular democracy and replace it with some form of a corrupt plutocratic-theocratic dictatorship

2. Because of that fear, it called on its loyal law experts to gin up an argument that tries to stop DJT from seriously damaging the corrupt, authoritarian FS agenda, and "conservatism" (authoritarian radicalism) generally, by running for the presidency in 2024

3. But if the FS had decided that DJT was helpful to its tyranny & corruption agenda, it would have ginned up an argument that tries to empower DJT to advance the tyranny agenda

Even if the analysis the two law experts adduced is correct, one can reasonably believe their intent is cynical, corrupt and anti-democratic. That is because the group they support and align with, the FS, is cynical, corrupt and anti-democratic authoritarian. Maybe the legal analysis here is right, but it is right only in service to corruption, tyranny and bad government. 

Maybe this analysis is designed not to have any impact on DJT, but instead is intended to rehabilitate the crappy image the FS has earned for itself. That strikes me as the most plausible explanation.

Qs: Is that analysis too cynical and over the top, or is it plausible? Does the opinion even matter one way or another, e.g., in view of how transactional, cynical, immoral and unprincipled Republicans in congress are?

Bits: A scary GOP plan to protect DJT; Starving the beast; School attendance disaster

The elites driving radical right Republican Party farther into extremism are creative little devils. Truthout reports on one scheme by which the radical right Republicans in control of the House of Representatives can immunize DJT against prosecution. This might actually work. Truthout writes:

Matt Gaetz Has a Plan for Blocking Jack Smith’s Indictments of Trump

Gaetz believes a select committee should be established to grant Trump immunity from prosecution for his crimes 

Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Florida), an ardent loyalist to Donald Trump, has suggested a plan to disrupt the dual investigations into the former president led by Department of Justice (DOJ) special counsel Jack Smith.

Unfortunately for Gaetz, however, the plan requires Trump to refrain from lying during his testimony before a House panel in Congress.

Gaetz has presented a number of strategies for how he and other Trump allies could protect the former president as he faces dozens of federal indictment charges. Last week, for example, he suggested that Republicans subpoena Smith to appear before the House Judiciary Committee, noting that if Smith refused to do so, he could be held in criminal contempt of Congress. Last month, he suggested that Congress vote to “defund” the special counsel’s office, limiting additional actions that Smith could take against the former president.

Gaetz explained his latest plan this week while discussing Trump’s most recent indictments, relating to his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, with right-wing radio host Charlie Kirk. In order to end the investigation and other federal charges (from the Mar-a-Lago documents case, or any other future charges), the House of Representatives would have to grant Trump whistleblower protection status, Gaetz said.

Afterward, “you can actually bring President Trump in to give testimony to the Congress and, in doing so, immunize him,” he went on.  

Gaetz noted that House rules require a committee to have a “supermajority vote” in order to grant someone “full immunity” — but he had a plan for that as well.

“Speaker McCarthy could set up a select committee tomorrow,” Gaetz said, adding that if the committee was made up mostly of Republican lawmakers, they could achieve a supermajority vote.  

The plan, as explained by Gaetz, would require the House to establish a select committee. McCarthy cannot do so on his own — he needs a majority vote in the House, which would require nearly every Republican in the chamber to cooperate with the scheme, given the GOP’s extremely narrow majority. The plan would also likely be challenged in courts by the DOJ, which may argue against the legality of granting Trump immunity in a way that is so transparently corrupt.  

Gaetz admitted that the scheme would require Trump to actually testify before the theoretical select committee — and that new problems could arise from him doing so, such as Trump, a well-documented liar, perjuring himself.

Think about that for a minute or two. First, Democrats in the House cannot block this plan -- they need some Republicans to defect. Second, House Republicans could probably vote to change the rule from a supermajority vote to a simple majority, if that was deemed necessary. Third, once DJT is immunized, he could just keep lying or say as little as possible, if he had the discipline to do so -- prosecution for perjury is better than prosecution for treason, etc. (the crimes he is currently being prosecuted for). Fourth, there is no guarantee that if the DoJ did challenge the corrupt radical GOP immunity scheme in court that the corrupt radical Republican US Supreme Court would see it as corrupt.

This one really creeps me out.

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Early warning - starving the beast: Heads up folks, the USSC (US Supreme Court) has picked up another nuclear weapon to play with. This one could blow government and democracy to smithereens. The Hill writes:

Historic Supreme Court case could imperil the entire US tax code

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear one of the most important tax cases in history, which could either greenlight the constitutionality of an economically disastrous wealth tax, or destroy critical parts of the U.S. tax system.

Unless the justices take a middle road and define the 16th Amendment according to the history and traditions of the U.S. tax system, the case will result in bad law and worse outcomes.

The case (Moore v. United States) concerns the constitutionality of the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act (TCJA). The act imposed a mandatory repatriation tax on pre-2018 profits that companies and some U.S. shareholders stored abroad. Previously, foreign business profits went untaxed until they returned to U.S. shareholders. But under mandatory repatriation tax, passed as part of Republicans’ comprehensive international tax reform, profits were taxed even if shareholders never received the income.

