Bad People Update

Catching up on some of the latest news about a few not-good people I've written about before.

When bad people have any kind of power, they tend to do bad things. And then worse things.

Here's a quick update on some of the latest news about a few not-good people I've written about before.

They were bad then. The more we find about them, the worse they get.

Clarence Thomas

I wrote about the unprecedented corruption being practiced by the conservative members of the Supreme Court in Criminal Justices (10 July 2023).

I followed up with an article about Clarence Thomas's egregious and unforgivable violations of the Court's new Code of Conduct in Judged by GPT (24 November 2023).

But it's worse than that.

As ProPublica's Jesse Eisinger tweeted this morning: "In 2000, Clarence Thomas was deep in debt. He met with a GOP Congressman & complained about his salary. The GOP started to fear he’d leave the court. In the years that followed, billionaires lavished him with secret gifts."

The latest ProPublica investigation peels back another layer to reveal more about the conservative bribery and "quid pro quo" corruption that has grown like a cancer with the Supreme Court for decades. Read it here.

Elon Musk

Regular readers know that I've written a lot about the "racist, misogynistic, anti-worker, journalist-censoring, authoritarian-loving, apartheid-educated, white-privileged billionaire who's actively destroying Twitter" while claiming to save free speech. One recent example: Musk and the Nazis (5 September 2023).

But it's worse than that.

A new report based on leaked documents obtained by Ireland's Business Post reveals that Elon Musk "has significantly watered down its trust and safety rules over recent months, and how its policies allow abusive and hateful accounts to remain on the platform."

Under the new rules staff are instructed, "not to suspend users that post explicitly racist, sexist and homophobic content, or who send sexual material to another person."

Related: SpaceX paid $250,000 in 2018 to settle a sexual harassment suit against Elon Musk.

J.P. Bryan and His War on Texas History

Earlier this year, in Whitewashing Texas History (21 May 2023), I interviewed Texas historian Benjamin H. Johnson about Houston billionaire J.P. Bryan's "palace coup" at the 126-year-old Texas State Historical Association in ways that would allow him to take control of the narrative and to lift up “heroic” rather than critical accounts of Texas history. 

But it's worse than that.

In a new thread on X, Johnson reports that the Texas State Historical Asscociation "seems to be in a death spiral," amid mass resignations and the withdrawal of at least half the invited panelists for it March 2024 meeting.

And even as he's killing off the TSHA, Bryan is helping "amateur historian Michelle Haas" whitewash Texas history in even more obvious ways. As in, supporting the removal of books about slavery from gift shops at former Texas plantations.

Moms for Liberty

I've also written extensively about Moms for Liberty this year, but the headline that is most apropos based on recent news is Moms for Hypocrisy (24 April 2023).

At the time, I discussed the bible-thumping group's "hypocrisy" in claiming that they were willing to "put the bar really, really low," and ban only "books that don't have incest, pedophilia, rape in them."

They were hypocritical then because The Bible has more incest, pedophilia and rape in it than books they actually want to ban, such as "And Tango Makes Three," a heartwarming true story about penguins in the Central Park Zoo, or the comic book edition of "Anne Frank's Diary," co-written by the son of Holocaust survivors and endorsed by the Anne Frank Foundation.

But it's worse than that.

The vicious political operatives running Moms for Liberty are not just hypocritical in the streets, they're hypocritical in the sheets, too.

As the group's power wanes amid a growing backlash against their hate, racism and bigotry, its reputation is imploding following reports that co-founder Bridget Ziegler engaged in a three-way sexual relationship with another woman her husband is alleged to have subsequently raped.

As The New York Times reports today, the latest DeSantis-adjacent Florida sex scandal has left the formerly powerful astroturf group "reeling" at a time when M4L's recent school board election losses "have prompted questions about the future of education issues as an animating force in Republican politics."

You can read the latest NYT story free here.

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