Deranged Ten Commandments Law Is Already Spawning Copycats

Oklahoma’s superintendent of public instruction is going to try to push Christian nationalism into the state’s schools by requiring every teacher to have a Bible in their classroom and use it for lessons.

“The Bible is a necessary historical document to teach our kids about the history of this country, to have a complete understanding of western civilization, to have an understanding of the basis of our legal system,” Ryan Walters said Thursday during a state school board meeting. “It is one of the most foundational documents used for the Constitution.

“Every teacher, every classroom in the state, will have a Bible in the classroom and will be teaching from the Bible in the classroom,” Walters added.

This rule blatantly violates the Constitution, but in Walters’s defense, he’s not great at citing historical precedent. He has previously denied that the infamous Tulsa race massacre had anything to do with race.

The move comes two days after the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that a religious charter school couldn’t receive public funds, otherwise it would violate the establishment clause, which prohibits the government from establishing or favoring a particular religion over others. Walters tried to intervene in the case but was denied three times.

It seems that the ruling, as well as a new Louisiana law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public school classrooms, has inspired Walters to make a move of his own. He even cited the state Supreme Court case in Thursday’s meeting, promising to take his new rule to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Louisiana has already been sued over its law, with the case likely headed to the nation’s highest court. The law’s backers have tried to defend the measure, only to fail miserably. In Walters’s case, he might defend his rule by enlisting the woman behind the anti-LGBTQ+ social media account Libs of TikTok, Chaya Raichik, who already supervises Oklahoma’s school libraries. However, one wonders how Raichik, an Orthodox Jew, feels about teaching the New Testament in schools.

Walters likely won’t have the support of Oklahoma’s Republican attorney general, who led the charter school lawsuit and called the state Supreme Court decision “a tremendous victory for religious liberty.” But Walters may have the backing of Oklahoma’s Governor Kevin Stitt, who said the ruling sent a “troubling message.” In the end, the support that matters will likely have to come from the U.S. Supreme Court, whose rulings on religion in public schools have tilted toward the Christian right.

Only hours before the first debate in the 2024 presidential race, Donald Trump posted some of his talking points on social media. Why he did that is as yet unclear.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump tweeted a screenshot of a document containing bullet points on climate and energy policy that appear to have been written for the presumptive Republican nominee by his former Environmental Protection Agency chief Andrew Wheeler.

“Mr. President, I am sure that a climate question will come up during your debate this week and I suggest the following talking points,” the document reads, signed by Wheeler.

Wheeler then listed multiple bullet points: “Under my Administration CO2 emissions went down, and at the same time we became more American energy dominate which helps Americans at the gas pump and with their electricity bills,” he wrote. “We can do both. Biden just increased the energy costs for everyone.”

While carbon emissions did drop under Trump’s administration, pollution levels decreased at a slower rate than they did under Barack Obama. Trump’s low carbon levels were likely helped by lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic that brought travel and industry to a screeching halt.

Wheeler wrote a point attacking President Joe Biden’s decision to rejoin the Paris climate accord, which Trump had exited during his term, claiming the move sent money overseas to “benefit other countries like China.” Wheeler also suggested criticizing Biden’s climate and tariff policies, claiming that they are causing people to buy “Chinese solar panels instead of American energy.”

“Under my Administration we will continue to reduce CO2 and focus on American made energy,” Wheeler wrote.

The notes from Wheeler also advise the former president to bring up Biden “canceling pipelines,” in the case that “you get push back during rebuttal and you need another point.”

Note that Trump’s comments on the environment don’t make a single reference to climate change, as during his presidency he marked himself as one of the many Republicans who is staunchly in denial about the existential threat of global warming.

Biden’s campaign hit back, noting that Wheeler is a former coal lobbyist.

Wheeler took over the EPA from Scott Pruitt in 2019 and immediately set about deregulating the agency, repealing Obama’s Clean Power Plan, and removing restrictions on U.S. fossil fuel power plants put in place to lower their carbon dioxide emissions. In general, Trump’s approach to climate legislation seemed to be to just undo everything from the previous administration—and that appears to be his plan again if he’s elected in November.

