I’m the Man; The Hastings Center for Bioethics, July 6, 2026

 Arthur Caplan, The Hastings Center for Bioethics; I’m the Man

"Why should we in bioethics care about what image of masculinity is being promoted in American or other cultures? There are many reasons.

Views of masculinity are closely tied to male health. Doctors are concerned about how the online emphasis on looksmaxxing is harming teenage boys’ mental health. When men are told they ought to be stoic, bottle up their feelings, and tough out stress and anxiety, they wind up sicker and miss out on support they would benefit from. When a politician is chided as unmanly and unfit for leadership for crying in public–as has happened to Tim Walz, John Boehner, Chuck Schumer, Adam Kinzinger, and Joe Biden, just to mention a few–it sends a lousy message about emotional health, and about leaders who take appropriate pride in the virtues of empathy and solicitude.

Manliness is defined these days by MAGA and MAHA as being swole and jacked. Role models come from phony sports like pro wrestling, vicious ones like UFC and professional slapping, and the recent steroid-infused enhanced games. When the President and his staff use AI to turn him into a muscle-bound fantasy in social media posts or promote testosterone replacement therapy for men young and old, then the culture begins to believe that only a muscular build, however constructed, is desirable as manly. The implications for inclusivity and authenticity are significant.

Extolling dominance, assertiveness, power, promiscuity, and violence may lead to abuse, sexual misconduct, repression, exclusion, and thwarting the opportunities of others. The toxic masculinity on display too often in American politics, business, social media, and sports means that men, and especially young men, see extreme caricatures of huge, domineering tough guys and a lack of positive, constructive uninflated male role models. 

Toxic masculinity distorts the ethos of healthcare and the ethical perspective that men bring to policy formation. Toxic masculinity is fertile soil for the increasing turn among MAHA and tech bros toward an unapologetic eugenics.

The depiction of men and what the current culture deems manly will be with us long after Andrew Tate, David Goggins, and looksmaxxers become passe. Articulating an alternative view and promoting it as manly (and very cool) is an important bioethical project.

Bioethics must remain alert and identify toxic masculinity when it rears its ugly head in prescriptions about how boys and men ought to behave. And bioethics must continue to explore, articulate, and disseminate views of masculinity in healthcare and health policy that are inclusive, are scientifically grounded, foster possibilities, and are ethically just."

The Trump Administration Is Lying About Gun Rights and the Death of Alex Pretti; Reason, January 25, 2026

 ROBBY SOAVE, Reason; The Trump Administration Is Lying About Gun Rights and the Death of Alex Pretti

"As with the killing of Renee Good two weeks ago, the legal threshold at which lethal force can be justified is whether the officer who killed Pretti reasonably feared for his own safety. Only a careful, impartial investigation can determine that. The Justice Department has declined to conduct such an investigation into Good's death, instead seeking to investigate the victim's family.

Video footage of Pretti's death shows federal agents using pepper spray on protesters. Pretti appears to be recording the altercation with his cell phone. After an agent shoves one of the protesters to the ground, Pretti moves to assist her. Several CBP agents then decide to bring Pretti down.

It's conceivable that the agent who shot Pretti had the impression that he was reaching for his weapon—though the first shot clearly went off after another agent disarmed the protester. It's also possible that the killer didn't have even that much justification. Yet federal authorities have all but ruled out that possibility, and are making abjectly false statements in support of their mendacious posture.

Noem has repeatedly claimed it as a fact that Pretti intended to harm officers. "This individual showed up to a law enforcement operation with a weapon and dozens of rounds of ammunition," she told reporters. "He wasn't there to peacefully protest. He was there to perpetuate violence." Miller flatly asserted that Pretti was a "domestic terrorist" who "tried to assassinate federal law enforcement."

These are lies. They have no evidence that Pretti wanted to kill anyone. Even if evidence were unexpectedly to come out tomorrow that he was secretly a would-be assassin, it would still be wrong for officials to state as fact that Pretti intended to kill. There are no known facts that establish murder as his motivation. This is a man who was watching officers interact with protesters and recording it on his phone. Contrary to what the Department of Homeland Security wrote on X, he did not approach law enforcement, let alone with a gun drawn."

