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Bill Frist: Clean Air Standards Save Lives.

From Senator Bill Frist, M.D., Sept. 17, 2026- Clean air standards save lives. Weakening them is a step backward for public health and the environment.

This week, the EPA proposed eliminating all remaining greenhouse gas emissions rules for coal and natural gas power plants. Many of these regulations have a history of bipartisan support, grounded in the Clean Air Act of 1970 that was authored by my mentor, Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker (R-TN).

As a heart and lung transplant surgeon and former Senate Majority Leader, I see clean air protections as preventive medicine.

Fine-particle air pollution can trigger inflammation, impair blood-vessel function, and promote abnormal clotting, increasing the risk of heart attacks and strokes. The original power-plant carbon standards were projected to deliver additional health benefits through measurable reductions in air pollution.

Any serious assessment of regulatory costs must also account for the costs of preventable illness: hospitalizations, lost productivity, and lives cut short.

In this week’s Myth Diagnosis, I address the claim that clean air standards are “just more red tape.”

My diagnosis? Prevention reversed.

Prescription? Protect the safeguards that protect our health.

We have made real progress toward cleaner air. Now is the time to build on it.

Clean air protections are health protections. Because the world around us shapes the health within us. 

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MAGA is More socialist Than DSA Supporters

by Rod Williams, Sept. 16, 2026 -Under Trump, the government has taken an ownership stake in over 30 large companies. Socialism is government ownership of the means of production. Even a lot of people who align with the DSA do not really support socialism.

Government ownership of the means of production, DSA’s defining program and actual textbook socialism, draws support from just 11 percent of voters, with 79 percent opposed and 63 percent strongly opposed. Even among Democrats favorable to the DSA, it nets out at 59 percent opposition.

The DSA’s defining program, public ownership of businesses, is underwater four to one even among those supporting the DSA. Nor is this the only sign of confused beliefs about socialism among today’s supporters. Other polls of voters under 25 showing 77 percent thought their paycheck should be based on merit, 70 percent wanted to own their own business, and 63 percent saw America as the land of opportunity led Mark Penn and Andrew Stein to remark earlier this month that “today’s young adults must be the most entrepreneurial socialists in history.”

Even socializing only utilities and railways — socialist bread and butter — failed to command majority support among any group polled by The Argument, even though those are exactly the two sectors DSA identifies as pivotal for socialists to nationalize. That proposition is only supported by 48 percent of Democrats who view the DSA favorably, with 38 percent actually opposed. In other words, while support for the socialist label is rising alongside the DSA’s success, apparent support for the key tenets of socialism remains fringe. (Do DSA Supporters Really Want Socialism? | Cato at Liberty Blog)

Of course, while the DSA actually calls for socialism and they accurately define it, most people don't really want socialism. They favor policies more aligned with Social Democracy policies. They want a regulated capitalist economy and strong social welfare programs to promote what they see as equality and social justice. They do not actually want to nationalize Amazon and Kroger. If you think your paycheck should be based on merit and you someday want to own your own business, you are not really a socialist. 

It seems the only people in America who want socialism are Trump supporters. I haven't found any polling to confirm this, but Trump supporters still enthusiastically support Trump and his policies, and I hear no voices on the new right condemning Trump's policy of taking ownership interest in American companies.

If a Democrat administration had taken an ownership interest in over 30 companies, Republicans would have their hair on fire and be screaming bloody murder. Of course, Republicans have abandoned most of what they once believed and now believe whatever Trump is doing is correct. They blindly follow Trump wherever he leads, and he can lead them to accept socialism as long as he doesn't call it socialism. Federal corporate ownership is becoming routine under this Republican administration. Don't tell me that it is not the Republican Party that views socialist policies more favorably.

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Trump Says Don't Worry About AI, the Only Guardrails Needed is a Strong and Smart President

by Rod Williams, Sept. 14, 2026- It seems most people who pay attention are concerned about the danger of AI. Not the President, of course. Here is what he had to say on his Truth Social today. 

I, of course, don't know what should be done about AI. I do not think doing nothing and assuming there is not a problem is the answer.

