For “the integrity of the court”: Why Clarence Thomas’ wife is a major problem for the Supreme Court

Progressive advocacy groups are calling on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from cases relating to the activism of his wife, Ginni Thomas, a prominent conservative operative whose political activities, the groups say, call the court’s nonpartisanship into question.

“We respectfully ask you to recuse yourself from all Supreme Court cases where a potential conflict of interest exists or appears to exist between the possible outcomes of the case and your wife Virginia ‘Ginni’ Thomas’ political activities,” the groups wrote to the justice in a letter exclusively obtained by Salon. “No justice – now or at any time in history – has had a spouse whose role as a key political strategist has raised as many conflicts as you face. The breadth and depth of these conflicts demands an ethical response.”

The sharp missive – released on Tuesday by Take Back the Court, Indivisible, People’s Parity Project, and Stand Up America – comes amid a broader political reckoning over Ginni Thomas’ potential influence on her husband’s jurisprudence.

Last month, The New York Times reported that the Thomases have “defied” the ethical norms of the Supreme Court, detailing, most notably, Ginni Thomas’ role in a failed scheme to illegitimately reinstall Donald Trump as president in the 2020 election. In her work with the conservative Council for National Policy, the outlet reported, Ginni Thomas helped draft and circulate “action steps” pressuring Republican state lawmakers to replace their state electors with partisan pro-Trump appointees.

Ginni Thomas has also directly lobbied on a number of issues that have made their way to the Supreme Court, the letter noted.

During the 2000 presidential election, Clarence Thomas, her husband, cast the deciding vote in Bush v. Gore, a Supreme Court case that settled a recount dispute in Florida between former vice president Al Gore and George W. Bush, who later became president. At the time of that decision, Ginni Thomas had been working for the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which was helping staff the Bush’ then-prospective administration, according to the Times.

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A similar conflict of interest presented itself in June 2018, when Clarence Thomas cast the deciding vote on Trump’s “Muslim ban,” which barred foreign nationals from predominantly Muslim countries from traveling to the U.S. In 2017 and 2018, The New Yorker reported, Ginni Thomas’ consulting firm raked in $200,000 from a conservative nonprofit that submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court when it was reviewing the ban in Trump v. Hawaii, which in a 5-4 ruling led to the policy being upheld.

Most notably, in January, Clarence Thomas stood firm as the lone dissenter in Trump v. Thompson, voting against allowing the January 6 selection committee to access president records from the Trump White House in their investigation of the Capitol riot. That decision came just a month after the panel was attacked in an open letter by Ginni Thomas, who in December called on House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., to expel Reps. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., and Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., from the House Republican Caucus over their roles in the probe.

Critics argue that Ginni Thomas’ conduct is cause for concern, especially given that federal justices, like her husband, are expected by the U.S. Code to “disqualify” themselves when “the judge or the judge’s spouse […] [has] an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding.”

But it’s not just Clarence Thomas’s apparent impartiality that’s in question, said Sarah Lipton-Lubet, Executive Director at Take Back the Court. “It’s really the integrity of the court as a whole,” she told Salon. “And with public faith in the court, bottoming out at a record low, there’s really no better time for the justices to show that transparency and ethics matter.”

Indeed, Monday’s letter comes as public confidence in the court continues to plummet. According to a Gallup poll from last September, just 40% of Americans have faith in highest court in the land. Quinnipiac meanwhile found that more than 6 in 10 Americans believe the court’s decisions are motivated by politics.

This perception isn’t helped by the fact that the court’s conservative wing has, in recent years, broken from judicial norms of years past by publicly aligning themselves with right-wing politicians and causes.

Back in September, conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett spoke at an event hosted by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who praised the justice during her introduction, saying that she is “Middle America” and doesn’t “legislate from the bench.” Paradoxically, Barrett went on to argue in her speech that day that the court is “not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks.”

More recently, in February, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch headlined at a closed-door speaking event put on by the Federalist Society, a right-wing network of attorneys and judges who support a textualist read on the Constitution. That event was also headlined by former Vice President Mike Pence and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and featured a session billed “The End of Roe v. Wade?”

“The court is detached from the will of the people and acting incredibly partisan,” said Lipton-Lubet said. “Democrats and Republicans overwhelmingly believe the Supreme Court is motivated by politics, not by upholding the Constitution. And that’s not good for democracy.”

Rowling doubles down on “transphobic” remarks about gender reform bill on International Women’s Day

J.K. Rowling doubled down on her opposition to legislation that would make it “less traumatic and inhumane” for trans individuals to legally change their gender on International Women’s Day.

“You really want your legacy to die on this hill, @jk_rowling?” a Twitter user named Wanda asked the “Harry Potter” author on Tuesday.

“Yes, sweetheart,” Rowling responded. “I’m staying right here on this hill, defending the right of women and girls to talk about themselves, their bodies and their lives in any way they damn well please. You worry about your legacy, I’ll worry about mine.”

In recent days, Rowling has waged a public campaign against the Gender Recognition Reform Bill introduced in Scottish Parliament. In the process, the author has been criticized anew for posting “transphobic” tweets and spewing TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) rhetoric.

The proposed legislation would reform the process by which trans people legally change their gender, including a required diagnosis for gender dysphoria and evidence. Rowling criticized the legislation, which has the support of First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, in a weekend quote tweet.

“The law Nicola Sturgeon’s trying to pass in Scotland will harm the most vulnerable women in society: those seeking help after male violence/rape and incarcerated women,” the author wrote. “Statistics show that imprisoned women are already far more likely to have been previously abused.”

Rowling reiterated her disapproval of the bill as a new week began, claiming on Monday that “evidence” of “negative consequences” was being “ignored.” According to The Times, the groups “voiced concerns that the proposals could erode women’s sex-based rights and access to women-only spaces and services, including hospital wards and refuges.”

“Multiple women’s groups have presented well-sourced evidence to Nicola Sturgeon’s government about the likely negative consequences of this legislation for women and girls, especially the most vulnerable,” Rowling tweeted in a two-part thread. “All has been ignored.”

“If the legislation is passed and those consequences ensue as a result, the [Scottish National Party government] can’t pretend it wasn’t warned,” she added.

Rowling did not share what “evidence” or statistics she was citing in either instance.

Exactly this. The law @NicolaSturgeon's trying to pass in Scotland will harm the most vulnerable women in society: those seeking help after male violence/rape and incarcerated women. Statistics show that imprisoned women are already far more likely to have been previously abused. https://t.co/LPN8cx1Vf4

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) March 5, 2022

In a recent appearance on BBC Radio 4’s news program “The World At One,” Sturgeon “fundamentally disagreed” with Rowling’s claims.

“This is about a process — an existing process by which people can legally change their gender,” Sturgeon said. “And it’s about making that process less traumatic and inhumane for trans people, one of the most stigmatized minorities in our society. It doesn’t give trans people any more rights — doesn’t give trans people one single additional right that they don’t have right now — nor does it take away from women any of the current existing rights that women have under the Equalities Act.”

Rowling infamously came under fire for allegations of transphobia in June 2020, when she blasted a Devex op-ed for using the term “people who menstruate” instead of “women.”

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“I’m sure there used to be a word for those people,” she said on Twitter. “Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”

As Salon’s Ashlie Stevens wrote, “Rowling went on to write several blog posts, including a 3,500-word essay, filled with tired transphobic talking points, like the idea that allowing individuals to use the public restroom associated with their gender identity is a greenlight for predators to harass young women.”

Rowling’s recent tweets arrive only a month before the upcoming release of “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore.” The film is slated to premiere on April 8 in the U.K. and April 15 in the U.S.

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Manic pixie death girl: “Killing Eve” and the adorable assassin

Everyone loves an onscreen assassin: how cool they are, how capable. How quickly they get away and how effortless they make ending a life look, generally while clad in black leather or formalwear and uttering one-liners. From James Bond to Jason Bourne, TV and film portrayals usually present those characters who kill for work as nonchalant and aloofly awesome.

Enter Villanelle of “Killing Eve.” She’s casual in her killing, like the rest of them. But the anti-heroine of the BBC America and AMC+ show has another element in her arsenal, as lethal as the stabby hairpin she has used to dispatch a target or two: She’s lovable.

Now in its fourth season, “Killing Eve” follows two main women: Eve (Sandra Oh), an intelligence officer in the United Kingdom who has a passion for researching female assassins — and has found a new one. And Villanelle (Jodie Comer), the Jean Valjean to Eve’s Javert, a hired assassin who might be in love with Eve. (OK, more than “might.”)

The obsession is mutual.

And the attraction is obvious. Even before Eve and Villanelle meet in person (and what a meeting it is), they’re drawn to each other: Eve to a woman who would behave so intensely, violently and efficiently, beyond rules; Villanelle to a woman who would be so taken and impressed by her, and who plays by the rules. Some of the time.

Villanelle is presented by the show as a psychopath (but Eve might have tendencies too); and at first, Eve’s attraction to Villanelle feeds the killer’s outsized ego. She wants to impress Eve. It’s flattering to Villanelle that Eve is so interested in her.

But face it, Villanelle is interesting. As a woman, she’s a rarity in the assassin world that so enthralls Eve, perhaps for more than simply professional reasons. Villanelle is also young, blond and traditionally beautiful, though she twists her beauty to her advantage, using it to gain entry and trust and often hiding herself in elaborate disguises (the pink maid outfit with the pig mask was a personal favorite).

Assassins and spies use their looks to kill, from La Femme Nikita to Lorraine Broughton of “Atomic Blonde.” A key part of the training for deeply-embedded Soviet spies Philip and Elizabeth Jennings in “The Americans” is learning to deal with sexpionage: having sex with targets in order to gain trust, information or to have an opportunity to terminate them. For Elizabeth, her KGB training leads to the trauma of a darker and real-life military issue: rape.

Because of her experiences, because of her job and her commitment to her native country, because of who she is, Elizabeth (Keri Russell) was always cool as a character. One of the many joys of “The Americans” was watching Russell, to see what stone-cold boss move Elizabeth would do each week — how she would shut Philip down or say a line like “If you knew how tired I was, you wouldn’t still be talking” or “I’m sorry I didn’t kill you. That’s my apology,” ice shooting from her eyes.

Elizabeth makes Villanelle look like a kindergarten teacher. While Elizabeth commits wrongdoings because she believes they are noble and right, Villanelle does not seem to know right from wrong. And while Villanelle has the coolness necessary to kill in the moment (and there are many moments), she also exudes warmth. Something that differentiates Villanelle from decades of assassins on screen is that, in many regards, she’s innocent.

She’s certainly immature, from tripping a woman to spilling a child’s ice cream purposefully; to fogging up a car window with her breath, writing HELP on it and making faces at passing cars while riding with her longtime handler, Konstantin (Kim Bodnia).

Villanelle’s most impish moments often come with Konstantin, running a blender to drown out his lecture, insisting that he lift her when she gleefully makes him dance with her. She becomes a child in the presence of the person who is most like a father to her. A family is something Villanelle didn’t get to have for long, as we saw in season 3, and she may have inherited her psychopathy from her cruel mother.

In that season, Villanelle also briefly kidnaps her handler’s child, who, being a tween, seems to be on an equal emotional maturity level with Villanelle. “You’re mine,” Villanelle says to Eve like a preschooler with a shiny new toy—and she doesn’t take kindly to Eve rejecting this absolute.

Villanelle’s immature reactions are on par with someone whose empathy is underdeveloped. But mostly, psychopaths are presented on the screen as only terrifying. (“American Psycho,” anyone?) More than simply charming, Villanelle seems to be truly … kind of fun? The manic pixie death girl who is gleeful, funny, loves glamour and adventure and also could end you at any time.

To terribly paraphrase Dani Rojas: Villanelle brings life. Villanelle also brings death.

“This would be a really bad way to go,” she says to Konstantin, laughing as she jumps up and down while they’re in a tram high above open water. She’s wearing a party dress at the time. Villanelle often is, her most stunning outfit — in a show with stunner after stunner — a hot pink tulle confection paired with combat boots, like a kid on her birthday.

She eschews the black leather edginess or evening wear elegance of the traditional fictional assassin for bright colors, wild prints, fun outfits that often read as young. A suit with a pattern of horses, a fuzzy faux fur jacket that looks stolen from a teen, too-small cartoon PJs that actually were taken from a child.

The way Villanelle dresses reflects the way she regards the world, despite what it has done to her and what it has made her into starting at a very young age. She is still amazed by it.

Visiting her family at home in Russia for the first time in many years, Villanelle’s competitive spirit takes over at a local festival. She enters — and wins — multiple contests for skills utterly new to her, including a shell game and dung throwing. Villanelle wants to learn things and she aches to be accepted.

Perhaps it’s unsurprising that in season four, she’s joined a religious group — and not simply joined, but moved in with the pastor’s family. When Villanelle goes in, she goes all in. How much of this is her desire to disappear — and how much is her desire to belong?

She’s a cold-blooded killer who is kinda naïve. She’s really good at killing. But not good at anything else. When she grabs the microphone to make a speech on a bus trip with the church, you groan. Because you know it’s going to be so embarrassing. But Villanelle is not going to care, even to notice her awkwardness, which Comer plays to perfection. She has a psychopath’s ego and an assassin’s skill, but she has a blundering way of being alive.

And sometimes, she’s not even the best at this whole assassin business. Some of her outfits, as charming and creative as they are, don’t have the desired effect. She doesn’t blend. Compare Elizabeth disappearing into permed wigs and Coke bottle glasses to Villanelle waiting for a teacher outside a school. She slicks her hair back, wears high-waisted khakis, a white-button down, a tie and sweater knotted over her shoulders, yacht-style. She looks great, but does not pass as … whatever she’s supposed to pass as (a schoolboy?). She looks too great. She stands out.

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It’s easy to imagine Villanelle’s line of thinking. It’s simplistic, often in black or white. Eve is hers or not. Someone is good or bad. Nothing exists in the gray area that actually comprises most of life. She thinks and reacts starkly. “Imagine he’s a log!” she screams at Eve, encouraging the woman to use an axe to strike a man who has attacked them. It works.

Stunted, Villanelle goes through life using childlike logic, running on basic instinct. She hasn’t had her basic needs met. That, along with doing her job, and sometimes seeking vengeance, is what drives her. But it’s not enough.

Part of what makes Villanelle sympathetic is the wounded child in her eyes. She does terrible things but seems not to know any better. And not to have better. Last season, in meeting Villanelle’s family, we learned the roots of what might have made her. This season so far, we’re watching her try and try again to capture, in all the wrong places, that unmet need: love.

“I really liked you,” she says simply after Eve stabs her in the finale of season 1. Against our better judgment, we really like Villanelle too.

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Michigan GOP candidate slammed for saying rape victims should “lie back and enjoy it”

A Michigan Republican running for the state House was widely condemned this week for comments he made about rape during a Facebook livestream.

Robert “RJ” Regan, who last week won a special primary election in Michigan’s 74th House district, went on a bizarre tangent during a livestream with the Michigan Rescue Coalition while discussing his calls to “decertify” the 2020 election over repeatedly debunked voter fraud conspiracy theories.

“Having three daughters, I tell my daughters, ‘If rape is inevitable, you should just lie back and enjoy it,'” Regan said.

A fellow guest called Regan’s remark “shameful.”

