The Dictatorship

What Clarence Thomas doesn’t understand about democracy

Published

2 hours ago

April 19, 2026

Apr. 19, 2026, 6:00 AM EDT

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas gave a speech Thursday at the University of Texas at Austin attacking progressivism as the enemy of all that America stands for — or at least what he believes it ought to stand for. “Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence and hence our form of government,” he said, because “it holds that our rights and our dignities come not from God but from government.”

It’s not a new idea, especially in Republican circles. In 2012, for instance, vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan thunderedin response to Barack Obama’s supposedly tyrannical rule, that “even Presidents need reminding that our rights come from nature and God, and not from government!” But while Thomas may cast himself as the truest defender of the American system, what he actually revealed was his contempt for the foundations of our democracy — one that is all too common among conservatives today.

The idea that rights come from God, not government, couldn’t be more wrong. And as someone who routinely wields the power of government to deprive Americans of their rights, Thomas ought to know.

Thomas never asks why, if God is so intent on providing all of us with these political rights, he took so long to offer them to almost anyone.

Thomas began his speech by citing Thomas Jefferson’s line in the Declaration of Independence asserting that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Deploying the essay-writing technique familiar to mediocre middle-school students everywhere, he added, “The American Heritage Dictionary of English Language defines self-evident as obviously true and requiring no proof, argument, or explanation.” (Fortunately, he declined to end his speech with “In conclusion, America is a land of contrasts.”)

As proof, Thomas offered his own history growing up in the Jim Crow South. “When you lived in a segregated world with palpable discrimination and the governments nearest to you enforced laws and customs that promoted unequal treatment,” he said, “it was obvious that your rights or your dignity did not come from those governments, but rather from God.”

So who was it who delivered the nation from the cruelty and injustice of Jim Crow? It was not a divine light of heaven sweeping across the land. It was government — or more specifically, democratic citizens who worked tirelessly to change the laws, and eventually forced those with power in the courts, legislatures and the executive branch to join their cause.

And it’s the laws passed and enforced by the government that guarantee those rights. To repeat, Thomas knows this perfectly well, since he and his conservative colleagues on the high court are in the process of destroying one of the key pillars of that effort, the Voting Rights Act.

Thomas never asks why, if God is so intent on providing all of us with these political rights, he took so long to offer them to almost anyone. Few citizens anywhere were guaranteed their supposedly God-given rights until a mere 250 years ago (and even then, it would be almost 200 years more before they were truly available to all Americans). God decided to allow thousands of generations of human beings to live from birth to death with no political rights, subject to the whims of kings, warlords and potentates — and yes, religious leaders, whose history of sins against fundamental rights is long and bloody.

Whatever support one might find in a selective reading of scripture for ideas such as universal equality (and one does have to cherry-pick rather aggressively), it wasn’t until the Framers created a government capable of guaranteeing those rights that they eventually became real. The people Thomas Jefferson enslaved may have taken inspiration from his words, but God did not deliver them the rights their master found so vital.

And critically, rights are more than vague notions about “equality” or “dignity.” Rights are specific and procedural, or else they are meaningless. God does not grant you the right to equal protection under law, or a fair trial if you are accused of a crime or the freedom of speech; it’s government that does that. Indeed, freedom of religion itself existed almost nowhere until the Constitution — a plan for government — created it. Even today, it is absent in many places, God’s supposed wishes notwithstanding.

Listening to Thomas’ speech, one can’t help but notice it comes at a moment when not only does his Republican Party hold a grip on national power, but the Trump administration he has done so much to support has brought to our government an aggressive and exclusionary Christian nationalism. The secretary of defense tells Americans to pray for the troops “in the name of Jesus Christ,” the secretary of agriculture sends an all-staff email on Easter saying “He is Risen indeed,” and the president posts an image to social media portraying himself as Jesus, while anyone not a conservative evangelical is left to wonder if this government represents them.

Americans know that when their rights are being trampled on, it is not God who will come to their rescue. Only government can do that — and it only does so when we as citizens demand it and have the power to ensure it.

Paul Waldman is a journalist and author focused on politics and culture.

