Opinion

Last Thursday, 39 million American parents began receiving a monthly child allowance ($300 per child under 6, and $250 per child from 6 through 17). It's the biggest helping hand to American families in more than 85 years.

They need it. Even before the pandemic, child poverty had reached post-war records. Even non-poor families were in trouble, burdened with deepening debt and missed payments. Most were living paycheck to paycheck – so if they lost a job, they and their kids could be plunged into poverty. It's estimated that the new monthly child allowance will cut child poverty by more than half.

Earlier this month, I introduced you to the concept of the Very Serious Debate Club. This is about half the pundit corps in Washington, I guessed, columnists and talking heads who believe everything in politics is as good or bad as everything else, and that nothing matters except whether or not they appear to be on the winning side. They are immensely clever, highly educated, almost always born successful and hence respected. At the same time, they don't really care about much of anything they say, because the point of debate isn't being wrong or right but instead the glorification of the debater.

In short, they are cynical, opportunistic and amoral. If politics has clear moral sides—for instance, whether free and fair elections are central to the identity of a country like ours that claims to be a democracy—members of the Very Serious Debate Club will strive mightily to ascertain ways of muddying up the moral picture so that those who do take sides seem to be the real culprits since extreme points of view, however moral or immoral, are presumed bad bad bad, even if an extreme view is pro-democracy.

As a pastor I was always uncomfortable using God's word to pressure people to give money to the church. It seemed like a dirty trick: Play on the fear of disappointing God by convincing people on fixed incomes to provide for my livelihood. So I never did, much to the chagrin of my board of trustees. For the past 70 years, however, evangelical leadership has used this fear of God to raise billions of dollars to fight those the evangelicals have deemed to be the enemies of God. This naturally requires a private jet, a television network, a super PAC and a con artist pastor and politician to lead the way.

This article originally appeared at Salon.

QAnon-inspired Republicans are ratcheting up their assault every day on COVID vaccines, defying common sense and reason even if it kills many of their own followers as collateral damage.

But the insanity has another friendly-fire victim: Donald Trump.

"Death Wish" was a hit movie in 1974, starring Charles Bronson as a violent vigilante. Now it's the primary motivation for the Republican Party. As of this week, in 13 states you have a legal right not merely to have a death wish but to inflict it on others by refusing to get vaccinated against COVID. In 21 more states, bills have been introduced that would limit any requirements that individuals produce evidence that they have been vaccinated. In six of those states, the laws specify that schools, including public primary and secondary schools and public colleges, cannot require coronavirus vaccines, even while the same schools continue to require vaccinations against whooping cough, polio, measles and chicken pox.

This article first appeared in Salon.

The GOP has been historically against sending money directly to people. They are ideologically opposed to it, but there are practical partisan considerations, too. When a majority of normal people receive aid and comfort from the government, a majority of normal people tends to think highly of it and, in turn, support that government with votes. The Republicans are not stupid. They know that means the Democrats win.

For this reason, it was a stroke of genius, I would say, that the president and the Congressional Democrats built into the American Relief Plan Act the ability to send advance child tax credit payments directly to normal people's bank accounts. To be clear, the amount of money isn't that much more than what the status quo had been. Americans with kids over 6 had gotten $2,000 per kid; now they get $3,000. But because all this was sorted out at tax time, most people didn't feel it the way they are now feeling it this week as direct payments arrive. I'm guessing lots of people did not even know the cash was coming until they checked their accounts and their eyes popped out.

On Thursday, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy did something no surgeon general has done before: He issued a warning — not about what people are consuming with their bodies — but with their minds.

"I am urging all Americans to help slow the spread of health misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond," Murthy asked in the health advisory titled "Confronting Health Misinformation." At a White House press conference Thursday, Murthy reserved his harshest criticism for tech companies, who he said "allowed people who intentionally spread misinformation — what we call disinformation — to have extraordinary reach" and whose algorithms are "pulling us deeper and deeper into a well of misinformation." White House press secretary Jen Psaki said: "We've increased disinformation research and tracking within the Surgeon General's Office. We are flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation."

After months of sliding downwards, COVID-19 transmission rates are now beginning to creep back up. The reasons for the backslide given in the media are often biological — lots of talk about how the delta variant is more contagious, for instance — but this surge was much more political. From the moment that President Joe Biden stepped into the White House, Republican leaders have understood that he will be blamed if the pandemic isn't brought under control. And so they've set out to sabotage his efforts by encouraging their followers to risk their own health and reject getting vaccines in an effort to get the COVID-19 numbers up.

This article originally appeared at Salon.

Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a CNN Medical Analyst, said last week, "A surprising amount of death will occur soon..." But why, when the deadly Delta variant is sweeping the world, are Republicans and their media warning people not to get vaccinated?

There's always a reason. People don't do things — particularly things involving a lot of effort and a need for consistency — without a reason. It just doesn't happen. No matter how bizarre, twisted or dysfunctional the reason may be, there's always a reason.

According to "Landslide," Michael Wolff's new book about the final days of the Trump administration, former President Trump is very disappointed in his handpicked Supreme Court justices, particularly Brett Kavanaugh. As Axios reports:

There were so many others I could have appointed, and everyone wanted me to. Where would he be without me? I saved his life. He wouldn't even be in a law firm. Who would have had him? Nobody. Totally disgraced. Only I saved him.

He did? Kavanaugh had a lifetime appointment on the D.C. Court of Appeals when Trump nominated him and would have sailed through the nomination process for the Supreme Court if Christine Blasey Ford hadn't stepped forward with her accusations of sexual assault when they were high school students. Trump has reportedly claimed that Republican senators begged him to pull the nomination saying, "Cut him loose, sir, cut him loose. He's killing us, Kavanaugh." Trump supposedly responded, "I can't do that," telling Wolff, "I went through that thing and fought like hell for Kavanaugh — and I saved his life, and I saved his career. At great expense to myself ... okay? I fought for that guy and kept him."

Members of the pundit corps seem to believe white evangelical Protestants (WEPs) have politicized their faith. They seem to believe the disgraced former president is the reason why. To be sure, there is something to this. After all, some adherents, especially younger ones, have fled congregations, decreasing the ranks of mainline churches, according to the latest Pew poll. But on the whole, the idea that WEPs have politicized their religion overlooks a reality few are capable of seeing: It's always been politicized.

This article was originally published at The Editorial Board

The US Senate is back in session this week, as Texas Republicans prepare to pass another massive voter suppression bill. The only remedy available to the American people is for the federal government to use its constitutional authority to regulate federal elections to block what President Biden has referred to as the GOP's "Jim Crow in the 21st century."

This article was originally published at The Hartmann Report

During a speech filled with lies, boasts, and bullying attacks that observers have come to expect, former President Donald Trump offered a rare moment of self-effacing honesty over the weekend to the audience at CPAC.

He brought up the conservative conference's practice of holding a straw poll to see who attendees favor to be the Republican Party's next presidential nominee — a contest which other polls suggest he still dominates. But while he was speaking, the poll hadn't been finished yet, so he telegraphed exactly how he will react no matter the results.