Sunday, July 24, 2022

And another day of deepening the probe, Trump’s radical plan, ‘imposter Christianity,’ Catholic hospitals’ growth, CA gun law modeled after TX abortion law, banning same-sex marriage, monkeypox, child labor, fabricated Alzheimer’s research, and sentient AI comes to a close:

“Yesterday at TPUSA, Congresswoman MTG proudly referred to herself as a ‘Christian nationalist.’ The crowd cheered, as did Rep. Matt Gaetz. Anyone with even a passing familiarity with world history knows where this is going.” — Jose Pagliery

Deaths

US: 1,051,996

World: 6,403,131

Cases

US: 92,194,892

World: 575,144,901

Jan. 6 panel deepens probe to Trump Cabinet, awaits Thomas. The House Jan. 6 committee said Sunday it will interview more former Cabinet secretaries and is prepared to subpoena conservative activist Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, who’s married to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, as part of its investigation of the Capitol riot and Donald Trump’s role.

A radical plan for Trump’s second term. Former President Trump’s top allies are preparing to radically reshape the federal government if he is re-elected, purging potentially thousands of civil servants and filling career posts with loyalists to him and his "America First” ideology…The impact could go well beyond typical conservative targets such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Internal Revenue Service. Trump allies are working on plans that would potentially strip layers at the Justice Department — including the FBI, and reaching into national security, intelligence, the State Department and the Pentagon, sources close to the former president say…Their work could accelerate controversial policy and enforcement changes, but also enable revenge tours against real or perceived enemies, and potentially insulate the president and allies from investigation or prosecution…These groups are operating on multiple fronts: shaping policies, identifying top lieutenants, curating an alternative labor force of unprecedented scale, and preparing for legal challenges and defenses that might go before Trump-friendly judges, all the way to a 6-3 Supreme Court…Even if Trump did not deploy Schedule F to this extent, the very fact that such power exists could create a significant chilling effect on government employees…Trump’s allies claim such pendulum swings will not happen because they will not have to fire anything close to 50,000 federal workers to achieve the result, as one source put it, of “behavior change.” Firing a smaller segment of “bad apples” among the career officials at each agency would have the desired chilling effect on others tempted to obstruct Trump’s orders…Throughout the Trump administration, Ginni Thomas had taken a strong interest in administration personnel. She complained to White House officials, including Trump himself, that Trump’s people were obstructing “MAGA” officials from being appointed to key roles in the administration. As Axios previously reported, Ginni Thomas had assembled detailed lists of disloyal government officials to oust — and trusted pro-Trump people to replace them…Sources close to the former president said that he will — as a matter of top priority — go after the national security apparatus, “clean house” in the intelligence community and the State Department, target the “woke generals” at the Defense Department, and remove the top layers of the Justice Department and FBI. — America will no longer be a democracy if Republicans take control of Congress in November. And if Trump is installed as President in 2024, then the great American experiment will come to an end.

An ‘imposter Christianity’ is threatening American democracy. This movement uses Christian language to cloak sexism and hostility to Black people and non-White immigrants in its quest to create a White Christian America.

How two Texas megadonors have turbocharged the state’s far-right shift. Gun owners allowed to carry handguns without permits or training. Parents of transgender children facing investigation by state officials. Women forced to drive hours out-of-state to access abortion. This is Texas now: While the Lone Star State has long been a bastion of Republican politics, new laws and policies have taken Texas further to the right in recent years than it has been in decades. Elected officials and political observers in the state say a major factor in the transformation can be traced back to West Texas. Two billionaire oil and fracking magnates from the region, Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, have quietly bankrolled some of Texas’ most far-right political candidates – helping reshape the state’s Republican Party in their worldview...Critics, and even some former associates, say that Dunn and Wilks demand loyalty from the candidates they back, punishing even deeply conservative legislators who cross them by bankrolling primary challengers. Kel Seliger, a longtime Republican state senator from Amarillo who has clashed with the billionaires, said their influence has made Austin feel a little like Moscow. “It is a Russian-style oligarchy, pure and simple,” Seliger said. “Really, really wealthy people who are willing to spend a lot of money to get policy made the way they want it – and they get it.”

Catholic hospitals’ growth impacts reproductive health care. Even as numerous Republican-governed states push for sweeping bans on abortion, there is a coinciding surge of concern in some Democratic-led states that options for reproductive health care are dwindling due to expansion of Catholic hospital networks. These are states such as Oregon, Washington, California, New York and Connecticut, where abortion will remain legal despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling overturning Roe v. Wade. Concerns in these blue states pertain to such services as contraception, sterilization and certain procedures for handling pregnancy emergencies. These services are widely available at secular hospitals but generally forbidden, along with abortion, at Catholic facilities under the Ethical and Religious Directives set by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Steve Bannon convicted of contempt for defying 1/6 subpoena. He faces up to two years in federal prison when he’s sentenced on Oct. 21. Each count carries a minimum sentence of 30 days in jail.

Newsom signs gun law modeled after Texas abortion ban, setting up Supreme Court fight. The new gun law, set to go into effect in January, will allow private people to sue anyone who imports, distributes, manufactures or sells illegal firearms in California, such as assault weapons, .50 BMG rifles and so-called ghost guns. The law requires a court to order $10,000 in damages for each weapon used in an alleged violation, along with attorneys fees. The bill was written so that if Texas' law is nulled, California's would similarly be invalidated.