The court faces a difficult question: Is this mandatory tax on foreign profits that shareholders never actually received constitutional under the 16th Amendment? The Supreme Court has maintained since 1920 that income must be “clearly realized” for it to be taxable. Yet the U.S. tax code is riddled with taxes on unrealized income.

For example, the main tenet of partnership tax law is that partners are taxed on income allocated to them for tax purposes, whether or not they actually receive the income. The Supreme Court upheld this principle in 1938, less than three decades after the 16th Amendment was ratified. Since 1962, the United States has also taxed the passive and highly mobile income of overseas corporations controlled by U.S. shareholders, whether or not the income is distributed to them, to prevent aggressive tax avoidance strategies. The TCJA’s mandatory repatriation tax fits within this existing international tax regime.

Although The Hill describes it as an economically disastrous wealth tax, I'm not sure that is the case. For decades, wealthy people and special interests have been buying people in congress to get them to pass laws that legalize corruption and tax evasion. That legalized corruption campaign has been worth trillions of dollars, not merely hundreds of billions.  

By now it is clear that the the radical right Republican judges on the USSC (i) are dominated by a virulent, enraged hate of secular, transparent (honest) government, and (ii) they have abandoned precedent and intellectual principle to get what their ideologies demand in their court decisions. In view of that, they just might mostly obliterate the government's ability to collect taxes. That result would be completely in accord with the radical right's decades-long strategy called Starve the Beast.

One source commented about the decades-long Starve the Beast government killer movement: 

Republicans still trying to starve the beast

The GOP, which didn’t have much trouble supporting deep tax cuts during the presidency of Donald Trump, is now worried about the federal deficit. Republicans’ answer, once again, is to cut domestic spending.

After that, they’ll propose more tax cuts, which will make the federal deficit and debt even larger, which will require — you guessed it — further cuts in domestic spending.

Republicans never look for additional revenue. And they really don’t care how tax cuts will impact the overall economy. The Trump tax cuts were enacted during a period of solid economic growth, not during a recession, when additional government spending can be necessary to jump-start the economy.

No, the GOP is always looking for opportunities to cut spending because cutting spending means shrinking government, which is really the goal of many Republicans in the first place. It’s the “starve the beast” strategy that conservatives have long pursued.**  

The original meaning in Black Law’s dictionary from 1910 claims that income must be “received” to be defined as such, and that any income that has not been received cannot be taxed. As much as the justices want to preserve longstanding principles of the U.S. tax system, they cannot do it without setting precedent against the original meaning of “income” and authorizing a wealth tax.

** "Bipartisanship is another name for date rape. .... We are trying to change the tones in the state capitals-and turn them toward bitter nastiness and partisanship." -- Grover Norquist, prominent radical right Republican government and tax hater, quoted here in 2003 (Also this: In 2001 and again this year, the Bush administration has launched pre-emptive attacks on the national treasury designed to leave the U.S. government so deep in debt it poses no threat to the conservative status quo. Its motto is: Stop government before it can help again.)

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A strange but powerful absenteeism phenomenon has struck American public schools. Millions of students are simply not showing up for school. The Ap writes:

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. – When in-person school resumed after pandemic closures, Rousmery Negrón and her 11-year-old son both noticed a change: School seemed less welcoming.

Parents were no longer allowed in the building without appointments, she said, and punishments were more severe. Everyone seemed less tolerant, more angry. Negrón's son told her he overheard a teacher mocking his learning disabilities, calling him an ugly name

Her son didn’t want to go to school anymore. And she didn’t feel he was safe there.

He would end up missing more than five months of sixth grade.

Across the country, students have been absent at record rates since schools reopened during the pandemic. More than a quarter of students missed at least 10% of the 2021-22 school year, making them chronically absent, according to the most recent data available. Before the pandemic, only 15% of students missed that much school.

All told, an estimated 6.5 million additional students became chronically absent, according to the data, which was compiled by Stanford University education professor Thomas Dee in partnership with The Associated Press. .... Absences were more prevalent among Latino, Black and low-income students, according to Dee’s analysis. 

CA = 30.0% chronically absent

OH = 30.2%, FL = 32.3%, Al = 17.9%, MA = 27.7%, AK = 48.6%

Kids are staying home for myriad reasons — finances, housing instability, illness, transportation issues, school staffing shortages, anxiety, depression, bullying and generally feeling unwelcome at school.

It looks like the bigotry, rot and vulgarity of intentionally divisive, rancid US politics is spilling over into the rest of American society. My analysis: 

1. Rancid US politics, including attacks on public education and teachers, has spilled over and is one part of the cause, ~40% responsible

2. To the extent politics is relevant, the radical right and its propagandists (Faux News, the GOP, etc.), supporters and enablers  = ~80% responsible

Everyone and everything else = ~20% responsible