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How Trump and his MAGA allies are purging the GOP of “disloyal” Republicans: report

During the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan had a big tent philosophy — stressing that someone who agreed with him 80% of the time was an 80% ally, not a 20% enemy. But former President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, in contrast, demand 100% obedience and ideological purity from Republicans. In an article published by Axios on December 9, reporters Jonathan Swan and Andrew Solender describe the Trumpian effort to purify the GOP going into the 2022 midterms and purge it of any Republicans who are “disloyal” to the MAGA movement.

Swan and Solender explain, “Donald Trump and his associates are systematically reshaping the Republican Party, working to install hand-picked loyalists across federal and state governments and destroy those he feels have been disloyal, sources close to the former president tell Axios…. If most or all of Trump’s candidates win, he will go into the 2024 election cycle with far more people willing to do his bidding who run the elections in key states.”

The reporters add, “He will also have a well-funded policy and political infrastructure and his own social media ecosystem. He’s made dozens of endorsements since last year’s election, with many more expected ahead of crucial primaries next year.”

Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville, over the years, has been vehemently critical of Democratic purity tests, saying that elections should be about “addition, not subtraction.” In that sense, Carville is bringing Reagan’s big tent approach to the Democratic Party. And Trump’s quest for total, unquestioning obedience to the MAGA movement begs the question: do purity tests risk alienating swing voters in the 2022 midterms?

Swan and Solender put it this way: “Will his hand in these contests help Republicans sweep to new majorities in 2022, or divide the GOP in brutal primaries that indirectly boost Democrats in the general election?”

“Trump is tapping his national network of allies to identify Republicans who were ‘weak’ in 2020 because they refused to go along with his efforts to overturn the election,” Swan and Solender report. “No office has proven too small; his apparatus touches everything from unseating governors, members of Congress, state legislators and secretaries of state, to formulating policy and influencing local school boards.”

A key part of Trump’s MAGA purity test is whether or not a Republican embraces the Big Lie — that is, the false, totally debunked claim that widespread voter fraud caused the 2020 election to be stolen from Trump.

A former Trump adviser told Axios, “We try to get him onto other topics, but you always get dragged back.”

Swan and Solender note, “Trump is also going after the few congressional Republicans who have defied him. He’s endorsed primary challengers to Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Reps. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., Fred Upton, R-Mich., Peter Meijer, R-Mich., and Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Wash., — all of whom voted for his impeachment…. Trump’s relentless messaging has forged an alternate reality for his followers: 58% of Republicans in an Axios/Ipsos poll last month said there was enough fraud to change the outcome of the 2020 election. Now, he’s harnessing that energy.”

“Unacceptable”: Bernie Sanders calls out Joe Manchin’s “arrogance”

Speaking to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Monday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) attacked colleague Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who said over the weekend he could not support the “Build Back Better” bill.

Behind the scenes, Manchin is reportedly telling people that he thinks people in West Virginia will take the child tax credit, turn around and spend it on drugs instead of their children. He also reportedly believes that people will take paid family leave policies and use them to go on a hunting vacation.

Sanders called out Manchin’s arrogance, specifically citing the people of West Virginia who desperately need affordable drug prices and insulin that doesn’t cost hundreds of dollars. Sanders said that people in his state as in West Virginia are walking around with teeth rotting in their mouths and unable to hear, and they deserve to have their Medicare and Medicaid pay for those services.

“This is the enormously important bill and the American people have got to stand up and demand that every member of the Democratic caucus — and it is pretty pathetic, I got to say, that there’s not one Republican who has the guts to stand up to the drug companies or the insurance companies or the fossil fuel industry,” said Sanders. “The last point that I would make on this, Rachel, is in the caucus, as everybody knows, there’s a wide diversity of opinion from progressive to pretty conservative. But what is troubling to me is that you have two senators who are not just prepared to fight for their ideas but they have said, ‘It’s my way or the highway. If you don’t do what I want, Mr. President or members of the Democratic caucus, I’m walking away from here.’ And that is an arrogance I think is unacceptable.”

He went on to explain that if it was him trying the same tactic, people like Manchin would be in full attack mode.

“Any member of the Democratic caucus can do that,” Sanders explained. “As you well know, I happen to believe the current health care system is dysfunctional, I believe in a Medicare-for-all system. I could say if you don’t believe in the Medicare-for-all, I’m walking away. What bothers me is people like Manchin turning their backs on the people of this country and basically saying if I don’t get everything I want, I’m not going forward. That is not acceptable to me.”

See the interview below:

Where can you stream all the “Matrix” movies before watching “The Matrix Resurrections”?

“The Matrix Resurrections” is in theaters on Dec. 22, and if you want a refresher and rewatch all the movies (or have never seen them) before the big day, here’s where you can stream the “Matrix“ movies online.

“The Matrix” movies franchise follows national treasure Keanu Reeves and queen Carrie-Anne Moss. The story the movies follow requires all of your attention and keeps audiences engaged with fun stunts and twists at every turn.

The first chapter, “The Matrix,” takes place in a dystopian future in which humanity is unknowingly trapped in a simulation, which is a wild theory that is very popular these days. This reality is called “The Matrix” in the movies. Eventually, computer programmer Thomas Anderson (aka Neo, Reeves) uncovers the truth and sets out to stop these machines.

Several movie sequels followed “The Matrix” (which was released in 1999), including two direct-to-video films. Since the movies feature such a unique and bendy concept, I do highly suggest you watch the first three movies before” The Matrix Resurrections,” but you don’t have to watch the direct-to-video chapters.

How many “The Matrix” movies are there?

There are a total of six movies, this number includes “Resurrections.” The movie titles are:

  • “The Matrix” (1999)
  • “The Matrix Reloaded” (2003)
  • “The Matrix Revolutions” (2003)
  • “The Matrix Resurrections” (2021)

And the two direct-to-video movies: “The Matrix Revisited” (2001) and T”he Animatrix” (2003). Again, the ones you should see are the first three.

Where can you stream “The Matrix” movies online?

  • “The Matrix” — the movie is streaming on Hulu and HBO Max with a subscription
  • “The Matrix Reloaded” — the movie is streaming on Hulu and HBO Max with a subscription
  • “The Matrix Revolutions” — the movie is streaming on Hulu and HBO Max with a subscription
  • “The Matrix Resurrections” — the movie premieres in theaters and HBO Max (with a subscription) on Dec. 22, 2021

Will you be watching “Resurrections” in theaters or stream it online thanks to HBO Max? I believe a movie like this deserves the big-screen treatment! But if you’re not comfortable going to the theater, you have a home option, too.

In Lagos, vulnerable communities buried by urbanization

Welcome to The Undark Podcast. In this episode, join freelance journalist Maggie Andresen and podcast host Lydia Chain as they navigate the profound social, economic, and environmental consequences of dredging for sand in Lagos, Nigeria.

Undark Magazine · Ep. 57: In Lagos, Vulnerable Communities Buried by Urbanization

Below is the full transcript of the podcast, lightly edited for clarity. You can also subscribe to The Undark Podcast at Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, or Spotify.

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Maggie Andresen: At 5:30 in the morning, the water is still in the Lagos Lagoon, at the edge of Nigeria’s most populous city. A group of fishermen on small-engined boats chat as they submerge branches to attract and trap fish in a traditional technique called Acadja, using light from their cell phones to cut the darkness.

As the sun breaks over the water, several boats head back to shore — passing two mammoth dredging machines stirring up muck as they collect sand from the lagoon floor. The dredgers are meant to clear built-up sand that blocks jetty traffic, but the churning silt has to land somewhere. That ends up being in the middle of the fishermen’s navigation channels. In some places the water is so shallow, the fishermen have to turn off the boat’s motor and use a large wooden stick to navigate the lagoon. These fishermen live in Ago-Egun Bariga, a small fishing community on the coast of mainland Lagos that’s been here since before Nigeria achieved independence from Great Britain in 1960. But this enduring community has been disrupted by the dredgers sitting in the lagoon, which have displaced enough sand to create 73 acres of land on a neighboring swampy area slated for a tourism redevelopment project.

Samuel Denapo: These dredging activities, this dredger, it created a lot of problems.

Maggie Andresen: That’s Samuel Denapo, a fisherman who’s been navigating these waters since boyhood.

Samuel Denapo: Because after we establish this fish trap, the dredger will come and they will put their pipe there, they will start sand-filling everything. Once they do that, they destroy the fish trap. And all the fish that we expected to catch, we won’t see them again. So apart from the one that blocks our way — they can destroy our fish trap, the second one they block our way.

Lydia Chain: This is the Undark Podcast. I’m Lydia Chain. Many coastal cities across the globe are struggling to find space to grow with their populations, especially as their coast lines erode and the sea begins to rise. Some cities are responding by making that space, creating more ground to build on by filling in wetlands or making artificial islands. In Lagos, Nigeria, the ecological and societal impacts of projects like this are far reaching — and vulnerable communities struggle to balance the opportunities of development with preservation of their way of life, and sometimes to have their needs considered at all.

Maggie Andresen has the story.

Maggie Andresen: The city of Lagos is made up of a coastal mainland and several low-lying islands connected by bridges. The megacity is home to at least 13 million people and counting — though by some estimates its population is much higher. Security threats in other parts of Nigeria and the regional search for economic opportunity by some estimates bring more than 2,000 new residents every day — and living space is coveted. Take a walk down almost any street and you can find block letters warning against scammers and land grabbers painted on building walls: “This house is not for sale.” The city’s growing population and limited space has prompted those with financial privilege to invest not just in the claiming of land, but the building of it. [Fade out ambient Lagos traffic/market sounds]. Building land requires a lot of sand, the second most consumed natural resource globally after water. In Lagos, that sand comes from the lagoon floor and the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. After extraction, sand is used to fill marshy wetland areas, building a solid foundation for new construction.

Alade Adeleke: Sand is needed every day. People who are making money, thousands of dollars from sand … And the coast is there for them to exploit. So they go to the powerful people in government, they get their licenses, even when the communities make noise they don’t worry. Unfortunately, those who are doing dredging are not living where they are dredging. That’s what I call remote power.

Maggie Andresen: That’s Alade Adeleke, a researcher focusing on the role of ecosystems, biodiversity, and enterprise on sustainable development. He’s a past director of the Nigerian Conservation Foundation, an environmental NGO, and currently leads a project commissioned by the Lagos State Government to assess the condition of its coastal wetlands and evaluate current policies governing the ecosystem. That includes measuring the impact of dredging and other human activities on those environments.

Alade Adeleke: The environment has always been exploited by people who don’t really value it….The communities are really, they are on the receptive side. Everywhere in the world they are just there, and you bring your problem to them. They don’t really create the problems that they have. Dredging is done by rich people. Poor people don’t dredge.

Maggie Andresen: Dredging removes sand from the bottom of a body of water, but it doesn’t make the water universally deeper. The process stirs up silt and drags sand around, creating new shallow areas and sandbars. Globally it’s considered one of the methods with the lowest enforcement of regional and national extraction protocols, according to the United Nations Environment Program. In Lagos, dredging and sand mining require permits and authorization at federal and state levels, but official channels are easily dodged, and illegal extraction tolerated. Although regulations overseeing sand mining for commercial use prevent the interference and obstruction of waterways, that continues to be the lived reality for Ago-Egun Bariga residents. Insufficient or unenforced policy means that people living in communities where dredging takes place don’t have much in the way of legal recourse when environmental consequences begin to mount.

Alade Adeleke: It perturbs the coastal ecosystem, the water system changes, the fisheries is affected. A lot of things will happen, as you are dredging the equipment are bringing oil and gas and introducing it into the water systems, so you have pollution. You have plenty of things. You change the life of the dredging communities.

Maggie Andresen: Before Lagos was colonized by the British, this area was lush with wetlands and mangrove forests that thrive in salty or brackish water and support a diverse ecosystem of plants and animals. From their first interactions with Lagos, the imperialists ill-tolerated the marshy coastal settlement. A bleak description by a British tradesman in 1853 termed the city “a filthy, disgusting, savage place,” pointing to a glaring ignorance of the ecological importance of the coastal forests, and a deeply racist ethos that defined the colonial relationship.

In their bid to cement control of the region and mitigate malaria, the imperial government began a huge campaign of land reclamation that included racist policies preventing Lagosians from commercially profiting off their land. This pitted colonial overseers against Indigenous people who had long sustained livelihoods based on the swampy wetlands and creeks.

Tunji Bello: For us in Lagos, a lot of wetlands that we have, they are a saving grace.

Maggie Andresen: That’s Tunji Bello, the Lagos State Commissioner for the Environment and Water Resources.

Tunji Bello: During colonial rule they could see them as marshy and disturbing for them. But for us, they are just natural, they are not something to be seen as marshy or disturbing and so …You go to Victoria Island, you go to Ikoyi, and several others, they used to be wetlands in those days … And the colonial masters in those days and so on, when they were looking for highbrow areas to settle … Today, they’re the most expensive part of Lagos.

Maggie Andresen: The history of wetland destruction in Lagos is braided with its colonial past, but that doesn’t mean it stopped after Nigeria achieved independence. As the city expands, it continues to sand fill wetland and mangrove forests. While Nigeria still is home to the most mangroves on the African continent, they are being destroyed at a rapid clip. And those losses can have cascading negative effects for Nigerians.

Alade Adeleke: All what you see at the back here used to be mangroves, both left and right. But that is what urbanization can do. Lagos should plan retaining these eastern parts of the mangroves the way they are.

Maggie Andresen: That’s Alade Adeleke in the field near one of the wetland study sites.

Alade Adeleke: Wetlands are very, very important ecosystems for Nigeria.

Maggie Andresen: He describes them like a sponge: taking in dirty water and expelling clean water.

Alade Adeleke: So when you lose the mangroves, you lose the opportunity for breeding stock of fish … And keeping the mangroves intact and the coastal wetlands well-managed is an additionality to promoting, you know, food, food security, and reducing the issue of poverty.

Maggie Andresen: Mangrove loss in the Lagos area is largely caused by land reclamation projects for large-scale urban development — it’s where that sand dredged from the lagoon will end up. The projects range from luxury man-made enclaves like Banana Island, housing Nigeria’s wealthiest, to coastal expansions, some intended to protect the eroding shoreline. But many of these projects are walled off to anyone outside the highest income bracket.

Taibat Lawanson: So with regards to those man-made islands, I’m totally and fundamentally against them. I think they will cause more problems than the solutions they claim that they are trying to solve.

Maggie Andresen: That’s Taibat Lawanson, who teaches urban planning and governance at the University of Lagos and is the co-director for the university’s Center for Housing and Sustainable Development. According to Lawanson, these projects often further entrench existing inequalities in the city’s infrastructure, even while their proponents claim they will increase economic opportunity.

Taibat Lawanson: What I see that is happening is that the very wealthy want to move further away from you know, the mess or the perceived mess of the city, so kind of take, you know, be apart from the rest. And so it doesn’t work well for social cohesion. It just further segregates, you know, the haves from the have nots.

Maggie Andresen: Nearly three in four Lagosians live in informal settlement and slum areas, but Lawanson says those voices are often overlooked in formal urban planning. Thanks to grassroots documentation efforts, it’s easy to track the city’s expansion by charting the forced evictions and slum demolitions. One of the most infamous was the violent removal of more than 300,000 people from the Maroko slum in 1990. Maroko was slated for destruction by the then-military government because the below-sea level settlement posed danger to its residents. But after it was destroyed in the “overriding public interest” and the area filled with sand, its former residents weren’t permitted to return. Today, it hosts some of the city’s most expensive real estate.

Recent high-profile evictions of waterfront communities Otodo Gbame and Tarkwa Bay mirror this pattern. Neighborhoods termed as informal are destroyed in preference of creating what are perceived to be legitimate, planned spaces. But in Lagos, the lines between formal and informal blur together — more fluid than static.

