RFK Jr. Will Kill Americans Sure As Death

Rick addresses the most dangerous man on Trump’s lineup… RFK Jr.
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MAGA Granny Refuses J6 Pardon

Rick Wilson dissects "MAGA Granny" Pamela Hemphill's journey on J6 and with the MAGA cult, exploring what led her to join the group and what ultimately opened her eyes and prompted her exit.
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Heather Cox Richardson Pep Talk

Make sure that you are making your voice heard and that you are doing so in groups. Support the peoiple who are fighting the legal battles. Make that frustration and anger work for you so that you are not living in Donald Trump’s world because there are 332 million of us. We are the richest country in the world. We are the strongest country in the world, and the idea that that some weanie is going to come in with a bunch of misfits and take over our government is only possible if we allow it to be.
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10 Things We Can All Do to Protect Democracy

Marc Elias, founder of Democracy Docket, lists ten things we all can do.
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Rick Wilson SLAMS Trump's DISASTER First Week & Urges Democrats to STAY STRONG!

The Lincoln Project is a leading pro-democracy organization in the United States — dedicated to the preservation, protection, and defense of democracy. Our fight against Trumpism is only beginning. We must combat these forces everywhere and at all times — our democracy depends on it.
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America Belongs to the Billionaires Now

Senator Chris Murphy points out the danger of a consolidated online media market where companies are motivated by money and profit instead of truth or the commond good. Here’s an excerpt:

The full article is available at Chris Murphy’s Substack: Link

The Perspective You Need Right Now: A Conversation with David Bender

America is about to change and we need to counter what’s coming with philosophy not politics. We have to lead with our values, not our party. We can’t give into fear or lose hope, but must reengage in the shared principles of freedom, justice and independence. Opinions are not facts. Information is not knowledge. MAGA has created their own reality dictated from the top down. The opposition needs to find a way to build something real from the ground up.
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I Have Resigned from The Washington Post, effective today.
Why I left to help launch a vibrant, new, independent media outlet

Corporate and billionaire owners of major media outlets have betrayed their audiences’ loyalty and sabotaged journalism’s sacred mission — defending, protecting and advancing democracy. The Washington Post’s billionaire owner and enlisted management are among the offenders. They have undercut the values central to The Post’s mission and that of all journalism: integrity, courage, and independence. I cannot justify remaining at The Post. Jeff Bezos and his fellow billionaires accommodate and enable the most acute threat to American democracy—Donald Trump—at a time when a vibrant free press is more essential than ever to our democracy’s survival and capacity to thrive.

I therefore have resigned from The Post, effective today. In doing so, I join a throng of veteran journalists so distressed over The Post’s management they felt compelled to resign.

The decay and compromised principles of corporate and billionaire-owned media underscore the urgent need for alternatives. Americans are eager for innovative and independent journalism that offers lively, unflinching coverage free from cant, conflicts of interest and moral equivocation.

Which is why I am so thrilled to simultaneously announce this new outlet, The Contrarian: Not Owned by Anybody. The Contrarian will offer daily columns, weekly features, podcasts and social media from me and fellow pro-democracy contrarians, many of whom have decamped from corporate media, others who were never a part of it. I am launching this endeavor with my cofounder, Norm Eisen. Founding contributors will include Joyce Vance, Andy Borowitz, Laurence Tribe, Katie Phang, George Conway, Olivia Julianna, Harry Litman (who recently resigned from the LA Times for reasons similar to mine for leaving the Post), and Asha Rangappa, among many other brilliant voices. We will provide fearless and distinctive reported opinion and cultural commentary without phony balance, euphemisms or gamified political punditry.

