GLAAD, Media Matters Call Out NYT for Excluding Transgender Voices


Research reveals The New York Times excluded transgender voices in 66 percent of its trans issue coverage.

By Zane McNeill , 

TRUTHOUT

March 27, 2024

The New York Times building stands in Midtown on February 7, 2024, in New York City.

SPENCER PLATT / GETTY IMAGES

Arecent study conducted by Media Matters and GLAAD reveals that in the year following public backlash for its coverage of anti-trans legislation, The New York Times neglected to include transgender voices in approximately two-thirds of its stories on the subject.

“The paper of record has an obligation to present its readers with the full human toll of the anti-trans legislative assault,” Ari Drennen, LGBTQ Program Director at Media Matters, said in a statement. “Trans people are more than theoretical curiosities to be debated from afar. Each and every anti-trans bill affects living, breathing people whose voices deserve to be heard and whose stories deserve to be told.”

Between February 15, 2023, and February 15, 2024, the Times published 65 articles addressing U.S. anti-trans legislation in either their headlines or opening paragraphs. Media Matters and GLAAD’s research found that 66 percent of the articles did not include a single quote from a trans or gender-nonconforming person, 18 percent of the articles quoted misinformation from anti-trans activists without sufficient factchecking or contextual elaboration, and six articles obscured the anti-trans backgrounds of sources, neglecting to mention their histories of extremist rhetoric or actions.

“As a well respected news organization, The New York Times should be ashamed of their lack of fact checking and representation of trans voices in their articles. The New York Times’ biased articles have contributed to the deadly culture war against the transgender community,” LGBTQ legislative researcher Allison Chapman told Truthout.

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States’ Anti-LGBTQ Moves May Have Disastrous Health Impacts, Experts Say
Medical professionals are worried about the long-term physical and mental effects of anti-LGBTQ legislation.
By Orion Rummler , THE19TH

March 23, 2024

The Times has been increasingly critiqued for its problematic coverage of transgender people and challenges, such as gender-affirming care bans, facing the transgender community over the past year.

“Prominent frontpage coverage has frequently missed the big picture of the trans community, choosing instead to hyper-scrutinize essential and mainstream medical care, undermining its support among readers who know next to nothing about this care, while laundering extremist talking points as legitimate concern,” Serena Sonoma wrote for GLAAD in April 2023. “The Times’ coverage has elevated critics without alerting readers to their anti-LGBTQ, anti-trans histories and their coordination and connections to longtime anti-LGBTQ groups like Alliance Defending Freedom.”

Last February, over 150 LGBTQ organizations and leaders, including GLAAD, published an open letter condemning the Times‘ harmful and inaccurate coverage of transgender people. The letter demanded that the Times stop publishing anti-trans articles, meet with leaders from the transgender community, and hire transgender writers and editors. According to GLAAD, the Times has not met any of the letter’s demands.

“One of the first recommendations we make during the hundreds of LGBTQ education briefings we hold with national and local newsrooms is to include LGBTQ voices in LGBTQ stories: interview the people impacted by your coverage and include their perspectives. The New York Times failed that basic reporting lesson 101, and replaced it with a pattern of obfuscating sources’ anti-trans affiliations and allowing their misinformation to go unchecked,” Sarah Kate Ellis, President and CEO of GLAAD, said in a statement. “Our coalition of more than 150 organizations, community leaders, and notable LGBTQ people and allies remains steadfast in our calls for the Times to improve their coverage of transgender people.”

In April of last year, hundreds of contributors to the Times also wrote a letter critiquing its handling of transgender topics. Times management responded by saying in a memo that: “Participation in such a campaign is against the letter and spirit of our ethics policy. That policy prohibits our journalists from aligning themselves with advocacy groups and joining protest actions on matters of public policy. We also have a clear policy prohibiting Times journalists from attacking one another’s journalism publicly or signaling their support for such attacks.”

The Times’ anti-trans coverage has been weaponized by anti-LGBTQ groups in legal filings to undermine transgender youth’s access to lifesaving health care. In fact, an anti-transgender op-ed published by the Times in February by Pamela Paul titled “As Kids, They Thought They Were Trans. They No Longer Do.” which was thoroughly debunked by transgender activist and journalist Erin Reed as relying on “pseudoscience,” was cited in a legal brief in Idaho within just four days of its publication.

“I felt compelled to highlight how central these pieces are to the legal structures limiting our material survival. Within 4 days of publication Paul’s piece was cited by Idaho officials in federal court — represented by Alliance Defending Freedom — in the state’s defense of their anti-trans law banning this medical treatment for minors,” Chase Strangio, the deputy director for transgender justice with the ACLU’s LGBT & HIV Project, said on Instagram earlier this year. “The distortions and the false debate are causing immediate and severe material harms that will be felt for generations.”

This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

ZANE MCNEILL is a trending news writer at Truthout. They have a Master’s Degree in Political Science from Central European University and is currently enrolled in law school at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. They can be found on Twitter: @zane_crittheory.

Revealed: VIP health system for top US officials risked jeopardizing care for soldiers

JUST LIKE IN CIVILIAN LIFE

Female American Soldier -

David Hilzenrath,

 KFF Health News

Top U.S. officials in the Washington area have received preferential treatment from a little-known health care program run by the military, potentially jeopardizing care for other patients including active-duty service members, according to Pentagon investigators.

Do you have experience with the federal executive medicine program, either as an employee or a patient, you’d like to share? Click here to contact our reporting team.Contact us

White House officials, senior military and other national security leaders, retired military officers, and family members have all benefited. The Washington elite could jump the line when filling prescriptions, book appointments through special call centers, and receive choice parking spots and escorts at military hospitals and other facilities, including Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, according to the Pentagon’s inspector general.

Through a unit at the White House, government personnel were routinely allowed to receive treatment under aliases, providing no home address or insurance information. For some of them, the care was free, as Walter Reed had no way to bill for it or waived charges.

The so-called executive medicine program was described in a report the Pentagon’s inspector general released in January. The investigation drew extensive media attention for spotlighting a history of loose prescribing practices and poor controls of powerful drugs including opioids in the White House Medical Unit, a military outfit that attends to the president, vice president, and others in the White House compound.

But the White House Medical Unit is just the tip of the broader executive medicine program, intended to provide VIP treatment to senior government and military officials. Though the program is meant largely to accommodate top officials’ busy schedules, the privileges have followed many patients into retirement. According to data from late 2019 and early 2020, the IG’s report said, 80% of the executive medicine population in the national capital region were military retirees and members of their families.

