An Assortment of Current Events

Trying to catch up on numerous items from recent days, briefly.

JMG, today: Mississippi Gov Proclaims Confederate Heritage Month
Some, like David Brin, have explicitly aligned MAGA with the Confederacy, and blue states with the Union.

Washington Post, today: Trump ousts National Science Board members
Subtitle: Members of the independent board that guides the National Science Foundation said they received a notice from the White House that their positions were being terminated.
No reason given. More tearing down, now of what has been a useful, nonpartisan agency since 1950.

Slate, Alexis Romero and Mark Joseph Stern, 23 Apr 2026: A Far-Right Court Allowed the Ten Commandments in Every Texas Classroom—in Direct Defiance of SCOTUS
Christian defiance of the Supreme Court. Entitlement.

The Atlantic, Graeme Wood, yesterday: Something Is Happening to America’s Moral Code
Subtitle: “A New York Times podcast hosted Hasan Piker and a New Yorker staff writer for a discussion of lawbreaking, which they both endorsed as resistance to tyranny.”
Essay. Civil disobedience.

Friendly Atheist, Hemant Mehta, yesterday: Trump replaces Navy Secretary with man who claimed witches took over a California city
Subtitle, which is the point aside from the witches: “Hung Cao’s history of ridiculous claims highlights the administration’s obsession with loyalty over competence”
According to NYT today, the previous secretary was fired for his insufficiently enthusiastic efforts to build Trump a new fleet of battleships. (Trump not having noticed that wars are no longer fought with battleships, but with missiles and drones and planes.)

Free Inquiry, Ronald A. Lindsay, 23 Apr 2026: Trump vs. the Pope: Not Much to Choose From
Some recent commentators have found themselves surprised to agree with the Pope, a religious figure, over the President, a political figure.
“However, many of the Church’s polices, although they have different focus, are as objectionable and lacking in rational justification as those of the Trump administration.” Well, of course.

PolitiFact, Louis Jacobson, 23 Apr 2026: “There’s two ways of calculating percentage” decreases. “If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that’s a 600% reduction.”
Subtitle: “RFK Jr. said there’s more than one way to calculate a percentage decrease. That doesn’t add up”
Rating: Pants on Fire!
And NYT, 22 Apr 2026: RFK Jr. Defends Trump’s Mathematically Impossible Drug Discount Claims, subtitled: President Trump has claimed that he has secured discounts of 400 to 1,500 percent on prescription drugs. A price discount cannot be more than 100 percent because that would lower the price to zero.
No one computes percentages the way Trump and RFK Jr. claim to. It doesn’t make mathematical sense. They’re just wrong. But you can understand why they do this: so they can cite larger numbers — 600%! — as a way of exaggerating their claims. And some people will believe them.

Slate, Nicholas Enrich, 23 Apr 2026: Want to Be Democrats’ Nominee for President? Pledge to Bring Back USAID.
Subtitle: Any responsible candidate for office should have a plan to rebuild an agency that saved millions and millions of lives.
The framing is that this has been the worst example of Trump’s dismantling of the government. Heartless, damaging, un-Christian, and so on. And as always, the cost of this program was a pittance compared to what the administration wants to spend bombing Iran.

So which is it?
Boing Boing, Ellsworth Toohey, 21 Apr 2026: Michio Kaku calls clustering of dead scientists a national security issue
The Atlantic, Daniel Engber, 21 Apr 2026: The ‘Missing Scientist’ Story Is Unbelievably Dumb, subtitled “It is, in a way, a remarkable achievement.”
While some on Fb have noted this situation as similar to the opening of Cixin Liu’s novel The Three-Body Problem, a much lauded novel that I had issues with.
Still, this seems to be a matter of detecting patterns in random data. Humans, even scientists like Kaku, are notoriously prone to seeing patterns where none exist. The Atlantic undermines the apparent similarities between these events.
At the same time, suggested someone, opposite sides in a cold or technological war have motivations to kill off each others’ scientists, who are the bases for technology. I think this case is open, but likely a mirage.

JMG, 23 Apr 2026: Ben Shapiro Attacks “Pseudo Christian” James Talarico: Posting Ten Commandments In Schools Isn’t Theocracy
Arrogant dimwit. Would he say the same if some other religion posted their guidelines in public schools? Like, say Sharia Law? I’d bet he’d say that’s a theocracy.

JMG, 23 Apr 2026: WH Pushes To Rename Mount Kilimanjaro For Trump
Endless arrogance. Don’t Trump and his minions realize that as soon as he’s out of office, or dies, sensible people will reverse all of this grandiose proclamations?

JMG, 23 Apr 2026: DeSantis Signs Ban On Local Climate Change Efforts
Conservatives seem to have no understanding of long-term consequences. Let the world burn.

Two examples of deep superstition, in the guise of religious belief.
JMG: American Family Association Warns That God Will Destroy America If Trump Picks Wrong SCOTUS Justice
No, God won’t, because…
Right Wing Watch, Kyle Mantyla, 22 Apr 2026: Micah Beckwith Says Democrats ‘Are Being Led By The Minions And The Voices Of Darkness’
These people live in a demon-haunted world.

LA Times, opinion by Jackie Calmes, 23 Apr 2026: Even Trump’s base doesn’t believe him anymore
There’s increasing speculation, even on the right, that the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, back in 2024, was staged. Largely because the apparent lack of damage to his ear, and due to the ease with which Trump immediately rallied and held his fist in the air. (And the lack of coverage about the supposed shooter.)
I haven’t come down on one side or the other, mainly because I don’t think Trump has the wherewithal to have cooperated in any kind of conspiracy, e.g. to hold up a packet of fake-blood to his ear to pretend he’d been shot. I’m sitting this controversy out, for now.