Author Archives: Mary Turck

Indiana and Florida now insist on the government’s right to tell professors in state universities what they can and cannot say. New laws restrict academic freedom in both states.  Indiana’s attorney general, Republican Todd Rokita, argues that “The curriculum used in state universities and instruction offered by state employees” is “state speech,” and professors “have no right to control how the State speaks.” A right-wing attorney hired by Florida to defend its 2022 Stop Woke Act in court took the argument to its logical conclusion: professors can be forbidden from criticizing the government. Inside Higher Ed reported: 

On Fox News today, House Speaker Mike Johnson once again shared his marvelous “intuition.” You may remember that he insisted a few weeks ago that people are voting illegally, based not on any evidence, but on his intuition. Today he told  Fox News host Maria Bartiromo that, “we believe we have terrorist cells set up around the country.” When Bartiromo asked him to estimate the number of cells, he once again cited intuition over evidence: “I don’t know how it’d be conjecture on my part but intuitively we know that this is a serious problem.”

Sometimes the news seems too awful to read, which might mean missing a couple of positives in the past week’s news. Among those positives? The IRS going after millionaire tax cheats, slowing inflation, continuing job growth and increasing wages.

NOTE: I will update this post from time to time, with new information usually added at the end of the post.

The right-wing crazy tree has many branches: apostles, prophets, warriors, bullies, criminals, and more. Some claim they are following directives from God, while others profess overtly racist ideas, sport Nazi symbols, or promote a second civil war. Some make public statements and claims, while others operate undercover and hide their (often criminal) activities.  

(White) Christian Nationalism

Christian nationalists make up many branches of the right-wing crazy tree. They generally reject separation of church and state. They insist that the United States was founded as a Christian nation (it was not), and that Christianity should determine U.S. laws and direct the U.S. government. That’s only the beginning: one popular variant insists that their version of Christianity must also dominate all of the “Seven Mountains” of religion, family, government, education, business, media, and arts & entertainment. 

They make common cause with book banning groups such as Moms for Liberty, as well as with politicians who brandish Bibles and insist on controlling what kind of history and science are taught in public schools.

Last week, Oklahoma’s state school superintendent ordered public schools in the state to teach the Bible.

750,000 people could die of starvation in Sudan in the next few months, according to a New York Times headline.  And that’s a lowball estimate: a report from Clingendael warns of “an estimated excess mortality of about 2.5 million people by the end of September 2024.” 

Starvation may be the least violent way to die in Sudan. The genocidal war that tore the country apart in the early 2000s has resumed. The Sudanese military and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) combined to put down pro-democracy demonstrations in 2019. Their power-sharing agreement fell apart in 2023, leaving the country again at war. 

The RSF is a successor to the Janjaweed militia. The Janjaweed, in close collaboration with the Sudanese government and military, were responsible for widespread ethnic cleansing—genocide—in the 2000s:

“The government and its Janjaweed allies have killed thousands of Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa– often in cold blood, raped women, and destroyed villages, food stocks and other supplies essential to the civilian population. They have driven more than one million civilians, mostly farmers, into camps and settlements in Darfur where they live on the very edge of survival, hostage to Janjaweed abuses.More than 110,000 others have fled to neighbouring Chad but the vast majority of war victims remain trapped in Darfur.”

Now the RSF attacks the same targets: the Masalit people and other non-Arab Sudanese, especially in the Darfur province. A May 2024 Human Rights Watch report details the devastation of the past year, including massacres by the RSF, war crimes, rape and murder of children and other civilians, attacks on refugee convoys, razing towns in Darfur, and the flight of more than half a million refugees to neighboring Chad. 

The war extends beyond Darfur, including Sudan’s capital, Khartoum. 

Dena Ibrahim, a Sudanese refugee now living in London, writes eloquently of the story of her country and family:

“I fled my home in Sudan one year ago. Millions of people are still there, trapped between an incompetent army and the genocidal militia it created. For them, it has been a year of summary executions, encroaching famine and city after city ravaged by the militia.

“The R.S.F. encircled El Fasher in North Darfur a little over a month ago. The city, already threatened by famine, waits on the edge of a likely massacre. And yet the international community still stands by. Attention is rarely paid to Sudan, and much of what I read reduces the conflict to a power struggle between two generals or a migration problem for Europe.” 

“America’s Monster” the New York Times reporters named him. Abdul Raziq, the warlord, kidnapper, torturer, murderer was our “model partner” in Afghanistan. He fought the Taliban—successfully—by imposing his own reign of terror. 

“Sometimes we asked Raziq about incidents of alleged human rights abuses, and when we got answers we would be like, ‘Whoa, I hope we didn’t implicate ourselves in a war crime just by hearing about it,’” said Henry Ensher, a State Department official who held multiple posts on Afghanistan, including as the top civilian representative in Kandahar in 2010 and 2011, when he worked with Raziq.

“We knew what we were doing, but we didn’t think we had a choice,” Ensher said.” 

Sounds like an earlier statement, attributed to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt: “He may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he’s our son-of-a-bitch.” That statement was supposed to refer to, among others, Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo and Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza. Trujillo and Somoza were both backed by the United States and both massacred their own people without compunction. As did Alfredo Cristiani in El Salvador and Efraín Rios Montt in Guatemala, also U.S. allies.

We still back monsters, sending them aid and weapons, lending them legitimacy and recognition.

Before he was elected, President Biden said he would ostracize Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). The crown prince was undeniably responsible for the brutal assassination of U.S. resident and Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. After becoming president, Biden met with MBS, fist-bumped him for the photographers, and counts Saudi Arabia as a close ally. 

Now his administration proposes even closer ties with, and more weapons for, the Saudi regime, as an incentive for Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel. 

Which brings us to Bibi Netanyahu, currently waging war without limit or end in sight. On Sunday (May 26), Israel bombed a refugee tent camp in Rafah, killing at least 45 people. About half were women and children, some burned alive. The bomb came from the United States.  Two days later, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, visiting Israel, signed an artillery shell, inscribing it “Finish them!” The Biden administration continues to send weapons, as Israel’s bloody attack failed to cross its “red line.”

Of course not. If the United States counted Abdul Raziq as our man in Afghanistan, if Biden can fist-bump the mastermind of Khashoggi’s assassination, surely we cannot balk at Netanyahu’s unlimited war. To do so would not be in the proud U.S. tradition of support for a long line of monsters.

How much blood is needed to draw a red line?