Christian Nationalism and Public Education: The Cost of Disinformation (Warren Throckmorton; The Christian Past That Wasn’t: Formerly Telling Jefferson Lies podcast)

The episode begins with a role play of a teacher presenting a history lesson right out of the Christian nationalist playbook. Mrs. Johnson's students try to help her with questions but she doesn't take the help. Her disinformation campaign continues until slavery comes up and then the lesson abruptly ends. Could this happen? A better question is, what do we do now that it is happening in some schools around the nation.

In this segment, I present another excerpt from the Texas State Board of Education which illustrates how Christian nationalist disinformation permeates opposition to public education. In this scenario a parent brings in David Barton's discredited book, The Jefferson Lies, as an authority and refuses to address a challenge to it. The parent appears not to know the book was pulled from publication due to historical errors.

There is a long history of conflict in public schools over religious differences. However, if religion is kept out of public education, this conflict could be avoided. A robust doctrine of separation of church and state is beneficial for public schools and should be enforced.
Interview: 

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/christian-nationalism-and-public-education-the/id1720424853?i=1000776082608

Trump's reckless cuts come back to bite him

 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/AoS5RzPMMwk

The Disinformation Dozen: Wuhan Drift (Conspirituality podcast #302)

Early in this podcast we covered the Disinformation Dozen, 12 wellness influencers and contrarian health figures responsible for spreading the lion’s share of vaccine misinformation on major social media platforms.

On a recent MAHA Action weekly call, Tony Lyons got the group back together for a victory lap after a court settlement seemed to justify their actions. Or did it?

We break down the court case, then hear from the influencers who continue to inflate their own sense of self-importance while rewriting a history that only exists in their minds.
Interview: 

https://www.conspirituality.net/episodes/302-disinformation-dozen-returns-wuhan-drift

French headquarters of Elon Musk’s X raided by Paris cybercrime unit

The MP, Éric Bothorel, expressed "deep concern" at "recent algorithm changes" and "apparent interference in [X's] management" since Musk bought it in 2022. Other complaints said the changes had led to a surge in "nauseating political content"...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/03/french-headquarters-elon-musk-x-raided-paris-cybercrime-unit

 

US judge blocks Trump administration from deporting UK anti-disinformation campaigner

In a statement, Ahmed said: "My life's work is to protect children from the dangers of unregulated social media and AI and fight the spread of antisemitism online. That mission has pitted me against big tech executives – and Elon Musk in particular – multiple times… Roberta Kaplan, Ahmed's legal counsel, said: "The state department's actions here are unjustified and blatantly unconstitutional."…

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2025/dec/26/us-judge-trump-imran-ahmed-uk-anti-disinformation-campaigner

Dr Jessica Knurick talks MAHA and diet and nutrition misinformation (Conspirituality podcast #288)

Derek sits down with Dr Jessica Knurick at the Eudemonia Summit for this special live recording. They discuss combating health misinformation online, what MAHA gets right and wrong, whether or not "nutritionist" should be a protected term, and Jessica's possible political ambitions.

Interview: 

https://www.conspirituality.net/episodes/288-conspirituality-live-dr-jessica-knurick

Meta AI adviser spreads disinformation about shootings, vaccines and trans people

Since his appointment, Starbuck has baselessly claimed that individual shooters in the US were motivated by leftist ideology, described faith-based protest groups as communists, and without evidence tied Democratic lawmakers to murders. 

Starbuck's online posts have not changed in tenor since the "anti-DEI agitator" was brought into the Meta fold, and his Trump administration connections raise broader questions about the extent to which corporate America has capitulated to the Maga movement...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/12/meta-ai-adviser-robby-starbuck

 

Fighting anti-science nonsense and scams: Dave Farina: The Scumbags I've Debunked (The Thinking Atheist podcast)

Science communicator Dave Farina is back to talk about the charlatans and idiots. Buckle up.

Interview: 

https://youtu.be/h4j-REoGZmE?si=-P1PEIlcZ_HjrHUM

Tulsi Gabbard’s Dangerous Disinformation Campaign Against America – Mother Jones

"Gabbard is engaging in blatant cherry-picking and gaslighting. And she's being sloppy with her subterfuge. Her case is easy to debunk. The intelligence reporting she cites does not contradict the ICA and does not indicate there was a high-level plot to produce a bogus report to damage Trump. She is providing a phony and weak cover story, both for Trump and Vladimir Putin. After all, long after the ICA was produced, the Mueller report and two congressional investigations confirmed that the Russians had assaulted the 2016 election, facts that Gabbardneglects to mention in her memo..."

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/07/tulsi-gabbards-dangerous-disinformation-campaign-against-america/ 

A Trans Pilot Was Falsely Blamed for a Plane Crash. Now She’s Fighting the Right-Wing Disinfo Machine | WIRED

Experts say the falsehoods about trans people following violent events range from misinformation, where people genuinely believe the wrong information, to deliberately disseminated disinformation, which includes Ellis' case. Disinformation "is something where the goal is to deliberately lie in order to stoke hatred," says Thomas Billard, an associate professor at Northwestern University who specializes in transgender studies. "These are people who either know that the person involved isn't trans and are saying that they are anyways or have no idea who the school shooter or the pilot is; the purpose is just to make other people hate them." 

