- MAGA wants more teen births (!), with reflection on why most human societies postpone children until adulthood;
- How Red State restrictions against abortion only stopped the lifesaving ones;
- Two items about Pete Hegseth and his Christian Nationalist leader, and guns.
- And how Republicans are always ready, fearing an ever-dangerous world, to spend more on defense.
More examples today of how conservative “values” are the priorities of primitive tribes, especially those living on the verge of extinction in the ancestral environment. Promote expansion of the tribe; fear others.
Salon, Amanda Marcotte, today: MAGA wants more teen births. It won’t work, subtitled “Teen birth rates are at historic lows — and young women want to keep it that way”
There used to be a consensus on both the left and right that it was best to wait for adulthood to have kids. But some conservatives are rethinking this view, and Republicans are now drifting toward open complaints that teenage girls aren’t having enough babies.
On April 9 podcaster Katie Miller, wife of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, lamented on X that teen births are down 72%, a statistic she blamed on hormonal birth control. “Our biological destiny is to have babies,” she wrote. That same day, Fox News medical analyst Marc Siegel called it a “problem” that the birth rate for girls aged 15-19 has plummeted in the past couple of decades.
But it’s not just talk. The push to drive teenagers to have babies is showing up in policy. After a federal judge blocked the Trump administration in October from shuttering the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, the White House got more brazen, proposing a Health and Human Services budget that would eliminate it altogether. The administration is also demanding that federally-funded clinics serving low-income populations dissuade their patients, who are disproportionately young, from using contraception.
Once again, the current administration is bent on destroying things that smarter people before them built. Beware “biological destiny” — that is to place humans among animals, which ironically the Christian right rejects, since humans are “created” in the image of God and evolution is a lie, according to them.
Think for a moment about why societies around the world — at least the Western ones, I don’t know for sure about the Asian or African ones — decided it was best to wait for adulthood to have kids. Basically it’s because human culture is complex enough that children are better off growing up and learning about the world they live in, and finding their places in it, before stepping away from education (typically at age 18) to start families, which then absorbs most of their attention.
But if your priority is only animal survival, education doesn’t matter.
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The same thinking applies to abortions, in part. One part of the animus to abortions is the supernatural belief that an embryo is imbued with a “soul” at conception and is therefore of equal value to every living adult. This is false; there’s no such thing as a “soul” independent of the development of the brain, which happens over many months in utero, as science (conservatives will shudder in revulsion at the mention of that word) has shown in the past couple centuries. The other part of the animus to abortions is that they limit the mechanism of tribal expansion. The same reasoning behind animus toward homosexuality, as sexual behavior that doesn’t lead to babies and the expansion of the tribe.
Typically, conservative solutions to perceived problems have unintended consequences, because they cannot legislate reality, and the world is not black and white.
Slate, Greer Donley and Yvonne Lindgren, today: Red States Thought They Could Stop Abortions. They Ended Up Stopping Only the Lifesaving Ones.
Last month, Guttmacher—one of the organizations tracking abortion numbers in the United States—released its complete 2025 report. The paper was consistent with previous findings: Abortion rates have increased nationwide since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
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Though overall rates have increased, there is one type of abortion that has become more difficult to access than ever before: abortions for medical reasons. Since Dobbs, horror stories of women dying, nearly dying, or birthing dying children have been reported on a regular basis in states with abortion bans. We know that these bans are increasing maternal mortality and morbidity, and at least six women have already died because of them.
In short, the only abortions that bans seem to be stopping are those that are medically indicated.
Conservatives don’t care. Collateral damage. Much more.
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Vox, Jolie Myers and Noel King, today: Pete Hegseth’s spiritual leader explains his radical faith, subtitled “The Christian nationalist pastor swaying the Trump administration discusses Trump, Iran, and the pope.”
War is nothing new for America — but the way Pete Hegseth talks about it is. President Donald Trump’s secretary of defense often styles the US’s actions in Iran as being blessed by God. As being holy.
He likened the recovery of a downed Air Force member in Iran on Easter Sunday to the resurrection of Christ. He quoted a Bible verse about God blessing war at a recent press conference on Iran. Famously, he has a tattoo that says “Deus vult,” which is Latin for “God wills it,” and it was a rallying cry for Christian armies during the Crusades.
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JMG, from The Daily Beast, today: Hegseth Delivers God-Themed Message To The NRA
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has filmed a personalized video for NRA members confirming their “God-given rights” to bear arms as Donald Trump’s war with Iran intensifies. Hegseth, 45, recorded a bespoke message for the annual meeting of the National Rifle Association. In the new video, Hegseth said the rights to bear arms are “endowed by Almighty God” and lashed out at “both foreign and domestic” threats on this “God-given right.”
Nonsense, I think. Why did God create so many people who feel the need to be armed against one another? Oh, well, I have an answer, it’s right there in the OT: “No other gods before me.” The writers of the OT were polytheistic. It’s all tribal warfare.
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Yet again, Republicans are always ready to spend more on defense. Even absurd amounts. It’s a frightening, threatening world out there.
Slate, Fred Kaplan, today: Trump’s $1.5 Trillion Defense Budget Could Be Political Suicide for Republicans, subtitled “In normal times, this budget would be dead on arrival.”
I’m old enough to remember when Republicans criticized Democrats for “throwing money at a problem.” Now here comes President Donald Trump, proposing a military budget for next year of $1.5 trillion, and most GOP lawmakers are just nodding.
If passed, this would be, even when adjusted for inflation, the United States’ largest defense budget ever—larger than the amount spent (again, adjusting for inflation) in any year during World War II, when the nation’s entire economy was geared to war.
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Since Project Hail Mary, revisiting earlier Ryan Gosling films. He was in First Man, some 8 (!) years ago, playing Neil Armstrong. Here’s the grand music of the lunar landing (a theme that occurs throughout the film).
