<One of the 16 people indicted in Michigan for acting as a fake elector for former President Donald Trump claimed she was “duped” by a lawyer for the former president.

In an interview with WDIV, a local news station in Michigan, Michele Lundgren, a 73-year-old photographer from Detroit, volunteered to be a Trump delegate and elector had he ended up winning the state, but she ended up becoming a fake Trump elector and now faces up to 80 years in prison.

She said she received a call in December asking her to come to the state Republican Party headquarters, where she would allegedly sign a certificate swearing Trump had won the election. But, she claims that everyone was asked to sign a notecard as a way to sign into the meeting, and then that signature was lifted and placed on the document in question.

“We signed a sign-in sheet with our names. It fits right into the real electoral ballot,” she said.

She said the lawyer who told them to walk to the capitol was Ian Northon, who “duped” her into thinking she was doing the right thing.

“I was an innocent little bystander in this whole thing, thinking I was doing my civic duty,” Lundgren said.

But, the Democratic Michigan Attorney General, Dana Nessel, claims her office has proof that the 16 electors knew what they were doing and purposely signed on as fake electors in an effort to undermine democracy and anoint Trump as the winner of Michigan.

“The false electors’ actions undermined the public’s faith in the integrity of our elections and, we believe, also plainly violated the laws by which we administer our elections in Michigan,” Nessel said in a statement.>

<Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt's ongoing feud with many of the Native American tribes in the state has grown so contentious that fellow Republicans in the Legislature and the state's attorney general are considering pushing him out of tribal negotiations altogether.

Those agreements, called compacts, have been worked out between the state and tribes over the last couple of decades to divvy up revenue from gambling, vehicle tags and the sale of tobacco and motor fuel on tribal land, all of which provide major revenue streams into state and tribal coffers.

Tribal casinos alone paid nearly $200 million to the state last year under agreements giving tribes the exclusive right to offer casino gambling.

State Republican leaders are grumbling publicly that Stitt's hostile posture toward the tribes, including vetoing the extension of some compacts, are costing more than just money. They say it's also eroding the relationship with tribal leaders that, although sometimes testy, has been nurtured for decades during Republican and Democratic administrations.

“Even (former) President Trump has mentioned he doesn’t know why the governor has such animosity toward the tribes,” said Senate President Pro Tempore Greg Treat, an Oklahoma City Republican. “It’s nonsensical.”

Stitt's relationship with many tribal leaders has deteriorated since he unsuccessfully tried to rework gambling contracts by renegotiating the state’s share of casino revenue early in his first term. Many of the state's most powerful tribes attempted to use their political influence last year to prevent Stitt from winning a second term.

This year, Stitt, himself a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, responded by vetoing virtually every legislative measure endorsed by the tribes, including a bill that would have allowed Native American students to wear tribal regalia at graduation ceremonies.

Stitt says he is trying to negotiate the best deal for all of the state’s more than 4 million residents, particularly when it comes to the tobacco compacts.

Stitt is concerned that unless the compacts are renegotiated, the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark McGirt decision on tribal sovereignty, which determined a large swathe of eastern Oklahoma remains a Native American reservation, could allow tribes to undercut non-tribal retailers across that area.

Under the current compacts, tribal tobacco sales are limited to retail locations on tribal trust land, but since the McGirt decision, courts have determined more than 40% of the state is now within the boundaries of historical reservations.

The feud between Stitt and the tribes has now spilled into the Republican-controlled Legislature, which is scheduled to meet in a special session Monday just to override Stitt’s vetoes of bills that would extend tribal compacts on tobacco and motor vehicles for another year.

Treat said he is willing to give the governor another year to negotiate with the tribes “in good faith,” but that if no progress is shown the Legislature could take over the right to negotiate the compacts. Although the governor's office historically has handled compact negotiations with tribes, Treat said state law also authorizes the Legislature to do so....>

<....Oklahoma’s Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond also has been critical of Stitt’s posturing against the tribes and urged the Legislature to let him assume the defense of Oklahoma's interest in an ongoing legal fight over gambling compacts involving the governor's office and Cherokee Nation.

“Oklahoma’s relationship with our tribal nations has suffered greatly as a result of the governor’s divisive rhetoric and ceaseless legal attacks," Drummond said.

Five of Oklahoma's most powerful tribes — the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek) and Seminole nations — issued a joint resolution last week accusing the governor of not negotiating in good faith and threatening “to undo decades of work and damage tribal-state cooperation for generations to come.” Stitt disputes he is not negotiating in good faith.

Feuds between governors and Native American tribes are not unique to Oklahoma.

Republican legislative leaders in Arizona in 2020 threatened to prevent tribes from renewing gambling licenses, a critical funding source for many tribes, if they had unresolved disputes over water rights.

In Connecticut, during the height of the pandemic, the state's governor engaged in a rare dispute with its two federally recognized tribes, the Mohegan Tribe and Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, over the tribes' decision to reopen their massive casinos.

But in Oklahoma, where the tribes are vitally important to the economy, particularly in depressed rural areas, even fellow Republicans are scratching their heads at Stitt's continued hostility toward the tribes.

Treat described Stitt's 2021 choice not to renew tribal compacts over hunting and fishing a “stupid decision” that has cost the state $35 million. Stitt's office said at the time the compacts were unfair because tribal citizens could purchase licenses at a cheaper rate.

The number of licensed hunters and anglers in Oklahoma, which is used to calculate federal funds for wildlife conservation, has been reduced because many Native Americans have chosen to obtain licenses from the tribes, which no longer have an agreement to remit funds to the state.

The governor's concerns about the fallout from the McGirt Supreme Court decision were heightened last month when a federal appeals court determined the city of Tulsa had no authority to issue a speeding ticket to a Choctaw citizen.

“Citizens of Tulsa, if your city government cannot enforce something as simple as a traffic violation, there will be no rule of law in eastern Oklahoma,” Stitt said.

Stitt's argument about a cascading effect of the McGirt decision has merit. Already, thousands of Native American taxpayers in Oklahoma have claimed an exemption from paying state income tax under regulations governing taxation of tribal citizens in “Indian Country.”

An Okmulgee woman and Muscogee (Creek) citizen, Alicia Stroble, claims she is exempt from paying state income tax in a case pending before the Oklahoma Supreme Court. Several tribes have filed “friend of the court” briefs siding with Stroble’s position.

“It’s not going to work,” Stitt said. "We can’t have two different systems.”

While many tribal sovereignty issues remain unresolved following the McGirt decision, experts on tribal law say the solution can be found by working with the tribes rather than fighting them in court.

“There has to be a way for us to work together, and that tends to be the answer to almost all the questions,” said Sara Hill, attorney general for the Cherokee Nation. “The alternatives are always painful, expensive litigation.”>

<To hear them tell it, House Republicans are solely focused on fiscal conservatism, on undercutting the appropriations levels agreed to in the Kevin McCarthy-Joe Biden debt ceiling law so they can “rein in federal spending.”