“I tell my daughters, ‘If rape is inevitable, you should just lay back and enjoy it,’” says Robert Regan, the favorite to represent MI’s 74th district in the state house. pic.twitter.com/3APRLfKxgG

— Ross Jones (@rossjonesWXYZ) March 7, 2022

Host Adam de Angeli said the show was “streaming on YouTube” but added, “probably not for much longer after what Robert said.”

De Angeli told Michigan’s WXYZ-TV that he believes Regan “misspoke.”

“Maybe not the best analogy, but he was speaking extemporaneously,” de Angeli said.

Regan told the outlet that the remark was “taken out of context.” In a separate statement to Bridge Michigan, Regan said that his remark only meant that “nothing is inevitable.”

“Sometimes, my words aren’t as smooth and polished as the politicians are because I’m not a politician. I’m working on it,” he said. “The only reason the (politically) left trolls attack you is because they know you’re directly over the target, dropping direct hits on an issue. If you’re not scoring hits, they leave you alone.”

But even Republicans in the state condemned Regan’s statement, as well as his previous remarks backing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

“RJ Regan’s disgusting and dehumanizing comments on the horror of sexual assault along with his support of murderous dictator Vladimir Putin are despicable and completely disqualify him from holding public office,” Tori Sachs, the executive director for the Michigan Freedom Fund, a conservative PAC backed by former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, said in a statement to the Detroit News.

“I teach my four young daughters to stand up for themselves, to know their worth, and to fight back and speak out against creeps like Regan,” Sachs said. “RJ Regan doesn’t belong anywhere near the state Capitol, and that is why we endorsed and supported his opponent.”

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One of Regan’s daughters has previously asked voters to oppose her father’s election.

“If you’re in Michigan and 18+ pls for the love of god do not vote for my dad for state rep. Tell everyone,” Stephanie Regan tweeted in 2020 when her dad made an earlier House bid.

Regan told The Hill in 2020 that his daughter had been “sucked into this Marxist, communist ideology” in college and disagreed with him on the subject of racism.

“The only place where I really see systemic racism would be the abortion clinic, cause they seem to target the African American community,” he said at the time. “I don’t buy into this whole systemic racism thing at all.”

Regan ultimately lost that race, but WXYZ reports that he is the “presumptive favorite” in his current race against Democrat Carol Glanville after winning his primary last week by just 81 votes.

“As a woman, human, and public servant, I am stunned that a person who wishes to hold public office would hold such beliefs,” Glanville said in a statement. “I did not think I would need to clearly state on the campaign trail that rape is never inevitable, acceptable, or warranted and is the worst type of personal violation anyone could ever experience. In empathy and compassion, I stand with survivors everywhere while defending human rights.”

Regan previously came under fire for his support of Putin and for spreading baseless conspiracy theories about Ukraine and major Democratic donor George Soros, a frequent target of antisemitic attacks.

“If evil George is supporting [Ukraine] then the opposite is the right thing to do,” Regan tweeted last week. “Massive corruption, bio labs and money laundering is being taken out by Putin; WEF, Soros and Clintons are none to happy about it.”

In another statement, he alleged that the invasion of Ukraine was a “fake war just like the fake pandemic.”

In the past, Regan has shared conspiracy theories that Jewish people were behind the 9/11 attacks and that they control the banks and the media, according to Bridge Michigan. In another post, he called feminism a “Jewish program to degrade and subjugate white men.”

Robert Regan, the GOP-backed nominee for a MI state House seat, shared material blaming Jewish people for 9/11, the Lincoln and Kenney assassinations, and the subjugation of "white men." One post was sourced to a pro-Nazi and Holocaust-denying site. https://t.co/JJ9cg7j9R0 pic.twitter.com/Z4lctXg498

— Eric Hananoki (@ehananoki) March 7, 2022

Noah Arbit, the chairman of Michigan Jewish Democrats, called Regan a “noxious, vile, antisemite, misogynist, and white supremacist.”

“Robert Regan is unfit to represent so much as an insect,” he told Bridge Michigan, “let alone an entire district in the people’s House.”

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A piece of space junk hit the Moon. Oddly, scientists are elated

Usually when a nation-state or a corporation accidentally sends a piece of space junk flying out of control, and it breaks something, other people get upset. Here’s a notable exception: A piece of space junk appears to have collided with the Moon at roughly 5,800 miles per hour on March 4th, and scientists are excited. While the incident underscores an ongoing problem in terms of humankind’s debris-laden exploration of space, it may also provide scientists with an opportunity to learn more the geology of Earth’s moon.

The Moon is full of mysteries, from how it affects our sleep cycles to the presence of carbon dioxide “traps” that could in theory one day be used to help people create lunar colonies. Yet on this occasion it may actually be able to help clear up a mystery — namely, what an impact crater on the Moon looks like immediately after formation. In the process, that could help scientists date existing craters on the Moon and refine our geologic understanding of Earth’s natural satellite.

“The upcoming rocket impact will provide a fortuitous experiment that could reveal a lot about how natural collisions pummel and scour planetary surfaces,” gushes planetary scientist Paul Hayne from the University of Colorado Boulder, who studies the Moon, in a recent article for SciTechDaily. “A deeper understanding of impact physics will go a long way in helping researchers interpret the barren landscape of the Moon and also the effects impacts have on Earth and other planets.”

The piece of space junk in question is a spent rocket booster of unknown origin: Suspected culprits range from a Chinese rocket to a SpaceX rocket, although everyone is unsurprisingly disclaiming ownership. Either way, scientists can confirm that the object is roughly 40 feet long and weighs almost 10,000 pounds. After it made impact, a shockwave likely pulsed through its entire body while its back end was destroyed. Metal debris flew in all directions. If scientists can find the impact crater, they could learn more about the precise way it created the lunar surface of pulverized rocks on the airless landscape.

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Bill Gray, the author of the Project Pluto software that monitors Near Earth Objects (NEOs) and the first person to spot the space junk’s collision course with the Moon, posted on his blog that “I have particularly hoped for a booster to hit on the near side, in an unlit area, near First or Last Quarter; that would presumably be visible from Earth. But we’d have to get very lucky for that.”

He added that “when you think that this is the first unintended lunar impact we’ve had, period, the level of luck required increases.”

Because this object landed on the far side of the Moon, Earth telescopes were not able to observe its actual impact. That said, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will be able to photograph the impact crater in roughly two weeks, once its orbit has taken it above the impact zone. As Hayne wrote — while recalling a 2009 project in which he was involved that entailed intentionally crashing a satellite into a shadowed crater near the lunar south pole —”the accidental experiment of the upcoming crash will give planetary scientists the chance to observe a very similar crater in the light of day.”

Although the spent rocket booster’s collision with the Moon may prove fortuitous, the larger problem of space junk is quite serious. Astronomers estimate that roughly 30,000 objects are orbiting Earth entirely by accident after being put there by human beings: Discarded parts from space stations and rockets, paint chips and broken equipment, lost equipment like spatulas and cameras, shrapnel from collisions and even chunks of frozen urine. Their combined mass is estimated to exceed 9,600 tons, and they can be as large as a Greyhound bus. All of them are stuck in the area known as low Earth orbit (LEO), which is defined as the region from 125 to 1,200 miles above the surface of the planet.

One possible solution to the problem of space junk is to send other craft up that catch them and release them toward Earth’s atmosphere, where they will burn up as they reenter. A spacecraft named ELSA-d (End-of-Life Services) was launched last year from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for that purpose. John Auburn, Astroscale’s managing director in the United Kingdom, told NBC News at the time that it was “enormously complex because you have to exactly match the motion of the spacecraft you’re docking with. When a spacecraft docks with the International Space Station, that’s a very controlled maneuver. But if you’re trying to dock with a failed satellite, it could be tumbling and you have to very slowly come together almost like you’re doing a dance.”

He compared the problem to getting plastic pollution out of the ocean, observing that “this is an issue like plastics in the ocean. We’ve been working for eight years to turn a difficult problem into a business.”

Read more on space junk:

Your blood type may affect how sick you get from COVID-19, genetic study confirms

There are many known risk factors for COVID-19 — chief among them age and immunocompromised status. Now, it turns out that one’s blood type may play a role in the severity of one’s COVID-19 symptoms, adding an unexpected twist to the body of knowledge about SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

According to a paper published last week in the journal PLOS Genetics, those with Type A blood are more likely to get severely sick from COVID-19. In the study, scientists screened more than 3,000 blood proteins to determine which ones actually caused positive or adverse COVID-19 outcomes. “Severity” was, in this context, defined as a COVID-19 case in which a patient required hospitalization and/or respiratory assistance — or actually led to the patient’s death. By the time the scientists were done, they had whittled the number of potential protein suspects down to just over a dozen — and one of them happens to be a protein that determines your blood type.

“Our study does not link precise blood group with risk of severe COVID-19 but since previous research has found that proportion of people who are group A is higher in COVID-19 positive individuals, this suggests that blood group A is more likely candidate for follow-up studies,” Christopher Hübel from King’s College London, co-last author on the study, told New Atlas.

This does not mean that people with Type A blood should panic. There are still a number of other variables that are far more likely to make a person vulnerable to severe illness than blood type, including obesity, age, and pre-existing immune diseases. Even so, it is helpful for doctors to have the knowledge that blood type influences a patient’s prognosis. In addition, there are implications to the findings that span beyond the immediate question of blood type.

“What we have done in our study is provide a shortlist for the next stage of research,” co-last author on the study Gerome Breen from King’s College London told New Atlas. “Out of 1,000s of blood proteins we have whittled it down to about 14 that have some form of causal connection to the risk of severe COVID-19 and present a potentially important avenue for further research to better understand the mechanisms behind COVID-19 with an ultimate aim of developing new treatments but potentially also preventative therapies.”

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As the study’s authors noted in their paper, there were four other proteins causally linked to increased risk of severe outcomes. Likewise, they identified three proteins where higher levels were associated with a decreased risk of hospitalization, need for respiratory support and/or death. Other blood proteins in their own unique ways were linked to more moderate, but still notable, improvements in patient outcomes. Some of these proteins were adhesion molecules, which help the immune system interact with blood vessels.

Scientists hope that learning more about how these molecules protect COVID-19 patients could save lives.

“In summary, molecules that mediate the interaction between immune cells and blood vessels may be important in late stage COVID-19 and moderate severity,” the authors wrote.

This is not the first study to link blood type with COVID-19 outcomes. Scientists had observed a correlation as far back as July 2020. In addition to helping to treat COVID-19, the blood type connection also provides them with a pathway to learn more about how human genes influence their ability to effectively combat this coronavirus.

“What I found helpful was thinking, let’s just assume there are some associations between blood type and Covid, dying of Covid or contracting the disease. What mechanism potentially could underlie this?” Michael N. Zietz of the Department of Biomedical Informatics, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, told Salon last year. “Blood type is determined by a few positions within a certain gene. It’s possible that there are some true variants that are affecting Covid susceptibility within that gene. We don’t definitively know that blood type itself is causal, but it’s an indication something about this gene’s function is causal.”

Read more on how COVID-19 affects the body:

Proud Boys leader indicted on conspiracy charges over Capitol riot

Enrique Tarrio, the onetime chairman of the far-right Proud Boys, had been indicted on conspiracy charges related to his alleged role in coordinating the January 6 Capitol riot.

According to a federal indictment unsealed on Tuesday, Tarrio is the fifth Proud Boys lieutenant to face charges related to the insurrection alongside Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Charles Donohoe and Zachary Rehl.

In a press release, the DOJ said that Tarrio “[directed] and [encouraged] the Proud Boys prior to and during the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and … he claimed credit for what had happened on social media and in an encrypted chat room during and after the attack.”

Tarrio was not in Washington, D.C. on the day of the Capitol riot. However, he was arrested and charged two days earlier for burning a stolen Black Lives Matter flag. Tarrio was also charged with illegally possessing two high-capacity rifle magazines, and was ordered by a judge to leave D.C. Last summer, Tarrio pleaded guilty to the charges and was sentenced to five months in prison.

Tuesday’s indictment specifically charges Tarrio with conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding – which, in this case, was the election certification ceremony.

During the leadup to the insurgency, Tarrio reportedly told his followers to dress “incognito” to avoid being identified by law enforcement, according to The New York Times. Tarrio also reportedly participated in a private chat on Telegram to help plan the attack with other leaders in the group, including Nordean and Joe Biggs, who also faces charges of his own.

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According to the indictment, Tarrio allegedly exchanged messages with a man who was identifying “crucial buildings” to occupy during the riot to “show our politicians We The People are in charge.”

“The revolution is (sic) important than anything,” the man told Tarrio.

“That’s what every waking moment consists of … I’m not playing games,” Tarrio responded.

The indictment additionally ties Tarrio to Stewart Rhodes, the far-right founder of the Oath Keepers who back in January was accused of seditious conspiracy, according to The Washington Post. On January 5, the indictment alleges, Tarrio had a thirty-minute meeting with Rhodes and a number of unnamed participants in “an underground parking garage.”

Rhodes, for his part, has pleaded not guilty, alleging that he never entered the Capitol. He remains in jail as he awaits trial.

As mask mandates are loosened, Americans who opt to continue wearing face masks face harassment

Last week, a video went viral of Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis telling high school students to take off their masks and dismissing the wearing of face masks as “Covid theater.”

DeSantis was at the University of South Florida in Tampa to announce $20 million in funding for cybersecurity and IT training opportunities— nothing to do with masks and COVID-19. “You do not have to wear those masks,” he said, clearly humiliating the students, with a tinge of anger in his voice. “So if you wanna wear it, fine, but this is ridiculous.”

A tweet from reporter Evan Donovan of WFLA (who initially erroneously reported DeSantis’ audience as college students, when they were actually high school students) contains a video of the incident:

NEW: @GovRonDeSantis annoyed with USF students—

"You do not have to wear those masks. Please take them off. Honestly, it's not doing anything. We've gotta stop with this Covid theater. So if you wanna wear it, fine, but this is ridiculous."https://t.co/7j1Pb2hV53 @WFLA pic.twitter.com/ZIOyTHLOh3

— Evan Donovan (@EvanDonovan) March 2, 2022

DeSantis’ words were perhaps unsurprising given the governor’s public stance against mask mandates and vaccinations. Yet these kinds of mask-mocking outbursts are not limited to sitting governors. The Miami Herald recently asked its readers for their tales of being harassed in public for wearing a mask. One reader said they were called a “communist” and a “Fauci puppet” for donning a mask. “I didn’t say anything and just walked away, while he screamed that I should be ashamed of myself for surrendering to tyranny,” the reader, who lived in Florida, said.

As mask mandates lift across the country, many Americans are choosing to keep wearing a mask in public places where they’re no longer required — like the grocery store, offices and restaurants. Notably, wearing a face mask in public was common in many countries pre-pandemic; it is not a new public behavior by any means. Yet not all bystanders are tolerant of those who are still masked up. Durin (who asked not to use his last name), who lives in Washington, D.C., says he was snubbed by a coworker wearing a mask. “I wear a mask indoors most of the time, because around D.C. most restaurants I go to still require employees to wear a mask,” Durin told Salon.

Indeed, what is sometimes called “mask-shaming” has taken various forms throughout the pandemic. Anecdotally, more Americans report that it seems to be becoming common once more.

