Improvement in diagnosing depression; Global cooling biomolecule discovery

Researchers at Stanford have published a study that has (1) uncovered six different types of depression, and (2) found that some of the different types respond to standard anti-depression treatments better than others:

A Stanford Medicine study reveals six subtypes of depression, identified through brain imaging and machine learning. These subtypes exhibit unique brain activity patterns, helping predict which patients will benefit from specific antidepressants or behavioral therapies. This approach aims to personalize and improve depression treatment efficacy.

Better methods for matching patients with treatments are desperately needed, said the study’s senior author, Leanne Williams, PhD, the Vincent V.C. Woo Professor, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, and the director of Stanford Medicine’s Center for Precision Mental Health and Wellness.

Brain imaging combined with a type of AI called machine learning can reveal subtypes of depression and anxiety. The study, to be published today (June 17) in the journal Nature Medicine, sorts depression into six biological subtypes, or “biotypes,” and identifies treatments that are more likely or less likely to work for three of these subtypes.

Around 30% of people with depression have what’s known as treatment-resistant depression, meaning multiple kinds of medication or therapy have failed to improve their symptoms. And for up to two-thirds of people with depression, treatment fails to fully reverse their symptoms to healthy levels.

That’s in part because there’s no good way to know which antidepressant or type of therapy could help a given patient. Medications are prescribed through a trial-and-error method, so it can take months or years to land on a drug that works — if it ever happens. And spending so long trying treatment after treatment, only to experience no relief, can worsen depression symptoms.

“To our knowledge, this is the first time we’ve been able to demonstrate that depression can be explained by different disruptions to the functioning of the brain,” Williams said. “In essence, it’s a demonstration of a personalized medicine approach for mental health based on objective measures of brain function.”

Given how primitive and ineffective depression treatments generally are, this seems like an important and promising avenue of research to pursue further. For new patients who present with depression, an initial brain scan could point to treatments that have a better chance of offering some relief sooner. This research starts to debunk the idea of one size fits all, trial and error for treating depression. I hope this pans out and turns out to be the start of a major advance in treating depression.  

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STD reports about ocean a climate-cooling compound that some ocean algae make:

Global Cooling Breakthrough: Scientists Discover 

Ocean Algae’s Crucial Climate Impact

Researchers have identified Pelagophyceae algae as significant producers of DMSP, a compound crucial for climate regulation. This discovery suggests higher than expected levels of DMSP and its byproduct DMS, impacting global climate cooling.

The researchers identified the bloom-forming Pelagophyceae algae as potentially abundant and important producers of a compound called dimethylsulfoniopropionate, or DMSP.

Co-lead author Professor Jonathan Todd, of UEA’s School of Biological Sciences, said: “The Pelagophyceae are amongst the most abundant algae on Earth, yet they were not previously known as important producers of DMSP.

“This discovery is exciting because DMSP is an abundant antistress compound, food source for other microorganisms, and major source of climate-cooling gases.”

Every year, billions of tonnes of DMSP are produced in the Earth’s oceans by marine microorganisms, helping them to survive by protecting against various stresses like changes in salinity, cold, high pressure, and oxidative stress.

Importantly, DMSP is the main source of a climate active gas called dimethylsulfide (DMS), which is known as the smell of the seaside.

When DMS is released into the atmosphere, DMS oxidation products help form clouds that reflect sunlight away from the Earth, effectively cooling the planet.

This natural process is essential for regulating the Earth’s climate and is also hugely important for the global sulfur cycle, representing the main route by which sulfur from the oceans is returned to land.

Interesting. The smell of the ocean comes from DMS. 

If more DMSP and DMS can be coaxed out of the oceans, this might turn out to be an important bit of knowledge for dealing with global warming.

News: Christians against CN make a noise; FA resource page on CN; A MSM criticism

Newsweek reports that some real Christians are starting to get vexed with faux Christian theocrats (Christian nationalists) stinking up the church and giving their religion a bad name:

Thousands Sign Christian Petition Demanding 

Samuel Alito Resign: 'Unfit'

A petition created by Faithful America is nearing its goal of signatures on Sunday as they demand Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito to resign amid his recent controversies.

In its petition from Wednesday, with a goal of 15,000 signatures, Faithful America, an organization of Christians supporting social justice causes while opposing "Christian nationalism," is demanding the conservative justice resign after he was heard in a secret recording agreeing that the United States should return "to a place of godliness" as well as for two flags that were previously flown outside the justice's home.