Taibat Lawanson: But it’s also a largely informal city mostly because people have to respond to the deficits … and so have to create ways of survival.

Maggie Andresen: Lawanson says that informality is often criminalized in Lagos, and the power to determine the legality of urban space often lies at the center of development disputes. On an even bigger scale, that power decides what public interest means, which doesn’t always include the needs of the urban poor.

Taibat Lawanson: The responsibility on those who take these decisions is now to reflect before those decisions are taken, that, is it for the public good? And what are the social, economic, and environmental impacts? And I think more fundamentally, who benefits? And that’s the real question in the development or re-development of Lagos.

Maggie Andresen: Back in Ago-Egun Bariga, that question is at the heart of the development debate.

Zannu Saphire: My name is Zannu Saphire. I am 13 years old now. But I normally go to school before. Now when the water is not dry, no school again. My mother and my dad did not have money to get to take me to school, that’s why I’m not going to school again.

Maggie Andresen: Saphire’s family home was demolished in 2011, along with every other house in the community built on wooden stilts above the water. Today, most homes adjacent to the lagoon in Ago-Egun Bariga are constructed on compacted refuse, leaving residents at increased flooding risk. The eviction was significant for Saphire’s family. Her uncle fell sick while the family was displaced. After they resettled in another house, problems returned with the onset of dredging.

Celestine Agajun: The dredging stops my husband of going to river. And if my husband doesn’t go catch fish, there is no way I can … sell the fish. The profit I make there we use to feed our family. But my husband is not going … And if I don’t get money, the children — what are they going to eat?

Maggie Andresen: Here, people’s livelihoods rely almost exclusively on fishing. When nearby dredging in the Lagos Lagoon began four years ago, it became difficult to fish at a fast enough pace to maintain livelihoods. Time spent on the water diminished as mud logged boats in place early in the day, cutting the hours spent fishing.

Sangoloke Moses: So the impact of dredging activities is affecting us, and I think it will affect our children’s future. Because our parents were not educated, because they were fishermen. And we are hoping that the children will be educated … So when they starting, these children start going to school, we don’t hope that they will stop. But dredging activities has come and stayed. So that’s makes the withdrawal of the student from the school … We are having difficulty in feeding our children. And we don’t have hope of education for our children again.

Maggie Andresen: Sangoloke Moses is the Ago-Egun community development association chairman and a coordinator of the grassroots network Communities’ Alliance Against Displacement. He works as a community paralegal with the legal-aid nonprofit organization, Justice and Empowerment Initiatives. Sangoloke grew up in Ago-Egun Bariga, and is advocating against the dredging project that has devastated his community.

Sangoloke Moses: Our livelihood was affected totally because major livelihood is fishing, and the dredging affecting us to the extent that we cannot go and fish anymore.

Maggie Andresen: This small fishing enclave’s problems began between May and June 2017, when the neighboring district — called Oworonshoki — began to redevelop. The plan was to rebrand the area as a tourist destination, needing 73 acres of land to make it possible. The first step was dredging, first to create material for sand filling and then to keep the waterways clear for jetty traffic. Construction projects in Nigeria are supposed to undergo an environmental impact assessment, or EIA, to determine the potential social and ecological consequences of a proposed development. The original 1992 laws stipulate that a hearing be held “in a manner that offers the public an opportunity to participate in the assessment.” But 25 years later, just a stone’s throw from Ago Egun Bariga, dredging and sand filling began as if the law never existed at all. No environmental impact assessment was ever done for the project. And the residents of Ago Egun Bariga never had a chance to make their concerns known publicly.

Sangoloke: When the project started, we wrote a letter to the company that is working, which is Westminster.

Maggie Andresen: Nigerian Westminster Dredging and Marine Limited is a subsidiary of Dutch construction company Boskalis. Based on reporting from local news outlets, the company was said to be conducting the dredging activities, but Boskalis claims their subsidiary is only leasing out their equipment, and has no part in active dredging for this project.

Sangoloke Moses: We wrote them that they should come so that we can sit on roundtable and discuss the way forward, because the thing is affecting us. So they reply us, then that we should write a letter to the Lagos State Government. And we wrote to them, and we didn’t get any response from them.

Maggie Andresen: And when did you write that letter?

Sangoloke Moses: It was two years or three years (ago). And we didn’t get any response from them.

Maggie Andresen: Sangoloke says that he and other community members visited the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources for Lagos state, which handles environmental impact assessments. It’s where Commissioner Tunji Bello now works, but didn’t at the time. Sangoloke said he was told the ministry was unaware of any ongoing dredging work for the waterfront project. That’s partly because there was no record of any consultation between developers and the EIA office.

Tunji Bello: The EIA for that area was not done. That was the quarrel we had with that government at that time. And that is why one of the reasons therefore for the government for not being able to be accepted back was because the consultation was not done.

Maggie Andresen: He’s referring to the fact that the governor was only in office for a single term.

Tunji Bello: And that was between 2015 and 2019.

Maggie Andresen: To date, there’s never been an assessment or consultation of the Oworonshoki project’s impact on the Ago Egun community made available to the public. The story of Ago Egun Bariga shows the potentially devastating impacts of major unauthorized development in Lagos, but theirs isn’t the reality of every waterfront community in the city. Others are still on the precipice of development — and are working to ensure potential projects will benefit the lives of their residents. The island community Agala Ajebo is unknown to many Lagosians. It’s part of a small natural island cluster a short boat ride from the Apapa Port Complex, where a large portion of Nigeria’s imports make landfall from long-haul ships. Agala Ajebo isn’t on the power grid, it has no health center, and has no official school. People fish to support their livelihoods, others sell food, and others take up trades like tailoring — traveling off the islands for work when local demand is low. The island cluster is buttressed by mangroves — some of the last remaining in central Lagos.

Saheed Onisiwo: You see how everywhere is so calm, and we are enjoying the atmosphere and at the same time in the mangroves we will be seeing a lot of birds, monkeys.

Maggie Andresen: That’s Chief Saheed Onisiwo, the leader of Agala Ajebo. These islands were settled generations ago. People have used the neighboring mangroves sustainably — harvesting them as fast as they can regrow — for years. Aside from their role as habitats, carbon sinks, and barriers for flooding and erosion, they offer firewood and building materials for houses and fish traps.

Saheed Onisiwo: The mangrove is a tree who grows up close to the ocean and our creek(s) here. And the trees are also useful for some things; some people comes to cut to use for some things to make their daily bread.

Maggie Andresen: People fish here the same way they do in Ago-Egun Bariga, using the group Acadja method.

Saheed Onisiwo: It absorbs the winds, and also provide food for us. We’ll pick some natural foods from the water, from the mangrove.

Maggie Andresen: The coastal forest ecosystem surrounding Agala Ajebo has another side effect — one incredibly desirable in the tropical heat. Just stepping off the boat onto shore, there’s a palpable difference in temperature. It feels cooler here than the rest of the city, which has almost no natural respite from the sun.

Samuel Udofia: Temperature is exceedingly high. And it’s even not supposed to be because of its proximity to the coast.

Maggie Andresen: That’s Samuel Udofia, a Ph.D. candidate in geography at the University of Lagos.

Samuel Udofia: So it’s supposed to be actually, you know, cooler. But because the wetlands are destroyed, vegetations are destroyed, the little water bodies are now being encroached upon. So nothing controls the temperature or the weather anymore, or the climate.

Maggie Andresen: Samuel works with computer-based geographic information systems to map and analyze different effects of climate change, including deforestation and forest degradation. He analyzed a hand-drawn map of Lagos from 1897, creating a spatial reference to compare it with a topographical map from 1964 and satellite data from 1984, 2000, and 2020 to identify the reduction of vegetation and wetland ecosystems as urbanization increased.

Samuel Udofia: Surprisingly, I never expected that urbanization would have grown that fast in Lagos as of 1964.

Maggie Andresen: Looking at the color-coded maps corresponding with the studied years 1897 and 1964, the former was almost entirely covered in mangrove and vegetation areas. Small red markings signifying community settlements are peppered around the Lagos mainland and islands. By 1964, a blaze of red covers half the city.

Samuel Udofia: As of 1964, even though it’s a long time, but the urbanization had already taken over the entire, you know, the entire area, the entire state. Then again, the way the wetlands have been reclaimed too is alarming.

Alade Adeleke: They cannot be the one that will actually destroy much of the mangroves.

Maggie Andresen: That’s conservationist Alade Adeleke.

Alade Adeleke: What do destroy are factors far away from the communities. Decisions that are taken from far away. And decisions that are taken by powerful people. Those that can either co-opt the community leaders, or settle the community leaders, or bribe the community leaders. Not decisions taken by communities.

Maggie Andresen: Even when development does arrive in these off-grid areas, critical decisions about build-up are often left out of the hands of communities. What was once a sustainable relationship allowing for continued germination of mangroves is lost to construction that destroys coastal forests from the root.

Alade Adeleke: The rural communities in wetland areas, especially in the coast are used to their coastal life. They are proud of it. Their children are born into it, they are used to it, but when they are surrounded by you know, flashy urban life, they also want to look like one. But they don’t know that it’s a give and take thing. You give something, you lose the other. So some of them have lost the value of the wetlands ecosystem functioning … Because they have, 10 years after their communities urbanized, they are suffering.

Saheed Onisiwo: Right now, we don’t have any infrastructure in Agala …The major problem and the challenges we have is that electricity … If electricity can come to the island generally it will change the system. It could change, it even boost the economy of the island … I am looking for a developer who will come and develop my community with me.

Maggie Andresen: For a place like Agala Ajebo, there’s a balance to consider between one extreme and the other. Chief Saheed wants development to come to his community, and he wants its natural beauty preserved. On the other side of the city, Ago-Egun Bariga never had the choice. But perhaps it isn’t too late for this verdant corner of Lagos to work alongside developers, creating a shared view of the future.

Saheed Onisiwo: I believe development is coming to my community, my environment. I believe this development is coming. So my prayer is for the development to come.

Taibat Lawanson: Everybody in the city has a right to aspire, both rich and poor, and also has a right to be given the opportunities for a better life.

Maggie Andresen: That’s Lawanson again.

Taibat Lawanson: It shouldn’t be either or, both can go hand in hand, because indeed, we need, you know, a collective of wealthy individuals, we need a collective of economically buoyant individuals for taxpaying purposes first of all, so that the city, the economy can flow for job prospects, also, you know, job opportunities and employment opportunities across the city. But we also must not cater to the needs, or the wants of the rich by crushing the poor.

Maggie Andresen: But is a middle ground possible? One that develops, with community buy-in, and does so in a way that preserves a balance between economy, equity, and ecology?

Countries everywhere are facing the linked challenges of increasing urbanization and extreme climate events. The lives and livelihoods of low-income people are most heavily impacted by these related factors in a phenomenon sometimes termed climate adaptation apartheid, where the rich are able to flee environmental disaster zones, while poor people have little choice but to bear the impact.

Natural weather and water barriers like mangroves and wetlands are being razed for expanding development not just in Lagos, but coastal cities everywhere. As these ecosystems disappear, people are considering all kinds of solutions for ecological preservation. But so far, that balance has been hard to find. Just across the water from Agala Ajebo sits a development enterprise that purported to offer an environmental safeguard and opportunities for economic growth. It’s also one of the most controversial projects in Lagos today.

Dreamed as a sustainable private city complete with its own power grid and water supply, Eko Atlantic City sits on four square miles of sand reclaimed from the Atlantic Ocean. It was advertised as a stately financial district and as a buttress to stop the rapid erosion of Victoria Island’s shoreline. It also encompasses what used to be Bar Beach, a community once home to 80,000 people who, in 2008, were evicted by the state police in a violent show of force. Their homes were burned to the ground before construction of Eko Atlantic began. The environmental impact assessment for the project, which broke ground in 2009, wasn’t approved until three years after construction was well-underway, in 2012. It never addressed the social impact of the mass eviction. After construction began, troubling news of fatal sea swells and displaced erosion from neighboring waterfront communities was reported. The management of South Energyx Nigeria Limited, the project’s sponsor, declined to be interviewed for this piece.

Taibat Lawanson: Particularly in the last 15 or so years when we started to aspire to be a modern day Dubai, to aspire to be like the Manhattans of this world and things like that… these threats are responding to this aspirations to belong to this cadre of world class cities, global cities … people are entitled to their aspirations, right? But it should not be at the expense of the survival of others.

***

Lydia Chain: Maggie, thank you so much for this story and welcome to the show.

Maggie Andresen: Thank you so much for having me

Lydia Chain: Early in the story you talk about the effects of racism and colonialism in the ways that Lagos has been shaped. Can you elaborate on that?

Maggie Andresen: Certainly. So I think that it’s important to note that Lagos as a colony was controlled by the British before Nigeria as a country was. So Lagos was annexed by the English in 1861. And Nigeria wasn’t established as a formal British colony until 1914, which gave quite a bit more time for the English to leave their mark on Lagos as a, in terms of infrastructure, and, and build up the city. So it kind of starts where you have these campaigns that are kind of branded as malaria mitigation and different swamp land clearing ordinances that actually took away the ability of Indigenous Lagosians to have control and autonomy over their lands. And this is well documented in different academic sources, of traditional leaders in Lagos approaching colonial governors and asking for some reciprocity in the use of their lands. It then makes more modern landfall in the continued proliferation of mass evictions in communities ranging from several hundred people to several thousand people. And this is a continuing issue that Lagos has been plagued by even as recently as last year where several thousand people were evicted from their homes in Tarkwa Bay in a pretty high profile eviction. And so you can see with the forced displacement of many of these that really kind of posits the question of who has the right to shape the city?

Lydia Chain: That was an important thread throughout your piece. What sorts of avenues or opportunities does the average person have to share their opinion on what happens in their neighborhood?

Maggie Andresen: So I think that’s a really important question when we think about the formal and informal feedback loops that are supposed to involve the public, especially looking at something like an environmental impact assessment, right? So that’s supposed to be a platform where the public is explicitly and expressly involved in talking about what potential social and economic impact that a project, a building development project might have on their, on their society. And so it’s not just about what the environmental impact is, although that is obviously incredibly important, but it’s supposed to be taking into account the social impact, right. And so that element of public discourse is super important. When you look at, for example, the fact that the environmental impact assessment was never done for Ago-Egun Bariga. And so if you don’t have the public’s input on a project like the Oworonshoki waterfront development project that has significant impact on the social and economic livelihoods of the people of Ago-Egun Bariga it doesn’t really, it’s not really fair to say that that project is serving the public interest.

Lydia Chain: Maggie Andresen is freelance journalist based in Nigeria. Our theme music is produced by the Undark team and additional music in today’s episode is from Kevin McLeod at Incompetech. I’m your host, Lydia Chain.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

For goodness bakes: Your ultimate guide to freezing Christmas cookie dough

It’s the most wonderful time of the year . . . to work ahead and pre-make Christmas cookies so you aren’t completely stressed leading up to the big day. Plus, there’s something to be said for baking yourself a fresh cookie or two (perhaps served alongside a glass of alt-milk?) as a treat following all of the work that goes into pulling off the holidays. 

Thankfully, plenty of seasonal favorites freeze and bake off beautifully on a later date. In order to please a crowd, you simply need to know a few basic things about choosing the right dough and add-ins, what shape or container it belongs in and how to eventually defrost it. 

Without further ado, here is your ultimate guide to freezing Christmas cookies:

What types of Christmas cookie dough are the best to freeze? 

The cookies that tend to freeze the best are the ones with a higher fat percentage — in the way of butter, egg yolks or oil — in the dough. It’s also best if the dough, when fully mixed, is thick enough to maintain its shape when scooped. Avoid freezing dough that has a more batter-like or liquidy consistency, such as madeleines, delicate Italian florentines or some chocolate tray-bakes. 