That might seem like a cultural oddity. After all, the United States has a notoriously laissez-faire culture; why are some Americans so embittered about others donning a mask to the extent that some opt to publicly humiliate them?

In the more extreme cases, like DeSantis, psychologist Dr. Carla Manly — author of “Joy from Fear” — believes that mask-shaming stems from an person’s inability, and unwillingness, to honor the personal preferences of another person.

“A lack of empathy — the ability to put yourself in another person’s shoes — is also apparent when shaming of this sort occurs,” Manly said. “Judgmental attitudes and rigid thinking patterns foster the ‘right or wrong’ mindset that is at work in ‘mask shaming.'”

In some cases, Manly said, actual bullying — as in exerting pressure or force to another person to confirm — occurs.

Manly tied mask-shaming to emotional intelligence, or a lack thereof.

“In truth, those who are emotionally intelligent tend to steer clear of judging and shaming others; there is simply no healthy upside to this type of behavior,” Manly said. The choice to wear a mask — or not — is a very personal one; a person who chooses to wear a mask has the right to do so; to infringe on this right is not only unkind but wholly unfair.”

Indeed, there has been much ado over the “empathy deficit” in America over the last decade. According to the American Psychological Association (APA), scientific research supports the idea that Americans are becoming less caring for others. Psychologists say genetics can play a role in an individual’s lack of empathy, yet community or the lack of community plays a role, too.

Conversely, California-based therapist Nick Bognar said that in some scenarios, mask-shamers could be well-meaning yet express it poorly. In other words, some might genuinely think they are helping others by reminding them they don’t have to wear a mask anymore.

While the CDC says due to low transmission rates masks aren’t needed in many parts of the U.S. for everyone anymore, many scientists disagree — and in any case, those who are high-risk or immunocompromised might understandably want to keep donning theirs.

“People might think that they’re doing someone a favor by reminding them that they don’t have to wear a mask,” Bognar said. He noted that there is a common narrative circulating in some communities that posits that masks are a means to control people. “For those of us who understand that the masks are meant to be a simple, preventative health and safety measure, those beliefs are incomprehensible — but to the people who believe them, the threat of being controlled or having one’s freedoms taken away is very real, and those people are terrified.”

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Bognar said it is notable how “triggering” mask-wearing can be for some people.

“To me, the interesting (and meaningful) piece of it is how angrily people have responded to others wearing masks, which points to how triggering this issue is for them,” Bognar said. “Although Governor DeSantis has dismissed masks as ‘COVID theater’, people do all kinds of theatrical and demonstrative things without anyone confronting them about it.”

If one is mask-shamed, Manly said the best response is usually “no response at all.”

“If a situation seems volatile, it’s often wise to avoid giving any attention to those engaging in shaming behaviors,” Manly said. “In some situations, the most beneficial response may be to simply walk away.”

However, if mask-shaming occurs in a “low-conflict environment,” Manly said it’s acceptable for a person to state their preferences in a “simple, respectful way.”

“In fact, a well-crafted statement that honors each individual’s right to make decisions can deescalate the situation quickly,” Manly said. “As an example, you might say, ‘I honor your choice to not wear a mask, I find it necessary to wear a mask; please respect my choice just as I respect yours. Thank you.'”

Read more on COVID-19:

There are only two Senate Republicans backing the ERA. Both of them are women

Back in March of last year, Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, broke ranks when they introduced a bill that would remove the deadline for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), a proposed Constitutional amendment that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex. One year later, the bill has since then only been referred to the committee level as Republicans have aggressively pushed back against the amendment, working to ensure that the ERA will never be certified – on a technicality.

Recently, Sens. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and Mitt Romney, R-Utah, penned a missive to U.S. Archivist David Ferriero, demanding that he commit to shutting the amendment down over a lack of state support.

“In light of the calls for you to disregard your duty and certify the ERA, we write to ask for your commitment that you, and the acting Archivist who will take over in April, will not certify or publish the ERA, which failed to achieve ratification by the states and is no longer pending before them,” the senators wrote.

The ERA, originally introduced in 1923, was passed back by Congress in 1972 but needed three-fourths of all U.S. states to ratify the amendment by 1979 in order for it to be enshrined into the Constitution. This deadline was eventually pushed to 1982, and by then, only 35 states had ratified the amendment, five of which had already rescinded their support of the rule. But over the past five years, states like Virginia, Illinois, and Nevada have ratified the amendment, which theoretically fulfills the amendment’s criteria for state support.

Opponents have said that Virginia, Illinois, and Nevada’s ratifications are invalid because they occurred well after the deadline originally set by Congress. To this point, Portman, Johnson, and Romney in their letter refer to a January 2020 memo in which the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel claimed that the ERA could no longer be certified due to its supposed deadline being missed.

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However, advocates of the amendment claim that states are not legally obliged to withdraw support of any amendments to begin with, and that the provision has not expired because its deadline was formally written into the ERA’s text.

“It has been nearly 50 years since Congress passed the ERA with overwhelming support from both sides of the aisle,” said Collins in a press release last year. “Maine ratified the Equal Rights Amendment in 1974, and now 38 states have done the same. The ERA will ensure that equality under the law will not be denied or abridged on account of a person’s sex.”

During a recent press conference, Rep. Caroline B. Maloney, D-N.Y., a supporter of the ERA, suggested that Ferriero “believes in the ERA” and should “just certify it.”

“Equality is not a technicality. Equality is a right. We have met every single requirement that was put forward,” she added. “There were only two in the Constitution. One was that you had to have two-thirds of Congress; we had more than two-thirds of Congress when we passed it. And that 38 states needed to ratify it. We’ve done that!”

According to The Washington Post, Ferriero has not expressed explicit support of the amendment. The archivist did, however, note that “a later rescission of a state’s ratification is not accepted as valid,” meaning that the ERA may have enough state support to be ratified, if its deadline is found unconstitutional. But in past rulings, the Post noted, courts have seemingly upheld the constitutionality of amendment deadlines, potentially casting doubt on whether Ferriero could now unilaterally write the ERA into Constitutional law.

How Sylvia Plath’s secret miscarriage transforms our understanding of her poetry

In 2017, one of Sylvia Plath's private letters, which had previously not been made public, included a startling revelation: Plath suggested that her husband, poet Ted Hughes, was responsible for the miscarriage of their child in February 1961.

Heather Clark's recent biography of Plath, "Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath," includes this new information. But no scholarship has yet to contextualize the painful event as a means to reinterpret two of Plath's most autobiographical poems, "The Rabbit Catcher" and "Thalidomide."

As a scholar of 20th-century American poetry, I teach Plath regularly in my university classrooms and direct graduate theses about her works. To me, this new biographical information, together with Plath's drafts and journal entries, reveals how she channeled this painful experience into her poetry.

Details of a miscarriage emerge

From Feb. 18, 1960, to Feb. 4, 1963, Sylvia Plath wrote a series of 14 intensely personal letters to psychologist Ruth Beuscher. In the letters – which span the most volatile era of Plath's marriage, writing and eventual suicide – Plath opens up about topics she didn't discuss with anyone else.

Scholars learned about these letters only in 2017 when they suddenly came up for auction, and a subsequent lawsuit eventually awarded them to Smith College, Plath's alma mater.

As Plath's marriage dissolved – she and Hughes separated in September 1962 – she had no reason to protect Hughes any longer. On September 22, 1962, she wrote to Beuscher: "Ted beat me up physically a couple of days before my miscarriage."

As Clark explains in "Red Comet," one day in early February 1961, Plath, who was four months pregnant, answered the phone at her home in Devon, England. It was the influential BBC personality Moira Doolan on the other line, and Doolan seemed startled to hear anyone but Ted answering.

To Plath, this response was evidence of an affair. She began tearing her husband's writings into long strips. She broke a mahogany table that was an heirloom of Ted's. Plath was furious that he could have been having an affair while simultaneously being, as she wrote, so "impervious" to the "innumerable little umbilical cords" that tied her to her unborn child and 10-month-old girl.

When Hughes found Plath in this rage, he began striking her repeatedly. Her unborn child, about four months along, died within days. Clark asserts the miscarriage likely took place on Monday, Feb. 6, 1961.

The two soon conceived again and their child, Nick, was born on Jan. 17, 1962. Plath died by suicide on Feb. 11, 1963, after having written the most important poems of her life during the six months before her death.

Most of these poems were eventually included in the collection "Ariel," which was published posthumously in 1965. But only in 2004 did two of them – "Thalidomide" and "The Rabbit Catcher" – appear in an updated version. The former, known for its surrealistic imagery, was open to multiple interpretations. The latter was received as a poem that directly addressed Ted's infidelity.

While Plath addressed the topic of miscarriage in her radio play "Three Women" and the poems "Elm" and "Parliament Hill Fields," the poems in "Ariel" seem to substantively build off her own personal experience with losing an unborn child.

A poem imbued with new meaning

The once elusive "Thalidomide," which was written after Nick was born, can now be read within the context of the emotional roller coaster of her miscarriage up through the birth of a healthy son.

Plath begins "Thalidomide" with the image of "O half moon." In Plath's handwritten drafts, which are available at Smith College, you can see that this image is the poem's original title.

This moon is an omen for miscarriage. Letters Plath exchanged with poet Ruth Fainlight reveal that Plath regarded this symbol directly animated by Fainlight's poem "Sapphic Moon," which is also about a miscarriage.

"Thalidomide" then graphically evokes the imagery of a lynching. Something has been dismembered to resemble a dark victim burned until its limbs are short and its face is "masked like a white." The most profound analog is the Billie Holiday song "Strange Fruit," and Plath alludes to the song when she writes, "The dark fruits revolve and fall."

What about the poem's title? There is no evidence Plath ever took thalidomide, a drug developed in 1954 prescribed to treat several symptoms including nausea and anxiety in pregnant women. However, she likely would have read about the horrors of its side effects if taken during pregnancy, which surfaced in 1962 when researchers and doctors discovered that over 10,000 children were born with missing or badly misshapen limbs to women prescribed the drug.

In the poem, Plath connects her experience with the fears of a pregnant woman taking thalidomide. She describes "indelible buds" and "knuckles at the shoulder-blades" arriving with only a "Half-brain." Plath herself was four months through the nine-month term when she had her miscarriage.

Plath's drafts also offer a window into her inspiration and creative process. Before removing such direct references to her miscarriage, she originally describes it as "that abortion" and "big abortion." It is a "sin that cries," complete with imagery that describes a fetus "thin as an eyelid" with "the smell of perilous slumber."

Just 11 months after her miscarriage, Nick would be born.

In one of her most haunting journal entries, she describes his birth: "I shut my eyes, so I would see and feel from the inside – a horror of seeing the baby before Ted told me it was normal."

At the end of "Thalidomide," Plath writes, "The glass cracks across, / The image / Flees and aborts like dropped mercury." The imagery evokes a lightbulb that shatters, releasing mercury gas trapped within.

And just like that, the birth of a child replaces the toxic memory of a miscarriage.

The rabbit died

Two weeks before Plath started writing "Thalidomide," on Oct. 14, 1962, the British newspaper The Observer published an article about how the drug was being tested on pregnant rabbits to show how it caused deformities.

"The Rabbit Catcher" – which was originally titled "Snares" – immediately precedes "Thalidomide" in Plath's version of "Ariel."

For the knowing reader, the old-fashioned saying that hovers silently behind this poem is the phrase "the rabbit died," which comes from the fact that pregnancy tests from the 1920s involved injecting a woman's urine into rabbits. Many people mistakenly believed that an injection that killed the rabbit signaled a positive test.

Among "birth pangs," a "hollow" and "a vacancy," "The Rabbit Catcher" includes objects that resemble umbilical cords. Plath writes of "snares," "Zeroes, shutting on nothing," and "wires." The line "I felt a still busyness of intent" was once read as anxiety over Ted's sexual advances to others; it now reads as if Plath were reliving the process of delivering a lost child too soon. And the final line of the poem – "The constriction killing me also" – points to Plath's feeling as if she, too, is dying.

The phrases from Plath's earlier drafts are illuminating: "I was a flat personage," it was "a clean killing," and it was all "Final, like a bad accident."

Most potent of all, Plath writes in an earlier draft of what can be understood only as her portrayal of Ted's reaction: "It might cause him a morning's anger." This line represents Ted as so emotionally shallow that the loss barely registers.

Is it any surprise that it was Ted Hughes who removed these two poems before "Ariel" was first published?

At the time, only he knew of the deep family trauma they probed. And only in the fully restored 2004 edition of "Ariel" did they appear as Plath intended.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Bill Barr admits Trump attempted to strong arm Ukrainians into investigating Joe Biden

As Russia invades Ukraine, Trump’s relationship with Vladimir Putin is being seen in a whole new light.

In Aug. 2019, as former Attorney General Bill Barr went on his first vacation while serving under Donald Trump’s presidency and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman had just filed a whistleblower report about what he overheard during Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, according to Barr’s new book One Damn Thing After Another.

Barr was “infuriated.”

“Having just broken free of Russiagate, the administration was about to get mired in another mess—this one self-inflicted and the result of abject stupidity.”

For several pages In his book, Barr recalls “stewing” about it when Trump called him to rant about former FBI Director James Comey and the communications with the president he revealed after leaving the administration.

“I thought parts of the President’s conversation were unseemly and injudicious,” he confessed, but ultimately claimed that Trump didn’t break the law.

The Atlantic penned a detailed analysis of Barr’s judicial philosophy about the presidency, explaining that in his mind, the “Founders’ vision of a president” was one “with substantially unchecked powers in what happened next. He would have us believe that this vision of an all-powerful president that he wants to restore has in fact been a reality for most of our history.”

In a 2019 speech to the Federalist Society, Barr claims that his vision of “total and illimitable executive power” is what led every president throughout the 1800s. As the report explained, it doesn’t match the reality of mostly “weak” executives until Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“The greatest expansion of executive power came not early in our history, but in the 20th- and a 21st-century era of the imperial president,” the piece explained.

As Barr speaks to reporters like NBC’s Lester Holt and Savannah Guthrie this week, none have yet asked him whether he believes a president can legally be impeached at all or if any member of the executive branch can face legal accountability.

Barr claims in his new book that he implored Trump to release the transcript of the call immediately so everyone could see how “perfect” it was. The document he released showed Trump saying that he would release the aid that he’d been holding back for months, but “I would like you to do us a favor, though.” That one sentence was interpreted by legal experts as a quid-pro-quo that he wanted Zelensky to publicly announce an investigation into Joe Biden.

Barr went on to recall that he was the most miffed about Trump lumping him in with the likes of Rudy Giuliani as one of his lawyers.

“He had created the false impression that I was involved in efforts to get the Ukrainians to open investigations,” wrote Barr, inadvertently admitting that Trump was trying “to get the Ukrainians to open investigations.”

Barr’s book was released Tuesday and Raw Story has extensive coverage of it here.

Florida Republicans revive deadly “queers recruit” myth with passage of “don’t say gay” bill

Even against an overwhelming backdrop of relentless GOP book banning and censorship attempts of recent months, Florida’s “don’t say gay” bill stands out from the crowd.

