COVID-19 vaccine authorization for children under 5 delayed

Parents with children under five were hopeful that their children would soon be eligible for the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid vaccine, a long awaited moment since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Indeed, plans were set for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) vaccine advisory committee to discuss data recently submitted by Pfizer on February 15, the next step in the process to pave the way for approval for children between 6 months and 4 years old for the vaccine.

But on Friday, news broke that the FDA canceled the meeting. Specifically, the FDA says it wants to consider new data submitted around the possibility of a third dose.

“As part of its rolling submission, the company recently notified the agency of additional findings from its ongoing clinical trial,” said Janet Woodcock, acting commissioner of the FDA and Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Review, in a joint statement. “Based on the agency’s preliminary assessment, and to allow more time to evaluate additional data, we believe additional information regarding the ongoing evaluation of a third dose should be considered as part of our decision-making for potential authorization.”

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While it wasn’t specified in the FDA statement, according to STAT News, that data won’t be available until April.

“For the next few months, while these additional data are gathered, parents will have to rely on what they have come to do well, which is that they’re using masking procedures and making sure they’re vaccinated and taking those types of precautions with their youngest children,” said Marks, according to STAT News.

According to the FDA’s statement, it appears that the omicron surge led the FDA to request data from Pfizer too soon regarding efficiency of two doses.

“Given the recent omicron surge and the notable increase in hospitalizations in the youngest children to their highest levels during the pandemic so far, we felt it was our responsibility as a public health agency to act with urgency and consider all available options, including requesting that the company provide us with initial data on two doses from its ongoing study,” the FDA stated. “The goal was to understand if two doses would provide sufficient protection to move forward with authorizing the use of the vaccine in this age group.”

In December, Pfizer said that one-third of the dose given to children ages 5 to 11 appeared to work for infants and toddlers up to 2, but did not produce the same immune response in 2 to 4-year-olds. At the time, the company decided to expand its trial to include a third dose, rather than the two doses older children and adults receive in a full vaccine series. In the beginning of February, Pfizer announced that the company submitted data from the two-dose vaccine for authorization at the request of the FDA.

On Friday, in a news release, Pfizer said the company is still sharing data from its child vaccine trial with the FDA.

“Given that the study is advancing at a rapid pace, the companies will wait for the three-dose data as Pfizer and BioNTech continue to believe it may provide a higher level of protection in this age group,” Pfizer’s news release said. “This is also supported by recent observations of three dose booster data in several other age groups that seems to meaningfully augment neutralizing antibody levels and real world vaccine protection for omicron compared to the two-dose regimen.”

The news comes as a huge disappointment for parents, and some children’s health advocate groups are speaking out against the delay.

“Throughout the pandemic, our health leaders have been unwilling to share the data and reasoning behind their evaluation process,” said Protect Their Future, a grassroots group of physicians, parents, and activists, in a press statement. “Today, the FDA owes the data from the Pfizer trials to the millions of families they gave false hope to; they owe it to the medical and parent community to be transparent on what caused their decision to offer a safe vaccine to children and then abruptly deny it.”

The statement continued: “They also owe millions of parents a viable pathway to vaccinate their children now, especially as mitigation measures are rolled back across the country.”

Read more on the omicron variant:

What are taxpayers spending for those ‘free’ Covid tests? The government won’t say

The four free covid-19 rapid tests President Joe Biden promised in December for every American household have begun arriving in earnest in mailboxes and on doorsteps.

A surge of covid infections spurred wide demand for over-the-counter antigen tests during the holidays: Clinics were overwhelmed with people seeking tests and the few off-the-shelf brands were nearly impossible to find at pharmacies or even online via Amazon. Prices for some test kits cracked the hundred-dollar mark. And the government vowed that its purchase could provide the tests faster and cheaper so people, by simply swabbing at home, could quell the spread of covid.

The Defense Department organized the bidding and announced in mid-January, after a limited competitive process, that three companies were awarded contracts totaling nearly $2 billion for 380 million over-the-counter antigen tests, all to be delivered by March 14.

The much-touted purchase was the latest tranche in trillions of dollars in public spending in response to the pandemic. How much is the government paying for each test? And what were the terms of the agreements? The government won’t yet say, even though, by law, this information should be available.

The cost — and, more importantly, the rate per test — would help demonstrate who is getting the best deal for protection in these covid times: the consumer or the corporation.

The reluctance to share pricing details flies against basic notions of cost control and accountability — and that’s just quoting from a long-held position by the Justice Department. “The prices in government contracts should not be secret,” according to its website. “Government contracts are ‘public contracts,’ and the taxpayers have a right to know — with very few exceptions —what the government has agreed to buy and at what prices.”

Americans often pay far more than people in other developed countries for tests, drugs, and medical devices, and the pandemic has accentuated those differences. Governments abroad had been buying rapid tests in bulk for over a year, and many national health services distributed free or low-cost tests, for less than $1, to their residents. In the U.S., retailers, companies, schools, hospitals, and everyday shoppers were competing months later to buy swabs in hopes of returning to normalcy. The retail price climbed as high as $25 for a single test in some pharmacies; tales abounded of corporate and wealthy customers hoarding tests for work or holiday use.

U.S. contracts valued at $10,000 or more are required to be routinely posted to sam.gov or the Federal Procurement Data System, known as fpds.gov. But none of the three new rapid-test contracts — awarded to iHealth Labs of California, Roche Diagnostics Corp. of Indiana, and Abbott Rapid Dx North America of Florida — could be found in the online databases.

“We don’t know why that data isn’t showing up in the FPDS database, as it should be visible and searchable. Army Contracting Command is looking into the issue and working to remedy it as quickly as possible,” spokesperson Jessica R. Maxwell said in an email in January. This month, she declined to provide more information about the contracts and referred all questions about the pricing to the Department of Health and Human Services.

Only vague information is available in DOD press releases, dated Jan. 13 and Jan. 14, that note the overall awards in the fixed-price contracts: iHealth Labs for $1.275 billion, Roche Diagnostics for $340 million, and Abbott Rapid Dx North America for $306 million. There were no specifics regarding contract standards or terms of completion — including how many test kits would be provided by each company.

Without knowing the price or how many tests each company agreed to supply, it is impossible to determine whether the U.S. government overpaid or to calculate if more tests could have been provided faster. As variants of the deadly virus continue to emerge, it is unclear if the government will re-up these contracts and under what terms.

To put forth a bid to fill an “urgent” national need, companies had to provide answers to the Defense Department by Dec. 24 about their capacity to scale up manufacturing to produce 500,000 or more tests a week in three months. Among the questions: Had a company already been granted “emergency use authorization” for the test kits, and did a company have “fully manufactured unallocated stock on hand to ship within two weeks of a contract award?”

Based on responses from about 60 companies, the Defense Department said it sent “requests for proposals” directly to the manufacturers. Twenty companies bid. Defense would not release the names of interested companies.

Emails to the three chosen companies to query the terms of the contracts went unanswered by iHealth and Abbott. Roche spokesperson Michelle A. Johnson responded in an email that she was “unable to provide that information to you. We do not share customer contract information.” The customers — listed as the Defense Department and the Army command — did not provide answers about the contract terms.

The Army’s Contracting Command, based in Alabama, initially could not be reached to answer questions. An email address on the command’s website for media bounced back as out-of-date. Six phone numbers listed on the command’s website for public information were unmanned in late January. At the command’s protocol office, the person who answered a phone in late January referred all queries to the Aberdeen Proving Ground offices in Maryland.

“Unfortunately, there is an issue with voicemail,” said Ralph Williams, a representative of the protocol office. “Voicemail is down. I mean, voicemail has been down for months.”

Asked about the bounced email traffic, Williams said he was surprised the address — acc.pao@us.army.mil — was listed on the ACC website. “I’m not sure when that email was last used,” he said. “The army stopped using the email address about eight years ago.”

Williams provided a direct phone number for Aberdeen and apologized for the confusion. “People should have their phone forwarded,” he said. “But I can only do what I can do.”

Joyce Cobb, an Army Contracting Command-Aberdeen Proving Ground spokesperson, reached via phone and email, referred all questions to Defense personnel. Maxwell referred more detailed questions about the contracts to HHS, and emails to HHS went unanswered.

Both the Defense and Army spokespeople, after several emails, said the contracts would have to be reviewed, citing the Freedom of Information Act that protects privacy, before release. Neither explained how knowing the price per test could be a privacy or proprietary concern.

A Defense spokesperson added that the contracts had been fast-tracked “due to the urgent and compelling need” for antigen tests. Defense obtained “approval from the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, & Technology to contract without providing for full and open competition.”

KHN separately searched for the contracts on the sam.gov website during a phone call with a government representative who assisted with the search. During an extended phone session, the representative called in a supervisor. Neither could locate the contracts, which are updated twice a week. The representative wondered whether the numbers listed in the Defense press release were wrong and offered: “You might want to double-check that.”

On Jan. 25, Defense spokesperson Maxwell, in an email, said that the Army Contracting Command “is working to prepare these contracts for public release and part of that includes proactively readying the contracts for the FOIA redaction.” Three days later, she sent an email stating that “under the limited competition authority … DOD was not required to make the Request for Proposal (RFP) available to the public.”

Maxwell did not respond when KHN pointed out that the contracting provision she cited does not prohibit the release of such information. In a Feb. 2 email, Maxwell said “we have nothing further to provide at this time.”

On sam.gov, the covid spreadsheets include a disclaimer that “due to the tempo of operations” in the pandemic response, the database shows only “a portion of the work that has been awarded to date.”

In other words, it could not vouch for the timeliness or accuracy of its own database.

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Trump under investigation: Your guide to who’s probing what, and how it’s going

Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election — which involved pressuring countless officials to do all sorts of dubious things, as well fomenting a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol — has come into greater focus this past week as state and federal officials continue to investigate the former president and his allies on numerous different legal fronts.

But investigations of the ex-president’s conduct around the Jan. 6 uprising don’t represent all the potential legal trouble Trump faces. At the very least, there are also both civil and criminal investigations in New York into his company’s business practices — mostly or entirely unrelated to his presidency — along with a criminal probe in Atlanta that might be the sleeper in this panoply of potential jeopardy

Washington, D.C.

Let’s start with the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, which this week opened a formal probe into the 15 boxes of official documents found at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida — which he reportedly took with him, in apparent violation of federal law, after leaving office last January.

Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., said this week that she was “deeply concerned” that the documents, now back in the hands of the National Archives and Records Administration, had not been officially turned over by Trump during the transition period. The former president’s conduct, she added, “[appears] to have been … in violation of the Presidential Records Act.”

The committee’s inquiry comes on the same day that Maggie Haberman, the New York Times reporter known for her suspiciously close rapport with the former president, alleged that White House staff repeatedly found “wads of printed paper” clogging Trump’s toilet in his own residence.

“I learned that staff in the White House residence would periodically find the toilet clogged,” Haberman told CNN on Thursday. “It could be Post-Its, it could be notes he wrote to himself, it could be other things, we don’t know,” she added. “But it certainly does add … another dimension to what we know about how he handled material in the White House.”

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Last week, the National Archives acknowledged that some of the documents it had preserved from the Trump administration were literally torn up and taped back together. Numerous officials likewise confirmed with The Washington Post that Trump habitually destroyed official documents himself, often leaving aides to salvage the scraps.

“He didn’t want a record of anything,” a former senior Trump official told the Post. “He never stopped ripping things up. Do you really think Trump is going to care about the Records Act? Come on.”

The House Oversight panel’s findings are likely to overlap with those of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, which this past week received some of the compromised documents. More broadly, the Jan. 6 panel remains laser-focused on Trump and his affiliates’ communications before and during the insurrection.

This week, the committee uncovered large and unexplained gaps in White House call logs during the insurrection, according to The New York Times — a report that appears to contravene claims made by Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy who acknowledged last year that they had spoken with Trump as the riot was underway. Trump was widely known to take calls on his personal cell phone — or those of aides — circumventing more secure channels of communication.

This week, the Jan. 6 committee also subpoenaed former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, who has in the past proudly divulged his failed (and distinctly illegal-sounding) plan to reinstall Trump as president after the 2020 election.

Navarro is just the latest in a list of Trump associates to be subpoenaed, including former White House strategist Steve Bannon, since indicted for contempt of Congress; former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows; and ex-Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, a central player in Trump’s election-unskewing conspiracy. According to CNN, the committee has thus far invited 80 people of interest to testify.

Navarro, for his part, played a key role in encouraging former Vice President Mike Pence (whose “team” has reportedly been cooperative with the Jan. 6 panel) to delay the election certification process — a maneuver intended, in Navarro’s account, to throw the election into the House. As we know, Pence concluded what was already obvious: His role in the vote count was purely ceremonial.

Atlanta

Now we move on to the criminal investigation in Georgia led by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is exploring Trump’s infamous phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, whom Trump asked to “find” enough votes to tilt the Peach State in his favor. (Raffensperger works in Atlanta, the state capital, which is Willis’ jurisdiction.) Last Friday, Willis told CNN that she expects to impanel a grand jury probe and start serving subpoenas this summer. She also said this week that Trump won’t be able to delay the case or invoke any form of executive privilege or immunity. “This is a criminal investigation. We’re not here playing a game,” Willis said. “I plan to use the power of the law. We are all citizens.”

Willis’ probe may go beyond Trump to a number of his associates, including Meadows, Giuliani, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who called Raffensperger last November, reportedly to ask whether he could find a way to exclude a large proportion of absentee ballots from Georgia’s final vote count.

New York City and Albany

Moving north several hundred miles, Trump faces two investigations, one civil and one criminal, into the Trump Organization’s finances and business dealings. (Whether either of these probes is focused on Trump personally remains unclear.) In the civil probe being led by New York state Attorney General Letitia James, the central question is whether Trump’s company inflated and deflated certain assets for tax and lending reasons, which is a form of fraud.

James recently subpoenaed the federal government’s General Services Administration to gather information about how the agency selected the Trump Organization to lease the historic post office building in Washington that became the Trump International Hotel. Last month, James’ office said it had found “significant evidence” of financial fraud that “permeated” the Trump Organization — an indication that the state is edging closer to filing a formal lawsuit. Trump has already sued James’ office in an effort to stonewall the proceeding, calling her investigation a politically-motivated “witch hunt.”

Downriver in New York City, the criminal probe of the Trump Organization launched by former Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, and now led by his successor, Alvin Bragg, has been quiet since mid-December, when one of Trump’s accountants appeared before a grand jury to answer questions about the company’s business practices. Last summer, that probe produced an actual indictment, when Vance charged Allen Weisselberg, longtime CFO of the Trump Organization, with 15 felony counts for evading $344,745 in taxes over more than a decade. Bragg has only been in office about six weeks, and so far has said nothing about whether he intends to push the investigation further or pursue criminal charges against the Trump empire. Stay tuned!

Inglewood mayor warns against anti-vax disruptions during Super Bowl

With the convoy of anti-vaccine truck protesters continuing to disrupt border crossings in Canada, rumors have spread of a similar demonstration popping up in the United States and possibly even disrupting the Super Bowl.

But according to L.A. Weekly, the mayor of Inglewood, California, James Butts, has a blunt message for anyone thinking about trying it.