Even as transgender people form less than 1 percent of the country's population, Trump has made them one of his primary targets, signing a host of executive orders, including ones that revoke funding and support for youth gender-affirming care and barring trans women and girls from participating in women's sports, along with the aforementioned military ban. So far, there have been at least 116 state anti-trans bills passed this year. Moreover, several words including "trans" and "transgender" have been purged from federal agency websites...

https://www.wired.com/story/a-trans-pilot-was-falsely-blamed-for-a-plane-crash-now-shes-fighting-the-right-wing-disinfo-machine/

Putin is invading more than Ukraine – POLITICO

But Putin's aggression is focused on the U.S. and all its allies. He's spending millions of dollars, bombarding European voters with manipulative social media and disinformation campaigns on a mass scale. It's a new type of warfare on democracy that eliminates the need to roll tanks into capitals. 

 Putin's constantly evolving playbook is the result of his failed military campaign to capture Kyiv and strangle Ukrainian democracy. He ran into Ukraine's indominable resilience, and as a result, he began deploying a long-standing Russian (and Soviet) strategy to destroy Western democracies from within by supporting and cultivating pro-Putin political candidates. And TikTok, Telegram and other social media channels are now weapons in this new kind of war… 

Unfortunately, too many people who should know better are still cozying up to Putin, backing his pro-Russian candidates and undermining the security of the U.S. and other democratic allies. Elon Musk protégé Mario Nawfal was in Moscow in May, while tech billionaire Elon Musk's father and controversial American right-wing commentators Jackson Hinkle and Alex Jones attended the Future 2050 forum in Moscow in June. Speaking at the forum were numerous Putin allies: right-wing Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov and former president Dmitry Medvedev…

https://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-invasion-ukraine-russia-romania-elections-democracy-nato-eu-donald-trump/

Elon Musk’s X sues New York over hate speech and disinformation law | Elon Musk | The Guardian

The bill's authors issued a statement on Tuesday rejecting Musk's suit as an attempt to "use the First Amendment as a shield against providing New Yorkers with much needed transparency" and argued that the act does not infringe upon the free speech rights of social media companies...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jun/17/elon-musk-new-york-hate-lawsuit-speech-law 

 

Trump administration shutters US office countering foreign disinformation

Known as the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R/Fimi) hub, the closure represents a huge victory for rightwing critics who had alleged that the office, despite only looking at foreign state-level disinformation attacks on other countries, was involved in censoring American conservative speech. It comes as part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to dismantle what it describes as government overreach in monitoring speech...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/16/trump-state-department-foreign-disinformation

 

Journalist Julia Ioffe explains how Russia's disinformation attack on Ukraine works on Truth Social

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7nKdkNR3rLo

Conspiracy Of Dunces (Conspirituality podcast Episode #239)

• Trump's nominees
• Disinformation economy
• Conspiricism 
• RFK Jr. 
• drone sightings
• medical grifting with MAGA
• Health Care for All Oregon
• opposition to Health Care for all from Ascension Catholic hospital system, plus reporting on their appalling financial dealings, including illegal co-pays charged to Medicaid patients, and underpayment of employees.
• politics as pro-wrestling 
• Can we know what's real when AI appears in media?

Interview: 

https://www.conspirituality.net/episodes/239-conspiracy-of-dunces

The Evangelical Anti-Vaccine Movement 50 Years in the Making (Bradley Onishi and Daniel Miller; Straight White American Jesus podcast)

Brad speaks with scholar Mark Fugitt whose recent work explores the various sources and factors in evangelical opposition to the COVID vaccine. He provides the historical context for this movement, showing that it is half a century in formation. 

He explains to Brad how everything from creationism, to Christian wellness, to anti-abortion sentiment, and the apocalypse play into fear-mongering around the COVID vaccine.

Interview: 

https://www.straightwhiteamericanjesus.com/episodes/swaj-rewind-the-evangelical-anti-vaccine-movement-50-years-in-the-making/

Opinion | Right-wing disinformation is a mortal threat to democracy - The Washington Post

" Donald Trump was returned to power by the most badly informed electorate in modern American history."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/11/12/disinformation-threat-democracy/

Russians behind fake video of ballots being destroyed, US officials say

Russian actors were behind a viral video falsely showing mail-in ballots for Donald Trump being destroyed in the swing state of Pennsylvania, US officials said on Friday, amid heightened alert over foreign influence operations targeting the upcoming election. 

The video, which garnered millions of views on platforms such as the Elon Musk-owned X, purports to show a man sorting through mail-in ballots from the state's Bucks county and ripping up those cast for the former president...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/26/russia-disinformation-campaign-pennsylvania-ballots

‘Expect war’: leaked chats reveal influence of rightwing media on militia group | Far right (US) | The Guardian

Disinformation and conspiracy theories – some spread by Elon Musk – fuel group's vitriol and paranoia…

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/28/rightwing-media-influence-militia-group

U.S. officials say Russia is spreading falsehoods about Tim Walz : NPR

A video making lurid and false claims about the Democratic presidential candidate was spread by pro-Trump accounts. Intelligence officials say Russia was behind the video.

https://www.npr.org/2024/10/22/nx-s1-5161376/russia-tim-walz-video-disinformation