RELATED: Cookies make the best holiday gifts: Here are a top pastry chef’s tips for shipping your baked goods

This is lucky for the industrious Christmas-season baker because many holiday favorites are left to choose from, including: 

  • Chocolate chip
  • Gingerbread 
  • Peanut butter cookies
  • Pinwheel cookies 
  • Shortbread 
  • Sugar cookies

Variations on these types of cookies tend to bake off really well, so have fun with nuts, dried fruit and extra chocolate chips. When it comes time to decorate, metallic and white sprinkles and nonpareils are fun to use. 

Tip: The dye from some sprinkles may “run” after the dough is taken out of the freezer and baked off. To check if this is the case, lightly moisten a paper towel with water, lay it on a plate and place a few sprinkles on top. Allow the paper towel to freeze, then let it thaw. If the sprinkle’s color runs during the thawing process, it will likely do the same if added to your dough.

How should I freeze them? 

How you freeze the dough depends on what type of cookie you decide to make. For “drop cookies,” like chocolate chip or peanut butter cookies, use an ice cream scoop (or a large measuring spoon) to place individual cookies on a parchment-covered sheet pan. Make sure they aren’t touching. Cover the tops of the cookies with plastic wrap and allow them to freeze. At this point, you can leave the dough in the freezer as-is. (If you want to leave more room for storage, remove the dough from the sheet pan and place it in a resealable plastic bag.)

For gingerbread or sugar cookies that you plan to eventually roll out and cut with cookie cutters, form the dough into a uniform disc and wrap it tightly in plastic wrap. Finally, for shortbread or other cookies that you plan to slice, form the dough into a tightly-packed log and cover it with plastic wrap.

How long can I freeze cookie dough? 

Frozen cookie dough is best used within three months. Be sure to label your batches with the dough type and the date you created it. 

How do I bake them after freezing? 

The majority of frozen cookie dough can be immediately baked. Just slice, if needed, and add about two minutes to the recommended baking time from the original recipe. If you plan on rolling out your cookie dough to cut or further decorate, allow it to thaw completely. The best way to do this is by letting it rest in the refrigerator overnight for about 12 hours (for larger batches, you may need up to 24 hours). From there, be sure to work on a well-floured surface to prevent sticking. 

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More inspiration from our holiday recipe box: 

Deck the halls with films of horror

I’m always a little sad come Nov. 1. My favorite holiday, Halloween, is over, and so too is the ready availability of horror films. Every streaming service and cable channel highlights horror during spooky season — a lot of people want to watch a scary movie in October. In December? It seems only the diehards among us want a jump-scare with our jingle bells, or some knives with our nog.

But holiday horror can provide an escape from the unrelenting optimism of the season, along with harkening back to what brought us here in the first place. Some Christmas traditions have pagan origins, and even movies like the classic stop motions which are not technically supposed to be scary, dwell in darkness, especially when we were confused children watching them. The Burgermeister Meisterburger of the trippy, 1970s TV special “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town” terrified me, as did its images of a burned town and the spindle-fingered Winter Warlock. 

The very first holiday horror I was exposed to was not intended to be horror at all: 1934’s “Babes in Toyland,” the operetta-based Laurel and Hardy classic which, growing up, was a favorite of my father’s. But even that Christmas musical comedy has a villain, a threatened eviction, forced marriage, near-drowning, and grotesque demons summoned by banging on a stalactite in “Boogeyland,” a kind of hellish alternate dimension accessed via a well.

Yes, we watched that on Christmas Eve.

RELATED: All hail the holiday aunt: the most untraditional character in traditional Christmas films

Many people’s first foray into the dark holiday arts is likely “Gremlins,” the 1984 Christopher Columbus–penned cautionary tale of what happens when your Christmas gift gets wet and you feed it after midnight. The movie’s images of gremlins being dispatched in the microwave and blender scared me badly enough that I stayed away from the genre for a while. (With 1985’s “Goonies,” this was a bad time for kids and blenders, and I gave all small kitchen appliances a wide berth.)

But there’s just something about blood on the snow, the stark contrast of still, natural beauty and violence, bright twinkling lights and cold chills. Winter is a dark time — the sun starts setting at four in the afternoon — and despite festivities like Christmas (or maybe because of them), it can get a little bleak. Perhaps especially now as we round our second pandemic winter, omicron on the horizon like a devouring snowman, we need a different kind of distraction.

Into this early twilight enter “Silent Night” (2021), written and directed by Camille Griffin and starring Keira Knightley, with Roman Griffin Davis as her young son Art (easily the best part of this dirge). The film is billed as a black comedy about the end of the world, but listen, the world has been ending for a while now, and there’s not much comedy in this particular dark cloud. I knew the twist going into the film — it’s not very twisty — but was still unprepared for how bleak this story of probable destruction at Christmastime was.

“Silent Night,” despite its holiday billing, lacks the cheekiness of better dark holiday fare, the best of which takes a different approach, capitalizing on the juxtaposition of fun, family time with the stuff of nightmares. And puns. So many puns. 2005’s “The Gingerdead Man” leads the pack in this category, with Gary Busey as the pastry he was born to play, not to be outdone by sequels “Gingerdead Man 2: Passion of the Crust” and “Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver.”

“Child’s Play” (1988) is not technically a Christmas film — little boy Andy (Alex Vincent) gets the possessed doll on his birthday, not as a holiday present — but as someone with a birthday close to the major holiday, I relate. We’re always overlooked in the gift department.  

Holiday horror often pulls in seasonal myths, like 2015’s “Krampus,” rather plodding until its surprisingly wicked ending, and the much more inventive and delightful Finnish film “Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale” (2010) which features the scariest naked elves I’ve ever seen — actually, fortunately, the only naked elves. 

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Slashers love the holidays. It gets dark early, people are out late shopping, killers have too much vacation time. I don’t know, but we have 1974’s ‘Black Christmas” (“The calls are coming from the house!“), ten years later: “Silent Night, Deadly Night” — not to be confused with “Silent Night, Bloody Night” (1972) — and a whole host of others. Santa kills, elf kill, a serial killer about to be executed experiences a freak accident and is turned into a mutant snowman who kills.

It’s ridiculous, but somehow, it also feels right. Not everyone is always happy around the winter holidays, and holiday horror provides an outlet for expressing those often-complex emotions in contrast to how the cheery world wants you to feel. Your great aunt might not understand, but the ghostly hitchhiker in “Dead End” (2003) would. And nothing makes you count your blessings quite like watching fictional characters escape death, like the college student in 2014’s “Kristy” who unluckily stays on campus alone during Thanksgiving break. Unlucky for the cult that tries to stalk her, that is. 

I like holiday horror for the same reason I like all horror: I want to be surprised. As someone who writes for a living, it’s hard to surprise me. I know how narrative works. I devour it in all forms like that giant Christmas cat in Iceland who eats naughty kids. Holiday horror, like perhaps all scary fiction, reminds us we’re alive, even in the darkest times. You never know who sees you when you’re sleeping, and sometimes comfort, especially now when the whole, real world feels like a horror show, is cold indeed.

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13 holiday classics turned into cookies

If you look forward to winter holiday desserts all year long, you’re not alone. I have sudden cravings for a cold glass of coquito in April, and sometimes think about a croquembouche festooned with drips of caramel in July. Now that it’s finally December, it’s time to dig into all those great seasonal goodies. But this year, we have a bit of a twist: Cookies Meet Classics, a baker’s dozen of your favorite holiday sweets as cookies.

We called up some of our favorite bakers, creators, recipe developers, and cookbook authors to shrink a banquet table of winter treats into a mailable cookie box. In other words, we cookie-fied the classics. That means that you can have the flavors of mulled wine in a two-bite snack, and a perfectly portioned Yule Log for one. These treats are ideal for sharing and dropping off at doorsteps, or just making into a festive platter for yourself. And if you have to dig out the recipes again in June, well, I’m not about to tattle on you.

1. Sufganiyot Cookies by Rebecca Firkser

Assigning Editor Rebecca Firkser takes traditional Hanukkah doughnuts and turns them into soft, jammy cookies adjacent to thumbprints. “These pillowy sugar cookies are chewier than a snappy or crumbly shortbread cookie, thanks to brown sugar and egg yolks, and a hefty glug of olive oil makes them extra-tender, as well as calls back to sufganiyot’s fried origins,” Firkser writes.

2. Coquito Cookies by Reina Gascon-Lopez

Infused with coconut, cinnamon, nutmeg, and just a hint of rum, these coquito cookies get extra flair from a heap of toasted coconut on top of the glaze. Eat them with a cup of tea or coffee, or just dunk them in a punch glass of coquito if you want to be meta about it.

3. Black Cake Cookies by Jillian Atkinson

In the West Indies, Black Cake is a holiday staple, and here, Jillian Atkinson brings the flavor of that luscious cake into cookies packed with dried fruit and burnt sugar. “This recipe turns the dense, pudding-like cake into a crispy-edged cookie with a chewy pool in the center and delightful hints of nutmeg and cinnamon,” Atkinson writes. The cookies are a bit lighter on booze than Black Cake usually is, but they’re just as full of flavor.

4. Baesuk Thumbprint Cookies by Joy Cho

If you’re not familiar with baesuk, you should know that the term refers to two delicious Korean treats. One is a pear-based punch. In the other, whole pears are steamed or poached with spices.

“To mirror the flavors of the original dish, shortbread dough is spiced with cinnamon, ginger, and black pepper, and diced pears are cooked down with jarred honey jujube tea marmalade until they reduce together into a jammy compote,” developer Joy Cho explains. “The pear filling is spooned onto the grooved cookies after baking to better retain the shape of the centers, and a sprinkle of eye-catching pine nuts completes the look.”

5. Latke Cookies by Emma Laperruque

Latkes might not seem like the most promising candidates to turn into cookies, but leave it to Food Editor Emma Laperruque to work her magic and do just that. These cookies have only four ingredients, and are inspired both by latkes and coconut macaroons. The result is a sweet-and-salty potato chip cookie that allows you to channel latke flavor without heating up a pan of oil.

6. Yule Log Cookies by Hetal Vasavada

A traditional Yule Log or buche de Noel is a wonderful centerpiece—but hard to fit into a cookie box. These Yule Log cookies look like miniature versions of the classic, right down to the chocolate swirl in the center. Break out your fanciest sprinkles to give them extra pizazz.

7. Strawberry and Pistachio Knafeh Cookie by Reem Kassis

The Arabesque Table author Reem Kassis takes knafeh, a sweet cheese and shredded phyllo treat widely enjoyed across the Middle East, and transforms them into these gorgeous holiday cookies, accented with crushed pistachios and floral orange-blossom- and rose-waters.

8. Espresso Martini Cookies by Reina Gascon-Lopez

A craze in the ’90s that has once again become the it drink, espresso martinis are everywhere, including in these boldly flavored cookies. Garnish them with flaky smoked salt or, if you’re feeling extra, give them a dip in white chocolate, sprinkle with chopped chocolate-covered espresso beans, and serve in a martini glass.

9. Fruitcake Cookies by Briana Riddock

Use whatever dried fruit you have on hand to make these glorious fruitcake cookies, a riff on the holiday classic that is as beloved as it is divisive. You can customize it to whatever your favorite fruit flavors are, but don’t skimp on the spices, which give the warming backbone to these sweets.

10. Rum Ball Cookies by Nik Sharma

If you love rum balls but want them to be more cookie-like—cookbook author Nik Sharma has you covered. He describes the flavor here as “boozy chocolate baklava sans the pastry,” and that’s exactly what they taste like.

11. Pannetone Cookies by Grant Melton

Think of these as the slice-and-bake version of pannetone, just perfect for keeping in the fridge or freezer to bake off when loved ones arrive. “In true holiday spirit, I like to serve them with a nip of Amaretto,” Supervising Producer Grant Melton writes.

12. Roasted Chestnut Cookie by Jillian Atkinson

You might know of roasted chestnuts primarily from Christmas carols, but these thumbprint cookies, which combine the nuttiness of chestnuts with fig jam, will convince you that they’re worth keeping around for more than just the novelty.

13. Mulled Wine Ka’ak by Reem Kassis

These cookies take the Palestinian tradition of making ka’ak and mamoul cookies and infuse them with mulled wine spices, which you can either buy premade (online or at the grocery store) or make yourself.

11 common cookie mistakes we’ll never make again

From now through the end of December, there will be more cookies baked than any other time of the year. OK, I don’t actually have the stats to back it up, but it makes sense right? From Emma Laperruque’s Latke Cookies to Dorie Greenspan’s World Peace Cookies to basic sugar cookies, Russian Tea Cakes, gingerbread boys and girls, and shortbread, there are so many — and I mean so many — cookie recipes to bake. But in the midst of the holiday hullabaloo, there are bound to be a few errors too. I turned to five pro bakers to find out what the most common cookie mistakes among home bakers are.

1. Not reading the recipe

Are you thinking to yourself, “duh?” I know. I thought the same thing. But Sarah Kieffer, baking blogger and author of the recently published, “100 Cookies: The Baking Book for Every Kitchen,” says that more bakers than you’d think (including the pros!) quickly skim a recipe — or don’t read it at all. “Cookies often seem like something simple or easy to bake, and often it is assumed that cookie recipe directions are all similar in nature. An example is what I myself did the other day — I glanced over the recipe, threw the butter in the stand mixer bowl and started mixing, only to then realize I was supposed to brown the butter, let it come to room temperature, and then mix it,” says Kieffer.

2. Not measuring the ingredients 

It sounds really simple — measure your ingredients before baking! But even the most experienced home bakers can mistake a tablespoon for a teaspoon if they’re in a rush (been there, done that) or measure ⅓ cup of walnuts, chopped when the recipe calls for ⅓ cup of chopped walnuts (yes, there is a difference!). “It is best to use a scale so that the recipe comes out the same every time. Using a measuring cup can result in a cookie that is too tough or too soft, depending on if you scoop or spoon the flour into the cup,” says Zoë François, a pastry chef and host of Zoë Bakes.

3. Not chilling the dough 

When you’re craving sugar cookies or gingerbread, you want to bake them and eat them stat. But most cookie dough recipes call for some time in the fridge, Even if they don’t, it never hurts. One of the biggest baking mistakes home bakers make is not allowing the dough enough time to cool off, or baking it without chilling altogether. “If cookie dough is particularly sticky, wet, or greasy, chilling is ideal because cold dough isn’t as likely to over-spread in the oven. The colder the dough, the less the cookies will over-spread into greasy puddles,” says Sally McKenney, writer and creator of Sally’s Baking Addiction.

Bonus: Chilling makes the cookie taste better! “Chilling the dough allows the various ingredients to absorb into each other, which enhances the texture and flavor,” adds François.

4. Misunderstanding room temperature butter 

For years, I thought room temperature butter meant that it needed to be super soft to the touch. I’d leave it out on a warm oven for an hour or two before baking my cookies. This is wrong. Don’t listen to me. Listen to the pros. “Room temperature butter is cool to the touch — not warm or greasy,” says McKenney. But what’s the big deal, right? “If butter is too warm, it won’t properly cream with the sugar(s) and the cookies may end up over-spreading or deflating,” she explains. Lots of things can affect how quickly your butter softens (the type of butter, humidity, and room temperature are the biggest factors), but as a rule of thumb, 30 minutes is about all it takes to get room temperature butter.

5. Scrape, scrape, scrape

Whether you’ve baked cookies, cake batter, brownies, or muffins before, you know that inevitably, some butter, all-purpose flour, cocoa powder, and even some stray chocolate chips tend to settle and stick to the bottom of the bowl. “Please scrape your mixing bowl! Your cookies will thank you,” says Andrea Quillen, Pastry Chef at King Arthur Baking Company.

“When I first started baking I made this mistake often, and found when baking my cookies each pan I made would change — the first pan would result in cookies that were too thick and didn’t spread at all, the second pan would almost be perfect, and the last pan would have flat cookies streaked with butter,” says Kieffer.

