When Daniel Francis enters a voting booth, ballot measures can be very anxiety-inducing: many are above his reading level.

“If it’s using words that I don’t understand, I just kind of rush on to answer, whether I know what it means or not,” says Francis, who lives with mental disabilities including autism and ADHD. Francis likes voting at the polls without assistance, as it’s a way for him to feel independent.

A Ballotpedia analysis of ballot measures voted on in 2023 found that, on average, they required a graduate-school reading level to understand. That can be a challenge for most people who haven’t pursued higher education, let alone people with intellectual disabilities or symptoms that affect their cognition, like those experiencing brain fog from the chronic illness fibromyalgia.

Having accessible ballots “would empower more people to be able to vote without assistance,” says Alexia Kemerling, who helps coordinate efforts to make voting more accessible at the American Association of People with Disabilities. 

This past April, Francis was part of a group of disability self-advocates who met with Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows to discuss the possibility of making ballot measures more accessible to disabled voters—which can also be helpful to other groups, such as English language learners.

In 2023, lawmakers in both North Dakota and New York passed legislation to put ballot measures in plain language, which is designed to be easier to understand on a first reading, and often includes active voice, shorter sentences and paragraphs, and the use of common words. In New York, ballot measures now can’t exceed an eighth-grade reading level. 

“I think having that reading level stipulation, and actually having something to measure it against, is going to be really impactful in New York,” Kemerling said. 

The impassioned push for more accessible ballots in Maine started last November, after the failure of a measure to remove language from its constitution barring people with mental disabilities under guardianship from voting. (People in Maine under guardianship for mental disabilities nevertheless have the right to vote due to a 2001 federal court ruling—the measure would have removed the defunct language.)

In discussions with other disabled people after that 2023 election, Francis found that several hadn’t understood exactly what the Maine measure was asking:

Do you favor amending the Constitution of Maine to remove a provision prohibiting a person under guardianship for reasons of mental illness from voting for Governor, Senators and Representatives, which the United States District Court for the District of Maine found violates the United States Constitution and federal law?

“For the vast majority of voters,” said Molly Thompson, a voting access advocate with Disability Rights Maine, “that’s really confusing to understand—if something was deemed unconstitutional, why was it not immediately removed from Maine’s constitution?”

Writing in plain language doesn’t necessarily mean being concise, which Maine’s constitution requires for ballot measures written by the secretary of state (measures written by the legislature do not have this requirement). In fact, when ballot measures are written in plain language, they tend to run longer, Kemerling says, which is a challenge to getting some election officials on board. “It’s important that election officials are willing to ask for and allocate [the] costs to having more accessible elections,” she said, suggesting the compromise of a separate, plain-language sheet explaining ballot measures on request.

Some other states also have plain language requirements, though they’re not as far-reaching as New York and North Dakota’s. Alabama requires a plain language summary of state ballot initiatives to be available online, and in Texas, ballot initiatives that specifically touch on debt are supposed to be written in plain language.

Francis hopes that politicians in Maine will also get on board with more understandable ballots, so more disabled people feel confident voting. The way ballot measures are written now, Francis said, can lead to disabled people like him feeling “like they’re being discouraged to vote.”

This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

This April, at a steak dinner with oil and gas executives at the Mar-a-Lago Club, in Florida, former President Donald Trump made a request backed by a hefty promise: If the CEOs in attendance raised $1 billion to support his reelection bid, he would lower their taxes and eviscerate environmental and public health protections once he became president, clearing away the “regulatory burdens” that stand in the way of their companies injecting more carbon into the atmosphere—and profiting handsomely from it.

According to reporting by the Washington Post, Trump promised to reverse dozens of Biden administration policies, including a moratorium on approvals for liquefied natural gas exports, new restrictions on Arctic drilling, and many regulations of oil and gas drilling on public land. For good measure, he’d also scrap electric vehicle mandates and bring an immediate end to all offshore wind development.

Judging from Trump’s record, he fully intends to fulfill these promises, and then some. And his mission will be backed by a playbook—alarming for its extreme approach—fashioned by a right-wing coalition intent on dismantling the administrative state.

It’s astounding that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee can solicit a billion-dollar bribe to sell out America’s public lands and not be immediately disqualified or even prosecuted. After all, one-time Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall was disgraced and tossed into jail for doing the same thing, in an incident known as the Teapot Dome scandal in the 1920s. Even more dumbfounding is that, according to some polls, President Biden and Trump are statistically tied among young voters on the issue of climate change.

The reason for this is simple—and, I might add, simplistic. In March 2020, during a Democratic presidential debate, then-candidate Biden said his climate policy included “no more drilling on federal land.” He made a similar statement during a town hall in 2019. And yet, during the first four months of 2024, the Bureau of Land Management issued 969 permits to drill. So much for “no more drilling.” And that’s not all: In 2023, the administration approved a scaled-back—yet still massive and highly destructive—version of the controversial Willow drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope.

Climate advocates are right to hold Biden’s feet to the fire, and to count these moves as black marks on his record. But it is naive, foolish, and destructive to let these missteps obscure the administration’s more subtle, but ultimately more meaningful, actions to protect the climate and public lands from the fossil fuel industry. To see no difference between Biden and Trump is simply ignorant.