Nearly one in three Americans say it may soon be necessary to take up arms against the government. Two-thirds of Republicans and independents say the government is “corrupt and rigged against everyday people like me,” according to the poll, compared to 51 percent of liberal voters. Twenty-eight percent of all voters, including 37 percent of gun owners, agreed “it may be necessary at some point soon for citizens to take up arms against the government,” a view held by around 35 percent of Republicans and around 35 percent of Independents. One in five Democrats concurred.

At Least 25 States Are One Supreme Court Decision Away From Banning Same-Sex Marriage. Now, the bill rests in the hands of the Senate, where it’s not yet clear if enough Republicans will support the bill and help it avoid a 60-vote filibuster. What would happen if it doesn’t pass? Currently, there are at least 32 states—Arizona, Louisiana, and Ohio among them—that have either constitutional amendments, state laws, or both that prohibit same-sex marriage. The Obergefell v. Hodges ruling rendered these defunct in 2015, but if the Supreme Court were to overturn that decision, same-sex marriage would be instantly banned in at least 25 of those states—putting thousands of couples at risk. Marriages, of course, are more than just white cakes and wedding rings. Everything from child custody to property rights can depend on whether a couple is married. In fact, a 2004 study from the US Government Accountability Office found that there are 1,138 statutes and provisions where marriage status is a factor in receiving benefits, rights, or privileges. Before the legalization of same-sex marriage, gay couples often would face discrimination and have their rights denied by various legal bodies…Meanwhile, several conservative politicians have hinted that they want to end marriage equality. — Marriage is not a state's rights issue. It’s a fundamental right as an American. That makes it a federal issue.

Average US gasoline price falls 32 cents to $4.54 per gallon. “Further drops at the pump are likely as the wholesale gasoline price cuts continue making their way to street level,” Lundberg said in a statement.

Monkeypox declared global health emergency by WHO as cases surge. The global monkeypox outbreak has been declared a public health emergency of international concern by the World Health Organization (WHO) – the strongest call to action the agency can make. It is the seventh time such a declaration has been made since 2009, the most recent being for Covid-19, which was given the same label by the WHO in 2020, and follows a meeting of a committee of experts on Thursday.

U.S. identifies first cases of monkeypox in children. Cases of the viral disease monkeypox in the United States have been identified for the first time in children - a toddler in California and an infant who is not a U.S. resident, health authorities said on Friday.

Hyundai subsidiary has used child labor at Alabama factory. Underage workers, in some cases as young as 12, have recently worked at a metal stamping plant operated by SMART Alabama LLC…Reuters learned of underage workers at the Hyundai-owned supplier following the brief disappearance in February of a Guatemalan migrant child from her family's home in Alabama. The girl, who turns 14 this month, and her two brothers, aged 12 and 15, all worked at the plant earlier this year and weren't going to school, according to people familiar with their employment. Their father, Pedro Tzi, confirmed these people's account in an interview with Reuters.

Florida school board rejects new sex ed textbooks. The board of Florida's largest school district has rejected new sexual education textbooks that it approved three months ago. The 5-4 vote by the Miami-Dade County School Board on Wednesday leaves students without a sex ed curriculum…The textbooks cover pregnancy prevention, understanding sexuality and sexually transmitted infections, drugs and alcohol, and relationships, according to descriptions in the book…The controversy lands when conservatives around the country are pushing bills that would further marginalize members of the LGBTQ community.

A neuroscience image sleuth finds signs of fabrication in scores of Alzheimer’s articles, threatening a reigning theory of the disease. If Schrag’s doubts are correct, Lesné’s findings were an elaborate mirage…A 6-month investigation by Science provided strong support for Schrag’s suspicions and raised questions about Lesné’s research. A leading independent image analyst and several top Alzheimer’s researchers—including George Perry of the University of Texas, San Antonio, and John Forsayeth of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)—reviewed most of Schrag’s findings at Science’s request. They concurred with his overall conclusions, which cast doubt on hundreds of images, including more than 70 in Lesné’s papers. Some look like “shockingly blatant” examples of image tampering, says Donna Wilcock, an Alzheimer’s expert at the University of Kentucky. The authors “appeared to have composed figures by piecing together parts of photos from different experiments,” says Elisabeth Bik, a molecular biologist and well-known forensic image consultant. “The obtained experimental results might not have been the desired results, and that data might have been changed to … better fit a hypothesis.”…But he says he felt an urgent need to go public about work that might mislead the field and slow the race to save lives. “You can cheat to get a paper. You can cheat to get a degree. You can cheat to get a grant. You can’t cheat to cure a disease,” he says. “Biology doesn’t care.” — Jesus fucking Christ. It looks like 16 years of Alzheimer’s research has been deliberately falsified.

Over the last two decades, Alzheimer’s drugs have been notable mostly for having a 99% failure rate in human trials. It’s not unusual for drugs that are effective in vitro and in animal models to turn out to be less than successful when used in humans, but Alzheimer’s has a record that makes the batting average in other areas look like Hall of Fame material. And now we have a good idea of why. Because it looks like the original paper that established the amyloid plaque model as the foundation of Alzheimer’s research over the last 16 years might not just be wrong, but a deliberate fraud.

A wave of salmonella infections has been linked to small turtles, the CDC says. According to the report, at least 15 cases of salmonella were reported across 11 states, and could be traced to turtles with shells smaller than four inches. The outbreak has resulted in 5 hospitalizations thus far.

Google fires engineer who contended its AI technology was sentient. Google has fired the engineer who claimed an unreleased AI system had become sentient, the company confirmed, saying he violated employment and data security policies. Blake Lemoine, a software engineer for Google, claimed that a conversation technology called LaMDA had reached a level of consciousness after exchanging thousands of messages with it.

Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.

Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.