“Flyers have been shared across multiple social media platforms, gaining support from political figures such as Arizona Senator Wendy Rogers and former gubernatorial candidate Major Williams. The threats of a trucker convoy protest now have the city of Inglewood and security forces are on high alert, whether they are successful or not,” reported Isai Rocha. “‘They wouldn’t be able to do it because the trucks would be towed away immediately,’ Mayor Butts told L.A. Weekly. ‘Let me be very clear… their vehicles would be towed immediately and it would cost them a lot of money.'”

“The gathering spots for these planned protest have primarily come from a Telegram app channel named ‘Truckers For Freedom,’ which has more than 80,000 subscribers and several discussions about trucker convoys, similar to the one that occurred in Ontario, Canada,” continued the report. “The ‘Freedom Convoy’ protest consisted of more than 1,000 semi-trucks blocking areas of Canadian roads, most notably the Ambassador Bridge that connects Ontario, Canada to Detroit, Michigan.”

The truck protest, which has been fueled by a tidal wave of disinformation on social media, is demanding an end to vaccine mandates for Canadian truckers. In fact, 90 percent of Canadian truckers are vaccinated, and the Canadian Trucking Alliance has condemned the blockade.

QAnon followers are working towards lining people up who echo Trump’s beliefs

QAnon enthusiasts, who believe former President Donald Trump represents some form of new world order, are now focusing on a different plot in hopes of regaining control of the White House.

According to The Guardian, QAnon advocates have turned their attention toward Secretary of State election races in various swing states. So, why do these races have the attention of QAnon followers? They believe these particular races could be the key to ensuring there is not a repeat of the 2020 presidential election. In many swing states, Republican election officials refused to assist Trump in overturning the presidential election.

QAnon enthusiasts, who believe former President Donald Trump represents some form of new world order, are now focusing on a different plot in hopes of regaining control of the White House.

“I knew right then that they had figured out that we need to take back the secretary of state offices around the country. Not only did they ask me to run, they asked me to put together a coalition of other like-minded secretary of state candidates. I got to work, Juan O Savin helped, and we formed a coalition.”

Savin has also spoken out about the QAnon agenda. In January, Savin also shared details about the supposed “project” the movement had in place. Marchant explained, “We have a project that we are doing helping candidates across the country that we started here in Nevada that has prospered pretty well, with a number of Trump endorsements.”

QAnon influencer Juan O Savin while on a QAnon show yesterday appeared to confirm that he's part of this alleged effort to recruit 2022 secretary of state candidates throughout the country. https://t.co/G8MNyAIGvC pic.twitter.com/sCQ4zNSjzY

— Alex Kaplan (@AlKapDC) November 24, 2021

On Sunday, Savin also weighed in on “the secretary of state stuff”, as he boasted that “across the country we are gaining strength rapidly to get back into this game in an effective way. A lot of those offices that they thought they held and weren’t going to matter, we are going to flip those.”

Koalas have officially been added to the endangered species list

Two years ago an Australian parliamentary inquiry pointed towards the possibility of koalas becoming extinct by 2050 and on Friday the indigenous marsupial was officially added to the endangered species list.

As with many other vulnerable species that have landed on the list before it, the decline in the koala population is widely thought to be caused by environmental stressors such as drought, bush fires and disease, according to The New York Times.

The switch in classification from vulnerable to endangered has led Australian government to take pro-active measures to pump the breaks on further rapid decline of the animal’s numbers. The environmental department of Australia is moving forward with a recovery plan with the hope of better protecting the koala’s natural woodland habitats.

A month prior to the official endangered ruling being made, Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared that Australia would put to use “50 million Australian dollars ($35.7 million) over four years to koala recovery and conservation efforts,” as stated in The New York Times report.

According to the Australian Koala Foundation, 30% of the koala population died in 2018, leaving roughly 58,000 koalas left.

Out of all the factors that led to this decline, bush fires in and around New South Wales, Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory are thought to have had the greatest impact.

“Australia must complete the transition out of deforestation and native forest logging to become a world leader in forest protection and restoration,” Stuart Blanch, a conservation scientist with WWF-Australia said in a statement quoted by The Wall Street Journal.

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Although the Prime Minister is taking steps towards protecting against the complete loss of Australia’s signature animal, some feel that it may be too little, too late.

“The change does nothing legally and [is] not backed by any legislative action needed to stop land clearing, which is the key reason for Koalas becoming homeless and then getting sick with disease,” The Australian Koala Foundation said in a statement Friday.

Read more from Salon on environmental concerns:

“Inventing Anna” takes a good story, imprisons it in unnecessary excess and robs of us our time

Before she inspired Shonda Rhimes‘ nine-part series “Inventing Anna,” the woman who went by Anna Delvey nervily played somewhere in the middle of America’s hatred of and fascination with grifters, and our grudging obsession with the wealthy.

This Russian-German con artist, born Anna Sorokin, constructed such a convincing illusion out of snobbery and good taste that she succeeded in stiffing luxury hotels and bilking financial institutions for hundreds of thousands of dollars. She may have remained an essentially New York story if not for journalist Jessica Pressler, who made Delvey an international sensation by way a 2018 New York Magazine profile emphasizing her stunning guile and essential unknowability.

Through Pressler’s story we traveled with Delvey into some of New York’s most exclusive circles, mingling with high society and discovering how far flattery and snobbery can take someone with enough savvy, along with right couture.

Although one of her victims is a writer who Delvey stuck with a $62,000 hotel bill, the scammer became something of a folk hero. This otherwise average-seeming woman stuck it to the one percent using little more than her charm and ability to talk her way into luxury suites.

For what is Anna Delvey if not a villainous twist on the Cinderella fantasy? Not content to wait for a prince or a fairy godmother to kit her out with ballroom slippers or the keys to the kingdom, she simply steals the former and takes up space in the latter. That takes an audacity few possess, and that many wish they did.

Wanting to love the “Inventing Anna” story is entirely separate from the reality of what Rhimes has done with it, which is to take an elegantly simple study about a decadent and envelop it in narrative maximalism. From the rococo dialogue that is Rhimes’ signature, in which simple communications take on gratuitous curlicues and repetition, to the penchant to drawing out scenes far beyond dramatic necessity, the showrunner mercilessly clobbers us with its overwrought approach.

Few questioned her until it was too late because, as a stylist in Rhimes’ liberal adaptation put it, she nailed the little details. She accessorized correctly and knew about all the finest places and things; she ordered wine not based upon the label but the region. Playing the part made it easy for her to insinuate herself into the lives of those with glittering reputations and enough money to part with sums here and there without losing much sleep.

But Rhimes’ most bewildering choice decentralizes the glamorous predator at its center to make the writer the star.

This wouldn’t be a problem if she’d written Pressler’s stand-in Vivian Kent (“Veep” star Anna Chlumsky) as more compelling than the sum of her obstacles. In fairness the very pregnant Vivian has much to overcome, starting with her need to recover from a career-derailing mistake that involved reporting a New York tale so fantastic that it ended up being false.

As penance her manager assigns her a toothless #MeToo story about the women of Wall Street, expecting that to eat up her time until she exits for maternity leave. Coming across the story of Anna (“Ozark” scene-stealer Julia Garner) leads her to defy orders. Anna wasn’t being taken seriously either, Vivian realizes, and becomes convinced that this young woman being dismissed as a simple socialite who got caught committing fraud is smarter than she’s made out to be.

If you’re wondering why Chlumsky’s journalist doesn’t bear Pressler’s name despite the writer having a producer credit here, this is quickly explained by the way the script capitalizes upon the nakedness of each woman’s ambition, as all electric tales about swindlers do.

Vivian never hides her intention to use Anna to achieve her own ends. After a long stretch of toying with the reporter, Anna plays along, using Vivian’s sympathetic ear and pen to expand her legend. Each woman in her way is symbolically snubbing a system constructed by and for the benefit of men, as three newsroom veterans who assist and advise her (played by Anna Deavere Smith, Jeff Perry and Terry Kinney, all consistently terrific despite everything else) regularly remind her.

Rhimes never sufficiently explores the common psychological elements that the journalist and her subject share in a way that could add meaning on the story. It’s the opposite: her thin rendering of each relationship to the other feeds the show’s other significant flaws.

Vivian is obsessed with Anna’s ability to hoodwink people who pride themselves on their superiority while never figuring out anything substantial about her, such as which lines she’s willing to cross and who is acceptable to screw over. Because of this, Garner is stuck with a character who never develops into much more than an irritating cartoon who cannot escape of the soggy mouth in which her unplaceable Eastern European accent has trapped her.

The actor nevertheless finds a way to crack open her grating, spiky façade to show us glimpses of frailty and insecurity, teasing at some drop of a reason that people like her attorney (Arian Moayed) stand by her and others in her circle, like Laverne Cox’s physical trainer Kacy Duke, put up with her. But at no point are we given a firm reason as to why we should invest or empathize with this entitled woman, not even when her story is filtered through the perspective of one of her ride-or-die friends.

Rhimes writes Vivian just as shallowly, which is a terrible way to render a lead. Chlumsky is a master of expressive silences, which serves her well in her comedy turns. But here, she’s handed a limiting palette mainly consisting of frustration, anxiety and awkwardness, with few opportunities for humanizing introspection.

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Chlumsky fiercely struggles to make a compelling portrait out of all this but doesn’t quite fill out the canvas. Instead she becomes a rougher version of a con artist herself, coercing sources with insinuations that she’ll make them look worse without their cooperation and manipulating Anna out of accepting a plea deal for her own benefit.

I suspect anyone who has been missing the “Scandal” creator’s writing style will embrace all the negatives listed here, chalking them up to being part of the “Inventing Anna” maker’s way of weaving a deliciousness out of mess. The parade of familiar faces from the Shondaland stable of regulars (including, among others, Katie Lowes, Chris Lowell, Josh Malina along Perry and Smith) doesn’t hurt either.

For some people such all-star reunions are enough to carry a piece emphasizing pleasing style over lasting insight. Others may be left bewildered by Rhimes’ apparent sympathy for a figure whose obvious pathology is never entirely explained or justified.

Any argument that Pressler writes Anna as an enigma in her article is undercut by the regularly posted reminder that “This whole story is completely true. Except for the parts that are made up.” Rhimes isn’t shy about availing herself of artistic license. In this story, however, she forgoes fleshing out her characters and bloats each episode’s runtime instead. The shortest episodes are 59 minutes long, with the finale clocking in at a punishing 82 minutes.

And this may be the ultimate test “Inventing Anna” places before us. Delvey’s modus operandi involved filling her marks’ head with grand schemes and visions of luxury while wining and dining on their dime, promising that she’s good for debts she could never pay. This show lures the viewer with the promise implied by Rhimes’ reputation for giving good soap, which the likes of “Bridgerton” has fulfilled. But as each hour-plus episode lurches toward the next without much sign of a payoff, you may start questioning whether you have, in fact, been drawn into another long con. Worse, it’s one for which there is no restitution. Repentant crooks can offer monetary restitution to their victims, but there’s no way to reclaim misspent time.

All nine episodes of “Inventing Anna” are currently streaming on Netflix. Watch a trailer for it below, via YouTube.

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In Amazon’s affable rom-com “I Want You Back” Jenny Slate and Charlie Day charm as meddling exes

The affable, undemanding rom-com, “I Want You Back” — alert: Valentine’s Day is next week — has Peter (Charlie Day) being dumped by Anne (Gina Rodriguez) just as Noah (Scott Eastwood) breaks up with Emma (Jenny Slate). Anne and Noah both feel stuck in their going-nowhere relationships. Viewers may find complacency with this entry in the genre. The film coasts on the charms of it leads, and offers smiles instead of laughs, comfort instead of romance.

The screenplay, written by Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger (who penned “Love, Simon“), takes a simple premise that has Peter and Emma meeting cute and scheming to get their exes back by breaking up their new relationships. Think “Strangers on a Train” with marriage instead of murder as the objective. Only the characters describe it as “Cruel Intentions,” only sexier. (It’s not sexier, they acknowledge; such is the film’s humor).

Peter and Emma are genial coconspirators. It is charming watching Peter and Emma get drunk and sing “You Oughta Know” at a karaoke bar, or dub themselves the “Sadness Sisters,” pledging to call each other instead of their exes, because misery loves company. And it is nice that the instant friends do not become instant friends with benefits; Emma wakes up with a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch the morning after a night out with Peter.

But back to the plan at hand. Peter and Emma decide that she should volunteer at the middle school production of “Little Shop of Horrors” that Anne’s new boyfriend, Logan (Manny Jacinto) is directing. Meanwhile Peter should befriend Noah to keep tabs on his new relationship with Ginny (Clark Backo). Both, of course, are flirting with disaster as their efforts to sabotage each other’s exes has greater potential to backfire than achieve success.

The best moments are the episodes that get the main characters out of their comfort zones. Peter accepts a dare to go jumping into a hot tub from a second-floor balcony, which is amusing and horrifying. Emma also faces her fears when she channels her pain after an awkward, unexpected chat with Noah, by belting out “Suddenly Seymour” during a dress rehearsal of “Little Shop.” It is an emotional, showstopping moment that slays.

The scenes of Peter and Emma bonding and supporting each other are appealing. He describes his stalled dream to her, and she is encouraging. He motivates her to get out of the house she shares with two horny law students, go back to school, and get on with her own life. “I Want You Back” benefits from Day and Slate’s rapport and their cockeyed optimism.

Sometimes it relies too much on the performer’s comic talents to force humor. There is an extended, and unfunny sequence where Peter breaks into Ginny’s house to plant a condom to suggest Noah is cheating on her. (The hope is to prompt a fight that will break up the couple). But, of course, he gets trapped in their bedroom during a passionate moment between the couple and gets an unwanted eyeful of the naked Noah. (Eastwood shows why he is appropriately cast as a personal trainer).

At its weakest, “I Want You Back” feels sophomoric with characters behaving like teenagers. Emma’s throwaway comment about “getting to second base” is meant to be cute, but like her invitation to have a threesome with Logan and Anne — concocted to break the couple up — it feels more like she is playing Truth or Dare than being a calculating seductress.

The threesome sequence is awkward, and Slate, unlike Day, doesn’t get to utilize her slapstick skills much. Instead Emma gets a curious subplot where she befriends Trevor (Luke David Blumm), a foul-mouthed 7th grader in the “Little Shop” production. Her exchanges with Trevor allow her to pass on life lessons about adulting — something she herself needs to embrace. These scenes are actually kind of sweet, and the film could have had fun with Emma calling the no-nonsense Trevor for support when she is feeling particularly dejected and vulnerable.

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Other tweaks might have improved the film as well. Noah and Peter’s bromance only hints at the comedy of misread signals. Likewise, Anne is underdeveloped as a character. Her attraction to Logan reads more like a relationship of convenience, whereas Noah’s love for Ginny seems genuine. If Anne is simply rebounding, that could have been further explored. As such, Rodriguez is wasted in a thankless role. At least Jacinto is diverting and wonderfully deadpan as the intense Logan.