That’s what they’d like to be fighting about. But their actions, the riders they’ve larded up these bills with, reveal a different priority: an obsession with fighting battles in the culture war, a fixation on extinguishing any semblance of abortion access in particular, no matter the repeatedly demonstrated political radioactivity of the issue post-Dobbs.

The add-ons are less poison pills and more a poison buffet for Democrats, ensuring that these versions of the bills will never see the light of law. They risk cutting House Republicans out of legislative relevance altogether, shifting the onus to the Senate to write bills that can actually pass. They could create a debt ceiling law redux where the legislation ultimately passes on the backs of mostly Democrats plus the Republicans still willing to play ball. Or they could shut down the government.

But none of those unpleasant outcomes is enough to change House Republicans’ behavior, which has now spanned multiple appropriations committees, curdled once collegial relationships between Democratic and Republican committee leaders and left the lower chamber with a tranche of bills that, if they remain in their current form, will be dead on arrival in the Senate.

“How much taxpayer money are we spending on these things if they’re not intending them to go through? And this is the party of ‘financial responsibility’ that insists we have to lower the debt,” a senior Democratic aide told TPM. “Honestly, these bills were crap from the beginning.”

Poisonous Riders

These culture war proposals fall under recurring categories.

One is abortion, the same issue that sent Democrats fleeing from the once-bipartisan National Defense Authorization Act when House Republicans included a provision that would prohibit the Defense Secretary from covering or reimbursing service members’ abortion-related expenses. Democrats told reporters that they’d heard from Republican colleagues expressing vexation that the party kept returning to this losing issue — only to vote for the final product anyway.

Abortion restrictions have cropped up in the appropriations process again and again, even in unexpected places.

In the bill to fund Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies, a rider would largely prevent the VA from implementing a rule that allows the agency to provide access to abortions for pregnant veterans and VA beneficiaries when the health or life of the pregnant woman is at risk, or when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.

In the Agriculture-Rural Development-FDA funding bill, a GOP rider would reverse the FDA’s late 2021 decision to allow the abortion drug mifepristone to be dispensed in certified pharmacies in addition to traditional health care settings like hospitals and clinics.

In the Homeland Security subcommittee, a rider specifies that no funds earmarked for ICE can be used to pay for an abortion, with very limited exceptions.

And in the Financial Services and General Government subcommittee, Republicans targeted abortion both for federal employees and for residents of Washington D.C., which has a home rule system with congressional oversight that allows federal lawmakers to interfere with its local governance. The GOP provisions would both prohibit the use of federal or local funds for nearly all abortion services in D.C., and require that the district report back to the House Republicans that it has followed the congressionally imposed (locally opposed) abortion restrictions. That reporting requirement would mandate that the district detail its compliance with Republicans’ “Partial Birth Abortion Ban,” including “whether the District of Columbia preserved each child’s remains for appropriate examination during the investigation” and “whether the District of Columbia conducted a thorough investigation of the death of each child and what each investigation showed.”

Many of these appropriations bills are also peppered with riders prohibiting any use of funds to teach the Republican bugaboo “Critical Race Theory,” cutting off gender affirming-related health care for transgender people and obliterating diversity and inclusion offices and initiatives.

Of these Christmas trees hung with Republican proposals, the Financial Services bill is the Rockefeller....>

<<....Along with anti-CRT and anti-trans riders, the Financial Services bill also includes Republican measures related to various fabricated controversies, such as provisions to block the Consumer Product Safety Commission from banning gas stoves (which it has no intention to do) and to prohibit the use of funds to “discriminate against a person who speaks, or acts, in accordance with a sincerely held religious belief, or moral conviction, that marriage is, or should be recognized as, a union of one man and one woman.” It also has provisions taking further aim at D.C., including one that allows anyone with a concealed carry permit to have a handgun in the district, including on the Metro, and another that seeks to knock down a local D.C. law prohibiting right turns on red lights.

“Unfortunately, the Fiscal Year 2024 House appropriations bills seem to be more about meeting woefully insufficient spending levels and waging culture wars than adequately funding the government and providing local priorities with the resources they deserve,” Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), the ranking member on Financial Services, told TPM in a statement. “Whether restricting reproductive health care funding for the District of Columbia, attempting to rescind critically needed funding for FBI intelligence and law enforcement officers, or spitefully withholding funding from organizations that serve our LGBTQ+ neighbors, a small but vocal group of right-wing Republicans have needlessly turned this year’s Appropriations bills into a polarizing legislative process.”

Culture Warriors > Colleagues

As mad as Democrats are about the content of the provisions that Republicans have hitched on to the bills, they’re also steamed at the way they’ve done it.

“We were not given a heads up — the markup had started when we found out,” the senior Democratic aide said, referring to one of these culture war amendments. “It was very clear that it was intentional. All of the Democrats’ offices were texting each other, ‘did you know about this?’”

Such tactics have soured relationships between the bipartisan committee heads particularly on under-the-radar subcommittees, some of the last remaining corners of comity as partisan warfare has become the order of the day.

“The old saying is, ‘There are Democrats, there are Republicans, and there are Appropriators,’” Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL), ranking member on the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies subcommittee told TPM in a statement. “But the all-out assault on comity and common-sense by extreme conservative members — not to mention the budget deal that Speaker McCarthy torched just days after agreeing to it — seriously erodes that.”

“Bowing to that extremist agenda is especially saddening on the MilConVA subcommittee, which has such a long-standing tradition of bipartisanship,” she added.

Thanks to the rogue House Republicans, the lower chamber is now riven by committee betrayals, behind in its schedule to pass these bills and on track to produce thousands of pages of legislation that will likely bear little resemblance to the final appropriations.

“Republicans are using these riders to spread hate and distract from the terrible cuts that they are including in these bills,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), the top Democratic House appropriator, said at a markup last week.

“I am fearful,” she added later in the day, “that we are on a trajectory, at best, for continuing resolutions. And at worst, a government shutdown.”>

https://twitter.com/abbieasr/status...

<Recently, I was reminded of just how easy it is to be silenced in America now.

I published an article on Medium about the impact of transgender inclusion on the rights of women and lesbians. I felt it was a timely subject, and as a gay woman of color I have a vested interest in this issue. So, you can imagine my shock when, less than 24 hours after the article appeared, Medium’s Trust & Safety team removed it for violating community rules. I was further warned that repeated violations would lead to possible suspension of my account.

My crime? Posting "hateful content."

For perspective, I have more than 1,000 followers and nearly 70 published articles on Medium. I’m a graduate of Harvard Law School and am on the Board of Advisors of the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism. I’m a published author and a TEDx speaker. Much of my writing focuses on bringing people together around our shared values and interests. I’ve never been accused of advocating hateful positions.

This incident is laced with many ironies, not the least of which is that I’ve spent much of my life feeling invisible and not having a voice.

Growing up Black and gay in the 70s and 80s was an alienating and often heartbreaking experience. Thankfully, as America has begun to reckon with its insidious legacy of racism, sexism, and homophobia, the landscape has changed. Barriers have crumbled. Hearts and minds have opened.