"You are unfit to serve on our nation's highest court, and we demand that you immediately resign...This man is far from impartial and cannot remain a justice on our nation's highest court. As a grassroots movement of Christians, let's join together to demand that Justice Alito immediately resign," the petition states.

You can sign the petition here. They are going to need a heck of a lot more than 15,000 signatures.

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The Faithful America website has a really great page devoted to describing and fighting against CN (Christian nationalism). Here are two snippets of info:

What is Christian nationalism, and why is it a threat?

As defined by multiple sociologists and academic researchers, Christian nationalism is a political ideology and cultural framework that claims America was founded to be a "Christian nation" where Christians should receive special legal treatment not available to non-Christians. This merges the previously separate Christian and American identities, proclaiming that the only true Americans are the country's Christians (and a specific subset of conservative Christians, at that). This means that Christian nationalism is antisemitic and Islamophobic, and poses a threat to the religious freedom of America's Jews, Muslims, Indigenous peoples, mainline Protestant Christians, and more.

Is Christian nationalism Christian?

No, Christian nationalism is a political ideology and a form of nationalism, not a religion or a form of Christianity. It directly contradicts the Gospel in multiple ways, and is therefore considered by many Christian leaders to be a heresy. While Jesus taught love, peace, and truth, Christian nationalism leads to hatred, political violence, and QAnon misinformation. While Jesus resisted the devil's temptations of authority in the wilderness, Christian nationalism seeks to seize power for its followers at all costs. And while Christianity is a 2,000-year-old global tradition that transcends all borders, Christian nationalism seeks to merge faith with a single, 247-year-old, pluralistic nation.

Woof! Those Christians are getting to be a feisty lot!

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From the Milquetoast MSM Files: 

A retired federal judge says Judge Cannon 

appears to show 'favoritism' toward Trump

Judge Aileen Cannon, who is overseeing the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump, continues to make decisions that puzzle many legal observers.

Last month, Cannon delayed the start of the trial indefinitely. She's taken months to make routine procedural decisions.

Retired judge Shira Scheindlin: The main thing that stood out to me is how she has constantly caused delay in the case instead of moving it forward. She's done that in, I would say, two ways. One is her inability to rule in an efficient manner. She holds onto motions. She keeps them pending. She can't seem to decide things. Most experienced judges, which of course I considered myself after 27 years, try to know which motions really require further consideration and argument and which, you know, instinctively you could say frankly, one word: denied. And you can rule from the bench.

The second thing that stands out to me is what appears to me to be her dislike of the government and her favoritism toward the defense. I'm not saying that that's going to, in the end, determine how she rules on everything, but she seems to have a visceral dislike of Jack Smith and his team. She's constantly criticizing them. She's constantly being sharp and sarcastic with them, and she almost never treats the defense that way.

Appears to show favoritism? Legal observers are puzzled? For real? Geez, what planet are we on here?

If something walks, talks, looks, smells and acts like a judge showing blatant favoritism to a party in a trial in their courtroom, it is the judge showing blatant favoritism. What planet do the elites in the MSM live on? It sure isn't Earth.

Q1: What the hell is wrong with the MSM, e.g., is it corrupted, co-opted, inept, biased, clueless, and/or something else? (this dreary news reporting is from NPR) 

Q2: Do you believe the following sentiment is mostly true, false or ambiguous?

(FWIW, I believe it is usually mostly true 

and in the case of DJT, completely true)

Thinking about DJT; Dem messaging; Misc.

Lately the news has been pretty much the same. Trump lies. Trump slanders. Trump is corrupt. Trump hates the rule of law applied to himself. Trump hates democracy, but lies about it. Trump has dementia, but Biden is old. Trump says something outrageous and the MSM gives him free air time and support by reporting his nonsense. Trump etc. 

It does not seem worth it to post about it much any more. By now, either people see the gravity and depth of America’s very real, very corrupt, authoritarian radical right anti-democracy threat or they don’t or can’t. Either they can see the rise of kleptocratic plutocracy, Christian fundamentalist theocracy and Trump-style autocracy or they cannot or will not. People know Trump or they do not.