Use a spatula (this one is my favorite) to really get in the dough and reach every last ingredient at the bottom of the bowl.

6. Overworking cookie dough

Quillen says that rolled cookies — particularly gingerbread — tend to be overworked. Think about it: You roll out a portion of dough, cut out Christmas trees or stars, and then knead the dough some more to re-form a ball. Rinse and repeat. Doing so is a necessary part of the process if you don’t want any dough to go to waste, but know that it will affect the final product. “The more you work the dough, you’ll notice that the color fades each time you roll it out. The final cookie will be a little tougher than your first roll (but still tasty of course),” says Quillen.

The trick to preventing too-tough cookies is not overworking the dough initially in the mixing bowl. “​​The way to make sure the cookie has enough structure, but isn’t tough, is to mix just until everything is combined, but not beyond,” adds François.

7. Let’s talk oven temperature 

There are two major traps home bakers tend to fall into. The first is not knowing your oven temperature. All ovens run a little bit differently, so just because your cookie recipe calls for an oven set to 375℉ and you have adjusted the temperature, doesn’t mean that the internal reading is actually 375℉. The solution? Buy an oven thermometer. They’re really inexpensive, and wildly useful. “Even if you have a fancy oven, you should still own an oven thermometer,” says Dorie Greenspan. Learn your oven’s hot spots too to prevent the cookies from baking faster than you’d expect.

The other faux paux that bakers make is opening the oven door repeatedly while something is baking in the oven. I know it’s tempting — believe me, I know. You want to know how things are going in there! Has the cake risen properly? Are the cookies done yet? The best way to ensure that your cake rises probably and your cookies become a lovely golden brown is to leave the oven door shut. I was once told that every time you open the oven door, the temperature drops by about 25℉. This means that your oven temperature will constantly fluctuate, causing your baked goods to need even more time in the oven.

8. Using the wrong color baking sheet 

Every pro baker I spoke with agreed unanimously that the color and material of a cookie sheet impacts the bake. “Dark-colored pans absorb more heat, which will cause the bottoms of cookies to brown faster,” says Kieffer. If you only have dark-colored baking sheets on hand, Kieffer says that you can lower the oven temperature by 25℉ to prevent too much browning. Now, her preferred baking sheet is a medium-weight half sheet pan, like Nordic Ware Gold Nonstick Baking Sheet Sets.

Greenspan likes to line her cookie sheets with parchment paper, which not only makes it easy to clean up, but she also believes that they’ll bake more evenly, regardless of the color of the pan (though she does prefer light-colored baking sheets).

9. Not letting your cookies cool thoroughly

Again I know the temptation is real. You want to eat your cookies and you want to do it now. If you try to move the cookies to a cooling rack immediately after they come out of the oven, they’ll break. If you try to decorate the cookies with icing before they have fully cooled, the icing will melt and puddle around the cookie. If you try to eat the cookies before they have fully cooled, you’ll burn your mouth (it seems worth it but trust me, it’s not). Five to seven minutes is all the time they need to cool enough so that you can transfer them to a cooling rack or to taste test; 45 minutes to one hour is what it takes to cool them completely before decorating.

10. Not using cooled cookie sheets

“When you bake in batches, you need to put the dough down on a cool cookie sheet. Otherwise, the baking time will be off and the cookies will start to spread if the sheet is warm,” says Greenspan. A good measure is if the sheet is cool to the touch. “If you only have one or two cookie sheets, pre-scoop the dough onto parchment paper. This will save time once the sheet has cooled,” she adds.

11. Ignore the “beat until fluffy” rule

In the same realm as overworking the cookie dough, Greenspan says that home bakers tend to overbeat the butter and sugar. “A light, airy, and fluffy texture is better for cakes than cookies,” she told me. “The cookies bake for such a short time that you don’t want them to rise and then fall. In general, you think of light and foamy batter for cakes and a creamier mixture for cookies.” However, you should always, always follow your recipe. So if it calls for a mixture of light, fluffy wet ingredients, do it!

11. Give the cookies some space

Like humans, cookies need a little breathing room. Being packed tight in a room is uncomfortable and the same can be said for cookies on a baking sheet. Greenspan emphasizes the importance of leaving an inch or two of space between each cookie, which will let the air circulate and ensure that they cook evenly.

15 secrets of “Sesame Street” puppeteers

For more than 50 years, “Sesame Street” has been imparting valuable moral, ethical, and social lessons to young audiences using a sprawling cast of puppets. The “Sesame” characters — Big Bird, Elmo, Oscar the Grouch, Cookie Monster, Bert and Ernie, the Count, and others — have become instantly recognizable to generations of viewers. But behind every memorable character is a human performer, one tasked with juggling the technical demands of puppet operation without losing the humor and heart that makes their furry counterpart so memorable.

To get a better sense of what goes into this unique skill set, Mental Floss spoke with three veteran “Sesame Street” performers. Here’s what they had to say about crossed puppet eyes, grooming habits, and enjoying a long career finessing felt.

1. “Sesame Street” puppeteers usually get started lending a (right) hand

Though there’s no definitive set of directions for puppeteers to get to “Sesame Street,” a number of performers selected to work on the show begin as apprentices with one specific task: operating the right hand of characters alongside the veteran cast members. “A lot of performers will almost only do right hands for a very long time,” Ryan Dillon, the puppeteer behind Elmo, tells Mental Floss. “Some characters, like Cookie Monster, require two performers with two practical hands.”

Dillon started working on “Sesame Street” in 2005 at the age of 17. He performed as a right hand and as various supporting characters for years before scoring the Elmo role in 2013. Throughout that training, he accompanied the main puppeteer, who uses their dominant (usually right) hand to control the mouth and the other to control the left hand. The newcomer will manipulate the right, a duty informally known as right handing. “It’s a great training ground,” Dillon says. “You’re working directly next to a performer with years of experience. You become one character together.”

2. “Sesame Street” puppeteers have trick for making their characters emote 

Peter Linz, who portrays Ernie (among other characters) on the series, tells Mental Floss that getting a puppet to exhibit a personality takes some finessing. “You have to show the entire range of human emotion through something that doesn’t have an expression,” he says. Linz, who also teaches classes on puppeteering, says that there are some techniques to get puppets to show off their mood, however. “You can make them look sad by having them look down. You can get them to smile by opening their mouth. If they’re angry, maybe you close their mouth and then shake their arms ever so slightly. There are degrees of subtlety in all of that.”

Linz says the audience does part of that work themselves, projecting their own feelings onto a puppet. The ultimate proof might be in the example of Miss Piggy. While not a “Sesame Street” cast member, Linz says it’s telling that people often seem to believe the vivacious and flirtatious porcine character bats her eyes. “She can’t,” he says. The puppet doesn’t have that ability.

3. Not all “Sesame Street” puppets can perform the same tasks

“Sesame Street” utilizes three major varieties of character. There’s the full-body puppet, like Big Bird and Snuffleupagus; “bag” puppets with two articulated hands, like Cookie Monster; and hand-and-rod puppets that have arms controlled by thin rods. “Elmo is a hand-and-rod puppet,” Dillon says. “[The difference means] some puppets can do things others can’t. Cookie Monster can pick things up. Elmo can, but it takes longer. You need to stop [filming] and attach something to his hands with tape or a pin.”

4. “Sesame Street” puppeteers rely on a key design element to connect to their audience

It can be difficult to communicate that a puppet is able to focus a pair of fixed eyes on something, whether it’s another character, an object, or the audience. But Linz says that the “Sesame Street” crew and the rest of the Muppets were designed by Henson with that in mind. “The eyes are just two black dots against a white background,” he says. “But all the characters are ever so slightly cross-eyed. There’s a triangle between the eyes and nose and a point where it looks like they’re looking right into the camera.” It’s a sensitive illusion. Turning the puppet even slightly, he says, and they will wind up looking at something else.

5. “Sesame Street” puppeteers can spend their entire day crouched on the floor 

Being a “Sesame Street” puppeteer requires more than just having performing chops. On set, characters that may be at waist level with their human co-stars are operated by performers crouched below frame, often on wheeled boards called rollies. “The first day or two, your back and everything else is sore,” Dillon says. “It engages your whole body. Your arm is up in the air performing.” Some actors, Dillon says, have developed knee issues as a result of a career bent over. Fortunately, not every scene requires contortions. Some sets are built raised so performers can stand up straight. Other times, they’ll have to situate themselves horizontally. Scenes set on a stoop usually mean the performer is lying down behind the steps.

6. “Sesame Street puppeteers have input into character design

Lurking in the offices of Sesame Workshop is a puppet factory that, according to Dillon, houses a number of “Anything Muppets” — blank designs that may one day be used as the template for a brand-new character. In 1991, performer Carmen Osbahr got an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of conceptualizing a character when she helped originate Rosita (top right), the first regular bilingual Muppet on the series. “They had a meeting and asked what I had in mind,” Osbahr tells Mental Floss. “I was able to tell them I wanted a monster and I wanted live hands because I wanted to be able to play a musical instrument. I wanted her to be active and colorful. I didn’t want a petite, tiny little monster.” Both Osbahr and Rosita have been a presence on the show ever since.

7. “Sesame Street” puppeteers have material for a blooper reel, but you’ll probably never see it 

Puppet manipulation takes concentration and effort. Occasionally, the cast of “Sesame Street” can find themselves flubbing a take. According to Osbahr, that’s often due to trying to coordinate left and right hands. “The main thing is props,” she says. “Grabbing stuff is easy, but if you want to pour something into a cup or write a letter, that’s hard. You think you’ll have a glass but just miss it.” Performers can also fall off their rollies, sending their counterparts tumbling out of the frame.

8. Each “Sesame Street” character has a dedicated puppeteer — with a couple of exceptions 

When it comes to “Sesame Street” characters, there is one sacrosanct rule — aside from right handing, no puppet will have more than one puppeteer. “We feel strongly each Muppet has a dedicated performer,” Dillon says. “If there were two or three Elmos, you would see a copy of a copy.” However, illnesses or personal appearances can make that rule difficult to follow every time. If Dillon can’t make a shoot, a performer will step in to operate the puppet, with Dillon going in to provide the voice later.

The cast can also cover for one another if a scene requires two characters who are normally operated by the same actor. Both Bert and Grover, for example, are played by actor Eric Jacobson. If the two share screen time, Dillon might step in to perform one of them, with Jacobson recording his lines later.

9. “Sesame Street” puppeteers have a specific way of handling their puppets to keep them clean 

Day after day of manipulating puppets can lead to issues with cleanliness. Performer sweat can dampen the foam insides, while body oils and other contaminants can affect their fur coats. To avoid being dirtied, Linz says performers and production members try to pick up the puppets by the scruff of their necks. “We don’t want to put our oily hands on their faces,” Linz says. Puppets are also usually delivered to and from the set by a team of “Muppet wranglers,” and stored in the workshop where they’re built and maintained. To dry out a puppet, they’re sometimes placed on a wooden stand. A hair dryer set on low might also be used to dry a sweaty interior.

10. “Sesame Street” puppeteers work very, very closely together

Owing to the frequent proximity of puppets in frame, “Sesame Street” puppeteers are usually working near or virtually over other performers. “We try to be very aware and conscious of the people around us,” Dillon says. “Mistakes happen. Elmo has big feet, and Abby Cadabby has big feet, so you’ll often hit the other person with a foot. It doesn’t hurt.”

11. Guest stars will talk directly to “Sesame Street” characters — not just the puppeteers 

“Sesame Street” has played host to many guest stars over the decades, from actors to First Lady Michelle Obama. According to Osbahr, their human guests will often address the character even off-camera. “Most everybody who visits us talks to the character like they’re alive,” she says. “The moment we bring a character down [to rest], we have a conversation, but it’s great to have a relationship with a character and a celebrity. They’ll talk to Elmo, Rosita, Cookie Monster, and we’re talking to them right back.”

12. “Sesame Street” puppeteers can take years to get fully comfortable with a character 

For many performers, it can take years before they feel like they’re fully inhabiting their character. “You can be so focused on doing something right, you forget to have fun with the character,” Osbahr says. “By the fourth season, that’s when I started letting go, taking risks, having fun. You stop having to think about it.”

Fortunately, it’s not uncommon for performers on “Sesame Street” to spend decades on the show, which means there’s plenty of time to adjust. Carol Spinney, who portrayed Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, retired in 2018 after 49 years as a cast member. Osbahr says the familial atmosphere encourages longevity. “I’ve been with this group of people for 30 years,” she says. “We’ve shared a lot of incredible memories together.”

13. “Sesame Street” puppeteers can sometimes mourn a puppet who is declared “toast” 

Made of foam and other delicate materials, “Sesame Street” puppets have a shelf life. Depending on use, wear, and handling, they might last a few years before needing to be replaced. Linz says two new Ernies have recently been made after one began sloughing off foam inside, a symptom the production calls “toast” because the foam resembles toast crumbs.

Even with replacements, the legacy of characters can still live on. Linz uses an Ernie with the same mouth plate that was used by Jim Henson as far back as 1982.

14. “Sesame Street’ puppeteers have to work backward

The most surprising aspect of working as a “Sesame Street” puppeteer? According to Linz, it’s the fact that performers often have to essentially work backwards. Because they’re crouched below the camera frame, puppeteers need to watch a monitor placed low to the ground to see what the camera sees. “When you move your arm to the right, the arm on the monitor moves to the left,” he says. “You’re seeing the image the audience sees.”

15. Yes, “Sesame Street” puppets are technically muppets 

Sometimes there’s confusion over whether the puppets that appear on “Sesame Street” actually constitute Muppets, or whether that term is reserved for non-“Sesame” projects like “The Muppet Show” or other endeavors featuring Kermit, Miss Piggy, and the others. According to Dillon, any Henson-birthed or -inspired puppet is a Muppet. “It’s become a catch-all term for puppets,” he says. “It’s a brand name, like Kleenex. Jim Henson came up with the name. A Muppet is used for characters that he came up with.”

A version of this article originally ran in 2019; it has been updated for 2021.

Squirrel privilege is real: Intergenerational wealth drives animal inequality, study says

Generational wealth isn’t a concept that is confined to human society.

According to a new study published in the journal Behavioral Ecology this month, animals, too, are born with different degrees of “wealth” according to what resources makes their own species thrive. Similar to humans, this so-called animal privilege appears to contribute to unequal outcomes among animals. 

Though it sounds like the subject of an article in The Onion, the research into privilege in the animal kingdom is both compelling and fascinating. Indeed, the authors, a team of researchers from UCLA and Mills College, wrote that “strikingly parallel phenomena exist in animal societies” compared to human societies.

“The concept of privilege — differential access to inherited resources — is familiar in the context of human economic and social systems, but many other animals also transfer some forms of wealth across generations,” the authors of the study wrote. “Although some of these examples are well known to workers within particular animal systems, there have been few efforts to understand the implications of privilege within a comparative evolutionary context.”

[Related: Four reasons why millennials don’t have any money]

Until now. In the paper, the researchers suggest that privilege can be studied in the animal kingdom in similar ways it can be studied in human societies — for example, by looking at how specific commodities are transferred from one animal family to another.

One prominent example, roughly analogous to caste or social status, relates to “social rank” among hyena societies. As with humans, such hierarchies are inherited. 

“The spotted hyena [offspring] inherit their social rank from their mothers within the maternal line (matriline) and priority of access to ephemeral food within shared territories,” the researchers noted as an example. “As a result, full family lines within this species increase in their representation over time, whereas other lineages decrease in numbers or even go extinct over time.”

Another prominent example comes from the world of squirrels, some of whom have vast territories and resources, while others do not.

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“In North American red squirrels (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus), a mother may store spruce cones on her territory and privilege her daughter by bequeathing a rich territory to her; daughters who receive these resources survive longer and reproduce earlier than those without,” the researchers wrote.

