gop climate change denial

Republicans are reportedly throwing in the towel already for the rest of the year, per Politico, giving up on initial plans to push through new legislation in their impending "lame duck" window.

In a new report published Tuesday morning, Politico explained that the GOP has "deferred" a considerable amount of its legislative plans for this year, having previously hoped that "post-election release of political pressure" after the all-important midterms might allow them some room to get things done.

"Fat chance, many GOP lawmakers now say," the report detailed. "Beyond the uncertainties surrounding the midterms and a potential transition of power on Capitol Hill, members will return to Washington facing a considerable list of must-pass bipartisan bills but also potentially messy internal leadership fights, a foul national mood and a mere 24 legislative days to get anything done."

In addition, there is now some doubt as to whether or not a large number of GOP lawmakers will even bother to show up in Washington, D.C., during the lame duck period post-midterms.

“The question becomes: Who shows up for work after the elections?” Rep. Austin Scott, a Georgia Republican, said in an interview. “Attendance is an issue right now.”

Some matters, Scott noted, are must-pass, including a measure to extend government funding past December 11 and getting the annual Pentagon policy bill sorted. Other possibilities, like "Major pieces of legislation to reauthorize farm, transportation and surveillance programs," are "loaded with potential partisan flashpoints" and might get bogged down for too long in debate. Some Republicans are also unsure about trying to push through bills during a time when Democrats might already be pushing them around with greater powers.

“What do you think?” Sen. Thom Tillis, a retiring North Carolina Republican, said with an "exasperated" tone when asked about the potential for lame duck productivity this year. “I mean, why? If you think about it, if Democrats win the House, why would they?”

The GOP might also have internal squabbling to deal with in the last few weeks of the year.

"And though the elections will be over outside the Capitol, internal politicking could continue for weeks in both chambers," Politico added. "A Democratic flip of the House could spark a potentially chaotic cascade of GOP leadership elections, especially with [House Speaker Mike] Johnson giving mixed signals about his intentions in that scenario. He broached the possibility he might not remain atop his conference in a Fox News interview last week, then said in a CBS News interview published Monday that he expected 'my colleagues would ask me to continue leading this conference' even after a loss. [Senate Majority Leader John] Thune says he is running again for GOP leader regardless of the election outcome, and no other senator has signaled they will challenge him. That hasn’t stopped some conservatives, in and out of the chamber, from questioning whether Trump will blame him if the majority is lost."

A Nobel Prize-winning scientist took a big swipe at President Donald Trump, calling him a "corrupt, senile felon" and saying he spotted another problem regarding a subject he has fully embraced.

Geoffrey Hinton, who is a pioneering computer scientist and one of the world's most influential researchers, discussed the president’s mental acuity in an interview with The Guardian published Tuesday.

Hinton, who won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics, criticized not only Trump but also his Silicon Valley allies, accusing them of ambition beyond raking in billions. He pointed the finger at billionaire investors Marc Andreessen, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, saying the trio “don’t believe in democracy.”

He also believes that they see themselves as superior individuals who should "control society” and suggested they view Trump as a useful instrument for achieving those ambitions.

He directed some of his harshest criticism at the president himself, arguing that he shows a basic lack of understanding of a rapidly evolving technology capable of transforming society.

The scientist was referring to artificial intelligence and Trump's recent insistence on replacing that term with "superintelligence."

Hinton, widely regarded as the godfather of AI, said the president understands "almost nothing" about the technology.

He said superintelligence has a definite scientific meaning: systems that exceed human intelligence, and merely changing the name, he said, doesn't make existing systems any smarter.

Trump recently declared on Truth Social that anyone refusing to adopt his preferred terminology was "THE ENEMY."

Hinton also challenged the president's opposition to government safeguards, particularly his apparent willingness to let technology companies regulate themselves.