Some facilities “provided access to care for executive medicine patients over active-duty military patients that had acute needs,” according to the report, which added that prioritizing medical care by seniority rather than medical need “increased the risk to the health and safety of non‑executive general patient population.”

Much of the report was written in past tense, leaving unclear whether all the practices it described continue. Before the report was made public, a draft was under review by the White House Medical Unit for more than three years — from May 2020, when Donald Trump was in office, to last July. The delay isn’t explained in the report, and White House spokespeople didn’t respond to questions for this article.

A spokesperson for the inspector general’s office, Deputy Assistant Inspector General Reishia Kelsey, declined to elaborate on the report. A spokesperson for the Pentagon, James P. Adams, also declined to comment.

In a response included in the inspector general’s report, a Pentagon official said there were “new procedures already put in place by the White House Medical Unit.” The report didn’t detail those changes.

At Walter Reed, the program is available to Cabinet members; members of Congress; Supreme Court justices; active-duty and retired generals and flag officers and their beneficiaries; members of the Senior Executive Service who retired from the military; secretaries, deputy secretaries, and assistant secretaries of the Department of Defense and military departments; certain foreign military officers; and Medal of Honor recipients.

Walter Reed’s executive medicine program caters to the “time, privacy, and security demands” of leaders’ jobs, the hospital says on its website. The IG report makes clear that the program has, at times, provided extraordinary privileges to the government’s most elite officials.

For example, one unnamed executive medicine patient asked to have a prescription for an unspecified “controlled medication” refilled two weeks early — and complained when pharmacy staff at Fort Belvoir Community Hospital said that wasn’t allowed.

Hospital leaders told hospital staff to fill the prescription as requested. According to the report, the staff said the task required an estimated 30 hours of extra work.

Controlled medications are subject to abuse, and some, such as opioids, can be addictive. Defense Department health policy calls for minimizing the use of opioids and prescribing them only when indicated.

A spokesperson for the Fort Belvoir hospital, now known as Alexander T. Augusta Military Medical Center, said every patient is seen through the same lens and treated with the care they deserve.

The spokesperson, Reese Brown, said the facility shows military deference to top officers on account of their rank. For example, they don’t have to sit with the general population of patients.

The facility’s website mentions an “Executive Medicine Health & Wellness Clinic” for authorized patients, including eligible family members.

Brown said he was unaware of the inspector general’s account of the prescription refill and had no information about it.

The report said that at one unidentified pharmacy site, “all pharmacy staff members expressed frustration about the prioritization and filling of executive medicine prescriptions. This prioritization of executive medicine prescriptions diverted the pharmacist from filling prescriptions for patients diagnosed with conditions that are more urgent.”

Executive medicine services are also provided at the DiLorenzo Tricare Health Clinic at the Pentagon, Fort McNair Army Health Clinic, and Andrew Rader U.S. Army Health Clinic, the report said.

The inspector general recommended the Department of Defense take steps such as establishing controls for billing nonmilitary senior officials for outpatient services. The assistant secretary of defense for health affairs agreed but said the department would consider “the historical practices of the White House Medical Unit, the DoD’s health care support for non‑military U.S. Government senior officials, and the need for strict security protocols to protect the health and safety of White House principals.”

Chaseedaw Giles, KFF Health News’ digital strategy & audience engagement editor, contributed to this report.KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

Scientists won't classify anthropocene as 'epoch' yet — but say human impact undeniable

Julia Conley
Common Dreams

The idea underpinning scientists' push to recognize the current time period as a new geological epoch called the Anthropocene dates back more than 100 years, but on Tuesday, a committee of experts voted down the proposal to officially declare a new age defined by human beings' impact on the Earth.

The panel, organized by the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), was tasked with weighing whether the Holocene—the epoch that began at the close of the last ice age, more than 11,000 years ago—has ended, and if so, when precisely the Anthropocene began.

Another group, the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG), had previously posed that an Anthropocene—an epoch during which "the scale and character of human activities have become so great as to compete with natural geological and geophysical forces," as British geologist Robert Lionel Sherlock argued in 1922—began in the mid-20th century.

Around that period, the U.S. and other countries began testing nuclear weapons while fossil fuel production began ramping up significantly, intensifying planetary heating, ocean acidification, and other climate impacts.

AWG presented geological evidence compiled at Crawford Lake in Canada, where radioactive isotopes dating back to the 1950s are embedded in the lake bed, to argue in favor of an Anthropocene that began decades ago.

Several members of the IUGS committee found that the time period proposed began too recently and "failed to capture the earlier impact of humans during, say, the development of farming or the onset of the Industrial Revolution," as Yale Environment 360 noted.

AWG members Simon Turner of University College London and Colin Waters of the University of Leicester told New Scientist Tuesday that the voting result was "very disappointing given the huge contribution by AWG to develop our case."

"All these lines of evidence indicate that the Anthropocene, though currently brief, is—we emphasize—of sufficient scale and importance to be represented on the Geological Time Scale," they said.

The academics who opposed recognizing a new geological epoch in the 12-4 vote are among the scientists who "prefer to describe the Anthropocene as an 'event,' not an 'epoch,'" The New York Times reported.

Geological "events" don't appear on the official Geological Time Scale, "yet many of the planet's most significant happenings are called events, including mass extinctions, rapid expansions of biodiversity, and the filling of Earth's skies with oxygen 2.1 to 2.4 billion years ago," according to the Times.

Michael Mann, director of the Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media at University of Pennsylvania, called the disagreement over the terminology "a tempest in a teapot" that won't stop scientists from identifying the current time period as one in which humans are significantly and negatively impacting the planet.

While the scientific community is not yet labeling the current time period as a new epoch, committee member Jan Piotrowski of Aarhus University in Denmark told the Times, "Our impact is here to stay and to be recognizable in the future in the geological record."

"There is absolutely no question about this," Piotrowski said.

Faith in numbers: Behind the gender difference of nonreligious Americans

Photo by Naassom Azevedo on Unsplash
praying woman inside church

The Conversation

March 25, 2024


One of the most consequential stories in American religion in recent years is the rapid and seemingly unceasing rise of “nones” – those who respond to questions about their religious affiliation by indicating that they are atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular.”

According to some recent estimates, around 4 in 10 millennials and members of Gen Z, a group that comprises those born after 1980, do not identify with a religious tradition. In comparison, only about a quarter of baby boomers indicate that they are religiously unaffiliated.