Biden’s public land and climate policies were all over the place during his first two years in office, but more recently he has cemented his legacy as a conservationist. In late April I wrote about a slew of new public lands protections enacted by the administration. In the weeks since, Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency has implemented new rules limiting coal power plants’ emissions of greenhouse gasses, mercury, and other toxic air pollutants; tightening regulations on coal ash disposal; and clamping down on wastewater releases by power plants. Additionally, the BLM proposed ending federal coal leasing in America’s largest coal field, Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, which signals a potential death knell for a declining industry. The BLM also canceled 25 oil and gas leases in a 40,000-acre area of southeastern Utah that is rich with cultural resources.

Since a Donald Trump “climate policy” is a contradiction in terms, we’ll look instead at Trump’s energy aims, which consist of little more than “unlock(ing) our country’s God-given abundance of oil, natural gas, and clean coal” by shredding environmental and public health protections at the behest of billionaire petroleum executives. Never mind that those same executives have boasted about achieving record-high domestic oil production and liquefied natural gas exports under the Biden administration. Never mind that ExxonMobil brought in $8.6 billion in after-tax profits during the first three months of the year—not too shabby for an industry purportedly under siege by radical environmentalists.

Since the Trump campaign lacks a concrete platform, a group of right-wing organizations calling themselves Project 2025 have taken it upon themselves to fashion an agenda and even a staff for the next administration to “rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left.” The coalition has published a document called “Mandate for Leadership,” which lays out a playbook for each government sector, providing an eerie glimpse into a second Trump presidency.

The chapter on the Department of the Interior was penned by none other than William Perry Pendley, a notorious anti-public lands zealot who served as Trump’s acting director of the BLM—illegitimately. In it, Pendley unabashedly advocates for returning to the pre-multiple use days, when the BLM was known as the Bureau of Livestock and Mining. He reiterates the absurd claim that wild horses pose an existential threat to public lands and calls for the immediate “rollback of Biden’s orders” and the reinstatement of “the Trump-era Energy Dominance Agenda.” Per the playbook, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the rest of the region would be reopened to drilling; the full Willow project (five drill sites rather than the scaled-back three) would be approved; coal leasing would be restored; drilling permits would be expedited; methane emissions rules and other pollution limits would be rescinded; national monuments would be shrunk or eliminated; protections for sage grouse, grizzlies, wolves and other imperiled species would be removed; and the administration would try to repeal the Antiquities Act of 1906.

And that’s just the DOI chapter. The Energy Department and EPA sections strike similar notes, calling on Trump to, among other things, “Stop the war on oil and natural gas;” lift the moratorium on liquefied natural gas export approvals (and stop considering climate change as a reason to stop LNG projects); support repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, both of which have created thousands of jobs in the clean energy and climate change mitigation industries; shift the departments’ focus away from climate change and renewable energy; end greenhouse gas emissions reporting for all but a select few facilities; and roll back coal plant pollution regulations.

The damage inflicted during Trump’s first term was somewhat mitigated by the administration’s incompetence. Project 2025’s 920-page playbook looks to remedy that, supplementing Trump’s greed and power-hunger with corporate-backed ideology and expertise. In office, Trump would create an authoritarian regime that cracks down on civil liberties, criminalizes immigrants, and bolsters the police state, while also letting corporate interests run wild at the expense of the planet and its most vulnerable people.

A recent report from Wood Mackenzie, a natural resource analytics firm, predicts that a Trump victory in November would bring an “immediate deceleration in support for decarbonization” and “unabated fossil generation would expand.” The report warns that “These steps would push the US even further away from a net zero emissions pathway.”

Biden may have broken a promise, but when it comes to Trump vs. Biden on the climate, the contrast couldn’t be more stark.

In one of his most pointed criticisms of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yet, President Biden suggested that the Israeli leader may be dragging out the war in Gaza for his political benefit.

“There is every reason for people to draw that conclusion,” Biden told Time in a new wide-ranging interview published Wednesday.

The president also said that he believed some of Israel’s actions in the war have been “inappropriate” and a “mistake.”

The new interview, which was conducted May 28, comes days after Biden announced a new three-stage deal to end the war—including a ceasefire, the release of hostages, and the rebuilding of Gaza—and said that it is “time for the suffering to stop.” His answers to Time were, at times, vague and contradictory, but amounted to some of his most direct public criticism of Netanyahu and the Israeli military since the war began on Oct. 7, when Hamas killed approximately 1,200 Israelis and took more than 250 hostages, including some Americans.

Netanyahu has grown increasingly unpopular among Israelis since the start of the war, due in part to his inability to free the hostages; Israeli officials have also threatened to resign and demanded Netanyahu publicly promise that Israel will not indefinitely occupy Gaza. Meanwhile, Israel’s national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, said last week the war could last through the end of the year.

