IF YOU ENJOY SR AND FIND IT USEFUL WOULD YOU PLEASE DONATE
When I began Schwartzreport my purpose was to produce an entirely fact-based daily publication in favor of the earth, the inter-connectedness and interdependence of all life, democracy, equality for all, liberty, and things that are life-affirming. Also, to warn my readers about actions, events, and trends that threaten those values. Our country now stands at a crossroads, indeed, the world stands at a crossroads where those values are very much at risk and it is up to each of us who care about wellbeing to do what we can to defend those principles. I want to thank all of you who have contributed to SR, particularly those of you who have scheduled an ongoing monthly contribution. It makes a big difference and is much appreciated. It is one thing to put in the hours each day and to do the work for free, but another to have to cover the rising out-of-pocket costs. For those of you who haven’t done so, but read SR regularly, I ask that you consider supporting it.
Fox News, and NBC News report that Thomas Matthew Crooks who attempted to assassinate criminal Trump was a registered Republican.
Thomas Matthew Crooks, the Republican gunman who tried to assassinate Donald Trump. Credit: The New York Post
Fox News contributor Juan Williams reminded his colleagues that the man who allegedly attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump was a Republican.
“I mean, it’s not only when you think about the president, former President Trump, but also the people in the audience, the people who died, and you understand the danger,” Williams explained during a panel discussion on Fox News Sunday. “It just makes you feel like the country is, the level of political polarization in the country is at a danger point.”
“It’s, I think, a reflection of the divisions within the United States today, not only liberal, conservative, but also on the extremes,” he continued. “This young man, they say he’s a Republican.”
Williams said he found the scenario puzzling.
“The whole thing is just like, especially with the Internet, I think the Internet feeds a lot of the extremism that we’re experiencing in the country, drives people,” he explained. “The politics of grievance, anger, all the conspiracy theories.”
JANELL FETTEROLF and SOFIA HERNANDEZ RAMONES, - Pew Research Center
Stephan:
Almost three-quarters of Americans, and an average of 40% of the people of the rest of the world recognize that the United States is no longer a good example of democracy. The turning point will come on November 2nd when Americans decide whether they wish to continue as a democracy or the over two century old experiment is over.
Ahead of the November presidential election, just 19% of Americans say democracy in the United States is a good example for other countries to follow, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in April.
The most common view – held by 72% of Americans – is that democracy in the U.S. used to be a good example, but has not been in recent years. Another 8% of Americans say U.S. democracy has never been a good example for other countries to follow.
Americans are much more likely than people in other countries to say U.S. democracy used to be a good example. A median of 40% of adults across 34 other countries surveyed in 2024 take this view.
Americans’ views differ by age, party and voter status
Relatively few Americans overall see the nation’s democracy as a good example for other countries to follow. But adults ages 50 and older are more likely than those under 50 to hold this view. Younger adults, on the other hand, are more likely […]
One of the foundational groups in MAGAt world are White men who can’t find a woman willing to have sex with them. It is that basic. As Sian Norris, the author of this article says, “Through my research I discovered that many incels believe in the far-right Great Replacement conspiracy theory which, they claim, is fueled by women’s reproductive rights, leading to extreme anti-abortion content. The baseless theory believes white people are being ‘replaced’ by migrant people, with that replacement aided by feminists repressing the white birth rate with abortion and contraception.” The United States has a a very real problem with White men who want only Hand Maidens, and loathe the idea of gender equality. I find it very strange how many White women either don’t get this or want to be Hand Maidens.
Credit: Adobe
Editor’s Note: This excerpt from the book “Bodies Under Siege” includes extreme racist and misogynistic language, and descriptions of men’s violence against women and girls.
In the run-up to the 2016 U.S. election, the Red Pill subreddit, an online group of men’s rights activists, became increasingly politicised, helping to catapult the ‘alpha male’ Trump into the White House. Once in power, Trump met his voters’ male supremacist demands by weakening protections against domestic abuse and sexual violence, and appointed a Supreme Court that would ultimately end the right to nationwide safe, legal abortion.
But the Red Pill is not the only online subculture to bring together violent misogyny, conspiracy theories, and far-right beliefs that dreamed of pure male entitlement and an end to women’s rights. Perhaps the most extreme example is the incel group — another forum that started on Reddit and now flourishes on other platforms, such as incel.net and incel.is.
Incel stands for involuntary celibates: a group of men and boys who feel sexually […]
The Israelis just bombed the remaining children’s hospital in Gaza, just as the Russians destroyed a children’s hospital in Ukraine. In both instances the hospitals were deliberately chosen targets. Both Russia and Israel are basically attempting to carry out a genocide. The Israelis, with the help of the United States which is supplying armaments, particularly bombs to Israel, which flies American planes, are doing better than the Russians. It is just like the Nazis except for the ovens. I do not understand how the Israeli people who, themselves, were the focus of genocide can allow the Netanyahu government do commit the atrocities it is carrying out.
Illustration: Fei Liu / Photo: AFP / Getty
Israel opposed a proposal at a recent United Nations forum aimed at rebuilding the Gaza Strip’s war-ravaged telecommunications infrastructure on the grounds that Palestinian connectivity is a readymade weapon for Hamas.