Maybe a lot of Americans knowingly support the fall of their democracy, rule of law and civil liberties. I bet that very few of them would say that, maybe ~2%, while vehemently asserting (i) they are doing the opposite of what they are doing, while (ii) the Dems are doing mostly the opposite of what they are doing.

These are strange, unpleasant days. Like the very real reality of Trump, the very real power of decades of radical right dark free speech, planning and quiet, focused work against democracy and civil liberties cannot be denied. American authoritarianism has crystallized around its leader. He means to use all of his power and cause as much damage to democracy pro-public interest government as he possibly can, while serving himself and elites as much as possible with government on serving them.

To some non-trivial extent, the leadership of the Democratic Party does not appear to fully understand what America faces from the authoritarian radical right. That seems to be especially true of Joe Biden. But maybe his milquetoast style of politics masks a deeper understanding of the threat than his behavior conveys. Regardless of what he might know, we are stuck with Joe and his rather inept, probably partly subverted center to center-right Democratic Party.

Among the polling intelligentsia, there is a bit of evidence of a recent shift of sentiment away from the election being a coin toss to Trump probably being the winner if the election were to be held today. This far out, it is not clear whether that means anything or not. That may be just a minority view. Maybe it could vanish in the wake of a gigantic October surprise like Trump dropping dead from old age.

Q: Is it more useful than not to keep posting bad stuff that we already know about Trump?

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Vox reports about a common complaint about weak or ineffective Democratic Party messaging:

Biden’s overlooked campaign to protect Americans from Big Business

Many Americans are focused on inflation, but from Big Tech to junk fees, Biden is advancing a pro-consumer agenda

Through his executive authority, Biden has taken steps to combat “junk fees” — hidden fees that make everything from airline bookings to concert tickets more expensive than their sticker price, but also just feel like shady corporate attempts to get the better of consumers. He has also required companies to provide more transparency in their pricing.

His administration has also tackled monopolies like it’s the Roosevelt era, filing a flurry of sweeping lawsuits against major companies, including four Big Tech companies, on the grounds that they are harming competition in their industries and, therefore, American consumers.

Though those lawsuits have yet to be decided, they have already put companies on watch and, if successful, could create new legal precedents that would protect consumers well after Biden leaves office.  

In both its use of executive action and litigation, the Biden administration has been “more aggressive on antitrust than any previous administration in at least the last 50 to 75 years,” said Andre Delattre, who directs national campaign programs at the Public Interest Network, a public interest advocacy group.

It is fair to say that if Trump is put back in power and he moves to implement Project 2025 with authoritarian radical right Republicans in control of the US Senate, everything Biden has done will be attacked and reversed as much as possible, as fast as possible.

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Trump threatens to cut US aid to Ukraine quickly if reelected -- Ukraine’s allies are scrambling to secure long-term aid for Kyiv amid fears about a second Trump term -- Former U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday blasted the scale of U.S. support for Ukraine and said that if he is reelected in November he would immediately “have that settled.”

There, that foreign policy issue is settled.

Trump challenges Biden to a cognitive test but confuses the name of the doctor who tested him -- Donald Trump has suggested President Joe Biden “should have to take a cognitive test,” only to confuse who administered the test to him in the next sentence

Lara Trump is building an army of ‘100,000 poll watchers and over 500 lawyers’ to ‘deploy’ across America in November -- These volunteers will have three missions: Watch people vote, watch people count votes, and sue anybody who gets in the way. “I believe if we have a free, fair and transparent election that there’s no question we’ll all be going to bed early on November 5,” she said. Following her remarks — which were full of militaristic language such as “deploy” and “battleground” — the assembled volunteers (around 75 in total) began “training” as potential poll watchers. The press was not allowed to view the training, The Post’s request to view training materials was declined.

Actually, those poll watchers have a fourth mission: Intimidate as many Democratic voters as possible. Notice the secrecy? The radical right has always worked in as much secrecy as possible. It has lied as much as possible about its agenda and tactics, e.g., FTZWS (flood the zone with shit).

Neo-Nazi who protested drag shows has been arrested on child porn charges -- The Nationalist Social Club-131, a neo-Nazi group, is known for harassing drag queen story hours and calling queens “pedo scum.” Now one of its members has been charged with possessing child pornography. The Nationalist Social Club-131, a neo-Nazi group, is known for harassing drag queen story hours and calling queens “pedo scum.” Now one of its members has been charged with possessing child pornography.