When it came to the question of whether Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza, as International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan publicly alleged last month, Biden was more tepid in the Time interview: “The answer is it’s uncertain and has been investigated by the Israelis themselves…But one thing is certain, the people in Gaza, the Palestinians have suffered greatly, for lack of food, water, medicine, etc. And a lot of innocent people have been killed,” Biden said, adding that “a lot of it has to do not just with Israelis, but what Hamas is doing in Israel as we speak.”

According to the latest numbers from the Associated Press, the war has killed more than 36,000 Palestinians, in addition to the 1,200 Israelis killed on Oct. 7. Officials have described the humanitarian crisis in Gaza as “absolutely catastrophic.” Samantha Power, the top US humanitarian official, said in April that famine was likely underway in parts of Gaza, and the situation has only grown more dire following the Israeli seizure of the Rafah border crossings. And recent reports, including one in the Washington Post, have alleged that some radical Israeli settlers have attacked aid trucks bound for Gaza, preventing crucial supplies from getting in.

But when the Time reporter asked if Biden believed that Israel was intentionally starving civilians, allegations that are included in the I.C.C. applications for arrest warrants, he said: “No, I don’t think that. I think they’ve engaged in activity that is inappropriate.”

He continued, saying that he advised Israeli officials not to “make the same mistake we did going after [Osama] bin Laden…it led to endless wars.”

“Don’t make the mistakes we made,” Biden said. “And they’re making that mistake, I think.”

It remains unclear if Israel and Hamas will accept the plan that Biden announced on Friday. Netanyahu’s allies have since expressed strong opposition to the proposal; Hamas has signaled a more positive reaction. But while Biden urges the two sides to accept the deal, as my colleague Noah Lanard wrote, there is still a lot Biden could do independently if he was serious about ending the war, including ending the sending of weapons to Israel, increasing aid to Gaza, and ensuring compliance with federal laws that restrict U.S. support for nations restricting American aid and implicated in “gross violations of human rights.”

Following former President Trump’s first criminal conviction—and his rambling against the outcome—he’s claiming that the possibility of being sentenced to house arrest or jail time doesn’t bother him.

“I’m okay with it,” Trump said on Fox & Friends Weekend, in his first interview since a dozen jurors handed down guilty verdicts on 34 of 34 felony charges for falsifying business records on Thursday.

The Fox & Friends hosts said they spent 90 minutes interviewing the former president at his Bedminster, New Jersey estate. In the 11-minute clip that aired Sunday, Trump ranted and repeated many of his complaints about the case and his political opponents: the people trying to hold him accountable are “deranged,” the trial was “a scam,” President Biden “can’t put two sentences together,” Democrats are “a threat to democracy.” Trump also called the guilty verdict, which he plans to appeal, “tougher on my family than it is for me.”

And, ever the martyr, the former president added that he thinks a sentence of jail or house arrest would throw his adoring public into upheaval. “I’m not sure the public would stand for it,” he said. “I think it would be tough for the public to take. You know, at a certain point, there’s a breaking point.”

But that remains to be seen. A CBS News/YouGov poll released today found that while 45 percent of respondents thought Trump should not serve prison time for the conviction, 38 percent think he should, with 17 percent unsure. An ABC/Ipsos poll found that half of Americans agree with the verdict—and nearly as many, 49 percent, think Trump should end his presidential campaign because of it.

Meanwhile, top Republicans are privately bracing for the possibility that their presumptive nominee may be incarcerated when the party officially nominates him at July’s Republican National Convention, according to a report on CBS’ Face the Nation. The former president’s sentencing is set for July 11; the four-day RNC kicks off in Milwaukee on July 15.

Some legal experts think Trump’s chances of jail time are slim given his age, 77, and his lack of a criminal record. He could simply be sentenced to probation. But incarceration is certainly possible, especially given Trump’s repeated violations of a gag order barring him from “threatening, inflammatory, denigrating” remarks about witnesses, jurors, court workers, and their families.

One thing is for sure: Jail time wouldn’t stop his campaign. “He is running for president,” Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, told the BBC on Sunday. “Nothing will change there.”

GOP Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who previously called January 6 rioters “insurrectionists” who “should face the full extent of federal law,” is now singing a different tune: Many of those insurrectionists, he believes, should be “considered” for, and receive, presidential pardons.

On NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Cotton said people “who did not attack a law enforcement officer, [and] who did not damage public property ” on Jan. 6 should be “considered” for a pardon.

“Anyone who is charged with silly misdemeanors about parading on public grounds without a permit, who did not attack a law enforcement officer, who did not damage public property, their pardon should be considered—in many cases, I would say it should be granted,” Cotton said. (As Meet the Press fill-in host Peter Alexander pointed out, that’s different from Trump’s recent pledge to pardon all of the more than 800 rioters who have been sentenced, whom he has called “hostages” and “political prisoners.”)

The senator went on to insist that he believes the Supreme Court will soon erase the insurrectionists’ convictions anyway, referring to Fischer v. US, the case focused on the Justice Department’s use of the “obstructing an official proceeding” charge against January 6 participants. (As my colleague Dan Friedman wrote, a favorable ruling for the rioters could disrupt the convictions of 350 participants; as Dan also wrote, it’s not clear how the high court will rule in the case, contrary to Cotton’s claims that it’ll be a slam-dunk for the rioters. A decision is expected by the end of the month.)