The Dictatorship

Trump isn’t just losing his base at home. He’s losing his friends abroad.

Published

2 hours ago

April 19, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Apr. 19, 2026, 6:00 AM EDT

President Donald Trump’s offensive behavior toward Christians and his unnecessary and unpopular war in Iran isn’t just splitting his political base at home — it’s also alienating his allies abroad. Right-wing nationalists in Europe are becoming more and more wary of association with Trump and growing inclined to keep him at a distance to protect their own political projects. The trend marks a blow to Trump’s aspirations of creating an international bloc of right-wing nationalist states that work in concert to quash the left.

This week, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni criticized Trump’s recent attacks on Pope Leo XIVas “unacceptable” and called it “right and normal for [the pope] to ‌call for peace and to ⁠condemn every form of war.” Trump lashed back at Meloni for defending the pope, marking his first criticism of her. He did so even though he has few allies left in Europe.

The Trump administration has also been criticized by right-wingers in Europe for its aggressive, but failed, attempt to bolster Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who lost in a landslide in last week’s election. The Trump administration’s efforts — which included Vice President JD Vance campaigning for Orbán in the final days of the race — may have hurt Orbán more than it helped him.

Trump’s lack of discipline is at the core of his own unraveling.

Since then, multiple German lawmakers from the far-right Alternative for Germany party have openly criticized Trump as politically toxic for their movement. AfD parliament member Matthias Moosdorf said on X that the Trump administration’s close ties to Orbán “hung like millstones around [Orbán’s] neck” during his failed reelection attempt. Lawmaker Torben Braga said that in the context of elections, it’s “not a particularly promising approach” to keep close ties with Trump.

Diana Sosoaca, a far-right member of the European Parliament for Romania, said last week that it was “a big mistake” for Orbán to invite Vance to stump for him, particularly as Trump has become a source of great “disorder in this world” with his war on Iran.

In recent weeks, French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has also criticized Trump’s disastrous war in Iran, calling his conduct “erratic” and his war “a mistake.”

Those bold criticisms speak to how incredibly damaging Trump’s war on Iran has been for his standing within his movement. The surge in global oil prices is politically radioactive; far-right leaders and parties in Europe affiliated with Trump risk becoming associated with the energy crisis unless they take steps to create distance from him.

While Trump’s criticism of the pope hasn’t been as salient or as materially significant as his hapless war, it, too, has global implications, with some 1.4 billion Catholics around the world who might take offense at Trump’s extraordinary broadsides against their spiritual leader. And then there are the hundreds of millions of people, Catholic or otherwise, who might be offended by Trump sharing on social media a blasphemous artificial intelligence-generated depiction of himself as Jesus Christ. One does not have to be Christian — or even religious at all — to recognize his behavior as repellent and megalomaniacal.

Trump’s lack of discipline is at the core of his own unraveling. Swept up in self-worship and a belief in his own infallibility, he’s now struggling to uphold his side of the deal with right-wing Christians and at least pretend he cares about their spirituality. And his desire to remold the world has alienated the isolationist part of his coalition that believed his promise that he wouldn’t start any wars.

Trump does not need European right-wingers, ultimately, in order to achieve his core political projects. But he has made alliances with right-wing nationalists in Europe a part of his foreign policy and described opposing European “civilizational erasure” in the face of immigration as a plank of his national security strategy. That those right-wingers see him as a political albatross shows that their collective assault on liberalism has major weaknesses. One hopes that these far-right movements in Europe aren’t able to shed their association with Trump only because that association is no longer convenient. We should hope their political influence declines right along with his.

Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He primarily writes about politics and foreign policy.

The Dictatorship

North Korea launches multiple short-range ballistic missiles toward sea

Published

2 hours ago

April 19, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

North Korea launches multiple short-range ballistic missiles toward sea

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korealaunched multiple short-range ballistic missilestoward the sea on Sunday, its neighbors said, days after the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog warned that North Korea was making “very serious” advances in efforts to build nuclear weapons.