Some of those Trump supporters are feisty little stinkers. Hypocrites too! 🤨

Bannon vows Trump’s opponents will be prosecuted in a second term -- Steve Bannon, a longtime ally of Donald Trump, vowed investigations and prosecutions of those who have probed the former president and his political allies, declaring at a conservative gathering Saturday that Inauguration Day in 2025 will be “accountability day.” “You are going to be investigated, prosecuted and incarcerated,” he said. “This has nothing to do with retribution. It has nothing to do with revenge. Because retribution and revenge might be another order of magnitude. This has to do with justice.” Bannon was referring to recent comments by Trump vowing to be his supporters’ “retribution” and saying that “sometimes revenge can be justified.”

Geez, all of that sounds like it has everything to do with retribution and revenge and little or nothing to do with justice. Whatever, that is just standard authoritarian radical right messaging.

New history book chronicles the overturning of Roe: (Interview with the authors)

The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America, by Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer, is the first major history that describes and analyzes the forces and events that led to the reversal of Roe. Though it provides the back-story and context of the anti-abortion movement from the 1970s to present, its main focus is on the way in which a  coalition of Christian lawyers, activists, and politicians methodically took down Roe while appearing to "fly beneath the radar of the Democrats" during the last decade or so. (Dems need a radar upgrade fast, as they've been asleep at the switch far too long on this and several other issues where the Right think strategically and play the long term game). While I have not yet read the book, interviews and reviews suggest that it frames the current state of play on this issue accurately and skillfully,  as we head to the polls in a few months. Much of the history may be familiar, but perhaps it is worth pulling various strands of the past and present together, to get a glimpse of where we are, how we got here, and where we may be going in the near and medium term future.

This interview with the authors is taken from The Bulwark podcast.  

Elizabeth Dias is National Religion Correspondent for NYT

Lisa Lerer is National Political Correspondent for NYT

Capitalism as usual: Profit above truth, human health and the environment

A long, detailed ProPublica article reports about a common occurrence among huge corporations, namely enforced secrecy to defend profits at the expense of the public interest:

How 3M Executives Convinced a Scientist the Forever Chemicals 

She Found in Human Blood Were Safe

Decades ago, Kris Hansen showed 3M that its PFAS chemicals were in people’s bodies. Her bosses halted her work. As the EPA now forces the removal of the chemicals from drinking water, she wrestles with the secrets that 3M kept from her and the world

Kris Hansen had worked as a chemist at the 3M Corporation for about a year when her boss, an affable senior scientist named Jim Johnson, gave her a strange assignment. 3M had invented Scotch Tape and Post-­it notes; it sold everything from sandpaper to kitchen sponges. But on this day, in 1997, Johnson wanted Hansen to test human blood for chemical contamination.

Several of 3M’s most successful products contained man-made compounds called fluorochemicals. In a spray called Scotchgard, fluorochemicals protected leather and fabric from stains. In a coating known as Scotchban, they prevented food packaging from getting soggy. In a soapy foam used by firefighters, they helped extinguish jet-fuel fires. Johnson explained to Hansen that one of the company’s fluorochemicals, PFOS — short for perfluorooctanesulfonic acid — often found its way into the bodies of 3M factory workers. Although he said that they were unharmed, he had recently hired an outside lab to measure the levels in their blood. The lab had just reported something odd, however. For the sake of comparison, it had tested blood samples from the American Red Cross, which came from the general population and should have been free of fluorochemicals. Instead, it kept finding a contaminant in the blood.

Kris Hanson

Long story short, Hansen repeated her results, then applied a more accurate measurement method and got the same results over and over. Everyone had PFOS in their blood. Hanson told her boss Johnson about the finding and his response was “this changes everything.” Johnson then walked into his office, closed the door and said nothing else the rest of the day. Later that same day, Johnson’s boss Dale Bacon came to Hanson and told her her results were wrong. Hanson then got more blood from more sources and tested them. All had PFOS contamination. While Hanson was doing her repeat testing, Johnson announced that he would be taking early retirement. He packed up his office and left.

The most reliable way to gauge the safety of chemicals is to study them over time, in animals and, if possible, humans. ProPublica reported that Hansen didn’t know that 3M scientists had already conducted animal studies in the 1970s and found evidence of PFOS toxicity in rats. A 1979 3M internal report in 1979 concluded that PFOS was “certainly more toxic than anticipated.” Explicit warnings about PFOS toxicity from an outside expert were omitted from internal company documents.

