Stephan: Two-thirds of Americans can't name a single Supreme Court justice. I find that appalling and a symptom telling us that our democracy is neither understood nor supported by a large percentage of the U.S. population. So months ago, to rectify this ignorance, I started looking for well-written fact-based articles on the members of the Supreme Court. A few weeks ago I published a lengthy piece about Clarence Thomas, and yesterday a piece on Amy Coney Barrett. Now, today, an excellent piece on Samuel Alito. What stands out for me from all these profiles is the christofascism, anger, and resentment these men and this woman have about the changes in American society. They do not want, and will do everything in their power to block racial and gender equality. They are obsessed and frightened by the growing percentage of Americans who identify as something other than heterosexual. None of them, in my view, should ever have been appointed to the court.
Associate Justice and militant MAGAt Samuel Alito Credit: Illustration by Gérard DuBois/ The New Yorker
Some baby boomers were permanently shaped by their participation in the countercultural protests and the antiwar activism of the nineteen-sixties and seventies. Others were shaped by their aversion to those movements. Justice Samuel Alito belongs to the latter category. For many years, he lacked the power to do much about that profound distaste, and in any case he had a reputation for keeping his head down. When President George W. Bush nominated Alito to the Supreme Court, in 2005, many journalists portrayed him as a conservative but not an ideologue. The Times noted that legal scholars characterized his jurisprudence as “cautious” and “respectful of precedent.” Self-described liberals who’d known him—as an undergraduate at Princeton, as a law student at Yale, or in some later professional capacity—sketched portraits of a quiet, methodical, reasonable man.
On the Court, even as Alito’s opinions aligned consistently with the goals of the Republican Party—in particular, of social conservatives—admirers praised him as pragmatic and Burkean. According to a 2018 C-span/P.S.B. poll, […]
Stephan: You might think that the endless criminality of Trump would be causing Republicans to rethink their support for a man who is so obviously a racist, a grifter, and a crook. But you would be wrong, as this poll data makes clear.
Donald Trump Credit: James Devaney / GC Images
Former President Trump remains a popular figure in the GOP, as a majority of Republican voters believe he should be the party’s nominee in 2024, a USA Today/Ipsos poll out Sunday indicates.
Why it matters: The poll was conducted after the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago. The results illustrate Trump’s continued grip on the GOP despite his myriad legal troubles.
The big picture: Roughly 59% of Republican voters said Trump should be the Republican nominee in 2024 and that he “deserves re-election,” while 41% said it’s time for a change within the GOP and that Trump shouldn’t run.
By contrast, 56% of Democratic voters surveyed said it was time for change within the party, while only 44% said Biden should be the Democratic nominee in 2024 and deserves re-election.
About 82% of Republican voters believe Trump can win the election, while only 60% of Democratic voters said the same of Biden.
Worth noting: Democratic voters gave President Biden the highest favorability numbers among a slate of candidates at 82%, followed by Sen. Bernie Sanders […]
Stephan: It's not just that support for Trump in the MAGAt world has gone up, his followers are also sending him millions of dollars. Unbelievable but true, and it tells us how bad the Great Schism Trend has become. It also makes clear how close the country is to breaking apart.
Credit: Yuki Iwamura / AP
The FBI searched Donald Trump’s Palm Beach, Florida, home for classified documents on August 8.
Trump’s fundraising team seized the moment to fire up supporters and solicit donations.
Donations peaked at $1 million for at least two days, according to The Washington Post.
Donald Trump raised up to $1 million a day in donations after the FBI executed a search warrant on August 8 at the former president’s home in Palm Beach, Florida.
“We need EVERY SINGLE AMERICAN PATRIOT to take action and bolster our Official Trump Defense Fund,” one email said. “This is the ONLY way to DEFEND President Trump and help him SAVE AMERICA.”
Stephan: Twelve years ago, when the natural gas scheme was really getting underway, I wrote my readers telling them that natural gas as a bridge out of carbon energy was a scam perpetrated by the carbon industries to extend their profits. A scam made possible because politicians across the globe had been bamboozled through the vast briberies -- excuse me, campaign contributions -- paid to them by the carbon corporations. Well, that prediction was correct, as this report describes.
The Haidach gas storage facility near Salzburg, Austria Credit: Frank Hoermann / Sven Simon / Picture-Alliance / DPA / AP
Throughout the 2010s, natural gas was portrayed as a near-miraculous energy source that could fight climate change, lower energy costs, and clean up the environment. It would be a “bridge fuel” that would help eradicate coal and provide the on-demand power that renewable sources like solar and wind could not.
“The natural gas boom has led to cleaner power, and greater energy independence,” President Obama boasted in a 2012 debate with Mitt Romney. “We’re encouraging it and working with the industry.” Much of the rest of the world took the same approach. Europe bet heavily on natural gas—especially Germany, which regeared its whole energy system around gas from Russia, thanks in part to years of effort from former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who has long worked as a lobbyist for the Russian energy companies and is close friends with Vladimir Putin.
David C. Radley, Jesse C. Baumgartner, and Sara R. Collins, - The Commonwealth Fund
Stephan: I tell you week after week that if your calibration is social and individual wellbeing Republican governance always produces inferior social outcomes to Democratic governance. Nowhere is that clearer than in the Covid pandemic. Look at the chart that heads this report. Why is this differential occurring? Because the MAGAt christofascists do not make wellbeing their first priority. There is nothing politically partisan about this. It is the only conclusion the facts will permit. It's not what they call themselves, it's what they do.
Highlights
COVID-19 took a huge toll on Americans’ health, directly and indirectly, but that toll varied dramatically by state.
Hawaii and Massachusetts top the 2022 State Scorecard rankings, based on overall performance across 56 measures of health care access and quality, service use and cost, health disparities, and health outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The lowest-performing states were Mississippi, Oklahoma, and West Virginia.
The pandemic’s impact reverberated throughout the health system in every state, as health care use fell and deaths from drug overdoses and treatable causes rose.
Federal pandemic relief policies helped stabilize insurance coverage.
Opportunities exist to strengthen states’ insurance coverage and care delivery systems so they are better able to withstand future health emergencies.
Introduction
Every year, the Commonwealth Fund’s Scorecard on State Health System Performance uses the latest data available to assess how well the health care system is working in every state. We ask such questions as:
Do Americans have good access to health care? Does their health insurance enable them to get the care they need to stay healthy? Are they protected from high out-of-pocket health costs?