Lies, violence and the American state; Democracy Docket, January 25, 2026

 Marc Elias, Democracy Docket; Lies, violence and the American state

"In early 1974, as he awaited his fate for writing about the horrors of the Soviet penal system, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn decided to take on the authoritarian regime’s most potent tool: lies. “In our country,” he wrote to Western journalists, “the lie has become not just a moral category, but a pillar of the state. In breaking with the lie, we are performing a moral act, not a political one.”

Several weeks later, on the day he was exiled from his country, he explained the connection between government lies and state-sponsored violence against citizens:

When violence bursts onto the peaceful human condition, its face is flush with self-assurance. It displays on its banner and proclaims: “I am Violence! Make way, step aside, I will crush you!” But violence ages swiftly. A few years pass — and it is no longer sure of itself. To prop itself up, to appear decent, it will without fail call forth its ally —Lies. For violence has nothing to cover itself with but lies, and lies can only persist through violence...

Donald Trump is an infamous liar. He has lied his way through business, law and politics. The movement he built is based on lies — lies about the economy, immigration and crime. But its most important lie — the Big Lie — is about democracy itself.

Trump abhors democracy because it allows ordinary Americans to reject his lies. Even worse for Trump, it allows us to reject him.

When voters did exactly that in 2020, he responded with more lies — lies in court, lies in the media, and lies to his supporters. On Jan. 6, 2021, those lies turned into violence.

Yet, as Solzhenitsyn suggests, that was not the end of the story. The violence itself then required more lies — about the Capitol Police, the Department of Justice, election workers, judges and his political enemies.

But something has changed in recent weeks. The lies are no longer about shadowy figures wielding great power and influence. They are now targeting everyday citizens — people standing in their own communities, in front of their homes, protecting their neighbors."

MAGA Official Slammed for Clobbering the Living Christmas Lights Out of AI Santa Claus; The Daily Beast, December 28, 2025

 Will Neal, The Daily Beast; MAGA Official Slammed for Clobbering the Living Christmas Lights Out of AI Santa Claus

[Kip Currier: I was curious about Indiana State Sen. Chris Garten's values and background when I saw this story. So it's eye-opening to see his own descriptor of himself on his Facebook page:

"My name is Chris Garten. I am a Christian, husband, father, Marine Corps veteran..."

https://www.facebook.com/GartenforSenate/

Though Garten's military service is commendable, nowhere in the Bible would the Christian Jesus condone the kinds of actions that Garten portrays himself performing in these AI-generated images of himself brutalizing Santa Claus. How do such images advance one of Jesus's greatest Commandments to "love thy neighbor as thyself" (Matthew 22:39, Mark 12:31)?

How does a person who self-identifies as a Christian justify such depictions to others, as well as when he prays? Especially when Jesus stands for helping the "least among us" (Matthew 25:40) and says that "the last shall be first" (Matthew 20:16).

Even in jest, do these images convey a sense of good judgment or an elected official who is a positive role model in a free and democratic society?]

[Excerpt]

"A MAGA official has branded his critics “snowflakes” after marking this year’s holiday season by sharing his apparent fantasy of whaling on a defenseless Saint Nick on the steps of Indiana’s State Capitol building.

State Senator Chris Garten shared the AI-generated images on X on Christmas Day. One of the four pictures features the two-term Republican state senator, decked in a sleeveless suit à la WWE, kicking a bewildered Santa Claus squarely on the chin to send the beloved, age-old children’s folk character sailing backwards through the air.

A second shows the MAGA official launching himself forward with the apparent intention of following up with a flying punch to the jaw. A third shows him further brutalizing the trembling, mythic gift-giver as he writhes in agony on the floor...

“Lots of intolerance, swearing, and outrage on display over a few AI pics I had a blast designing with my kids,” he wrote in a subsequent post. “Some of you clowns are just insufferable. Hopefully your negativity stays in the comments and not directed at your families.” 

“Merry Christmas, snowflakes,” Garten added, accompanied by another AI-generated photo of himself in a Santa suit, pointing at an oversized snowflake."

MAGA breaks with Trump on mocking Rob Reiner's killing; Axios, December 15, 2025

 Tal Axelrod, Axios ; MAGA breaks with Trump on mocking Rob Reiner's killing

"President Trump torpedoed MAGA influencers' calls for compassion after the killing of director Rob Reiner, mocking the longtime liberal activist as a victim of "Trump derangement syndrome."

