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Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Is A Young Earth Creationist

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Antonin Scalia, one of the most conservative justices on the Supreme Court, tipped his hand during a speech on Thursday.

On Thursday, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia delivered the commencement address at a private all-girls 700-student Catholic school in Bethesda, Maryland. How was the small school lucky enough to get a sitting Supreme Court justice? Scalia’s granddaughter was graduating from the school that day.

Justice Scalia, one of the Court’s most conservative justices, is often giving speeches and interviews, not to mention writing legal opinions for the Supreme Court on cases that shape the nation and our future.

His commentary is often amusing – even his closest friend on the Court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the most progressive of all the justices – enjoys his wit and sense of humor.

But often Scalia’s comments reveal the mind of someone who seems stuck in a different century – not the 21st century, not even the 20th.

For example, in a 2013 interview with New York Magazine, Scalia casually acknowledged he not only believes the devil exists, but that the devil is a real person.

Here’s the transcript, which is too riveting to summarize:

SCALIA: I even believe in the Devil.

NY MAGAZINE: You do?

SCALIA: Of course! Yeah, he’s a real person. Hey, c’mon, that’s standard Catholic doctrine! Every Catholic believes that.

NY MAGAZINE: Every Catholic believes this? There’s a wide variety of Catholics out there …

SCALIA: If you are faithful to Catholic dogma, that is certainly a large part of it.

NY MAGAZINE: Have you seen evidence of the Devil lately?

SCALIA: You know, it is curious. In the Gospels, the Devil is doing all sorts of things. He’s making pigs run off cliffs, he’s possessing people and whatnot. And that doesn’t happen very much anymore.

NY MAGAZINE: No.

SCALIA: It’s because he’s smart.

NY MAGAZINE: So what’s he doing now?

SCALIA: What he’s doing now is getting people not to believe in him or in God. He’s much more successful that way.

NY MAGAZINE: That has really painful implications for atheists. Are you sure that’s the ­Devil’s work?

SCALIA: I didn’t say atheists are the Devil’s work.

NY MAGAZINE: Well, you’re saying the Devil is ­persuading people to not believe in God. Couldn’t there be other reasons to not believe?

SCALIA: Well, there certainly can be other reasons. But it certainly favors the Devil’s desires. I mean, c’mon, that’s the explanation for why there’s not demonic possession all over the place. That always puzzled me. What happened to the Devil, you know? He used to be all over the place. He used to be all over the New Testament.

NY MAGAZINE: Right.

SCALIA: What happened to him?

NY MAGAZINE: He just got wilier.

SCALIA: He got wilier.

That exchange concluded with an apparently unhinged Scalia going off on the reporter.

“You’re looking at me as though I’m weird,” the now 79-year old Roman Catholic conservative jurist cried. “My God! Are you so out of touch with most of America, most of which believes in the Devil? I mean, Jesus Christ believed in the Devil! It’s in the Gospels! You travel in circles that are so, so removed from mainstream America that you are appalled that anybody would believe in the Devil! Most of mankind has believed in the Devil, for all of history. Many more intelligent people than you or me have believed in the Devil.”

A 2009 survey by The Barna Group, a Christian polling organization, titled “Most American Christians Do Not Believe that Satan or the Holy Spirit Exist,” disputes Scalia’s claim.

But let’s fast forward to Thursday.

Delivering his speech at his granddaughter’s graduation, Scalia tipped his hand a bit more subtly.

“Class of 2015, you should not leave Stone Ridge High School thinking that you face challenges that are at all, in any important sense, unprecedented,” Scalia, a bit condescendingly, told the graduating class. “Humanity has been around for at least some 5,000 years or so, and I doubt that the basic challenges as confronted are any worse now, or alas even much different, from what they ever were.”

ThinkProgress’ Ian Millhiser offers an intelligent rebuttal of Scalia’s comments.

“Humanity began to develop much more than 5,000 years ago. Early human ancestors began to diverge from the chimpanzee lineage about six million years ago. The first members of the species Homo sapiens are believed to have lived in Africa about 100,000 years ago, and cave paintings and other evidence of human culture exist that are believed to have been created 50,000 years ago.”

Young earth creationists generally believe that God created the earth within the last 10,000 years. This is a fringe view, however, within Scalia’s Catholic faith.

Should it trouble Americans that several of our Supreme Court justices, like Scalia – who are determining the long-term direction of our nation – are of a mind that is so far removed from today’s America, from science, from the Internet, from the day-to-day lives of average Americans who neither believe in the devil nor believe dinosaurs roamed the earth with man?

Here’s Scalia’s speech:

 

Image: Screenshot via myMCMedia/YouTube

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Trump Appeared Unaware His Budget Bill Cuts $1T From Medicaid: Report

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President Donald Trump reportedly appeared to be unaware that the Republican budget legislation, formerly his “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” cuts approximately $1 trillion from Medicaid. In a meeting at the White House on Wednesday, Trump told moderate Republicans not to cut Medicaid, Medicare, or Social Security.

“Trump still doesn’t seem to have a firm grasp about what his signature legislative achievement does,” NOTUS reports. “According to three sources with direct knowledge of the comments, the president told Republicans at this meeting that there are three things Congress shouldn’t touch if they want to win elections: Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.”