Nevertheless, “I Want You Back” is a compatible showcase for its sad sack leads. Day and Slate are endearing as they lean on each other as they process their emotions about relationships. His scrappiness is a good match for her quirkiness, even when there is friction between them when their plans do not go as planned. Each performer gets a moment to shine. Day is in top form when he gets flustered and tries to talk his way out of a sticky situation. Slate excels when Emma exudes confidence, dropping a book to catch Logan’s attention, or putting on a fancy seductive dress.

“I Want You Back” it is likable enough, but too often the film feels sit-comic, playing things safe rather than living the dream.

“I Want You Back” is available on Prime Video. Watch a trailer for it below, via YouTube.

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Teenage figure skater Kamila Valieva is the latest casualty of Russia’s athletic glory at any cost

Weeks before the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, 15-year-old Kamila Valieva, a figure skater from Russia, tested positive for a banned heart medication. In the past, that would be enough to disqualify an athlete from international competition for some amount of time, but in the case of Valieva, she was allowed to compete in the opening days of the Beijing Olympics. It’s unclear why.

This doping revelation was not released until after Valieva had already started competing and had helped her fellow Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) figure skaters win gold in the Beijing Olympics figure skating team event, where Valieva shined. She wowed her fellow competitors and fans all over the world by becoming the first woman to complete a “quad” in competition, an extremely difficult maneuver where she spins four times in the air before landing on one foot.

But, as the athletes prepared to gather for the medal ceremony — ROC won gold, the U.S. silver, Japan the bronze — they were told to turn back. There would be no medal ceremony. As the case works its way through the sports courts that will make a final determination if the Russian team — and Valieva — is disqualified or not, there still has been no medal ceremony.

Related: “Russian Doping Scandal Exposed“

For Russia, it’s not the first time a doping scandal has marred their participation at the games.

In 2019, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) banned Russia from participating in international sports for four years stemming from its alleged state-led doping program that saw Russian athletes at the 2014 Sochi olympics double their medal output. The ban was later reduced to two years; it expires at the end of 2022. But, in the eyes of the world’s sporting governing bodies, the ban on international competition for the country was not fair to all the other Russian athletes who had not doped, so Russians were allowed to compete in the Olympics under a different moniker, ROC.

As the New York Times wrote, “The news of the positive test also highlighted the presence of Russian athletes at the Games.” Still, Russia’s flag cannot be flown at the Olympics and their anthem cannot be played when their athletes win.

Russia has shown that international sporting glory is paramount at any cost, even at the cost of its own athletes’ well-being. This latest scandal will do nothing to ease the international sporting community’s distrust of Russian athletes and their inclusion in the games. A cloud of suspicion hangs over each event ROC athletes participate in, doping or not.

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When it comes to Valieva, things are a little more complicated. As a 15-year-old, the athlete is considered a “protected person” under the anti-doping code rule book, so she could receive simply a reprimand for the positive test. But what could happen to any Russian who helped her, Olympic official or otherwise, remains to be seen: Her coaches and team doctors are likely to be investigated as well.

In the meantime, the World Anti-Doping Agency and the IOC are vowing to fight the Russian decision to allow Valieva to continue skating in the Olympics. The Court of Arbitration for Sport will soon hold a hearing to determine if she’ll be eligible to compete in next week’s figure skating events at the Beijing Olympics or if she’ll have to sit them out.

In the coming months, more will certainly be revealed about just what happened, and who is responsible. Hearings will be held, and the world’s sporting courts and administrators will surely punish someone. For Russia, that’s the worst-possible outcome: the latest lasting damage the whole scandal is doing to their reputation — no matter what it’s done to their athletes.

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“Indemnity” director on his unique South African action film: “What if trauma can be weaponized?”

“Indemnity” is an intense, impressive South African action film written and directed by Travis Taute (his debut) that grapples with PTSD, trauma, and conspiracies. In the film, beefy firefighter Theo Abrams (Jarrid Geduld in a star-making performance) is recovering from the death of his colleagues during a rescue. Unable to work without clearance from Dr. Tunbridge (Susan Danford), a psychiatrist, and going through a rough patch in his marriage to Angela (Nicole Fortuin), Theo is at a crossroads. However, his life really gets upended when Angela is found dead and Theo is suspected of her murder.

With Detective Rene Williamson (Gail Mabalane) and her boss, General Alan Shard (Andre Jacobs) in pursuit, things quickly get complicated for Theo. As he goes on the run, bodies pile up, as does incriminating evidence. He also finds highly classified information concerning an experimental program that may lead to the future of warfare.

RELATED: A Maori action movie? Hell yes

“Indemnity” zips along with numerous chases, fight scenes, and explosions as Theo tries to uncover the truth and clear his name. Remarkably, Geduld performed all of his own stunts — including one hair-raising bit outside a 21st-floor hotel window.

Taute spoke with Salon about crafting his exciting new film, depicting trauma, and the state of South African cinema.

What can you say about the scope of a making a project like “Indemnity?” There are drone shots, action scenes, chase, explosions, fights, car accidents, and stunts. How ambitious did you get with writing, directing, and the action here?

I wanted to make an action film, and I was very fortunate that my producers bought into that vision and that ambition. We wanted to move the needle in terms of the perception of what kinds of films can come out of South Africa. I love action as a genre, and it is notoriously expensive to produce. We haven’t been afforded the opportunity to do this in the past. But we have all the capability to pull it off. So, for us, it was about striking a balance with our ambitions. There needs to be an action sequence every 10 minutes. We had to be really clever about what was realistically achievable in our budget. We made a conscious choice to keep things as contained as possible — a fight in an elevator, or in the back of police van. We knew the fire scenes would be a challenge to accomplish, so we used our resources for that. It really started with the writing. It’s a man on the run story, so we are constantly moving to different locations. I wanted to make a film that had action set pieces but was grounded by character. Sometimes it was too ambitious, so I reined it in, and sometimes it was organic.

I appreciate that your film addresses PTSD and trauma for first responders. Why did you decide to explore that topical issue?

There were multiple reasons that led to this being the issue tackled in the film. I wanted this to be a love letter to the films of the ’90s and ’00s, which had social commentary embedded in a blockbuster. I wanted to highlight things that are important and not spoken about that often. The impetus for “Indemnity” came about a couple of years ago when I read about American soldiers returning from Afghanistan war who were having trouble reintegrating into society. I stumbled upon this one story of a veteran was home less than 24 hours. He reunited with his family and while at a local grocer, he shot the cashier and sat on the pavement and waited for the police. He had no recollection of the events and was retraumatized discovering what he had done. I thought that was such a harrowing story. It sent me down rabbit hole to investigate PTSD. I brought it home. In our country, unfortunately, we have a very high crime rate. A lot of people are suffering from trauma here. PTSD specifically is quite undiagnosed.

Looking further, at first responders — we’ve seen the police angle, but people don’t know how much firefighters actually go through on a daily basis. If there is a car crash on the freeway, you know what the paramedics and policemen are doing, but if there are fatalities, the firefighters have to clean that up. I chatted with firefighters about their stories. I really understood that the platform to talk mental health is really not there for them to cope and survive and do the work that they do. Bringing it closer to home, I felt with men in particular — and men of color of a certain generation — there is this idea of what a man is and what a man should be. When it comes to any issues regarding mental health, there is such a terrible stigma attached to it, it gets swept under the rug. It’s considered weak. This inability for men to converse in a constructive way about not being well emotionally and psychologically and being supported in that conversation. That was important to me, and powerful and why I landed on that as the issue I wanted to speak about in his film.

“Indemnity” is set in South Africa, features some Afrikaans dialogue, and Black leads. However, your film is not really about race — though that issue hangs in the background. Can you discuss that?

Race is such a big issue worldwide — especially in South Africa with our history. It’s been an omnipresent theme in films that come out of South Africa. Apartheid hangs in the air in so many of our films. I specifically wanted the main character in “Indemnity” to be a person of color. I wanted to be as authentic as I could be and speak to a story that I personally understand. But also, we haven’t seen an action hero, or someone represented in this way, in a South African film before. Race was about subverting expectation. How do we have race be there in the background, and feel it, but not have it be an issue or spoken about? How do we not make it the prominent, pervading thing that people take away from the plot? It was purposefully designed to remove that issue and have people sucked into what we were trying to do with the story.

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I was pleased your film opens with a personal story, gets a bit cloak-and-dagger, turns into an action film and ends up being a conspiracy movie. Can you talk about creating the film’s tone and shifting genres?

There was a fear there might be too much. For me, I grew up loving action films, and man on the run stories. You can feel the influence of “Enemy of the State,” “The Bourne Ultimatum,” and political conspiracy thrillers. These are my favorite kind of films to watch. So, it was in the developing the film and escalating the stakes — dealing with trauma and one man’s psychological struggle. I asked: What if it was something bigger? What if trauma can be weaponized? That made me do research. There are so many elaborate and varying techniques used to treat patients with psychological issues and taking things further. That propelled me into the political arena. I tried to make it something that could be a reality. I wanted the film to feel grounded and feel as real as possible even if it teeters on the edge of sci-fi.

Jarrid Geduld as Theo in “Indemnity” (Magnolia Pictures)

One thing that is typical of the conspiracy genre is how Theo has information fall into his lap at times. I know you need some contrivances to move the story forward, but did you incorporate them?

It was all in the writing, it could easily become action with chunks of exposition explaining to the audience what is happening. It was a complicated story, and we wanted to engineer twists and turns, but not have you feel you could lose track of what was happening and why. I spent the most time on those pieces of the film where you have to tie things together and explain what is happening and why. I find that in films I watch. You do get removed if you are spoonfed everything, so you have to be careful how much information you reveal at what point and time. It has to be intriguing enough in the beginning to spur someone on a journey without giving you all the answers, so the dots can connect at the end. In the making of it, we’re also limited by how many days and locations we can shoot. Your ambition as a filmmaker is to do things visually, because film is a visual language, and you don’t always have that opportunity so you have to strike the balance between what you can show people and what you need to tell them.

Theo’s character suffers mentally, but also physically. He is shot. He is beaten. He hangs out a window on cut glass. He gets in a car accident. He catches on fire. Can you talk about the grueling paces you put Jarrid Geduld through?

I wanted to keep each sequence fresh, so it felt like a different challenge for Theo’s character, but also put him through wringer, physically. He’s a very resilient character. He has been through so much trauma. For me, he was extremely strong in terms of his physical capabilities, and I wanted to show someone going through so much but not stopping or giving up. That’s the fascinating thing about the human spirit — we have this insane ability to endure. He has psychological faults and setbacks, but physically, he was able to keep moving despite sustaining injury after injury.

Speaking of injury, Jarrid performed his own stunts, too!

When you think of firemen, everyone has preconceived expectation of them being big, buff guys. Jarrid is 5′ 10″ and he brought this soft, vulnerable energy [to his audition]. I felt immediately when I saw it — that’s him. We had a team to train whoever we cast for action. But we need a performer who could do the emotions. When we knew we would be casting Jarrid, I had conversations with producers and stunt coordinators because I wanted to do everything as practical as possible.

We were lucky that Jarrid is super athletic; he used to be a gymnast. I love films when you know the actors immersed in the role doing their own stunts. It adds an extra level of cool. When I spoke to Jarrid about that, he said that’s great he wanted to all his own stunts. He underwent about two months of intensive training and conditioning to get into shape. The stunt team coached Jarrid through every fight sequence. We spoke about the emotion of each sequence and where Theo is as a character and how he’d react to those environments. Jarrid went to firefighter training, so we could shoot the opening fire scene and how to handle fire, and the correct movement, so it would feel as authentic as possible. That was challenging. I never worked with those kinds of special effects, or shot a scene on that scale before.

The two most challenging sequences were the back of police van fight sequence — we were on a freeway with two characters bouncing around the vehicle, but we couldn’t shoot on the freeway — and the window sequence. There weren’t a lot of locations that actually provide the aesthetic I wanted for that. I wanted glass windows so there was nothing to hold onto. I wanted to induce vertigo. We had to break the sequence up into two parts. The first was him climbing out of window, the second part where he dropped and hung onto the window. We only had about a half day to shoot. Once everything was rigged, Jarrid could feel what it was like and feel safe doing these really risky stunts. That anxiety and fear of being that high up is real. I was so impressed with him, and thankful that he was willing to take this on board.

Lastly, I wanted to go back and ask about working in the South African film industry. Is there a pressure to make films that have broad appeal but also focus on South Africa?

I have always felt that we have so much to offer as a film industry. People shoot here all the time. We have this amazing topography that doubles for so much, and we have crew and equipment that is top class. But we don’t get to flex our storytelling muscle that our filmmakers are very capable of. That’s been the general consensus over the last 20 years. In the last five years, there has been this new wave of filmmakers breaking the norm and producing the stories.

As I said previously, our films are often about apartheid. But those aren’t the only stories we have to tell. That’s our history, but we have 11 different languages and so many diverse cultures and traditions. I can see us doing epic fantasy film because of history and mythology that exists here is so massive. People are starting to believe that the industry is not feasible to only make films for local audiences. So, how can you position certain elements of the film to have a broader appeal? That speaks to imbuing with universal themes, like PTSD, that folks can engage with and relate to. If you can achieve that, all you need to do is set your world and characters in a unique subculture.

With Netflix and other streamers, people are seeing films from various parts of the world. They now have the appetite for international films and films set in exotic locations and in unique subcultures. How can you capitalize on that mentality? How can you make a broad action film that tells a specific South African story that people with be able to identify with? Hopefully, we’ll see different kinds of films from South Africa in the future.

“Indemnity” opens Friday, Feb. 11 in theaters and is available on VOD. Watch a trailer for it below, via YouTube.

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There’s already a law on the books that could lower prescription drug prices — but no one’s using it

The prostate cancer drug Xtandi, discovered with taxpayer money from the National Institutes for Health and the US Army, is sold in the US by Japanese company Astellas Pharma at five times the price it is sold in Japan. The cancer treatment retails at $130 per 40mg capsule — which mean that unless the roughly 250,000 US men who suffer from prostate cancer have good health insurance, they will pay nearly $190,000 per year for the lifesaving cancer treatment.

That price tag might seem absurd for a drug invented by the public sector. And indeed, there is actually a law on the books already that could be called upon to stop Americans from being ripped off. Unfortunately, past administrations have refused to use it.

In 1980 Congress passed the Bayh-Dole Act, which gave universities, research institutions, and pharmaceutical companies the right to own and commercialize the patents to inventions developed with federal funding. Since its enactment, the law has been hailed as a huge success for fostering partnerships between public and private institutions that has brought several novel drugs to market. The problem, however, is that although many new medicines have been developed, pharma companies price the new drugs at a rate beyond the means of most Americans.

Included in Bayh-Dole was a provision known as “march-in rights” that would allow the federal government to intervene if the inventions developed with government funding were not made available to the US people “on reasonable terms.” Frustratingly, the drafters of the bill never define what they meant as “reasonable”; but a reasonable mind would assume this means that the average American could access and afford medicine he or she already paid for once with tax dollar research money.

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In the 40 years since the enactment of Bayh-Dole, a lot of Big Pharma lobbying money has been spent to make sure drug prices are anything but reasonable. Americans pay on average 2.56 times more for prescription drugs than other developed countries, despite the fact that the US government, through the National Institutes for Health (NIH), is the single biggest funder of medical research grants in the world with a 2021 budget of almost $52 billion. The money has poured into almost every drug on the market — all 210 drugs approved by the FDA between 2010 and 2016 received NIH funding totalling $100 billion. And drug companies rely on that funding to develop drugs, even if they don’t take the money directly from the NIH.

A common practice is that public money goes to funding groundwork research that is later bought by a start-up biotech and then sold for huge dollars to Big Pharma. According to Bayh-Dole’s provisions, when the pharmaceutical company buys the government-funded research, they also get the patent that goes with it. The drug company then performs the finishing touches of the last phases of clinical trials and then packages up the medicine and sells it to Americans at stupid prices. The march-in rights were put in place to prevent that last part.

To date the march-in orders have never been used, despite multiple petitions to Health and Human Services (HHS) for the government to step in. Robert Sachs, a retired attorney and consultant with advanced prostate cancer, petitioned HHS to enforce the Government’s march-in rights for Xtandi. In October, Sachs told me that even with Medicare, co-payments can be as much as $10,000/ year.

“March-in orders would give the US government the means to keep drug companies from dictating exorbitant prices for taxpayer funded prescription drugs,” said Sachs. “These were terms accepted by the patent holders when they accepted federal grants. By exercising march-in rights it would bring some rationality in pricing to some of these obscenely priced speciality drugs.”

The pharma industry, unsurprisingly, is against using march-in orders because it claims that any state intervention would create uncertainty and make drug companies reluctant to invest in early-stage government funded research. A February 2020 report from Phrma, a pharmaceutical lobbying group, said that any company that buys government funded research is: “under the assumption that they will have the opportunity to recoup these investments without the added risk of arbitrary and unanticipated government action and unpredictable price-setting after years of investment.”

But neither Pfizer nor Astellas Pharma made the biggest investments into Xtandi. The drug was developed with public funding at the University of California, Los Angeles, and sold for $1.14 billion.”. Astellas Pharma worked in collaboration with the drug company Medivation to do the phase 3 clinical trials (which is the least risky investment phase), and then Pfizer bought Medivation for $14 billion. Xtandi has already earned its patent holders $20 billion in revenue since its discovery.

Another argument often heard against using march-in orders is that the two drafters of the law, Senators Bob Dole and Birch Evans Bayh, said after leaving Congress that the provision “on reasonable terms” was never meant to include pricing. According to the drafters, the only thing required of drug companies is that the inventions developed with public funding are later commercialized in the US regardless of the price tag on offer.

After leaving Congress, both Senators went on to work for pharma companies that had a vested interest that march-in orders never be used. Bob Dole famously starred in Pfizer’s Viagra ads, and Bayh went on to work as a law partner at Venable, which in 2004 was representing the drug company Abbott. That same year, both Pfizer and Abbott were subjects of march-in order requests. Former Senator Bayh attended a March 25th, 2004 NIH meeting to give testimony against using march-in orders to control for drug pricing. James Love, director of Knowledge Ecology International and petitioner of the march-in orders wrote: “I was at the NIH meeting, and listened as Bayh began his testimony by claiming “no one” had paid him to attend the meeting…. Would it have made a difference if Bayh had disclosed his firm actually represented Abbott? I think it would have.”

Robert Sachs’ petition marks the second petition regarding Xtandi sent to Health and Human Services. The first one was filed in 2016 and was rejected because the former director of the NIH, Francis Collins, said that the drug was not in short supply and broadly available as a prescription drug in the US. The fact the drug was exorbitantly expensive and therefor inaccessible to many Americans was not a factor of consideration.

There is reason to hope that this time around things might be different. Days before leaving office, Trump asked The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to remove pricing as a consideration for the “reasonable terms” of march-in orders in the Bayh-Dole Act. On July 9th the Biden administration issued an executive order opposing Trump’s attempt to narrow the definition of reasonable pricing terms, which sent a loud signal to the pharma industry that march-in orders could soon be under way.

Another promising sign is that the current HHS secretary, Xavier Becerra, sent a letter to the NIH and FDA when he was the attorney general of California urging the institutions to use march-in rights to increase access to Remdesivir, which is used to treat COVID.

Controlling drug prices has been a huge challenge for this administration. The Build Back Better Act has been watered down of its key provisions that would allow Congress to negotiate directly with pharma companies to control drug prices, and there is still no guarantee the bill will become law. The advantage of using the march-in orders to control pricing is that Biden could lower drug costs without needing a single vote from any Republican congressman. Between 2012 and 2019 Medicare dished out $5.8 billion for Xtandi even though the government already paid for some of the initial research. The US government could reduce spending by as much as 80% if the drug was brought in line with the same prices paid by Canada, Australia or Japan.

On Tuesday, US representatives Peter DeFazio (D-OR) and Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) sent a letter to HHS asking the administration to step in and use march-in rights over Xtandi.

“There is absolutely no reason American taxpayers should pay FIVE times the cost for the same exact drug that would not have been possible without research funded by them. The Administration must act now to rein in Big Pharma’s greed and send a clear message that price-gouging taxpayers will not be tolerated,” wrote representative DeFazio.

HHS said it would issue a decision about Xtandi sometime this month.

Inside Big Pharma:

What made Bob Saget’s Danny Tanner so different from other sitcom dads

Bob Saget, who died on Jan. 9, 2022, is probably best remembered for his role as Danny Tanner on the popular sitcom “Full House,” which aired from 1987 to 1995.

I think fans of the show have such fond memories of this character because Danny exemplified what it meant to “be there” as a parent. A single dad whose wife had passed away, he was eager to lend an ear to daughters D.J., Stephanie and Michelle, offering them support and reassurance through the twists and turns of childhood and adolescence.

Why heap so much praise on a sitcom dad? It’s easy to disregard TV as mere mindless entertainment. But entertainment media can both reflect and reshape culture – including how fathers interact with their children. They can influence how viewers think about fathers, regardless of the accuracy of those portrayals.

As someone who studies stereotypes of fathers, I view Danny as an avatar of the changing expectations of fatherhood that began in the late 1970s.

Danny Tanner and “being there”

Danny Tanner was a 30-something widower when Full House premiered. That wasn’t a common situation for his demographic – less than 1% in his bracket shared it – and it allowed viewers to watch Danny parent his three daughters with the help of his brother-in-law and his best friend.

Nonetheless, in nearly every episode, viewers saw Danny “being there” for his family. “Being there” is a concept that describes being physically and emotionally involved with your children. This term took on particular significance for fathers in the late 20th century. “Being there” allowed dads to be seen as more than just financial providers and recognized that fathers interact with their children in varied and important ways.

In the earlier part of the century, fathers were assumed to be breadwinners and not much else, a stereotype reflected in the era’s popular media. For example, sitcom fathers on “Father Knows Best,” which aired from 1954 to 1960, and “The Donna Reed Show,” which ended its run in 1966, bore little responsibility for actual child care beyond a pat on the head and some occasional discipline.

Beginning in the 1970s, psychologist Michael Lamb encouraged a change in how we thought about fathers and broadened the definition of what he called “father involvement.”

Lamb proposed three dimensions of father involvement: engagement, availability and responsibility. The last of these, responsibility – which involved financial support and parental guidance – could be spotted in some form in the preceding sitcoms. But engagement and availability, which tend to involve day-to-day emotional support, were almost entirely foreign.

Danny Tanner’s approach to fatherhood, by contrast, demonstrated perhaps the fullest realization of these changing expectations.

One episode, “Back to School Blues,” featured oldest daughter D.J. starting junior high. Spoiler alert: It doesn’t go well. She’s teased by older girls, wears the same outfit as one of the teachers, and spends lunch alone. (I was a year younger than D.J., and this episode made me nervous about my own entry into junior high.)

When Danny doesn’t approve of D.J.’s attempts to look older to fit in and make friends, she storms off to her room saying she wants to be left alone. Danny says he can’t do that, and then listens as she explains everything that went wrong at school.

In this short scene, he reinforced family rules and provided emotional support, while showing that he would “be there” for D.J. whenever she needed.

A different kind of dad

Though Danny represented a departure from the typical sitcom father, he didn’t exactly spearhead a new trend.

Immature and irresponsible fathers – the kind seen in popular shows like “The Simpsons,” “Home Improvement” and “Married … With Children” – were more commonplace. To this day, the stereotype of the bumbling dad persists on TV.

Danny comforts D.J. after she admits she isn’t happy with her body.

In my research, I found that single sitcom dads with full child care responsibilities were shown interacting with their children more often than married sitcom dads. Compared to their married counterparts on the tube, they were more likely to offer kindness, care, love, support and guidance. Along with Danny, these characters included Mr. Drummond on “Diff’rent Strokes,” Tony Micelli in “Who’s the Boss?” and Maxwell Sheffield on “The Nanny.”

On the other hand, married sitcom father-child interactions were more likely to involve criticism and sarcastic humor. In fact, married sitcom fathers often made jokes at their children’s expense.

Why does this discrepancy exist?

My research has found that in real life, married fathers are thought to be loving and kind but with room for improvement as parents. They’re seen as the right-hand man to mothers, who have taken the lead in parenting. Because of this, people expect more bumbling and less skill.

Single dads, however, tend to be viewed as selfless and dedicated, because the assumption is that they’ve put their children above all else.

Danny Tanner isn’t the novelty today that he was in the early 1990s. But if his character is instructive in any way, it’s that dads shouldn’t have to lose their wives to be the best parent they can be.

Jessica Troilo, Associate Professor of Child Development and Family Studies, West Virginia University

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

15 date-night pasta recipes for Valentine’s Day

If you’re not a fan of pre-fixe menus or making reservations a month in advance, then dining out on Valentine’s Day probably isn’t the best call. Instead, have a date night at home with a delicious pasta recipe, a bottle of Chianti Classico, and a fuzzy pair of slippers. From seafood pasta to creamy fettuccine alfredo, here are 15 edible ways to say “I love you.”

Our most loved Valentine’s Day pasta recipes

1. Vito’s Shrimp Scampi

Hands down, this is the creamiest (dare I say best?) shrimp scampi you’ve ever tried. Two cups of heavy cream, a few pats of butter, and plenty of grated Parmesan create a creamy, alfredo-like sauce that has hints of roasted garlic. The pasta is tossed with juicy blistered tomatoes and fresh basil for a fresh, colorful dish that’s worthy of being served on Valentine’s Day.

2. Classic Potato Gnocchi

Making homemade gnocchi is a symbol of true love. This recipe will walk you through exactly how to make it so that you can create pillowy, fluffy gnocchi for your valentine.

3. L’Artusi’s Famous Mushroom Ragu with Fresh Garganelli

Couldn’t get a reservation at L’Artusi for Valentine’s Day this year? Same. But I’m pushing my bitterness aside and focusing my attention on recreating their beloved mushroom ragu for dinner instead.

4. Cacio e Pepe

Don’t let the short ingredients list trick you into thinking this Roman specialty is easy to make. While it’s not hard, per se, it requires a good technique so that the cheese, starchy pasta water and sizzled crushed peppercorns create a creamy, homogenous sauce. Once you nail the technique, you’ll fall in love.

5. Linguine with Clams, Parsley, and Lemon

Linguine alle vongole will always top the list as one of the most romantic pasta dishes—and for seafood lovers, it’s one of the tastiest.

6. Orecchiette with Tiny Lamb Meatballs

Although you can’t exactly recreate a “Lady and the Tramp” moment with orecchiette, this hearty dish is still apt for Valentine’s Day dinner. Cut the recipe in the half if you’re just cooking for two (but still want some leftovers).

7. Lobster Fra Diavolo (Pasta with Spicy Lobster-Tomato Sauce)

“Lobster fra diavolo is a rich, spicy tomato sauce flavored with the essence of sherry and tossed with juicy lobster nestled on a bed of pasta,” writes recipe developer Anna Francese Gass. This particular pasta recipe is her family’s favorite for serving on Christmas Eve, but it’s just as special for Valentine’s Day dinner.

8. Jennie’s Homemade Manicotti

For Valentine’s Day, go all out. In this case, this means making homemade pasta for manicotti (think: Italian crepes) and fresh ricotta cheese for the filling, which you were obviously planning to make from scratch, right? Right.

9. Cheesy, Meaty Lasagna

I’m not going to tell you that you can, or should, only make lasagna if you’re feeding a large family on Valentine’s Day. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve made a 9″x13″ lasagna for two . . . well, I could at least reimburse myself for the cost of the ingredients.

10. Garganelli with Lobster and Caramelized Fennel Purée

This is a restaurant-worthy pasta recipe, which is perfect if you’re the type of couple who’d prefer to stay home on Valentine’s Day.

11. Bucatini All’Amatriciana

Maybe a trip to Rome isn’t in the cards for this Valentine’s Day (next year though…wink wink). But that doesn’t mean you can’t recreate a classic Roman dish at home for your partner.

12. Best Fettuccine Alfredo

There’s a lot of pressure to perform on Valentine’s Day but sometimes, keeping things simple and done well is even more meaningful. You can’t go wrong with this crowd-pleasing, ridiculously creamy fettuccine alfredo.

13. Ravioli alla Sorrentina

Inspired by a meal that Food52’s Resident Pasta Maker Meryl Feinstein ate while on her honeymoon in Italy comes this recipe for homemade tomato-y ravioli.

14. Rigatoni with Vodka Sauce

There are a million theories about the best way to make vodka sauce, and whether or not it’s better to make it with rigatoni or penne. But I promise that this is one will be very satisfying to serve on Valentine’s Day.

15. Ina Garten’s Pasta alla Vecchia Bettola

For a love like Ina and Jeffrey’s, make her tomato-y pasta recipe. “The sauce concentrates and the tomatoes caramelize and turn jammy, melding with all the other flavors more conclusively than they would in a speedier stovetop number,” writes Ina.

We are totally and completely in love with these Valentine’s Day cakes

We have heart eyes for these nearly two dozen Valentine’s Day cakes. In this collection that we’re informally calling “desserts to fall in love with,” you’ll find chocolate cake smothered generously with chocolate buttercream and filled with fresh berries. You’ll find individual Bundt cakes baked in a heart-shaped cake pan. And you’ll find three different chocolate lava cakes because surely one isn’t enough.

1. Mini Brownie Layer Cakes

Is there anything more romantic than fudgy chocolate brownies layered with whipped cream and raspberry jam? I don’t want to know the answer . . . I just want to eat this cake.

2. Extra-Fudgy Flourless Chocolate Cake

Skip the bouquet of red roses and just give me a serving of Emma Laperruque’s flourless chocolate cake topped with a generous dollop of fresh whipped cream. Jury’s out on whether or not I’ll share this with my fiancé.

3. Pink Champagne Cake

Drink your champagne and eat it too in the form of this pretty-in-pink layer cake that’s perfect for slicing on Valentine’s Day.

4. Grandma’s Italian Cream-Filled Sponge Cake

Even if you’re someone who hates the commercialism of Valentine’s Day, are you really going to say no a slice or two of this cream-filled, berry-topped sponge cake? I didn’t think so.

5. Clementine Chocolate Lava Cakes

Is it really Valentine’s Day if you don’t eat chocolate lake cake with your date? This one has the zest of a clementine for a hint of fruitiness that says “there’s more to me than meets the eye.”

6. Lemon Raspberry Layer Cake

This seven-layer cake filled with raspberry jam and decorated with lemon buttercream is perfect for a Galentine’s Day celebration, Leslie Knope style.

7. Easiest Chocolate Mousse Cake

This is not just chocolate cake, nor is it a bowl of chocolate mousse (I will take one of each if you’re offering though). The base of this Valentine’s Day cake is a chewy brownie: Recipe developer Jessie Sheehan added hazelnuts but you don’t have to. Then, there’s a thick layer of chocolate mousse studded with fresh raspberries. Finally, an equally thick layer of whipped cream dusted with cocoa powder brings it all together.

8. Coconut Layer Cake

If you’re like me and my fiancé, you spend every Valentine’s Day in front of the TV, simultaneously nodding off while watching “When Harry Met Sally.” Spoiler alert: Harry and Sally fall in love, get married, and have a delicious coconut cake with chocolate sauce on the side. This dessert is a nod to the most romantic scene in movie history, by no one’s standards but my own.

9. Double Chocolate Chiffon Cake

This ultra-rich chocolate cake gets its moistness from a combination of vegetable oil, a lot of whipped egg whites, and cake flour. You’ll spend Valentine’s Day floating on cloud nine as you take bite after bite.

10. Black and White Pound Cake

Love is all about compromise, right? That’s where this cocoa-y pound cake comes in: there are layers for chocolate lovers and pound cake traditionalists alike.

11. Flourless Almond and Coconut Cake

This recipe plays off the idea of a classic flourless almond cake, but a touch of coconut flour gives it a depth of flavor, says recipe developer Posie (Harwood) Brian. Bonus: it’s totally gluten-free.

12. Mini Chocolate Layer Cakes with Whipped Ganache and White Chocolate Glaze

No matter how much you love your partner, it’s entirely reasonable that you might not want to share your cake with them on Valentine’s Day (trust me, I know). That’s where these mini chocolate cakes doused in white chocolate glaze make perfect sense.

14. Victoria Sponge Cake

A proper Victorian sponge cake filled with whipped cream and raspberry jam is a sweet dessert to snack on throughout Valentine’s Day (because all-day cake is always acceptable).

15. Martha Stewart’s Whole-Lemon Pound Cake with Pomegranate Glaze

Don’t let the pastel pink and pomegranate-kissed exterior make you think that this Valentine’s Day dessert is sticky-sweet; beneath it is a mouth-puckering lemon pound cake that uses an entire lemon.

16. Magical Molten Chocolate Lava Cake

“What comes out of the oven looks like a perfectly baked chocolate cake, but there’s a shocking surprise underneath. A hot, bubbly, molten layer of chocolate fudge,” says recipe developer Grant Melton. I can’t imagine a better cake to serve on Valentine’s Day than that.

17. Raspberry Cake with Swirled Meringue

Cupid baked this frilly pink cake for Valentine’s Day and sent it straight into my belly.

18. Neapolitan Pound Cake

A trio of vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry mix and mingle for a sweet pound cake that you’ll fall head over heels for.

19. Milk Chocolate Mini Bundt Cakes

These baby Bundt cakes are filled with a nutty cocoa swirl and baked in a heart-shaped pan for the ultimate sign of love.

20. Naturally-Dyed Red Velvet Cake with Beets and Cream Cheese Frosting

“Red velvet is a classic cake, flavored with just a hint of cocoa powder, that has a deep red crumb contrasted with fluffy white icing…Now, while I love the idea of red velvet, ingesting that much Red 40 isn’t quite as appealing, so for this Valentine’s (or Galentine’s) Day, I set out to make an all-natural red cake, using red beets,” says recipe developer Yossy Arefi.

21. Melissa Clark’s Instant Pot Chocolate-Bourbon Lava Cakes

If you’re cooking at home for Valentine’s Day, you want dinner to be both special and low-maintenance, which is no easy feat. Now, you can have a romantic dessert for two without having to spend the entire night in the kitchen, thanks to this Instant Pot-friendly recipe.

22. Chocolate Nemesis

It only takes four ingredients — eggs, sugar, bittersweet chocolate, and unsalted butter — to make this Valentine’s Day cake recipe that will guarantee you a second date (or a proposal, depending on where you’re at).

From “crack pipes” to “critical race theory”: GOP’s 2022 midterm strategy is overt racism

Nothing speaks more to how the modern GOP is centered around tickling the racist lizard brains of white conservative Boomers than the sudden reemergence of the term “crack pipe.” The actual crack epidemic wound down literally decades ago, back when Donald Trump was still divorcing his first wife. But the audience for Republican propaganda is still stuck in the 1980s, the last time many of them had a full head of hair, and so here we are, with the term “crack pipe” suddenly exploding all over social media, search algorithms, and, because this really is the worst timeline, a grossly named federal bill.

The situation, which I regret even having to write about, is as idiotic as it is disturbing. As Jon Skolnik reported for Salon, Health and Human Services was planning on passing out a paltry “$30 million to nonprofit groups nationwide as part of a plan to reduce drug-related harm,” mainly by preventing opioid overdoses. The opioid epidemic is affecting rural white communities as much as anyone else, making it impossible to turn into a racist moral panic. So instead, Republicans seized on a minor provision allowing clinics to provide “safe smoking kits,” which can be used for many different drugs, including opioids. But, because of racism, the right-wing press ran with the outdated term “crack pipe,” and, in case you are too dense to hear the dog whistle, most even insisted that the provision was there to “advance racial equity,” which is a flat out lie.

Their audience loves any excuse for racist jokes, so Republicans ran with it, with odious Fox News segments falsely claiming President Joe Biden wants to close the “crack gap.” And it wasn’t just the usual suspects in right-wing media, either. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., usually pretends at being more moderate and open-minded — remember when he used to pretend he liked hip-hop? But in a fit of racist exploitation, he rushed forward with the Cutting off Rampant Access to Crack Kits (CRACK) Act. It should be noted that Rubio’s leading Democratic opponent is Rep. Val Demmings, a Black woman and the first female head of the Orlando Police Department.

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Welcome to what promises to be the next 8 months of culture war politics. Donald Trump made naked racism popular in the GOP again, but somehow things have gotten even less subtle since he lost the 2020 election. It’s as if, without Trump on the ticket, Republicans feel that they need to announce “WE ARE INCREDIBLY RACIST” in 20-foot letters, lest their voters, not known to be fans of subtle rhetoric, miss the point. Usually, the needle that the right likes to thread is to signal racist intent while propping up some plausible deniability so they can act all huffy and outraged when liberals point out that they’re being racist. But in recent weeks there’s been a real eff-it approach in GOP circles, with the subtext and insinuation being abandoned for in-your-face racism.

Take for instance Biden’s nomination of economist Lisa Cook to the Federal Reserve, which as a Washington Post editorial this week notes, is being treated by GOP propagandists like a five-alarm fire, even though Federal Reserve nominations are the kind of boring bureaucratic stuff that most media, especially conservative media, tends to ignore. Cook, however, is a Black woman, and so Republicans view this as a golden opportunity for some over-the-top race-baiting.

Tucker Carlson of Fox News called Cook “economically illiterate” and “unqualified to teach junior college econ 101,” and Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., said she’s “fundamentally not qualified.” Needless to say, Cook is incredibly qualified. She holds a doctorate from Berkeley, tenure at Michigan State University, and a resume as long as your arm, including a senior adviser to the Treasury Department, directing the the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and serving on Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Training their audience to have a hate-on for a qualified woman simply because she’s Black is just a taste of what we’re going to get in response to Biden’s upcoming Supreme Court nominee, who Biden promised would be a Black woman. The right-wing media and multiple GOP senators have already framed the nominee as inherently unqualified, even though she hasn’t been named yet. As with Cook, there is no amount of experience and education that would ever qualify a Black woman in their eyes. And they’re getting ever bolder about displaying that racial prejudice without apology.

Even Donald Trump is getting blunter, something that previously didn’t seem possible.

As Chauncey DeVega recently pointed out at Salon, Trump has dropped a lot of the euphemistic language in favor of blunt racial appeals. In a recent Texas rally, he dusted off a joke that tends to be kept in private conversation among racists, saying, “we are going to take back that beautiful, beautiful house that happens to be white.” Trump also insisted that podcast host Joe Rogan “stop apologizing” for repeated use of the most infamous of racial slurs. At an Arizona rally, Trump floated the conspiracy theory, “If you’re white you don’t get the vaccine, or if you’re white you don’t get therapeutics.” He called it “unbelievable,” which it is, since it’s not happening.

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It’s a conspiracy theory that’s spreading rapidly on the right, however, likely as a way to explain away the high hospitalization and death rates from COVID-19 in Republican-voting areas. Carlson has been hyping this conspiracy theory on his show. Trump advisor Stephen Miller has been suing medical providers to prop up this lie. In reality, the reason so many white conservatives are dying of COVID-19 is because people like Carlson convinced them not to vaccinate — ironically, Carlson has even pretended that the vaccines themselves are a form of anti-white racism.

But racist freakouts are even more impervious to rational criticism than most of the nonsense that right-wing propagandists put out. Their audiences just don’t care one bit if their arguments make sense. They just want the permission to go wild with the racism.

Over the summer, there was a feeble attempt to keep the paper thin “I’m not a racist” cover story draped over this escalation of race-baiting. After all, the whole idea behind the “critical race theory” hoax was it gave conservatives a talking point, however incoherent, to say they are the ones that are somehow anti-racist. (And some are still trotting that line out.) But that facade pretty quickly slipped away when it became clear that the main result of all this “critical race theory” talk was efforts to ban classic American texts like “Beloved” by Toni Morrison or basic history lessons covering the March on Washington and Brown v. the Board of Education. Once white parents in Alabama started calling Black History Month “critical race theory,” the deceit that the freakout was anti-racist instead of pro-racist was completely shredded.

There are still eight months to go before the election — so this is probably going to get much worse. Republican leaders are desperate to change the subject away from the January 6 insurrection and the Big Lie, but Trump and his base are obsessed. Racist hysterics about “crack pipes” serve as a distraction. But this blunt racism is also about justifying Trump’s coup and ongoing efforts to steal the next election. The constant drumbeat of reminders that white supremacy is under very real threat from a multiracial democracy helps keep the GOP focused on why it is, exactly, they are organizing behind what has turned into an anti-democracy movement. Time to invest in anti-nausea meds, because Republicans are committed to this tactic of overt racism, clearly convinced it’s the key to winning the midterm elections.

Arizona Republican’s “disgusting” ad shows him shooting at Gabby Giffords’ husband Mark Kelly

Arizona Republican Senate candidate Jim Lamon’s Super Bowl ad shows him in a shootout with President Joe Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., whose wife, former Rep. Gabby Giffords, was shot in the head and critically injured in an assassination attempt more than a decade ago.

Lamon posted the ad on Twitter, showing him dressed as an Old West sheriff coming to rescue a town from “Old Joe,” “Crazyface Pelosi” and “Shifty Kelly.”

“The good people of Arizona have had enough of you. It’s time for a showdown,” Lamon says, before shooting weapons out of the Democratic characters’ hands.

Arizona has had enough of the DC Gang’s open borders, high gas prices, and shifty politicians pushing us around. @CaptMarkKelly @JoeBiden @TeamPelosi, it’s time for a good old-fashioned showdown.

Check out our new Super Bowl ad, The Showdown, here ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/mJTbFuS0du

— Jim Lamon (@jim_lamon) February 10, 2022

Kelly, who is running for a full term after winning a 2020 special election to fill the seat of the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is married to Giffords, a Democratic congresswoman who suffered a severe brain injury when she was wounded in a 2011 mass shooting in Tucson that also killed six people and injured many others.

Lamon’s campaign is spending “multiples of six figures” on the ad, which is expected to air on NBC in Tucson during the Super Bowl, according to the Washington Post. The campaign has raised just $600,000 from individual donors while Lamon, the founder of a solar energy company he recently sold to Koch Industries, has spent $10 million of his own money on his bid and vowed to spend $50 million by Election Day.

Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, called the ad “disgusting.”

Gun control advocate Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter was killed in the 2018 Parkland school shooting in Florida, demanded Lamon pull the ad.

“You owe Gabby & @CaptMarkKelly an apology,” he tweeted.

Lamon’s Republican rivals also panned the ad.

“Absurd and desperate,” Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters said in a statement to The Arizona Republic. “Fits his campaign.”

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Fellow candidate Mick McGuire, the former head of the state National Guard, told the outlet that the ad showed “poor judgment.”

“Real violence and use of deadly force is no laughing matter,” he said. “Violence in America is real and it isn’t funny. This ad shows poor judgment and isn’t reflective of the values of the Second Amendment. This ad will do more to boost Mark Kelly’s fundraising than help Republicans.”

This isn’t the first time a Republican’s video has depicted fictional violence against Democrats. The House last year voted to censure Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., after he shared an altered anime video depicting him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.

“When a member uses his or her national platform to encourage violence, tragically, people listen,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said at the time, warning that “depictions of violence can foment actual violence, as witnessed by this chamber on Jan. 6, 2021.”

Lamon dismissed the outrage over his ad, vowing, “I won’t be backing down.”

“Left wing snowflakes can’t stand the fact that, for once, AZ will have a Senator who will shoot straight with them & stop cowering to Biden,” he tweeted. “Their feigned outrage over our new Super Bowl ad came right on cue.”

Yahoo last month rejected a different digital ad from Lamon that echoed Donald Trump’s debunked “election rigging” conspiracy theories over its use of the “Let’s go Brandon” meme, the right-wing’s viral euphemism for “fuck Joe Biden.”

“Once again, the Big Tech Oligarchs are interfering in elections and censoring conservatives,” Lamon tweeted in response to the decision, adding the hashtag “#LetsGoBrandon.”

Lamon also recently came under fire for falsely claiming to be an Arizona elector during Trump’s crusade to overturn his election loss. Lamon was one of 11 Arizona Republicans who signed a document falsely certifying the state’s electoral votes for Trump. The signatories claimed that they were the state’s “duly elected and qualified electors,” which was obviously untrue. The House committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot recently issued subpoenas to 14 fake electors involved in the scheme.

Lamon told Vice News last month that the committee has not contacted him. but said he would be willing to cooperate with their investigation.

“Of course,” he said. “Why not?”

Read more:

Donald Trump’s week in the toilet bowl: His craptastic coup gets a little clearer

It’s been quite a week for Donald Trump and his henchmen. The House Jan. 6 committee finally subpoenaed his former trade adviser, Peter Navarro, who has been telling anyone who will listen about his plot to overturn the election. It was reported that Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani, last seen on “The Masked Singer,” called a Michigan prosecutor shortly after the 2020 election and asked him to turn over voting machines in one county to Trump’s team. And the National Archives has reportedly sent a referral to the Department of Justice regarding all the White House documents Trump absconded with and shipped to Mar-a-Lago, some of which were reportedly marked as classified or top secret. Oh, and it turns out there were major gaps (of more than 15 minutes) in the White House presidential call records on Jan. 6 and that Trump at least sometimes tried to flush documents down a White House toilet.

Taking the last items first, let’s stipulate that Trump’s non-compliance with the Presidential Records Act has been known for some time. It was previously reported that he routinely tore up documents and his staff had to rifle through the trash and tape them back together. He refused to use a secure phone and half his staff, including his daughter, used personal email accounts. Trump was even alleged to have eaten documents at one point. This new story, reported by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman in her forthcoming book “Confidence Man,” that plumbers were repeatedly called to service a toilet in the White House which had become clogged with papers that “someone” had tried to flush, is entirely in keeping with all the reports about Trump’s refusal to adhere to laws about record keeping.

As for stealing documents and mementos that rightly belong to the National Archives, that’s par for the course as well. Recall that during Trump’s notorious trip to France for the World War I memorial (where he didn’t want to get his hair mussed) he pretty much ransacked the U.S. ambassador’s house, sending whatever he took a liking to back to Washington. He clearly believed the had the prerogative and authority to take whatever he wanted, which apparently included such historical documents as the letters he received from North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, as well as others that were clearly classified.

Trump responded to these reports with one of his extended Twitter-esque “statements,” but this one was clearly drafted by a lawyer and later larded up with Trumpish embellishments, suggesting that there is some concern about his legal exposure. But you have to love the fact that despite the clear obligations outlined in the explicitly-named Presidential Records Act, he claims he was told he was “under no obligation to give this material.” He truly does not believe that any rules ever apply to him.

In reporting this overt act of lawbreaking, mainstream media went to great lengths to explain that it would be difficult for prosecutors to determine his intent, so this is probably another example of the Teflon Don getting away with it. But it’s hard to think of any possible reason for ripping, flushing or stealing documents unless you really doesn’t want others to see them.

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Meanwhile, this Politico story reports that Rudy Giuliani had been trying to seize voting machines as far back as Nov. 20, 2020. Until now there was no evidence that this daft idea had gone beyond being floated among various executive branch officials, but apparently Giuliani actually made that request to prosecutor James Rossiter in Antrim County, Michigan (the focus of various MAGA World conspiracy theories). Rossiter said he told Giuliani, “‘I can’t just say: give them here.’ We don’t have that magical power to just demand things as prosecutors. You need probable cause.” Since Giuliani first became famous as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. I’m pretty sure he knew that.

This sheds some light on the odd fact that Giuliani was reportedly the one who put his foot down during the notorious White House meeting when Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn urged Trump to use the military to seize voting machines. Clearly Giuliani wasn’t against the seizure itself. After all, he later approached the Department of Homeland Security about doing it, and now we know he reached out to at least one local official. It would appear that Giuliani and Powell had competing theories about the predicate for seizing voting machines. Powell was pushing the theory that foreign actors (China, Venezuela, Italy, etc.) had stolen the election. That hypothetically created a national security issue, which she and Flynn believed would allow the president to order the military to intervene. Giuliani thought the better story was that Democrats and local officials had rigged the machines, so the national security issue didn’t hold water. The fight wasn’t over whether to seize voting machines, but exactly how and why.

What seems clear in all this reporting is that Trump didn’t care what theory anyone came up with — he just wanted to overturn the election by any means necessary. He was willing to run with whatever worked. It’s unclear, even today, exactly how he claims to explain this alleged massive fraud, coordinated and carried out with amazing precision.

That brings us back to Peter Navarro’s subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee which he promptly refused, claiming executive privilege. When asked about the subpoena by the New York Times he responded by email, attacking a wide array of fellow Republicans as disloyal to the Leader:

[Mike] Pence betrayed Trump. Marc Short [Pence’s former chief of staff] is a Koch Network dog. [Mark] Meadows is a fool and a coward. [Liz] Cheney and [Adam] Kinzinger are useful idiots for Nancy Pelosi and the woke Left.

He seems wound a little tight, don’t you think?

Navarro is an unusual case, since he has written a book openly admitting that he and Steve Bannon concocted a plot to allow Trump to steal the election. In the book and in these interviews with MSNBC’s Ari Melber, he explains that his “Green Bay Sweep” required one member of the House and one member of the Senate to object to the electoral count in each of the battleground states where Trump claimed he actually won. Then Mike Pence would declare that the electoral count could not be determined and he would “send it back to the states,” where the legislatures would determine who had really won. Navarro insists he had no idea about the slates of “alternate electors” that were already in place in those states (which is hard to believe) and that this ridiculous plan is clearly outlined in the Constitution (which it certainly is not). He claims he had 100 members of Congress lined up to help him with his plan, although he has declined to name them.

Trump, Giuliani and Navarro are not hiding what they’ve done. They are betting there is no mechanism strong enough to hold them accountable, as long as the Republican establishment continues to support them. There’s little sign that will change so all of this is likely being done just for the historical record. What with all the book-banning the right wing is doing these days, I wouldn’t count on anyone learning the real story in the future.

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Can roadless areas help stem the extinction crisis in the United States?

It’s a small world for relictual slender salamanders, who live only in California. Development has slashed their suitable habitat to just two small areas in the mountains of Kern County — so keeping those last vestiges wild is critical to the amphibians’ survival.

And there’s some hope for that, because half of the salamanders’ habitat is in what’s known as “inventoried roadless areas.”

The lands, designated under the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, are generally undeveloped areas that are 5,000 acres or larger and not already classified as protected wilderness. The roadless rule — which applies to 58 million acres of national forest lands in the United States — leaves these landscapes open to uses like hunting and camping, and even oil development, but limits most road construction and commercial logging. Some areas have been degraded by livestock grazing, which is permitted by the rule, but most are relatively intact wild lands that provide enormous conservation value.

But just how much?

A new study by scientists from the Wilderness Society, published in Global Ecology and Conservation, looked at the importance of national forest roadless areas for vulnerable wildlife species — like the relictual slender salamander — and more than 500 other mammals, birds, amphibians and reptiles in the contiguous United States.

The research is time sensitive.

“One of the most pressing challenges facing the country right now is the looming extinction crisis,” says Matthew Dietz, lead ecologist at the Wilderness Society and lead author of the study.

For years scientists and conservation activists have been calling for the world’s governments to help halt the loss of biodiversity by protecting 30% of the Earth’s land and water by 2030 and 50% by 2050.

This interim goal, known as 30×30, has recently picked up steam — and last year even received an endorsement from the Biden administration.

It’s not clear yet how the United States will hit that target. So Dietz and his colleagues decided to see what role roadless areas could play.

“We wanted to know how valuable they could be in stemming the extinction crisis in the United States,” he says.

Shifting Ground

It’s possible, the research shows, that focusing on conserving inventoried roadless areas would be a low-cost strategy with big ecological gains.

That’s because the lands are “already federally owned, they’re ecologically intact, and they have minimal current conflicting uses,” says Dietz.

But there’s one big catch: Their fate is a bit tenuous. Any administration can create exemptions or change the regulations with public process, and states can also petition to change the roadless rules, as both Alaska and Utah have both done in recent years.

The Trump administration stripped roadless protections away from 9 million acres of Alaska’s Tongass National Forest — a move that President Biden has sought to undo.

In 2020, roadless restrictions were lifted in the Tongass National Forest—areas previously determined by the @forestservice to be critical for protection—putting wildlife, communities, and the planet at risk. Now we have a chance to reverse this decision: https://t.co/Sn2BKDxP02 pic.twitter.com/aLBjh8sRXk

— Audubon Society (@audubonsociety) December 11, 2021

Conservation Value

But as Dietz’s study found, efforts to give stronger protections to roadless areas could go a long way in helping to reach conservation goals and slow extinctions.

The research found that of the 537 species identified as being of conservation concern, 57% had at least some suitable habitat in one or more of the inventoried roadless areas.

“That’s pretty surprising considering that these roadless areas make up just 2% of the lower 48 states,” says Dietz. “And especially since they tend to be concentrated geographically mostly in the West, mostly biased toward mountain ranges and almost exclusively of a single biome type — forests.”

Every roadless area, they found, provides critical habitat for at least two vulnerable wildlife species and in one case — Tumacacori in Arizona — up to 62 species. For some wildlife, roadless areas made up a significant portion of their habitat. There were eight that had 20% of their total suitable habitat in inventoried roadless areas and 45 species with more than 10%. The relictual slender salamander was the highest, with 50%.

“That’s a species for which inventoried roadless areas are very important,” says Dietz.

It’s important to strengthen protections for roadless areas to maintain suitable habitat for species that rely heavily on it now, he says. But these wild lands could also be vital in the future for some animals to recolonize — like woodland caribou, for example.

In 2019 the last member of the South Selkirk herd — the only population of woodland caribou left in the lower 48 — was moved into a captive-breeding program.

However, more than one third of the animal’s total suitable habitat in the contiguous United States remains in roadless areas. So there’s habitat for the caribou — but no caribou currently. That could change.

“If there’s any hope of bringing woodland caribou back to the contiguous United States, a lot is going to depend on preserving that roadless habitat,” says Dietz.

Stronger Protections

So what’s the best way to make sure roadless areas have enduring protections?

One strategy would be an administrative action. “During national forest land management planning processes, the agency can recommend any roadless lands to be designated as wilderness by Congress,” says Dietz. And until Congress decides on whether or not to act on that, the Forest Service would manage them as de facto wilderness. This definition would forbid almost all human activity on these lands, with the exception of research and non-mechanized recreation such as hiking or horseback riding.

The second way would be for Congress itself to pass a law designating all or some roadless areas as wilderness. That, says Dietz, is the gold standard for land protection. But Congress could also codify into federal law the protections that exist under the current roadless area conservation rule.

H.R. 279, the Roadless Area Conservation Act of 2021, would do just that, although the bill hasn’t moved forward since it was introduced a year ago and its fate seems uncertain in today’s partisan political environment.

Whatever happens, making sure protections endure for roadless areas wouldn’t get the country all the way to its 30×30 goal, nor would it be the only solution needed to halt the extinction crisis, says Dietz.

But it would be a big — and necessary — conservation step.

“As a nation, we have to ask ourselves this question,” says Dietz. “If we can’t protect these federal public lands that are some of the last of our country’s wild, ecologically intact and unroaded forests — that also provide habitat for the majority of our most vulnerable wildlife species — what can we protect?”

Joe Walsh on what the left doesn’t get: TrumpWorld “would happily burn this country down”

The Republican Party’s assault on American democracy is an imminent existential crisis. But this disaster was long in the making.

For at least five decades the Republican Party and the larger conservative movement have moved farther and farther to the right, becoming increasingly anti-democratic and detached from reality. Today’s Republican Party is a de facto fascist political organization, but that is only the logical end result of more than 50-years of policies and planning.

The Republican Party embraced white supremacy and white backlash in the late1960s and early 1970s, in the form of the “Southern strategy” as a way to win over white voters angry about the victories of the civil rights movement. It then enthusiastically chose the friendly fascism of Ronald Reagan and the gangster capitalism and right-wing libertarianism of the 1980s and beyond as an aspirational template.

It has grown ever closer to white evangelical Christianity, and ultimately to its most extreme factions, Christian nationalism and dominionism.

Republicans have also operated in concert with Fox News and the larger right-wing echo chamber where the most extreme and dangerous elements of the right gained increasing visibility and power over the direction of the “conservative” movement.

As a practical matter, the groups that Hillary Clinton called “a basket of deplorables” had gained immense influence over the Republican Party. Conspiracism, hostility to truth and reason, a rejection of empirical reality and an embrace of cultl-ilke thinking have been long-standing traits on the American right since at least the early 1960s.

Ultimately, the Republican Party’s embrace of fascism is a story about how “respectable,” “establishment” conservatives made bargains and agreements with fringe factions in order to win elections and hold power. Gradually, those supposedly mainstream Republicans gave the political arsonists in their midst the fuel and matches, and then feigned shock and surprise at the resulting conflagration.

In the years since Donald Trump’s seizure of the Republican Party, some of those “respectable” conservatives have chosen to break away from their party. One can certainly question their past records and current motivations, but in many cases this has demanded great personal and political courage. And there’s no denying that those who want to save democracy need as many allies as they can get, irrespective of ideological differences.

Only a few of those conservatives have been willing to reckon honestly with their role in creating and empowering the present-day fascist movement. The temptation to whitewash recent history and present themselves in a noble light can be too much to resist.

As Bill Kristol wrote last September, it is time to face the facts: “Real, existing conservatism as it exists in America in 2020 is an accomplice to, an apologist for, and an enabler of Trump’s nativist, populist, unconservative, and illiberal authoritarianism.” But Kristol is still eager to embrace the conservatism of the 1980s, and to deny its clear connection to what we face now.

I recently had a long conversation with former Republican congressman Joe Walsh, who was a staunch conservative, a leading voice in the Tea Party movement and a vociferous opponent of Barack Obama. At first, he supported Donald Trump before turning against him in dramatic fashion. He even ran against Trump, albeit briefly and with no success, in the 2020 presidential campaign. His new podcast is “White Flag with Joe Walsh,” where, in his words, “he surrenders the urge to fight and strives to find a path to unite, not divide.”

In this conversation, Walsh warns that liberals and progressives still do not understand the depth of loyalty and power that Donald Trump has over the Republican Party. He shares what it was like to be inside TrumpWorld at the highest levels and explains how and why Trump’s coup attempt and the Jan. 6 insurrection have become normalized — if not outright embraced — by Trump’s followers

Trump voters, Walsh warns, are willing to destroy American society to get their way — and their opponents must take that threat more seriously if democracy is to survive.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity. This is the first of two parts.

How are you managing your emotions in this time of crisis?

We are in a unique moment in the country’s history where we are trying to save our country’s democracy. If you are in the battle every day it is exhausting — and I would argue that most of us should feel that way.

I receive emails almost every day from people who read my articles or listen to my podcasts. There is a consistent theme: I am tired. I am afraid. Please help me. Tell me what to do. I tell them that the fight hasn’t even begun yet. How do we support people who are already tired before the fight has been fully joined?

I am in a weird position. I was part of TrumpWorld. I was part of the Trump cult — and I got out of the Trump cult. Whenever I have the opportunity, I try to wake up Democrats, and anybody else who will listen, to what the people in TrumpWorld and who are part of that movement are really all about and what we’re really up against. I do not believe that most Democrats and independents really believe it when they say, “We have to defend our democracy.” They do not really understand how close we are right now to losing it all.

As you say, you were part of TrumpWorld. What do people outside that world not understand about it?

People watching MSNBC or CNN every night hear Rachel [Maddow] and everybody else bemoaning what’s going on. What you have there is a bunch of liberals and other good people just talking to each other. There are not really seeing what is going on in this country. This is a battle, a fight for the heart and soul of the country. Too many of those liberals and CNN and MSNBC and establishment Democratic Party types are not paying attention to what the other side is doing. You need to understand your enemy.

I hear from thousands of Republican voters every single day. If there’s one message that I try to convey to the MSNBC viewers of the world, it is the following: These people, the Trump folks, the Republican voters of today, they would happily burn this country down to get the country they want. They would happily do it. And they tell me that. I don’t think the folks who watch CNN and MSNBC every night really understand that fact.

There is an echo-chamber effect among Democrats, liberals and progressives, the NPR and MSNBC types. They refuse to accept that the people living in TrumpWorld and the MAGAverse really believe what they are being told. Those Trumpists don’t think they are sick. They don’t think they’re confused. They don’t think they’re lost. They think that you folks, the Democrats, the “liberals,” are the sick and confused ones. The MAGAverse is the real world to them, and all your interventions will not help them.

What do people in MAGA world tell you?

They are not nuts. All the good New York City liberal types — the elites, I will call them — they just laugh and think all these people are nuts or that they are all bigots. They are not. They’re dead-set on what they want to do. Their country, they believe, their 1953 America, has been taken away from them. In the form of Donald Trump, they have somebody who is going to bring it back, step by step. These Trump followers are taking the long view. The MSNBC crowd does not understand that fact at all.

What is the role of race and racism in their version of the “good old days”?

It is a broader and more general view. There’s no doubt that race is part of it. And let’s be honest, who are we talking about? This was my family. These were my supporters. We’re talking about old white men and old white women. That is the Republican Party base. These people are talking about a life where the factory that you worked at was right there in town. Now it is gone. This was a world where men married women and women married men. That’s gone. There is the stupid stuff too, such as their belief that back then they could freely say “Merry Christmas.” In their eyes now, that’s a struggle. I hear this stuff all the time. The country had borders, and nobody could come into this country illegally. In their minds, that’s all gone. Now some of this is an issue of race, where they long for a time when in their minds white people reigned supreme.

But as I see it, mostly what they want back is just a time where for them there was right and wrong, and now everything’s just gray. In the last 20 years their world has changed so quickly. Trump basically just said, “I’m going to stop it. I’ll stop all of this spinning. I’ll build a wall. I’ll keep brown and Black people out.” And that was it. It was over once Donald Trump said that.

What did it feel like, being inside TrumpWorld and the MAGAverse?

You felt a struggle every day. I was a Republican. I was a former Republican congressman. Jim Jordan and I were best friends. Mark Meadows and I were good friends. I was on 200 radio stations around the country. I was going to be the next Rush Limbaugh. In that world you’ve got these older white men and older white women listening to you. You’re incentivized. You’re pressured.

How did Trump take over the Republican Party? I am asked that all the time. What Trump did was, he realized that the Republican Party establishment ignored the base. There were all these people who wanted to bring back 1953 America. Instead of sitting them down and educating them, and telling them, “You’re never getting 1953 back,” John McCain, John Boehner and the party’s leadership, ignored these people’s concerns. And then, being fair here, in 2010 Tea Party people like me came along and inflamed the base. We riled them up. I was in that world every day. The more you could rile them up, the better. Those people were primed by the time the demagogue came along.

I condemn everything that Trump and the Republican fascists represent. But to see this all happen, to be in a moment in history where so many forces, evil as they may be, are coming together, is exhilarating in a way. It’s like a car accident in slow motion. This is a fulcrum in American and world history. It must all be so intoxicating for the Trumpists and neofascists. Most people on the left are afraid to take on that emotional component. Instead, they delude themselves into believing that reason and facts will stop this.

We are living in a populist moment in American history. I voted for Trump in 2016. I didn’t love him or like him. I have been preaching this since I was in Congress: Our political system sucks. Democrats suck, Republicans suck, it’s broken. We needed disruption. So along came a disrupter. Trump won because he said, “I’m going to drain the swamp. I’m going to blow it all up.” There was a part of me that recognized our political system needed, figuratively speaking, some blowing up. Donald Trump is a horrible human being. He’s an evil human being. There are good disrupters and bad disrupters.

The Democrats in 2016, and I would argue today, had no clue that we were in a populist moment. If the Democrats had nominated Bernie Sanders in 2016, he beats Trump. Instead, they nominated the poster child for the establishment, Hillary Clinton.

The only reason Biden won is because the country was exhausted with Trump. We’re still in a populist moment. To your point, if I had $10,000 to bet right now, I would put it on Trump. He’s the favorite in 2024 because the Democrats still don’t recognize what this moment is.

What did it feel like to have the power you possessed, at least for a while?

When you go on the radio every day or you go on Fox News every night, what you say can really move people to do things. Again, this is something unique to conservatives and Republicans. Rush was a pro and a master. We on the right dominate talk radio. There’s much more of a direct contact and an intimacy on the right, in how their demagogues and celebrities and talkers and politicians talk to the people.

I don’t think the Democrats have the equivalent of that. There’s an elite aspect to the Democrat Party. Republican and conservative leadership know that Trump’s a fucking fraud, it’s all a grift. But they play the parts well and they come across like they’re one of the people. There is enormous power doing what I did. It is very difficult to do the right thing. It’s much easier to lie and inflame your listeners. And that’s what Sean Hannity and all the rest of them have made their livings doing. I couldn’t do that, because eventually I could only speak my truth. My truth is that Donald Trump is an evil, horrible guy. So eventually I had to say that, and then I lost everything.

Is it just about money? How do these people choose between power and the truth? Do they have any higher principles beyond immediate gains?

Some believe in the cause, but most do not. It’s analogous to the other world I come from, Congress. Most Republicans in Congress privately believe Trump is bad. He’s bad for the party. He’s bad for the country. They don’t say it. It’s all utilitarian. They want to get re-elected.

Some, though, do believe it. There are true believers in the Republican conference. In the conservative media world, most don’t believe it, but some do. And the reason you sell your soul, and I couldn’t do it, is that, man, the money is good, the recognition is great, the power is awesome, the ratings are through the roof. That’s really hard to walk away from. Being a congressman is an awesome job. They decided, “I’m going to keep my mouth shut when it comes to Trump because I want to get re-elected.” I get that. They told me that night after night, day after day. It’s a hard thing to walk away from.

Why are so many people in this country, especially among the the political class and the media, afraid to call Donald Trump and the larger Republican neofascist movement evil?

As left-wing as MSNBC may be and as maybe as a little left of center as CNN might be, there’s still corporate media pressure not to use the language that someone like me uses. When I call Trump evil, I’ll get well-known Democrats coming down on me to tone it down. When I call Trump a traitor or a killer because of the COVID pandemic, the grassroots Democrats love it. But the Democratic Party establishment and the media class shy away from that kind of language.

Is it just about money and ad revenue? Is it fear of backlash?

They’re all part of the same club. Why the hell was Chris Christie on your TV every minute of every day the last few weeks, selling a book that nobody read? Because he’s part of the club. Chris Christie has no constituency out here, but he’s part of the ABC, CBS, NBC, New York City, Washington, D.C., club. When I was in Congress, I felt it. I was never part of that club because I went there and railed against Republicans and Democrats. And in D.C., the lobbyist class and the media class is a very bipartisan group. In the end, I suppose there is a worry that that my type of plain talking is going to turn off advertisers.

So many in the mainstream media, especially the professional centrist types, are afraid to rise to the occasion. They’re terrified of what that would demand of them.

Right after the insurrection, the day of, and for a few days after that, I was on the radio talking to Republican base voters. For the first time I heard them say, “Oh my God, oh wow, this isn’t good.” I even heard some fear. But as the days went by and the weeks went by, and now the months went by, and now we’re a year removed from the insurrection, the average Republican voter now says Jan. 6 was no big deal. I felt the same thing from the news media: “Oh my God, this is happening!” when Jan. 6 took place. But now, a year later, it’s all part of the Washington political ratings-grab and they don’t talk about what it really was. I believe they are afraid to do so.

How did TrumpWorld, and his followers in particular, respond to the events of Jan. 6 at that time? And where are they now?

We’re talking about cult members. Building up to the 2020 election, Trump started talking about it being stolen months before. So by the time of Election Day, what I was hearing over and over from these people was absolute distrust of whatever was going to happen that night. They had already bought into the fact that this was not going to be a free and fair election. In that window of time between Election Day and Jan. 6, I started to become afraid of potential violence because of the things I was hearing.

When it all went down on Jan. 6, that was the first time I’d heard Trump supporters kind of catch their breath. They were a little bit shaken by it all. But because they are good, loyal cult followers, they waited. They waited to hear what Hannity would say to them. They waited to hear what Tucker Carlson would say to them. Laura Ingraham, all the rest of the voices from that machine. Then they waited to see what Trump would say to them.

In the weeks following Jan. 6, the right-wing talkers began blaming antifa and that didn’t pan out. So they tried to pin it on other people. And then eventually they said it was no big deal, just a few knuckleheads who got out of hand. Then the cult members over the months really just walked off the ledge. What happened on Jan. 6 was no big deal to them now. Why? Because they were given that messaging day after day from the Hannitys and others of that world.

Did Trump change the Republican Party? Or did he just give the modern Republican Party permission to be what it always has been on some level?

I think it’s the latter on some level. This had been building for a while. I say repeatedly, and I mean it, I’m responsible for Trump. Stuart Stevens is responsible. Jonah Goldberg is responsible. Bill Kristol is responsible. Jeb Bush, John McCain, Sean Hannity, every fucking Republican and conservative, I don’t give a damn if you’re a never-Trumper. We all created the conditions for this guy to come along in 2015.

All of these “principled conservatives” and never-Trumpers and establishment people, their base had been telling them for years what they were scared and pissed off about. But the party did nothing about it. People like Newt Gingrich riled them up. And then the Tea Party people like me, we came along and we riled them up. Trump and this moment were always waiting to happen, because the party ignored their base for years instead of sitting the base down, educating them and teaching them that 1953 is never coming back.

Christian nationalism drove Jan. 6: Now it’s embraced the Big Lie, and wants to conquer America

Earlier this week, a new Pew survey found that the share of Americans who believe Donald Trump was largely responsible for the violence of Jan. 6, 2021, has declined by nearly 10 percent over the past year, while the percentage of people who think he bears no responsibility has increased by almost as much. On Wednesday, the Freedom from Religion Foundation and the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty released a new report that helps explain that shift: The same Christian nationalism that served as the unifying principle behind the Jan. 6 insurrection is also driving efforts among the faithful to rewrite the history of that day.

As two of the report’s contributors, scholars Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry, co-authors of “Taking America Back for God,” noted in a launch event on Wednesday, Christian nationalist support for Jan. 6 rioters has doubled in the past year, while support for prosecuting those rioters has declined by 20 percent. That suggests, said Perry, “that this ideology is powerfully connected to a reinterpretation of these events” in a way that could become “a powerful motivator for future potential violence.”

At more than 60 pages and drawing on the work of a number of academics, journalists and researchers, “Christian Nationalism and the January 6 Insurrection” is the most comprehensive account to date of the role of the movement in the attack. Within the political and cultural universe of Christian nationalism, America is a special place: It was created as a Christian nation and its founding documents were divinely inspired. Christianity should and must have a privileged position in public life, and “true Americans” are understood to be “white, culturally conservative, natural-born citizens.”

That ideology, argues the report, served both as the unifying theme for the various factions that joined in the assault on the Capitol as well as the “permission structure” that allowed participants to justify their violence. To call those fringe ideas is misleading: Surveys repeatedly find that close to half of the country supports the idea of fusing Christianity and civic life.

Christian nationalism also lends itself to a number of other convictions, notes the report. Surveys in early 2021 found strong associations between Christian nationalist views, such as the proposition that the federal government should declare America a Christian nation, and a whole range of far-right beliefs not directly connected to faith. Those include the disproved claim that Antifa or Black Lives Matter caused the violence on Jan. 6, while Donald Trump was blameless; support for various white supremacist and antisemitic beliefs; and even a willingness to accept the outlandish premises of QAnon.

Two-thirds of white Americans who strongly support Christian nationalist ideology believe that the 2020 election was rigged; 40 percent of them think that violence from patriotic Americans might be necessary to save the country; and more than 40 percent are convinced that Democrats are engaged in “elite child trafficking,” said Whitehead.

The report includes some meditations on the movement’s origins as well. Penn religion scholar Anthea Butler, the author of “White Evangelical Racism,” writes that white Christian nationalism began moving more firmly into the mainstream after 9/11, as the “Holy War” coding of the “War on Terror” helped popularize its ideology, laying the groundwork for Trump’s rise. The seemingly contradictory beliefs of Christian nationalism — that America is the greatest nation on earth thanks to its foundation in Christianity, and also that America has been overtaken by alien and even demonic enemies — only serves to keep the movement in a state of tense mobilization, observed journalist Katherine Stewart, author of “The Power Worshippers.”

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“It’s astonishing to so many of us that the leaders of the Jan. 6 attack styled themselves as patriots,” Stewart added at Wednesday’s event. “But it makes a glimmer of sense once we start to understand that their allegiance is to a belief in blood, earth and religion, rather than to the mere idea of a government of the people, by the people and for the people.”

Most of the report was written by Andrew Seidel, a constitutional attorney at the Freedom from Religion Foundation and author of “The Founding Myth.” It consists of a meticulous accounting, drawing on hundreds of hours of video footage, of Christian nationalism’s ubiquitous role in the lead-up to Jan. 6 and its execution. There are the flags, the signs, the cross and gallows that we’ve all seen.

There are also some less familiar pieces of evidence, such as the 50-person Christian choir singing about swords and taking possession of the land while the attack was underway. Multiple rioters recounted how God’s hand or voice had urged them to enter the capital. One avowed white supremacist had convinced his parole officer to let him travel to Washington that week to hand out Bibles. And then there’s the man who broke down Nancy Pelosi’s office door, believing that “the crowd would tear her ‘into little pieces,'” and later testified in court that God had been on Trump’s side: “And if patriots have to kill 60 million of these communists, it’s God’s will.”

Seidel also describes how the events of the previous two months — including the Million MAGA March in November, and the Jericho March events on Dec. 12 and Jan. 5 — served as test runs for Jan. 6 and a broader “permission structure that gave the insurrectionists the moral and mental license that they needed,” through the promise that they were doing the Lord’s work.

There’s an exhaustive list of such examples. Paula White, “faith adviser” to the Trump White House, recorded nightly prayer videos calling on God to smite Trump’s enemies. The Proud Boys prayed in the street and were “hailed as God’s warriors.” Evangelical speaker Lance Wallnau told his massive following, “Fighting with Trump is fighting with God,” and said that angels were looking for some “risk takers” and “wild cards that are gonna go start something up.”

“They marched around government buildings in state capitals and in D.C., including the Capitol and the Supreme Court, blowing on shofars and claiming to know God’s will,” said Seidel. “Sometimes I wonder how could we possibly have been surprised by the violence that day.”

More than a year later, said the panelists, Christian nationalists continue to march under slightly new banners, leading efforts to suppress voting rights through gerrymandering and new legislation that would require everything from lifetime disenfranchisement of convicted felons to Jim Crow-style civics tests for would-be voters. Jemar Tisby, president of the Black Christian organization The Witness and author of “The Color of Compromise,” said Christian nationalism is also animating numerous state and local fights, including culture-war battles like the manufactured debate over critical race theory, as well as efforts to silence dissenting Christians.

“Even the religious voices within the church are being labeled as critical race theory, as too liberal or progressive to be trusted, and even the communist and Marxist labels are being used,” said Tisby.

Perry noted the mixed blessing found in recent polling that suggests Christian nationalist ideas as a whole have lost some support nationwide since Jan. 6. The other side of that, he added, is that groups that become more isolated also tend to become more militant. Indeed, added Seidel, researchers have seen an uptick in Christian nationalist pastors proudly and openly embracing the label.

Relegating Christian nationalism back to the margins, say the report’s authors, will not be easy. That would require a national recommitment to the separation of church and state, countering the historical myths propping up Christian nationalist ideology, and coalition work between secular and religious allies.

“I don’t really know if people understand how close we were to losing America that day,” said Seidel. “If they decide to get a little more serious next time, we are in big trouble.”

“America is really a shared ideal, and Christian nationalism refuses to share,” said Seidel. “That’s the choice we face: Christian nationalism or America. Because we can’t have both.”

Read more from Kathryn Joyce on Christian nationalism and the far right:

Will a copycat version of Canada’s “Freedom Convoy” threaten the Super Bowl?

The Department of Homeland Security is warning law enforcement authorities of the potential that a trucker convoy, along the lines of the “Freedom Convoy” that has largely shut down Canada’s capital city, could converge on Washington or even threaten the Super Bowl game in Los Angeles this coming Sunday, according to Yahoo News.

The DHS claimed in a Tuesday bulletin that it “has received reports of truck drivers planning to potentially block roads in major metropolitan cities in the United States in protest of, among other things, vaccine mandates for truck drivers.”

The would-be demonstrators reportedly “[intend] to start in California as early as mid-February and travel to Washington, D.C., as late as mid-March, reportedly gathering truckers as they travel across the country.”

While DHS noted that the threat “appears to be purely aspirational because the event is only being discussed online,” one DHS official told Yahoo News that the threat “is absolutely a real concern.”

“They are definitely going to follow the Canadian model and shut down Washington,” the official added.

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This uncertain threat comes amid the unprecedented demonstration in Ottawa, the Canadian capital, where thousands of truckers and tagalong supporters have converged around the nation’s Parliament building in protest of a recently-passed law mandating that all truckers crossing the U.S.-Canada border must be vaccinated.

The so-called Freedom Convoy has at times brought daily life in Ottawa to a near-operational standstill, with aggrieved truckers blocking major roads, blaring their horns for prolonged periods and even assaulting residents. The protest, which began in late January, has already wreaked havoc on the Canadian economy and has blocked or slowed access to the bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, the busiest U.S.-Canada border crossing. Estimates suggest the damage to trade is costing the Canadian economy roughly $300 million per day.

It’s by no means clear that a copycat American convoy can be organized anytime soon, and there is virtually no evidence that it poses a threat to the Super Bowl. Insider reports, however, that dozens of conservative groups have been using the encrypted messaging platform Telegram in an effort to organize a trucker-led blockade of Washington, D.C.

“Our nation needs a big bear hug right around DC,” one user commented, noting that the Capital Beltway is “perfect for a slow roll bear hug.”

“Nothing moves without truckers and that’s a fact!!” another user posted.

One group on Telegram is reportedly seeking to monetize the hypothetical protest, encouraging users to “be prepared” by purchasing “4-Week Emergency Food Supply” kits that cost almost $300.

Alex Kaplan, a senior researcher at Media Matters for America, told Salon that he has seen local organizing on multiple platforms like Facebook, Telegram and Gab.

“It’s just kind of disorganized, but it is concerning because it’s been spreading on multiple platforms,” Kaplan said, noting that hundreds of thousands of members of various online groups have signed onto the cause. Much of the organizing he’s seen online, he said, is more focused on March than February — which would leave the Super Bowl unmolested, for instance.

It wouldn’t be the first time that online right-wing chatter has played a key role in fomenting a mass demonstration.

In the summer of 2017, white nationalist groups and neo-Nazis reportedly used the instant messaging platform Discord to “convene in private, invite-only threads” around the planning of the infamous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, according to the Washington Post. NBC News reported that attendees on Discord “coordinated rides, planned chants, discussed Virginia laws and talked about what gear to take.”

During preparations for the January 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol, militia groups and pro-Trump activists used social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter as well as right-leaning messaging apps like Parler and Gab to amplify the former president’s claims of election fraud and stir up sentiment for insurrection. Many rioters discussed tips and tricks on how to avoid the police, where to penetrate the Capitol building and how best to smuggle weapons into the city. According to Zignal Labs, a media insights company, the term “storm the Capitol” was used more than 100,000 times online during the month before the riot.

Read more on Canada’s trucker protest:

Dear France: I’m sorry about “Emily in Paris”

All right, France. You’ve got it. On behalf of the great nation of the United States of America and in the spirit of our long and harmonious relationship, I apologize for “Emily in Paris.”

I didn’t know you’d feel so strongly about it. I didn’t even know you really even knew about it. So if I seemed a little slow on the regret when I was in the City of Light recently, please be assured it was simply out of surprise, not any lack of deep national shame. I tried to get up to speed, however, when I quickly realized that nearly ever Parisian I’d encounter would want to know, “Have you seen ‘Emily in Paris’?” — and then follow up with a lengthy and highly accusatory list of all its culinary, sartorial and cultural offenses.

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“Do you . . . like ‘Emily in Paris’?” a friend’s family member asked me on one bright morning walk, by way of small talk that felt immediately like a trap.

“It’s not really my thing,” I replied. “I’m more a fan of the great work the Marquis de Lafayette did for us during the American Revolution.”

“She is so disrespectful,” the woman continued, oblivious to my deflection. “She is ridiculous. She comes to France and doesn’t even learn French. Is this what Americans do?” “Mais non,” I told her. “Jamais.” And then I hung back and pretended to take a photo of the Sacre Coeur so she would stop being mad at me.

I first came to France when I was 16-year-old exchange student, and I have weathered decades of Gallic scorn about our politics, our monolingualism, our fast food and the existence of Disneyland Paris. I’ve tried to be a good representative and a good guest, following in the footsteps of Benjamin Franklin and Julia Child and generations of Americans who have trod gently in Paris without unfortunate hats. Yet everywhere I went this time — to a dinner party, a walking tour — I found myself dodging an unprecedented level of cool fury from the Parisians. We’re going to have to invent and export another Jim Morrison to make up for this.

“Emily is the rude one, do you not agree?” a 30-ish man I had just met demanded of me one evening over a long restaurant table. “She’s the worst,” I answered, with all the confidence of someone whose knowledge of the series begins and ends with Peyton Manning’s recap.

I live in Manhattan, and I don’t remember ever feeling a sense of concern that the rest of the world might believe that “Sex and the City” or “Succession” were an unfair representation of the lives of New Yorkers. (If you’re wondering what it’s really like, maybe “Broad City”?) Nor am I aware of any Korean friends who think I believe “Squid Game” is a true story. But most television shows offer the conceit of characters inhabiting their own milieus. “Emily,” in hot-take inspiring contrast, brazenly swaggers into an entirely different world from her own and shows her hosts a thing or two. And lack of humility is America’s largest and least appreciated export.

“I like Paris,” Emily Cooper once famously said, “but I’m not really sure Paris likes me.”

Yet the Parisian affection for other American guests is evident everywhere you go there. There is a statute of Thomas Jefferson and an avenue and metro station named for Franklin Roosevelt. Josephine Baker rests in the Pantheon, Benjamin Franklin’s portrait hangs in the oldest cafe in the city, and at the moment, there is a massive billboard for Ralph Lauren draping La Madeleine and posters for “Pam & Tommy” on every corner. My favorite falafel place boasts on its front sign that it is recommended by Lenny Kravitz. If you’re not teetering around town like a self-absorbed fictional television character, you can find yourself greeted warmly there. It doesn’t take much — my waiter at one venerable bistro gave me both a wink and the shooty finger when I ordered the choucroute. And if anyone asks, just go ahead and be that ambassador, expressing contrition for the Netflix faux pas of your countrymen.

So, Paris, I am very, very sorry for what Emily has done to you. I confess I’m not sure what gave you the impression that I had something to do with it, but I get it. You gave us the Statue of Liberty and we gave you an insufferable woman in extremely loud blazers. Je suis très désolé. And can I suggest that you’d probably really like “The Bachelor”?

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Justice Department looking into top secret presidential documents pulled from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago

Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich is calling “fake news” to claims that top secret documents were improperly taken from the White House to the former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence.

According to The Washington Post, the National Archives and Records Administration made arrangements to retrieve 15 boxes of documents from Trump’s residence and, as of now, there has been no number given as to how many of them were classified. Since the discovery, the Justice Department has been brought in to investigate the matter further but as of the time of this post the FBI has not yet had a chance to review the documents, and a more extensive investigation has yet to be launched.

“It is clear that a normal and routine process is being weaponized by anonymous, politically motivated government sources to peddle Fake News,” says Budowich. The only entity with the ability to credibly dispute this false reporting, the National Archives, is providing no comment.”

The Presidential Records Act stipulates that any written documents relating to a president’s time in office need to be preserved, which is a practice that Trump has come under scrutiny for shrugging off for years. In a recent CNN report it’s detailed that three different White House officials who worked close to Trump witnessed him, on numerous occasions, rip up documents after reading them.

“I remember sitting behind him on one of our Christmas trips to the Middle East, and he would put certain things in folders and then he would tear up others and leave them on the floor,” says former White House communications director Stephanie Grisham.

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If the matter of these classified documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago were to escalate, it would be on the basis that prosecutors determined that the mishandling of the top secret paperwork was intentional, and/or grossly negligent, according to the Washington Post article.

“The FBI would want and need to review the information and conduct an investigation to determine what occurred and whether any sources and methods were compromised,” says Former federal prosecutor Brandon Van Grack.

Trump’s treatment of presidential documents isn’t the only thing that’s been of some concern lately. A report from The New York Times today reveals that a House committee investigation into the attack on the Capitol on January 6 found that there were gaps in Trump’s phone logs during hours in which investigators knew he had in fact been on the line.

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Snoop Dogg sued for alleged sexual assault after he announced Death Row Records label acquisition

An anonymous woman filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against rapper Snoop Dogg and an associate of his, asserting that the pair sexually assaulted her back in 2013, TMZ first reported.

The woman, who is described as an actor, model and dancer, said the assault took place after she attended one of Snoop Dogg’s show in Anaheim, California, on May 29. She claimed that Bishop Don “Magic” Juan, a former pimp and longtime associate of the rapper, offered her a ride home but instead, drove her to his place. She said that Juan later forced her to perform oral sex on him the following morning. According to the lawsuit, Juan “discriminated against and harassed [her] because of [her] sex and gender.”

The woman then claimed that Juan took her to Snoop Dogg’s studio the next day to see if the rapper would offer her a gig. She alleged that the rapper had also forced her into oral sex while she used his bathroom. The lawsuit claims that Snoop Dogg ultimately denied her a gig because she “refused to willingly and enthusiastically give oral sex.”

On Friday, a spokesperson for Snoop Dogg provided a statement to Salon:

The allegations of sexual assault against Calvin Broadus (aka Snoop Dogg) are simply meritless. They appear to be part of a self-enrichment shakedown scheme to extort Snoop Dogg right before he performs during this Sunday’s Super Bowl half-time show.

This scheme was first launched through a filing with similar baseless accusations made by the same plaintiff, using her full name, in December 2021 with the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing. Most probably, given concern about her own history of questionable conduct, she then shifted to an anonymous “Jane Doe” plaintiff and filed this complaint late Wednesday, only three days before the Super Bowl, knowing full well the filing can be a public document. In this complaint, the plaintiff manufactures an occurrence of more than eight years ago, in 2013, for her false allegations.

To be clear, Mr. Broadus has never had any sexual encounter whatsoever with “Jane Doe.”

What is clear is that this shakedown scheme is disgraceful. This attempt to use the courts to advance this scheme is shameful too, and does a disservice to real victims who deserve to be believed.

Another statement released by Snoop Dogg’s spokesperson had revealed the woman’s name. A representative for Jane Doe responded to that with the following statement:

We have been made aware by a reporter that a “spokesperson” for Calvin Broadus (known as Snoop Dogg) released the name of our client to that reporter.

Sexual assault victims are allowed to proceed anonymously for their own protection. Courts allow pseudonyms “when necessary to protect the privacy of . . . rape victims.” The “public generally has a strong interest in protecting the identities of sexual assault victims so that other victims will not be deterred from reporting such crimes.” These laws also protect the safety of sexual assault victims. We believe this is especially true when a Defendant has a criminal history.

By Mr. Broadus’ spokesperson revealing our client’s real name, this falls right in step with what we believe to be Mr. Broadus’ modus operandi of harassing and intimidating women who oppose sexual misconduct or oppose him. We believe it is the Defendants’ intention to attack and intimidate any woman who goes against them.

We are disgusted and appalled that a spokesperson for Mr. Broadus would do something so malicious. It takes a lot for women to finally muster the courage to come forward against their harassers. It is even harder for a woman to come forward against a sexual harasser who has an extensive criminal history and is idolized by millions. It is obvious that survivors should never have to face intimidation and threats from their harassers. Broadus’ spokesperson’s revelation of the Plaintiff’s real name in this case is abhorrent. There are laws to protect their identities for a reason. We have concerns for our client’s safety now that her identity has been revealed.

Our client had the courage to stand up for her rights and decided that her story could no longer be silenced.  Our client does not have the power of over 60 million Instagram followers or the elite celebrity status of “Snoop Dogg” and everything that comes with it. She is just one woman who was brave enough to stand up for herself. We applaud her bravery and hope that Mr. Broadus and his spokesperson’s actions do not further deter women from coming forward against their sexual harassers. If enough women will stand up against their harassers, we will see a change for the better. However, if harassers like Mr. Broadus continue to retaliate against those who stand up to them, we are concerned there will be a disastrous chilling effect, and women will not come forward out of fear of retaliation. Even worse, harassers would feel emboldened to sexually assault without fear of consequences.

It is hypocritical to accuse our client of performing a disservice to other victims when this spokesperson just released the name of a survivor. This conduct may instill fear in other victims that their names will also be released in public despite the protections the law has given them.

We are passionate and will continue to fight for our client.  The “Jane Doe” status is available to victims of sexual assault and must be protected.  We thank all individuals who have come forward to stand with our client, and hope that this conduct does not scare others from coming forward with their stories. We thank those who have shared with us over the past couple of days their experiences with Defendants.  We encourage other victims to always come forward.  We also thank all news outlets that refuse to publish the real name of our client. We will continue to protect sexual assault survivors and fight for their rights.

Until the appropriate time when a motion is made to address Plaintiff’s right to proceed anonymously.  We hereby request that Defendants’ be enjoined from making any further public reference to Plaintiff’s true identity.

The woman’s allegation arrived just a few hours after Snoop Dogg announced that he had acquired Death Row Records, the record label that launched his 1993 debut solo album “Doggystyle” and kickstarted his music career.

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“I am thrilled and appreciative of the opportunity to acquire the iconic and culturally significant Death Row Records brand, which has immense untapped future value,” the rapper said in a statement per CNN. “It feels good to have ownership of the label I was part of at the beginning of my career and as one of the founding members. This is an extremely meaningful moment for me.”

Snoop Dogg is also slated to perform at the Super Bowl Halftime show on Sunday alongside Dr. Dre, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar and Mary J. Blige.