The need for upstart outlets has never been more acute. The contradiction between, on the one hand, the journalistic obligation to hold the powerful accountable and, on the other, the financial interests of billionaire moguls and corporate conglomerates could not be starker. The Post’s own headline last month warned: “Trump signals plans to use all levers of power against the media; Press freedom advocates say they fear that the second Trump administration will ramp up pressure on journalists, in keeping with the president-elect’s combative rhetoric.” And yet The Post’s owner quashed a presidential endorsement for Trump’s opponent, forked over $1M for Trump’s inauguration through Amazon, and publicly lauded Trump’s agenda.

None of us could imagine Katharine Graham sending LBJ or Nixon a $1M check. It would have been, as it is now, a fundamental betrayal of a great American newspaper. Defense of the First Amendment is incompatible with funding or cheerleading for the very person who seeks to “drastically undermine the institutions tasked with reporting on his coming administration.”

The Post’s downfall is hardly unique. ABC, Mark Zuckerberg's Meta and corporate-owned cable TV networks (which have scrambled to enlist Trump-friendly voices) are catering to powerful interests, and have profound corporate conflicts. Instead of guarding their independence, they join financial leaders, politicians and other public figures currying favor with Trump and his orbit. Through classic anticipatory obedience—a dangerous but all too familiar pattern—they normalize the authoritarian menace. If Trump has taken “attacks on the press to an entirely new level, softening the ground for an erosion of robust press freedom,” as The Post reported, it is because he finds insufficient resistance. Instead, owners whose outlets he targets quite literally rewarded him.

In closing, I want to reiterate that I have been honored to work for over fourteen years alongside the finest writers and editors in journalism. Above all, I was blessed to work for The Post under the Graham Family ownership and Fred Hiatt’s leadership of the editorial section. My admiration for their collective integrity, dedication to craft, courage, patriotism, and decency is boundless. But when new leaders sully the reputation of institutions entrusted to them and the fate of democracy is in the balance, we all must reevaluate our careers and our obligations to the world’s most essential nation. History calls us all.

I treasure the readers who have stuck with me over the years. I invite them and all those interested in defeating authoritarianism as well as writers and content creators to join this exciting new venture in defense of democracy. Forward!

Rachel Maddow on Pam Bondi: Five things to know about Trump's (second) pick for attorney general

In this episode, Rachel takes a closer look at Trump's choice for attorney general, Pam Bondi, who has been working closely with Trump, despite not being given a role in his first administration, showing commitment to his causes, including the prosecution of his political opponents. While Bondi is not highly regarded for her abilities, she does benefit from comparison to Trump's first choice for attorney general, former Rep. Matt Gaetz.
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More than 15,000 doctors sign letter urging Senate to reject RFK Jr. as health secretary

Brandy Zadrozny, NBC News

More than 15,000 doctors have signed a letter urging senators to vote against confirming Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of health and human services. The letter was posted online by the Committee to Protect Health Care, a physicians advocacy group.
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Letter to United States Senate

From Rob Davidson, MD, MPH, Executive Director, Committee to Protect Health Care
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What Does It Mean? A Conversation with Heather Cox Richardson

We’re at the start of a new year, a new quarter century, and a new administration and a lot is up in the air, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to chat with one of the smartest people I know, about where she thinks America stands in the course of history and what to expect next.
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Letters from an American: Substack

Ben Wikler’s Vision for the Democratic Party

Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler joins Marc Elias to discuss his bid to lead the Democratic National Committee, his plans for the Democratic Party, what went wrong in the 2024 election and more.
YouTube Link

Rachel Maddow on Billy Long: Five things to know about Trump's pick for IRS commissioner

Rachel takes a closer look at Trump's choice for IRS commissioner, Billy Long, a dubiously credentialled former congressman whose qualifications for the job are distant at best.
MSNBC Link | YouTube Link

Before Crackpot RFKism There Was Crackpot Lysenkoism

Gabriel Schoenfeld, The Bulwark

The following is an excerpt. The full article is available in The Bulwark.
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RATHER THAN OPPOSE DONALD TRUMP’S dangerous nominee for secretary of health and human services, some liberal commentators have suggested that the critics of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. should find ways to accommodate him.