They note that this squirrel privilege can perpetuate for many generations, and perpetuate what humans might call class divisions among animals.

“Intergenerational transfer of material wealth can drive inequality within family lineages of animals,” the researchers wrote.

The researchers argue that while previous studies have focused on the consequences of privilege, both human and animal society might benefit from identifying the commonalities around the drivers of privilege in the natural world.

“Comparative study of privilege in animal societies may yield a greater understanding of (1) the deep evolutionary roots of wealth inequality across the Tree of Life, (2) how advantages for some but not other individuals perpetuate privilege to create and sustain a landscape of inequality, (3) how multigenerational inequality and its compounding of advantages for some contribute to unequal playing fields across multiple species, including our own,” the researchers stated. “We might begin to understand the conditions producing more or less even playing fields in the natural world.”

Perhaps by understanding how privilege perpetuates among animals might help humans understand how to improve equity among our own species. Or, at the least, dispel outdated myths about the cause of inequality. 

Read more on the animal world:

Trump sues to stop New York Attorney General investigating him for fraud

Donald Trump on Monday filed a lawsuit against Letitia James, the New York attorney general probing Trump’s business practices, claiming that her entire investigation is politically motivated. 

The suit, filed in federal court in upstate New York and first reported by The New York Times, broadly claims that James’ civil inquiry violates Trump’s constitutional rights and specifically asks a judge to put an end to the proceeding. The attorney general’s mission, the suit says, “is guided solely by political animus and a desire to harass, intimidate, and retaliate against a private citizen who she views as a political opponent.”

“The investigations commenced by James are in no way connected to legitimate law enforcement goals, but rather, are merely a thinly-veiled effort to publicly malign Trump and his associates,” he suit adds.

According to CNBC, the offensive “paints Trump, his family and his business as victims of a ‘bitter crusade’ by James, who has ‘tirelessly bombarded’ them with ‘unwarranted’ subpoenas.”

Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, further claimed that James “has short changed the state by commencing this partisan investigation and has forever tarnished the sanctity of her office.”

RELATED: New York Attorney General eyeing early January deposition of Trump: report

“By filing this lawsuit,” Habba added, “we intend to not only hold her accountable for her blatant constitutional violations, but to stop her bitter crusade to punish her political opponent in its tracks.”

Several pages of the suit reportedly includes James’ past criticism of Trump over social media.

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The former president has sought to cast doubt over the probe’s legitimacy since its inception two years ago, repeatedly claiming that it’s a political “witch hunt.”

James’ probe is reportedly looking into whether the Trump Organization committed financial fraud by overvaluing its properties to take advantage of underserved loans and tax breaks. Earlier this month, The Washington Post reported that James is seeking a deposition with Trump himself. Last October, James deposed the former president’s son, Eric Trump, the executive vice president of the Trump Organization.

James’ office still has yet to personally charge Trump with any criminal wrongdoing, though Trump has reportedly expressed concerns over James’ probe to members of his inner circle. 

James’ two-year probe exists alongside a separate criminal investigation led by Manhattan District Attorney Cryus Vance, who is similarly looking into the Trump Organization’s business practices. However, Vance has already charged the firm with running a 15-year tax evasion scheme for certain high-ups, namely former executive Allen H. Weisselberg, who failed to report $1.7 million worth of company perks. 

RELATED: Manhattan DA convenes new grand jury in Trump Organization probe

Trump has suggested that Vance and James are working “hand-in-hand,” though the two investigations are being conducted separately. 

“Don’t, don’t, don’t”: Trump lashes out after crowd boos him for getting COVID booster

Supporters of Donald Trump booed when the former president revealed that he’d received a booster shot on Sunday. 

A largely unmasked crowd at ​​the American Airlines Center in Dallas – the final stop of Fox host Bill O’Reilly’s “The History Tour” with the former president — vocally pushed back at the news. During the appearance, Trump touted his implementation of Operation Warp Speed, the public-private partnership brokered last May to expedite the development, production, and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines for every American. 

“Look, we did something that was historic,” Trump told the crowd. We saved tens of millions of lives worldwide when we – together, all of us – we got a vaccine done.”

RELATED: 4-to-1 vaccine split means COVID deaths are three times higher in Trump counties than Biden areas

“This was going to ravage the country far beyond what it is right now, take credit for it … it’s great, what we’ve done is historic,” he added. “Don’t let them take it away.”

He then quickly added: “If you don’t want to take [the shot], you shouldn’t be forced to take it, no mandates.”

Later, when O’Reilly asked him if he’d received a booster, Trump responded, “Yes.” 

“I got it, too,” O’Reilly added, after which the crowd began to boo. 

“Don’t, don’t, don’t,” Trump said to the crowd. “That’s alright, it’s a very tiny group up there,” he added, pointing to a section of the crowd. 

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It isn’t the first time Trump’s stance on vaccination has gotten him into hot water with his followers. 

Back in August, the former president was booed at a rally in Alabama after encouraging the crowd to receive the shot, to which he responded: “No, that’s okay. That’s all right. You got your freedom. But I happen to take the vaccine. If it doesn’t work, you’ll be the first to know. Okay?”

RELATED: Trump booed at rally after telling supporters to “take the vaccines”

According to an August Fox News poll, roughly a third of the former president’s voters do not plan on receiving even the first round of any COVID-19 shots. 

Over the past two years, Trump has walked a tightrope when it comes to vaccination, supporting the practice as a public health precaution but condemning any effort to mandate them. Trump and then-First Lady Melania Trump privately received their first vaccinations back in March, according to The New York Times. 

Last October, the couple revealed that they had tested positive for the virus. But this February, the Times reported that Trump was likely much sicker than his administration previously acknowledged, with “depressed blood oxygen levels at one point and a lung problem associated with pneumonia.”

Liz Cheney: Not the Republican hero that we needed in 2021

From the moment that Donald Trump first ran for president in 2015, there’s been a longing — from not just the mainstream media, but from large numbers of Democrats — for Republican heroes who will stand up to him. The tiny percentage of almost entirely elite Republicans who objected to Trump became known as “never-Trumpers” and were exalted in #Resistance circles as patriots and heroes, even though their actual power over the GOP was non-existent. They existed more to prop up this illusion that the Republican Party was once an upstanding party, and that it’s only after the advent of Trump that the GOP lost its way. 

“I say to my Republican friends, take back your party. The country needs a big, strong Republican Party,” Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, embodying this type of thinking, remarked in September. Pelosi is right in one respect: Democracy can’t endure when only one party feels constrained by the demands of basic morality. But the premise of her remarks was rotten in multiple ways.

For one thing, there is no better form of the Republican Party to “take back.” The GOP has been the party of Richard Nixon and Joe McCarthy for longer than most Americans have been alive. Trump’s mentor, infamously sleazy lawyer Roy Cohn, was influential in Ronald Reagan’s administration, at least until he was disbarred and died of AIDS. Reagan’s race-baiting, you’ll recall, was hardly more subtle than Trump’s. And before Trump’s Big Lie, we had George W. Bush’s “WMDs in Iraq.” Jonah Goldberg may play at being the upright conservative now, but he only came up in GOP politics because his mother was involved in destroying the life of a young Monica Lewinsky. The fantasy of the “good Republican” relies on ignoring literal decades of actual Republican behavior. 

In 2021, no one more illustrated this gulf between the fantasy of the heroic Republican and the actual scumminess of the GOP than Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming.

RELATED: Never forget that Liz Cheney helped produce Trumpism — and could be worse in the long run 

The daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney has made a name for herself with MSBNC viewers in the past year by refusing to back down from her vocal outrage over Trump inciting a violent insurrection on January 6. For that, she now stands out from the vast majority of her party, which has reorganized to cover for Trump and lay the groundwork for his 2024 coup effort to succeed. She most recently made headlines when, as part of her duties for the Jan. 6 committee, she dramatically read text messages sent from Fox News hosts to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows. The texts proved the hosts knew Trump was responsible for the riot, even as they pretended otherwise on-air. 

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But while that was a jolly good time that embarrassed the liars at Fox News, no one should be confused about why Cheney is doing what she’s doing. Her objections to Trump and his insurrection aren’t rooted in any real interest in saving democracy. On the contrary, her anger is clearly more aesethetic than substantive. She and her family were served well by the old school of GOP politics, which were thoroughly corrupt, but kept the appearance of sleaze at arm’s length by making sure the unkempt masses knew their place. It’s one thing to get the votes of the doughy redhats with bad facial hair by throwing them red meat from behind a podium. It’s another thing entirely when the animals are running through the Capitol, breaking things and leaving behind the odor of marijuana smoke and smeared feces. 

RELATED: Beware Liz Cheney 2024: If you think that’s a big improvement on Trump, think again 

It’s not just that her father was one of the architects of the original big lie, the “WMDs in Iraq” nonsense that was produced to justify the unjustifiable invasion of Iraq. Until Trump tried to overtly steal the 2020 election, Cheney stood by her man through thick and thin. She voted with Trump 93% of the time during his four years in office. When Trump attempted to blackmail the Ukrainian president into falsifying evidence for an anti-Biden conspiracy theory in 2019, Cheney refused to vote to impeach him. She also joins in with every Fox News smear of Democrats, showing that she’s fully committed to the GOP’s long-standing habit of resorting to dirty tricks. 

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Most importantly, Cheney opposes voting rights. She supported the long line of Trump judges that were being installed in order to gut the Voting Rights Act. Even after she became an outspoken Trump critic, she vehemently refused to back any kind of legislation to prevent the ongoing state-level efforts by Republicans to make sure Trump’s next coup is more effective. She doesn’t take issue with Republicans trying to wind down democracy or steal elections. She just wants to put a gloss of respectability on the process. A paperwork coup, where power is obtained by preventing people from voting and by corrupting the election systems, is just fine by Cheney. What grossed her out was the way Trump and his allies kept doing obvious coup-stuff on camera. 

It’s understandable that so many Democrats want there to be a better Republican Party. Democracies are better when they’re competitive. One only has to look at the debacle of Andrew Cuomo’s tenure as New York’s governor to see the decay that sets into even left-leaning parties when there’s no real electoral competition. But it’s important not to confuse what Democrats want — a healthy democracy — with what the handful of never-Trump Republicans like Cheney want. What Cheney wants isn’t a healthy democracy or a better GOP. She just wants a return to the old days, when Republican corruption was better-dressed and didn’t involve being photographed kow-towing to an embarrassment like Trump. Sorry Liz, wanting classier D.C. cocktail parties is not the same thing as wanting a functioning democracy.

How Joe Biden lost Joe Manchin — and how he can win him back

I expect you’re going to be reading an endless number of hand wringing analysis pieces over the next couple of days about the deeply disappointing decision by West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin to go on “Fox News Sunday” after the Senate had recessed for the holiday and announced his decision to destroy the Democratic agenda — making it even more probable that the Republicans will win in 2022. Merry Christmas.

Now it is understandable why podcaster Charlamagne tha God asked Vice President Kamala Harris the other day which Joe — Biden or Manchin — is the real president. Manchin is powerful enough that he has veto power over the entire legislative agenda and he’s apparently decided to use it to kill Biden’s Build Back Better Bill (BBB). As he said:

I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation. I just can’t. I’ve tried everything humanly possible. I can’t get there. This is a no on this legislation. I have tried everything I know to do. 

Manchin went on to say that he believes the Biden administration should direct all of its attention to “the variant,” although he didn’t explain what exactly he thought they should be doing about it that they have been unable to because they were distracted by their legislative agenda. But then he’s offered up dozens of different and conflicting reasons for his reluctance to support the bill during the entire process, stringing the White House along with vague impressions that he could be seduced, so this latest reasoning was no more convincing than any of them.

Manchin’s always been unhappy about the amount of money being spent, fretting over debt even as his partner in sabotage, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., was the one who nixed tax hikes that would have easily paid for everything. This led to Democrats coming up with the idea of allowing program funding to “sunset” in just a few years on the logic that once enacted nobody would have the nerve to kill them. I have to say I think that’s naive. It may have worked for the Bush tax cuts but that’s just because Democrats are fools. It’s true that their failure to end Obamacare is an example that proves such a case, but I think we have to acknowledge just how close they came to doing it. If not for one stubborn, dying, man with a grudge against Donald Trump it would have happened. And the Republican Party as currently constituted would positively revel in reversing Build Back Better if given the chance because they believe that creating chaos gives them power. (They are not wrong, unfortunately.) And it is wildly optimistic to believe that Democrats will hold on to the Congress and the White House long enough to fully entrench these programs in this polarized electorate.

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Smart analysts like American Prospect Executive Editor David Dayen, who argued in the New York Times all the way back in October for simplifying the bill, saw this moment coming. Dayen suggested that many of Build Back Better’s programs were impossibly complicated, bureaucratic and poorly funded in any case and some are downright counter-productive, largely thanks to the relentless demands of Manchin and Sinema who had turned the bill into a mess as everyone tried to figure out ways to accommodate their needs. Dayen wrote:

After grinding an expansive agenda into paste, Democrats should not expect voters to re-elect the pastemakers so that they can sculpt the paste into something useful.

He said “to be successful, not only in this legislation but in revitalizing Joe Biden’s presidency and his party, Mr. Biden must enact permanent, simple, meaningful programs, and connect them to his argument about how government can work again.”

The thrust of Dayen’s political argument was that inefficient, kludgy programs do more harm than good since the public doesn’t get it. Much better to do a few things well and restore the people’s faith in government than try to solve everything at once and do it badly, reinforcing the view that government can’t do anything right.

If the Democrats and the White House decide to give that approach a go and pick just a few programs that Manchin and Sinema have both supported in the past it will no doubt result in some very hard feelings among the various constituencies that will be left out of this round of legislation. It’s a bitter pill to swallow. But this negotiation has almost certainly clarified that having such a small majority makes it extremely difficult to pass anything, particularly when dealing with divas like Manchin and Sinema who are perfectly content to walk away.

RELATED: White House officials stunned as Manchin ends Build Back Better talks with little warning

To those who say that the Democrats should never have decoupled the infrastructure bill from the BBB bill because that would have been leverage over Manchin, I doubt it would have gone that way. Manchin would just as easily walked away from that as well, particularly since it wouldn’t have been bipartisan which is something he actually does care about.

The media reported that the White House was caught off guard when a Manchin staffer informed them of his decision only a half an hour before the interview was broadcast. He apparently failed to answer a call from the president as well which is more than a little disrespectful under the circumstances. Biden was displeased and signed off on a blistering comment from the White House press secretary Jen Psaki, more or less calling out Manchin for failing to act in good faith.

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Some Democratic members of Congress reacted angrily to the news as well. Senator Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., wants the bill to come to the floor so that everyone can see who is voting against all the popular items in the bill. I’m not sure that would accomplish anything. Manchin and Sinema would be thrilled to have a “thumbs down” moment to show their independence. Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota called Manchin’s excuses “bullshit.” After all the work both Houses put into this, it’s understandable. Millions of Americans who have been following this saga undoubtedly felt exactly the same way. It’s infuriating.

But maybe they’ll all take a break, come back next year and pick up the pieces. Oregon Democratic Senator Ron Wyden came out with a proposal already:

The New York Times reported that the White House is thinking along similar lines. So, perhaps all is not lost. The huge comprehensive deal that Democrats wanted may be dead but that doesn’t mean they can’t pass something substantial and meaningful that will tackle urgent priorities like climate change and drug prices.

If they can get that done, perhaps the American people will regain faith that the government can accomplish some big things — even if they can’t do it all at once.  

America in 2021: From the end of empire to the prospect of a new civil war

Graveyard of empire

The enforced Afghanistan “withdrawal” was likely America’s Suez moment. The reference is to the manufactured confrontation by Britain over the Suez Canal in 1956, after which the British Empire, which by that time existed in name only, became manifestly a paper tiger. It will take quite a few years for this realization to sink in among American policy elites, but my sense is that the vicious trauma caused to the establishment by the inevitable fall of Afghanistan is an accurate reflection of the new geopolitical reality.