He compared that approach to letting tobacco companies, stating: “Do we think tobacco companies should have been allowed to design the warnings on the packets? So that they could print them in a six-point font, in dark grey on black?”

Hilton’s comment came after he received criticism from power players in the industry.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently pushed back on Hinton's predictions about the dangers of advanced AI, arguing that his estimates lacked sufficient scientific evidence. Hinton previously predicted a 10% to 20% chance that the technology could cause human extinction in the coming decades. He defended his dystopian warning by explaining that the precise probability matters less than recognizing the possibility of catastrophe.

The scientist also warned that humanity has only a few years in which to get used to sharing the world with machines that are becoming more and more intelligent at a rapid pace.

Hinton, having left Google in 2023 to speak openly about the dangers of the technology, maintained that failing to prioritize safety when developing more powerful systems could lead to irreversible consequences.

The full panel of "Morning Joe" started off Tuesday cracking up over President Donald Trump's bizarre new fascination with "the male physique."

Speaking in Ohio on Monday night, Trump talked about checking out the rear end of Sen. John Husted (R-Ohio) and gushed over the size of his hands.

"But I'm standing over here, and I don't do this with men very often. I started examining his body because I didn't know he was a great athlete," Trump confessed to his audience. "And I looked, and I watched up and down. I looked at his a—, and I looked at the whole — and then I looked at his hands, look at his hands. He's got these like claws. And I got it. You are a great athlete. I didn't know that because he doesn't talk about that. Congratulations. Now they finally know that was very good. John fought for Ohio. Look at that jawline. I'm telling you, I never saw that. I never studied him."

The camera turned to Joe Scarborough and a very confused Mika Brzezinski.

"He has a rank," Scarborough told Willie Geist. He's "become quite the admirer of the male physique. We hear it all the time. Loves talking about buff men. I mean, this is out of a village people video. Like every one of his events. It's like, whoa, look here, look here."

"Did he say he was looking at his..." Brzezinski quewstioned.

"His rear end," Geist said. "And his jawline."

From jawline to rear end. Front to back, he sees it," mocked Scarborough.

"This time it wasn't Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart. He's usually going out of his way to compliment the thick, beautiful, tree-trunk legs that he has. He talked about the beautiful," Geist said, trailing off. "Yeah, members of the military that he sees in the audience. He praises their physical appearance. But this was a new..."

Brzezinski said she wished that Trump would "keep his private life private."

"He said. I looked at him top to bottom, including, forgive me, his a—. He was checking out the a— of a U.S. senator."

"No," Brzezinski said.

"Which actually, you know, when you invite a U.S. president to come in during a midterm election, you're having trouble possibly losing. This is not on the top of your list of things you want the president of the United States to come in and talk about at your rally," Scarborough said as the panel laughed.

Laura Barrón-López noted that the year began with Trump talking about New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani: "he's better looking in person."

Scarborough noted that Trump does tend to talk a lot about how buff men are.

"So, I guess it's wonderful he appreciates the male physique, I guess," he said.

They brought in New York Times columnist David French, who said that while Trump is rambling about someone's physical characteristics, he's not making horrible deals with Russia.

- YouTube youtu.be

Experts and casual citizens alike have discussed President Donald Trump's apparent decline, raising questions about the 80-year-old president's fitness to service.

Journalist Jim Acosta, formerly of CNN, is the latest to reach this conclusion.

“I think we’re now on earth three, which is what do we do with the president of the United States who is both mentally unstable and in serious decline?" Acosta said on his podcast on Monday. "And it’s just staring us in the face on a regular basis.”

Acosta continued, “The more I think the case becomes crystal clear that we have a 25th Amendment crisis in this country.” The 25th Amendment states that a president who becomes mentally unfit to serve can be forcibly removed from power "whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office."

If involved against Trump — as a group of leading health professionals urged Congress to do in an open letter in May — the Vice President, JD Vance, would take over.