Social scientists are only beginning to explore the demographic factors that drive individuals who no longer feel attached to a religious tradition.

But as someone who follows the data on religious trends, I note one factor appears to stand out: gender.

Scholars have long noted that atheism skews male. Meanwhile, critics have pointed toward the apparent dominance of male authors in the “new atheism” movement as evidence of a “boys club.” Indeed, a quick scan of the best-selling books on atheism on Amazon indicates that almost all of them are written by male authors.

According to data from the Nationscape survey, which polled over 6,000 respondents every week for 18 months in the runup to the 2020 election, men are in general more likely than women to describe themselves as atheists, agnostics or nothing in particular. The survey, conducted by the independent Democracy Fund in partnership with the University of California, Los Angeles, was touted as one of the largest such opinion polls ever conducted.

However, tracking the gender gap by age reveals that at one point the gap between men and women narrows. Between the ages of 30 and 45, men are no more likely to be religiously unaffliated than women of the same age.

But the gap appears again among older Americans. Over the age of 60, men are 5 to 8 percentage points more likely to express no religious affiliation.

Moreover, older Americans – both men and women – tend to be far less likely to identify as “nones” compared with younger Americans, according to respondents of the survey.
The ‘life cycle’ effect

What may be driving this pattern of young women and older women being less likely to identify as nones than their male counterparts?

One theory in social science called the “life cycle effect” argues that when people begin to marry and have children, some are drawn back into religious circles to raise their kids in a religious environment or to lean on support structures that religion may provide.

But once kids grow up and leave the house this attachment fades for many. I make this point in my forthcoming book called “The Nones.”

The data on gender and those with no religious affiliation could indicate that this drifting is especially acute for men. One explanation could be that men are more likely to be religious when they are part of a family unit, but when children grow up, that connection becomes weaker. Unfortunately, the survey does not offer a direct test of this hypothesis.

But it would fit with survey research over the past five decades that has consistently found that Christian women are more likely than men to attend church.

One word of caution about the data is necessary. The survey is just a single snapshot of the public in 2019 and 2020. It’s possible that this same pattern would look different if data were collected 20 years ago or 20 years from now. Either way, it offers a small window into how age and gender interact with the religious lives of Americans.

Ryan Burge, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Eastern Illinois University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Top US nitrogen gas producers ban use in executions

Photo by Greg Rosenke on Unsplash
water droplets on glass window

Brett Wilkinsand
Common Dreams

March 12, 2024

Three of the leading U.S. manufacturers of medical-grade nitrogen gas said this week that they will not allow their products to be used in executions, a move that came after Louisiana approved the controversial capital punishment method recently used to kill an Alabama prisoner who appeared to be in agony before he died.

Airgas—owned by the French company Air Liquide—along with Air Products, and Matheson Gas toldThe Guardian that they are banning the use of their nitrogen gas products in the previously untested execution method used to cause death by hypoxia, or deprivation of oxygen to vital tissues.

Veterinarians consider nitrogen gas unethical for euthanizing animals and United Nations human rights experts have asserted that the execution technique may violate international anti-torture law.

"Airgas has not, and will not, supply nitrogen or other inert gases to induce hypoxia for the purpose of human execution," the company said.

Matheson Gas told The Guardian that use of its products in executions is "not consistent with our company values," while Air Products told the U.K.-based newspaper that it has established "prohibited end uses for our products, which includes the use of any of our industrial gas products for the intentional killing of any person (including nitrogen hypoxia)."

Four states—Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma—have approved nitrogen gas for use in executions. Last week, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, signed legislation passed by the GOP-controlled state Legislature expanding execution methods to include the electric chair and nitrogen hypoxia. This, despite the agonizing execution in January of 58-year-old Kenneth Smith, who was killed by the state of Alabama by nitrogen hypoxia on January 25 after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his last-ditch appeal.

Rev. Jeff Hood, a spiritual adviser to U.S. death row inmates, witnessed Smith's killing, which he described as "horrific and cruel." Hood and other witnesses said Smith convulsed violently for several minutes while he was strapped to a gurney and forced to breathe nitrogen gas through a mask. Even prison guards were taken by surprise as the gurney shook and Smith struggled for his life.

Alabama officials had claimed that nitrogen hypoxia is "perhaps the most humane method of execution ever devised."

States have sought alternative means of killing condemned prisoners—including nitrogen gas and firing squads—ever since the European Union banned the sale and export of lethal injection drugs in 2011.

Maya Foa, co-executive director of the anti-death penalty group Reprieve, told The Guardian that "drug manufacturers don't want their medicines diverted and misused in torturous executions and the makers of nitrogen gas share the same objection: They do not want their products to be used to kill."

"States which claim that the lethal injection or gas inhalation are 'humane' methods of execution are merely seeking to mask what it means for a state to forcibly put someone to death," Foa added. "The makers of these products see through the lie and naturally want nothing to do with it."

Revealed: documents shed light on shadowy US far-right fraternal order



New documents detail inner workings of Society for American Civic Renewal, group with an emphasis on Christian nationalism

Jason Wilson

THE GUARDIAN

Tue 19 Mar 2024 

New documents have shed light on the origins and inner workings of the shadowy Society for American Civic Renewal (SACR), including methods for judging the beliefs of potential members on topics such as Christian nationalism, and indications that its founders sought inspiration in an apartheid-era South African white men-only group, the Afrikaner-Broederbond.

They also show that Boise State University Professor and Claremont thinktank scholar Scott Yenor tried to coordinate SACR’s activities with other initiatives, including an open letter on “Christian marriage”.


One expert says that one of the new documents – some previously reported in Talking Points Memo – use biblical references that suggest a preparedness for violent struggle against the current “regime”.


The SACR is a secretive far-right men-only organization with an emphasis on Christian nationalism and a desire to open branches across the US.

The Guardian has previously reported on SACR’s close links to the Claremont Institute, an influential rightwing thinktank with fellows who have participated in attempts to overturn the 2020 election and promoted the idea that an authoritarian “Red Caesar” might redeem a US republic they see as decadent.

SACR’s origins appear to date to the latter half of 2020, with key milestones in the group’s development coming over the following 18 months.

And there are indications that the inner circle of the group sought inspiration from earlier iterations of Christian nationalism in authoritarian states.

As previously reported in the Guardian, Skyler Kressin, a tax consultant based in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, appears to play a central administrative role in SACR. Idaho and Texas company records show that Kressin incorporated lodges in Boise, Coeur d’Alene and Dallas; serves as a director of the Coeur d’Alene and Dallas lodges; and was named as the principal officer of the parent organization on its 2020-21 tax return.

