US civic health rating downgraded after year of ‘restrictive‘ Trump actions

Civicus, a non-profit that monitors global civic freedoms, moved the US from the 'narrowed' to 'obstructed' category…

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/09/us-civic-health-rating-trump 

 

One Way Parents Can Fight the Phone-Based Childhood - The Atlantic

About 75 percent of kids ages 9 to 12 regularly play the online game Roblox, where they can interact with friends and even strangers. But most of the children in our survey said that they aren't allowed to be out in public at all without an adult. Fewer than half of the 8- and 9-year-olds have gone down a grocery-store aisle alone; more than a quarter aren't allowed to play unsupervised even in their own front yard...

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/08/kids-smartphones-play-freedom/683742/

WHY THE CATHOLIC CHURCH WANTS TO TAKE AWAY YOUR FREEDOM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_hCSDHakLM

 

WOTM: The Values Of The West: Freedom

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0w0Vpbkb3s

 

The Top Goal of Project 2025 Is Still to Come - The Atlantic

With a little imagination, we can glimpse the America that Project 2025 proposes. It is an avowedly Christian nation, but following a very specific, narrow strain of Christianity. In many ways, it resembles the 1950s. While fathers work, mothers stay at home with larger families. At school, students learn old-­fashioned values and lessons. Abortion is illegal, vaccines are voluntary, and the state is minimally involved in health care. The government is slow to police racial discrimination in all but its most blatant expressions. Trans and LGBTQ people exist—­they always have—­but are encouraged to remain closeted. It is a vision that suggests Reagan was right: Freedom ­really is a fragile thing...

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/04/project-2025-top-goal/682142/ 

 

Defectors offer insight into mindset of North Korean soldiers fighting in Ukraine

"When North Korean workers, who have lived their entire lives trapped in a restrictive system, experience life abroad, they come to see North Korea as nothing short of a prison," Ahn said. "Once they realize what freedom could mean, it's hard to imagine they wouldn't consider breaking free to live a freer life." 

In addition to finding freedom, they could provide the U.S. and others with valuable intelligence regarding the North Korean military's strategies and capabilities, which are often exaggerated by the North Korean government…

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/north-korea-ukraine-soldiers-defectors-russia-rcna187547

 

Music I’m Listening to: Hymns for My Atheist Sister & Her Friends to Sing Along To

“…an album for the faithful, the faithless, and the somewhere in between” is how the modern folk music duo known as The Rough & Tumble describe their newest collection, called Hymns for My Atheist Sister & Her Friends to Sing Along To.

These songs are wonderfully arranged with only a few acoustic instruments. The lyrics reflect on life’s struggles and beauty, most especially love, compassion, and community, and are sung with rich and passionate harmonies — with the “choir” of several of their friends.

Here are some lyrics from what I’d call the album’s title song — My Atheist Sister: 

My sister and all her friends,
they get together on the weekends
They drink some wine and sing some hymns
They know by heart but don’t believe in.
And they pack socks and clean water
And granola bars in paper bags–
And they hand them out to the unhoused, 

My Atheist sister and all of her friends…

She takes sick days and goes to the capitol,
Swears on the Bible and bends some ears about
Equal rights for her daughter and
For all the people living here…

When you’re scared and full of doubt,
And for your sins, God cast you out.
Who will love you without fear?
An Atheist in riot gear.

The album closes with these words from the song Hymn: 

Come all, come close, come from a long way.
Count yourself present before autumn falls.
Come joy, come poor, come as you have always.
We’ll say you’ve been here after you’ve gone.

There’s no better world that is coming,
There’s no other time than now.
Fear not a hell– it is what you have been through.
Heaven exists all around.

“All instrumentation on this record,” they say, “was limited to what Mallory was allowed to have in her church growing up. We chose this with intention of leaning on the voices of others, and to remember that the ways in which we felt limited-- the ways that we were held back by arbitrary rules-- gave us a chance to creatively grow around the barriers to something bigger and more beautiful than ourselves.”

You can hear the album for free at the Bandcamp Web site, or download the Bandcamp app to your phone or iPad and stream the music on demand that way. You can also purchase CDs and MP3s of the songs on the album. 