Psychiatrist Dr. Henry Abraham, leading author of that letter and formerly of Tufts University, told AlterNet in a recent interview that he perceives Trump as being "pathologically hyped up and manic. In fact, the noun for this is maniac. He's a maniac at night, but he's not a maniac during the day, generally. So it's a nocturnal form of mania which remains to be explained."

He continued, "Let's move on, because a lot of this stuff is at night. Another red flag is his inability to control his rage. And this is pretty dangerous stuff. If he's alone at night and he's in one of these rageful states — well, he has sole access to nuclear weapons. He could, on his own, launch a nuclear attack against whatever enemy he chooses, and he has a few, but Iran comes to mind, since he's started a war with Iran. That's a very dangerous thing. In fact, that's probably the most dangerous. That probably goes at the top of my list of abnormalities of mental function which threaten literally hundreds of millions of people."

Not every health expert agrees with Abraham.

"I have no basis for making any assessment at all about cognitive functioning," Dr. Jay Olshansky is a University of Illinois Chicago emeritus professor best known for developing the "biodemographic paradigm" of mortality, told AlterNet in September. "And actually, nor does anyone else, perhaps except his doctors. So, honestly, I don't trust videos that I see. Those can be doctored and altered. I don't trust audio that I hear; those can be doctored and altered. I don't trust opinions of others based on video and audio, because those are often influenced by politics."

He added, "Bottom line is I think very few people have any valid basis for drawing any conclusion about cognitive functioning about the president."

President Donald Trump praised the physical appearance of Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH), raising attention about his previously well-established recent habit of making overtly aesthetic comments about the men in his vicinity.

"President Donald Trump has bizarrely thirsted over the body of a male MAGA senator during a midterm rally," reported The Daily Beast's Cameron Adams on Monday. "Trump, 80, attended a rally in Youngstown, Ohio, on Monday evening to lend his support for Senator Jon Husted and gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy."

Adams added, "During his speech, the president praised Husted and admitted he didn’t know about his past playing football for the University of Dayton, where he earned All-American recognition as a defensive back and kick returner." Adams quoted Trump as saying of Husted, "He was a great athlete. I don’t do this with men very often, I started examining his body, because I didn’t know he was a great athlete."

Trump continued, "And I looked, and I watched up and down, and I looked at his a-- ... and I looked at the whole... and then I looked at his hands, look at his hands, he’s got these, like, claws... and I got it, you are a great athlete.”

While unorthodox, Trump often compliments the physical appearance of men around him. In 2026 alone he did so when meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping and New York Giants Quarterback Jaxson Dart. He also repeatedly referred to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is running for the Senate as the Republican nominee in that state, as "ugly." Yet the president is just as prone to mentioning how women appear as he is how men appear — and, just as he can kind to Husted or cruel to Paxton, he is known for being either overtly flattering (such as how he judged and spoke to contestants on the reality TV show that launched him to superstardom and a presidential campaign, "The Apprentice") or bitterly cutting toward women over how they look.

""December 6th he called Kaitlin Collins 'stupid and nasty,'"" MS NOW anchor Nicolle Wallace pointed out in December. "On November 27th he said 'are you stupid' To CBS journalist Nancy Cordes. On November 26th, he called the New York Times' Katie Rogers 'ugly.' On November 18th, he called ABC's Mary Bruce 'terrible and insubordinate' — to whom I'm not sure — November 14th, he told a Bloomberg reporter, 'quiet, piggy,'"

Because Trump seems to obsess more over people's physical appearance at present, to the point where doing so interferes with what would otherwise seem to be the responsibilities of his job, experts have expressed concern that they could be a sign of cognitive decline. Speaking to AlterNet in May, former Tufts University psychiatrist Dr. Henry Abraham — who authored a letter to Congress by 36 health professionals saying Trump is unfit to serve — argued that, broadly, Trump's erratic and obsessive comments are a "red flag."

