A therapist who specializes in cult recovery says he's "never seen anything like this before"

By NICOLE KARLIS

FEBRUARY 27, 2021 3:00PM (UTC)

Adam and his wife were always pretty conservative. While she was an "ardent" supporter of Donald Trump, as he described, it wasn't until the November 2020 election — and nearly eight months into the coronavirus pandemic — that he started to get increasingly concerned about how deep her support for Trump ran. She was spending hours on her phone watching videos by pro-Trump conservatives like Dan Bongino and Ben Shapiro.

"I didn't have a problem with that," Adam, whose name has been changed, said in a phone interview. "But then she started to watch a lot of the QAnon conspiracy videos, and started to share those with me."

She would watch these videos until 2 or 3 in the morning, Adam said. He feared she was having a "psychotic break." Previously, she had been on antidepressants. He wondered if a mix of the pandemic and political chaos was driving her to the edge.

Then, one day, she came home and announced: "I'm going to join the militia."

Adam said he's still "emotional" about it, his voice cracking. He said he couldn't believe what he was hearing as his wife repeated QAnon talking points.

more
https://www.salon.com/2021/02/27/meet-the-spouses-whose-marriages-were-destroyed-by-qanon/

By Marshall Cohen, CNN

Updated 9:01 AM ET, Sat February 27, 2021

(CNN) - Nearly a dozen Trump supporters charged in connection with the US Capitol insurrection have said that Antifa and other left-wing groups weren't involved in the attack, debunking a false-flag conspiracy theory that is gaining popularity in the pro-Trump orbit.

The baseless claim that left-wing infiltrators were responsible for the violent attack has been promoted by former President Donald Trump's impeachment lawyers, several GOP lawmakers and at least one speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference Friday morning.

Many of the alleged rioters facing charges also embraced this conspiracy. But according to a CNN review of court documents, nearly a dozen defendants have explicitly pushed back, saying that they and other Trump supporters deserve the credit for storming the Capitol -- not Antifa.

"There's a lot of memes and posts flying around saying that the people who were fighting last night were all Antifa provocateurs etc.," defendant Jose Padilla allegedly posted to Facebook one day after the January 6 attack. "I just want to say that as a first hand observer of every point of last night, that it was not Antifa. They were Patriots who were trying to Restore the Republic."

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https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/27/politics/capitol-attack-trump-supporters-not-antifa/index.html

After the devastating freeze, Texans in blue cities blame the state GOP leaders for leaving them in the cold.

By RICHARD PARKER

02/26/2021 02:48 PM EST

Richard Parker is the author of Lone Star Nation: How Texas Will Transform America.

-snip-

As President Joe Biden landed in Houston Friday, temperatures had returned to a balmier 76 degrees or so, but the merciless arctic freeze that crippled the state, knocking out power to as many as 4 million people for several days, has left a trail of damage that will take weeks, if not months, to repair. Economists estimate the total damage of winter storm Uri will exceed $100 billion, placing it on the scale of Hurricanes Harvey and Ike, the second and third most costly in recent U.S. history. The death toll, now hovering around 30 in Texas (80 across all the states hit), seems likely to more than triple to Harvey and Ike levels, too. About 1 million people in South Texas are hungry.

The hardest breach to repair, however, might be between Texans and their elected officials. Over the course of the cascading humanitarian crisis high-ranking Texas politicians didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory.

First, Austin falsely blamed renewable energy, even assailing a policy proposal that hadn’t even become law yet. One GOP member of Congress sent a letter to constituents with a link to warming centers before closing with a warning that “radical ideologies have politicized energy policy at the state and federal level in recent years.” Then they went after the utility industry that was once the state’s pride.

“The Electric Reliability Council of Texas has been anything but reliable over the past 48 hours,” said Gov. Greg Abbott, rebuking the independent entity that controls power generation across almost the entire state. Officials managed to skip past their pledge from a decade ago, after the last catastrophic freeze, to winterize their power plants. Then, instead of chipping in, as former Rep. Beto O’Rourke did, several of the state’s most prominent Republican elected officials headed out for warmer locales, or at least ones where the power was still on.

And the public, trapped in their flooded, frozen, barren-fridge misery, noticed.

-snip-

full article
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/02/26/look-what-you-did-to-us-471607

The social cost of carbon could have ripple effects throughout industry.

By LORRAINE WOELLERT and ZACK COLMAN

02/26/2021 04:57 PM EST

President Joe Biden on Friday restored an Obama-era calculation on the economic cost of greenhouse gases, a step that will make it easier for his agencies to approve aggressive actions to confront climate change.

But the administration stopped short, for now, of boosting the cost figure to higher levels that economists and climate scientists say are justified by new research.

he interim figure — $51 for every ton of carbon released into the atmosphere — is well above the $8 cost used under former President Donald Trump, who declined to factor the global impacts of climate pollution into his calculation. It’s on par with a price based on analyses undertaken between 2010 and 2016 under former President Barack Obama, whose administration was first to calculate the figure known as the social cost of carbon.

The price point is temporary. A new Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases is required to issue a final number by January.

more
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/26/biden-carbon-price-climate-change-471787

Fritz Berggren’s hundreds of blog posts, videos and podcasts date back several years.