North Korean escapee explains what life there is really like | Minutes With

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JoTQjCJws2A

 

Kate Cohen: "Tampon Tim" and the Long Reach of Religion | FFRF Convention 2024

Kate Cohen's talk, "'Tampon Tim' and the Long Reach of Religion," highlights how religion continues to influence public policy, especially in education. She takes aim at school voucher programs that funnel public money into religious institutions and connect Christian nationalism to anti-LGBTQ and anti-transgender laws. With humor, she explains how media and politics intersect with religious bias, referencing Minnesota Governor Tim Walz being mocked for his progressive policies. Cohen emphasizes that challenging religious influence is essential for protecting personal freedoms and fostering equality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVzr7ARgCSo

3 American myths we don't believe anymore after living in Europe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q50p_lr0HPk

Tim Walz sends a message to MAGA: Mind your own damn business. #harris2024

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5gjfoHkpfWo

Butker commencement speech spotlights religious war on women's freedom, even Taylor Swift's

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FY3MYvBR6s

Russia and China Are Winning the Propaganda War - The Atlantic

Autocrats in China, Russia, and elsewhere are now making common cause with MAGA Republicans to discredit liberalism and freedom around the world…

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/06/china-russia-republican-party-relations/678271/

‘They May Be Republicans, But They Still Come in for Services’ - POLITICO

Thus it's freedom — not party affiliation — that will be key to getting their support, according to referendum backers I spoke to. "That's what it comes down to for conservatives like me," said Carlos Lacasa, a Cuban American Republican and former South Florida state representative. "Freedom to possess a firearm, even with a high-capacity magazine, or … to choose whether or not to be vaccinated in the case of a pandemic — anybody who values those and countless other freedoms should be concerned" about restricting abortion before viability, he said. Fidel Castro's legacy was to take freedom away from millions, and Lacasa says that as a result he and many other Cuban Americans are "freedom-loving" and on guard against autocrats to this day. 

"When the state says to a woman that you cannot have an abortion after six weeks, what the state is doing is seizing that woman's womb for its own purposes," he said. "That's scary to me."…

 

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/05/05/abortion-ban-florida-women-00156107

Two Los Angeles county men exonerated after spending decades in prison | Los Angeles | The Guardian

Hernandez said on Wednesday his and Solorio's cases were not unique. "There are more people in there who are innocent," he said. "I just want to be that voice for those who cannot speak who are still in juvenile hall, or LA county jail filing a case or in prison spending decades for a crime they did not commit."…

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/14/los-angeles-county-men-exonerated-wrongful-conviction

Ron DeSantis's Vision of Freedom Is Unconstitutional - The Atlantic

Neither my freedom nor yours requires the state to protect us from an entertainment company urging the state legislature to repeal a bill, or a beer company putting a trans influencer on a can, or whatever else DeSantis regards as a pathology. Indeed, we remain free in part because the First Amendment prevents the state from engaging in that sort of viewpoint discrimination...

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/04/desantis-disney-lawsuit-free-speech-florida/673903/

Grandpa, Tell Me About the Time the Supreme Court Picked a Fight With the Future

By installing a Supreme Court prepared to constitutionalize right-wing dogma, the political right is stripping the generations that follow them of the freedom to decide for themselves what sort of society they will strive to achieve…

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/supreme-court-fights-future

REAL Wellness (Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor, Freethought Radio podcast)

Guest: Don Ardell. The news is filled with state/church battles, politicking preachers, and religious threats to women's lives. After hearing a sneak preview of the Godless Gospel song "Life Is Good," we talk with U.S. and world triathlon and duathlon champion Don Ardell about his newest book, Freedom From Religion in 30 Days: A REAL Wellness Approach to Critical Thinking, Exuberance and Personal Freedoms.

Interview: 

 Download

Forced Birth or Freedom — with Kurt Bardella, Eric Goldman, and Cliff Schecter (The Mary Trump Show)

Mary Trump sounds off on the terrible decision leaked from the Supreme Court that would overturn Roe V. Wade. Together with strategists Eric Goldman, Cliff Schecter, and Kurt Bardella, she lays out the threats to our very notions of freedom and a constitutional republic, how to reclaim the language of America from the Right, and fight back with our values using 21st century communication techniques.

Interview: 

https://youtu.be/15Gg4KuoBU4

John Fugelsang (The Mary Trump Show podcast, Episode 18)

Mary Trump calls out the Republicans’ true colors that shine through when they give their support to Putin and insurrectionists. Then, she’s joined by actor, comedian, and podcast and radio host John Fugelsang for a conversation about the hypocrisy of the Right when it comes to religion and freedom. Will the Democrats be able to expose it, unite the party, and bring out voters in time to beat them in the midterms?

Interview: 

https://www.politicon.com/podcasts/john-fugelsang/