“It’s a red flag,” Abraham told AlterNet at the time. “People perseverate because they can’t think of anything else to say, because they’re cognitively impaired, or they perseverate because their emotional motor is stuck in high gear. In the last five to 10 years, he has planted red flags of concern again and again and again, and they’ve clustered.”

President Donald Trump and his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, use Christian nationalism as the ideological fuel for their right-wing political movement. Yet according to one expert, they often do not understand the very Bible that they like to reference.

"He vowed that in his military, there would be 'no fatties. No trannies. No beardos. No weirdos. No wimps. No radicals,'" wrote The Dispatch's Paul D. Miller, professor of the practice of international affairs at Georgetown University, the managing editor of Providence Magazine and the Hugh Shelton visiting chair of ethics at the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College Foundation, on Monday. Yet it appears Hegseth struggles to accurately connect the aforementioned philosophy with the Bible.

"Hegseth compared American servicemen to the prophet Isaiah receiving God’s commission," Miller wrote. "'‘Lord, here I am, send me,' Hegseth said, quoting Isaiah 6:8. 'Send me to fight the Red Coats. Send me to fight the Communists. Send me to fight the Islamists. Send me.' (It’s one of Hegseth’s favorite tropes. He launched a recruitment tour using the 'Send Me' slogan as the centerpiece of the pitch.) "

Miller added that Hegseth also quoted Psalm 33:12 (“Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.”), Psalm 118 ("The Lord is on my side; I will not fear: What can man do unto me?”) and Ephesians 6:11 (“Our department is, you might say, putting on the full Armor of God”) through 6:12 (“while we wage physical war, we all know the real battle is spiritual.”) in the same speech.

Yet "Hegseth is plainly taking Scripture out of context—King David was not thinking of America when he praised the nation whose God is the Lord," Miller wrote, adding that Hegseth similarly errs in "conflating the American soldier with a divinely inspired prophet (Isaiah) and the United States with God’s chosen covenant people (the 'nation whose God is the Lord'). If he means any of this literally, it is literally blasphemous."

Yet even if he does not mean any of it literally, Hegseth is still revealing himself to be remarkably shallow in his theology, Miller claimed.

"He tears scriptural phrases out of context and throws them in the speechmaking blender, and they come out like so many aphorisms and clichés," Miller argued. "They line his speech to elevate the bombast, to balance the jejune with the sacred. For Lincoln, Scripture serves to illuminate, judge, and humble the nation. For Hegseth, Scripture elevates, ennobles, and even sacralizes the nation."

He added, Hegseth’s misuse of Scripture is especially galling because he does this sort of thing in the name of restoring Christianity to its formerly central place in American public life while overseeing a war that is, at least, troubling in light of the Christian just war tradition."

Miller neglected to mention Hegseth's most infamous religious gaffe, when he invoked pseudo-scripture by reading lines by Samuel L. Jackson's character in the Quentin Tarantino film "Pulp Fiction" to the actual Bible.

“The path of the downed aviator is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men,” Hegseth said in a speech, referencing a fictional Biblical passage (Ezekiel 25:17) recited before a hit is performed. “Blessed is he who in the name of camaraderie and duty shepherds the lost through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother, and you will know my call sign is Sandy One when I lay my vengeance upon thee. Amen.”

Despite the claims made by Trump and Hegseth, the co-author of the Declaration of Independence and third American president, Thomas Jefferson, coined the phrase "separation between church and state" to emphasize the importance of keeping both spheres distinct.

“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State," Jefferson wrote during his presidency.

Conservative writer Andrew McCarthy voted for President Donald Trump three times, but he pulled no punches in blasting Trump’s “imbecilic” policies leading to his deal with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin.

“Trump’s atrocious oil deal with Vladimir Putin, his friend and America’s foe, is impeachable flim-flam,” said McCarthy. “It’s a fraud on the American people — a desperate, futile attempt to address Trump’s self-inflicted wound of high diesel prices.”