It would have been easy to lay a bet on some confrontation during the later 2020s with China, probably in the South China Sea, as signaling America’s Suez moment, but it seems to have arrived several years early. Pandemic politics played a role in the acceleration — but fear not, the world has taken full note of the American ignominy in Afghanistan over the last 40 years, with the final two decades embodying a desperate escalation that could only have had one denouement. The impact of this imperial defeat for the global balance of power will be the biggest story of this decade and beyond.

Liberal commentators, as they have for the last two decades, are cheering the collapse of Evergrande, the Chinese real estate giant, and as usual are cherry-picking statistics to forecast post-peak China, with declining Asian and global influence. In fact, China has already accumulated enough goodwill and power, increasingly soft power, to see it through any foreseeable turbulence and establish itself as the undisputed hegemon over large parts of the world well before the middle of this century. The fall of Afghanistan was a crucial signpost in this direction, which nobody around the world, except Americans, missed or misunderstood.

RELATED: Empire of chickenhawks: Why America’s chaotic departure from Afghanistan was actually perfect

The hollowness of what passes for the American “left” was fully exposed in this moment, to the extent that they shared with the liberal elite lamentations over the fate of Afghans, or the alleged precipitous nature of the exit after 20 years of murderous dawdling, conveniently forgetting the imperial slaughter in the name of human rights with which we gifted the Afghan people, as we earlier gifted the Vietnamese.

The pandemic and public health

The neoliberal state was always unequipped, by design, to handle a collective emergency such as the pandemic. Wherever the neoliberal state — or its dark twin, the neofascist state — is in ascendance, the pandemic has typically heralded the most ruin. Some Asian, African and Latin American countries apparently never got the memo about mishandling the crisis by way of authoritarian economics, but this seems to be in part nature’s revenge against the Chicago economists, Milton Friedman’s “Free to Choose” and the multi-generational legacy of pitting individual against individual in an economic paradigm that has lost all touch with human empathy.

In a system where eight billionaires own as much wealth as the bottom half of the world’s population, there can be no such thing as a broad-based, sensible, flexible public health response that does not rely on unwarranted authority seized by the very people who have failed the public on health issues, almost as a matter of professional definition, in the neoliberal health economy.

RELATED: Right-wing media and the pandemic: A toxic feedback loop that nurtured fascism

Will there ever be accountability for the hundreds of billions both the Trump and Biden administrations lavished on the private health care industry for such functions as efficient distribution of vaccines? Why did the discussion in this country never expand beyond the narrowest of parameters to include all that a normal human being would consider within the definition of “health”? Encouraging healthy behaviors and offering economic incentives in such matters as nutrition and preventive care, which are staples of public health everywhere else, was never going to be part of the single-minded assault on the viral enemy in this country.

Which side has not played cultural politics with science? Science is being fetishized as a system above and beyond politics, when no objective study of its aims and objectives can show this to be the case. Science, as much as any system, has played its part in creating inequality. Why would we expect it to behave differently during the pandemic? It is people, endowed with reason and perception, whose needs should come first, not the scientific establishment’s self-generated propulsion.

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Build Back Better is not enough

Was Obama the new FDR, or is it Biden? Or was it Bill Clinton? Another day, another collapse forfended and another revived Roosevelt — the patrician man of the hour — to the rescue. Except that the solutions, from the Affordable Care Act to Build Back Better, not only do not fail to rise to the moment but only serve to exacerbate the deep-rooted inequalities that are driving this country to visible collapse.

To hear both left and right commentators, BBB, with its original $3.5 trillion tag, was going to be transformational. In reality, broken down over its 10-year duration, the amount was only about 1% of U.S. GDP — hardly transformational. One has to think back to the 2020 presidential campaign to recall figures amounting to many times the BBB price tag to even imagine making a dent against the environmental challenges whose hour has come. Besides, most of that money was going to be backloaded to the out years anyway, and subject to revision or cancellation by future administrations, even before the entirely predictable kabuki theater of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema took hold — evoking parallel, and much encouraged, in-party provocations going back several Democratic administrations.

This is not to say that components of Biden’s BBB — most of which were severely compromised or extinguished in negotiations, and all of which appears to be dead for now — were not going to ease many people out of dire poverty, with such long-postponed ideas as permanent child tax credits (essentially a form of Universal Basic Income) or support for child and elderly care. But we always knew that Biden did not have the luxury of Obama’s disdain, and that token gestures, or something a little more than that, would have to be made toward the recalcitrant workforce to get them enthused about capitalism again. Now all of that is deleted. Despite the appointment of Lina Khan as FTC chair, breaking up Big Tech, among the least controversial of reform initiatives, is not likely to become a reality under any of the current proposals under consideration.

RELATED: Beltway media’s moronic coverage of Build Back Better is cheating the nation

Inflation, like the “great resignation,” is being downplayed by liberal economists. But both are integrally connected, and are in fact hopeful signs of runaway inequality finally facing the music. Tens of millions of Americans decided that it was entirely rational, and more lucrative, to stay home and do nothing, or close to nothing, rather than persisting in wage slavery. BBB has no real answer to this.

What can progressives do at the local level?

Minneapolis voters rejected an initiative to replace the police with a new department of public safety. In the impassioned first days after George Floyd’s murder, the only sensible idea to address state-sanctioned violence — to end policing as we know it — caught the imagination under the label of “Defund the police” (recalling “Abolish ICE” from the early Trump years). But within a matter of days, organizations blessed by the liberal establishment started redefining and narrowcasting what “Defund the police” really meant. How thoroughly the argument has been lost came to light during the 2021 local elections, when mayor after mayor, even of a progressive bent, campaigned on some version of “reforming” police, often rehashing ideas that have outlived their usefulness and shown to be of little value over decades of incrementalism. Even incoming Boston mayor Michelle Wu, arguably the most progressive of the lot, takes a firm stand against defund the police.

RELATED: Democrats and the dark road ahead: There’s hope — if we look past 2022 (and maybe 2024 too)

In short, the potent energies unleashed in the first pandemic spring by the enforced lockdown, resulting in a concrete set of radical demands that arose spontaneously — which is the only way they can matter — were quickly diluted into familiar liberal nostrums about better training and awareness. A required national policy has, in typical fashion, devolved to the local level, directed hither and thither by the waves of passivity the media can generate by exaggerating crime and violence. In Atlanta, one of the more progressive candidates, Andre Dickens, won in a runoff, but the palliatives offered in the South, compared to a northern city like Boston, leave much to be desired.

Other necessary national initiatives, like the Green New Deal (mightily watered down and repackaged as a liberal-capitalist initiative via BBB), have likewise descended upon the overstretched shoulders of municipalities. Over the next few years, Boston will offer a good test case of how far progressive initiatives — with regard to housing, transit, health care and a revived social safety net — can extend, but judging from past experience, we shouldn’t hold out much hope. This failure of national imagination, in a moment of unprecedented inequality, cannot be addressed piecemeal and over long periods of time by disempowered jurisdictions..

Woke America vs. Primitive America

This year saw the shreds of meritocratic America, the counterpart to Reagan’s libertarian America, further assimilated by the “woke” social justice movement, just as free-market libertarianism has become dominated by what I call Primitive America, the mirror image of Woke America. Primitive America proudly offers a point-by-point refutation of the woke creed, in favor of a rejuvenated barbarism of the national spirit. Meritocratic America’s peak moment was Barack Obama’s ascendancy, and its signal failure was Hillary Clinton’s second campaign. Likewise, libertarian America’s peak moment was the George W. Bush presidency, a period of transition toward primitivism, although not yet full-blown in his era.

The 2021 Virginia governor’s race, the most discussed of the cycle, was seen as a repudiation by the electorate of critical race theory (CRT), which has lately served as a catch-all symbol of everything that Primitive America sees as wrong with Woke America, challenging it for blaming America excessively and without cause. Woke America, on the other hand, only feels strengthened by each defeat, and even by electoral setbacks, aided by the fact that it has wiped out, in academic and artistic circles, any challenges to its hegemony. It is too easy to dismiss the Virginia outcome as successful Republican demagoguery around CRT, but Woke America, with its unchallengeable rituals and dogmas, has deviated so far from any original credibility it might have had that corporate America now finds it an indispensable prop to the system.

RELATED: Can the real lessons of Virginia rescue the Democrats in 2022? It’s definitely worth trying

Sharp internal division has existed in the CRT camp from the beginning, as with Randall Kennedy and other scholars’ assertions that CRT is overly preoccupied with issues of symbolism that concern the well-established bourgeoisie. The class component has been ignored, increasingly so, even at the height of the pandemic.

The issue of immigration reflects CRT’s failings perfectly. The woke party of choice, the Democrats, have predictably empowered the Senate parliamentarian to effectively overrule the needs of tens of millions of people by blocking eminently reasonable proposals to put undocumented immigrants on the path to legal status. A third option, offering temporary status, is currently under consideration, but Democrats continue to treat the parliamentarian as though she had divine power. Partly this failure is a reflection of Woke America’s lack of a class analysis of immigration (or of globalization and its discontents) and trusting the liberal party of symbolism, which built its case for electability around weakening norms of “democracy” — which only the most naïve could believe had any validity under present conditions of inequality — to take on the burden of treating immigrants fairly.

These five realities add up to the sense of de facto civil war, which became more palpable during the course of 2021 than even in the preceding election year. An uncanny impression of stasis, with no resolution in sight, defines this era, as was true of the 1850s in America. In both instances, an economic system that had lost legitimacy was the culprit, and there was no political solution to the crisis. Nothing that happened in 2021 had a sense of randomness or unpredictability about it — at least not to me — if you held the long perspective of a gathering disintegration whose roots extend into our very creed. Neither Woke America nor Primitive America passes the test of Enlightenment principles — but then again, the foundational institutions of American democracy, as was so evident throughout 2021, did not pass that test either.

Top Georgia Republican wants to ban ballot drop boxes — months after voting to install them

Georgia Senate President Pro Tempore Butch Miller is pushing to eliminate all absentee ballot drop boxes in the state, only months after he voted to install them.

Miller, the No. 2 Republican in the state Senate and a candidate for lieutenant governor, has introduced Senate Bill 325, which would eliminate drop boxes, a focal point among pro-Trump Republicans who ginned up unfounded fears about mail-in voting. The state’s election board approved the use of drop boxes amid the pandemic last year.

“Drop boxes were introduced as an emergency measure during the pandemic but many counties did not follow the security guidelines in place, such as the requirement for camera surveillance on every drop box,” Miller said in a statement. “Moving forward, we can return to a pre-pandemic normal of voting in person. Removing drop boxes will help rebuild the trust that has been lost. Many see them as the weak link when it comes to securing our elections against fraud. For the small number of Georgians who need to vote absentee, that will remain as easy and accessible as it was before 2020.”

Voting rights groups accused Miller of “going all-in on the Big Lie.”

“Instead of figuring out how to put together policies that will help our people, he is preemptively erecting barriers to voting a year out,” Stephanie Ali, policy director at the New Georgia Project, said in a statement, arguing that Miller’s proposal shows he is “terrified” of the state’s changing demographics after Republicans got swept in the last round of statewide races.

Election officials around the country have warned that proposals like Miller’s will make it more difficult to vote, particularly for voters of color.

“Efforts like Sen. Miller’s to remove drop boxes or place other restrictions on voting are not about election security, but part of a national coordinated attack on democracy,” Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, chairwoman of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, told Salon. “Nationwide, the voter suppression proposals and laws disproportionately affect people of color and working people — these are the voices extreme lawmakers are trying to suppress to tip future elections in their favor. Candidates should win by running good campaigns, not by undemocratically taking away Americans’ freedoms.”

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who has pushed back against false GOP election claims and Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss, rejected Miller’s claim that every county did not have video surveillance, noting that officials had identified only one irregularity: a woman who cast a ballot one minute after the deadline.

“This office and I have worked very hard on making sure we have integrity up and down the line,” he told WSB-TV.

On Tuesday, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that helped the GOP write a slew of new voting restrictions, ranked Georgia No. 1 in the country on “election integrity,” including the new drop boxes.

“It means that we’re a leader in voter integrity and also security,” Raffensperger told the news outlet.

Georgia Democrats called out Miller for pushing the proposal after he said in a recent interview that newly-arrived Georgians “need to assimilate into our values and our culture.”

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“Butch Miller’s proposal to blow up our elections based on lies is part of his sad, desperate attempt to win over far-right voters after Donald Trump endorsed his primary opponent,” Scott Hogan, executive director of the Democratic Party of Georgia, said in a statement. “We already know Butch Miller is terrified of Georgia’s diversifying electorate — now, he’s trying to silence the voters of color who elected Democrats last cycle by banning one of the most popular ways they chose to cast their ballots.”

Just months earlier, Miller joined other Georgia Republicans in supporting Senate Bill 202, a sweeping set of voting restrictions that codified the use of drop boxes, even while restricting their availability. But Miller now faces an opponent endorsed by Trump, and appears intent on trying to win over Trump supporters after the former president accused him of not doing enough to try to overturn his election defeat. Repeated reviews and investigations have found no evidence of fraud or widespread irregularities in Georgia — or for that matter in any other state.

“Trump’s grip on the Republican Party is clear: he has made endorsing the Big Lie a litmus test for his support,” Griswold said. “Now, hundreds of candidates running under the GOP banner at the county, state and federal levels have promoted lies about the 2020 elections. We need lawmakers and election administrators who will respect voters and their decisions at the ballot box, even if they don’t like the outcome. That is how democracy works.”

Miller is running to replace Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a Republican who opted not to run for re-election after spending much of the year battling election conspiracy theories from his own party. Duncan has said that he does not think anything should be done about drop boxes.

“I’m one of those Republicans that want more people to vote,” he said earlier this year.

An analysis by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Georgia Public Broadcasting earlier this year found that heavily Democratic counties like Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb and Gwinnett were far more likely to use the drop boxes than Republican areas. More than 305,000 of about 547,000 absentee ballots in the metro Atlanta area were cast using drop boxes, compared to just 32% of the absentee votes in 11 smaller countries.

“This legislation is nothing more than a last-ditch attempt to further undermine faith in the results of the 2020 election and win support with those who simply cannot accept that they lost,” Fulton County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts said in a statement. “Our absentee ballot drop boxes were safe and secure — three counts of the vote and monitors from the Secretary of State’s office proves that.”

Georgia has already restricted the use of drop boxes. Though SB 202 required each county to have at least one drop box per 100,000 active voters, they must now be located inside early voting sites and can only be accessible during early voting days and hours. Voting rights advocates accused Republicans of seeking to “limit options in the metro areas versus the rural areas” where Republicans tend to do better.

Miller’s proposal comes ahead of two high-profile elections in the state next year. Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., the state’s first Black senator, is up for re-election and appears likely to face Trump favorite Herschel Walker, a former NFL star. Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican who has rejected Trump’s election fraud claims, is set to take on Trump-endorsed former Sen. David Perdue in the GOP primary, ahead of a potential rematch with former Georgia House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams, who refused to concede her race in 2018 after accusing Kemp of voter suppression. Abrams has charged that Georgia Republicans’ crackdown on ballot access is a “redux of Jim Crow in a suit and tie” targeting Black voters.

SB 202 is already having noticeable effects on the state’s elections. Rejected absentee ballot requests rose 400% in November’s municipal elections after the state imposed new restrictions, and 52% of rejected applications were denied because they were submitted after the state’s new deadline, which requires voters to request ballots at least 11 days before an election. State lawmakers have also used the new law to replace local election officials with their own picks, often replacing Black Democrats with white conservatives.

