If the west could find the courage, it would order an immediate freeze of Rupert Murdoch’s assets. His Fox News presenters and Russia’s propagandists are so intermeshed that separating the two is as impossible as unbaking a cake.

On Russian state news, as on Fox, bawling ideologues scream threats then whine about their victimhood as they incite anger and self-pity in equal measures. Its arguments range from the appropriation of anti-fascism by Greater Russian imperialists – the 40 countries supporting Ukraine were “today’s collective Hitler”, viewers were told last week – to the apocalyptic delirium of the boss of RT (Russia Today) Margarita Simonyan. Nuclear war is my “horror”, she shuddered, “but we will go to heaven, while they will simply croak”.

Russia would never give genuine western journalists airtime. But it can always find a slot for its favourite quisling: Fox News’s Tucker Carlson. He pushes out Russian propaganda lines or perhaps creates his own lies for Russia to use. Ukraine, not Russia, is the real tyranny. Nato provoked poor Vladimir Putin. The west is plotting to use biological weapons. Last week, he floated the theory that the war was not the result of an unprovoked invasion by a colonialist dictatorship but of the Biden administration’s desire to avenge Donald Trump’s victory in 2016.

It was a big hit in Moscow, reported BuzzFeed’s Julia Davis. “State TV propagandists loved it so much, Russia’s 60 Minutes included it not once, but twice in their evening broadcast – neatly bookended by the Kremlin’s war propaganda.”

But above all, women have historically engaged in extremist movements through their domestic roles and identities as wives, daughters and mothers. They use these roles to support “backstage” activities — like sewing KKK hoods, cooking meals for gatherings and home-schooling children — but also to mobilize men as “protectors” of their purity and vulnerability in the face of a range of purported threats.

Motherhood plays an especially key role in the kinds of rhetorical strategies far-right extremists use, including the kinds of “utopian propaganda” that calls on followers to reject modernity and embrace “traditional values” and roles. But women aren’t called upon to be entirely passive as mothers, or to be relegated completely to domestic tasks. Rather, motherhood is used to justify women’s engagement in activism and to “depoliticize” their actions by positioning them as acting on behalf of their children and families.

Themes about the need to protect children are especially powerful in drawing women into extreme and even violent action, as illustrated by the rise of conspiracy theories and propaganda that mobilize mothers around themes of child exploitation and protection. Some women have been drawn into QAnon through relatively banal entry points like wellness blogs and yoga studios, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. In these spaces, healthy skepticism of traditional medicine and a propensity for alternative models of wellness can create inadvertent gateways to entire rabbit holes of conspiracy theories and disinformation, much of which calls on women to protect children.

Mom lifestyle influencers who have embraced the QAnon conspiracy have integrated posts about child trafficking into their regular content feeds with home decorating, cooking and child rearing tips, a challenge for parenting website editors, who have reported an uptick in conspiracy theory posts.

“I’m wondering if there is data supporting the need for bills regulating this in Missouri or if this (is) a solution in search of a problem,” Jeffress wrote. “As an educator who has worked at the middle school and high school level in Missouri, I know how hard it is for transgender students to be accepted by peers, parents, churches and some teachers. If they are able to participate on an athletic team, they may find acceptance important to their well-being. I hope you would sponsor bills that support positive mental health for each citizen of the state of Missouri instead of proposing bills that attack a population already at risk. Thank you for your time,” she said in closing. The next morning, she received this far less respectful reply:

“Nedra, Do your own research. I don’t care about your feelings nor do I care about your resume. “Bottom line, my intent is to keep women’s/girl’s sports for the female gender.

“If a person was born with a penis, that individual doesn’t belong in sports designed solely for females. “Now go ahead and have your meltdown and/or temper tantrum. Remember, Let’s Go Brandon!!”

Firearms surpassed car accidents as the No. 1 killer among children and teens, according to startling new data released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Friday.

10. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: The more obvious path for the 32-year-old congresswoman would be to bide her time for the right opportunity to run for Senate. She passed on a primary against Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) this year, but she would have a good shot against Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) in 2024. Or she could go for an even higher office, for which she polled at 6 percent in that YouGov poll. She doesn’t seem to be taking the kind of steps that others on this list are, but she would have a built-in base, and the progressive lane will be significantly more open this time, since Sanders has said he’s very likely out. (Previous ranking: 10)

While many aspects of Hunter Biden’s financial arrangement with CEFC China Energy have been previously reported and were included in a Republican-led Senate report from 2020, a Washington Post review confirmed many of the key details and found additional documents showing Biden family interactions with Chinese executives.