The legislation not only cuts $1 trillion from Medicaid, it effectively forces cuts of hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicare, and takes a large chunk—also possibly hundreds of billions—out of SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

The President has repeatedly vowed he will not touch Medicaid.

And as recently as Tuesday, Trump wrote: “Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security Benefits are not being cut, but are being STRENGTHENED and PROTECTED from the Radical and Destructive Democrats by eliminating Waste, Fraud, and Abuse from those Programs.”

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“As the President has said numerous times, there will be no cuts to Medicaid,” a June 29 White House memo claimed. “The One Big Beautiful Bill protects and strengthens Medicaid for those who rely on it—pregnant women, children, seniors, people with disabilities, and low-income families—while eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.”

That memo also claimed, “Medicare has not been touched in this bill— absolutely nothing in the bill reduces spending on Medicare benefits.”

At least 17 million people will lose health care coverage due to the bill’s cuts, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

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Critics blasted the President.

“No matter how far into physical or mental decline he was, there was never a single moment in Biden’s presidency that he appeared to be as checked out about what his administration was doing as Trump appears to be about this bill,” wrote Yahoo Finance reporter Jordan Weissmann.

“Imagine for a moment if Joe Biden did not know at a basic level of generality what the signature piece of legislation he was attempting to pass contained. The media outrage would be measured on the Richter scale but oddly, Trump is not held to this standard,” added another social media user.

And Bloomberg columnist Matthew Yglesias made this request: “Can a reporter ask Trump to explain what Medicaid is? Does he know?”

Watch the video above or at this link.

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Image via Reuters

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‘Every Reason to Be Scared’: Strategist Worried Trump Could Try to Rig or Cancel Midterms

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In a stark warning, a top, veteran Democratic strategist says he believes President Donald Trump could try to rig or cancel the 2026 midterm elections, to retain control of Congress.

“I don’t put anything past him, nothing,” James Carville told former CNN reporter Jim Acosta, as The Daily Beast reported on Wednesday. “To try to call the election off, to do anything he can. He can think of things like that that we can’t because we’re not accustomed to thinking like that.”

The Beast noted that “Carville is so convinced that Trump will rig the midterm elections that he’s already started sounding the alarm.”

“You know people come up to me all the time and say, ‘James. I’m really scared,’” Carville told Acosta on “The Jim Acosta Show” (video below).

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“I said, ‘you should be, you have every reason to be scared. Don’t kid yourself,’” Carville added.

“This is scary s—!” Acosta replied.

“Yeah, it’s really scary,” responded Carville. “Really scary.”

The conversation was sparked by a viewer’s question.

“They want to know,” Acosta said, “Do you worry about vote tampering in the midterms?”

“Do you worry,” the host continued, “about Donald Trump and Stephen Miller and some of these types monkeying around with the midterms and the way we do elections in this country?”

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“In the short word, yes, in the longer word, very,” Carville said.

He went on to suggest that Democrats will do well in the governors’ races in Virginia and New Jersey, which will be held this November.

“I think what may happen is he’ll see the writing on the wall in Virginia,” Carville continued. “This is what I think is gonna happen. In New Jersey, also. He’s going to see retirements and people are going to start coming in and saying, ‘you know we’re getting ready to lose. I got to change, and I got to get some distance,’ and he’s going to see all that coming and I don’t put anything past him.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

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‘Special Place in Hell’: Top Dem Slams ‘Cult’ of ‘People Who Take Food Away’ From Kids

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U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), the Ranking Member of the powerful House Rules Committee, blasted his Republican colleagues for their support of President Donald Trump’s budget bill that will cut $1 trillion from Medicaid, hundreds of billions from Medicare, and greatly reduce the food program known as SNAP—also by hundreds of billions—while giving massive tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans.

As the House began voting on the legislation on Wednesday, giving members just one hour for debate in a rush to meet the President’s July 4 deadline, Rep. McGovern took to the floor.

The Massachusetts Democrat denounced Republicans’ “attack” on SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. “You can live without a lot of things, but you can’t live without food,” he reminded his GOP colleagues.

Speaking to “those Republicans who think that it’s okay to give [billionaire] Jeff Bezos a tax cut, and at the same time, cut food benefits for struggling families,” McGovern declared, “we don’t share the same values.”

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“Unloading billions of dollars in new costs on states, money they do not have, will force them to cut benefits and throw needy people off of SNAP. It is a rotten thing to do,” he added.

“And I believe there’s a special place in hell for people who take food away from veterans, from seniors, from children, from foster youth, and from hungry families. This is sick. This is disgusting.”

He called the rushed floor vote “legislative malpractice.”

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“We are not on a deadline,” he reminded House members. “No looming crisis.”

“We’re here because Donald Trump wants a Fourth of July party to celebrate this garbage bill. He wants fireworks and flags and cameras, not for this country, but for himself. So he says, ‘Close your ears, close your eyes, and vote for this bill.’ Honestly, sounds more like a cult than a Congress to me.”

After listening to a Republican—who was standing next to a big poster of President Donald Trump and fireworks—call for members to support the bill, McGovern declared, “Cult much?”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

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