It is too tiring to keep up on the daily outrages. I have things to do. But we can’t become complacent. So headlines today, with minimal comment.
- Items about gaslighting, Bari Weiss, Trump not as fascist but as tyrant, winking at white nationalists, giving a pass to a red state’s welfare fraud, Trump’s Greenland delusion, the reversal in cutting funds to mental health and addiction services, more gaslighting, RFK Jr.’s plan to bankrupt vaccine manufacturers;
- Re: Heated Rivalry: how Russia treats gays the way MAGA treats the left; and how the world keeps warming while conservatives are apparently unable to understand this.
– – –
- Slate, Julie Stone Peters, 15 Jan 2026: The Project of Gaslighting Us About the Renee Good Execution Video Has Been Years in the Making
- Slate, Nitish Pahwa, 14 Jan 2026: The Bari Weiss Era at CBS Is Already a Complete Embarrassment, subtitled “The legendary newsroom has become a laughingstock under its new editor in chief.”
- Salon, Heather Digby Parton, 15 Jan 2026: Trump is something worse than a fascist, subtitled “We’ve been using the wrong word to describe the president and his approach to ruling” The better word is “tyrant.”
- Vox, Eric Levitz, 14 Jan 2026: The Trump administration can’t stop winking at white nationalists, subtitled “The government is recruiting ICE agents with (literal) neo-Nazi propaganda.”
- AlterNet, Thomas Kika, 15 Jan 2026: Trump gives red state a pass on ‘one of the biggest welfare fraud scandals of all time’.
- The Atlantic, Tom Nichols, 14 Jan 2026: Trump Is Risking a Global Catastrophe, subtiteld “His irrational fixation on Greenland could lead to widespread conflict.” Because Trump, misled by Mercator projection maps, thinks Greenland is so much bigger than it actually is.
- Update from yesterday. NYT, 14 Jan 2026: H.H.S. Reverses Decision to Cut $2 Billion for Mental Health and Addiction Services, subtitled “A day after funding termination notices went out to more than 2,000 programs nationwide, the administration reversed itself and reinstated the money.”
- The New Republic, 15 Jan 2026: Transcript: Mike Johnson’s Gaslighting on ICE Takes Truly Vile Turn, subtitled “As the House Speaker offers disgusting comments about ICE and Renee Good, a scholar of the religious right explains how it is that evangelicals like him see no evil whatsoever in ICE’s violent attacks on Americans.”
- Washington Post, 15 Jan 2026: How RFK Jr. plans to bankrupt vaccine manufacturers, subtitled “Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants to flood the vaccine injury compensation program to hurt vaccine access in the U.S.” Again, it’s as if someone is deliberately sabotaging the US.
- The Moscow Times, 15 Jan 2026: ‘Heated Rivalry’ Catches Fire in Russia Despite Kremlin’s Anti-LGBTQ+ Repressions
- Russians treats gays the ways conservatives and MAGA treat the ‘left’ — as ‘unmentionables’ who must be suppressed.
- LA Times, 15 Jan 2026: The Earth keeps getting hotter, and Americans’ trust in science is on a down trend
- A Pew Research poll reveals partisan division over U.S. scientific leadership, with Democrats far more concerned about losing ground than Republicans.
- The report comes as officials confirm that 2025 was Earth’s third-hottest year on record, pushing it closer to breaching the Paris climate agreement’s 1.5-degree limit.
- The Trump administration has withdrawn from the Paris agreement and cut federal funding for science and climate programs.
- Because conservatives/Republicans, if they can’t see it right in front of them, they don’t believe it. They don’t do evidence or inference. Another running theme on this blog.
