New York Times: “A hard-line conservative activist, Ms. Thomas had long been viewed with suspicion by the Republican establishment. Yet her influence had risen during the Trump administration, especially after Mr. Meadows, who like Ms. Thomas has roots in the Tea Party movement, became chief of staff. Now, an examination of her texts, woven together with recent revelations of the depth of her efforts to overturn the election, shows how firmly she was embedded in the conspiratorial fringe of right-wing politics, even as that fringe was drawing ever closer to the center of Republican power.”

“The disclosures add urgency to questions about how Ms. Thomas may have leveraged her marriage to Justice Thomas, who would be ruling on elections cases throughout the battle over the 2020 vote and beyond.”

New York Magazine: QAnon’s takeover of the GOP is virtually complete.

“Pro-Russian channels and QAnon conspiracy theorists think Moscow is launching airstrikes on Ukraine to destroy bioweapon manufacturing labs in order to prevent the American infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci from creating a sequel to the COVID-19 virus,” Foreign Policy reports.

“This theory hangs on the entirely discredited idea that the coronavirus was designed as a bioweapon, perhaps by the U.S. government itself. And yet, the theory is being shared thousands of times, faster than regulated social media networks can yank the conspiracy theory down. On unregulated platforms, such as Telegram and 8chan, the conspiracy theory has become incredibly popular, racking up hundreds of thousands of hits each day.”

“The theory is now being actively contributed to, and promoted, by one Russian embassy, an official Russian state propaganda outlet, and media channels in Serbia and China.”

A new study finds the QAnon conspiracy movement continues to thrive and has even strengthened more than a year after Donald Trump left the White House, The Guardian reports.

“Some 22% of Americans believe that a ‘storm’ is coming, 18% think violence might be necessary to save the country and 16% hold that the government, media and financial worlds are controlled by Satan-worshipping pedophiles.”

New York Times: “As the stream of messages, most signed only Q, grew into a sprawling conspiracy theory, the mystery surrounding their authorship became a central fascination for its followers — who was the anonymous Q?”

“Now two teams of forensic linguists say their analysis of the Q texts shows that Paul Furber, one of the first online commentators to call attention to the earliest messages, actually played the lead role in writing them.”

“Sleuths hunting for the writer behind Q have increasingly overlooked Mr. Furber and focused their speculation on another QAnon booster: Ron Watkins, who operated a website where the Q messages began appearing in 2018 and is now running for Congress in Arizona. And the scientists say they found evidence to back up those suspicions as well. Mr. Watkins appears to have taken over from Mr. Furber at the beginning of 2018. Both deny writing as Q.”

David Corn: “A few days ago, Cruz sent out a fundraising email embracing the right-wing crackpot notion that the insurrectionist January 6 attack on the US Capitol was orchestrated by the FBI or another government agency.”

“Hardcore Trumpists, most notably Fox host Tucker Carlson, have pushed the fact-free idea that the Deep State engineered the assault on Congress to discredit Trump and his political movement. And Cruz has rushed to the front of the loony train.”

QAnon followers claim Donald Trump was not at his rally in Arizona on Saturday, but that the person they saw was actually a “body doubly” or even John F. Kennedy in disguise, Newsweek reports.

Vice News: “Having spent the last two-and-a-half months holed up in Dallas awaiting the reappearance of John F. Kennedy and his son, a group of two dozen or so QAnon followers, led by an antisemitic guru called Michael Protzman, made the 1,000 mile trip to hear Trump speaking at his first major rally of 2022.”

“Ahead of the rally, Protzman, or Negative48 as he’s known to his followers, predicted the event would feature some major revelations. While most QAnon followers criticized Trump for talking about returning in 2024 rather than trying to overturn the 2020 election result, Protzman told his followers that something huge happened in the desert on Saturday night.”

“This is an emergency Christmas Day warning to President Trump. You are either completely ignorant… or you are one of the most evil men who ever lived… What you told Candace Owens is nothing but a raft of dirty lies.”

— Alex Jones, pushing back on former President Trump’s claim that the coronavirus vaccines work.

“A group of unvaccinated people who attended a huge conspiracy conference in Dallas earlier this month all became sick in the days after the event with symptoms like coughing, shortness of breath, and fever,” Vice News reports.

“Instead of blaming the global Covid pandemic, however, the conspiracy theorists think they were attacked with anthrax.”

The family of a QAnon member “who left her husband and children behind in Delaware to follow a fringe QAnon cult leader to Dallas last month, has been drinking a chemical cocktail containing chlorine dioxide, an industrial disinfectant, among other substances,” the Dallas Observer reports.

“It’s unclear why the group is drinking the chemical potion, as many believe the coronavirus, which has killed over 800,000 people in the U.S. and millions worldwide so far, is a government fabrication.”

White supremacists and far-right extremists are deploying Covid-19 conspiracy theories on Telegram to “expand their reach and recruit followers,” the AP reports.

“The tactic has been successful: Nine of the 10 most viewed posts in the sample examined by the researchers contained misleading claims about the safety of vaccines or the pharmaceutical companies manufacturing them. One Telegram channel saw its total subscribers jump tenfold after it leaned into Covid-19 conspiracy theories.”

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) tweeted that “365,348 children went missing in 2020” and criticized “the media” for lacking coverage of that statistic, Insider reports.

She added: “There enlies the problem,” appearing to intend to use the phrase, “therein lies.”

“While that number is technically correct — there were 365,348 reports of missing children entered into the FBI’s National Crime Information Center database last year — nearly 95% of those were categorized as runaways, or children who leave home without permission and stay away for at least one night.”

Jitarth Jadeja: “I left QAnon back in 2019, but I don’t seem to be able to walk away. I talk about my experience a lot — to the Washington Post, CNN and Rolling Stone magazine among many others. I even apologized to Anderson Cooper on his show for having once thought that he ate babies.”

Daily Beast: “Former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn has embraced his position as a hero to QAnon conspiracy theorists. He took the QAnon oath, sold QAnon T-shirts, and even auctioned off a QAnon quilt. He appeared at a QAnon convention and signed books with a QAnon slogan. Some QAnon followers even believe that Flynn is “Q,” the mysterious figure behind QAnon.”

“But a recording released late Saturday night by a one-time Flynn ally suggests that the retired three-star general privately believes QAnon to be ‘total nonsense.’”