There are good reasons why the proposed legislation, which passed the Florida Senate on Tuesday, is drawing national attention and condemnation. The bill doesn’t just ban teachers from allowing any acknowledgment of LGBTQ people in the classroom, it uses the novel “bounty hunter” system Texas used to ban abortion to allow parents to sue schools if, say, a teacher allows a kid with same-sex parents to talk about it in class. Even Kate McKinnon of “Saturday Night Live” jokingly weighed in on a recent “Weekend Update.”

“So, like, one kid can say, ‘I live with my parents,’ but another one has to say, ‘I live in a house with two adult men who bought me when I was young?'”

Despite all the public pressure, Florida Republicans pushed this bill through the legislature and sent it to Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ desk on Tuesday morning. To make it even worse, Republicans, in their eagerness to get the “don’t say gay” bill across the finish line, revived a repulsive, homophobic myth: That queer people are pedophiles who recruit children.

“The bill that liberals inaccurately call ‘Don’t Say Gay’ would be more accurately described as an Anti-Grooming Bill,” Christina Pushaw, DeSantis’ longtime press secretary, wrote over the weekend on Twitter. She followed up by saying that anyone who opposes the bill is “probably a groomer.” The term “groomer,” of course, is just another word for “child molester,” as actual pedophiles are known to “groom” their victims before assaulting them. But (I can’t believe this needs to be said in the year 2022) there is no evidence that LGBTQ people molest children at a higher rate than straight-identified people.

What Pushaw is doing here, of course, is dog-whistling to QAnon and their conspiracy theories accusing pretty much every Democrat around of being pedophiles and cannibals. She’s harkening back to a “gays recruit” myth that is so old that many Americans haven’t even heard it, or at least thought it died out long ago. The myth comes straight out of the 1970s.

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In 1977, religious right icon Anita Bryant and her husband Bob Greene spearheaded a nasty campaign against a proposed Miami ordinance prohibiting job and housing discrimination based on sexual orientation. As the Washington Post at the time reported, the two argued that “passage of the law will enable homosexuals to ‘recruit’ youths.” This myth allowed conservatives to deny that same-sex attraction — and later trans identities — are intrinsic with a side dose of implying that queer people are dangerous sexual predators.

Decades of LGBTQ people telling their coming out stories has done a great deal to destroy this myth, allowing the larger public to hear about how most queer people’s identities come from inside. Indeed, most queer people’s experience was massive pressure from others to be straight or cis, and having to overcome all the pressure to live as their authentic selves. And yet, as we’re finding out from Florida Republicans, a lot of conservatives are still clinging to this idea that everyone is inherently straight and cis, and that the only reason people are queer is because they’re “recruited.”

DeSantis himself invoked the “gays recruit” myth on Friday, insisting that the bill just bans “sexual instruction” and “telling kids they may be able to pick genders.” No one actually believes, of course, that kids are being given how-to lessons in sexual technique at any level of public school. This is just a dressed-up version of his press secretary’s grotesque argument that merely acknowledging the existence of LGBTQ people is somehow sexual predation and “recruitment.”

At the risk of feeding the troll, it’s worth remembering that no one equates acknowledgment of straight people with “recruitment” kids into that lifestyle. If a children’s book has a picture of a heterosexual couple getting married, this is not viewed as “sexual instruction.” But, to hear DeSantis tell it, that same picture of a same-sex couple getting married is perverse, pornographic, and somehow “recruitment.”

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The bill’s sponsor, Republican state Senator Dennis Baxley, also defended the censorship effort by invoking the “gays recruit” myth. During debate over the bill, he argued that LGBTQ kids are “just trying on different kinds of things they hear about.” He went on to say coming out is like “maybe they’re in this club or that club,” and accusing kids of just being confused about who they are.

“All of a sudden overnight, they’re a celebrity when they felt like they were nobody,” he said, trying to explain why kids might feel they are LGBTQ. Notably, he did not consider the possibility that straightness is also something kids might try on and decide they don’t like. The underlying assumption, always, is that straight identities are always authentic, and only queer identities are questionable. Which is an inverse of reality, where many queer people are coerced into pretending to be straight for years, or even decades, due to social pressure.

The same “queers recruit” myth is underlying the new orders from Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas for state agencies to investigate parents of trans children. By signing this order, Abbott is implying that trans kids are being pushed into their identities by overbearing parents, presumably for the same motivations — attention, accolades, woke points, whatever — Baxley assigned queer kids who come out in school. In reality, the vast majority, if not all, of these families follow the same path: The kid themselves starts asserting a trans identity, and the parents are affirming and supporting the child. In many cases, the parents are actually being pushed far out of their comfort zone in doing so, but love for their child is overcoming their doubts and confusion.

It is worth, also, noting that the people being targeted for state “investigation” (read: abuse) are only following the standard care recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics. These parents are consulting with medical professionals and experts before moving forward with the plan to affirm a gender identity in a child who doesn’t agree to the one they were assigned at birth. And in doing so, most parents are giving up a lot, often including the name they gave their child. That’s an act of love and acceptance, not “abuse” or “recruitment.”

But it almost feels pointless to argue these points.

Most of the Republicans reviving the “queers recruit” myth know full well it’s a lie. What they want is not to protect children, but to harm children. This bill is intended to force teachers to shame and marginalize kids who are either LGBTQ, have family members who are, or, in some cases just don’t want to conform to rigid gender roles by being boys who like pink or girls who play sports. In other words, Republicans want to bring back the closet. And they want to coerce teachers, on pain of being sued or fired, to play the role of right-wing gender police.

Mitch McConnell is on a mission to end expanded free school lunches

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is blocking the extension of child nutrition waivers that made school lunches free during the pandemic, even as federal funding for the program is set to expire on Friday.

“McConnell is not budging,” a person close to the ongoing negotiations told Politico. “It hurts everybody in every state. These are things Republicans want.”

NEW: McConnell is forcefully opposing a provision in the omnibus spending bill that would extend waivers that have allowed schools to serve universal free meals during the pandemic, per sources close to the talks.

— Helena Bottemiller Evich (@hbottemiller) March 7, 2022

The development centers on an omnibus Democratic-backed spending package, set to be unveiled as soon as Tuesday, that would, among other things, allow the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to extend child nutrition waivers in schools across the country.

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The waivers were first approved back in March 2020, at the height of the pandemic, to help schools, government agencies, and nonprofits continue feeding kids despite pandemic-era challenges, including school closures, according to The Washington Post. The program was repeatedly extended in recent years by President Biden and former President Donald Trump as the COVID-19 crisis dragged on.

But now, Republicans are reportedly blocking the passage of the provision by arguing that it was designed to serve only as a form of temporary relief.

“Parents and Republicans are for reopening our schools. Many of these waivers were designed to encourage schools to close and go virtual,” an aide familiar with the matter told Politico. “This is not a message we should be sending to schools at this point, when almost everyone agrees we should be returning to normal.”

The waivers are set to remain in place until the end of the school year, according to CNN. But if they are ultimately dropped, schools are likely to see a 40% reduction in lunch reimbursements from the federal government. The USDA has reportedly been reimbursing schools with an average of $4.56 per meal, as opposed to the typical amount of $2.91. But without these waivers, schools would not be able to cover the higher costs of food provisions amid the supply chain disruptions.

“The need is greater now than ever,” Jack Miniard, president of the Kentucky School Nutrition Association, wrote to McConnell this week in a letter obtained by CNN. “While the virus is waning, the effects persist.”

USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, told the Post that he requested to McConnell that the program be extended.

“I realize that they’ve got a lot on their plate. But the failure of Republicans to respond to this means that kids are going to have less on their plates,” Vilsack said. “And there’s no reason for this. There’s no reason for this.”

Without the waivers, schools might be fined for failing to meet the federal school lunch requirements, even by no fault of their own.

Revealed: “Troubling” details of how Trump probe broke down and led to resignation of prosecutors

“The New York Times” on Saturday published a detailed account of what led two prosecutors involved with the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into former President Donald Trump’s business practices to abruptly resign last month—a “seismic development” that some experts had called “troubling.”

The probe was launched under the former district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr., who did not seek reelection. When prosecutors Carey Dunne and Mark Pomerantz resigned, the newspaper reported that it was because the new DA, Alvin Bragg, had concerns about moving forward with the case.

Following up on their initial reporting, a trio at the “Times” provided an “account of the investigation’s unraveling, drawn from interviews with more than a dozen people knowledgeable about the events,” which “pulls back a curtain on one of the most consequential prosecutorial decisions in U.S. history,” given that Trump would be the first president to be criminally charged.

Prosecutor Cary Dunne acknowledged case against Trump no "slam dunk" but argued better to lose than to not try at all -“It’s a righteous case that ought to be brought,” Dunne told Mr. Bragg. Lack of courage not a lack of evidence allowed Trump's escape.https://t.co/w9vZrdRTSx

— Shanlon Wu (@shanlonwu) March 6, 2022

Ben Protess, William K. Rashbaum, and Jonah E. Bromwich laid out major developments in the probe and at the office from Vance’s final days to the resignations—including a December 9 meeting of the former DA’s “brain trust,” the public relations “firestorm” Bragg faced over criminal justice reforms and high-profile shootings, and intense discussions between the new district attorney and the two prosecutors in January and February.

As Protess, Rashbaum, and Bromwich reported:

Mr. Bragg was not the only one to question the strength of the case, the interviews show. Late last year, three career prosecutors in the district attorney’s office opted to leave the investigation, uncomfortable with the speed at which it was proceeding and with what they maintained were gaps in the evidence. The tension spilled into the new administration, with some career prosecutors raising concerns directly to the new district attorney’s team.

Mr. Bragg, whose office is conducting the investigation along with lawyers working for New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, had not taken issue with Mr. Dunne and Mr. Pomerantz presenting evidence to the grand jury in his first days as district attorney. But as the weeks passed, he developed concerns about the challenge of showing Mr. Trump’s intent—a requirement for proving that he criminally falsified his business records—and about the risks of relying on the former president’s onetime fixer, Michael D. Cohen, as a key witness.

The prosecutors quit the day after the new district attorney told them that “he did not want to continue the grand jury presentation” and was not prepared to authorize charges against Trump, according to the report, which noted that “Mr. Dunne and Mr. Pomerantz also bristled at how Mr. Bragg had handled the investigation at times.”

While Pomerantz and Dunne declined to comment, Danielle Filson, a spokesperson for Bragg, said that “this is an active investigation and there is a strong team in place working on it.” She added that the probe is being led by Susan Hoffinger, the executive assistant district attorney in charge of the office’s Investigation Division.

Responding to the new report, former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti tweeted that “this is a remarkable article that gives us an inside look into the Manhattan DA’s deliberations regarding whether to charge Trump. If you believe prosecutors should indict Trump, it’s worth reading. We rarely get a window into prosecution decisions.”

3/ Bringing criminal charges in a complex white collar case is not as simple as some Twitter lawyers (and non-lawyers) would have you believe.

Prosecutors aren’t supposed to charge people unless they can prove their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. And they don’t want to lose.

— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) March 5, 2022

According to Mariotti, it is not possible to tell from the Times‘ reporting “whether the current Manhattan DA is making the right call. We don’t know the evidence his team has, and ultimately they could develop evidence that convinces them to file charges.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if other prosecutors agonize over charging Trump. Not because they believe he’s above the law, but because of issues with the evidence they have,” he added. “If you’re convinced that other prosecutors are doing nothing, they might be doing what this one did.”

Florida becomes first state to buck CDC, will recommend against vaccines for children

The Florida Department of Health will recommend that healthy children in the Sunshine State do not receive the vaccine, according to the state’s newly-appointed surgeon general.

“The Florida Department of Health is going to be the first state to officially recommend against the Covid-19 vaccines for healthy children,” Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo said during a Monday roundtable with experts, all of whom shared skepticism around the efficacy of common sense Covid health precautions.

If issued, the recommendation would run in direct opposition to federal guidance that’s been provided by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), which back in November recommended that all children get vaccinated. According to CNN, 1.1 million kids in Florida have already done so. The specifics around the agency’s soon-to-be guidance remains unclear, but Ladapo noted that Florida’s would be the first recommendation of its kind.

The announcement comes amid the Republican governor’s long-running campaign to delegitimize the value of masks and vaccine mandates.

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During a press conference last week, DeSantis scolded a group of high school students for wearing masks to protect themselves against the virus.

“You do not have to wear those masks. Please take them off. Honestly, it’s not doing anything,” he chided them. “We’ve got to stop with this covid theater. So if you want to wear it, fine, but this is ridiculous.”

Last year, as cases in Florida climbed, the governor also prohibited schools and private businesses from instituting mask and vaccine requirements, even though children under the age of twelve did not qualify for vaccines at the time.

Ladapo, appointed by DeSantis, has likewise repeatedly cast doubt over the efficacy of the masks, even when they’ve been widely proven as effective in preventing the spread of the virus.

On Monday, Nikki Fried, Florida’s agriculture commissioner, blasted the Florida Department of Health’s impending guidance, arguing that the governor and Ladapo “are once again confusing Floridians by promoting dangerous COVID-19 misinformation that goes against all mainstream medical guidance.”

“I urge all Floridians to continue to follow the COVID-19 guidance provided by their doctors, in addition to the FDA and the CDC, and not the anti-science conspiracy theories DeSantis and Ladapo are pushing,’ she added in a statement.

According to state data, over 804,000 Florida children younger than 16 have contracted COVID-19 throughout the pandemic, and roughly 70,000 total residents in the state have died due to coronavirus.

Dark-money groups fighting Biden’s Supreme Court pick also funded Big Lie, Capitol riot

Conservative dark money groups that are fighting President Joe Biden’s nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court also helped fund conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and rallies leading to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, according to a new report from the watchdog group Accountable.US.

The Judicial Crisis Network (JCN), which played a key role in shaping Trump’s Supreme Court nominations, last month launched a preemptive $2.5 million strike before Biden even named his nominee, accusing Biden of caving in to leftists by promising a “Supreme Court nominee who will be a liberal activist.” The organization is one of many linked to a network of dark-money groups around conservative activist Leonard Leo, the co-chairman of the Federalist Society who was dubbed Trump’s “Supreme Court whisperer.” Other groups affiliated with Leo, like the 85 Fund, have donated hundreds of thousands to the Independent Women’s Forum, another group that has run ads attacking Democrats for picking judges to advance a “woke agenda.”

JCN, the 85 Fund and other affiliates have spent tens of millions to shape the Supreme Court — but have also funded groups that played a role in the Capitol riot, according to Accountable.US.

“It should worry us all that the groups leading the fight against Biden’s historic nomination of Judge Jackson to the Supreme Court are tied to the Jan. 6 insurrection and efforts to undermine confidence in the 2020 election,” Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.US, said in a statement to Salon. “With American institutions and our democracy itself under constant attack from every direction, the importance of Judge Jackson’s swift and successful confirmation cannot be overstated.”

JCN was the public face of a secretive network of dark money groups that spent millions to confirm Trump’s Supreme Court picks. JCN spent tens of millions helping to confirm Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, according to Open Secrets, and launched a $25 million effort to confirm Justice Amy Coney Barrett just weeks before the 2020 election.

JCN is closely affiliated with Leo, who also founded the 85 Fund, which he uses to funnel money to other conservative groups, which all appear tightly connected to each other. Gary Marx, the president and treasurer of the 85 Fund, is also a senior adviser at JCN, according to CNBC. JCN president Carrie Severino is also involved with the Honest Elections Project, which is part of the 85 Fund.