On 30 October 2020, Kressin wrote an email to Yenor with the question “that good?”, along with a screenshot of an Amazon listing for Super-Afrikaners, a book by the investigative journalists Ivor Wilkins and Hans Strydom.


First published in 1978, Super-Afrikaners exposed the workings of South Africa’s Broederbond, a secretive, exclusive, men-only network that promoted the interests of white Afrikaners in that country and which is credited with a significant role in bringing the National party – the architects of apartheid – to power.

Within half an hour, Yenor replied: “That’s the one”.

The Guardian contacted Scott Yenor with detailed questions on aspects of this reporting, including whether or not the Afrikaner Broederbond had been an inspiration for SACR.

He did not respond directly to most of those questions, but on the matter of SACR’s secrecy, he wrote in an email: “We maintain confidentiality because we know talentless punks like you would pose ridiculous, bad-faith questions meant to stoke your unhinged fever dreams and incriminate us and even unaffiliated people.”

Yenor continued: “Lazy propagandists who disregard ethics in journalism don’t deserve detailed responses.”

The Guardian invited Yenor to respond to the initial questions.
SACR’s rules and vetting process

In the early part of 2021, Yenor drafted documents that firmed up SACR’s purpose and character.

To a 27 April 2021 email sent to himself and his wife at her employment address, Yenor attached a document entitled “Working membership and recruiting guide for chapter leadership”.

In spelling out SACR’s rules, the document reveals the high value the organization places on secrecy. It says that “all discussion is confidential unless clearly noted otherwise”; and “all names of attendees are strictly confidential”. The document even says that members should withhold information from prospective members, instructing that members should “never reveal the names of other Chapter members to prospects”, and “never reveal national or chapter initiatives to prospects – speak only in general terms about our objectives and mission”.

The document also lays out procedures for vetting such prospects. After chapter leaders have decided that a prospect is “worthy of consideration”, they should be invited to a chapter event.

The document says that at that point, members should “gauge alignment and fit” with questions such as “What are your thoughts on Christian nationalism?”, “Comment on the Trump presidency and what it entails for the future”, and “Describe the dynamic of your household in terms of your role and that of your wife.”

In the first section – “membership criteria” – the document says membership in the group is “predicated on political alignment and faithfulness to the Christian religion, combined with virtue and with any of community influence, capability, or wealth”.


The document elaborates on each of these criteria.

Alignment is “deference to and acceptance of the wisdom of our American and European Christian forebears in the political realm, a traditional understanding of patriarchal leadership in the household, and an acceptance of traditional natural law in ethics”.

Natural law is a view with a long history on the right which holds that fundamental moral principles arise from God or nature, not from human reflection or politics. It is a view that Claremont scholars have attempted to provide.

Faithfulness also has a patriarchal edge in SACR’s definition: it is “submission to the authority and standards of behavior of a particular Trinitarian Christian body”, but also “taking ownership as head of the household in terms of leading regular prayer and spiritual reading and reflection”.

Influence is defined as “the ability to make a mark primarily on culture and social discourse but also in politics and business. The positions here can range from equity ownership in productive enterprises to positions of influence in cultural, religious and intellectual institutions.”

Recruiting efforts for the group included visits to Boise from out-of-town collaborators.

A 19 March 2021 email from Yenor lays out a draft schedule for a visit to Boise by Aaron Renn, senior fellow and editor of “theocon” website American Reformer – co-founded by Nate Fischer – and a former senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Plans included “dinner at Epi’s”, a Basque restaurant in Boise; a meeting with representatives of the Idaho Freedom Foundation, a far-right thinktank; and a guest lecture by Renn to Yenor’s students.

Also planned were “drinks with SACR possibles” where Yenor anticipated a “soft sell as per Skyler’s method”, a comment which is not explained further.

The documents indicate Yenor had worked on putting together a group of “SACR possibles” ahead of Renn’s visit.

In a 19 March 2021 exchange, Yenor and his son Jackson workshop the wording of an invitation to prospective SACR members to an evening talk at a local “classical Christian” academy, the Ambrose school. While Scott Yenor’s original had “a national movement with national ambitions”, Jackson Yenor replied with the recommendation: “Say goals instead of ambitions. These guys are ‘goal oriented’ business people, not Machiavelli.”

Further on, the text advised prospective recruits that “chapters will unite public-spirited men who are interested in doing the work of civic renewal. This might involve shoring up teetering institutions. It might involve seeking to turn corrupt institutions.”


The Ambrose School is a “classical Christian” academy in Meridian, on the western edge of the Boise metro area, where Yenor’s wife Amy works as an events coordinator.

The draft invitation does not indicate any date for the drinks meeting, but Yenor’s visit happened less than three weeks after Yenor was working on the text.

The Guardian contacted Boise State University to ask whether there were any policies about faculty combining guest lecturer visits with political activism, but there was no immediate response.

Other documents appear to be connected to SACR recruiting.

On several occasions, Yenor emailed a link to the sacr.us domain with no further context or explanation in the email text. One such email was sent to the Gmail address of the chief executive of a civil engineering company in Pennsylvania. Another was sent to a lawyer and former justice department employee in Tallahassee, Florida.

Christian nationalist prayers

An April 2021 email Yenor sent to his wife’s work address has an attached PDF – “SACR-prayers”. The document features a “long prayer – formal and inaugural occasions” and a “short prayer – regular meetings”.

The long prayer draws biblical and historical parallels for SACR’s activities: “May God unite us in this mission as Joshua’s men when they defeated the mighty walls of Jericho, as Nehemiah’s men who rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem, as St Constantine’s men when they conquered in the sign of the cross. May the light of Christendom be restored in our homeland, and may America not fall to those who hate God.”

Brad Onishi is the author of Preparing for War, a critical account of Christian nationalism, the host of the Straight White American Jesus podcast, and an academic with appointments at UC Berkeley and the University of San Francisco. He is also a self-described former Christian nationalist.

In a telephone conversation he said that the prayers include “coded” references that may function as justifications of violence.

Explaining the reference to the story of the conquest of Jericho in the book of Joshua, Onishi said: “What happens when the walls fall down? Joshua’s men go in and kill everyone: men, children, women, animals.

“It’s an attempted genocide, right?”

“In that prayer they’re saying we’re Joshua’s men. We’re the type of men who trust God,” Onishi added.