One 3M manager told Hanson that her equipment might be contaminated, so she cleaned everything, repeated the experiments and got the same results. 3M was looking for ways to discredit Hanson and her data. ProPublica described the extremes to which 3M as going to kill the results:

Sometimes Hansen doubted herself. She was 28 and had only recently earned her Ph.D. But she continued her experiments, if only to respond to the questions of her managers. 3M bought three additional mass spectrometers, which each cost more than a car, and Hansen used them to test more blood samples. In late 1997, her new boss, Bacon, even had her fly out to the company that manufactured the machines, so that she could repeat her tests there. She studied the blood of hundreds of people from more than a dozen blood banks in various states. Each sample contained PFOS. The chemical seemed to be everywhere.  

After Hansen started her PFOS research, her relationships with some colleagues seemed to deteriorate. One afternoon in 1998, a trim 3M epidemiologist named Geary Olsen arrived with several vials of blood and asked her to test them. The next morning, she read the results to him and several colleagues — positive for PFOS. As Hansen remembers it, Olsen looked triumphant. “Those samples came from my horse,” he said — and his horse certainly wasn’t eating at McDonald’s or trotting on Scotchgarded carpets. Hansen felt that he was trying to humiliate her. (Olsen did not respond to requests for comment.) What Hansen wanted to know was how PFOS was making its way into animals.  

Hansen’s team found it in Swedish blood samples from 1957 and 1971. After that, her lab analyzed blood that had been collected before 3M created PFOS. It tested negative. Apparently, fluorochemicals had entered human blood after the company started selling products that contained them. They had leached out of 3M’s sprays, coatings and factories — and into all of us.  

Even as Hansen was being sidelined, the results of her research were quietly making their way into the files of the Environmental Protection Agency. Since the ’70s, federal law has required that companies tell the EPA about any evidence indicating that a company’s products present “a substantial risk of injury to health or the environment.” In May 1998, 3M officials notified the agency, without informing Hansen, that the company had measured PFOS in blood samples from around the U.S. — a clear reference to Hansen’s work. It did not mention its animal research from the ’70s, and it said that the chemical caused “no adverse effects” at the levels the company had measured in its workers. A year later, 3M sent the EPA another letter, again without telling Hansen. This time, it informed the agency about the 14 other fluorochemicals, several of them made by 3M, that Hansen’s team had detected in human blood. The company reiterated that it did not believe that its products presented a substantial risk to human health.  

In 2022, 3M said that it would stop making PFAS and would “work to discontinue the use of PFAS across its product portfolio,” by the end of 2025 — a pledge that it called “another example of how we are positioning 3M for continued sustainable growth.” But it acknowledged that more than 16,000 of its products still contained PFAS. Direct sales of the chemicals were generating $1.3 billion annually. 3M’s regulatory filings also allow for the possibility that a full phaseout won’t happen — for example, if 3M fails to find substitutes. “We are continuing to make progress on our announcement to exit PFAS manufacturing,” 3M’s spokesperson told me [ProPublica reporter Sharon Lerner]. The company and its scientists have not admitted wrong­doing or faced criminal liability for producing forever chemicals or for concealing their harms.

This reporting personally resonates quite a lot. A company I worked for in the 1980s had two different well-known consumer products tested for one form of toxicity, one each from two major corporations. One was mildly toxic but a common food ingredient and the other was horrendously toxic. After receiving their toxicity reports, lawyers for the two corporations wrote a letter to our CEO, (i) reminding him of the secrecy agreement the testing was done under, and (ii) threatening to ruin him and the company if the toxicity data was ever leaked to the public. 

The foot-dragging, downplaying bad data and denying responsibility in pursuit of profit is standard corporate tactics. That is the rule, not the exception. Exxon-Mobil and oil companies do it about global warming. Cigarette companies still do it about lung cancer. All or nearly all big corporations do it about whatever they make money from doing. Profit is always privatized and trickled up to the elites, while harm and damage to humans and the environment are socialized and offloaded from corporate responsibility as much as possible. And, much is possible with America’s corrupt pay-to-play, two-party political system.  

From this story, one can easily see why the authoritarian radical right Republican Party Project 2025 plans to get rid of the EPA and environmental protection regulations. 1970s federal law had required that companies tell the EPA about any evidence indicating that a company’s products present “a substantial risk of injury to health or the environment.” By getting rid of laws like that, corporations can legally keep their dirty laundry hidden. That is how plutocracy works. That is the core morality of capitalism.