These groups are also tied to other groups in the right-wing donor universe. Donors Trust, a dark-money group backed by the Koch network that gave more than $20 million to at least a dozen groups that questioned the election, donated more $48 million in 2020 to the 85 Fund, according to Accountable.US. The Rule of Law Trust, a little-known conservative group that appears to have no employees, gave nearly $22 million to JCN in 2020 and another $6 million to Donors Trust. The Bradley Foundation, whose board includes Cleta Mitchell, an attorney who helped Trump try to overturn the election, donated more than $3.5 million to Leo-connected groups in 2019 and 2020, including over $1 million to the Federalist Society. Donors Trust also donated more than $700,000 to the Federalist Society in 2020.

Members of the Federalist Society played key roles in Trump’s attempts to overturn the election. Attorney John Eastman, who was a senior Federalist Society fellow, worked with Trump to draw up a six-point plan to convince Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election, and later appeared at the Jan. 6 rally ahead of the Capitol riot to claim the election had been stolen.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, another Federalist Society member, filed a lawsuit aimed at throwing out the election results in a number of key states, effectively overturning Biden’s victory. Of the 17 other Republican attorneys general who joined Paxton’s suit, 13 were members of the Federalist Society.

Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, both Federalist Society members, led the objections to the certification of Trump’s loss after the riot.

Donors Trust, which has been described as the “dark money ATM of the right,” funnels money from anonymous wealthy donors to a variety of right-wing causes. The group gave nearly $8 million to the State Policy Network, which helped push voting restrictions in Georgia and other states in the wake of Trump’s campaign of lies following the election, according to the New York Times.

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Donors Trust in 2020 also gave nearly $1.6 million to the Government Accountability Institute, a group co-founded by Trump ally Steve Bannon and backed by Trump megadonor Rebekah Mercer, which has repeatedly pushed false voter fraud claims. Since the Capitol riot, Bannon has urged his followers to seek local offices that could allow them to oversee future elections.

Also that year, Donors Trust gave over $1.45 million to the Wyoming Liberty Group, which pushed baseless claims of voter fraud while demanding a so-called election audit. It also gave $1.27 million to the Metric Media Foundation, which ran more than 1,000 partisan news sites that spread claims about voter fraud ahead of the election. Donors Trust gave over $1 million to the Thomas More Society and its Amistad Project, which filed election challenges in five states. Another $1 million went to Project Veritas, the conservative media group that publishes undercover “sting” videos which have frequently been accused of deceptive edited. Before the 2020 election, Project Veritas launched a campaign to discredit mail-in voting, which has been shown to be secure.

Donors Trust also gave $839,000 to the conservative Club for Growth, which doled out millions to 42 members of Congress who voted to overturn the 2020 election. Another $780,000 went to Turning Point USA, the conservative youth group that bragged about sending 80 buses to the rally ahead of the Capitol riot.

In all, Donors Trust has funneled more than $28 million to groups that pushed election lies or in some way funded the rally ahead of the Capitol riot, according to Accountable.US.

The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation also helped fund groups that backed election lies or efforts to impose voting restrictions. Going back well before the Trump era, the Bradley Foundation spent millions to back voting restrictions, The New Yorker reported last year. Its affiliate, the Bradley Impact Fund, also fund groups that promoted election conspiracy theories, including Turning Point USA, Project Veritas and the Heritage Foundation, according to tax filings obtained by The Intercept. The Bradley Impact Fund also donated $2.5 million to the 85 Fund and over $1 million to the Federalist Society, as well as smaller donations to numerous other groups, according to Accountable.US. Cleta Mitchell, who serves on the board of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, was the attorney who participated in Trump’s infamous phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, when Trump demanded he “find” enough votes to overturn the election. That effort is currently under investigation by the Fulton County district attorney’s office.

A second report from Accountable.US raised questions about ties between Leo’s network and Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is set to hold hearings on Jackson’s nomination later this month.

Cruz, Hawley, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who all sit on the panel, all “grew up” in the Federalist Society, Law & Liberty reported in 2018, dubbing the group the “Federalist Society Caucus.” Cruz, Hawley and Cotton were even on Trump’s Supreme Court shortlist, which was shaped by Leo and the Federalist Society.

Cruz’s nonprofit, the Conservative Action network, has received at least $500,000 from Leo’s Freedom and Opportunity Fund, according to Open Secrets. Leo’s Concord Fund also donated $200,000 to American One Policies, a group tied to Cotton, according to the Daily Poster.

Other Republicans on the committee have links to the group as well. Leo praised Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the committee, as a “long friend of the Federalist Society.” Grassley, who previously chaired the committee during Trump’s tenure, helped speed through confirmations for Federalist Society-approved judicial nominees, and Mike Davis, Grassley’s former nominations counsel, oversaw a record number of circuit-court judicial confirmations during Trump’s first two years in office, according to his online biography. Davis has since joined the Article III Project, another dark money group linked to Leo’s network.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who replaced Grassley as the committee’s chairman during Trump’s last two years in office, oversaw Barrett’s lightning-quick confirmation ahead of the 2020 election. Graham received a maximum donation from Federalist Society co-founder and board chairman Steve Calabresi during Barrett’s confirmation process. Graham also headlined a Federalist Society event held at the Capitol building in 2019.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, another member of the committee, attended a Koch network summit in 2018 with Leo to discuss Trump’s judicial nominations, according to CNBC. Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., has been featured in at least four Federalist Society events since 2016, and has repeatedly defended and praised the group. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., received at least $7,800 from Federalist Society leadership last election cycle, including $1,500 from Leo on the day Gorsuch’s confirmation proceeding began, according to Accountable.US. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., has also appeared in at least four Federalist Society events since 2009 and defended the group when Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., criticized the influence of Leo, the Federalist Society and their related dark money groups during Barrett’s confirmation hearing.

Last month, Whitehouse called out Leo’s dark-money network for spending money to attack Biden’s nominee before he had even selected one, and also for accusing liberal groups that support Biden’s nominee of doing exactly what Leo’s network has done for decades.

“When Supreme Court vacancies occur, a Republican dark-money operation swings into action. … Their accusations of dark-money corruption are a bizarre reimagining of the very strategy that they, themselves, hatched and executed,” Whitehouse wrote in a Washington Post op-ed. “But that’s not all. It takes the public eye off the Roberts Court’s pattern of more than 80 partisan 5-to-4 and 6-to-3 decisions benefiting easily identified Republican donor interests. Those wins often come at the expense of regular Americans, stripping away protections for minority voters, reproductive rights, the environment, public health and workers. And they often degrade our democracy: greenlighting gerrymandering, protecting dark money and suppressing the vote.”

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In war, there are no “worthy” or “unworthy” victims: That’s how we justify our crimes

Rulers divide the world into worthy and unworthy victims, those we are allowed to pity, such as Ukrainians enduring the hell of modern warfare, and those whose suffering is minimized, dismissed or ignored. The terror we and our allies carry out against Iraqi, Palestinian, Syrian, Libyan, Somali and Yemeni civilians is part of the regrettable cost of war. We, echoing the empty promises from Moscow, claim we do not target civilians. Rulers always paint their militaries as humane, there to serve and protect. Collateral damage happens, but it is regrettable.

This lie can only be sustained among those who are unfamiliar with the explosive ordinance and large kill zones of missiles, iron fragmentation bombs, mortar, artillery and tank shells, and belt-fed machine guns. This bifurcation into worthy and unworthy victims, as Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky point out in “Manufacturing Consent : The Political Economy of the Mass Media,” is a key component of propaganda, especially in war. The Russian-speaking population in Ukraine, to Moscow, are worthy victims. Russia is their savior: The 1.5 million refugees and the millions of Ukrainian families cowering in basements, car parks and subway stations, are unworthy “Nazis.”

Worthy victims allow citizens to see themselves as empathetic, compassionate and just. Worthy victims are an effective tool to demonize the aggressor. They are used to obliterate nuance and ambiguity. Mention the provocations carried out by the Western alliance with the expansion of NATO beyond the borders of a unified Germany, a violation of promises made to Moscow in 1990; the stationing of of NATO troops and missile batteries in Eastern Europe; the U.S. involvement in the ouster in 2014 of Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych, which led to the civil war in the east of Ukraine between Russian-backed separatists and Ukraine’s army, a conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives, and you are dismissed as a Putin apologist.

It is to taint the sainthood of the worthy victims, and by extension ourselves. We are good. They are evil. Worthy victims are used not only to express sanctimonious outrage, but to stoke self-adulation and a poisonous nationalism. The cause becomes sacred, a religious crusade. Fact-based evidence is abandoned, as it was during the calls to invade Iraq. Charlatans, liars, con artists, fake defectors and opportunists become experts, used to fuel the conflict.

Celebrities, who, like the powerful, carefully orchestrate their public image, pour out their hearts to worthy victims. Hollywood stars such as George Clooney made trips to Darfur to denounce the war crimes being committed by Khartoum at the same time the U.S. was killing scores of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. The war in Iraq was as savage as the slaughter in Darfur, but to express outrage at what was happening to unworthy victims was to become branded as the enemy, who of course, like Putin or Saddam Hussein, is always the new Hitler.

Saddam Hussein’s attacks on the Kurds, considered worthy victims, saw an international outcry while Israeli persecution of the Palestinians, subjected to relentless bombing campaigns by the Israeli air force and its artillery and tank units, with hundreds of dead and wounded, was, at best, an afterthought. At the height of Stalin’s purges in the 1930s, worthy victims were the Republicans battling the fascists in the Spanish civil war. Soviet citizens were mobilized to send aid and assistance. Unworthy victims were the millions of people Stalin executed, sometimes after tawdry show trials, and sent to the gulags.

While I was reporting from El Salvador in 1984, the Catholic priest Jerzy Popiełuszko was murdered by the regime in Poland. His death was used to excoriate the Polish communist government, a stark contrast to the response of the Reagan administration to the rape and murder of four Catholic missionaries in 1980 in El Salvador by the Salvadoran National Guard. Ronald Reagan’s administration sought to blame the three nuns and a lay worker for their own deaths. Jeane Kirkpatrick, Reagan’s ambassador to the United Nations, said, “The nuns were not just nuns. The nuns were also political activists.” Secretary of State Alexander Haig speculated that “perhaps they ran a roadblock.”

For the Reagan administration, the murdered churchwomen were unworthy victims. The right-wing government in El Salvador, armed and backed by the U.S., joked at the time, Haz patria, mata un cura (Be a patriot, kill a priest). Archbishop Óscar Romero had been assassinated in March of 1980. Nine years later six Jesuits and two others were gunned down at their residence on the campus of Central American University in San Salvador. Between 1977 and 1989, death squads and soldiers killed 13 priests in El Salvador.

It is not that worthy victims do not suffer, nor that they are not deserving of our support and compassion, it is that worthy victims alone are rendered human, people like us, and unworthy victims are not. It helps, of course, when, as in Ukraine, they are white. But the missionaries murdered in El Salvador were also white and American, and yet it was not enough to shake U.S. support for the country’s military dictatorship.

“The mass media never explain why Andrei Sakharov is worthy and Jose Luis Massera, in Uruguay, is unworthy,” Herman and Chomsky write:

The attention and general dichotomization occur “naturally” as a result of the working of the filters, but the result is the same as if a commissar had instructed the media: “Concentrate on the victims of enemy powers and forget about the victims of friends.” Reports of the abuses of worthy victims not only pass through the filters; they may also become the basis of sustained propaganda campaigns. If the government or corporate community and the media feel that a story is useful as well as dramatic, they focus on it intensively and use it to enlighten the public.

This was true, for example, of the shooting down by the Soviets of the Korean airliner KAL 007 in early September 1983, which permitted an extended campaign of denigration of an official enemy and greatly advanced Reagan administration arms plans. As Bernard Gwertzman noted complacently in the New York Times of August 31, 1984, US officials “assert that worldwide criticism of the Soviet handling of the crisis has strengthened the United States in its relations with Moscow.” In sharp contrast, the shooting down by Israel of a Libyan civilian airliner in February I973 led to no outcry in the West, no denunciations for “cold-blooded murder,” and no boycott. This difference in treatment was explained by the New York Times precisely on the grounds of utility in a 1973 editorial: “No useful purpose is served by an acrimonious debate over the assignment of blame for the downing of a Libyan airliner in the Sinai Peninsula last week.” There was a very “useful purpose” served by focusing on the Soviet act, and a massive propaganda campaign ensued.

It is impossible to hold those responsible for war crimes accountable if worthy victims are deserving of justice and unworthy victims are not. If Russia should be crippled with sanctions for invading Ukraine, which I believe it should, the United States should have been crippled with sanctions for invading Iraq, a war launched on the basis of lies and fabricated evidence.

Imagine if America’s largest banks, JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, were cut off from the international banking system. Imagine if our oligarchs, Jeff Bezos, Jamie Diamond, Bill Gates and Elon Musk, as venal as Russian oligarchs, had their assets frozen and estates and luxury yachts seized. (Bezos’ yacht is the largest in the world, cost an estimated $500 million and is about 57 feet longer than a football field.) Imagine if leading political figures, such as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and U.S. “oligarchs,” were blocked from traveling under visa restrictions. Imagine if the world’s biggest shipping lines suspended shipments to and from the United States. Imagine if U.S. international media news outlets were forced off the air. Imagine if we were blocked from purchasing spare parts for our commercial airlines and our airliners were banned from European air space. Imagine if our athletes were barred from hosting or participating in international sporting events. Imagine if our symphony conductors and opera stars were forbidden from performing unless they denounced the Iraq war and, in a kind of perverted loyalty oath, condemned George W. Bush.

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The rank hypocrisy is stunning. Some of the same officials who orchestrated the invasion of Iraq, who under international law are war criminals for carrying out a preemptive war, are now chastising Russia for its violation of international law. The U.S. bombing campaign of Iraqi urban centers, called “Shock and Awe,” saw the dropping of 3,000 bombs on civilian areas that killed more than 7,000 noncombatants in the first two months of the war. Russia has yet to go to this extreme.

“I have argued that when you invade a sovereign nation, that is a war crime,” a Fox News host said (with a straight face) recently to Condoleezza Rice, who served as Bush’s national security adviser during the Iraq War.

“It is certainly against every principle of international law and international order and that is why throwing the book at them now in terms of economic sanctions, and punishments is also a part of it,” Rice said. “And I think the world is there. Certainly, NATO is there. [Putin has] managed to unite NATO in ways that I didn’t think I would ever see after the end of the Cold War.”

Rice inadvertently made a case for why she should be put on trial with the rest of Bush’s enablers. She famously justified the invasion of Iraq by stating: “The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly [Saddam Hussein] can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” Her rationale for preemptive war, which under post-Nuremberg laws is a criminal war of aggression, is no different than that peddled by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who says the Russia invasion is being carried out to prevent Ukraine from obtaining nuclear weapons.

And this brings me to RT America, where I had a show called “On Contact.” RT America is now off the air after being deplatformed and unable to disseminate its content. This was long the plan of the U.S. government. The invasion of Ukraine gave Washington the opening to shut RT down. The network had a tiny media footprint. But it gave a platform to American dissidents who challenged corporate capitalism, imperialism, war and the American oligarchy.