“And when God, when God gives us the signal, we’re going to go kill everybody. That’s what we do.”

Revealed: US conservative thinktank’s links to extremist fraternal order


Claremont Institute officials closely involved with Society for American Civic Renewal, which experts say is rooted in Christian nationalism


Jason Wilson

THE GUARDIAN

Mon 11 Mar 2024 

The president of the rightwing Claremont Institute and another senior Claremont official are both closely involved with the shadowy Society for American Civic Renewal (SACR), an exclusive, men-only fraternal order which aims to replace the US government with an authoritarian “aligned regime”, and which experts say is rooted in extreme Christian nationalism and religious autocracy.

The revelations emerge from documents gathered in public records requests, including emails between several senior members of SACR: Claremont president Ryan P Williams; its director of state coalitions and Boise State University professor Scott Yenor; and others including former soap manufacturer and would-be “warlord” Charles Haywood.



Ron DeSantis ally Chris Rufo has close ties with ‘dissident right’ magazine

The trove also contains an “internal” SACR “mission statement” with a far more radical edge than the public “vision” now recorded on the organization’s website.

That document speaks of recruiting a “brotherhood” who will “form the backbone of a renewed American regime” and who “understand the nature of authority and its legitimate forceful exercise”; whose “objectives” include to “collect, curate, and document a list of potential appointees and hires for a renewed American regime”.

The document does not indicate that such “renewal” will take place through participation in electoral contests, and nor does it make mention of the US constitution.

Along with the financial links between the SACR and Claremont – the Guardian previously reported Claremont’s $26,248 donation to SACR in 2020 – the documents raise questions as to what extent SACR is an initiative of the Claremont Institute, and to what extent its participants have abandoned liberal, secular or democratic politics.

The Guardian contacted Ryan Williams, Claremont’s president, for comment on his involvement in SACR, and on the extent of Claremont’s ties to the organization.

In an email he said: “While the Claremont Institute acted as a fiscal sponsor to help the Society for American Civic Renewal establish itself as an incorporated 501(c)(10), that was the end of any corporate collaboration between the Claremont Institute and SACR.”

He added: “As a founding board member of SACR in my personal capacity, obviously I think that a fraternal order dedicated to civic and cultural renaissance and rooted in community, virtue, and wisdom is a very good thing.”

Williams also confirmed that he continues to serve as a SACR board member.

The Guardian also contacted Scott Yenor and Boise State University for comment.

Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project on Hate and Extremism, said of the SACR documents: “Their planned regime is obviously far from a multiracial democracy. The documents appear to be describing a religious autocracy.”

Laura K Field, a writer, political theorist and senior fellow at the Niskanen Center, a Washington thinktank, said the documents expressed “extreme Christian nationalism” where “a particular kind of Christianity should dominate as an ideal, and that it should dominate permanently”.

Yenor and SACR

Scott Yenor is a professor of political science at Idaho’s Boise State University and simultaneously the senior director of state coalitions at the Claremont Institute.

His Claremont appointment came in February 2023. Media reports at that time indicated that Yenor would be working closely with the Florida governor Ron DeSantis and DeSantis-aligned legislators; when the job was announced the governor’s wife, Casey Desantis, tweeted: “Thrilled to welcome Scott Yenor from the Claremont Institute to his new home in Tallahassee.”

Reporting in the New York Times last month put Yenor at the center of a network of activists tied to Claremont and other rightwing nonprofits to wage an “anti-DEI crusade” against diversity, equity, and inclusion measures in educational institutions, corporations and public agencies.

Unreported until now is Yenor’s place as an ideological and organizational leader in SACR, and the radical nature of that organization’s aims as understood by he and other core members.

SACR is structured as a 501(c)(10) body under the section of US tax law that provides nonprofit status for organizations “with a fraternal purpose”.

In 2020 the umbrella organization was incorporated in Indiana with Charles Haywood as principal, and the first local lodge was established in Dallas, Texas. Subsequently, three local lodges were established in Idaho: in Boise and Couer d’Alene in 2021, and Moscow in 2022.

Idaho company filings show that Scott Yenor became president and the only listed principal officer of the Boise lodge on 5 August 2023.

Secrecy at SACR


But emails indicate that he had taken a board role in the national organization even earlier than that date.

On 25 January 2023, lawyer Clyde Taylor – now at Wagenmaker Law but until 2019 an associate at the rightwing litigation firm the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty – wrote to Haywood and Skyler Kressin about their trademark application for the SACR logo.

Haywood forwarded the lawyer’s email to Yenor, Claremont president Williams, and Nathanial “Nate” Fischer, copying in Kressin on two addresses including one hosted at SACR’s sacr.us domain.

“We should probably have a board meeting to discuss this, finances, etc,” Haywood wrote in response to Yenor, suggesting Yenor and the others he copied in were members of that body.

Haywood added a suggestion on encrypted messaging services, indicating an imperative of secrecy inside SACR. “I vote we create a new Signal group and have a board meeting. Any takers?” he said. The group was then set up.

The Guardian reported last August that on his website Haywood has repeatedly envisioned serving as a “warlord” at the head of an “armed patronage network” which might at some point find itself in conflict with the federal government.

Haywood has also expressed a desire to recruit “shooters” to help defend the “extended, quite sizeable, compound” he occupies on the western fringe of Carmel, Indiana. According to documents lodged with the city of Carmel, the latest construction project on Haywood’s compound is a six-bedroom faux-classical mansion with a central library room that occupies both of the building’s floors.

He has funded SACR through his Howdy Doody Good Times foundation to the tune of at least $50,000, according to 2021 and 2022 tax filings, along with at least $50,000 to the Claremont Institute.

In the same report, the Guardian revealed that Kressin, of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, appears to serve a key administrative role in SACR. Idaho and Texas company records show that Kressin incorporated lodges in Boise, Coeur d’Alene and Dallas; serves as a director of the Coeur d’Alene and Dallas lodges; and was named as the principal officer of the parent organization on its 2020-2021 tax return.

The Guardian reported last September that Fischer, a Claremont Lincoln fellow, was president of SACR’s Dallas lodge and owns a firm that has won hundreds of thousands of dollars in government ammunition contracts. He also owns another firm that helped produce videos in which Claremont chairman Thomas Klingenstein exhorted rightwingers to join in a “cold civil war” against “woke communists”.

The Guardian contacted Nate Fischer, Skyler Kressin and Charles Haywood for comment.