The missiles fired from the North’s Sinpo area flew about 140 kilometers (87 miles) each in a direction toward the country’s eastern waters, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said. It said South Korea maintains a readiness to repel any provocations by North Korea and is closely exchanging information with the U.S. and Japan.

In an emergency meeting of the National Security Council, senior South Korean officials expressed concerns about North Korea’s repeated ballistic missile tests and urged it to stop them immediately. Sunday’s launches came hours before South Korean President Lee Jae Myung left the country to visit India and Vietnam.

The U.S. and Japanese militaries also said they detected the launches. The U.S. Indo-Pacific Commandsaid it remains committed to the defense of the U.S. homeland and its allies in the region. Japan’s Defense Ministry said Tokyo strongly protested to Pyongyang, saying the launches threaten regional and international peace and violated U.N. Security Council resolutions that bans any ballistic activities by North Korea.

Sinpo, the launch site, is an eastern coastal city in North Korea where it has a major shipyard use for building submarines.

South Korea’s military was analyzing whether the latest launches were made from a submarine, a land-based launcher or both platforms, according to South Korean media. Asked about where the missiles were launched, Japan’s Deputy Minister of Defense Masahisa Miyazaki told reporters that Japan was analyzing launch details in coordination with the U.S. and South Korea.

If the launches involved a submarine,it would mark North Korea’s first submarine-launched ballistic missile test in four years.

North Korea obtaining a greater ability to fire missiles from underwater would be a worrying development because it’s difficult for its rivals to detect such launches in advance. Last year, North Korea unveiled a nuclear-powered submarineunder construction for the first time.

Sunday’s launches were the latest in North Korea’s run of weapons tests this year.

Last week, North Korea said leader Kim Jong Un supervised missile testsfrom the country’s destroyer. In the previous week, North Korea said it had three days of testing activities to examine ballistic missiles armed with cluster-bomb warheadsand other new weapons systems. Last month, it said it tested an upgraded solid-fuel enginefor missiles capable of reaching the U.S. mainland.

Kim has focused on enlarging his nuclear and missile arsenals since his high-stakes nuclear diplomacywith U.S. President Donald Trump collapsed in 2019. Trump has repeatedly expressed his desire to restore diplomacy with Kim, and the North Korean leader has recently left open the door for dialogue with Trumpbut urged Washington to drop demands for the North’s nuclear disarmament as a precondition for talks.

Trump is to travels to Beijing for a rescheduled summitwith Xi Jinping in May. Some observers North Korea’s recent testing activities were likely meant to increase its leverage in future dealings with the U.S., as the Trump-Xi meeting could provide a diplomatic opening with Pyongyang.

On Wednesday, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossisaid that his agency has confirmed “a rapid increase” in activities at nuclear manufacturing facilities in North Korea. Grossi told reporters in Seoul that activities in North Korea point to “a very serious increase” in its nuclear weapons production capabilities.

His comments echoed a view by many outside observers that North Korea has taken steps to expand its main Yongbyon nuclear complex and build additional uranium-enrichment sitesin recent years. Last September, South Korea’s Unification Minister Chung Dong-young said that North Korea was operating four uranium enrichment facilitiesand that they were running everyday.

The Dictatorship

How Trump dashed Republicans’ big hope for the midterms

Published

2 hours ago

April 19, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Apr. 18, 2026, 8:14 PM EDT

ByJoseph Zeballos-Roig

For Tax Day, Republicans tried to focus on trumpeting new tax breaks popular with a broad segment of voters. President Donald Trump had other plans.

Championing no tax on tips and no tax on overtime was meant to shore up the GOP’s standing ahead of the midterms, especially after the controversial war with Iran inflated gas prices to more than $4 per gallon. Many Republicans are betting that bigger tax refunds will give voters a reason to re-elect them even as Trump’s management of the economy hits new lows in public polling.

But instead of zeroing in on a kitchen-table message, the Republican Party’s chief salesman was mudslinging on biblical terrain that’s about as far away from the kitchen table as possible.

While tax refunds are up, they are not keeping pace with the price increases walloping Americans.

In the past few days, Trump has brawled with the Vatican, including sharing an image depicting him as Jesus Christ. It didn’t take long for him to take down the post, but the move helped overshadow the GOP’s celebratory messaging around the tax cuts.