My public denunciation of the invasion of Ukraine was treated very differently by RT America than my public denunciation of the Iraq war was treated by my former employer, the New York Times. RT America made no comment, publicly or privately, about my condemnation of the invasion of Ukraine in my column. Nor did RT comment about statements by Jesse Ventura, a Vietnam veteran and former Minnesota governor, who also had a show on RT America, and who wrote: “20 years ago, I lost my job because I opposed the Iraq War and the invasion of Iraq. Today, I still stand for peace. As I’ve said previously, I oppose this war, this invasion, and if standing up for peace costs me another job, so be it. I will always speak out against war.”

RT America was shut down six days after I denounced the invasion of Ukraine. If the network had continued, Ventura and I might have paid with our jobs, but at least for those six days they kept us on air.

The New York Times issued a formal written reprimand in 2003 that forbade me to speak about the war in Iraq, although I had been the newspaper’s Middle East bureau chief, had spent seven years in the Middle East and was an Arabic speaker. This reprimand set me up to be fired. If I violated the prohibition, under guild rules, the paper had grounds to terminate my employment. John Burns, another foreign correspondent at the paper, publicly supported the invasion of Iraq. He did not receive a reprimand.

My repeated warnings in public forums about the chaos and bloodbath the invasion of Iraq would trigger, which turned out to be correct, was not an opinion. It was an analysis based on years of experience in the region, including in Iraq, and an intimate understanding of the instrument of war those in the Bush White House lacked. But it challenged the dominant narrative and was silenced. This same censorship of antiwar sentiment is happening now in Russia, but we should remember that it happened here during the inception and initial stages of the invasion of Iraq.

Those of us who opposed the Iraq war, no matter how much experience we had in the region, were attacked and vilified. Ventura, who had a three-year contract with MSNBC, saw his show canceled.

Those who were cheerleaders for the war, such as George Packer, Thomas Friedman, Paul Berman, Michael Ignatieff, Leon Wieseltier and Nick Kristof, who Tony Judt called “Bush’s useful idiots,” dominated the media landscape. They painted the Iraqis as oppressed, worthy victims, whom the U.S. military would set free. The plight of women under the Taliban was a rallying cry to bomb and occupy the country. These courtiers to power served the interests of the power elite and the war industry. They differentiated between worthy and unworthy victims. It was a good career move. And they knew it.

There was very little dispute about the folly of invading Iraq among reporters in the Middle East, but most did not want to jeopardize their positions by speaking publicly. They did not want my fate to become their own, especially after I was booed off a commencement stage in Rockford, Illinois, for delivering an antiwar speech and became a punching bag for right-wing media. I would walk through the newsroom and reporters I had known for years looked down or turned their heads, as if I had leprosy. My career was finished. Not just at The New York Times but any major media organization, which is where I was, orphaned, when Robert Scheer recruited me to write for Truthdig, which he then edited.

What Russia is doing militarily in Ukraine, at least up to now, was more than matched by our own savagery in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Vietnam. This is an inconvenient fact that the press, awash in moral posturing, will not address.

No one has mastered the art of technowar and wholesale slaughter like the U.S. military. When atrocities leak out, such as the My Lai massacre of Vietnamese civilians or the prisoners in Abu Ghraib, the press does its duty by branding them aberrations. The truth is that these killings and abuse are deliberate. They are orchestrated at the senior levels of the military. Infantry units, assisted by long-range artillery, fighter jets, heavy bombers, missiles, drones and helicopters level vast swaths of “enemy” territory, killing most of the inhabitants. The U.S. military, during the invasion of Iraq from Kuwait, created a six-mile-wide free-fire zone that killed hundreds if not thousands of Iraqis. The indiscriminate killing ignited the Iraqi insurgency.

When I entered southern Iraq in the first Gulf War, it was flattened. Villages and towns were smoldering ruins. Bodies, including women and children, lay scattered on the ground. Water purification systems had been bombed. Power stations had been bombed. Schools and hospitals had been bombed. Bridges had been bombed. The U.S. military always wages war by “overkill,” which is why it dropped the equivalent of 640 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs on Vietnam, most actually falling on the south where our purported Vietnamese allies resided. It unloaded in Vietnam more than 70 million tons of herbicidal agents, three million white phosphorus rockets — white phosphorus will burn its way entirely through a body — and an estimated 400,000 tons of jellied incendiary napalm.

“Thirty-five percent of the victims,” Nick Turse writes of the war in Vietnam, “died within 15 to 20 minutes.” Death from the skies, like death on the ground, was often unleashed capriciously. “It was not out of the ordinary for U.S. troops in Vietnam to blast a whole village or bombard a wide area in an effort to kill a single sniper.”

Vietnamese villagers, including women, children and the elderly, were often herded into tiny, barbed wire enclosures known as “cow cages.” They were subjected to electric shocks, gang raped and tortured by being hung upside down and beaten, euphemistically called “the plane ride,” until unconscious. Fingernails were ripped out. Fingers were dismembered. Detainees were slashed with knives. They were beaten senseless with baseball bats and waterboarded. Targeted assassinations, orchestrated by CIA death squads, were ubiquitous.

Wholesale destruction, including of human beings, to the U.S. military, perhaps any military, is orgiastic. The ability to unleash sheets of automatic rifle fire, hundreds of rounds of belt-fed machine-gun fire, 90mm tank rounds, endless grenades, mortars and artillery shells on a village, sometimes supplemented by gigantic 2,700-pound explosive projectiles fired from battleships along the coast, was a perverted form of entertainment in Vietnam, as it became later in the Middle East. U.S. troops litter the countryside with claymore mines. Canisters of napalm, daisy-cutter bombs, anti-personnel rockets, high-explosive rockets, incendiary rockets, cluster bombs, high-explosive shells and iron fragmentation bombs — including the 40,000-pound bomb loads dropped by giant B-52 Stratofortress bombers — along with chemical defoliants and chemical gases dropped from the sky, are our calling cards. Vast areas are designated free-fire zones — a term later changed by the military to the more neutral-sounding “specified strike zone” — where everyone in those zones is considered the enemy, even the elderly, women and children.

Soldiers and marines who attempt to report the war crimes they witness can face a fate worse than being pressured, discredited or ignored. On Sept. 12, 1969, Nick Turse writes in his book “Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam,” George Chunko sent a letter to his parents explaining how his unit had entered a home that had a young Vietnamese woman, four young children, an elderly man and a military-age male. It appeared the younger man was AWOL from the South Vietnamese army. The young man was stripped naked and tied to a tree. His wife fell to her knees and begged the soldiers for mercy. The prisoner, Chunko wrote, was “ridiculed, slapped around and [had] mud rubbed into this face.” He was then executed.

A day after he wrote the letter, Chunko was killed. Chunko’s parents, Turse writes, “suspected that their son had been murdered to cover up the crime.”

All of this remains unspoken as we express our anguish for the people of Ukraine and revel in our moral superiority. The life of a Palestinian or an Iraqi child is as precious as the life of a Ukrainian child. No one should live in fear and terror. No one should be sacrificed on the altar of Mars. But until all victims are worthy, until all who wage war are held accountable and brought to justice, this hypocritical game of life and death will continue. Some human beings will be worthy of life. Others will not. Drag Putin off to the International Criminal Court and put him on trial. But make sure George W. Bush is in the cell next to him. If we can’t see ourselves, we can’t see anyone else. And this blindness leads to catastrophe.

Turning the desert green: this solar panel system makes water (and grows food) out of thin air

Climate change has all kinds of ancillary effects beyond mere rising temperatures: from its effect on agriculture, water resources, cooling and wildlife ranges, when we talk about stopping climate change we are talking about a huge, multifaceted project. In other words, supplying reliable sources of water, energy, and food in a rapidly changing world simply requires outside of the box thinking.

Hence, scientists at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology have built an “integrated solar-driven system” that does just that — offering a low-cost source of renewable energy, water, and food providing life saving benefits for those people living in remote, arid regions of the world. It’s a remarkable all-in-one system that solves multiple problems — water supplies, electricity, and food — in effect killing three birds with one stone

This specific system is called a “water-electricity-crop coproduction system” or “WEC2P.” Using a unique hydrogel to capture waste heat and condense water vapor to irrigate crops, researchers increased electricity generation of the solar panels by 10% — a massive leap considering most solar panels are only able to convert about 20% of the solar energy they are exposed to into electricity. Combining irrigation, agriculture, and photovoltaics the conceptual design makes promising headway for a type of integrative solar energy known as agrophotovoltaics.

In the arid climate of Saudi Arabia, the research team tested a proof-of-concept model with spinach plants for two weeks this past summer. Even in exceptionally hot weather, the experiment yielded a 95% success rate with 57 of the 60 seeds sprouting and growing to a normal height using only the 2 liters of water the system itself condensed.

“Our goal is to create an integrated system of clean energy, water, and food production, especially the water-creation part in our design, which sets us apart from current agrophotovoltaics,” Dr. Peng Wang, a researcher on the project, explained in a statement.

With the proof of concept demonstrating very promising results, before turning the model into a product the team will work on developing a more absorbent hydrogel that can generate even higher quantities of water.

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“Making sure everyone on Earth has access to clean water and affordable clean energy is part of the Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations,” Wang continued. “I hope our design can be a decentralized power and water system to light homes and water crops.”

Photovoltaics are widely a key tool in any strategy to avert a total climate crisis. Still, like any developing technology, photovoltaics come with their own set of problems. Notoriously inefficient in hot climates, photovoltaics are severely limited in the desert, one of the few environments with nearly constant daytime solar exposure and effectively limitless potential for clean energy.

Meanwhile, climate change is driving water shortages and desertification, a process in which previously hospitable environments become veritable wastelands of desert ecosystems. According to the World Health Organization, over 2 million people live without safe drinking water, 800 million people lack access to any electricity, and 700 million people suffer from starvation.

“A fraction of the world’s population still doesn’t have access to clean water or green power, and many of them live in rural areas with arid or semi-arid climate,” Wang said. “Our design makes water out of air using clean energy that would’ve been wasted and is suitable for decentralized, small-scale farms in remote places like deserts and oceanic islands.”

Read more on the climate crisis:

Meet the billionaire helping to enlist Trump-supporting citizens to hunt for voter fraud

At a wedding hall in rural northwest Wisconsin, an evangelist hollered a question to an eager crowd of conferencegoers: “Who thinks Wisconsin can be saved?”

He was answered with enthusiastic whistles and cheers. The truth, he said, would be revealed. “We need transparency!”

The subject: the nation’s election systems. The preacher was among a group of conservative speakers, including politicians, data gurus and former military officers, who theorized on the mechanics of voter fraud in general — and specifically distrust in the voter rolls, the official lists of eligible voters.

“Voter rolls are very, very important to the process,” Florida software and database engineer Jeff O’Donnell told the gathering of 300 in late January in Chippewa Falls, deeming the rolls “the ground zero” of what he called Democratic plots to steal elections. The only way former President Donald Trump could have lost his reelection campaign in 2020, O’Donnell said in an interview, was if voter rolls had been inflated with people who shouldn’t have been able to cast ballots.

Ever since Trump failed to convince the world that he lost the 2020 election because of fraud, like-minded people across the country have been taking up the same rallying cry, revisiting that vote with an eye toward what will happen in 2022.

Now, a new group is stepping into a more conspicuous role in that world by providing easily accessible tools for people in Wisconsin, other Midwest battleground states and, eventually, the entire country to forge ahead with a quest to prove election irregularities.

Calling its work unprecedented, the Voter Reference Foundation is analyzing state voter rolls in search of discrepancies between the number of ballots cast and the number of voters credited by the rolls as having participated in the Nov. 3, 2020 election.

The foundation, led by a former Trump campaign official and founded less than a year ago, has dismissed objections from election officials that its methodology is flawed and its actions may be illegal, ProPublica found. But with its inquiries and insinuations, VoteRef, as it is known, has added to the volume in the echo chamber.

Its instrument is the voter rolls, released line by line, for all to see.

In early August, the foundation published on its website the names, birthdates, addresses and voting histories for 2 million Nevada voters, information that is normally public but only available on request, for a fee. It claimed to have found a significant discrepancy between the number of voters and the number of ballots cast, despite being warned by state election officials that its findings were “fundamentally incorrect.”

In the months since, VoteRef has reported similar discrepancies in rolls posted for 17 other states, including the 2020 election battlegrounds of Michigan, Georgia, Ohio and Wisconsin. It intends to post the rolls of all 50 states by year’s end.

“Voter File Transparency site adds Michigan; large discrepancy found,” read a headline on a Dec. 6 press release put out by the organization, which is led by Gina Swoboda, a high-ranking officer in the Republican Party of Arizona.

The project is still in its early stages, and the people at the Chippewa Falls conference did not mention VoteRef specifically.

Still, the VoteRef initiative is an important indication of how some influential and well-funded Republicans across the country plan to encourage crowdsourcing of voter rolls to find what they consider errors and anomalies, then dispute voter registrations of specific individuals. Visitors to the VoteRef site are able to scroll through data on more than 85 million people in a free, easy-to-use format. The VoteRef data includes personal identifying information of every voter and the years they voted, but not how they voted.

VoteRef’s methods have already led to pushback from state officials. The New Mexico Secretary of State believes posting data about individual voters online is not a permissible use under state law and has referred the matter to the state attorney general for criminal investigation.

And an attorney for the Pennsylvania Department of State notified VoteRef in January that state law prohibits publishing the voter rolls on the internet and asked that the data be removed. VoteRef complied.

ProPublica contacted election officials in a dozen of the states where VoteRef has examined voter rolls, and in every case the officials said that the methodology used to identify the discrepancies was flawed, the data incomplete or the math wrong. The officials, a mix of Democrats and Republicans, were in Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

“The accuracy and integrity of Michigan’s election has been confirmed by hundreds of audits, numerous courts and a GOP-led Oversight Committee analysis,” said Tracy Wimmer, director of media relations for Michigan’s secretary of state.

“This is simply another meritless example of election misinformation being disseminated to undermine well-founded faith in Michigan’s election system, and from an organization led by at least one former member of the Trump campaign,” Wimmer said.

VoteRef, records show, is an initiative of the conservative nonprofit group Restoration Action and its related political action committee, both led by Doug Truax, an Illinois insurance broker and podcaster who ran unsuccessfully in the state’s GOP primary for the U.S. Senate in 2014.

A ProPublica review found that VoteRef’s origins and funders are closely linked to a super PAC predominantly funded by billionaire Richard Uihlein, founder of the mammoth Wisconsin-based packaging supply company Uline. A descendant of one of the founders of the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company, Uihlein is a major Trump supporter and a key player in Wisconsin and Illinois politics. Among his political donations: $800,000 in September 2020 to the Tea Party Patriots political action committee, a group that helped organize the Jan. 6 rally that led to the Capitol insurrection.

Uihlein and his wife, Elizabeth Uihlein, have contributed in excess of $30 million combined over two decades to mainly Republican candidates on the state and local level, particularly in Illinois and Wisconsin, according to OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan organization that tracks campaign donor information. The total includes money given to groups that advocate on behalf of candidates as well as direct contributions.

Voter rolls are public information, typically used by campaigns to identify potential supporters, target messages or persuade people to go to the polls. Journalists and some businesses also at times use the rolls for newsgathering or commercial purposes.