The United States, after all, produces around 5 million barrels of diesel per day, yet consumes less than 4 million barrels per day. This excess makes the U.S. the “world’s top diesel exporter,” while Russia, in stark contrast, has “collapsed” as an exporter, said McCarthy.

“Putting aside the more appalling aspects of this deal — a gift to Putin, requiring no concessions on his part — we are apparently supposed to believe that Russia, whose energy sector is in such disrepair it was importing diesel from South Korea this summer, is going to be our savior exporter,” said McCarthy.

Putin is a war criminal, he added, who scoffs at Trumps pleas of peace after attacking Ukraine. And he “blithely persisted in his barbaric attacks on civilians, even as Trump announced the diesel deal.”

McCarthy said in making this deal Trump is trying to convince voters that he is “taking real steps to reduce the prices his unilaterally imposed policies have caused.” But that’s not going to work because prices will not decrease. In fact, they’ll probability go higher because the war “Trump started against Iran without seeking congressional authorization or public buy-in” is back on the menu. Iran — which is Putin’s ally — has stepped up attacks in the Strait of Hormuz, said McCarthy. And Iran’s Houthi allies are pounding Saudi Arabia and upsetting Red Sea shipments. Meanwhile Trump has not ended “his imbecilic trade war with Canada, our ally and neighbor,” said McCarthy.

“The second reason for doing the diesel deal with Putin is, as ever, corruption,” said McCarthy, who is — again — a three-time Trump voter.

“In early October, the New York Times reported that Trump is working on an even more execrable multibillion-dollar oil deal with Putin: The U.S. would waive sanctions so that an investor group could buy up oil fields, refineries, and gas stations around the world that are owned by Lukoil, the Russian energy giant,” said McCarthy. “The deal has been negotiated by Trump’s aforementioned emissaries, Kushner and Witkoff. Among the major beneficiaries are said to be one of Trump’s major donors (Todd Boehly, who has donated $2 million to Trump political causes) and Middle Eastern executives who have business ties to Trump, Kushner, and Witkoff.”

“What is straightforward, though, statute or no statute, is that the president of the United States is empowering and emboldening a murderous anti-American regime even as it persists in a war of aggression, savage war crimes,” continued McCarthy. “… regardless of whether statutes have been transgressed, President Trump is grossly abusing the executive power entrusted in him.”

A retired judge, once powerful enough to be appointed and promoted by two Republican presidents (Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush), seemed to subtly troll President Donald Trump's defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, in a Monday statement. When discussing Hegseth's decision to air live the execution of terrorist and mass murderer Nidal Malik Hasan, most have focused on the fact that America's military has not publicized an execution in nearly a century.

Alex Kozinski, on the other hand, praised Hegseth for executing Hasan by firing squad — which Kozinski points out is actually more humane than the most popular execution method, lethal injection.

"It borrows medicine’s costume without the people and safeguards that make medicine work," Kozinski wrote in The Wall Street Journal. "Physicians are barred by the American Medical Association’s ethics code from participating in executions; similar constraints apply to nurses. The job therefore falls to law-enforcement personnel, who must obtain the drugs, find a vein, insert a catheter, and administer the substances in the right quantities and sequence. If the first attempt fails, they try again."

After describing the botched executions of two convicted murderers — first Joseph Rudolph Wood II in 2014 in Arizona, who only died after 15 injections of midazolam and hydromorphone over almost two hours, and then more recently Christa Pike, who survived two pentobarbital injections in Tennessee — Kozinski cited his own work on the Wood case when declaring firing squad more humane than lethal injection.