Cotton’s change of heart over the treatment of the insurrectionists under the law may have something to do with his rumored status as an increasingly attractive contender as Trump’s vice-presidential nominee, according to a New York Times report published last week. The Times report, which cites three anonymous people close to Trump, says the now–convicted felon sees Cotton as disciplined and an effective communicator, and likes the fact that he served in the Army and is a fellow Ivy League graduate.

Another part of his apparent VP audition on Meet the Press this morning came when Cotton—who voted to certify the 2020 election results—said that, while he does not believe that Congress has the authority to reject electors certified by states, he’d only accept this year’s results “if it’s a fair and a free election.”

“Any candidate of any party has a perfect right to pursue legal remedies if they believe there’s been fraud or cheating in an election,” Cotton said. Trump and his allies, of course, made use of this right, filing more than 60 court cases challenging the results of the 2020 contest. All but one failed; the sole legal victory was on a technical matter in Pennsylvania, and would not have changed the election outcome in the state, where Biden won by more than 80,000 votes, according to USA Today.

Other rumored Trump VP contenders have played the same game as Cotton, publicly reversing their previously articulated positions to align with Trump’s, or walking back previous criticisms of him. Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) have all gone on television and, in various ways, refused to commit to certifying this year’s election results no matter who wins—even though Scott and Rubio both voted to certify the 2020 results. (Vance was not yet in office in 2020, and has since said he would not have certified the results. Stefanik voted to overturn them.)

But for all his posturing, when this morning’s interview turned to talk about Trump’s VP shortlist, Cotton played coy. “I suspect only he knows who’s on his short list,” Cotton said of Trump. “I have not talked to the president or his campaign about his vice-presidential selection or any position in his administration.”

He added, “Any great patriot, if offered a chance to serve our country by the president, would have to consider it seriously.”

And any aspiring Trump VP, it appears, has to abandon their convictions and fall in line with the ex-president to be seriously considered for the job.

In the wake of Donald Trump’s conviction yesterday, far-right influencers have taken to Twitter to express their dismay—and desire for revenge. While some have simply urged Trump supporters to show their support at the ballot box in November, others have gone full apocalypse, urging retribution through thinly disguised calls for violence. Here are a few of the suggestions they have for standing up for their hero during his time of need.

First up: the more establishment wing of the MAGAverse. Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) oozes with disgust over “the left’s smirking, pretentious little faces:”

A disgraceful moment for our country, when activism and emotion trampled longstanding judicial principles and standards. This case is ripe to be overturned on appeal, as it should be, and Donald Trump will be reelected in November. Ultimately this will blow up in the left’s…

— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) May 30, 2024

Then, there’s Charlie Kirk, head of the conservative student movement group TurningPoint USA. On Thursday following the verdict, he tweeted this to his 2.9 million followers on X:

They rigged the trial to rig the election.

Make them pay.

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) May 30, 2024

Relentless Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who in 2022 was ordered to pay $1.5 billion dollars in damages to the families of the children slain during the 2012 massacre, plays his version of three-dimensional-conspiracist chess by claiming to his 2.3 million followers that calls for violence from Trump supporters are actually a “false flag” operation by Democrats.

Anonymous people on message boards are calling for violence. An investigation of the IP addresses would discover that leftist posing as Trump supporters are making the comments. False flag attacks emanating from the deep state are imminent. https://t.co/GGUyryITWm

— Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) May 31, 2024

From Jackson Hinkle, an extremist antisemite and white nationalist with 2.6 million followers on X, comes this suggestion:

Donald Trump must IMPRISON these three WAR CRIMINALS FOR LIFE when he is reelected.

Expose their financial crimes, sex crimes, murders & war crimes @realDonaldTrump! pic.twitter.com/CSJgRSkML6

— Jackson Hinkle (@jacksonhinklle) May 30, 2024

Looking at some actors with fewer followers but equal passions, we can start with Stew Peters, a former bounty hunter-turned-extremist-livestreamer. He took a break from spewing his usual antisemitic horrors by tweeting on Friday to his 596,000 followers on X a video he dug up of a guy ranting about the sheer injustice of Trump’s conviction. “We’re going to put Donald Trump in office, and we want him to lock you motherfuckers up and put a lot of you motherfuckers to death,” he fumes.  

The 937,000 followers of the far-right account The Vigilant Fox were gifted with the tweet of an admiring description of a video it produced of conservative pundit Megyn Kelley. “She compares the Democrats to a wolf that just ‘tasted blood’ and suggests the only way to stop a wolf from ‘coming back for more’ is ‘if he loses a limb of his own.’

NEW: Megyn Kelly suggests a reckoning is coming for Biden, Obama, and Clinton after Trump verdict.

“You just wait, and it won’t be Hunter Biden the next time. It’s going to be Joe Biden. It could potentially still be Barack Obama. It could still potentially be Hillary… pic.twitter.com/VCl9DxBKwL

— The Vigilant Fox (@VigilantFox) May 31, 2024

The religious right also had strong feelings they needed to express. Smash Baals is an account, with 47,000 followers associated with a group of far-right Christian Nationalist pastors. It urged followers—maybe one notable follower in particular?—to fly a flag bearing the slogan “Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.”