VoteRef has said its aim is to increase transparency in the elections process, echoing the language used to justify door-to-door address checks, painstaking ballot audits and other efforts that Trump supporters are continuing to employ to parse the 2020 election. To publicize the results of its analysis of ballot inconsistencies, it crafted press releases that then were parroted on sites that purport to be legitimate news outlets and were connected to a media network that received large sums of money from VoteRef.

“VoteRef is the beginning of a new era of American election transparency,” Swoboda, VoteRef’s executive director, said in its Nevada press release. “We have an absolute right to see everything behind the curtain.”

Until a few months before the 2020 election, Swoboda, a resident of Scottsdale, a Phoenix suburb, was a professional in Arizona’s election system, working as the campaign finance and lobbying supervisor in the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office.

Swoboda then served as Election Day operations director for the Trump campaign in Arizona, according to a sworn court affidavit she gave in Arizona in November 2020 as part of Trump’s legal challenge to election results there. She described how she took complaints from people who thought poll workers allowed defective ballots to be submitted, in what later became known as “SharpieGate.” (Votes made with a Sharpie do count, the state said.)

She and others associated with VoteRef declined to be interviewed for this story. But Swoboda did respond via email.

“In each of the states we’ve researched to date, the election data math simply doesn’t add up,” she wrote. “That requires reform. We seek to spur this reform through the sustained spotlighting of inaccuracies or wrongdoing.”

Flawed Methodology

As of late February, VoteRef showed 431,173 more ballots cast overall than people credited by voter rolls with having participated in the 2020 election.

To those unschooled in the mechanics of elections, VoteRef’s approach could seem reasonable: Compare the total number of ballots cast in the Nov. 3, 2020 election with the number of current voters on the rolls who have recorded histories of having participated in the vote.

For example, the VoteRef table for Nevada shows 8,952 more ballots cast than individuals credited with voting, based on histories obtained in February 2021.

“Theoretically, these numbers should match,” VoteRef claimed in an August press release.

But there are valid reasons the numbers do not match.

Nevada election officials explained it this way in a press release: “If ‘John Doe’ votes and has his ballot counted in Lander County, then moves to Mineral County, once he is registered in Mineral County, he will show no vote history because he has no vote history in Mineral County. The farther away from the election the data is acquired, the more it will have changed.”

In Connecticut, there were 1,839,714 ballots cast in 2020, according to VoteRef, but the group’s examination of voter histories in October, 2021, showed 1,802,458 people voting. VoteRef’s conclusion is that there was a discrepancy of 37,256 ballots.

But state election officials said that the registration database is “live,” and voting histories of those who moved out of state or died in the months after the election would have been removed from the rolls, accounting for the discrepancy.

“The list is not a static list,” said Connecticut Secretary of State Denise Merrill. “It changes all the time.”

In Michigan, where VoteRef found a difference of more than 74,000 votes, an elections official said that state’s qualified voter file also constantly changes as it’s updated, making the data the foundation relied on in late May 2021 — more than six months after the election — out of date.

In a recent email to ProPublica, Swoboda conceded as much.

“It’s up to election officials who run election offices to reconcile their data, not the Voter Reference Foundation, which merely publishes their information in a consumer-friendly format,” she said. “Of course, our election experts are well aware of the time lag between certification and data pulls — we posted the documents online for all to see!”

Federal law requires that election supervisors make reasonable efforts to update voter lists, but provides leeway in how states carry out the task. The law prohibits administrators from removing people for simply not voting in repeated elections, unless notices go unanswered and officials wait for two federal election cycles before putting the voters on an inactive list.

Counties haven’t always done a good job, however, in maintaining the voter rolls, leading some people to distrust the system. One of VoteRef’s key aims is to task ordinary people with the chore of finding anomalies.

Scrutinizing Voter Rolls and Neighbors

In announcing the launch of its website, the Voter Reference Foundation touted it as a “first of its kind” searchable tool for all 50 states “that will finally give American citizens a way to examine crucial voting records.”

“Citizens will be able to check their voting status, voting history, and those of their neighbors, friends and others. They will be able to ‘crowd-source’ any errors,” the press release stated.

The group’s backers have encouraged scrutiny outside of one’s own household.

“With VoteRef.com you can find out who voted and who didn’t. Did your aunt who died 10 years ago ‘vote’ after she died? Did your ‘neighbor’ who moved to another state vote? Did 55 votes emerge from a five-unit apartment complex?” Jeffrey Carter, a partner in a venture capital group who earlier had appeared on Truax’s podcast, wrote on the newsletter site Substack in December.

Matt Batzel, whose organization American Majority recently highlighted VoteRef’s efforts in Wisconsin, said in an interview with ProPublica that VoteRef’s vision is for citizens to detect and then report potential problems with the voter rolls, such as people who are registered to vote at vacant lots or unusually high numbers of votes coming from nursing homes.

Election experts say the type of work being done by VoteRef risks leading to further misinformation or being weaponized by people trying to undermine the legitimacy of the past election or give the sense that voter fraud is a more encompassing problem than it’s proven to be. Or it could be used to harass or intimidate valid voters under the guise of challenging their legitimacy.

Even without any clear evidence of fraud during the 2020 election, the vast, decentralized election system still is drawing scrutiny from those who believe that the system can be easily manipulated. At the daylong voter integrity conference in Chippewa Falls, speakers invoked war imagery, spoke of coverups, and urged people to “expose the tactics” of the political left. The group — saluted via video by Trump acolyte and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell — is seeking to put like-minded individuals in vote-certifying secretary of state offices nationwide.

The voter rolls have been targeted, too, by others in Wisconsin, including special counsel Michael J. Gableman, a former state Supreme Court justice and Trump supporter who the state’s Republican Assembly speaker appointed in June to conduct a review of Wisconsin’s administration of the 2020 election. On March 1, Gableman released a report blasting what he called “opaque, confusing, and often botched election processes.”

Gableman urged the Legislature to consider legal methods to enable citizens or civil rights groups to help maintain election databases.

“As it stands, there is no clear method for individuals with facial evidence of inaccurate voter rolls to enter state court and seek to fix that problem,” he wrote. He envisioned a system that “could even provide nominal rewards for successful voter roll challenges.”

While information about voters is available in most states, it comes at a cost and with limits on how it can be distributed to avoid having some private information be easily accessible.

In January, an official with the Pennsylvania Department of State wrote to Truax warning that it appeared that the Voter Reference Foundation had “unlawfully posted Pennsylvania-voter information on its website” and demanding that the organization “take immediate action” to remove the information.

Soon, Pennsylvania data disappeared from the website. Swoboda declined to answer questions about the matter. Attempts to reach Truax were unsuccessful.

In New Mexico, Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver also said the undertaking is not an allowable use of voter data. By state law, she said, the rolls can only be used for governmental or campaign purposes.

“Having voter registration data ‘blasted out across the internet’ violates state law limiting use of the voter rolls solely for campaign or government activities,” she said. In December, Toulouse Oliver’s office referred the matter to the state attorney general for investigation and possible prosecution.

Associates of the Voter Reference Foundation dismiss these privacy concerns.

“You are joking, right?” said Bill Wilson, chairman of the conservative-leaning Market Research Foundation of Fairfax, Virginia, which paid more than $11,000 to the state of Virginia in March 2021 for the voter roll data and shared it with the Voter Reference Foundation.

“Big tech, both political parties and big media have no interest or concern for privacy and have mountains of data on individuals that is shared and sold on an hourly basis. You called me at my home, after all.”

Support in GOP Circles

Restoration Action/PAC describes itself on its website as an “effective dynamo against those trying to destroy our country.” It produces ads on behalf of state and national candidates, castigates Planned Parenthood, “biased liberal media” and “Big Tech” and advocates for fair elections.

Truax, the group’s head, frequently assumes the role of news anchor to host the First Right video podcast, interviewing far-right conservatives. In early June last year, he introduced his audience to VoteRef, telling them: “We helped create the organization, and we’ll have much more to say about it in the coming weeks.”

Richard Uihlein’s quiet role was essential. He’s been the primary funder of Restoration PAC since its inception in 2015, contributing at least $44 million, according to the data from OpenSecrets. In May 2021, Federal Election Commission records show, Uihlein donated $1.5 million to Restoration PAC. That same month, the Voter Reference Foundation was incorporated in Ohio.

Two weeks after the Uihlein donation, money started flowing from Restoration PAC to a media network that did some data procurement and analysis for VoteRef, with payments totalling more than $955,000 as of the end of 2021, the FEC records show.

The network, which includes Pipeline Media, is operated by Bradley Cameron, a Texas business strategist, state corporation records show. Brian Timpone is listed as a manager at Pipeline Media. He made headlines a decade ago after his firm, then called Journatic, came under fire for outsourcing hyperlocal news offshore using phony bylines.

In recent months, VoteRef has released press releases about its activities that have been turned into stories on sites owned by Metric Media, which Cameron leads, according to his online profile. The sites mimic legitimate news outlets but print press releases, shun bylines, do little to no original reporting and rely on automated data. “New website to publish which Arlington residents voted, did not vote in gubernatorial election,” read an Oct. 28 headline in the Central Nova News of Virginia, a Metric Media site.

Uihlein did not respond to calls or emails from ProPublica seeking comment. Cameron and Timpone also did not reply to messages seeking an interview.

Political figures with ties to Trump have been touting the efforts of VoteRef.

Among them: former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, an immigration hard-liner appointed by Trump to serve as acting head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Cuccinelli now heads the Election Transparency Initiative, a Virginia organization opposed to expanding early voting or easing registration requirements. The initiative, a project of the conservative group Susan B. Anthony List, says it partners with The Heritage Foundation’s political arm.

Cuccinelli spoke in September to about 100 party loyalists at a gathering at a suburban Milwaukee hotel about how they could use the VoteRef tools and become involved in securing the elections process.

Similarly, J. Hogan Gidley, former national press secretary for the 2020 Trump campaign, promoted the work of VoteRef on Philadelphia conservative talk radio before Christmas.

“We’re doing some work with them, too. We know the folks over there really well,” said Gidley, who is now with the America First Policy Institute, a nonprofit packed with Trump administration alums.

Truax, meanwhile, brought in Swoboda for his podcast last summer. They talked about the Arizona ballot audit and briefly referenced her work with the Voter Reference Foundation.

“It always feels like to me that the states, in general, have gotten a little sloppy in different areas and just you know nobody’s really paying a lot of attention to it,” Truax said.

He added: “Now I think as conservatives we’re in a place we really got to pay a lot more attention. There’s a lot of energy now on this.”

Tennessee Republican forced to resign after wire fraud charges

A Tennessee Republican resigned from the state legislature after she was charged with wire fraud in a scheme involving former House Speaker and current Rep. Glen Casada.

State Rep. Robin Smith (R-Hixson) was charged with one count of honest services wire fraud in court documents unsealed Monday, and a short time later issued a statement announcing her resignation, reported the Tennessean.

“I want you to know that serving the great people of this district, and indeed, all of Tennessee, has truly been an honor,” Smith said. “I have resigned with the deepest of humility and out of respect for the role of public service.”

Prosecutors alleged that Smith, Casada and Casada’s former top aide Cade Cothren set up a consulting firm called Phoenix Solutions to engineer kickbacks to the pair of legislators.

Cothren established Phoenix Solutions in late 2019, but prosecutors say the firm didn’t actually exist and instead sent kickbacks to Smith and Casada, who then allegedly used their positions to pressure the House Speaker’s Office to approve the firm as an official vendor.

“It is clear in the charging documents that certain individuals used their official capacity to target General Assembly members and the Republican Caucus by using a fake company to siphon off money illegally and deceptively,” said House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R-Crossville).

“I will continue to cooperate fully with federal authorities as the investigation continues which has been the case since I became speaker in 2019,” Sexton added. “Due to this being an ongoing investigation, I will reserve any further comments as the FBI continues their pursuit to stop public corruption.”

Casada and Cothren are named as individuals 1 and 2 in the indictment.

Cothren lost his job with Casada in 2019 over racist and sexist text messages and his admitted drug use in the legislative office building.

Casada resigned from his leadership post following that scandal but remains in the legislature, but he will not seek re-election this year and is instead running for Williamson County clerk.

“What a complete fool”: Disney CEO criticized for refusing to publicly oppose “Don’t Say Gay” bill

Though Bob Chapek finally broke his silence on Florida’s controversial “Don’t Say Gay” bill, what he didn’t say sparked further backlash. The CEO of the Walt Disney Company told staffers on Monday that he was “committed to creating a more inclusive company,” but he stopped short of publicly condemning the legislation.

“[W]hile not perfect, our company has a long history of supporting the LGBTQ+ community — and in fact, has played an important role in the personal journeys of so many of our employees,” Chapek wrote in an internal memo, which was obtained by Deadline. “I want to be crystal clear: I and the entire leadership team unequivocally stand in support of our LGBTQ+ employees, their families, and their communities. And, we are committed to creating a more inclusive company — and world. I understand that the very need to reiterate that commitment means we still have more work to do.”

Chapek once again declined to take a public stance on the legislation, which prohibits “classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity” in schools. As Salon’s Amanda Marcotte wrote, it also includes “language clearly meant to force educators to report any kids suspected of being LGBTQ to their parents.”

The CEO also didn’t answer calls to pause political contributions to legislators who supported the bill. The Orlando Sentinel earlier reported that Disney had funded all of the sponsors and co-sponsors of the legislation, including Dennis Baxley. In the past, the Republican reportedly said that he “simply can’t affirm homosexuality.”

“I don’t hate anybody. I don’t want to discriminate against anybody,” Baxley said in 2015. “I’m not phobic, but I simply can’t affirm homosexuality. My compass won’t go there, knowing what I know biblically.”

In an apparent defense of his “tactics,” Chapek called corporate advocacy as a whole into question, asserting that statements “do very little to change outcomes or minds.”

“I do not want anyone to mistake a lack of a statement for a lack of support. We all share the same goal of a more tolerant, respectful world. Where we may differ is in the tactics to get there,” Chapek added. “And because this struggle is much bigger than any one bill in any one state, I believe the best way for our company to bring about lasting change is through the inspiring content we produce, the welcoming culture we create, and the diverse community organizations we support.”

Disney, for its part, employees thousands of workers in the Sunshine State. The company has “close to 80,000 employees in Florida as it continues to move most of its Southern California-based jobs not fully dedicated to Disneyland in its Parks, Experiences and Products Division to a new regional facility in central Florida,” Dominic Patten reported for Deadline.

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Former Disney CEO Bob Iger recently expressed his public disapproval of the bill, tweeting that it would “put vulnerable, young LGBTQ people in jeopardy.” But Chapek has refused to do the same, a move which has drawn increasing blowback in recent days.

Abigail Disney, a documentary filmmaker and member of the Disney family, expressed her disapproval on Twitter.

“I could not be more unhappy with their political activities, both in terms of whom they fund and how they lobby,” Disney said of the company last week. “I would strongly support a law to require all corporations to reveal ALL of their funding and lobbying moves.”

In response to Monday’s memo, Matt Burnett, the co-creator of Cartoon Network’s comedy series “Craig of the Creek,” didn’t mince words, calling Chapek “an absolute f**king idiot.”