Trump won’t be able to actually use any pre-written talking points during the 90-minute debate. Each candidate will only be given a bottle of water, a blank pad of paper, and a pen while onstage. According to CNN’s terms, their campaign staff will be unable to communicate with them during the breaks.

It’s really not clear why Trump would bother to share his talking points. Maybe he doesn’t think he’ll get the chance to say them; maybe he doesn’t think he can actually remember them.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer may have attacked President Joe Biden for utilizing email aliases, but he’s no stranger to the practice himself.

Earlier this month, it was reported that Comer had used two pseudonymous email addresses instead of his government one while serving as Kentucky agriculture commissioner, both of which were uncovered during a records request into Comer’s 2014 marijuana mishap. But a new FOIL request filed by The Daily Beast’s Roger Sollenberger has uncovered an eyebrow-raising trove of other aliases used by the Kentucky representative—approximately 1,600 to 2,700 more.

“In a previous communication, you were advised that more than 1591 parent emails containing 199 attachments had been identified as possibly related to your request,” the FOI officer email to Sollenberger read in part. “During a subsequent search, we found an additional 2,716 emails and attachments possibly related to your request.”

One finding in the document load suggested that Comer had used one such alias to handle classified information.

Some parts of the request were denied, including one exemption that was particularly notable.

“One email from a loan officer to former Commissioner Comer discussing a personal financial matter that was unrelated to government business was redacted,” the letter read.

Judge Aileen Cannon denied a motion by Donald Trump’s legal team on Thursday, but she isn’t ready to stop what legal experts have decried as inessential hearings intended to indefinitely delay the actual trial.

The denied motion pertained to Trump’s effort to suppress 32 classified documents seized by the FBI during its raid on Mar-a-Lago. But in the same order, she granted Trump’s team an evidentiary hearing that could suppress key obstruction evidence, including former Trump attorney Evan Corcoran’s notes that describe a client who not only knew he had committed a crime but was also knowingly attempting to obstruct the federal effort to retrieve the documents.

The decision to hold what special counsel Jack Smith’s office has described as a “mini-trial” over the notes would effectively overrule a D.C. District Court’s decision that ruled that Corcoran’s notes fell under a crime fraud exception of attorney-client privilege. It would also further postpone the classified documents trial, likely until after the November election, after which Trump could theoretically pardon himself from the federal charges.

In a written order clearly conscientious of the time-wasting criticisms being levied against her, Cannon claimed that there “is a difference between a resource-wasting and delay-producing ‘mini-trial,’ on the one hand, and an evidentiary hearing geared to adjudicating the contested factual and legal issues on a given pre-trial motion to suppress, on the other.”

Trump faces 42 felony charges in the case related to willful retention of national security information, corruptly concealing documents, and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Meanwhile, the Trump-appointed judge overseeing the case has slow-walked the trial so aggressively that she has been accused by legal experts of attempting to postpone it indefinitely. Last week, Cannon began hearing arguments not related to Trump’s actions—but instead on whether Smith’s appointment to the case, and its subsequent prosecution, was constitutional.

It’s exceptionally cool and normal that the network hosting the Biden-Trump debate has been forced to roll out stopgaps to prevent a descent into chaos. CNN on Wednesday explained in child’s terms how they’ll be muting mics at Thursday night’s presidential debate to avoid interruptions, sending MAGA viewers into a frenzy.

CNN’s Victor Blackwell and Phil Mattingly demonstrated how it will sound when a candidate attempts to interrupt the other, showing a green light appearing on their podium when their mic is on and—get this—turning off when their mic is off. According to Mattingly, the same explainer was provided to both the Trump and Biden campaigns and by appearing at the debate, both are agreeing to abide by the muted mic rules. Notably, the muting appears intended to protect against cross talk, a disruption where no one can make head or tail of what anyone is saying—not to preemptively silence the content of a candidate’s response.

The very simple rule was enough to set off Trump’s base.

While MAGAs fume, many view CNN’s decision to mute mics as a grim indictment on the state of debate that requires technological intervention to ensure the basic rules are followed—and the unwillingness to let the debate get derailed by a certain Republican presidential candidate prone to ranting incoherently.