It’s time to hoist your colors. pic.twitter.com/d09nAeNiQe

— Smash Baals (@smashbaals) May 31, 2024

Lastly, let’s review a few reactions from a pair of brothers associated with the New Apostolic Reformation, a growing, controversial evangelical movement whose adherents believe they are called to fight for the supremacy of Christianity in all aspects of life—and that includes the US government. One distinguishing feature of the New Apostolic Reformation is the belief that God speaks through modern-day prophets. Guess who Tim Sheets, who says he is an apostle and pastor in Middletown, Ohio, considers that modern-day prophet to be?

Friday
May 31, 2024

We decree an angelic whirlwind over the Ekklesia and ministry. And these angels and this anointing will be sent and released over this country and the nations to call things back to divine order. So be it. pic.twitter.com/SenVQfmdqz

— Tim Sheets (@TimDSheets) May 31, 2024

Tim is less well known than his brother, Dutch, another NAR apostle who gained notoriety recently when Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito flew an “Appeal to Heaven” flag over his house. Dutch Sheets has frequently used the “Appeal to Heaven” phrase and symbols as a rallying cry for the ascendant Christian nationalist movement.

In a YouTube address to 340,000 followers on Friday titled “Stay Focused: God Will Have the Last Word,” Dutch Sheets said he had been “revisiting what I’ve been hearing from the Holy Spirit in the last several months.” He shared the dreams of several other prophets, which he said foretold the Trump verdict. “The fire and glory of God is coming to America—it will cleanse and it will empower,” he assured viewers. “It will tear down that which is evil, not us.”

In April of 2023, right-wing podcaster Steven Crowder announced that he and his wife, Hilary, were divorcing—an event, he explained to listeners of Louder with Crowder, to which he did not consent. She “didn’t want to be married anymore,” he said, “and in the state of Texas, that is completely permitted.”  

Crowder, upset, lamented: “My beliefs don’t matter.” 

His venting—which did not include the context of potential abuse he inflicted; a video from 2021 surfaced soon after Crowder’s podcast posted showing him restricting Hilary from access to a car because she would not do “wifely things”—was a watershed moment.

The right has long pushed policies to enshrine a specific view of marriage. But the open discussion of making divorce harder has—in large part because of dudes online with podcasts and politicians who want to appeal to dudes who listen to dudes on podcasts—become more obvious over the last year. Crowder’s rant was a crossover point in uncovering a renewed push by the GOP to roll back no-fault divorce laws. It gave more mainstream attention to a burgeoning men’s movement centered on family values.

“I think divorce should basically be outlawed, or it should be at least greatly restricted,” The Daily Wire host Michael Knowles said, while referencing Crowder. Podcaster Tim Pool said no-fault divorce is “ruining relationships,” on an episode where he cites Jordan Peterson and jokes that, “maybe we would just be better if, I don’t know, women just had to wear red dresses and bonnets.”  

Over the past year, I’ve been following this effort for Mother Jones. During that time, I have written about how conservatives, both elected and not, have been trying to make divorce harder. These arguments are often deeply influenced by religion and depend on misogynistic understandings of marriage, women, and money.

When I initially set up a Google Alert for “no-fault divorce” last summer, the news was pretty sparse. Now, I’m getting updates daily.  

Just as rolling back abortion rights was a concerted effort of religious groups, conservative provocateurs, and legislators, so is this anti-no-fault-divorce movement. The growing crowd of anti-woke Republicans, stewarded by men like Crowder, has taken up making divorce harder and turned it into a perfect recruiting tool to bring young misogynists into the fold. By pairing the moral panics about the changing norms of marriage and wokeness, with a hefty splash of masculinity-baiting, the GOP can appeal to some of the most conservative young male voters in generations.

Young women, according to research by Gallup, are becoming more liberal than previous generations. But young men have trended toward conservatism. This group of voters is increasingly available to, and coveted by, Republican candidates. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) released a book, Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs, to speak to them. Donald Trump Jr. launched a hunting magazine, Field Ethos, that, according to co-founder and CEO Jason Vincent appeals to the “unapologetic male mindset” (which is a draw for women, too, he told Politico). Tucker Carlson released a documentary called The End of Men.

Return, right-wing conservatives seem to say in these works, to the world before society decayed into the libidinous lawlessness of abortion and divorce. Be a good man—and enter a marriage. Have children. Provide for “the family.” This nostalgia is fundamentally wrapped up with a backslide on rights won by women since the mid-20th century.

Women are more likely to initiate divorces, and, historically, no-fault divorce has been specifically beneficial for wives seeking separation. A 2003 working paper in the National Bureau of Economic Research found that, in states that allowed one partner to unilaterally push for divorce, total female suicide declined by around 20 percent. There was no similar decline for men. Keeping divorce simpler also benefits those experiencing domestic abuse. Fault-based systems are costly and take more time—two resources that victims often lack.