By NAHAL TOOSI

02/26/2021 02:38 PM EST

A State Department official for several years has been publicly calling for the establishment of Christian nation-states, warning that white people face “elimination” and railing against Jews as well as Black Lives Matter and other social movements.

Fritz Berggren, a mid-ranking Foreign Service officer, openly uses his name and image as he espouses these and other controversial views, according to a review of his online postings. Current and former State Department officials noted the connection to POLITICO in recent days.

“Jesus Christ came to save the whole world from the Jews — the founders of the original Anti-Christ religion, they who are the seed of the Serpent, that brood of vipers,” states an Oct. 4 blog post signed “Fritz Berggren, Ph.D.” and titled “Jews are Not God’s Chosen People. Judeo-Christian is Anti-Christ. They murdered Jesus Christ,” the 5,300-word post continues, “How then can they be God’s chosen?”

Berggren’s voluminous output dates back to at least September 2017, according to the archives of his website, Bloodandfaith.com. An about page for the site, also signed “Fritz Berggren, PhD,” offers what appears to be a manifesto of sorts. Like several of his other posts, it includes a video of Berggren expanding on his views.

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https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/26/diplomat-online-activity-blood-and-faith-471755

Chris Meagher would replace TJ Ducklo on the White House press team.

By DANIEL LIPPMAN

02/26/2021 09:01 PM EST

Chris Meagher, a top spokesman for Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, is being seriously considered to be a White House deputy press secretary, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Meagher, who recently started as deputy director of public affairs at the Department of Transportation, would replace TJ Ducklo, who resigned in mid-February after threatening a POLITICO reporter. Meagher didn’t respond to a request for comment, and a White House spokesperson declined to comment.

Meagher was national press secretary on Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential campaign and later worked as deputy communications director for the Democratic National Committee in the 2020 cycle. He graduated with a degree in journalism from Michigan State University and started his career as a reporter covering local news in Santa Barbara, California, earning a law degree during the same time.

Meagher got his start in politics doing press and communications work for former Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.). He has served as senior communications adviser for the Colorado and Montana state Democratic parties. He also worked for Sen. Jon Tester's (D-Mont.) Senate reelection campaign in 2018.

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https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/26/biden-pete-buttigieg-spokesperson-471818

February 27, 2021 at 10:08 am EST By Taegan Goddard

Playbook: “Three people close to Trump tell me that he’s stewing anew over Kevin McCarthy. It’s become so frequent that his advisers think the House minority leader may be in for a public reprimand. That’s even after the powwow at Mar-a-Lago where McCarthy tried to patch things up after he denounced Trump for the violence on Jan. 6.”

“The reason for Trump’s displeasure: an emboldened Cheney.”

“Each time Cheney criticizes Trump from her leadership post as the No. 3 House Republican, he’s reminded that it was McCarthy who pleaded with his conference to keep her on as chair — despite her vote to impeach Trump.”

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https://politicalwire.com/2021/02/27/trump-angry-at-kevin-mccarthy-again/

Source: The Hill


BY JORDAN WILLIAMS - 02/27/21 09:16 AM EST

President Biden on Friday pledged that a shelter for young migrants in Texas “won’t stay open very long” amid bipartisan criticism over his administration's decision to reopen the facility for migrants ages 13-17.

Critics saw the opening of the facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas, as similar to the hard-line immigration tactics of former President Trump’s administration, though Biden insisted his administration's approach was different.

“Our hope and expectation is that won’t stay open very long, that we’ll be able to provide for every kid who comes across the border safely to be housed in a facility that’s licensed,” Biden said during an interview with Univision on Friday.

Biden said the shelter was opened because “thousands” of unaccompanied migrant children were crossing the border. He added that his administration had been able to place a “significant number” of them in shelters throughout the country.

Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/540817-biden-vows-texas-shelter-for-young-migrants-wont-stay-open-very-long

02/26/2021 09:28 pm ET

Hunters blew past a cap of 119 wolves after the Trump administration ditched protections for the animals just last month.

By Mary Papenfuss

Wisconsin officials shut down a planned weeklong wolf hunt in just three days after 216 of the animals were killed — 82% more than the maximum that had been set by the state.

“This season trampled over tribes’ treaty rights, the Wisconsin public, and professional wildlife stewardship,” a spokesperson for the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission told The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

“It will go down as a stark example of mismanagement, and the problems that can be expected when the state Legislature and the courts embrace special interest groups over the public as a whole.”

Megan Nicholson, director of the Wisconsin chapter of the Humane Society of the United States, called the killing spree a “deeply sad and shameful week for Wisconsin.”

more
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/wisconsin-wolf-hunt-216-endangered-species_n_60398372c5b601179ebd8716

“The Daily Show” montage spots similarities in the rhetoric of Republicans at the Conservative Political Action Conference and the U.S. Capitol rioters.

By Lee Moran

A stinging supercut calls out Republican rhetoric at this week’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida.

“The Daily Show With Trevor Noah” montage highlights how speakers — including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Donald Trump Jr. — used the same frenzied language in their addresses on Friday as the violent mob of then-President Donald Trump’s supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

Watch the video, titled “The GOP Is Horny for Another Insurrection,” here:

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https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cpac-republicans-daily-show-supercut_n_6039f50dc5b6d7794adf181b