I enjoy a thriving legal career in entertainment and have a white partner and a biracial son. We happily live our alternative lifestyle in a state that is overwhelmingly white and Christian. The past two decades have empowered me and given me a voice.

Yet now I fear I’m in danger of losing my voice. I worry that I, and millions of other women, are becoming invisible — not at the hands of right-wing extremists, but by those who promote tolerance and inclusion.

Medium’s content curators removed my article because it "disempower[ed]" and excluded others based on "protected characteristics," i.e. biological men who identify as women. Yet they had no qualms about disempowering and excluding me — a member of not one, but three "protected" groups — from their community.

Further, I was silenced for expressing my belief that inclusion of biological men in women’s sports, prisons and other historically protected spaces potentially undermines the rights and safety of biological women and lesbians. Yet the act of deplatforming my article was, itself, proof of the marginalization I lamented in my article....>

<.....When I shared the incident with a left-leaning friend, she cautioned that right-wing extremists have created a dangerous environment for transgender Americans. While this is undoubtedly true, I’m not a right-wing extremist. Why should my concerns be conflated with fringe elements with whom I have nothing in common? If an article that raises thoughtful concerns on behalf of protected groups can be characterized as "hateful content," then what is the threshold for hate?

You don’t have to be gay, female, or a person of color to appreciate the danger this poses to all Americans. If the boundaries of prohibited speech keep growing, then we can be silenced by anyone who disagrees with us. All they have to do is call us "hateful." Yet if we live in constant fear of offending others, then how long will it be before we’re too afraid to say anything?

Freedom of speech is one of our most cherished rights. The free and open marketplace of ideas is what makes our country unique. It’s enabled groundbreaking innovation and thought and has empowered historically disenfranchised groups. Given my unique background and experience, freedom of speech holds a special place in my heart. Where would I be today if voices that made others uncomfortable had been muffled?

But protecting this sacred right isn’t easy or painless; it demands our constant vigilance and selflessness. What we safeguard for ourselves we must also be willing to safeguard for others, even those with whom we vehemently disagree.

Unfortunately, a growing number of social media platforms aren’t committed to doing the hard work. They’re apparently willing to sacrifice freedom of speech when it makes others uncomfortable, even if the people expressing themselves have lived in discomfort most of their lives (and in many cases still do). They fail to see that the noble goals of tolerance and inclusion become performative when they’re restricted to those with preferred agendas. Selective tolerance and inclusion aren’t progressive; they’re regressive.

For now, I write with a question mark over my head. Will I be branded a TERF if I continue to advocate for the rights of women and lesbians? Will my next article offend others and be "the one" that terminates my account?

All I know for certain is that this is no way for people to live in a free society. If we can spend billions of dollars to fight for the freedom of people in another country, then surely we can find the courage to defend this precious right at home.

Let’s spend less time talking about tolerance and inclusion and more time practicing it.>

<Republican presidential candidate Gov. Ron DeSantis said the state of Florida is launching an inquiry into Bud Light and InBev which, he said, could lead to a lawsuit. The Florida governor told "Jesse Watters Primetime" Thursday that businesses should be penalized for prioritizing "social agendas" over shareholders after Florida pension funds took huge losses due to the beermaker's decline.

GOV. RON DESANTIS: It has absolutely hurt teachers and other pensioners. … When you start pursuing a political agenda at the expense of your shareholders, that's not just impacting very wealthy people. It impacts hardworking people who were police officers, firefighters and teachers in terms of the pension. So what we're doing, since we do have these shares, we believe that when you take your eye off the ball like that, you're not following your fiduciary duty to do the best you can for your shareholders. So we're going to be launching an inquiry about Bud Light and InBev, and it could be something that leads to a derivative lawsuit filed on behalf of the shareholders of the Florida pension fund. Because at the end of the day, there's got to be penalties for when you put business aside to focus on your social agenda at the expense of hardworking people.

DeSantis is asking the head of the State Board of Administration (SBA) to review its holdings of AB InBev, citing the ongoing decline of its subsidiary company Bud Light.

In a letter sent to SBA Executive Director Lamar Taylor, DeSantis speculated that AB InBev may have "breached legal duties" to its shareholders by partnering with transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney and pushing "radical social ideologies."

"It has come to my attention that the State Board of Administration (SBA) currently holds global equity assets with Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev)," the governor wrote in the Thursday letter. "As you well know, AB InBev's performance has plummeted since its decision to associate its Bud Light brand with radical social ideologies. That fateful decision has transformed America's formerly best-selling beer — and one of InBev's best-performing assets — into a commercial pariah. InBev's losses have been staggering."

Data from Evercore ISI shows that in the 12-week period leading up to July 2, Bud Light’s sales volume fell by 27.1% over that timeframe – which includes much of the aftermath following Mulvaney’s early April social media post showing the custom can Bud Light provided her with.

In that same period, rival light beers saw sales rise. Coors Light's sales volume rose by 17.8%, while Miller Lite’s increased by 14.3% and Corona Light’s ticked up by 3%.

The fallout from the Bud Light controversy has spilled over into other Anheuser-Busch InBev beers which have also suffered from sales declines.>

<A yearslong public relations campaign praising and defending Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas can be traced to a network of nonprofit groups tied to a prominent conservative activist, The Washington Post reported.

Leonard Leo, co-chairman of The Federalist Society, has spent several decades pushing federal courts to the right by leveraging a large network of nonprofit organizations in which he holds formal or informal roles.

According to the Post, Leo has also used that network to support the confirmation of every conservative Supreme Court justice in the past two decades. But one more recent campaign was directed at Justice Thomas, who had already spent about three decades on the Court's bench.

The initiative includes a two-hour movie, "Created Equal," released in 2020, that followed Thomas' upbringing; websites that praise Thomas's life or dispute the sexual harassment allegations made by Anita Hill; and even a Twitter fan account with close to 30,000 followers. The Post found that the effort cost at least $1.8 million from conservative nonprofits tied to Leo.

The campaign began in early 2016, the Post reported, when HBO was set to release "Confirmation," a film that centers on Hill's explosive allegations during Thomas' 1991 nomination hearings. The movie starred Kerry Washington as Hill and Wendell Pierce as Thomas.

One person who was tapped to lead the elaborate public relations campaign was Mark Paoletta — a former Trump White House aide, attorney, and close friend of Thomas. According to the Post, a nonprofit called the Judicial Education Project paid the lawyer about $300,000 in 2016 for "media projects."

Leo does not have a formal role in the Judicial Education Project nonprofit, according to the Post. Still, he previously told the newspaper he is an advisor to the organization.

Paoletta did not return a request for comment sent outside of business hours and during the weekend.

Paoletta denounced the HBO film after reviewing the script and sent a letter to HBO's then-president on March 7, 2016, claiming the movie contained "numerous distortions, omissions and fabrications" in an attempt to bolster Hill's "credibility and smearing."