This rhetorical push from the right is happening online and in homes across the country, but also in statehouses, and from the mouths of some of the most powerful people in politics. Just this week, the Texas GOP doubled down on their support for rolling back no-fault divorce in their official party platform. The Nebraska GOP’s website notes, “We believe no-fault divorce should be limited to situations in which the couple has no children of the marriage.”  

“For the sake of families,” Ben Carson, former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and current Republican vice-presidential hopeful, wrote in his book, The Perilous Fight, released this month, “we should enact legislation to remove or radically reduce incidences of no-fault divorce.” Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) has suggested he abides strictly to the “’til death do us part” view of divorce, even in unhappy or violent marriages. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) has questioned no-fault divorce since he was a Harvard undergraduate in 1997. 

And of course, there’s current Speaker of the House Mike Johnson: one of the most prominent people in the country to get a “covenant marriage.”

In 1997, Louisiana—the Johnson’s home state—became the first in the country to pass a covenant marriage law, which allowed newlyweds to opt for a religion-based contract that makes it significantly harder to get divorced. Arizona and Arkansas followed. These unions provide an alternative to regular marriage certificates, which permit couples to get no-fault divorces.

If the Johnsons ever sought divorce, they would legally need to seek counseling first. Then, they would still only be able to separate if they proved one of the following requirements: adultery, “commission of a felony,” abandonment for one year, physical or sexual abuse of the spouse or of a child, or living apart for two years. 

Those seeking a no-fault divorce don’t have to do any of that—no wrongdoing needs to occur for couples to part ways. Starting in 1969, when then–California Gov. Ronald Reagan signed the country’s first no-fault divorce law, these statutes have provided a way out for couples wanting to go their separate ways. While Reagan, according to his son, would later consider supporting no-fault divorce his “greatest regret” in life, these laws have stuck around and helped change how we view divorce nationwide.   

In 2001, Johnson and his wife Kelly went on Good Morning America to talk about what made their nuptials special. Host Diane Sawyer was curious about this new thing called “covenant marriage,” and wanted to ask the Johnsons, who were one of the first couples to try it out, about the appeal.

“Critics of this again say, ‘you should be able to promise and mean it and not have to bring the law in,’” Sawyer said. “You’re letting states legislate something that is really a religious or a personal commitment.”  

“That’s true,” Johnson responds, “but I’m not sure why they oppose it. Because society, we have a vested interest in preserving marriages because all of the social ills that come from the root cause of divorce and the law, the state, is going to sanction some type of marriage, so why not have an option that’s more binding?” 

This is the regular argument of many on the right, that marriage should be held sacred in the law. What’s the harm in making divorce harder?

Hearing that, I can’t help but think of a woman I spoke with last fall.

Eleanor, who chose to conceal her name for safety, told me about one harm—how complicated it was, already, for her to leave her abusive partner and file successfully for divorce, and how much worse it would have been if she had to prove the abuse. A mother, Eleanor lives in Texas and while going through her divorce in 2020, was balancing keeping her and her children safe from her husband, who she says sexually assaulted and strangled her.

“I almost died,” Eleanor told me. “The notion that this could even be made any more difficult than it already is,” she explained of divorce, baffled and scared her.

As any schoolkid might tell you, US elections are based on a bedrock principle: one person, one vote. Simple as that. Each vote carries the same weight. Yet for much of the country’s history, that hasn’t been the case. At various points, whole classes of people were shut out of voting: enslaved Black Americans, Native Americans, and poor white people. The first time women had the right to vote was in 1919. This week’s episode of Reveal is about a current version of this very old problem.

For this show, host Al Letson does a deep dive with Mother Jones national voting rights correspondent Ari Berman about his new book, Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People—and the Fight to Resist It.

They first discuss America’s early years and examine how the political institutions created by the Founding Fathers were meant to constrain democracy. This system is still alive in the modern era, Berman says, through institutions like the Electoral College and the US Senate, which were designed as checks against the power of the majority. What’s more, Berman argues that the Supreme Court is a product of these two skewed institutions. Then there are newer tactics—like voter suppression and gerrymandering—that are layered on top of this anti-democratic foundation to entrench the power of a conservative white minority.

Next, they trace the rise of conservative firebrand Pat Buchanan and how he opened the door for Donald Trump. Buchanan made white Republicans fear becoming a racial minority. And he opposed the Voting Rights Act, which struck down obstacles to voting like poll taxes and literacy tests that had been used to keep people of color from the polls. Buchanan never came close to winning the presidency, but he transformed white anxiety into an organizing principle that has become a centerpiece of much of today’s Republican Party.

Finally, the show follows successful efforts by citizen activists in Michigan to end political gerrymandering and reinforce the democratic principle of one person, one vote. Berman argues that this state-based organizing should be a national model for democratic reform.

Editor’s note: The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial of Our Land here.