The resolution, which was drafted by Saudi Arabia for last week’s U.N. International Telecommunication Union summit in Geneva, is aimed at returning internet access to Gaza’s millions of disconnected denizens.
It ultimately passed under a secret ballot on June 14 — but not before it was watered down to remove some of its more strident language about Israel’s responsibility for the destruction of Gaza. The U.S. delegate at the ITU summit had specifically opposed those references.
Israel, for its part, had blasted the proposal as a whole. Israel’s ITU delegate described it as “a resolution that while seemingly benign in its intent to rebuild telecommunications infrastructure, distorts the reality of the ongoing situation in Gaza,” according to a recording of […]
Andrew Prokop, Senior Politics Correspondent - Vox
Stephan:
I have been rereading parts of the Project 2025 book which explains what would happen to America if criminal Trump was elected President. It is horrifying. Here are the best cliff notes I could find.
Project 2025. It can be downloaded at: https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf
In talk about what a second presidential term for Donald Trump might bring, one name has become the shorthand for all the horrifying things that might await: Project 2025.
It’s been called “authoritarian” and “dystopian.” It’s the talk of TikTok. Some Democrats see it as the ace in the hole that could save President Joe Biden’s struggling reelection campaign. But Trump is now claiming, implausibly, to know nothing about it.
So what is it?
Project 2025 is the conservative movement’s detailed and specific plan for what the next Republican president should do with his power, including its preparation to put that plan into action. Basically, it’s an attempt to make the second Trump term way more organized and effective than the first.
Organized by the right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation and advised by more than 100 conservative groups, Project 2025 has put forth a 922-page list of policy recommendations, going agency by agency in the federal government.
It is not a pie-in-the-sky policy agenda full of bold but empty promises. It is crafted to be a list of things the […]
If you read Project 2025, what you see is how incredibly sexist it is. It tells one a lot about the psychology of the men who wrote this document. They clearly do not see women as equals. Any woman who votes for any MAGAt republican, from Trump down to local officials, is either too ignorant, not bright enough to comprehend what these people are about, or desirous of being reduced to a hand maid. Because that is what this document is advocating; a return to the Make Room for Daddy 1950s television series.
Wealthy right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation has published a detailed plan for the next Republican president to use the executive branch of the federal government to attack the rights of women, LGBTQ people and the BIPOC community, by eliminating the agencies and offices responsible for enforcing civil rights laws and placing trained right-wing ideologues in staff positions throughout the federal government.
Called the 2025 Presidential Transition Project—or “Project 2025,” for short—the plan has “four pillars”:
a 180-day playbook, which is what they hope to achieve in the first 180 days if Trump takes office in January 2025.
To develop this plan, the Heritage Foundation organized a broad coalition of over 90 conservative organizations—a who’s-who of groups that have led attacks on reproductive rights and bodily autonomy, gender studies, the Equal Rights Amendment and #MeToo initiatives.
This story is so absolutely typical of MAGAt public officials, who from Trump on down don’t give a damn about the wellbeing of families or children. It made me very angry just to read it. How could any honorable public official not want to see children fed properly? Yet the MAGAts do it over and over; it is one of the reasons the quality of life in the States they control is always inferior to the quality of life in states controlled by Democrats. But, at the end of the day, the people of those states vote these wretches into office again and again. We are culturally two countries.
Mother Jones illustration; Joshua Oluwagbemiga; Jonathan Greenaway; Thomas Park / Unsplash
When I spoke to Mandi Remington in late January, she had $7 in her bank account and had run out of milk. At times like these, which happen toward the end of most months, she cobbles together “stone soup” from what’s in the house, she said, or feeds her three children and then makes her own meal from whatever is left on their plates.
So when she found out that Iowa, where she lives in Iowa City, is among the 15 states that decided not to participate in Summer EBT, a new federal food program that would have sent her $40 a month per child while they were out of school, “it was extremely frustrating,” she said. As a single parent who doesn’t receive child support, Remington struggles to make ends meet. Her $55,000 annual salary as a medical records clerk at the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics “does not leave much leftover for gas in […]
I keep telling you that we are culturally two countries. Here is the CNBC assessment and it confirms what I have been saying. These are the worse states for quality of life in the United States. And what do you notice? They are all MAGAt Republican controlled states, and that means, because we are a democracy, that those states are the way they are because the people of those states voted again and again for the MAGAt Republican politicians who make up the government of those states. Although these states have some strengths, overall the voters literally choose and vote for an inferior overall quality of life for themselves and their families. Fundamentally, this is not a political issue, it is a cultural issue.
Worker shortages have eased a bit, but companies still look closely at quality of life when choosing a location that will attract skilled employees.
CNBC’s annual ranking of state business climates considers quality of life among ten categories of competitiveness.
Quality of Life metrics include Crime, Child Care, Health Care, Environmental Quality, and Inclusiveness.
The job market may have cooled a bit, but there are still far more job openings nationwide than there are people available to fill them. That means qualified workers are still a precious commodity.
So, companies seeking to attract great employees like to set up shop in states that offer a great quality of life. While some states are more than happy to oblige, these are not those states. They are America’s worst states to live and work in.
