Walker Bragman

We now have the names!

Excellent reporting

Amazing

Dangerous irresponsibility defines the GOP agenda.

- Deny climate change in the face of rising global temperatures and all the changes that follow

- Deny vaccines in the face of deadly illnesses

- Deny the dangers of a pandemic virus

- Leave the WHO right when global coordination is vital

The GOP conception of public health is no public health.

Florida is a testing ground for these deeply irresponsible, dangerous policies—a model red states all across the country.

Ladapo is an anti-vaxxer.

Man on a local news street interview: The earth is a resort for like 500 rich people and the rest of us are just the staff.

This shit hits like a sledgehammer right now. It's not even remotely an exaggeration.

At this point, if I were a Republican candidate, I would consider asking Trump to stay out of my race

It was literally two days ago that he used his social media platform to endorse her, calling her a "phenomenal Candidate" and "incredible supporter of our Movement" while urging "America First Patriots" to "GET OUT AND VOTE"

There is a reason that advertisements for dietary supplements say vague things like “supports heart health”.

The reason is that the law prevents them from directly lying to consumers about alleged health benefits, but allows them to vaguely deceive consumers on the basis of poor evidence.

Khanna: "There has to be accountability. Do I think impeaching Kristi Noem is going to solve the issue of ICE? No. But it's gonna send a signal that you can't wield power without a check in this country. And that's what we have with ICE agents smashing windows, following people to churches."

If I’m a Republican in Congress or the Senate or a state house, I’m probably starting to wonder at the wisdom of tying myself to Trump.

If I’m a Republican strategist, I’m freaking out right about now.

Bad faith or bad reading comprehension?

Seriously.

🤔

Children. They are literally tear gassing children.

👀

Will @cbsnews.com.web.brid.gy cover the fact that Petter Attia MD’s name comes up more than 1700 times in the latest Epstein files drop?

I don’t know about his funding, but this is a critical point: There is big money on the right for people who are willing to walk this path and serve as gateways for lefties to move right.

Politics is politics. People change their views over time. When I was younger and more impulsive, I didn’t understand this—that my enemy in one battle might by my ally in the next battle (I wish I had).

But we all need to be aware of how the fascist right has been and is recruiting people.

But you have to understand that there is a difference between those folks, who are essentially just contrarians, and ideologically committed leftists.

I’m not saying the latter category never ends up on the right, but it’s a much bigger journey—as COVID illustrated

There are very real left—>right pipelines. And populism is at the root of it.

There are certain folks who can comfortably operate in an anti-“woke” environment where everyone hates the Democrats and all disagreements are polite on economic issues (the right cultivates these people).

Where was the Democratic pushback? Fucking nowhere. The administration and its Congress and Senate scientists to fend for themselves.

Hell, Biden’s HHS even debarred Dr. Peter Daszak after a right-wing, conspiracy-fueled lab leak witch hunt.

An absolute failure.

Anyway…

Suddenly, Trump, who let hundreds of thousands die because he wanted to reopen the country ahead of the 2020 election, was a victim of a nefarious public health cabal—that also probably caused the pandemic (lab leak bullshit).

And when only one side is fighting on an issue, that side is free to write the narrative however it sees fit, which they did.

Suddenly, a nation that lost hundreds of thousands to COVID “overreacted” by closing businesses and schools at the state level.

That’s how right-wing radicalization and indoctrination works.

And I’ll just add here that the Biden administration didn’t do nearly enough to fight it.

Because Biden wanted to declare victory and move beyond the pandemic, they didn’t fight back against the anti-lockdown nonsense.

From COVID conspiracies and denial, a lot of folks came to embrace anti-trans narratives.

Kennedy is a great example of this.

And from there, the right’s worldview is an all-consuming blob. You believe one conspiracy theory and that’s your entry point. But you eventually have to embrace all.

Appeals to Bush Era/post-9/11 paranoia about government surveillance and mistrust of Big Pharma have served the right well.

I met a kid who was working at the Dem convention in 2016—a young liberal kid in like high school—who went down the right-wing rabbit hole with COVID.

Got big into wellness.

Right-wing operatives made real efforts to draw in contrarian types on the left.

You saw Martin Kulldorff do a Jacobin interview about how *lockdowns* were hurting the global poor.

Or Jay Bhattacharya cozying up to Jimmy Dore and The Grayzone.

And don’t forget the alliance with RFK Jr.

The right didn’t like that the crisis was tanking the economy—especially in an election year with a Republican in the White House. It didn’t like that we were starting to talk about government intervention. It didn’t like that suddenly everyone saw who the essential workers were.

That latter group sided with the political right, which—you will recall—was pushing to reopen the economy no matter how bad the crisis was.

I’ve talked about the reasons for that ad nauseam but the big 3 are:

1) Economic upset for big business
2) Demand for government
3) labor empowerment

You had people (like me) who saw the pandemic as something akin to the Great Depression—a crisis requiring major government intervention to protect people. A lot of self-identified liberals also took that position.

But then you had other “leftists” who saw only government mandates and conspiracies