“Don’t know the guy, but based on that internal email, what a complete fool,” Burnett wrote in a Twitter thread. “You play right into the right wing’s hand when you accept that LGBTQ+ rights are a political issue. They’re not. They’re basic human rights.”

“Acknowledging the EXISTENCE of gender identity and sexual orientation is not a political issue,” the writer continued. “It’s reality, and to deny it, or endanger those who belong to those communities… it’s unconscionable.”

Brock Powell, a voice actor whose credits on IMDB include numerous Disney titles, said he was broken.

“Never been quiet about my love of Disney over the years but being loud about my own identity as a queer human took YEARS,” Powell wrote alongside the hashtag #DisneySayGay. “Breaks me in pieces that a company that literally pays me to speak is paying to keep me silent by funding puritanical Anti-LGBTQIA+ politicians.”

John Pavlovitz simply said, “Bob Chapek is destroying Disney.” The author and pastor deployed a different hashtag: #BoycottDisney.

More stories about Disney:

Angelina Jolie visits Yemen as Ukraine crisis deepens: “Everyone deserves the same compassion”

As Russia continues its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, actor Angelina Jolie is using her platform to shine a light on the ongoing armed conflict and humanitarian crisis in Yemen, declaring that “everyone deserves the same compassion.”

Jolie, who is a special envoy for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), took to Instagram on Sunday to reveal that she was in the city of Aden to meet with displaced families and show her support for the people of Yemen.

“The situation here is one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, with one civilian killed or injured every hour in 2022,” Jolie captioned the post. “An economy devastated by war, and over 20 million Yeminis depending on humanitarian assistance to survive.”

Jolie simultaneously acknowledged the war in Ukraine, calling for an “immediate end” to the bloodshed in both countries.

“As we continue to watch the horrors unfolding in Ukraine, and call for an immediate end to the conflict and humanitarian access, I’m here in Yemen to support people who also desperately need peace,” Jolie wrote.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CawegKzDRIc/

“This week a million people were forced to flee the horrific war in Ukraine. If we learn anything from this shocking situation, it is that we cannot be selective about who deserves support and whose rights we defend. Everyone deserves the same compassion,” she added. “The lives of civilian victims of conflict everywhere are of equal value. After seven years of war, the people of Yemen also need protection, support, and above all, peace.”

Jolie has frequently used her platform to highlight the human faces who are impacted by war. In 2020, she made an “extremely generous” donation to two youngsters from London who opened a lemonade stand to raise funds for Yemen.

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In another recent Instagram post, Jolie shared that she was “praying for the people in Ukraine” following Russia’s full-scale military invasion. She emphasized that her “focus along with my UNHCR colleagues is that everything possible is done to ensure the protection and basic human rights of those displaced, and refugees in the region.”

“We have already seen reports of casualties and people starting to flee their homes to seek safety,” Jolie continued. “It is too soon to know what will happen, but the significance of this moment — for the people of Ukraine, and for the international rule of law — cannot be overstated.”

Read more:

Cosby remains free after Supreme Court declines to revisit decision that overturned his conviction

Bill Cosby, the actor and comedian once known as “America’s Dad” before his stint behind bars, will stay a free man.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to review the decision that freed Cosby from prison following his conviction on three felony counts of aggravated indecent assault.

Upon being convicted of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand, Cosby was sentenced to three to 10 years behind bars in 2018.

After less than three years in prison, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned Cosby’s conviction in a surprise ruling. Citing a violation of his due process rights, the court ruled that the prosecutor who charged Cosby was bound by former Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor’s promise not to prosecute him. Cosby was released on June 30, 2021.

Kevin Steele, the Montgomery County district attorney who charged Cosby, appealed the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court in November. Steele called the Pennsylvania court’s decision “a dangerous precedent,” adding that it raised “issues under the Constitution’s due process clause.”

“The question presented to the Court is: ‘Where a prosecutor publicly announces that he will not file criminal charges based on lack of evidence, does the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment transform that announcement into a binding promise that no charges will ever be filed, a promise that the target may rely on as if it were a grant of immunity?'” Steele said in a press release obtained by Variety.

Andrew Wyatt, a spokesman for Cosby, called the petition a “pathetic last-ditch effort” and claimed that the district attorney’s “fixation” with Mr. Cosby was “troubling to say the least.”

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After the Supreme Court declined to review the case, Wyatt released a statement commending the justices for “following the rules of law.”

“This is truly a victory for Mr. Cosby but it shows that cheating will never get you far in life,” Wyatt said, “and the corruption that lies within Montgomery County District’s Attorney Office has been brought to the center stage of the world.”

Read more:

Pamela Adlon on ending “Better Things”: “It hasn’t been a piece of cake — but it’s been a total joy”

Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown, you can always turn to “Better Things.” This remains true despite Pamela Adlon’s reliable meal of goodness coming to a close after five seasons on FX. Adlon, who stars as Sam Fox and directs all ten episodes of this final season, designed her series to capture the feeling and rhythm of everyday life for women rather than follow concrete story arcs.

This ensures that long after the series creator and the ensemble cast Adlon thinks of as her second family have moved on in their lives and careers, Sam’s loving and trying moments with her mother Phil (Celia Imrie) and daughters Max (Mikey Madison), Frankie (Hannah Riley) and Duke (Olivia Edward) will be there for future generations of mothers and daughters to look to for guidance, solace, companionship or a guide to letting old grievances go.

“It’s really about what matters the most to you,” Adlon says in our full “Salon Talks” interview, which you can watch here or by clicking on the video below. “Everything changes, and we’re all an organic mess. You have to be better. You have to be willing to take all of that stuff away and say, ‘I love you. You asked me to hold this space for you.'”

I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing Adlon at the launch of every new season of “Better Things,” which makes this episode a bit wistful. But it’s also inspiring, given all of the positive messages Adlon wants to leave viewers with in these last visits to the Fox household, including the example of the show itself.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

I’ve got to say, I’m very sad that this is the last season. Just to say “fifth and final season” to me is a little heartbreaking. This show is one of those reliable comforts that we’ve all become accustomed to. How is it for you to be entering to this time knowing, “This is it”? You’ve already filmed those last episodes.

Well, I love that you say that it’s a comfort to people. That makes me feel like I’ve done my job, because I really wanted it to be that…. It was very hard, gratifying work to make a show and build a show that people will remember, that can resonate. I know that the crew feels that way about it, and the cast and all the new cast that we had come in, and the UK crew that we worked with. I mean, it hasn’t been a piece of cake. But it’s been a total joy.

Let’s talk about that because there were production challenges this year. Part of it was filming Celia Imrie’s part in England, which was interesting to see in that it looked seamless. If you hadn’t told me that Phil was right next door like she’s always been, I wouldn’t have known it. How did you do that?

I could not picture it at all. I was like, how are we going to do this? The thing is that when we figured out that we were going to go to the UK, as opposed to like… I’m not going to do Celia on Zoom the whole season. We’re not going to have “Virtual Phil.” We’re going to address COVID within the stories of the show, but not in the show. We figured out that we were going to build Phil’s living room and her house, essentially, on a stage in the UK. And weirdly, the studio we shot at is called Dukes Island.

I s**t you not, this is real. I couldn’t believe it when they told me that, but my production designer, Kitty Doris-Bates, is incredible. She built this house. Every time you see Celia, a scene with Celia Imrie in it or any of us with her, we’re all in England. And then we shot an entire episode in England, which turned out to be incredibly important and just these immersive storylines all merging and coming into a [harmonious] experience.

There is a thematic arc to the season, as with every season. The thing that I found was really interesting was how everything circled back to this idea of what home means. Specifically: In previous seasons and the entire series is about Sam and her relationships with her children, Duke, Max, and Frankie, her relationship with Phil, with being a mother and a daughter and a friend. And through all of this, the house has been this constant.

Mm-hmm [affirmative].

You’ve directed so many of these beautiful sweeping shots of the house. We’re all familiar with the art, the furniture, every detail of it. And that’s something that this season plays with in a very real way. Was that kind of an intentional thing as you went in, or did you see it developing as the season progressed?

You mean in terms of the house specifically?

Just in terms of the house and the idea of home is a constant.

It came from — well, how do we talk about the feeling that we all just had, and the feeling that we’re living in, and that fear? What did we do? We all went back to basics. We all started going for walks. We all started looking at the stuff that was in our homes. “Oh my God, those four boxes have been sitting there for five years. I can’t go out there. I might as well go through the boxes.” We started de-hoarding. We wanted to go to Goodwill and give stuff away. Goodwill wasn’t open, so we had…

It was just all these different, crazy things. People started cooking. They started making sourdough fricking bread. If I heard one more thing about a f**king sourdough starter, I’m like, okay, I didn’t do a sourdough—

I didn’t either.

But it’s all of those things and holding on to what we have, that’s what people were realizing. Your family is so dear to you. So many people lost people and people got sick. It’s just like to appreciate what you have and to… I mean, I had so many people living with me at one time. I was cooking three meals a day. And then I would go outside and go, “oh my God, we have a backyard. We have a small space.” Everything just had a new kind of veneer on it that was the same thing the day before and the month before.

But now, how it felt so precious and life is so precious, I doubled down on that “Better Things” feeling. And just wanted to kind of go hard in that direction and really be able to explore and take these characters — Max, Frankie, Duke, Phil, Sam, the village — who all get a little kind of tip-of-the-hat moment in this season, and let everybody have a little bit of a win and keep this show like you would keep in a time capsule. That it’s there for you to kind of unlock different feelings that you want to feel and different lessons that you learned.

There were some big decisions that I’m not going to go into specifically, but what were some of the things that you thought like, “this is a change that we’re going to kind of challenge the audience with” when it comes to not just the house in terms of structure, but about the environment.

Yeah. I mean, well, things that were a constant shifted, but the energies are there because the energies have been poured into those places and those characters. And also, it’s massively important to watch somebody go through something hard or challenging because we’re all going through that at a certain point. That was something that… Duke’s getting older. She’s a teenager now and that can suck for everybody who’s experiencing it, the teenager and the person who’s raising the teenager and the friends of the teenager.

It’s shining a light… I mean, without doing spoilers, I’m trying to speak…

Yeah, it’s tough, I know.

Speaking code. I’m speaking in code.

This will all make sense once you’ve seen it!

Totally.

I’m going to quote something to you, which is Max says to Duke at one point, “Hey, I was 13 too, but my 13 is not your 13,” which is kind of amazing to watch the show in that I still picture Duke as so tiny. And yet, Max is an adult now and Duke is at that age. That must have been interesting to play with just in terms of circling back to like, okay, the oldest teenager in the house is now an adult and in many ways a co-parent.

Yes. That enabled Sam to be able to go and do that job. Whereas before, this one job, she’s like, “Well, I can’t go. I have responsibilities.” She never really could imagine that her own daughter would be the one who’d be helping her out and really stepping up. Seeing Max go through her challenge or whatever the thing — code, code, code — and then be able to step up and really take care and take charge, and then say to Sam, “This mom sh*t is not for pussies,” that kind of validation for a mom is kind of just like thank you.

You’ve said this before that an unofficial motto for the show has been, “hey, bad for my life, great for the show.”

Yeah.

One thing that we have gotten to experience through the show and also watching you and your career is that you took the creative reins of the show since season three. It has just blossomed from there. Just completely become this piece of art. And the fact that you’re self-taught as a cinematographer, director, all of those things is pretty amazing. We’ve seen Sam kind of take charge as a director in her own life and in her career in the show.

This season, she’s reflecting on what a lot of people are choosing right now — which is, if this isn’t making me happy, I’m not going to do it even if it means that I’m going to forego a sure thing to pursue something that I think is interesting.

Yeah. I’m so glad you brought that up, because when I look back, it was seven years ago that we started “Better Things,” even though it’s five seasons. There was work. There was real good work opportunity for me that I had to say no to in order to pioneer this and [get to] where I am now. My show wasn’t a sure thing. It wasn’t picked up, but I needed to stop everything and completely focus on getting the show made.

That is a very big moment for Sam, particularly after she finds out that she comes from people who are workers and laborers and things can get taken away from you. When she says, “This is a shanda! You never turn down work.” You know Yiddish, Mel.

When you said that, I laughed. Yes. [Shanda is a Yiddish term for shame.]

Yiddish is so great because it sounds exactly like what it is. But she’s like, you don’t turn down work, but she knew that this was wrong. This felt wrong. This was going backwards. She was going to Belarus and she didn’t even get to hang out with Donald Glover. He got shot out in Indiana. You know what I mean? It’s a big step for her because Sam, you see her throughout this show and her career teaching an acting class, acting in a car commercial, doing voices, all of it, like directing her own segment on the Jess Barden show, you see all of that and it’s all led to this thing.

She doesn’t even know if she’s going to succeed, but she’s going to try. She’s going to Eleanor Roosevelt the s**t out of it, which is when… Remember what our girl said, do something every day that scares you. I remember that quote. And it’s like it’s only scary when you haven’t done it. And then when you’ve done it, it’s not scary anymore.

I think that’s a big thing when people are talking about pivoting, especially pivoting mid-career or midlife.

Yeah.

There’s this visual that it’s supposed to be daring or absolutely, like, done out of survival, but the way that you presented it, it is the survival and it’s also the path to thriving, which I think is so wonderful for Sam and for you and seeing that.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that I’ve said with you that I wished I wasn’t so myopic earlier on in my life. My wish is for everybody to try lots of things. I mean, don’t quit your day job, but do other things. And then maybe one day you can make a living doing the thing you love.

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Exactly. We’re unfortunately coming towards the end, but I want to make sure that I ask about the music. I could ask you about the food too, because I love the fact that in this season, Sam makes these elaborate meals for herself.

Yeah, and I know you cook too, but it’s fun to see her make that drink.

Yes.

This elaborate drink, like a margarita, and it’s not just like you go home and you pour tequila in a glass and that’s it. Goodnight, nurse! But that somebody is doing thing that’s loving for themselves, even though Max comes over and she gives it to her. Whatever. That’s really important too. I mean, I guess if the show went on, we would see Sam cooking for herself all the time.

Yes, that would be great. The music. You have two selections, I don’t think this is giving anything away, from Monty Python.

Yeah… There’s one cue in the first episode that is called “The Galaxy Song,” and it was a cue that I introduced my music supervisor to and she fell in love with it. You feel the world and the planets orbiting, and you hear the merry-go-round song and it’s just… Oh, it’s just got all that feeling. We’re welcoming everybody back to “Better Things” after two years of being down. We just go back in on the ride. It’s just a gorgeous song. It’s incredible.

I mean, Eric Idle is my hero and hearing his beautiful voice sing, I wanted the season to start with him saying, “Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown, and things seem hard or tough,” it’s just the best way to start because we’ve all been down, and we still are and we’re still scared, but we cannot give up. We have to keep moving. For years, I would be like the Earth is at the tipping point. The polar caps are melting. Yes, we have to do something about that, but also we have to keep living.

And the only way to do that is to have hope and to keep the young people going. That was my little present. I wrote a letter to Eric Idle and he allowed me to use that cue, and I’m forever grateful.

New episodes of “Better Things” premiere at 10 p.m. Mondays on FX and are streaming on Hulu. You’ll be able to see episodes weekly and you definitely should. It will make you feel better about life.

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