Sometimes I’d rather not be right. In January, reacting to Donald Trump affectionately referring to the trio of tyrants Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong Un as “very fine people,” I wrote that two constants in the Trump Era are his affection for murderous authoritarians and Russian efforts to screw with American politics. The former is well-known, the latter, less recognized. Moscow mounted information warfare operations to boost Trump during both the 2016 election—most notably, the hack-and-leak attack in which Russian cyber-operatives swiped Democratic emails and documents and WikiLeaks released them—and the 2020 election, when Russian intelligence operatives spread disinformation about Joe and Hunter Biden and Ukraine. The first op helped the Putin-friendly Trump reach the White House; the second failed to keep him in office, but it had the side-benefit of fueling the House Republicans’ baseless (and now fizzling) impeachment crusade against President Biden. Putin went one for two.

I noted in that Our Land issue: “[I]t’s a good bet that Putin this year will try once again to mess in an American election…[As Putin] continues to commit horrendous war crimes in Ukraine, he has even more reason to clandestinely boost Trump and win the rubber match.” At long last, official warnings have arrived.

Two weeks ago, Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee that Russia remains “the most active foreign threat to our elections.” She noted that the Kremlin’s “goals in such influence operations tend to include eroding trust in US democratic institutions, exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the United States, and degrading Western support to Ukraine.” All of this, obviously, would be to Trump’s benefit. She pointed out that artificial intelligence and deepfakes will presumably be deployed in this effort, and she cited China and Iran as other threats.

Russia’s latest attack on the United States is already underway. As the Associated Press reported in March:

Russian state media and online accounts tied to the Kremlin have spread and amplified misleading and incendiary content about US immigration and border security. The campaign seems crafted to stoke outrage and polarization before the 2024 election for the White House, and experts who study Russian disinformation say Americans can expect more to come as Putin looks to weaken support for Ukraine and cut off a vital supply of aid.

The New York Times reported recently that a disinformation operation—most likely mounted by Russians—has been circulating a video that purports to disclose the existence of a troll farm in Ukraine that is being run by the CIA and targeting the US election to prevent Trump’s election. It’s a clever instance of cyber-gaslighting, for it is Russian trolls who are disseminating fakery to hurt Biden and help Trump.

Microsoft, according to the Times, concluded this video “came from a group it calls Storm-1516, a collection of disinformation experts who now focus on creating videos they hope might go viral in America. The group most likely includes veterans of the Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin-aligned troll farm that sought to influence the 2016 election.” Another recent video from this gang—or a similar one—claimed to show Ukrainian soldiers burning an effigy of Trump and blaming him for delays in military aid shipments to Ukraine. The aim was to bolster MAGA’s opposition to aid for Ukraine. (You can’t send money to those anti-Trump ingrates!) Alex Jones’ conspiracy site posted the video that was not hard for experts to spot as a ruse. (The Ukrainian soldiers had Russian accents.)

At the Senate hearing, Haines testified that combatting disinformation “from foreign influence or interference is an absolute priority for the intelligence community” and that the US government is prepared “to address the challenge.” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the chair of the intelligence committee, said, “We’ve got to do a better job of making sure Americans of all political stripes understand what is very probably coming their way over the next…less than six months.”

In fact, disinformation experts in and out of government regularly say a crucial element in thwarting such operations is to alert the public that it is being targeted by bad-faith actors with false messages. Basically, you have to educate people about the big picture and then try to counter the specific instances as they occur. Here’s the rub: In a time of political division, not all major players are keen to do this. Especially when they, too, are engaging in similar activities.

Let’s rewind to the summer of 2016. When the Obama administration determined that Russia was covertly assaulting the US election, the White House reached out to Sen. Mitch McConnell, then the majority leader, to form a united front against the Kremlin’s interference. McConnell told President Obama to take a hike. At the time, Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, was falsely claiming there was no Russian intervention underway. McConnell didn’t want to cross-swords with Trump, and, ever the cynical political operative, he suspected the White House wanted to use this issue to undermine the Republicans. Consequently, he took a powder and placed party over country.

Since then, it’s only gotten worse. Republicans have generally waved away concerns about Putin’s war on US elections, echoing Trump’s phony assertion—disinformation—that it’s a big hoax concocted by Democrats and the media. Moreover, as noted above, many Republicans have gone further, embracing and amplifying Russian disinformation about both Biden and the war in Ukraine. Don’t take my word for it. Recently, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, groused, “Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately, and it’s infected a good chunk of my party’s base.” And Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, complained that anti-Ukraine messages from Russia are “being uttered on the House floor.”

Theirs is a minority position. Most Republicans don’t want to broach the subject of Russian meddling. Putin’s operations are useful for these useful idiots. And their Dear Leader certainly desires no discussion of this. Any such talk is a reminder of how he slid into the White House with Russian assistance, which, in an act of grand betrayal, he aided and abetted by claiming no such thing was happening. Of course, conservative media and ex-lefty Trump-Russia denialists (Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, and others) will pooh-pooh this and pump up the conspiracy theory that countering Russian disinformation is a scheme to impose state-sponsored censorship.

Given all this, how can a strategy to counter Russian information be implemented? If the Biden administration or congressional Democrats elevate these concerns, Trump and his minions will insist this is a plot to undermine him. The Trumpers don’t need to win the argument; they succeed if they turn this matter into yet another political mud-wrestling match that confuses or confounds voters. Still, Haines and others ought to keep trying.