"Ban it" is not a solution but a slogan. I have no way of knowing whether the dire warnings expressed by researchers and industry leaders are warranted, but enough people are expressing concern that the issue should be taken seriously. The risk of a new wave of biological weapons and autonomous warfare is a serious concern. 

Of course, if the US calls a halt to technological advancement and China and other countries are not restrained, then nothing is accomplished. Unilateral disarmament is not a solution. That is not a reason for despair and doing nothing, however.  We have lived under the threat of nuclear annihilation since 1945 yet we cooperated with an enemy sworn to destroy us and avoided nuclear Armageddon. The arms race was dialed back by things like the Test Ban Treaty and SALT. I think such an approach should be pursued regarding AI, assuming of course, that the threat is real, which I tend to think it is but have no way of knowing with any degree of certainty. 

Since Trump has turned much of the world against us and we have lost much of our soft power and Trump has been destroying alliances and the world order, America would have a more difficult time exerting leadership in the world to address this issue than in the past.  However, we should attempt to rally the world to deal with this issue, again assuming it is as serious as some think it is. 

I am a little suspicious when industry leaders call for government regulations of their industry. I have to ask if this is to lock in an advantage and suppress competition or if it is genuine.  I don't know, so while I am skeptical of the motives of industry leaders, I am not prepared to simply dismiss the industry's expressed concerns. 

There are a lot of questions about the threat of AI and, as of yet, not a lot of answers. In my view, the threat should be taken seriously. The last thing we need is for the President of the United States to say all is fine because I am in charge and I am strong and smart. Oh, and if you think there is a reason to be concerned about AI you are a conspiracy theorist, treasonous, and a traitor. 

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Never Have so Many People Known so Little and Been so Imbued With the Confidence of Their Intellect

by Rod Williams, Sept. 13, 2026 - 

One finds fame on platforms like Twitter by being the lamest, the angriest, the least amenable to thoughtful pushback or open debate or introspection. And Zeus forbid that someone reject tribal orthodoxy. The biggest stars of the Twitter age . . . well, let’s just say that rarely have so many people who knew so little been imbued with so much confidence in their intellect. (Democracy in Silos, by David Earsany, NR)

I came across the above the other day, and it expresses well what I have observed and that of which I am persuaded.  People are getting dumber and dumber, and they think they are informed and intelligent.  I think there was a time when people who were ignorant kind of knew they were ignorant. On certain topics, they would defer to experts and better-informed people. Now, many seem to think an uninformed opinion is just as valuable as an informed one, and they distrust experts. There is a certain pride in having "common sense," and a belief that common sense and a passion are all one needs to argue a case for some proposition or to govern.

I think the rise of new media is a major reason for this.  There are "influencers" with no experience and no credentials who are followed by millions. On the right, there is an explosion of podcasters at the junction of the manosphere and Trumpistan. People take them seriously and think they have discovered the truth and that everyone else has been lying to them.  Of course, this is not only true of right-wing political podcasts, but you see the same certainty of one's views about healthcare topics, alien encounters, and other topics. 

In addition to this certainty of having discovered the truth, those who are promoting unorthodox views are able to reach people who in the past, they would never have reached. Sure, before the widespread use of the internet, one could publish anything one wanted. People had the same right to spread untrue or hatefull or just wrong information, but you can only reach so many people by handing out xeroxed copies on the street, and to found and publish a magazine is a big undertaking. Then, one could only reach a small fraction of the population. In the past, there were gatekeepers. A TV discussion panel was not going to program a person of really fringe views or people who just spread wrong information. Letters to the Editor did not get published if they were too outlandish. Now the gatekeepers are gone.

One thing that led to our current state of political illiteracy is the rise of Donald Trump. Without any evidence and despite over 60 court rulings against the stolen election myths and despite the millions paid in settlements for defamation, about a third of Americans still believe the 2020 election was stolen. Another example of people believing things that are obviously not true is that tariffs are paid by the exporting country. They refuse to believe that it is the consumers who pay the tariffs. This should not even be debatable. The importer pays the tariffs, and he passes them on to the retailer, who passes them on to the consumer.  That is a fact, yet many don't believe it. People not only feel entitled to their wrong opinion but also to their own "facts."