RELATED: “What voter suppression looks like”: Rejected ballot requests up 400% after new Georgia voting law

Griswold said laws like SB 202 are part of the “worst attack on democracy in recent history.” She called on Congress to pass voting rights legislation in response to the ballot access crackdown, urging the Senate to reform the filibuster because “American democracy is more important than antiquated Senate rules.” While the Senate has renewed its focus on voting rights amid increasingly aggressive Republican gerrymandering, which threatens the Democratic House majority, conservative Democrats like Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have ruled out any changes to the filibuster.

“Access to the ballot box shouldn’t be dependent on voters’ zip code, political party or the amount of money in their bank account. Every eligible American deserves to have their voice heard and their vote counted,” Griswold said. “Congress needs to do its job and pass the Freedom to Vote Act and John Lewis Voting Rights Act as soon as possible to combat this historic wave of voter suppression.”

More on the fight to preserve voting rights and the GOP assault on democracy:

“Bulls—“: Colleagues blast Joe Manchin for killing Biden’s Build Back Better agenda

“I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation,” Mr. Manchin said on “Fox News Sunday, “I’ve tried everything humanly possible. I can’t get there. This is a no.”

The comments from Mr. Manchin dealt a fatal blow to the legislation that is central to President Joe Biden’s agenda.

“I think he’s gonna have a lot of explaining to do to the people of West Virginia,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”

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Sanders said Manchin “doesn’t have the guts to stand up to powerful special interests.”  “We’ve been dealing with Mr. Manchin for month after month after month. But if he doesn’t have the courage to do the right thing for the working families of West Virginia and America, let him vote no in front of the whole world,” Sanders added.

In a statement following his CNN appearance, Sanders said:

“If Sen. Joe Manchin wants to vote against the Build Back Better Act, he should have the opportunity to do so with a floor vote as soon as the Senate returns. He should have to explain to West Virginians and the American people why he doesn’t have the courage to stand up to powerful special interests and lower prescription drug costs; expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing and eyeglasses; continue the $300 per child direct monthly payment which has cut childhood poverty by over 40%; and address the devastating impacts of climate change. He should also have to explain why he is not prepared to demand that millionaires and large corporations start paying their fair share of taxes.

“I also find it amusing that Sen. Manchin indicates his worry about the deficit after voting just this week for a military budget of $778 billion, four times greater than Build Back Better over ten years and $25 billion more than the president requested.” Manchin, a rightwing Democrat, put out a statement after his FOX News appearance detailing his decision to vote against the bill, pointed to rising prices, inflation, dependence on foreign supply chains and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), also on CNN’s “State of the Union, said “He has continued to move the goalposts, he has never negotiated in good faith. and he is obstructing the President’s agenda. 85 percent of which is still left on the table. And in obstructing the president’s agenda, he is obstructing the people’s agenda.”

“We cannot allow one lone senator from West Virginia to obstruct the president’s agenda, to obstruct the people’s agenda. Jake, all I want for Christmas is a senator that has compassion for the American people and not contempt,” Pressley added.

Pressley was one of just six progressive lawmakers who voted against the bipartisan infrastructure bill in November to show their opposition to moving forward with the legislation without also passing the social spending and climate package.

Rep. Ilhan Omar, (D-Minn.) in a tweet Sunday morning, said: “Let’s be clear: Manchin’s excuse is bullshit. The people of West Virginia would directly benefit from childcare, pre-Medicare expansion, and long term care, just like Minnesotans. This is exactly what we warned would happen if we separated Build Back Better from infrastructure.”

President Biden, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Schumer had promised that the Build Back Better bill would be passed after the bipartisan infrastructure bill, reversing previous vows to approve the two measures at the same time.

Back in June, Pelosi said: “Let me be really clear on this: There ain’t gonna be no bipartisan bill, unless we have a reconciliation bill.” She reiterated: “As I said, there won’t be an infrastructure bill, unless we have a reconciliation bill. Plain and simple. In fact, I use the word ain’t. There ain’t going to be an infrastructure bill, unless we have the reconciliation bill passed by the United States Senate.” 

Roger Stone throws Steve Bannon under the bus with accusation he directed Capitol “breach”

According to a report from the Daily Beast’s Zachary Petrizzo, former Donald Trump associate Roger Stone took to his Telegram account on Sunday morning to blame former White House adviser Steve Bannon of ordering the attack on the Capitol building on Jan 6th, reminiscent of the way he used to do “crazy things” in order to “curry favor” with the former president.

Writing that Stone appeared to be throwing Bannon “under the bus,” Petrizzo reported the conservative gadfly wrote, “It is highly likely that [Steve] Bannon really gave the order to breach the capital [sic] and maneuvered patriots into dangerous positions.”

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He added, “A neophyte Steve Bannon was willing to try crazy things like this to curry favor with Trump who had a [sic] no interest in Bannon’s bullsh*t.”

You can read more here.

More news from the Jan. 6 committee:

Anti-vax GOP lawmaker who disappeared after getting COVID has died: report

An anti-vax GOP state lawmaker in Washington — who recently disappeared after being diagnosed with COVID — has died.

Sen. Doug Ericksen, a Republican from Whatcom County, passed away Friday at 52, according to a report from KOMO News.

“Please keep our family in your prayers and thank you for continuing to respect our privacy in this extremely difficult time,” Ericksen’s family said in a statement.

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Ericksen reportedly tested positive for COVID-19 while in El Salvador last month. “He was taken to a hospital in Florida where it was reported that he was in stable condition and on the road to recovery,” KOMO News reports.

However, last week, the Bellingham Herald reported that Ericksen hadn’t been seen or heard from in three weeks — “leading to public speculation about his condition.”

According to the Daily Beast, “Ericksen has been a vocal opponent of COVID restrictions and mandates, saying late last year he would introduce a bill opposing vaccine mandates. It’s unknown if he was vaccinated.”

More on the burgeoning right-wing anti-vaccination movement:

25 fun facts about “Home Alone”

On November 16, 1990, what appeared to be a fun-filled little family yarn about a kid left to his own devices at Christmastime and forced to fend off a couple of bungling burglars became an instant classic. Today, no holiday movie marathon is complete without a viewing of “Home Alone,” the movie that turned Macaulay Culkin into one of the biggest kid stars of all time. And while you may be able to recite its dialogue line for line, here are 25 things you might not know about the John Hughes-penned picture. So settle in and enjoy, ya filthy animals. 

1. Without “Uncle Buck,” there’d be no “Home Alone.” 

The idea for “Home Alone” occurred to John Hughes during the making of “Uncle Buck,” which also starred Macaulay Culkin. Always game to play the precocious one, there’s a scene in which Culkin’s character interrogates a potential babysitter through a mail slot. In “Home Alone,” Culkin has a similar confrontation with Daniel Stern, this time via a doggie door.

2. The role of Kevin McCallister in “Home Alone” was written specifically for Macaulay Culkin.

But that didn’t stop director Chris Columbus from auditioning more than 100 other rascally pre-teens for the part. Which really was all for naught, as Culkin nailed the role. 

3. Macaulay Culkin wasn’t the only Culkin to appear in “Home Alone.”

Macaulay’s younger brother Kieran also landed a part in “Home Alone,” as Kevin’s bed-wetting cousin, Fuller. Though the film marked Kieran’s acting debut, he has since gone on to build an impressive career for himself in movies like “The Cider House Rules,” “Igby Goes Down,” “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” and FX’s “Fargo.” In both 2019 and 2020, Culkin received Golden Globe nominations for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television for his work in HBO’s “Succession.”

4. Casting Kieran Culkin in “Home Alone” taught Chris Columbus a very important lesson.

Since “Home Alone,” Columbus (who also wrote the scripts for “Gremlins” and “The Goonies”) has gone on to become one of Hollywood’s premier family-friendly moviemakers as the director of “Home Alone 2,” “Mrs. Doubtfire,” and two movies in the “Harry Potter” franchise. But one lesson he learned from “Home Alone” is that when you agree to work with a kid actor, you’re also agreeing to work with that kid’s family.

“I was much younger and I was really too naive to think about the family environment as well,” Columbus told “The Guardian” in 2013. “We didn’t know that much about the family at the beginning; as we were shooting, we learned a little more. The stories are hair-raising. I was casting a kid who truly had a troubled family life.” In 1995, Culkin’s parents, who were never married, engaged in a very public — and nasty — legal battle over his fortune.

5. “Home Alone” was a Guinness world record holder for more than 25 years.  

In its opening weekend, “Home Alone” topped the box office, making $17,081,997 in 1202 theaters. The movie maintained its number one spot for a full 12 weeks and remained in the top 10 until June of the following year. It became the highest grossing film of 1990 and earned a Guinness World Record as the highest-grossing live-action comedy ever domestically. It held on to that title for quite some time — 27 years, to be exact — until the Chinese blockbuster “Never Say Die” knocked it out of the top spot in 2017.

6. “Home Alone’s” unprecedented success led to its title becoming a verb

In his book “Who Killed Hollywood? And Other Essays,” the late, great, Oscar-winning screenwriter William Goldman admitted that the unexpected success of “Home Alone” contributed a new phrase to the Hollywood lexicon: to be Home Aloned, meaning that other films suffered at the box office because of “Home Alone’s” long and successful run. “More than one executive said to me, ‘My picture did 40, but it would have done 50 if it hadn’t been Home Aloned,'” Goldman wrote.

7. “Home Alone” spawned more than a sequel. 

While all of the main, original cast members reprised their roles for “Home Alone 2: Lost In New York” (with Columbus again directing a script by Hughes), the success of the original led to a full-on franchise, complete with four sequels, three video games, two board games, a novelization, and other kid-friendly merchandise (including the Talkboy).

8. Poland loves “Home Alone.” 

Showings of “Home Alone” have become a Christmas tradition in Poland, where the film has aired on national television since the early 1990s. And its popularity has only increased. In 2011 more than 5 million people tuned in to watch it, making it the most watched show to air during the season.

9. The McCallister home from “Home Alone” has become a major tourist attraction. 

Located at 671 Lincoln Avenue in Winnetka, Illinois, the kitchen, main staircase, and ground-floor landing seen in the film were all shot in this five-bedroom residence. (The dining room and all other first-floor rooms, with the exception of the kitchen, were shot on a soundstage.) In 2012, John and Cynthia Abendshien, who owned the home when it was used as one of the film’s locations, sold the property for $1.585 million.

10. Kevin’s tree house in “Home Alone” was not part of home rental deal.

Kevin’s backyard tree house was not originally part of the property. It was constructed specifically for the movie and demolished once filming ended.

11. All of “Home Alone” was shot in the Chicago area 

Though the main plot point is that the McCallister family is in Paris while Kevin’s back home in Illinois, the production was shot entirely within the Chicago area. The scenes supposedly set at Paris Orly Airport were actually shot at O’Hare International Airport. And those luxurious business class seats they’re taking to Paris? Those were built on the basketball court of a local high school — the same school where the scene in which Kevin is running through a flooded basement was filmed (the “basement” in question was actually the school’s swimming pool).

12. Robert De Niro turned down the role of Harry Lime in “Home Alone.” 

As did Jon Lovitz. Then Joe Pesci swept in and made the part his own. Bonus fun fact: The character is a slight homage to Orson Welles. (It was the name of Welles’s character in Carol Reed’s “The Third Man.”)

13. Joe Pesci got all method on Macaulay Culkin in “Home Alone.”

In order to get the most authentic performance possible, Joe Pesci did his best to avoid Macaulay Culkin on the set so that the young actor would indeed be afraid of him. And no one would blame the young actor for being a bit petrified, as he still bears the physical scar from one accidental altercation. “In the first “Home Alone,” they hung me up on a coat hook, and Pesci says, ‘I’m gonna bite all your fingers off, one at a time,'” Culkin recalled to Rule Forty Two. “And during one of the rehearsals, he bit me, and it broke the skin.”

14. Joe Pesci wasn’t used making a “family-friendly” movie like “Home Alone.”

Considering that Pesci’s best known for playing the heavy in movies like “Raging Bull,” “Goodfellas,” and “Casino,” it’s understandable that he wasn’t quite used to the whole family-friendly atmosphere on the set of “Home Alone” — and dropped a few f-bombs as a result of that. Columbus tried to curb Pesci’s four-letter-word tendency by suggesting he use the word “fridge” instead.

15. Daniel Stern had a four-letter word slip-up on the “Home Alone” set, too. 

And it wasn’t cut out of the film. He utters the word “s***” when attempting to retrieve his shoe through the doggie door (look for it at the 55:27 mark on the DVD).

16. In real life, Harry and Marv may not have survived Kevin’s brutal attack in “Home Alone.”

BB gun shots to the forehead and groin? A steaming hot iron and can of paint to the face? A flaming blowtorch to the scalp? The Wet Bandits endure an awful lot of violence at the hands of a single eight-year-old. So much so that neither one of them should have been walking — let alone conscious — by the end of the night. In 2012, Dr. Ryan St. Clair diagnosed the likely outcome of their injuries for “The Week.” While a read-through of the entire article is well worth your time, here are a few of the highlights: That iron should have caused a “blowout fracture,” leading to “serious disfigurement and debilitating double vision if not repaired properly.” And the blowtorch? According to Dr. St. Clair, “The skin and bone tissue on Harry’s skull will be so damaged and rotted that his skull bone is essentially dying and will likely require a transplant.”

17. The ornaments that Marv steps on in “Home Alone” would cause the least amount of damage. 

“Walking on ornaments seems pretty insignificant compared to everything else we’ve seen so far,” said Dr. St. Clair. “If I was Marv, I’d be more concerned about my facial fractures.” Fortunately, the “glass” ornaments in question were actually made of candy. (But just to be on the safe side, Stern wore rubber feet for his barefoot scenes.)

18. The tarantula on Stern’s face? Yep, that was real. 

At one point, Kevin places a tarantula on Marv’s face. And it was indeed a real spider (Daniel Stern agreed to let it happen — but he’d only allow for one take). What wasn’t real? That blood-curdling scream. In order to not frighten the spider, Stern had to mime the scream and have the sound dubbed in later.

19. John Candy wrapped his filming on “Home Alone” in one day. 

But what a long day it was: Twenty-three hours to be exact. John Candy was a regular in many of John Hughes’s movies, and Gus Polinski — the polka-playing nice guy he plays in “Home Alone” — was inspired by his character in “Planes, Trains & Automobiles.”

20. Kevin’s older sister is a Judo champ.

Two years after appearing in “Home Alone,” Hillary Wolf — who played Kevin’s older sister Megan — landed the lead in Joan Micklin Silver’s “Big Girls Don’t Cry . . . They Get Even.” She also appeared in “Home Alone 2,” but hasn’t been seen on the big screen since. But there’s a good reason for her absence: In 1996 and 2000, she was a member of the Summer Olympic Judo team for the U.S.

21. Don’t bother trying to get your hands on a copy of “Angels with Filthy Souls.”

The Jimmy Cagney-like gangster movie that Kevin channels as his inspiration throughout “Home Alone”? Don’t bother searching for it on eBay. It’s not real. Nor is its sequel, “Angels With Even Filthier Souls,” which is featured in “Home Alone 2.”

22. Old man Marley wasn’t in the original screenplay.

Kevin’s allegedly scary neighbor, who eventually teaches him the importance of family, wasn’t a character in the original script. He was added at the suggestion of Columbus, who thought the film could do with a stronger dose of sentimentality.

23. The lyric opera of Chicago benefited from the movie’s snowfall.

Did you know the fake snow used in filming “Home Alone” was donated to Lyric & used in multiple productions? #funfact pic.twitter.com/mC3X1pBqHe

— Lyric Opera Chicago (@LyricOpera) December 17, 2014

When filming of “Home Alone” wrapped, the production donated some of the artificial snow they had created (the stuff made from wax and plastic) to the Lyric Opera of Chicago. It has since been used in a number of their productions.