Len Amato, HBO's president at the time, disputed the assertion to Politico and said there was "no agenda" behind the film and that it's "quite evenhanded."....>

<....In the time surrounding the film's release, the attorney began submitting op-eds to conservative outlets such as the Daily Caller, National Review, and Washington Examiner, defending Thomas and attacking the film.

Paoletta also sought help from Javelin, a Virginia-based PR firm, to launch a website, confirmationbiased.com, to dispute or "fact check" the film.

"I was determined to not let these lies go unanswered, so I reached out to Javelin to help me develop a media presence to push back," Paoletta told The Post.

Records obtained and interviews conducted by the Post show Paoletta worked with another public relations firm called CRC Public Relations — now CRC Advisors, which Leo chairs — to drum up websites and a social media account.

According to the Post, CRC helped create a Twitter fan account around September 2016 to post quotes from Thomas or video clips of the justice. The account's bio now shows that it's run by Judicial Crisis Network, a nonprofit also led by Leo, although his name does not appear in the group's tax filings. The New York Times has previously reported how Leo has worked closely with the group during confirmation hearings.

The firm also helped create anitahillcase.com, dedicated to disputing Hill's allegations, and justicethomas.com, which praises Thomas.

"This site is dedicated to Justice Clarence Thomas and his three decades of jurisprudence on the Supreme Court of the United States," the website states. "Since his confirmation on October 15, 1991, Justice Thomas has been a stalwart defender of the original meaning of the Constitution."

According to the Post, Paoletta would also seek help from conservative filmmaker Michael Pack to make "Created Equal," which only features interviews from Thomas and his wife, Ginni Thomas. The film's financial backers included the Judicial Education Project and the Crow family.

Harlan Crow was recently the subject of a ProPublica investigation that revealed how the GOP donor poured lavish gifts onto Thomas.

The Judicial Crisis Network (JCN) also spent $1.5 million to promote the film in 2022 during Ketanji Brown Jackson's confirmation hearings. One ad took a dig at Jackson for saying she doesn't "understand" how Thomas grew to hold his conservative views as a Black man. The comment was made years ago in a 2007 biography of Thomas, "Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas."

A spokesperson for JCN did not respond to a request for comment sent during the weekend.

The film later spawned a book of the same name, in which Pack said that Paoletta was "an unsung, uncredited executive producer" of "Created Equal," the Post reported.

In a statement to the Post, Paoletta confirmed that the work he paid to do for the Judicial Education Project was related to Thomas and that "my good friend Leonard Leo's group provided funding for this work."

A spokesperson for The Federalist Society did not respond to a request for comment sent during the weekend.>

<When Ron DeSantis strode onto the stage in April in front of almost 10,000 students at Liberty University, he did so with an introduction from the school’s chancellor, pastor Jonathan Falwell, son of legendary televangelist Jerry Falwell. The chancellor noted that the university took pride in inviting speakers “who have brought wisdom to this idea of what it means to be a champion for Christ.”

DeSantis took the opportunity to paraphrase Jesus’ words in the Book of John, when he promised believers they would be rewarded if they followed him.

“Yes, the truth shall set you free,” DeSantis said. “Because woke represents a war on truth, we must wage a war on woke.”

It was an evangelical performance in a deeply evangelical setting. Anyone watching it might assume DeSantis was at home among evangelicals. But here’s the thing: He’s not one himself.

Ron DeSantis is solidly Roman Catholic. A recent descendant of Italian immigrants, DeSantis counts a Catholic priest as an uncle and a nun as an aunt. He grew up going to Catholic school and attending Catholic mass every Sunday. And yet, until recently, many people weren’t sure whether he is still a practicing Catholic. When the Catholic magazine America reached out to his press team to clarify his religious denomination, for example, they got no response. Given that DeSantis makes faith integral to his political identity, it became confusing enough that the Orlando Sentinel published a story with this reveal:

After months of dodging the question, DeSantis’ staff and a priest have confirmed

that DeSantis and his family regularly attend the handful of Catholic churches in the

Tallahassee area.

So, what, exactly, is DeSantis doing here? Why was his Roman Catholicism essentially a secret? Faith can be no private matter for a Republican presidential candidate. As Politico and others noted recently, DeSantis’ presidential campaign has outlined educated white evangelicals as being his gateway to the nomination. So is this Catholic-evangelical two-step how he’s trying to court voters, and if so, is it a good strategy? What, exactly, is Ron DeSantis signaling to Republicans with how he presents his faith?

DeSantis has made it clear that Catholicism is not central to his image. Unlike President Joe Biden, who is known to pray the rosary and identifies proudly as Catholic, DeSantis keeps things generically Christian. Even the prominent Catholic masses he has attended could be justified by non-Catholics as political in nature: one at the culture war–infused Ave Maria University, and one at a “Blue Mass” for police officers who died while on duty. His fight against abortion certainly taps into a traditionally Catholic battle, but it’s a battle that Protestants co-opted decades ago. When he speaks of his faith in interviews, he speaks of “faith”—not the church’s teachings or anything more distinctly Catholic in flavor. If this choice is a matter of identifying as—or appealing to—a generic white Christian American, it doesn’t sound that different from his recent efforts to pronounce his own name in a less European way.

But from the way he speaks at events and in interviews, it does seem that DeSantis isn’t just trying to seem less Catholic. It sounds like he’s also trying to seem more evangelical—or at least one specific kind of evangelical.

In speeches, DeSantis has a favorite line: It is time for us to “put on the full armor of God.” He has used it in reference to resisting COVID lockdowns or enacting abortion bans or just standing against leftists. This is a reference to Ephesians, in a passage about Christians staying committed in their faith, but DeSantis uses it in reference to opposing enemies. It’s a term now commonly used in allusion to “spiritual warfare,” popular among evangelicals who feel the call to win over the country.....>

<....There are other ways he takes on this spiritual warfare language, as when he ran an ad (alluding to Paul Harvey’s “So God Made a Farmer” speech) implying that he had been sent by God to be a fighter. It’s a religious tone that fits the candidate’s culture-war sensibilities.

This messaging has received mixed reviews from religious experts. Some view DeSantis’ language as plainly antithetical to his Catholicism. But others believe it’s reflective of how some modern American Catholics have embraced a more aggressive, us-against-them Christianity.

It’s a tone that David DeCosse, the religious and Catholic ethics director at Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, said is not very Catholic. “Of course, it’s not possible to say it’s inherently incompatible with Catholicism,” he said. “But there definitely is a tension of stark division, of good and bad, Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and the left. At some point, that simply does not work with Catholicism.”

As he explained it, modern Catholic theology insists on the dignity of all people, and that no one is beyond redemption. “What you can hear in this stark binary language on the part of DeSantis is that the fill-in-the-blank—the liberals, the left, the Democrats—have become inherently evil in some way,” he said. “You’re moving out of that Catholic sense of the world and moving into something maybe evangelical, maybe Manichean.”