Neither Kressin nor Haywood responded. Fischer did not respond directly, but on Friday morning on X, formerly Twitter, he left a 900-word post offering some material from internal SACR documents, admitting that the Guardian’s reporting had led him to the conclusion that “this is a good time to share more about the organization.
SACR’s mission: ‘dominance’ and ‘authority’ in an ‘new aligned regime’

Another document suggests reasons that SACR’s leadership might want to avoid scrutiny: in internal discussions. “Civic renewal” appears to equate to regime change in America.

The document is one of two Yenor attached to a 27 April 2021 email, sent from his Boise State email address to a personal email address. The email text simply says “print”.

The SACR document contains two versions of the organization’s “mission statement” – one “public” and one “internal” – along with a list of “objectives” for the organization.

Its authenticity as a working document is indicated by the current “vision” articulated on SACR’s website, which currently features what appears to be a reworked version of the “public” mission statement.

The 2021 document envisions “a vigorous civic renewal that will reflect the past while facing the future”, while the website sets out a “new thing for a new day, informed by the wisdom of the past but facing the future”. Each version promises to “reclaim a humane vision of society”.

A harder-edged “internal” mission statement, however, stands in stark contrast to these anodyne public presentations.

It first announces: “Our aim is to build and maintain a robust network of capable men who can reverse our society’s decline and return us to the successful path off which America has strayed.”

The document says the organization’s founders are “un-hyphenated Americans, and we believe in a particular Christianity that is not blurred by modernist philosophies.”

It says: “We are willing to act decisively to secure permanently, as much as anything is permanent, the political and social dominance” of their beliefs.

In terms of recruiting, the document says: “Most of all, we seek those who understand the nature of authority and its legitimate forceful exercise in the temporal realm.”

Further down, the document specifies five organizational “objectives” that encompass nepotistic business practices, the grooming of new and emerging “elites” within SACR, and, experts say, an apparently insurrectionary political project.

The first objective is to “identify and provide formation for local elites … capable of exercising authority and who are aligned with our goal of complete civic renewal”, and warning that “concrete temporal achievements, not furthering intellectual discussion”.

The second objective is to help those local elites build “fraternal networks which will advance both the members of those networks and our collective goals” including “direct preferential treatment for members, especially in business”.

The third objectives to coordinate across the “fraternal networks” to bring “political awareness” to matters such as “hiring and promotion; award of contracts; internal policies and procedures; and leadership succession”.

A fifth objective is to “collect, curate and document a list of potential appointees and hires for an aligned future regime”, who would likely not be founding participants, but “ … men who grow up in the system”.

Asked what an “aligned regime” might look like, Williams, the Claremont Institute’s president, wrote: “It would, more likely than not, be some form of the US constitutional order, but with much higher fidelity to that order before it was corrupted and subverted by modern progressivism.”

Perhaps ominously, a fourth objective is to “defend fraternal networks, our own and allies, against attacks by those opposed to civic renewal, and strongly deter such attacks”, though no details are offered on what form this defense or deterrence might take.

Although the document makes reference to America’s founding, Field, the Niskanen fellow, said that it contradicted its spirit.

“George Washington, Jefferson, [and] Madison all embraced religious pluralism very explicitly, and the constitution reflects that,” she said.

“This is anti-constitutional, and I think many, many faithful Christians would say it’s anti-Christian.”

Beirich, the extremism expert, said the mission statement and objectives were “essentially a stealth plan to replace everything about the current government with a religious autocracy”, with the addition of an effort to “fashion young people behind closed doors for the eventual takeover of the regime, right?”

“They’re going to grow them up as Christian autocrats.”

FLOURIDE IS A COMMUNIST PLOT

Fluoride in public water has slashed tooth decay — but some states may end mandates

A 2022 University of Calgary study showed increases in tooth decay procedures in Calgary, Canada, and Juneau, Alaska, after each city ended water fluoridation.

Photo by Diana Polekhina on Unsplash
girl with red and white toothbrush in mouth

Stateline.org

March 08, 2024

Kentucky state Rep. Mark Hart has been drinking fluoridated water his entire life. In 1954, five years before Hart was born, his home state mandated adding or adjusting levels of the mineral, which occurs naturally in water, in drinking water systems of populations larger than 3,000.

But after hearing from a constituent a few years ago, Hart believes the matter of what’s in Kentucky cities’ drinking water should be a decision made by those drinking it. He’s been trying to reverse the state’s mandate since 2018, with several unsuccessful legislative attempts.

This year, with more than 20 co-sponsors, his bill has so far passed out of committee on its route to the House floor.

In 1945, Grand Rapids, Michigan, became the first city to fluoridate its water. The decline in tooth decay that followed the widespread adoption of fluoridation has been hailed as one of the greatest public health achievements of the past century. Fluoridation lessens tooth decay in children and adults by 25%, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But there’s been pushback against fluoridation, including a lawsuit by advocates seeking the federal government to ban the practice entirely. Some state lawmakers want to reverse or relax requirements for communities to fluoridate, and several localities across the country in recent years have chosen to stop doing it. Health experts say the rise in anti-fluoridation measures is an example of the increased skepticism toward science and public health measures — exacerbated by the mask and vaccine mandates during the pandemic.

“At the heart of these big public health issues — including water fluoridation — is science. But over the past few years, there’s been skepticism of science,” said Jane Grover, senior director of the Council on Access, Prevention and Interprofessional Relations at the American Dental Association.

Roughly 73% of the U.S. population with public water access in 2020 received drinking water with fluoride adjusted to the “optimal” concentration of 0.7 milligrams per liter, according to the CDC.

At least a dozen states have laws mandating that larger communities fluoridate. Among them are California, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio and South Dakota.

Yet lawmakers in three of those states — Georgia, Kentucky and Nebraska — have filed bills that would reverse the mandates and leave the choice up to a local voter referendum or to the governing body of local water systems.

Three states — Maine, New Hampshire and Utah — require a public vote for fluoridation by municipalities and their public water systems.

What the science says

Hart, a Republican, said he didn’t give much thought to his drinking water until a constituent sent him studies that linked very high levels of fluoridation to lower IQs in rural communities of China and India. (U.S. public health experts say those cases don’t correspond to fluoridation in the United States.)

“I was shocked by all the research I was reading. I hadn’t put much stock into my drinking water when I first joined the [Kentucky legislature],” said Hart.

He’d personally rather avoid fluoridated water altogether, but said at a minimum Kentucky’s statewide mandate ought to be overturned.