Over the course of 14 months, the Chinese energy conglomerate and its executives paid $4.8 million to entities controlled by Hunter Biden and his uncle, according to government records, court documents and newly disclosed bank statements, as well as emails contained on a copy of a laptop hard drive that purportedly once belonged to Hunter Biden.

The Post did not find evidence that Joe Biden personally benefited from or knew details about the transactions with CEFC, which took place after he had left the vice presidency and before he announced his intentions to run for the White House in 2020.

But the new documents — which include a signed copy of a $1 million legal retainer, emails related to the wire transfers, and $3.8 million in consulting fees that are confirmed in new bank records and agreements signed by Hunter Biden — illustrate the ways in which his family profited from relationships built over Joe Biden’s decades in public service.

Everybody has their own idea of what makes a best picture winner at the Oscars. Perhaps a biopic or a war movie, or something huge in scale such as a "Dances With Wolves" or "Titanic."

What's pretty clear if you undertake watching all 93 (so far) films to take that vaunted prize – and it's not for the fainthearted, trust us – is that you come out of it changed. You love movies a little bit more.

All of these films bear Hollywood's highest honor – but how do they compare with one another? To celebrate Sunday's 94th Academy Awards ceremony (ABC, 8 EDT/5 PDT), we're ranking every best picture winner, from iffy stuff where a recount seems in order to the very best of the best.

“Some people might have drawn the line earlier, or at a different point,” he acknowledged. “I think Fox has changed over the course of the last year and a half. But I can certainly understand where somebody would say, ‘Gee, you were a slow learner, Chris.’”

...

But Mr. Wallace also acknowledged that he felt a shift at Fox News in the months after Donald J. Trump’s defeat in 2020—a period when the channel ended its 7 p.m. newscast, fired the political editor who helped project a Trump loss in Arizona on election night and promoted hosts like Mr. Carlson who downplayed the Jan. 6 riot.

He confirmed reports that he was so alarmed by Mr. Carlson’s documentary “Patriot Purge” — which falsely suggested the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was a “false flag” operation intended to demonize conservatives—that he complained directly to Fox News management.

Not that it seemed to have mattered much. “I’m fine with opinion: conservative opinion, liberal opinion,” Wallace said. “But when people start to question the truth—Who won the 2020 election? Was Jan. 6 an insurrection?—I found that unsustainable.”

But the really interesting reminder the Post provides is that from the first moment, Trump's plan was to take this fight to the Supreme Court. There, the election would not be decided by the 158 million Americans who voted, but by nine people in black robes—three of whom he personally put there. (And wherever did he get that idea?) Of the six remaining justices, Samuel Alito is probably the most dependable right-wing vote possible, a true ideologue who starts at his preferred conclusion and backfills the justification from there, even if it means taking the question at issue in a case and treating your preferred answer as a premise of the argument. And the last, fifth vote he'd need was...Clarence Thomas, husband to GITMO Ginni. This doesn't mean all five would have delivered for Trump, but he certainly thought they would.

The beauty of Republicans pulling the battering ram out to get Amy Coney Barrett on the Court in almost comic disregard of their previously stated principles regarding the appointment of Supreme Court justices in an election year was that Trump no longer needed RINO Chief Justice John Roberts, who seems to still harbor some concern for the legitimacy of the Supreme Court as an institution. Like it or not, Notorious R.B.G. fans, but this is part of her legacy. When you play the Game of Robes, you resign under a normal president or you wait long enough to hand over your seat to The Windmill Guy.

Speaking of which, Ol' Donny Windmills is, if we can believe a word of what his erstwhile ally Congressman Mo Brooks has to say, even farther off his rocker than could once be imagined. The two had a falling out where Trump withdrew his endorsement of Brooks in the Alabama Republican senate primary, probably because Brooks is floundering in the polls. Some payback for the kind of friend who wears body armor to your pre-riot shindig and tells the frothing crowd, "Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass. Now, our ancestors sacrificed their blood, their sweat, their tears, their fortunes and sometimes their lives … Are you willing to do the same? My answer is yes. Louder! Are you willing to do what it takes to fight for America?"