Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Overton (April 8) From xkcd.

2. 'We are bonded forever': Artemis II astronauts speak about completing their historic moon mission (April 12) This is so cool!

3. National puppetry group faces backlash for platforming anti-LGBTQ Christian puppetry group (April 10) So, there's apparently a Christian puppet group, which requires its members to sign a statement saying marriage is "a man and a woman" and being trans isn't a real thing. I feel like... this kind of thing is extremely normal for conservative Christian organizations- requiring employees to agree to some kind of "statement of faith" which includes anti-LGBTQ beliefs. (Or at least it was normal 10 years ago and then I stopped paying attention?)

For me it's a dealbreaker because I'm queer. And I think it's a good thing that there was backlash against this. But also, this is really normal within that conservative Christian subculture, and groups that have these anti-LGBTQ "statements of faith" do have good people in them, doing good things. The anti-queer beliefs are just background noise, something you're required to believe if you're in that space, but not the front-and-center message the group is promoting. But still, it's not okay that they are discriminating in this way.

Anyway, glad Hemant Mehta's post is getting the word out that these nice-sounding Christian groups often explicitly bar queer people from working for them.

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Birthright Citizenship: Supreme Court Could Create an Exploitable Noncitizen Class (March 30) "Trump’s bid to strip birthright citizenship from millions is a moral, administrative, and legal catastrophe that the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted to prevent. That’s why he’s pursuing it."

2. The ‘pedagogy of moral accommodation’ (April 7) "Belief in eternal hell deforms the moral imagination. It trains Christians to call evil good. It instructs them to bless what, under any other description, they would condemn as cruelty."

This is so spot-on, and it applies to a lot of things in evangelical Christian ideology. So many apologetics answers for why some horrific thing (genocide commanded by God in the bible, sending the majority of humans to suffer in hell forever, oppression of women and queer people, etc) is actually good, and how dare you question that.

3. Donald Trump Impeachment Backed by Most Americans: Poll (April 8) and Iran ceasefire fails to quash Dem calls for Trump's removal (April 7) via

4. Did Donald Trump threaten the Pope? Here is what we know (April 10) Fascinating how the pope's bland statements about how peace is good and war is bad, which is something popes say all the time, are being viewed as an extremely political statement against that felon.

Trump posts image of himself as Jesus after attacking Pope Leo (April 13) What on earth. That felon is really posting AI images of himself as Jesus.

5. Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán is ejected after 16 years in a European electoral earthquake (April 13, via) "It was a stunning blow for Orbán — a close ally of both U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin — who quickly conceded defeat after what he called a ″painful″ election result."

6. Judge dismisses Trump's $10B lawsuit over the Wall Street Journal's Epstein reporting (April 13) "Trump filed the lawsuit in July, following up on a promise to sue the paper almost immediately after it put a new spotlight on his well-documented relationship with Epstein by publishing an article that described a sexually suggestive letter that the newspaper said bore Trump's signature and was included in a 2003 album compiled for Epstein's 50th birthday."

7. 2025 was one of most volatile years ever for U.S. naturalizations (April 13) "'What we see this administration doing is targeting even people who have followed all the rules. The administration is changing the rules on those folks,' said O'Herron, of the Brennan Center for Justice. 'That unpredictability creates a real sense of fear.'"

8. There's growing disquiet in the military. The Iran war made it worse (April 10) "'We've had a lot of calls from people who don't identify as nonviolent or pacifists,' says Woolford. 'They identify as everyday service members who are willing to defend the country but feel very unsettled and suspicious about the ways the military is being used now.'"