Still, even if DeSantis strays from official church teaching, there are many Catholics with deeply cynical, black-and-white views of the world. And there are some embracing the ideas of spiritual warfare. This trend has emerged from different traditions within the church, but for DeSantis specifically, it comes from the sort of masculine Christianity that emerged first in the 1990s among Protestants.

“Overall, it 100 percent makes sense from a Catholic perspective,” said Lauren Horn Griffin, a professor in the philosophy and religious studies department at Louisiana State University. “There’s a real prevalence of military metaphors in Catholicism.” She cited the Knights of Columbus, a popular Catholic men’s organization. “Knight imagery, crusader imagery, are very common. And that often leads to spiritual warfare language. So I think that there’s definitely a spiritual warfare rhetoric in the Catholic past and present.”

More than any dogma, DeSantis’ spiritual warfare language was likely inspired by geography, as his Catholicism is informed through interaction with the evangelicals around him. “There’s certainly a Southern vibe,” Griffin said. “It’s a Southern way of talking about it, which Catholics don’t share as much.” In this light, in how he talks about religion, DeSantis is signaling where his cultural loyalties lie, rather than his deeply held beliefs....>

<.....But there was one moment in which DeSantis clearly affirmed himself as either directly speaking to or identifying with evangelicals. In an interview with the conservative evangelical Christian Broadcasting Network, the station’s political analyst, David Brody, asked DeSantis to describe where he is today with his Roman Catholicism. DeSantis gave a bland, wandering answer about raising his children in a “Christ-centered household” and with “those values,” avoiding their “indoctrination,” and wanting to bring the Bible alive for them. But when Brody pressed about his theology, DeSantis gave a decidedly un-Catholic answer.

Brody: From the Roman Catholicism standpoint, there’s a lot of tradition, there’s a lot of rituals. That’s kind of how it’s steeped in. Evangelicals kind of see it as that born-again relationship with Jesus. How do you process that?

DeSantis: Well, I mean, if you think about what’s the most compelling part of the Bible, there’s a lot, for me. I would point out, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” [from John 14:6]. I mean, that’s ultimately what the faith centers around. Yes, there’s a lot of traditions, and I think a lot of those are nice. But at the end of the day, it’s: Where is your heart with respect to God, and what is that relationship? That, to us, to my wife and I, is kind of where we center that. And some of the history, I think, is really neat … But in terms of how we do it, we really just focus on: What is the cornerstone of being a Christian in the modern world? And I think it’s really back to that in John [14:6].

Not only did DeSantis call Catholic traditions a tepid “nice” and Catholic history “really neat,” he gave such a Protestant-sounding answer that Brody had to follow with a clarification. (“You consider yourself Roman Catholic today? Still?” “Yep,” DeSantis said.) As Brody would write on Twitter afterward, “his answer about having that PERSONAL relationship with God was fascinating considering you typically don’t get that type of answer and language among traditional Roman Catholics.”

“Sacramentalism is not simply nice,” said William D. Dinges, a religious studies professor at the Catholic University of America, about the Catholic rites. “They’re constituent for what it means to be a church. Catholicism is not a me-and-Jesus form of religiosity. It’s profoundly communal in the sense of our relationship with Christ and the church. From my point of view, he’s talking more Protestant-evangelical than Catholic.”

We can’t say whether DeSantis really leans this way “in his heart,” or if he’s playing up his Protestant-esque personal relationship with God for purely political reasons. We have evidence, though, that he doesn’t care about reaching out to Catholic voters, partly because Catholics do not vote as a bloc. (They’re split nearly 50–50 among the two parties and tend to vote more along racial, ethnic, and class lines.) Repeatedly, Catholic bishops have chastised DeSantis for his positions on the death penalty and on immigration. But DeSantis has shown no sign of moderation or remorse at the bishops’ criticism.

And we have evidence he’s trying hard for the evangelical vote. The week he announced his candidacy, he chose to speak to the largely evangelical audience at the National Religious Broadcasters’ annual convention. And his focus on Israel—alongside his acknowledgement that his Israel position has to do with the Bible—is clearly connected to evangelical priorities, given that Catholics do not share in certain evangelical theological views about the nation.

So DeSantis’ religious messaging leaves him in a strange spot. While Donald Trump barely makes an effort to pretend to be religious—no one confuses him for a religious man—DeSantis is trying to brand himself as a credible, vaguely evangelical Christian. But that’s a crowded lane beside fellow candidates Mike Pence and Tim Scott, who have for decades proved themselves to be authentic, committed evangelicals. With those uncut options, how many educated white evangelicals will really go for the less pure version? Neither fully Catholic nor fully evangelical, DeSantis is counting on voters to care enough about religious authenticity to defect from the religiously illiterate Trump, while not caring enough to think too hard about whether he’s an actual, authentic evangelical candidate.>

<Drawing rebuke from federal law enforcement, Sen. Chuck Grassley released the much discussed FBI-generated FD-1023 form in which it is alleged that then-Vice President Joe Biden engaged in a criminal bribery scheme with a foreign national.

The 89-year-old Republican Senator, who has long worked to protect whistleblowers, says he released the redacted form in the interest of transparency. The release of the document, which House Oversight Committee Chair Rep. James Comer has characterized as a bombshell revelation, means the “American people can now read this document for themselves, without the filter of politicians or bureaucrats,” according to Grassley.

Rep. Dan Goldman was among those who took issue with the release of the document, an internal FBI form not designed for public inspection. Instead of overtly slamming Grassley for the release, Goldman looked to deliver context around the document itself — seeking to undermine the message more than the messenger.

Acknowledging that Grassley had already let this cat out of the bag, Goldman attempts to define what kind of cat it is — a toothless, clawless feline, in his estimation.

Using three bullet points, Goldman leads with the fact that Donald Trump‘s DOJ did not find the allegation worthy of investigation.

Goldman writes:

Here's what we know about these unverified allegations: 1) Trump's DOJ had this information and did not find it sufficiently credible to investigate. 2) the source of the information subsequently denied it. 3) The Burisma Russian propaganda has repeatedly been debunked.

The White House, in its response, took on Grassley the messenger as well as the message.

“It is remarkable that congressional Republicans…continue to push claims that have been debunked for years,” said White House spokesperson Ian Sams. “It’s clear that congressional Republicans are dead-set on playing shameless, dishonest politics and refuse to let truth get in the way.”

House Oversight Committee Chair Comer and Sen. Grassley started demanding FBI Director Christopher Wray hand over the FBI-generated record back in May. The FBI resisted on protocol — though at the time Director Wray made the FD-1023 available to the Committee for examination.>

<Republican presidential candidates are ramping up their attacks over President Joe Biden and his youngest granddaughter, defying an unofficial rule in Washington that lawmakers’ families, especially minors, are off-limits to conflict.

The 4-year-old girl is Hunter Biden’s fourth daughter, his only child with Lunden Roberts of Arkansas. Hunter Biden’s child support case with Roberts garnered attention, and Republican presidential candidates have started targeting the president for not publicly confirming whether he has a relationship with the girl.

For example, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday hit back at Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for their criticism over several policies in Florida, including Harris’ condemnation of Florida officials over educational standards about slavery and American history.

“Maybe if Biden’s granddaughter moved to Florida he’d actually visit her,” DeSantis tweeted.

DeSantis at a recent campaign stop also said "Why don’t you focus on spending more time with your granddaughter in Arkansas, or at least acknowledge she exists?”

Roberts said in April court filings that Hunter Biden has “never seen or contacted” the child. She also said Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden “remain estranged” from her, CNN reported.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has declined to comment on the president’s relationship with the child. USA TODAY has reached out to the White House for additional information.

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley during a campaign event last week was discussing her call for competency tests for politicians, which she said could include asking how many grandchildren a person has, an apparent reference to Biden.

The criticism hasn’t only come from Republican presidential candidates. GOP Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel earlier this month accused Biden of having “no empathy.”

Biden has long touted his close relationship to his grandchildren, including Hunter Biden’s three other daughters and son, as well as the son and daughter of Beau Biden, who died in 2015 from brain cancer.

In April, Biden said he had six grandchildren during remarks to celebrate "Take Your Child to Work Day." The president said he’s “crazy about them” and he speaks to them every day.

Republicans’ criticism targeting Biden over his youngest granddaughter isn’t the first time lawmakers, commentators and others from either party have broken the unspoken rule that families should be left out of the political arena.

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., in 2019, said he apologized to former President Donald Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen after tweeting an apparent threat about him, saying "Regardless of disagreements, family members should be off-limits from attacks from representatives, senators & presidents, including myself.”>

<A far-right activist who led the takeover of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon now must pay millions of dollars in damages after a hospital in Idaho won a defamation lawsuit against them.

The lawsuit by St. Luke’s Regional Health accused Ammon Bundy and his associate Diego Rodriguez of making defamatory statements against the hospital and its employees after Rodriguez’s infant grandson was temporarily removed from his family and taken to St. Luke’s amid concerns for his health.

Police said at the time that medical personnel determined the child was malnourished and had lost weight. The hospital claimed Bundy and Rodriguez orchestrated a smear campaign against it.

Late Monday, a jury at the Ada County Courthouse in Boise agreed, awarding the hospital damages exceeding $50 million, the hospital announced.

“The jury’s decision imposes accountability for the ongoing campaign of intimidation, harassment and disinformation these defendants have conducted,” St. Luke's said in a statement. “It also affirms the importance of protecting health care providers and other public servants from attacks intended to prevent them from carrying out their responsibilities.”

Bundy had urged his followers to protest at the hospital and at the homes of child protection service workers, law enforcement officers and others involved in the child protection case. Rodriguez wrote on his website that the baby was “kidnapped,” and suggested that the state and people involved in the case were engaged in “child trafficking” for profit.

The lawsuit was filed more than a year ago. Since then, Bundy has ignored court orders related to the lawsuit, filed trespassing complaints against people hired to deliver legal paperwork, and called on scores of his followers to camp at his home for protection when he learned he might be arrested on a warrant for a misdemeanor charge of contempt of court.

Bundy did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the jury's decision. Bundy wasn't represented by an attorney, nor was Rodriguez, according to court papers.

In 2016, Bundy led a 41-day armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Oregon, to protest the arson convictions of two ranchers who set fires on federal land where they had been grazing their cattle.

In 2014, Bundy’s father, rancher Cliven Bundy, rallied supporters to stop officers from impounding Bundy Ranch cattle over more than $1 million in unpaid fees and penalties for grazing livestock on government land.

Ammon Bundy was acquitted of criminal charges in Oregon, and the Nevada criminal case ended in a mistrial.>

<The Texas A&M University professor Joy Alonzo criticized the Texas lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, during a visiting lecture in March 2023 on the opioid crisis at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas.

Just hours later, Alonzo learned a student accused her of disparaging Patrick during the lecture. The complaint reached her supervisors and the chancellor of Texas A&M, John Sharp, who was in communication directly with the lieutenant governor’s office.

The student is reportedly the daughter of the Texas land commissioner, Dawn Buckingham, who served in the Texas senate with Patrick for six years, received an endorsement from him in her run for land commissioner, and had attended Sharp’s wedding in May.

Less than two hours after the lecture had ended, Patrick’s chief of staff forwarded Alonzo’s professional biography to Sharp, reported the Texas Tribune. The chancellor responded to the lieutenant governor directly via text message that Alonzo would immediately be placed on administrative leave pending an investigation to fire her.

The University of Texas Medical Board quickly issued a censure statement, distancing itself from any comments Alonzo made during the lecture.

Texas A&M and the University of Texas Medical Board did not specify what Alonzo said during the lecture that prompted the investigation. Students interviewed by the Texas Tribune only recalled a vague reference to Patrick during the lecture on opioid overdose policies. Texas A&M ultimately allowed Alonzo to retain her job after the investigation did not reveal any wrongdoing.

The swift investigation sparked criticism from Alonzo’s colleagues and free speech advocates over the interference of politicians into classroom discussions and how state universities are managed.

Adam Steinbaugh, an attorney with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a non-profit legal group focused on protecting free speech on college campuses, criticized the investigation as “inappropriate” in an interview with the Tribune and noted its chilling effect, regardless of the outcome of the investigation.

Marcia Ory, a professor at Texas A&M Health and co-chair of the university’s Opioid Task Force with Alonzo, noted the long-term consequences of the interference in an email to Jon Mogford, vice-president of Texas A&M Health.

The reporting of the suspension and investigation of Alonzo comes as the Texas A&M president, Katherine Banks, resigned last week over the backlash to politically motivated outsiders halting the hiring by the university of Kathleen McElroy, a Black journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin, to revive the journalism school at Texas A&M.

On Alonzo, a spokesperson for the university system told the Tribune: “It is not unusual to respond to any state official who has concerns about anything occurring at the Texas A&M System,” claiming the system followed standard procedure investigating the claim against Alonzo.

The Guardian has contacted Texas A&M, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, and Joy Alonzo for further comment.>

Does that mean no mention of their incompetent guvnor?

<The Florida Supreme Court has publicly reprimanded the judge who oversaw the penalty trial of Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz for showing bias toward the prosecution.

The unanimous decision Monday followed a June recommendation from the Judicial Qualifications Commission. That panel had found that Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer violated several rules governing judicial conduct during last year's trial in her actions toward Cruz's public defenders. The six-month trial ended with Cruz receiving a receiving a life sentence for the 2018 murder of 14 students and three staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School after the jury could not unanimously agree that he deserved a death sentence.

The 15-member commission found that Scherer “unduly chastised” lead public defender Melisa McNeill and her team, wrongly accused one Cruz attorney of threatening her child, and improperly embraced members of the prosecution in the courtroom after the trial's conclusion.

The commission, composed of judges, lawyers and citizens, acknowledged that “the worldwide publicity surrounding the case created stress and tension for all participants."

Regardless, the commission said, judges are expected to “ensure due process, order and decorum, and act always with dignity and respect to promote the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.”

A voicemail message was left at Scherer's office Tuesday, and an email seeking comment was sent to the public defender's office. Paula McMahon, spokesperson for the Broward State Attorney’s Office, said her office didn't have comment.

Scherer retired from the bench at the end of last month. The 46-year-old former prosecutor was appointed to the bench in 2012, and the Cruz case was her first capital murder trial. Broward County’s computerized system randomly assigned her Cruz’s case shortly after the shooting.

Scherer's handling of the case drew frequent praise from the parents and spouses of the victims, who said she treated them with professionalism and kindness. But her clashes with Cruz’s attorneys and others sometimes drew criticism from legal observers.

After sentencing Cruz, 24, to life without parole as required, Scherer left the bench and hugged members of the prosecution and the victims’ families. She told the commission she offered to also hug the defense team.

That action led the Supreme Court in April to remove her from overseeing post-conviction motions of another defendant, Randy Tundidor, who was sentenced to death for murder in the 2019 killing of his landlord. One of the prosecutors in that case had also been on the Cruz team, and during a hearing in the Tundidor case a few days after the Cruz sentencing, Scherer asked the prosecutor how he was holding up.

The court said Scherer’s actions gave at least the appearance that she could not be fair to Tundidor.>

<Former President Donald Trump and even some of his key GOP rivals may be raking in money — but at the state level, it's a different story. State Republican Parties in important parts of the country are going broke as they are taken over by extremists who don't know how to organize or win elections, Jim Geraghty wrote for the conservative National Review on Tuesday.

"Even worse for the GOP, these aren’t just any states — Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, and Minnesota all rank as either key swing states or once-purple states that would be tantalizing targets in a good year," wrote Geraghty.

The simple fact of the matter, he wrote, is that if the GOP underperforms for their fourth consecutive election cycle, "a key factor will be the replacement of competent, boring, regular state-party officials with quite exciting, blustering nutjobs who have little or no interest in the basics of successfully managing a state party or the basic blocking and tackling involved in helping GOP candidates win elections."

Many of these parties [sic] struggles have been well-documented. The Michigan GOP has been in turmoil since it was taken over by Kristina Karamo, a QAnon-obsessed election denier who ran unsuccessfully for secretary of state in 2022; party officials have been arguing with her and her loyalists over financial arrangements, and tensions have escalated to the point that two officials got in a physical fight that put one in the hospital. Meanwhile, the Minnesota GOP is down to just $53 dollars in the bank, with hundreds of thousands in debt.

But more ominously, Geraghty noted, there are cracks showing even in relatively more competent state GOPs, which managed to come away with wins last year. For instance, "the Georgia state Republican Party is spending a small fortune on the legal fees of those 'alternate' Republican electors from the 2020 presidential election."

Before Trump, wrote Geraghty, things weren't this bad — there were embarrassments, sure, but state parties often scored major wins, with Arizona Republicans in particular crushing Democrats in 2014. Now, the chaos is so bad that donors are leaving in droves, all but paralyzing these parties from doing the basics of organizing.

"The MAGA crowd now running these state parties insisted they didn’t need anyone else," concluded Geraghty. "And now we see where that got them.">

<The Bulwark’s Bill Kristol expressed his displeasure with a statement from Florida Governor and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis after he was involved in a a car crash on Tuesday.

After DeSantis’s press secretary Bryan Griffin issued a statement noting that the governor and his staff appreciated “the prayers and well wishes of the nation for his continued protection on the campaign trail,” Kristol decided to weigh in on the accident, in which neither DeSantis nor his staff were injured.

“I’m glad he’s fine, but the ‘We appreciate the prayers and well wishes of the nation for his continued protection while on the campaign trail’ is so grandiosely and self-importantly and pretending-he’s-engaged-in-a-dangerous-enterpr- ise on brand,” tweeted the frustrated commentator, who also serves on the board of directors at Defending Democracy Together, a 501(c)(4) funded by progressive donor Pierre Omidyar of which The Bulwark was once a project.

Despite leaving the Republican Party over its relationship with former president Donald Trump and even seeking out a third-party challenger to Trump in 2016, Kristol recently praised Trump for his “alpha” behavior, comparing him favorably to DeSantis.

“I tend (perhaps foolishly) to discount the Alpha/Beta Male stuff. But: DeSantis was always on Fox when Rupert was for him. Now he announces on Twitter when Elon’s for him. Kind of Beta, no? Trump does CNN town hall, goes into the (pseudo-) lion’s den. Looks kind of Alpha, no?” tweeted Kristol in May.

“DeSantis is so much worse a demagogue than Trump,” he argued in another tweet last month.>

<U.S. senators across the aisle warned that the Federal Reserve’s Inspector General could have a financial incentive to not properly investigate other Fed officials, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Republican Florida Sen. Rick Scott have asked Mark Bialek, the Fed’s internal Inspector General, to turn over specific information about his salary, according to a letter obtained by Reuters. The request comes amidst a bipartisan effort to increase oversight of the banking sector, and concerns that the Fed IG role is not independent enough from the organization to make unbiased decisions, Reuters reported Tuesday.

Part of that concern stems from the fact that Bialek reports directly to the Fed’s board, unlike other agencies like the Pentagon, whose IG reports directly to the government. Bialek’s salary structure is also directly tied to the compensation of Fed officials who he is tasked to investigate, which raises the possibility of conflicts of interest, the senators wrote in the letter.

Warren and Scott have proposed new legislation that would have the Fed IG role be chosen by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

“Because the Fed Inspector General’s salary is in part based on the bonuses earned by other Fed employees… there is a structural, financial incentive for the IG to overlook or downplay wrongdoing by those Fed officials,” the senators wrote in the letter. “These types of conflicts are why we have introduced legislation.”

Warren and Scott posed five questions to Bialek in the letter, including what salary he had received in the past five years, what percentage of his salary structure was based on bonus compensation and whether any investigations he conducted were connected to bonuses he received, according to Reuters.

At a Senate hearing earlier in May, Warren reprimanded Bialek about an incomplete investigation which he was responsible for and accused him of being “compromised” within the Fed, Reuters reported.

“The people who hired you and who have the power to fire you — that dynamic tends to create watchdogs that don’t bark,” Warren said. “At best, you are in an impossible compromised position when it comes to investigating wrongdoing at the Fed.”

Bialek defended the Fed during his hearing, assuring the Senate his investigations were truthful and independent from bias.

“No Board Chair has resisted or objected to our oversight work since I have been the IG,” he said at the time.

The Federal Reserve did not immediately respond to a request for comment.>

<In today's fast-paced, digitally driven world, it's easier than ever to lose sight of the importance of human connection. The truth is, it matters—more than we might realize. One source of proof is a June 2023 study published in Nature Human Behavior, a double-blind peer-reviewed science journal, that examined the link between social isolation, loneliness and mortality. The in-depth meta-analysis, which incorporated 90 cohort studies and involved over 2.2 million individuals, may provide wake-up call [sic] about the health implications of our social well-being.