I do not know if the toxicity data my old company generated was ever reported to the EPA. Given the moral mindset of capitalism, that data may have never been reported. 

The essence and language of Christian nationalism; About the radical right's logic and consistency

An interesting Slate interview discusses the theocratic Christian nationalism wealth and power political movement with experts, Katherine Stewart and Rachael Laser:

The Religious Right Isn’t Hiding What It’s Doing in the Courts

Religion is everywhere in American legal discourse, but only one side is really comfortable talking about it. Religion is why Dobbs talks about the “unborn human being,” and it’s why religious website designers have now been given a singular opt-out from providing services to their paying customers. It’s why Justice Samuel Alito went to Rome shortly after Dobbs was decided, to fret publicly that “religious liberty is under attack in many places because it is dangerous to those who want to hold complete power.” Religion is why Federalist Society chairman Leonard Leo flies an “Appeal to Heaven” flag. It’s why Speaker Mike Johnson also flies an “Appeal to Heaven” flag. Oh, and it’s also why Martha-Ann Alito flies an “Appeal to Heaven” flag.

And it’s clear that extreme religionists are very, very comfortable talking about extreme religion amongst themselves, even if the rest of us have been slow to recognize and name that pattern in political conversation. Just think about how Mark Meadows and his “Stop the Steal” pen pal, Ginni Thomas, were happily writing about how “Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs,” and how the former president screens a video called “God Made Trump” at his rallies, and how Project 2025 is teeming with theological ideas.

One side is still scrambling to find the language to talk about how religious fundamentalism is playing out in the courts at a time when the separation of church and state is a persistent target of legal assault, and the consequences of one subset of religious beliefs have been imposed on many millions of women in the country. Dahlia Lithwick spoke with Rachel Laser, the president and CEO at Americans United for Separation of Church and State—a nonprofit education and advocacy organization that works in courts, legislatures, and the public square to protect religious freedom—and Katherine Stewart, an author and journalist who’s been covering religious nationalism and the assault on American democracy for over 15 years.

Dahlia Lithwick: Define Christian Nationalism because we put a lot under this rubric of white Christian nationalism.

Katherine Stewart: Let’s talk about what Christian nationalism is and what it isn’t. Christian nationalism is not a religion—it’s not Christianity. I think of it as a mindset, and also a machine. The mindset is this ideology, the idea of America as essentially a Christian theocracy or a Christian nation whose laws should be based on the Bible, and a very reactionary reading of the Bible. It’s also a political movement that exploits religion in this organized quest for power. As a political movement, it is leadership-driven and it’s organization-driven. It has this deeply networked organizational infrastructure that is really the key to its power. There has been five decades of investment in this infrastructure, and it’s the leaders of this network who are really calling the shots.

We can group their organizations into categories. I’ll throw out a few names, but this is by no means comprehensive. There are these right-wing groups like the Family Research Council. You have networking organizations like the Council for National Policy, which gets much of the movement’s leadership cadre on the same page, and brings them together with these very deep-pocketed funders. There are think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation. And there’s a vast right-wing legal advocacy ecosystem that includes groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom, with its $100-plus-million-per-year budget; also, the Becket Fund, Liberty Counsel, First Liberty Institute, Pacific Justice Institute—and they align with the aims of the Federalist Society and related organizations that mobilize enormous sums of money to shape the courts.

Another feature of this movement that is often overlooked is the pastor networks like Watchmen on the Wall and Church United, or groups like Faith Wins, that draw together and then mobilize tens of thousands of conservative or conservative-leaning pastors as movement leaders. If you can get the pastors, you can get their congregations. Often pastors are the most trusted voices in their congregations. So they reach out to these pastors, draw them into networks, and give them tools to turn out their congregations to vote for the far-right candidates that they want.

And then, of course, there’s this information sphere—or propaganda sphere—of the type that the Alitos, with their “Appeal to Heaven” flag, are clearly tied into. It’s a kind of messaging sphere that outsiders often simply don’t know about, but it’s incredibly self-contained and repeats over and over again a certain core set of messages.

Lithwick: We know a lot about Mike Johnson, we know a lot about Marjorie Taylor Greene, and the ways in which these religious ideas have embedded themselves in the other two branches of government. But it’s harder and murkier to understand how it intersects with the courts. 

Rachel Laser: I think we have to start with the Federalist Society, which was founded in 1982. That was around the time when all of the religious-right groups were getting active. They were intentionally shifting their focus from school segregation to abortion. In the late ’80s and early ’90s, we saw this shadow network of legal groups forming. That accompanied what the Federalist Society was doing with the judiciary. The Alliance Defending Freedom was founded in the early ’90s, the Becket Fund in the early ’90s, First Liberty in 1997, Jay Sekulow’s American Center for Law and Justice back in 1990, Liberty Counsel in 1989. So when we were seeing the “moral majority,” and this sort of burgeoning religious extremist movement in the country, they got really smart and decided to focus on the courts, and, boy, are we seeing the rewards of that today.

Stewart: And the movement is extremely strategic. Very patient. I think the key to their success is that long-range thinking and their strategy.

From the very beginning, they set about picking the right cases to bring to the right courts and they created these novel legal building blocks that would sideline, and in some cases obliterate, the establishment clause. They’ve turned civil rights law on its head, and expanded the privileges of religious organizations substantially, including the right to taxpayer money.

Lithwick: Katherine, you wrote a piece in 2022 describing how the movement gets supercharged. You flagged three things that happened after Dobbs: First, the rhetoric of violence among movement leaders appears to have increased significantly from the already alarming levels I had observed in previous years. Second, the theology of dominion—that is the belief that right-thinking Christians have a biblically derived mandate to take control of all aspects of government and society—is now explicitly embraced. And third, the movement’s key strategists were giddy about the legal arsenal that the Supreme Court had laid at their feet as they anticipated the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Stewart: By acknowledging the legitimacy of a state interest in zygotes and blastocysts and fetuses, they really provide a legal system with a set of purely religiously grounded rights that can be used to strip women of all kinds of rights and basically turn our bodies and lives over to federal and state authorities.

But Dobbs is really just the inevitable consequence of this movement’s power. They’re not stopping here. The movement leaders are determined to end all abortion access everywhere. When they say abortion, they also mean some of the most effective and popular forms of birth control, as well as miscarriage care that’s necessary to save women’s lives and health. We’re seeing the consequences of this all over the country, where women are suffering devastating health consequences when they can’t get the miscarriage care that they need.

I’ve been attending right-wing conferences and strategy gatherings for 15 years for my research, and they tell us over and over again what they intend to do, and then they do it, and then they boast about what they’ve done. They’re really not hiding, and their aims are not hard to discern if you’re paying attention.

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A Salon article discusses how America's authoritarian radical right is reacting to the conviction of Hunter Biden:

Why Republicans are left disappointed by Hunter Biden's conviction

The Trump campaign reportedly thought it would be a fundraising bonanza for them if Hunter Biden was acquitted

Some Democrats and legal observers wondered about the prosecutorial discretion in bringing the case which is very seldom done in circumstances like this,(as did a couple of the jurors) but across the board, they all respected the verdict and the judicial system. Nobody threatened anyone or vowed to take vengeance on them. Nobody accused the prosecutors, the judge or the jurors of being corrupt. Nobody said the proceedings were rigged.

Well, actually, a lot of people said it was rigged — but they were all Republicans who simply couldn't take "guilty" for an answer. You can understand why. They've been sobbing and whining and rending their garments for weeks now over Donald Trump's guilty verdict in his Manhattan hush-money trial insisting that the Biden Justice Department (DOJ) had implemented a two-tiered system of justice to target Republicans, specifically Trump. And here you have that same DOJ prosecuting the president's only living son over a crime that Republicans insist is a violation of the Second Amendment. In fact, if it had been anyone else, much less the son of a GOP president, the NRA would have been holding vigils outside the courthouse. If Republicans still required logic and consistency to persuade their voters this whole thing would have been terribly confusing for them. Lucky for them, all they need is lies and demagoguery.

That nicely sums up the deep moral rot that America's authoritarian radical right operates with. American authoritarianism is based on lies, demagoguery, bad faith and malice, not logic, consistency or good will.

The "minor felonies" Hunter was convicted of carry a maximum 

sentence of 25 years in prison and a fine of up to $750,000

Are we distracted and gaslit yet?

And finally, there is this little gesture of bad faith and malice from DJT: