AT around the fifth hour of November’s “Enough Is Enough” prayer rally, hosted by the Catholic right media outlet Church Militant, event emcee and fallen alt-right star Milo Yiannopoulos bounded onstage to reveal a dramatic wardrobe change. Gone were the rock-star white suit and purple shoes he’d been wearing since morning, replaced by a black shirt, black suit, and heavy crucifix, which gleamed from the jumbotrons all the way to the back of Baltimore’s Pier Six Pavilion, where the concert venue jutted into the city harbor. The bleached-blond tips of his floppy hair— fashy-short on the sides and Donald Trump combover-long on top—had been shorn in a final makeover after his year of ostentatious renunciation.
At the podium, Yiannopoulos assumed an air of exaggerated modesty. “The path to salvation is a series of baby steps,” he told a crowd of some 1,500 predominantly white, mostly middle-aged rallygoers. “I’m glad I got to share one of them with you today.” Whooping and whistling, the audience rose in a standing ovation. And throughout the day, as Yiannopoulos interspersed homophobic slurs—like calling the Catholic bishops meeting next door “sodomites” and Covid masks “fag muzzles”—with banter about Versace loafers and demands for more flattering stage lighting, the crowd roared with laughter, all of them in on the joke.
There were, as they say, layers to this assemblage of some of the noisiest partisans in the ongoing civil war within the American Catholic Church.
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In the Name of the Mother - How Shyamala Gopalan Harris raised a presidential contender
Shyamala Gopalan Harris did not believe in coddling. Pay her daughters, Kamala and Maya, an allowance for doing chores? “If you do the dishes, you should get two dollars,” scoffed the woman who this past summer, almost two decades after we spoke, would launch a million coconut memes. “You ate from the damn dishes!” Reward the future vice president of the United States—and possible future president—for good grades? Ridiculous. “What does that tell you?” her mother chided. “It says, ‘You know, I really thought you were stupid. Oh, you surprised Mommy!’ No.”
Kill the Messenger - The anti-disinformation field is retreating under attack.
A few months ago, a man crawling along a rooftop in Pennsylvania tried to murder Donald Trump at a campaign rally. Hours later, press releases started to circulate, from analysts, think tanks, politicians, and pundits, all offering to cut through the swell of confusion and misinformation.
Food + Health / Global Warning - Why Project 2025 is an environmental catastrophe in the making
When President Joe Biden took office, Democrats held a slim majority in the House of Representatives and a single-vote edge in the Senate. Despite the monumental odds, he has presided over the most productive presidential term for climate action in American history. Under Biden’s direction, the federal government took up the arduous task of incorporating climate considerations into scores of administrative operations and procedures. The epa cracked down on superpollutants and issued stricter emissions regulations for passenger vehicles. The Inflation Reduction Act, the biggest climate spending bill Congress has ever passed, brings the nation closer to its goal of slashing carbon emissions in half by 2030.
Trumpnesia - To get a second chance, Trump needs voters to forget his disastrous presidency.
One of the most oft-quoted sentences ever penned by a philosopher is George Santayana’s observation that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” In 2024, this aphorism is practically a campaign slogan. Donald Trump, seeking to become the first former president since Grover Cleveland to return to the White House after being voted out of the job, has waged war on remembrance. In fact, he’s depending on tens of millions of voters forgetting the recent past. This election is an experiment in how powerful a memory hole can be.
WHEN IN DROUGHT
This obscure yet adaptable grain could be a healthy staple for a warming planet.
BAD HABITS
A spate of recent horror movies recycle tired tropes about nuns-and reveal society's ongoing discomfort with independent women.
Taking the Fifth For a glimpse of the Supreme Court after a second Trump term, look at the radical circuit court that's already driving America to the right.
Imagine obamacare is dead and millions of Americans have lost health coverage.
THE ARCHITECT
TRUMP WANTS TO BE KING. RUSS VOUGHT HAS A PLAN TO MAKE IT HAPPEN.
Losing Faith
As an evangelical leader, I enticed lawmakers and federal judges to adopt a conservative Christian agenda. Donald Trump’s rise proved how wrong I was.
GOD'S COUNTRY
These Christian nationalists have a plan to take over Americafrom small towns to the highest court in the land.
