Ms. Magazine:“If we had a Christian nation tomorrow, and women did have the right to vote, we would not have a Christian nation within 50 years because the husband has been appointed by God as the head of his home.” – MAGA Pastor Joel Webbon, president of the Right Response Ministries, in 2023

In a 2024 episode of his own podcast Theology Applied, [MAGA theologist Joel] Webbon argued that the repeal of the 19th Amendment is actually “not [about] trying to take away the female vote, but it’s trying to say, no, there’s a family vote,” and that he believes this because “that is the Christian position.”

In fact, more than a hundred years earlier, a member of the Christian Reformed Church used the same argument that the Bible opposes suffrage, and taught that society consists of families, not individuals.

On the same episode of The Standard, Webbon uses the same argument that late 19th- and 20th-century anti-suffragists used: that women’s right to vote is a moral issue in that it impinges on men’s rights and interferes with women’s predestined roles as wife and mother.

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Daily Beast: “On behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way, I say… get some help and take an honest look at yourself,” [Penelope Hegseth, the Trump nominee’s mother] wrote on April 30, 2018.

“I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego.

“You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth.”

This is not incompetence. It’s an attack. Creating economic chaos is fundamental to the authoritarian playbook.

In Shock Doctrine, her seminal work on the rise of authoritarnism in the contemporary world, Naomi Klein shows how fascists undermine democracies in order to replace them with authoritarian states by creating and exploiting economic chaos. In the disruptions that ensue, they seize power.

In advance of his inauguration next month, Trump is saying plainly that he is very intentionally bringing economic chaos on day one. As Maya Angelou said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. People know themselves much better than you do.”

Salon.com: Donald Trump, who won in part due to inflation that peaked two years ago, campaigned on a policy of making everything from vegetables to televisions more expensive, suggesting a plurality of voters either did not understand tariffs — and the rippling economic impact of raising taxes on imported goods — or simply did not believe the Republican candidate would follow through.

In a Monday evening post on Truth Social, the president-elect reaffirmed that yeah, he’s serious.

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Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny: It is a mistake to think of [Trump’s cabinet nominees] as flawed. It is not they will do a bad job in their assigned posts. It is that they will do a good job using those assigned posts to destroy our country.

However and by whomever this was organized, the intention of these appointments is clear: to create American horror. Elected officials should see this for what it is. Senators, regardless of party, should understand that the United States Senate will not outlast the United States, insist on voting, and vote accordingly. The Supreme Court of the United States will likely be called upon. Although it is a faint hope, one must venture it anyway: that its justices will understand that the Constitution was not in fact written as the cover story for state destruction. The Supreme Court will also not outlast the United States.

And citizens, regardless of how they voted, need now to check their attitudes. This is no longer a post-electoral moment. It is a pre-catastrophic moment. Trump voters are caught in the notion that Trump must be doing the right thing if Harris voters are upset. But Harris voters are upset now because they love their country. And Harris voters will have to get past the idea that Trump voters should reap what they have sown. Yes, some of them did vote to burn it all down. But if it all burns down, we burn too. It is not easy to speak right now; but if some Republicans wish to, please listen.

Brookings: For coming political battles, people need to be aware of how the current information ecosystem regularly is promoting falsehoods and skewing views about important issues. But we do not need to stand back and accept widespread misperceptions as the new reality. There are several things people and organizations can do to protect themselves for what will be a continuing wave of misinformation, disinformation, and false narratives.

There needs to be meaningful content moderation by social media platforms. Right now, many leading platforms are cesspools of rumors, false information, and outright lies. They are widely disseminated and seen by millions of people. If that continues, it will become increasingly difficult to discern fact from fiction—endangering our country’s ability to address major problems. Companies need to get far more serious about content moderation…

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