“What goes in your drinking water isn’t for the states or big government to decide. That to me is a local control issue — give people a choice on what they’re drinking, you know?” Hart said.

Much of the research used by anti-fluoride activists has been resoundingly debunked by the medical community. Public health officials note that studies touted by anti-fluoridation groups are often cited out of context, may not be peer-reviewed, and often are conducted in countries where fluoridation levels can be several times that of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s recommendation.

“Good public health policy is built on decades and decades of scientific review, not junk science. Because we need reputable, peer-reviewed science to assess what’s necessary to protect public health,” said Kathleen Hoke, a University of Maryland law professor and the eastern region director of the Network for Public Health Law, a professional group that provides technical legal assistance on public health matters.

“The EPA’s recommendation for fluoride levels is based on scientific, peer-reviewed data. It’s up to our public health measures to reflect that same type of reputable science,” she added.

And organizations such as the CDC, the American Dental Association and the National Cancer Institute are in consensus that U.S. fluoridation is safe, and is not linked to lower IQs or critical health problems.

Local debates

For most of the United States, fluoridation already is a matter of local control. Hawaii is the only state that bans fluoridation; most others leave it to individual water systems or localities.

There are bills in Hawaii and New Jersey to mandate water fluoridation statewide, but the legislation is stalled in committee.

Hawaii state Sen. Stanley Chang, a Democrat, said his concern over the oral health of his newborn daughter inspired the bill, which would require all state suppliers of public water to meet fluoridation levels set by the EPA.

“I think this will prevail in the end. When it comes to health and science, there’s an information plateau if you’re not an expert,” Chang told Stateline. “I’m not an expert. It’s why my job is to ask experts, so that I can be equipped to make that information accessible and reliable for my constituents.”

Debora Teixeira, the oral health systems coordinator at the Vermont Department of Public Health, said her agency will send educators to local communities to talk about fluoridation in the hope of helping residents understand the benefits.

“When requested, we go to the place where fluoridation is being challenged,” Teixeira said.

“It’s less of advocating law, and more of an education and information about the science behind it,” she said. “Because there’s decades and decades of research that supports fluoridation, but we want to engage with those who may be skeptical or have been misinformed.”

This year, local governments in Union County, North Carolina, and Collier County, Florida, prohibited the adding of fluoride to their drinking water.

Last year, State College, Pennsylvania, and Brushy Creek, Texas, stopped adding fluoride to their water systems.

In a September 2023 memo announcing the decision to terminate fluoridation, Shean R. Dalton, general manager of Brushy Creek Municipal Utility District, cited health concerns, personal choice and cost-effectiveness as reasons to forgo the practice.
Sewer rates soar as private companies buy up local water systems


A 2022 University of Calgary study showed increases in tooth decay procedures in Calgary, Canada, and Juneau, Alaska, after each city ended water fluoridation.

Last month, a federal court in San Francisco heard arguments in a lawsuit by Food and Water Watch and anti-fluoridation advocacy groups against the EPA, arguing that fluoride ought to be regulated as a toxin. The lawsuit, filed in 2017, is seeking a ban on fluoridation of drinking water “to protect fetuses and children” from the risk of neurodevelopmental problems.

“There is a very real trend of states looking to reverse these mandates. We believe that the court’s ruling — which we hope is in our favor — will give more states cause to look at what we’re doing to our drinking water,” said Stuart Cooper, executive director of the Fluoride Action Network, an anti-fluoride advocacy group that is among the plaintiffs in the case.

Meanwhile, residents of Buffalo, New York, have filed a class-action lawsuit against the city after it quietly ended fluoridation without informing residents. One resident said her elementary school-aged son suffered from oral health problems from a lack of fluoride.

The latest effort at stopping fluoridation was in Rutland, Vermont, where residents this week took their second vote in less than a decade on whether to keep adding the mineral to their drinking water. In 2016, the ballot measure failed.

On Tuesday, it failed again. Rutland will keep its fluoride.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY 1958 

Once you work for Trump, you're trapped

Ronna McDaniel speaks at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute's 'A Time for Choosing Speaker Series' at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on April 20, 2023 in Simi Valley, California. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images).

Robert Reich

March 28, 2024

If you’re seeking employment at the Republican National Committee, you’re likely to be asked in your job interview if you believe that the 2020 election was stolen. If you say no, well, you might as well seek to work on George Santos’s next campaign.

At the Republican National Committee — newly reorganized under Trump — agreeing to Trump’s false claim has become a kind of litmus test for employment, just as it’s become a litmus test for almost every Republican running for public office.

Even if you already have a job at the RNC, don’t count on keeping it if you fail to agree to the lie. According to TheWashington Post, Trump advisers have been quizzing multiple employees who had worked in key 2024 states about their views on the 2020 presidential election.

Hell, even if you’ve repeated the big lie multiple times in the media, you might still lose your RNC job. Former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel lost hers even though she continued to echo Trump’s election lies.

McDaniel even participated in a November 17, 2020, phone call in which Trump pressured two Republican members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers not to sign the certification of the 2020 presidential election, according to recordings reviewed by The Detroit News.

None of this was enough for Tump. Trump fired McDaniel because she was insufficiently loyal to him.

But she was too loyal to him to land a new job. McDaniel was hired by NBC last week as a paid contributor, until network anchors and reporters revolted. They argued that by hiring her, NBC gave a green light for election deniers to spread lies as paid contributors. On Tuesday, NBC revoked McDaniel’s hire.

The New York Times said the episode underscores the challenge to news organizations “of fairly representing … pro-Trump viewpoints in their coverage.”

The real problem is there can’t be any “fair” representation of pro-Trump Republican viewpoints as long as those viewpoints are centered on the big lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.

A political party that baselessly denies the outcome of an election has no legitimate claim to be “represented” in the media.

Nor should any official who has gone along with the lie expect a job in a news organization.

The fact is, neither NBC nor any other legitimate news organization can find someone with integrity to defend Trump or act as a mouthpiece for the Republican Party he now controls, because no one with integrity would do so.

“Wow!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday. “Ronna McDaniel got fired by Fake News NBC. She only lasted two days, and this after McDaniel went out of her way to say what they wanted to hear. It leaves her in a very strange place, it’s called NEVER NEVERLAND, and it’s not a place you want to be.”

If anything, Trump understates the trap he’s sprung, not just on McDaniel but on the Republican Party.

The entire MAGA Republican Party is now in Never Neverland. And it’s a place no one with a shred of integrity would want to be.

So beware that RNC job interview.