The publication of this study also aligns with a significant advisory issued by the Surgeon General of the United States, Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, in May 2023. In his public statement, Dr. Murthy declared, "Loneliness and isolation represent profound threats to our health and well-being." His realization came after he heard countless stories of isolation and invisibility from Americans of all ages and backgrounds. He drew a striking comparison to illustrate the severity of social disconnection, likening its mortality risk to that of smoking up to 15 cigarettes per day. Astonishingly, this risk even surpasses the risks associated with obesity and a sedentary lifestyle.

Social isolation and loneliness

Isolation and loneliness seem like two sides of the same coin, but they differ significantly. Think of social isolation as the actual, tangible absence of social interactions. It's when you don't have people around you to connect with.

On the other hand, loneliness is more about feelings and perceptions. You could be surrounded by people—but if you feel disconnected or unfulfilled by your relationships, that's loneliness. It's not just about how many people you interact with, but the quality of those connections that really matter.

Beyond loneliness: Unseen health risks

According to the June 2023 study, individuals who experience social isolation face a startling 32% increased risk of premature death. For those dealing with feelings of loneliness, the risk is still significant, increasing by 14%.

But that's not all. Apart from having a higher risk of dying overall, lonely and isolated people are more likely to die from specific diseases, like heart disease and cancer. If you're socially isolated, your chances of dying from heart disease rose 34% and cancer 24%. Even just feeling lonely can increase your risk of dying from cancer by 9%.

A threat for chronic disease patients

Here's where it becomes even more important—especially for those already battling chronic diseases: The study shows if you're socially isolated and have heart disease or breast cancer, your risk of dying from any cause jumps to 28% and 51%, respectively. For isolated breast cancer patients, their risk of dying from the disease itself increases by 33%.

This is a stark reminder that fighting chronic diseases isn't just about medicine—emotional support matters in a big way, too.

What can we do about it?

The authors of the study advocate for a renewed focus on social isolation and loneliness as vital aspects of our overall well-being. They suggest increasing awareness about their health implications among healthcare professionals and the public, utilizing innovative technologies to mobilize family and community resources, and equipping our healthcare system to identify and address these issues promptly.

Dr. Murthy also shared some simple but powerful advice: Connect more with people. Answer calls from friends, have meals together, listen to each other without getting distracted by your phone, do nice things for others, and be your authentic self. He says, "Our individual relationships are an untapped resource—a source of healing hiding in plain sight."

He said we must work together as a community to rebuild social connections. This means changing how we set up our communities and running programs that help us build healthier relationships. He believes, "By taking small steps every day to strengthen our relationships, and by supporting community efforts to rebuild social connection, we can rise to meet this moment together."

It's a clear call to action for each of us: For the sake of our health and our longevity, it's time to reach out, reconnect, and reaffirm the bonds that make us human.>

<Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich in his latest video takes Republicans to task over five “totally made-up crises” he says they are using to distract Americans.

The GOP talking points seek to divert attention away from growing economic inequality, the climate crisis and right-wing efforts to undermine democracy, argues the former Clinton cabinet secretary.

They are the conservative war on “woke,” attacks on the transgender community, freak-outs over critical race theory, slurring of welfare recipients and claims of out-of-control government spending.

All five “disguise what’s really going on,” Reich warned.>

<On the menu today: The seemingly frozen-in-amber GOP presidential primary is getting most of the attention and headlines, but under the radar, in at least a quartet of key states, the state Republican parties are collapsing — going broke and devolving into infighting little fiefdoms. Even worse for the GOP, these aren’t just any states — Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, and Minnesota all rank as either key swing states or once-purple states that would be tantalizing targets in a good year. Meanwhile, the Georgia state Republican Party is spending a small fortune on the legal fees of those “alternate” Republican electors from the 2020 presidential election. If Republicans are disappointed with the results of the 2024 elections — for the fourth straight cycle, mind you — a key factor will be the replacement of competent, boring, regular state-party officials with quite exciting, blustering nutjobs who have little or no interest in the basics of successfully managing a state party or the basic blocking and tackling involved in helping GOP candidates win elections.

Crumbling State Republican Parties

When a political party adopts a mindset that prioritizes loyalty to a particular figure — in this case, Donald Trump — over all other traits, eventually it tends to run low on those other traits. We see the consequences of this mentality in the condition of several state Republican parties.

In Arizona:

The Arizona Republican Party picked a bad time to run out of money.

There are two competitive House seats on the line as Republicans are looking to defend their slim majority in the lower chamber next year. Not to mention, Arizona is going to be a major swing state in the 2024 presidential election.

But the state GOP has just over $23,000 in cash on hand in its federal account, according to federal filings, and roughly $144,000 according to their [second-quarter] state filing. That pales in comparison to state parties in places like Wisconsin and Ohio, where both had more than $1 million in cash on hand at the end of the most recent quarter.

In Colorado:

In the wake of the vote in Congress to raise the debt ceiling, [state Republican Chair Dave] Williams delivered a strident attack on all Republicans who voted for the measure, and specifically his former primary opponent, Republican U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn (he lost to Lamborn last year by 18 points).

In a blast email, he basically called Lamborn a liar and a hypocrite and said “Colorado Republicans are fed up with say-anything politicians like Doug Lamborn…”

This is not only wildly inappropriate for a party chair but seems utterly unmoored from any serious strategy to build a robust, statewide election-winning organization. In fact, he included a plea for donations at the end of the anti-GOP email by touting his efforts to “put the Democrats on defense.”

Also in Colorado:

Stolen election conspiracist Dave Williams, the new state chairman, has announced the Colorado Republican State Central Committee (CRC) will vote on August 5 on whether to cancel the 2024 Republican primary election. And to accomplish this act of political suicide, they want to make a change in the committee’s voting rules that would make the old Soviet Politburo proud.

Voters passed Proposition 108 in 2016 which allows unaffiliated voters to vote in the primary election of their choice.

Unaffiliated voters receive both parties’ primary ballots in the mail and they can choose one. Voting in both primaries nullifies both ballots.

In Minnesota:

Recent filings with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) reveal that Minnesota’s Republican Party is financially struggling, with barely $54 cash on hand. Additionally, the state GOP has more than $335,000 in debt, according to the FEC paperwork filed in late June.

In Michigan:

At least four county parties in Michigan have been at open war with themselves, with members suing one another or putting forward competing slates that claim to be in charge. The night before an April state party meeting, two GOP officials got into a physical altercation in a hotel bar over an attempt to expel members. The state party’s new chairwoman, Kristina Karamo, has struggled to raise money and abandoned the party’s longtime headquarters.

Also in Michigan:

The Michigan Republican Party has about $93,000 in its bank accounts 16 months before the November 2024 presidential election, a revelation GOP insiders said paints an alarming financial picture for a political party that had full control of state government five years ago....>