The media has an important role to play. The more attention it can cast upon the Russian efforts, the greater the odds that a slice of the electorate will comprehend the threat and perhaps be inoculated from being unduly influenced by these operations. But how many of you saw coverage of this hearing? How about of the recent Russian actions? The New York Times did not consider this threat to American democracy front-page news, and buried its account of that phony video and the hearing on the bottom of page A19. (The Washington Post did not assign its own reporter to the hearing; it ran an AP account.) My hunch is that Trump’s ceaseless grousing about the “Russia hoax” has made some in the media gun-shy about this stuff.

As McConnell demonstrated eight years ago, it is tough to devise an effective and nonpartisan counter to a foreign threat when an entire political party denies that threat or, worse, sees benefits from it. The Russians aren’t coming, they’re here. Preserving democracy could depend on making sure Putin doesn’t win this round.

David Corn’s American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy, a New York Times bestseller, is available in a new and expanded paperback edition.

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Donald Trump was continuing to ask fossil-fuel executives to fund his presidential campaign on Wednesday, despite scrutiny of his relationship with the industry.

The former president attended a fundraising luncheon at Houston’s Post Oak hotel hosted by three Big Oil executives.

The invitation-only meeting comes a day after the defense rested its case in Trump’s criminal hush-money trial, and a week after Houston was battered by deadly storms. The climate crisis, caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels, has created the conditions for more frequent and severe rainfall and flooding, including in Texas.

“Houstonians are staring at Trump in disbelief as he flies in to beg Big Oil for funds just days after the city’s climate disaster,” said Alex Glass, communications director at the climate advocacy organization Climate Power, and a former Houston resident.

It also follows a fundraising dinner at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club last month, where the former president reportedly asked more than 20 oil executives for $1 billion in campaign donations from their industry and promising, if elected, to remove barriers to drilling, scrap a pause on gas exports, and reverse new rules aimed at cutting car pollution.

“Donald Trump is telling us who he is, again,” said Pete Maysmith, a senior vice-president at the environmental nonprofit the League of Conservation Voters. “He has already asked oil executives for a billion dollars for his campaign; we can only assume this week’s meeting is to haggle over exactly what they will get in return.”

Executives from two of the companies reportedly represented at the Mar-a-Lago meeting were among the hosts of Trump’s Wednesday’s fundraiser.

Harold Hamm, the executive chairman and founder of Continental Resources and one of the Wednesday luncheon organizers, is a longtime Trump supporter and was reportedly also at the April dinner.

Hamm, a multibillionaire, was a major player in the rush to extract oil from the Bakken shale formation, which stretches across the US midwest and Canada.

During Trump’s first presidential campaign, Hamm was also reportedly one of the seven top donors to receive special seats at Trump’s inauguration. The oil magnate was briefly under consideration to be energy secretary during the former president’s first term but reportedly turned down the position. He turned away from Trump after his 2020 loss, choosing to donate to his opponents, but then donated to Trump’s primary campaign in August.

One of Hamm’s Wednesday co-hosts was Vicki Hollub, chief executive of Occidental Petroleum, which was also represented at the Mar-a-Lago fundraiser. Hollub has been criticized by climate activists for investing in carbon-capture technology in an effort to continue extracting oil and gas, despite warnings that fossil fuels must be phased out to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

Congressional Democrats launched an investigation into Occidental Petroleum and other companies on Wednesday after the Federal Trade Commission last month accused the head of Pioneer Natural Resources of illegal collusion with the oil production cartel Opec+ to keep fuel prices high.

The third co-host of Wednesday’s meeting, Kelcy Warren, is the executive chairman of Energy Transfer Partners—a company with whom Trump has close financial ties.

Throughout the 2024 campaign cycle, Warren has donated more than $800,000 to Trump’s campaign. In the 2020 election cycle, he held at least one fundraiser for the former president in 2020 and donated $10 million to a pro-Trump Super Pac.

During his first presidential run in 2016, Trump invested in the company while also receiving more than $100,000 in campaign contributions from Warren, the Guardian found.

Warren appears to have benefited from Trump’s first term: within days of taking office in 2017, Trump approved construction of his company’s highly controversial Dakota Access pipeline, triggering outrage from climate advocates, conservationists and nearby Indigenous tribal organizations.

Last year, the Texas Tribune found that Energy Transfer Partners profited to the tune of $2.4 billion as gas demand soared during Texas’s deadly winter freeze and the ensuing collapse of the state’s energy grid.

The fossil-fuel industry has funneled $7.3 million to Trump’s 2024 campaign and associated groups, making it his fifth-largest industry donor this election cycle.

The $1 billion “deal” that Trump allegedly offered to oil executives last month could save the industry $110 billion in tax breaks if he returns to the White House, an analysis last week found.

Last week, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) launched a House oversight investigation into nine oil companies after Trump reportedly offered to dismantle Biden’s environmental rules for their benefit and requested $1 billion in contributions to his presidential campaign.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has also expressed interest in formally investigating the Mar-a-Lago meeting. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, the powerful Washington watchdog, also told the Guardian it is investigating.