“Eight or ten large-caliber rifle bullets fired at close range can inflict massive damage, causing instant death every time," Kozinski had written. "There are plenty of people employed by the state who can pull the trigger and have the training to aim true. The weapons and ammunition are bought by the state in massive quantities for law enforcement purposes, so it would be impossible to interdict the supply. And nobody can argue that the weapons are put to a purpose for which they were not intended: firearms have no purpose other than destroying their targets. Sure, firing squads can be messy, but if we are willing to carry out executions, we should not shield ourselves from the reality that we are shedding human blood. If we, as a society, cannot stomach the splatter from an execution carried out by firing squad, then we shouldn’t be carrying out executions at all.”

Kozinski closed by reaffirming his statement from the Wood case.

"Deserving as Mr. Hasan may be of his punishment, no one merits a lingering, possibly excruciating death," Kozinski concluded. "I have some doubts whether livestreaming the execution is advisable, but Mr. Hegseth should be commended for his honesty, and for showing Mr. Hasan mercy."

Few are arguing that Hasan — who murdered 13 people and injured 32 others at a military base in Fort Hood, Texas as a terrorist act — should be spared. Leading evangelicals are joining hands with legal scholars to oppose the act of publicly displaying Hasan's execution on humanitarian grounds, as well as on the practical matter of the act turning Hasan into a martyr.

"The idea seemed to shock even some of his colleagues in the administration," reported The New York Times' Peter Baker on Friday. "Vice President JD Vance cast doubt that it would be livestreamed, telling reporters that “I don’t know that that’s going to happen” and adding that he would not watch if it does."

Baker continued, "But Mr. Trump said he signed off on it. 'Did I approve' he said. 'Absolutely I did.'" He pointed out that "no public execution has been conducted in the United States in 90 years, and the decision to conduct this one in front of an audience would put the country in the company of Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea and Somalia."

One day after a federal judge in New York ordered the Trump administration to immediately stop airing controversial government-funded television ads featuring President Donald Trump, government watchdog group Common Cause was already ratting out the administration for countless violations.

In a two-page notice, reported by AllRise News Editor Ada Klasfeld, Common Cause told federal Judge Jennifer L. Rochon that Trump's taxpayer funded propaganda ads ran “hundreds of times” after the judge’s temporary restraining order demanded an immediate halt to them.

“Plaintiffs respectfully submit this letter to bring to the Court’s attention information relevant to Defendants’ compliance with the Court’s Temporary Restraining Order, which was entered on October 11, 2026, at 6:46 p.m. and was effective immediately,” Common Cause said, before then unloading a report of easily more than 400 spots despite the court’s binding TRO.

Trump’s “Final Battle” spot ran in 193 spots during “60 Minutes,” which aired on CBS starting at 7 p.m., said the group. And the “Maduro” ad ran in 198 spots during “America’s Funniest Home Videos.” These were in addition to many others the group was quick to catalogue Sunday and Monday.

“Plaintiffs do not presently seek contempt sanctions. But given that the ads have continued to run on October 12 — the day after Defendants insisted the ad-buy was no longer effective — Plaintiffs request a status conference to determine Defendants’ compliance,” Common Cause said in it’s Monday letter to the court.

Judge Rochon ordered the Trump administration to immediately pull a slate of taxpayer-funded pro-Trump ads that have been running on national television for two weeks. Her temporary restraining order also bars the Department of Homeland Security from spending any more of the $20 million in taxpayer funding allocated for the ad campaign. About $19 million of that allocation has already been spent on the ads.

CNBC reports the order came a day after the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office — which is defending the Trump administration in a lawsuit challenging the ads — assured Rochon that the ads would not continue airing past Sunday.

The alert by Commons Causes appears to dash that claim.

The New York Times reported that President Donald Trump personally instructed his budget director to use taxpayer money for TV ads praising him and his presidency, “setting in motion a $20 million contract that used funds from the Department of Homeland Security, according to people familiar with the matter.”

NBC News later reported that federal sources said Trump did not even alert administrators that their budgets would be footing the bill for the ads

“They didn’t sign off on it,” an official said of CBP leaders. “They were thinking, ‘There’s no way they’re going to try to take the funding from CBP for those ads.’”