DL Open Thread: Thursday, September 19, 2024

He wants carnage.  That’s the only explanation I can conjure up.  Hey, maybe he can put Ohio into play…

Trump Retaliated Against Climate Scientists Who Wouldn’t Peddle His Shit:

More than three years ago, a small group of government scientists came forward with disturbing allegations.

During President Donald Trump’s administration, they said, their managers at the Environmental Protection Agency began pressuring them to make new chemicals they were vetting seem safer than they really were. They were encouraged to delete evidence of chemicals’ harms, including cancer, miscarriage and neurological problems, from their reports — and in some cases, they said, their managers deleted the information themselves.

After the scientists pushed back, they received negative performance reviews and three of them were removed from their positions in the EPA’s division of new chemicals and reassigned to jobs elsewhere in the agency.

On Wednesday, the EPA inspector general announced that it had found that some of the treatment experienced by three of those scientists — Martin Phillips, Sarah Gallagher and William Irwin — amounted to retaliation.

Three reports issued by the inspector general confirmed that the scientists’ negative performance reviews as well as a reassignment and the denial of an award that can be used for cash or time off were retaliatory. They also detailed personal attacks by supervisors, who called them “stupid,” “piranhas” and “pot-stirrers.”

Meet The TheoBros’.  JD Vance’s peeps:

On July 15, when former President Donald Trump first appeared at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, he brought along two new accessories. One was a large bandage covering his ear, which had been nicked by a would-be assassin’s bullet. The other was Ohio’s first-term senator and Hillbilly Elegy author JD Vance, who was about to debut as the GOP vice presidential hopeful.

Two days later, after paying tribute to his wife, Usha—the child of immigrants from India—and their three biracial kids, Vance portrayed a vision of America that resonated deeply with Trump voters. “America is not just an idea,” he said solemnly. “It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation.”

To many viewers at home, this seemed like the stuff of a boilerplate, patriotic stump speech. But the words “shared history” lit up a far-right evangelical corner of social media. “America is a particular place with a particular people,” Joel Webbon, a Texas pastor and podcaster, wrote on X. “This is one of the most important political questions facing America right now,” posted former Trump administration official William Wolfe. “Answer it wrong, we will go the way of Europe, where the native-born populations are being utterly displaced by third world migrants and Muslims. Answer it right, and we can renew America once more.”

Vance was embracing one of their most cherished beliefs: America should belong to Christians, and, more specifically, white ones. “The American nation is an actual historical people,” says Stephen Wolfe (no relation to William), the author of the 2022 book The Case for Christian Nationalism, “not just a hodgepodge of various ethnicities, but actually a place of settlement and rootedness.” For this group of evangelical leaders, Vance, a 40-year-old former Marine who waxes rapturous about masculinity and women’s revered role as mothers, was the perfect tribune to spread their gospel of patriarchal Christian nationalism.

In their place, a group of young pastors hope to spearhead a Christian nationalist glow-up as they eagerly await a “Christian prince” to rule America. These often bearded thirty- and fortysomethings have suits that actually fit. They are extremely online, constantly posting on myriad platforms, broadcasting their YouTube shows from mancaves, and convening an endless stream of conferences for likeminded followers. Let’s call them, as one scholar I spoke with did, the TheoBros.

For all their youthful modishness, this group is actually more conservative than their older counterparts. Many TheoBros, for example, don’t think women belong in the pulpit or the voting booth—and even want to repeal the 19th Amendment. For some, prison reform would involve replacing incarceration with public flogging. Unlike more mainstream Christian nationalists, like House Speaker Mike Johnson, who are obsessed with the US Constitution, many TheoBros believe that the Constitution is dead and that we should be governed by the Ten Commandments.

Hope this whets your appetite to read the entire thing.

We Pay Double Than Other Countries For The World’s Worst Healthcare.  Eliminate the middle man!:

The United States health system ranked dead last in an international comparison of 10 peer nations, according to a new report by the Commonwealth Fund.

In spite of Americans paying nearly double that of other countries, the system performed poorly on health equity, access to care and outcomes.

The fund said the US would need to expand insurance coverage and make “meaningful” improvements on the amount of healthcare expenses patients pay themselves; minimize the complexity and variation in insurance plans to improve administrative efficiency; build a viable primary care and public health system; and invest in social wellbeing, rather than thrust problems of social inequity onto the health system.

More Arrogance From the University Of Delaware.  UD’s penchant for secrecy rivals that of John Carney and his Delaware Way cohorts.  It’s more than BHL’s unreported income this time:

It sounded like the expression of a jilted suitor.

The University of Delaware on Monday delivered somewhat of a social media salvo at the Delaware Interscholastic Athletic Association, with critical undertones that few missed.

The post on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter), understandably, said UD was “disappointed” the DIAA has moved its football championships out of Delaware Stadium, a decision primarily rooted in high rental costs.

Profits are critical to the DIAA, as income from state tournaments has long provided the majority of its operating budget.

That’s the root of this breakup, as the DIAA has apparently determined other venues would be more profitable.

“It’s economically in the best interest of the DIAA to explore all options that we have and to forge partnerships with different universities and colleges,” DIAA executive director Dave Baylor said.

Alluding to someone else’s revenue was also curious and quite ironic, considering the university recently decided to keep its athletic finances secret. UD no longer submits information for USA Today’s annual report on school athletic revenues and expenses and, as most state universities do, the Knight-Newhouse college athletics financial database.

That’s because, it said, state money does not support the athletic department’s operating budget, though Blue Hen teams play in facilities built and/or improved with the aid of state money, including the Carpenter Center, Delaware Stadium and the presently under-renovation softball field.

The UD charter established it as a “privately governed, state-assisted” institution, meaning many of its financial information is not open to the public. That’s despite the fact the university annually receives state appropriations, including $143 million in the state’s 2024-25 fiscal year budget.

Which is an ongoing disgrace.  Tresolini points out what governors and legislators have kept hidden from the public for decades.  Good on him.

What do you want to talk about?