At a moment when we should be thinking of this nomination in terms of the potential risk to human lives, all this muddled analysis about science and politics calls to mind a grim episode from the last century that is a cautionary tale for today: the career of the Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko.

Born in 1898, Lysenko had accomplishments of great consequence to his name. Most of these occurred in the field of agronomy, where he advanced a revolutionary set of ideas—now known as Lysenkoism. His main contentions were that genes did not exist, that acquired traits could be inherited, and that heredity itself could be altered by “educating” plants.

One such form of education was called “vernalization”—the notion that crop yields would dramatically increase if seeds that usually died in harsh frosts were exposed to lower temperatures before sowing. “Insights” like that, derived ultimately from Marxist ideology instead of legitimate empirical research, were put into practice on a large scale, first in the USSR and then in Communist China. Widespread crop failures followed, and then famines in which millions perished.

This history of massive state-sponsored scientific fraud is pertinent to Trump’s attempt to install Kennedy to the highest-ranking healthcare position in the U.S. government. The secretary of health and human services has oversight of everything from food safety to medical research to private health insurance to epidemiology to Medicare and Medicaid and much, much more.

Like Lysenko, RFK Jr. has departed from science even as he claims its mantle. He is a proponent of consuming raw milk despite the proven safety benefits of pasteurization (just last month raw milk in California was found to contain bird flu). He opposes the fluoridation of water despite the proven benefits to dental health. But it is for his opposition to vaccines—and his lies about them—that he is most notorious and most dangerous.

To be sure, in lobbying for his confirmation Kennedy has said that “We’re not going to take vaccines away from anybody.” He also says he aims to improve the science of vaccine safety and wants nothing more than to provide “good information” so people “can make informed choices.”

But in light of some of his other pronouncements, this is all disingenuous. One piece of his “good information”—repeated in a 2023 interview with Fox News—is that vaccines cause autism. This theory was first popularized by the British doctor Andrew Wakefield in the Lancet in 1998. But Wakefield was discredited and his Lancet paper was retracted because it was fraudulent. Despite numerous studies that have since found no link between vaccines and autism, Kennedy has persisted in trumpeting his view, and gone even further to claim that “no vaccine is safe and effective.”

A person with no medical or scientific training, RFK Jr. is evidently unaware that vaccines are one of humanity’s greatest accomplishments. Smallpox, the deadliest disease in human history, has been wiped from the face of the earth. Polio, a scourge that terrified generations of Americans and struck down an American president, has been largely consigned to the dustbin of history, at least in the developed world. Rabies, an invariably fatal disease, is preventable by vaccination (does RFK Jr. want to stop vaccinating Fido as well?).

UNFORTUNATELY, RFK JR. IS NOT THE ONLY Lysenko-like figure nominated to serve in the incoming administration. Trump has also tapped MAGA loyalist Dr. Mehmet Oz to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Oz has a long record as a grifter pushing pseudoscience for bucks. Among his claims lacking any scientific backing are that selenium supplements are “the holy grail of cancer prevention”; that raspberry ketones are “the No. 1 miracle in a bottle to burn your fat”; that umckaloabo root extract is “incredibly effective at relieving cold symptoms,” and that hydroxychloroquine is an effective treatment for COVID-19. All of this is quackery.

Trump has said he has appointed Kennedy to “go wild” on U.S. health. The phrase is well chosen. When it comes to medical care and medical science in the unfolding second Trump administration, we’re entering a wild time and a dark age.

Why I’m quitting the Washington Post

By Ann Telnaes, Substack

The following is an excerpt. The complete text is available on substack. Link

I’ve worked for the Washington Post since 2008 as an editorial cartoonist. I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations—and some differences—about cartoons I have submitted for publication, but in all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now.