During a staged event on Monday in which a DoorDash worker delivered McDonald’s to the White House, Trump could not avoid questions from reporters about the Jesus image and his caustic attack against Pope Leo XIV that generated criticism from Catholic officials. Three days later, the president appeared critical of his team’s effort to promote the tax cuts.

“To be honest, it was a little tacky,” Trump said in a flash of self-awareness at a roundtable discussion in Las Vegas. “They come up with these crazy ideas … we do these things in politics. They’re a little embarrassing.” He has also kept up his criticism of the Holy See and ruled out an apology.

Trump hasn’t been able to avoid repeated blunders that threaten to imperil the GOP’s control of Congress this November, beginning with his decision to green-light the unpopular war with Iran. Sharp price increases for gas, groceries and more will swallow most Americans’ tax refunds this year, all but wiping out the political boost Republicans could wring from last year’s megalaw.

Start with the swelling cost of refilling the gas tank, an expense few Americans can dodge. A group of Stanford University economists recently projected that American families will spend an extra $776 this year on higher gas prices. Those aren’t the only new charges they are grappling with: The Tax Foundation estimates that tariffs will consume another $600 of their budgets this year in what amounts to a tax increase.

Meanwhile, though tax refunds are up, they are not keeping pace with the price increases walloping Americans. Refunds are only $350 more compared with 2025, per IRS data. That falls short of White House promises of a $1,000 boost straight to taxpayers’ bank accounts. Sluggish wage growth won’t bail Republicans out either, and inflation overtaking pay raises will hit middle- and low-income families particularly hard.

It helps explain why U.S. consumer sentiment is plunging to record lows, driven by concern that the price hikes will stick around and stretch budgets for the foreseeable future. A recent Fox News poll showed 64% of voters disapproved of Trump’s handling of taxes, an issue long viewed as a GOP strength. That share included almost 80% of independents and even 27% of Republicans, in a warning sign of eroding support.

Already, key Republican senators are acknowledging a partywide failure to tout the megalaw ahead of the midterms.

The president’s polling on the economy is similarly poor, but the White House seems to reject those numbers. Asked on Thursday why people aren’t feeling better about the economy, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent responded: “Well, in their heart of hearts, they feel good. I’m not sure what they’re telling the survey people.”

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act was Republicans’ biggest hope for the midterms. But it’s falling into a familiar sequence of events — an instance of déjà vu, if you will — that similarly troubled the 2017 Republican tax law.

Shortly after entering office in 2017, Trump put the repeal of the Affordable Care Act at the top of his to-do list. The spectacular collapse of the repeal effort was among the biggest failures of his first term. Only then did Republicans retreat to their safe space of gigantic tax cuts, most of which benefited wealthy Americans and large corporations.

Democrats, though, zeroed in on health care during the 2018 midterms, a decision that propelled them back to controlling the House. They painted the GOP tax law as a giveaway to the rich, an impression that gained sway among voters and contributed to the measure’s lackluster popularity. Many GOP candidates barely mentioned tax cuts on the campaign trail that year.

Credit Republicans in Congress for learning from their mistakes. For this legislative go-round, they designed distinct tax benefits for restaurant servers, Uber drivers, hairstylists and others in the service sector who rely on tips or are used to working overtime. But the learning only went so far: Most of the law’s benefits were again freighted toward the richest Americans while leaving poorer ones in the lurch.

Democrats are capitalizing on messaging similar to 2018 and chipping away at the law’s approval ratings. Already, key Republican senators are acknowledging a partywide failure to tout the megalaw ahead of the midterms. Sen. Steve Daines of Montana said at a Semafor event this week that “we’ve done a very poor job” in selling it. “We’ve just not done a good job litigating that,” he said.

Republicans want voters to deliver a favorable verdict in November. Yet Trump’s decisions that led to surging prices for groceries, gas and more are setting them up to fail if the election hinges on the economy. Many voters will correctly judge that a war with Iran wasn’t part of the agenda. Neither was picking fights with pontiffs.