Why it matters: Many MAGA influencers vowed after the assassination of Charlie Kirk that they would never celebrate or mock the untimely death of a political opponent. 

• Trump abandoned that moral high ground the morning after Reiner and his wife were found dead in their Los Angeles home — drawing rare criticism from his Republican allies.
• 
  

What they're saying: "Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME," Trump posted on Truth Social Monday.

• "He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before."

Driving the news: When news initially emerged of Reiner's death Sunday night, many MAGA voices expressed sympathy and drew direct comparisons to Kirk's assassination.

• "You won't see people on the right celebrating the horrific murder of Rob Reiner and his wife. Compare to the Left's reaction to Charlie Kirk's murder," MAGA podcaster Jack Posobiec posted Sunday night.
• 
  
• Turning Point USA spokesman Andrew Kolvet tweeted a clip of Reiner responding "with grace and compassion" to Kirk's assassination: "This video makes it all the more painful to hear of he and his wife's tragic end. May God be close to the broken hearted in this terrible story."
• 
  

After Trump's incendiary post, several Republicans criticized the president for politicizing the apparent murder. Reiner's son Nick has been arrested in connection with the death of his parents.

• "Rob Reiner and his wife were tragically killed at the hands of their own son, who reportedly had drug addiction and other issues, and their remaining children are left in serious mourning and heartbreak. This is a family tragedy, not about politics or political enemies," Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a Trump ally-turned-critic, wrote Monday.
• 
  
• "A man and his wife were murdered last night. This is NOT the appropriate response. The Right uniformly condemned political and celebratory responses to Charlie Kirk's death. This is a horrible example from Trump (and surprising considering the two attempts on his own life) and should be condemned by everyone with any decency," added Trump's former lawyer Jenna Ellis."

What a presidential president would have said about Charlottesville; Washington Post, August 12, 2017

Editorial Board; Washington Post; What a presidential president would have said about Charlottesville

"HERE IS what President Trump said Saturday about the violence in Charlottesville sparked by a demonstration of white nationalists, neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members:

We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides. On many sides.

Here is what a presidential president would have said:

“The violence Friday and Saturday in Charlottesville, Va., is a tragedy and an unacceptable, impermissible assault on American values. It is an assault, specifically, on the ideals we cherish most in a pluralistic democracy — tolerance, peaceable coexistence and diversity.

“The events were triggered by individuals who embrace and extol hatred. Racists, neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members and their sympathizers — these are the extremists who fomented the violence in Charlottesville, and whose views all Americans must condemn and reject.

“To wink at racism or to condone it through silence, or false moral equivalence, or elision, as some do, is no better and no more acceptable than racism itself. Just as we can justly identify radical Islamic terrorism when we see it, and call it out, so can we all see the racists in Charlottesville, and understand that they are anathema in our society, which depends so centrally on mutual respect.

“Under whatever labels and using whatever code words — ‘heritage,’ ‘tradition,’ ‘nationalism’ — the idea that whites or any other ethnic, national or racial group is superior to another is not acceptable. Americans should not excuse, and I as president will not countenance, fringe elements in our society who peddle such anti-American ideas. While they have deep and noxious roots in our history, they must not be given any quarter nor any license today.

“Nor will we accept acts of domestic terrorism perpetrated by such elements. If, as appears to be the case, the vehicle that plowed into the counterprotesters on Saturday in Charlottesville did so intentionally, the driver should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. The American system of justice must and will treat a terrorist who is Christian or Buddhist or Hindu or anything else just as it treats a terrorist who is Muslim — just as it treated those who perpetrated the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013.

“We may all have pressing and legitimate questions about how the violence in Charlottesville unfolded — and whether it could have been prevented. There will be time in coming days to delve further into those matters, and demand answers. In the meantime, I stand ready to provide any and all resources from the federal government to ensure there will be no recurrence of such violence in Virginia or elsewhere. Let us keep the victims of this terrible tragedy in our thoughts and prayers, and keep faith that the values enshrined in our Constitution and laws will prevail against those who would desecrate our democracy.”"