The cartoon that was killed criticizes the billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to curry favor with incoming President-elect Trump. There have been multiple articles recently about these men with lucrative government contracts and an interest in eliminating regulations making their way to Mar-a-lago. The group in the cartoon included Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook & Meta founder and CEO, Sam Altman/AI CEO, Patrick Soon-Shiong/LA Times publisher, the Walt Disney Company/ABC News, and Jeff Bezos/Washington Post owner.

I will not stop holding truth to power through my cartooning, because as they say, “Democracy dies in darkness.”

Visit Ann Telnaes at Open Windows.
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“Hello darkness, my old friend: the Ann Telnaes resignation and the late, formerly great Washington Post

What a travesty, by Jack Ohman, Substack

The following is an excerpt. The complete text is available on substack. Link

I know Ann very well. She is absolutely a no-bullshit personality in a good way. She says what she thinks to you and in her work. I have been on the sharp, pointy stick business end of a few chats over the years with her, but she is also very thoughtful and kind, with an arid wit. She was a real leader in AAEC, our national editorial cartoonist group, and was president about five years ago. One thing she doesn’t do is fold, take any crap, or otherwise compromise on anything.

Period.

When I heard last night that she had resigned in protest from the Post after 17 years of fine work, I was surprised/ not surprised, because I knew she had been having tense exchanges with editors there who do not know shit from shinola about what an editorial cartoon should be. It’s sad, and I don’t wish to name names, but the Post lost its way on editorial cartoons way before the resignation of Ann Telnaes.

Their editors brought in a bunch of New Yorker-type cartoonists—on the editorial page. One did a cartoon about blue jeans.

Blue jeans.

Ann’s description of her resignation and the reasons behind it showed me Ann’s true self, and Ann’s True Self doesn’t put up with, ahem, cowardice.

The Post now?

Hmm.

Suddenly, Bezos lost his courage and folded like a cheap tent, eager to supplicate to the incoming authoritarian regime. He also added a cool million bucks to the Trump inauguration fund.

During Trump I, the slogan of The Washington Post was “Democracy dies in the darkness”.

True dat, my little spacefaring friend. Now that Trump looked like he could assume power, all the democracy stuff went out the window in favor of ending Trump’s war on Bezos and Amazon.

I haven’t canceled my Post subscription yet, but I suppose I will now. Too bad. This is too much. Nor do I even bother to send my work to them. I stopped a few months ago. It makes me sad, but it’s kind of like finding out your mother was turning tricks on the side.

Bezos has hired a bunch of Murdoch Fleet Street clowns to run the smoldering wreckage of what once was a great and even inspirational newspaper. They can’t even find an external candidate to be editor now. Ask Matea Gold, an obvious next Post executive editor, who fled to The New York Times. The Post editor spiked the story, too.

Hi, darkness.

It smells familiar to most cartoonists my age, who found themselves lionized one minute and stifled the next. Ask Rob Rogers. Ask any of them who ran into a brick wall on their ability to do what they did before craven cowardice set into the journalism profession now owned by spineless techbro billionaires with no moral or ethical compass—other than dropping their pants for authoritarians.

Mad about Ann? Yeah, I’m mad.

But more importantly, I grieve because it’s not just Ann. It’s everyone in journalism. If you’re in opinion, you should be getting your affairs in order and making other arrangements.

Unless you’re a coward.

Then you’ll be fine.

******************************

Hi, people: This was a hard one to write, because now the direction of American editorial cartooning isn’t determined by staffing levels, money, or the usual reasons. It’s about fear. I can keep doing this column with help, free or paid, from folks like you. I am in your debt, again.

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In Support of Anne Telnaes and the First Amendment

On January 3, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes resigned from The Washington Post after her editorial cartoon, critical of The Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, was rejected. Many cartoonists have rallied in support of Ann Telnaes and the First Amendment. For aditional cartoons and commentary, see:

By Steve Brodner, Substack, Jan 07, 2025
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By Heather Hopp-Bruce Globe Staff,Updated January 9, 2025
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