Of course, this raises the question: did Trump spread political illiteracy, or is political illiteracy what led to Trump? I think it is a little of both. At some point in the last thirty or so years, schools began focusing on STEM and had to cut other things, like civics and history. Generations of people grew up without an understanding or appreciation of how government works and the conflicts that led to our democracy. People had to wrestle less with competing and complex ideas.  Not only did civic education suffer, but other critical thinking skills suffered, with there being less emphasis on literature, reading, and composition. 

This decline in critical thinking skills and the ability to reason is greater than just what happens in the political realm. I think it is a general dumbing down of society. There are two articles published in The Atlantic that explore this. One is The Post Literate Age published in the October 2025 issue. This article by George Packer, makes the case about people's failure to read and why it matters:

For one thing, did anyone still read fiction? I mean literary fiction, the kind that aspires to complex characters, subtle themes, and careful attention to prose style. Those novels are gone from the best-seller lists—it’s all sexy dragons now. The novel ceased long ago to occupy the cultural center, giving way first to movies, then TV series, video games, social-media posts, and AI content. The novelist as voice of a generation no longer exists. Literary fiction has become more like classical music—the eccentric taste of a diminishing set of the devoted.

I don't think it matters the topic of the novel so much as exercising the brain the way reading requires. As we read less, we are less capable of rational thought. 

The other article that explores this topic is The End of Reading Is Here, by Rose Horowitch published in the August 2026 issue. It points out that "The decline in reading cuts across age groups, gender, and education levels. Even the demographics that traditionally read the most—retirees, women, and college graduates—have seen a collapse."

Not only are people reading less, but their attention spans are also shrinking and what they do read has been dumbed down. Horowitch points out that New York Times bestsellers today have sentences that are about one-third shorter than they were a century ago.  Nearly 30 percent of American adults cannot paraphrase or make inferences from a multipage text. In 2017, that number was less than 20 percent. Reading scores are plummeting.

Not only is the decline in literacy found in the average American, but the elites are getting less literate also. The article documents this. Some will say that we are getting information from listening to news or podcasts on headphones. The author says that hearing something is no substitute for reading: 

The written word is fundamentally different from oral language. Writing detaches the message from the messenger, allowing for a more dispassionate spread of information than was possible in oral societies. Because writing a phrase takes longer than speaking it, writing forces the author to slow down and reflect. Written language tends to employ more complex sentence structures and vocabulary than spoken language. And unlike speech, it doesn’t disappear into the ether. Readers can return to a text and plumb it for new meaning and understanding. Because writing endures, individuals can temporarily forget what they’ve written but trust that it won’t be lost forever. This frees up the mind to think of new ideas and make new discoveries. ...

Studies have shown that people comprehend less when reading on a digital device than on paper, perhaps because of all these distractions. Devoting extended, undivided attention to a text can now feel like too much to ask. Audiobooks have become a popular alternative to print books at least in part because listening to a book allows for multitasking: You can read while doing the dishes or driving to work.

In this digital age, illiteracy increases: the short-form video and the tweet and the thumbs up and other symbols are replacing reading text and writing text online.  The author points out that as America has become postliterate, Trump is our first postliterate president. 

Trump’s communication style is perfectly suited to an oral society. He employs epithets—“Low-Energy Jeb,” “Little Marco,” “Sleepy Joe”—that are easy to remember and repeat. He contradicts himself as though there is no record of his previous statements. Even his writing is almost indistinguishable from his speech. (It makes sense; Trump reportedly prefers dictation to composition.) His online posts are full of idiosyncratically placed punctuation, capital letters, and exclamation points. Many are memes with little text:

I am pessimistic about the future of America. Trump's policies have weakened America's standing in the world; the world order that kept the peace is falling apart, and America faces an economic crisis. I could think that when Trump passes from the scene, we can restore the old order and reintegrate a fractured world and address our pressing issues; however, I have my doubts.  I fear that an illiterate population, getting dumber by the day, may be incapable of rational thought and discerning the truth from fiction. People want free things and they don't want to pay for them, and they want scapegoats to blame for the problems of the country or their own failings. A post-literate world will be easier to demigod, to manipulate, and to persuade. 

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