Does the GOP have a future?

ONLY IN THE WALL ST DEMOCRAT PARTY

Ronna McDaniel stands on stage in an empty Mellon Auditorium while addressing the Republican National Convention at the Mellon Auditorium on August 24, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images).

Robert Reich

March 27, 2024

Ronna McDaniel’s tenure at NBC lasted four days. It ended last night, after network anchors and reporters blasted NBC’s decision to hire her last Friday. They argued that hiring her gave a green light for election deniers to spread lies as paid contributors. The New York Times said the episode underscored the challenge to news organizations “of fairly representing … pro-Trump viewpoints in their coverage.”

But can there be any “fair” representation of pro-Trump Republican viewpoints when those viewpoints center on a big lie about the 2020 election? More broadly, can a party that baselessly denies the outcome of an election have any legitimate future?

My grandfather was a lifelong Republican. My father was a Republican until Bill Clinton appointed me labor secretary. I got my first job in Washington under a Republican president — Gerald Ford. I worked closely with several Republicans in Congress to raise the minimum wage and enact the Family and Medical Leave Act.

But that was the old Republican Party. It cared about governing. It was principled (although I disagreed with many of those principles).

Today’s Republican Party doesn’t care about governing, and it has no principles. It’s a MAGA Party that cares only about power.

It’s getting worse. Twenty percent of the 40 most senior House Republicans are retiring, even though just three of them are in their 70s or older.

The retirements are disproportionately moderate — “moderate,” that is, as compared with their Republican colleagues. Those retirees include five of the 20 Republicans with the worst ratings on the MAGA-aligned conservative group Heritage Action’s scorecard. Nearly half (17) of the 40 House Republicans with the highest 2021 Bipartisan Index ratings are heading for the exits.

Robert Reich is a professor at Berkeley and was secretary of labor under Bill Clinton. You can find his writing at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

WELCOME TO WOKE COUNTRY

Beyonce's 'Cowboy Carter' drips history — and joy

Agence France-Presse
March 29, 2024 

Beyonce is embracing her Texas roots with her new album, 'Cowboy Carter' (Theo Wargo/AFP)

Beyonce's "Cowboy Carter" is a full-throated ode to her southern roots, a rollicking revue of an album that also deals a vital history lesson on the Black lineage of country music.

The 27-track, highly anticipated record out Friday is the second act of her "Renaissance" trilogy, a sonically diverse jamboree flavored with strings and pedal steel guitar.

Beyonce has been a versatile showbiz fixture for nearly three decades, but for all the caps she's worn, the Houston-bred megastar's cowboy hat has stayed within reach: Queen Bey has always been country.

But even the powerful artist -- who has more Grammy wins than any other artist in the business, ever -- has brushed up against the overwhelmingly white, male gatekeepers of country music who have long dictated the genre's perceived boundaries.

She notably received racist comments after performing what was then her most country song to date, "Daddy Lessons," at the 2016 Country Music Association Awards alongside The Chicks.

And while her first two singles off the album were released last month to chart-topping acclaim and ecstasy from fans, there were also predictable, bigoted eyebrow raises from some circles.

At the same time, news of her album magnified a wider conversation on the long history of Black artists in country music, and the persistent racist backlash they've continued to experience in those spaces.

A Texan raised by a mother from Louisiana and father from Alabama, Beyonce tackled the perceived "controversy" over her full country turn on the track "Ameriican Requiem."

"They used to say I spoke, 'Too country' / Then the rejection came, said I wasn't, 'Country enough' / Said I wouldn't saddle up, but if that ain't country, tell me, what is?" Beyonce sings on the track whose musical allusions include Buffalo Springfield's classic "For What It's Worth."

"Tread my bare feet on solid ground for years / They don't, don't know how hard I had to fight for this."

And with technical mastery she delivers a blend of styles including various country subsets as well as rap, dance, soul, funk, rock and gospel.

It's a full-color display of just how rich music can grow outside dusty strictures of genre.

"Genres are a funny little concept, aren't they?" says an intro to "Spaghettii."

"In theory, they have a simple definition that's easy to understand -- but in practice, well, some may feel confined."

- Beyonce X Dolly -


The album is rife with socio-cultural nods both in lyric and style, a honkified celebration of country-western's musicography and influences that's also grounded in the African American spirituals and fiddle tunes rock blossomed out of.

And "Cowboy Carter" features genre elders in the form of a broadcast from a fictional radio station -- a hint at well-documented struggles women and people of color still face getting airtime on country radio -- whose hosts included Willie Nelson, country pioneer Linda Martell and the legend herself, Dolly Parton.

In performing a rendition of Parton's "Jolene" -- the singer fears her partner might leave her for another -- Beyonce recalls her seminal album "Lemonade" that excavated the infidelity of her husband, Jay-Z.

Parton's intro lays bare the parallels in describing "that hussy with the good hair," a direct reference to the 2016 Beyonce track "Sorry."

Also on the sprawling album is a Beyonce cover of Paul McCartney's "Blackbiird," stylized with a double-i spelling.

McCartney wrote the 1968 song about the Little Rock Nine, Black teenagers who became Civil Rights Movement icons when they were the first to enter a previously all-white high school in Arkansas, ushering in desegregation in the US south.

- Beyonce-style ode to joy -

But as is her custom, Beyonce seamlessly blends her socio-political commentary with a full-blown party, a celebration of sex, mirth and her own self-love.

"Ya Ya" is a sultry, psychedelic soul mashup that manages to sample both Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'" and The Beach Boys, while still dropping point after point.

"My family lived and died in America," she belts. "Whole lotta red and then white and blue/ History can't be erased."

"Are you lookin' for a new America / Are you tired, workin' time-and-a-half for half the pay, ya-ya."

And "Sweet Honey Buckiin'" incorporates hip hop and house with strums on loop, among her songs that hat-tip to the first act of "Renaissance," which celebrated electronica's Black origins and evolution.

Tanner Adell, Willie Jones and Shaboozey, all acclaimed Black country artists, feature on "Cowboy Carter," as do Miley Cyrus -- Parton's goddaughter -- and Post Malone, stars who've also drifted between pop and country.

"Texas Hold 'Em," the album's lead single, includes Rhiannon Giddens -- who often uses her platform to celebrate the African American roots of country -- on the banjo and viola.

No matter how Nashville reacts to "Cowboy Carter," Beyonce has made it clear she'll have the last word.

"This ain't a Country album," she posted recently.

"This is a 'Beyonce' album."