24. Marv was supposed to have gotten a spinoff.

Greg Beeman’s 1995 film “Bushwhacked,” which stars Daniel Stern as a delivery guy on the run after being framed for murder, was originally intended to be a spinoff of “Home Alone.” The storyline would have been essentially the same: After giving up a life of crime, Marv would have been framed for the same murder.

25. If you believe that Elvis is still alive, then you might believe that he is in “Home Alone.”

No hit movie would be complete without a great little conspiracy theory. And in the case of “Home Alone,” it’s that Elvis Presley — who (allegedly?) died in 1977 — makes a cameo in the film. Yes, that’s right. The King is alive and well. And making a living as a Hollywood extra.

A version of this story ran in 2018; it has been updated for 2021.

Jacob Anderson wants to return to “Doctor Who” as Vinder

The 13th season of “Doctor Who” ended with a promise of a regeneration to come for the Doctor (Jodie Whittaker), but the show has never just been about the many-faced Time Lord: the companions have always been just as important, and season 13 introduced a potential new one: Vinder, played by “Game of Thrones” veteran Jacob Anderson (Grey Worm).

At the end of season 13, Vinder reunited with his beloved Bel (Thaddea Graham) and took to the stars with their unborn child and “family dog” Karvanista (Craige Els). It seems very possible he could return at some point. “Oh, I would love that,” Anderson told RadioTimes.com. “Who knows? You never know how the story ends . . . I would be so excited to bring Vinder back, and for him to be brought back into the story.”

Heck, Vinder and Bel have such a perfect setup at the end of season 13 that BBC could probably give them their own spinoff. But Anderson would be just as happy with a random cameo. “I would happily just, me as Jacob, come back as a Cyberman or as Dalek number six – gladly. If Chris [Chibnall] just asked me to come in for a day, and you don’t even see my face, I would have been like, ‘Absolutely.'”

Mandip Gill is open to staying on “Doctor Who” after Jodie Whittaker leaves

Showrunner Chris Chibnall is currently on his way out of the franchise, with former showrunner Russell T. Davies returning. Whittaker is also leaving, although we don’t know her replacement yet.

Does this mean that Mandip Gill, who has played the Doctor’s companion Yaz for the past three seasons, is also leaving? “What’s great about ‘Doctor Who’ is that the audience are so open to old and new characters all the time. They don’t need a whole new cast every time it starts with a new Doctor,” Gill told RadioTimes.com.

That’s a bit cryptic. So does she think she’ll stay on after Whittaker leaves? “[N]ever say never.”

You also never know with this series. A lot of why it works is because there are a lot of secrets, and then a lot of revelation. And it’s really exciting. And that’s actually what people love is that they don’t know what’s around the corner, but they always get to guess.

There’s a lot we don’t know about the future of the show, but I’m sure we’ll learn eventually.

But before we do, we have a few more “Doctor Who” specials with the current cast to enjoy. The first, “Eve of the Daleks,” airs on New Year’s Day.

Sarah Palin on COVID vaccines: “It will be over my dead body that I’ll have to get a shot”

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) suggested on Sunday that she would rather die than be vaccinated for Covid-19.

During an appearance at a Turning Point USA conference, host Charlie Kirk asked Palin for her opinion on vaccine mandates.

Palin argued that she does not need to be vaccinated because she previously had been infected with Covid-19.

“We were led to believe that we wouldn’t have to have the shot,” Palin said. “Well then they changed their tune and now those of us who have had Covid, they’re telling us that even though we’ve had it and we have natural immunity now that we still have to get a shot.”

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“It will be over my dead body that I’ll have to get a shot,” she added. “I will not do it.”

Palin encouraged others to “rise up” by refusing to be vaccinated.

“There are more of us than there are of them!” she exclaimed. “You need to all look around and realize as you stiffen your spine and take those positions and we know our rights, especially when it comes to the government telling us what we have to inject in our own bodies, realize that those around you — as you stiffen your spine — their spines too will stiffen.”

Watch the video below:

More on the burgeoning right-wing anti-vaccination movement:

Decades of work are riding on the James Webb Space Telescope. What happens if it fails?

On Tuesday, NASA engineers announced that the much-anticipated launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been delayed “​​to no earlier than the 24th” of December. (The mission was previously scheduled to blast off Dec. 22 of this year.)

It isn’t the first time in 2021 that the stunningly complicated telescope’s launch has been pushed back — in fact, it’s the fourth. This time the delay was due to a “communications issue between the observatory and the launch vehicle system,” according to a brief statement by the space agency.

For those who don’t follow space news, JWST is a once-in-a-generation space observatory poised to usher in a new chapter for astronomy. It’s also one of the most expensive space missions (roughly $9.7 billion) in history. As the Hubble Space Telescope’s successor, JWST will be launched on top of the nose of an Ariane 5 rocket and moved to a position nearly one million miles from the surface of the Earth. Once it arrives at its final destination, in about six months’ time, JWST will peer into distant corners of the universe, survey the atmospheres of Earth-like exoplanets, and more.

In short, the James Webb Space Telescope will undoubtedly make discoveries that will change humanity’s understanding of the universe — but first, it has to make it to its final destination. And if anything goes wrong, there are no guarantees that scientists here on Earth can fix what’s wrong with it. That’s very different than the Hubble Space Telescope, which, by virtue of its low-Earth orbit, was serviced by NASA astronauts five separate times between 1993 and 2009. 

Yet because of the necessity for nothing to go wrong, scientists and engineers have spent two decades on extensive safeguard testing to anticipate anything and everything that could possibly go wrong.

“When something is identified that is seen as a risk, there is a process that starts to either assess that the risk is acceptable — meaning it wouldn’t be too bad if the thing one is worried about happens — but if it’s not acceptable the risk is mitigated or eliminated,” said Massimo Stiavelli, Head of the Webb Mission Office, in an interview with Salon. “So almost by definition, when a project like this launches, there are no serious risks left, because you want to address them all before launching.”

Hence, the most recent delay.

[Related: Hubble’s enormous, ambitious successor is poised to change our understanding of the universe]

Of course, all those safeguards aren’t a surety, because there is no testing ground quite like reality — and unlike in, say, sports, engineers don’t get any practice runs. 

The launch of the JWST is bound to be fraught. First, there’s the launch itself. On a date, currently no later than December 24, the Ariane rocket will launch with the JWST attached to its nose. There will be lots and lots of shaking for the eighteen 46-pound mirrors that comprise the observatory. Of course, the ability of these mirrors to withstand shaking has been tested extensively, Stiavelli said, adding nearly 20 years of preparation have gone into making sure this launch goes smoothly.

“The observatory has been tested to be able to survive the vibrations and sound waves associated with launch,” Stiavelli said. “We know it can survive, but it’s still an exciting moment.”

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Another “exciting,” moment, Stiavelli said, will be the sunshield deployment two and half days after the launch.

“Unlike some of the other tests that we have done, the sunshield, of course, will be deployed in zero gravity,” Stiavelli said. “And it’s hard to add zero gravity on the ground, so we had to use computer models to test that. To the best of our knowledge, it will work, but it will be nice to see it deploy.”

After the initial set of major deployments, which will take an estimated six days to complete, Stiavelli said he will be “personally happy.”

“But I’m sure the people who developed the instruments will not be happy until they see their instruments fully working six months after the launch,” Stiavelli said.

Avi Loeb, the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University and author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth,” tells Salon that humans on Earth won’t know if anything is wrong with the instruments on JWST until it actually starts to observe the sky — which could be a bit problematic.

“Unfortunately, its location at the second Lagrange point at four times the distance to the Moon will not allow us to serve it as we did with the Hubble Space Telescope — which is 2,600 times closer,” Loeb said. “The response will depend on the mode of failure; some problems can be partially solved remotely.”

Indeed, Stiavelli said, the JWST team has practiced routine blind drills — meaning that engineers on Earth don’t know what problem they have to solve until the drill — to figure out workarounds for potential issues that could arise.

Stiavelli described these “rehearsals” as the process of “injecting anomalies,” then watching the team react to them and try to fix them in real time. “The team is very well trained for these kinds of events,” he said. “In case of a big disaster or something that goes wrong and is not recoverable in the way I described — then we would be in bad shape.”

For example, if JWST was hit by a massive asteroid or blew up during launch, there isn’t an immediate replacement for the observatory. And it would be hard to get the funding again to build another one. Plus, space observatories like JWST don’t have an insurance policy.

“It would be very expensive to build another one; some of the equipment that was used is no longer available, so it wouldn’t be easy. I’m not qualified to answer exactly how expensive a duplicate would be, but I’m sure it would be very expensive,” Stiavelli said. “And another factor is that in something like this that took a long time to develop, a lot of the people that may have worked on a particular component may have retired.”

Loeb agreed.

“If the problem is more serious [than what can be fixed remotely], the astronomy community together with NASA will have to decide whether to invest the necessary funds to build another one,” Loeb said.

More stories on astronomy:

 

 

Think you hate fondant? Think again

What comes to mind when you hear the word “fondant?” You know the stuff — it’s a sweet paste you know (and likely hate) that’s used to smoothly cover elaborately decorated cakes. AKA, it’s sugary play-dough. It usually doesn’t add anything pleasant to the eating experience of the otherwise tasty cake hiding underneath it, and in fact is unpleasantly sweet for my taste.

I have used the tip of a fork to gently peel back the layer of fondant just to get to the good stuff at my fair share of weddings. It’s an imperfect solution: You’re left with a hunk of gunk on your plate that feels both unappreciative of the baker who likely worked incredibly hard to decorate it, but also like totally unnecessary food waste. And no matter how carefully you scraped, delicious frosting was sacrificed in the process. If you, too, cannot abide the loss of even one smear of buttercream, you’re probably with me in saying: That fondant is a bit gross.

But hear me out: Even if you’re not a fan of this particular substance, you probably don’t hate fondant. Seriously! Did you know there are actually three types of fondant? Even with my fairly negative perspective of the hereby deemed purely decorative variety (known as rolled fondant), I never like to hear someone say that they “hate fondant.” Regardless of how you feel about the rolled variety, I really think you should know about — and may even love — the other two (I certainly do!). Let’s break it down.

Types of fondant

1. Rolled Fondant

In the name of baking knowledge, let’s start with the notorious rolled fondant. Not surprisingly, I have a whole bunch of cons, but we can begin with the pros:

  • It’s malleable, and with practice, fairly easy to manipulate. After applying to a cake, it firms up slightly, but is still very much sliceable.
  • It rolls out very smooth, and creates a beautiful appearance on the outside of a cake (not to mention, it’s the perfect edible canvas for other decorations).
  • It can be cut, molded, and formed in tons of ways to create decorations for cakes.
  • It’s flavor is mild — basically just sweet. Assuming you don’t mind the way it tastes, it generally “goes” with just about any cake flavor you like.
  • It is pure white, so it can be dyed to just about any color.

Rolled fondant is made for purchase by a variety of commercial producers. I used to have a lot of difficulty when buying fondant to experiment with, often finding it too firm to easily roll (this is sometimes a symptom of it being dried out). Fondant that’s too dry can be difficult to work with, and can cause the surface to crack or have a visible textured appearance when applied. This is just one of its cons, in addition to the below:

  • Rolled fondant is fairly shelf-stable due to the high quantity of sugar, but old fondant, or fondant that’s been packaged poorly, is prone to drying out. Dry fondant will not appear smooth and may even crack.
  • It’s finicky: If rolled too thick or too thin, the fondant will be harder to manipulate. And while it’s common to add food coloring to dye fondant various hues, adding too much food coloring or using liquid food coloring can alter the consistency of the fondant and make it difficult to work with. Unless it’s the perfect consistency, rolled fondant is likely to stick slightly as you work with it — but dusting it with confectioners’ sugar risks altering the consistency and can potentially ruin the smooth look.
  • Honestly, it doesn’t taste good — which always makes me wonder why anyone bothers with it at all!

The good news? There’s an easy-to-make homemade version known as marshmallow fondant. It mimics the commercially made stuff using ingredients like marshmallows, confectioners’ sugar, shortening, corn syrup, and water. I actually think marshmallow fondant even tastes a little bit better, but it also isn’t as shelf stable as commercially made rolled fondant. It can also take a bit of practice to get the right consistency to make it as easy to handle.

2. Confectionary Fondant

Do you like peppermint patties) or buckeyes? Then you like fondant — the filling for these is (you guessed it): confectionary fondant. As a candy-lover, this is actually one of my favorite sweet things to eat. Confectionary fondant can be made by cooking sugar and manipulating it to encourage crystallization, which gives it the signature creamy texture. But there’s also an easy-to-make, totally uncooked confectionary fondant that’s made by combining fat (like butter or shortening) with a high ratio of confectioners’ sugar.

In the wild, you’ve likely encountered confectionary fondant when you see anything marked “cream” or “buttercream” in your favorite box of chocolates. Also, cordials, chocolate-covered cherries, and other candies with liquid centers are made by coating another filling or piece of fruit in a cooked fondant. At first, it sets firm enough for the candy to be easily dipped. Then, once coated, the fondant breaks down to form a soft, liquid center. In short: confectionary fondant rocks.

Here are the pros:

  • It’s a universal filling that can be easily flavored in a variety of ways.
  • It can be take on multiple different textural results.
  • The uncooked method for making is so incredibly easy — if you can make cookie dough, you can make confectionary fondant!

For me, the only real cons have to do with the difficulty of the cooked variety, which definitely takes a little bit of knowledge to pull off. Which is all to say: It’s mostly pros, here.

3. Poured Fondant

Poured fondant is a glorious, fairly easy icing everyone should know about. For one, you’ve likely already eaten it. It’s the perfect, just-set icing on top of pastries, cookies, and cakes at your favorite bakeries — perhaps most identified as the all-over glaze atop petit fours. It’s fairly simple to make, requiring just confectioner’s’ sugar, corn syrup, and water. The ingredients are heated over a double boiler until fluid; if the temperature is kept below 100°F, the fondant will set with a lovely shine, though overheating it can make it a bit more dull, but doesn’t make it unusable or taste unpleasant in any way.

I like to point out that because this makes a smooth icing that can fully glaze a cake or pastry, it’s a much easier alternative to the trendy option of mirror glaze. Mirror glaze contains gelatin that helps it set, and therefore requires a precise monitoring of temperatures throughout the process for both the glaze and the baked good. But when working with poured fondant, the baked goods are placed on a rack over a baking sheet, and the icing is poured over baked goods. Leftover icing can be reheated and reused. It sets beautifully — lightly shiny but dry to the touch and easy to handle.

Here are the pros:

  • It’s easy to make: Stir the ingredients together and heat over a double boiler.
  • It’s easy to flavor using extracts, liquors, or other flavorful liquids.
  • It sets firm enough to be handled, but soft to easily bite through and melt in your mouth.
  • It can be easily tinted any color using any kind of food coloring.
  • It’s fairly easy to apply, and can be ladled over items.
  • After using it once, excess fondant can be reheated, strained if necessary, and reused.

When it comes to negatives of poured fondant, the primary concern is obtaining the correct consistency. When poured fondant is too thin (too warm), the icing will flow too quickly off the baked goods, and may not cling well to them. If this happens, allow the first layer of icing to set, then use the remaining fondant to glaze them again. When poured fondant is too thick (too cool), it won’t flow easily, and may even appear clumpy. If this happens, just heat the fondant a little bit to make it more fluid before proceeding. You can use a small offset spatula to smooth any too-thick icing flat against the baked good to remove the excess, and create a crumb-coat-like coating before reglazing.

Cons:

  • It can take a long time to dry, and may not dry well or at all in especially hot or humid environments.
  • Obtaining the correct consistency can take a little practice (use my tips above)!

There’s so much more to fondant than may meet the eye — it can be a valuable, versatile tool when it comes to making all kinds of pastries. Be sure to check out our Bake it Up a Notch episode on Frostings, Icings, and Glazes for more ideas and recipes to add to your baking repertoire!

Recipes to try: