VIDEO OF THE DAY: Trump sends shockwaves with stunning announcement
Brian Tyler Cohen sits down with legal expert Glenn Kirschner to discuss Trump's shocking deployment of troops to Portland.
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Comey shows that Donald Trump’s contempt for America knows no bounds
Michael Tomasky, The New Republic: "James Comey has done some things in his career that I didn’t care for and which I suspect you didn’t like either, for what I’m guessing are similar reasons. But those things are irrelevant today. As of Thursday evening, Comey is one more symbol of Donald Trump’s utter contempt for law and decency. To the extent that the United States of America was founded as a nation where the law was more powerful than any individual leader, the sinister indictment of Comey is the ultimate symbol—so far, that is—of Trump’s contempt for the United States of America. Yes—contempt for the United States of America. This may confuse some Americans, who see Trump constantly wrapping himself in the flag, on some obscene occasions even hugging and kissing it—a Judas kiss from a man who has no understanding of what love of country actually means—and think of him as patriotic. But this is exactly what authoritarian thugs throughout history do. They bathe themselves in flag imagery as they torch the best values that flag represents. Trump has done many terrible things, has attempted in many ways to place himself above the law. But the Comey indictment is clearly the most egregious. The New York Times, which I’ve criticized in the past for dancing around saying what really needs to be said about Trump in its news columns, actually rose to the occasion this morning in its news analysis piece: 'An inexperienced prosecutor loyal to President Trump, in the job for less than a week, filed criminal charges against one of her boss’s most-reviled opponents. She did so not only at Mr. Trump’s direct command, but also against the urging of both her own subordinates and her predecessor, who had just been fired for raising concerns that there was insufficient evidence to indict.' That inexperienced attorney, whose name you need to commit to memory because it will live in infamy in this country’s history, is Lindsey Halligan. She has never been a prosecutor. She was an insurance lawyer in Florida. She chased tornadoes. And it almost goes without saying that she represented insurance companies against ordinary people. Trump somehow spotted her one day when he was golfing and she was playing tennis (and, oh, she’s a former Miss Colorado), and he invited her onto his legal team. Let’s talk about the charges. As you’ve no doubt read, they are based on testimony Comey gave to a Senate committee in September 2020. It was pandemic time, and so he testified from his home in Virginia, which is why the charges were filed there and not in Washington. Ted Cruz asked Comey if he authorized then–Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to leak certain facts to Wall Street Journal reporter Devlin Barrett (now covering this matter for the Times) back in 2016 pertaining to the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton. Comey said he did not. Now you might be saying, “Well, that sounds like something we should get to the bottom of, actually.” That’s the thing. We already have. This has all been investigated. The Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General, or OIG, investigated the matter and issued a report in 2018. But none of that matters to Trump. All he knows is that Comey was investigating his Russia ties, and now, nearly a decade later, Comey must be destroyed. Trump’s vile hyperbole about Comey—a “bad person,” a “sick guy,” and worse—lays bare that this is nothing more than a personal witch hunt. That’s the other thing about authoritarian thugs, besides the faux patriotism: They accuse their opponents of doing exactly what they are perpetrating. It has a name: accusation in a mirror—accuse your political foes of doing exactly that which you yourself are doing or plan to do. The Nazis used to say that the Jews were planning on wiping out the German people. Trump, far from being the victim of witch hunts, is the orchestrator of them. But even he has never sunk this low. This is a crime against the best values of this republic. It is a profoundly un-American act."
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Freshman Democrat under ATTACK for standing up to the GOP
Nellie Pou for Congress: Nellie Pou has only been in Congress a few months, but she’s already facing a barrage of GOP attacks for voting against their destructive budget bill that would hand out huge tax breaks to the wealthy while RAISING taxes on working families. Just a few days ago, the NRCC issued an error-filled press release written by Big Business lobbyists that falsely smeared her with lies. She’s one of the few Democrats to win her seat in a county that voted for Trump; she’s going to need all the help she can get if we want to protect the MUST-HOLD seat and retake Congress. Will you chip in to thank her for doing the right thing and helping her weather the storm against GOP attacks?
Trump’s war on Tylenol is also very much a war on women
Arwa Mahdawi, The Guardian: "Donald Trump is a man with no medical training. However, that’s never stopped the very stable genius from inflicting his unhinged health views on the rest of us, has it? Back in 2020, for example, Trump memorably mused that injecting disinfectant could help fight the coronavirus – which forced the maker of Dettol and Lysol to put out an urgent statement explaining that this was a very bad idea. Now the president, who once vowed to be a protector of women 'whether they like it or not,' has turned his attention to prenatal care. 'Taking Tylenol is, uhhhh, not good,' Trump said on Monday, with his trademark eloquence. He was flanked by health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, the guy who told Congress this year that 'people shouldn’t take medical advice from me.' Trump went on to link autism to prenatal exposure to acetaminophen, which is the active ingredient in Tylenol. If you’re feeling poorly while pregnant you should 'fight like hell' not to take Tylenol to relieve your pain, the president instructed. Which basically means suffering instead: ibuprofen, for instance, is generally not recommended after week 20 of pregnancy. Like everything Trump says, this incoherent quote makes zero sense. But the bottom line here is that the Trump administration is advancing wildly irresponsible guidance. There is no evidence for a causative link between acetaminophen and autism and many experts were aghast at Trump’s statements. Indeed, even the moral vacuum that is JD Vance balked at repeating Trump’s advice, instead urging women to lean on their doctors. And while Trump claimed that there is “no downside” in avoiding Tylenol, an untreated fever during pregnancy could cause problems for the baby. Trump’s demand that pregnant women 'tough it out' is also deeply misogynistic and a reminder of how women’s pain is often misunderstood or ignored. Numerous studies show that the medical establishment takes men’s pain more seriously. A 2022 study from the Journal of the American Heart Association, for example, found that women who visited emergency departments with chest pain waited 29% longer than men to be evaluated. This sudden Tylenol scare is also yet another example of mom-shaming. ' We really have a long history of blaming mothers in this country, and we’re seeing that reinforced through the narratives around autism’s causes right now,' Martine Lappé, a sociology professor, told NPR. Studies have also found a link between advanced paternal age and autism. But does society constantly shame men for having kids later in life? Of course not. When a 59-year-old Trump fathered Barron, he crowed to the press about his virility. 'I continue to stay young, right? I produce children, I stay young,' said Trump at the time. No doubt there are numerous things motivating this sudden Trump administration obsession with Tylenol, including a need to distract people from those pesky Epstein files. However, a concern for women’s health is absolutely not at the heart of it. Rather, this is yet another way to control women; another way to reduce us to walking wombs rather than multidimensional human beings. This war on Tylenol is also very much a war on women. Now, if only there was a pill we could take to help deal with this Maga-induced malaise. As it is, we are all just going to have to tough it out."
MAHA and the end of American modernity
Shane Burley, Jacobin: "'I know one of the things you’re most worried about is glyphosates, so we’ve got glyphosate-free honey and raw milk,' natural-food podcaster Paul Saladino said, barely able to contain his excitement as his producer handed him and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr two shot glasses. Saladino was part of a White House health summit meant to address the country’s most pressing health issues, and podcasters were more than welcome. Saladino, often referred to as 'Carnivore MD,' promotes the 'carnivore diet,' in which adherents consume an overwhelmingly meat-based diet under the notion that our primal ancestors relied on such an ultrahigh protein diet. He presents it as a healthier alternative to the destructive world of modern cereal grains, packaged foods, and processed junk. Saladino knew Kennedy was a fan of 'raw milk,' unpasteurized milk that figures prominently in an online 'wellness' community that often suggests the milk has almost mystical healing powers. Moments before, Saladino bragged that his lunch included raw milk with chunks of uncooked, 'grass-fed' beef floating in it. Cavemen supposedly knew best: raw meat preserves nutrients that modern, industrial cooking destroys. For Kennedy, Saladino’s caveman act isn’t a gimmick; it illustrates the MAHA precepts he’s built into policy. Central to those precepts is a largely discredited theory of 'natural immunity' — the claim that human bodies should simply acquire immunity from exposure rather than immunization. While unsupported by evidence, it has a certain holistic appeal for those distrustful of modern institutions: maybe things were better before technology, institutions, and 'experts' got in the way. Raw milk is one of the latest flash points of the clash between natural-food advocates and scientific consensus. While there are few proven benefits to unpasteurized cow’s milk, the problems are numerous: it opens the drinker to a litany of pathogens and is incredibly dangerous for pregnant or immunocompromised people. It poses risks for potential exposure to campylobacter, Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC), salmonella and listeria, which could lead to stillbirths and the transmission of diseases in utero. While modern listeria outbreaks are generally from post-pasteurization contamination, raw milk introduces voluntary risk to a problem with a clear, modern solution. That is why few were surprised when Kennedy drastically shrank the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) FoodNet program, which tracks foodborne illnesses, from eight pathogens down to two, deprioritizing listeria and campylobacter and leaving only salmonella and STEC. Kennedy’s shift on vaccine policy may be the most extreme of all: he fired all seventeen members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, narrowed eligibility for COVID vaccines, opened the door for insurance companies to refuse coverage, and dramatically cut vaccine research despite his vocal concerns over vaccine safety. He justified this while citing discredited COVID-19 studies. Kennedy also accepted a recommendation to remove the vaccine preservative thimerosal from American flu shots. The scientific community has been clear in repudiating his drastic measures — including over a thousand HHS staff calling for his resignation on September 3 — but Kennedy’s supporters have cheered his changes as a victory for health. For them, dismantling the infrastructure of food safety is not a reckless gamble but precisely the measure required to liberate us from a toxic system that is making us all sick. Kennedy’s logic is not a new one, nor is it confined to the world of fringe medical cures and outlandish food claims. It rests on a broader belief that what is “natural” is inherently good, and what is modern, technological, or institutionally managed is destructive — a dangerous intervention into organic harmony. This idea has been foundational to reactionary politics since the industrial revolution created some of the largest communal shifts in history. Today it is warping how millions of people understand what is a legitimate global crisis of health, ecology, and human relationships."
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