Feds open investigation into Amazon warehouse practices following deadly tornadoes

An Amazon worker who was killed in the devastating tornado outbreak across the midwest this past weekend was reportedly barred from leaving his warehouse as the storm approached. Amazon reportedly refused to initially excuse another employee’s absence in the storm’s immediate aftermath. Now, after an entire Amazon warehouse collapsed, federal officials have opened an investigation into the megacorporation.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has opened an investigation into the collapse of an Amazon warehouse in Illinois last week. Larry Virden, 46, was killed Friday night in Illinois when a deadly tornado caused the roof to cave in at his Amazon facility. Virden, who began working for the company just five months ago, was just one among six other Amazon warehouse workers to perish.

“I got text messages from him [that night],” Virden’s girlfriend of thirteen years, Cherie Jones, told the Post. “He always tells me when he is filling up the Amazon truck when he is getting ready to go back … I was like ‘OK, I love you.’ He’s like, ‘well Amazon won’t let me leave until after the storm blows over.'”

“It’s that what-if situation: what if they would have let him leave?” Jones added. “He could have made it home.”

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Amazon has claimed that it attempted to alert as many workers as possible about the tornado warning issued by the state. According to Bloomberg, the company has enforced a years-long policy of barring personal phone usage for blue-collar workers during their shifts, preventing them getting minute-by-minute updates on deadly storms in tornado-prone areas. Despite this policy, Reuters reported that some workers in Edwardsville had kept their phones with them in case the tornado hit their facilities.

“After these deaths, there is no way in hell I am relying on Amazon to keep me safe,” an Amazon employee in a nearby Illinois facility told Bloomberg. “If they institute the no-cellphone policy, I am resigning.”

The National Weather Service said the tornado plowed through the warehouse with a wind speed of 150 miles per hour, ripping off 11-inch thick concrete walls designed for storm protection.

An Amazon spokesperson said that the company is “saddened by the news that members of our Amazon family passed away as a result of the storm in Edwardsville, IL. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims, their loved ones, and everyone impacted by the tornado.”

Search and rescue efforts in the affected areas remain underway, with the national death toll likely to surpass 100, according to the Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who noted that the tornado was the most devastating in the state’s history. “Nothing that was standing in the direct line of [one] tornado is still standing,” Beshear said.

On Sunday, President Joe Biden declared the storm a major disaster, providing federal aid to at least eight counties. According to CNN, the move will provide grants and low-cost loans to residents seeking permanent housing and home repairs.

House Freedom Caucus expanding to the states — because GOP isn’t right-wing enough

The far-right House Freedom Caucus is planning to expand its extremist rhetoric and tactics to state legislatures around the country.

The Freedom Caucus was launched in 2015 after lawmakers like former Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., former Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., former Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio split from the Republican Study Committee — which was already a right-wing caucus within the House GOP — because they felt it was not conservative enough. The group initially had few members and largely served as an annoyance to Republican leaders like former Speaker John Boehner as it tried to push the party further right. But its membership grew as the party became increasingly conservative, and now the Freedom Caucus clearly represents the mainstream within the Trump wing of the GOP.

Meadows, who went on to serve as former Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff after leading the caucus, is now working to help expand the group to state legislatures amid his battle with Congress over his role in the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

The Conservative Partnership Institute, a D.C.-based nonprofit founded by former Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., whose leaders include Meadows and attorney Cleta Mitchell — who aided Trump’s failed legal efforts to overturn the election — is funding the group’s expansion to Georgia, where seven Republican state lawmakers announced their launch on Tuesday, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“The grassroots have not been silent, but they have been ignored. We’re at the precipice now, and the grassroots is no longer going to be ignored,” vowed state Rep. Philip Singleton, who helped organize the Georgia group that includes two other House members and three state senators. Singleton has long quarreled with Republican leaders in the legislature, leading the party to redistrict him into a district that favors Democrats in an apparent bid to oust him entirely, according to AJC.

The group also includes state Sen. Burt Jones, the Trump-backed candidate to be the state’s next lieutenant governor. Jones on Tuesday accused the Republican-dominated state legislature of a “culture of cancellation.”

“It’s a sad day when elected officials, the very people that are put here to represent constituents across the state, can’t freely voice their opinions in these hallowed hallways,” he said.

The group already has plans to push a stalled proposal to allow people to carry concealed handguns without a permit and to block legislation it feels does not comport with its far-right values.

“The question that never gets asked is what legislation gets stopped,” said state Sen. Greg Dolezal. “We’re going to make sure we’re working with our colleagues to stop legislation that increases the size and the scope of government and infringes on personal liberties.”

The Georgia group is just the beginning. CPI announced in a press release that it will launch the “State Freedom Caucus Network” across the country and provide each state freedom caucus “with the tools and resources they need to mirror the success of the House Freedom Caucus.”

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“From election integrity, critical race theory, school choice, vaccine mandates, and police reform — our nation’s most important battles are taking place in state legislatures,” the release said, vowing to support “conservative representatives to effectively fight back against the establishment in their state and in Washington.”

The campaign is intended to provide funding and resources to conservative lawmakers whose far-right views might otherwise be pushed aside even in Republican-dominated legislatures. The State Freedom Caucus Network will provide lawmakers with bill analysis and vote recommendations and may train members to use legislative rules and procedural tools to pressure their opponents.

“Not all of them have staff to do this,” Andy Roth, the group’s president, told the Washington Examiner. “If they do have staff, a lot of times, that staff serves at the pleasure of leadership. So, leadership’s interests may not be aligned with the members’ interests.”

The launch underscores the growing acrimony inside the GOP between the Trump wing and establishment Republicans. Trump has waged a war against perceived enemies like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, accusing them of disloyalty and not fighting hard enough to overturn his election loss. Trump is even backing former Sen. David Perdue’s primary bid against Kemp next year, after a majority of the state Senate Republicans pleaded for Perdue to stay out.

This development also highlights the party’s increased focus on state legislatures. Many Republican-led legislatures this year unleashed a torrent of bills to restrict ballot access, ban school curricula they (often wrongly) term “critical race theory” and usurp powers from state and local officials.

“If we’re going to save this nation, I think Congress has a role to play,” Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., the outgoing chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, told the Examiner. “But by far, the dominant role will be from the states and state leaders.”

Read more on increasingly radicalized state-level Republicans:

J.R.R. Tolkien estate vanquishes “Lord of the Rings”-themed cryptocurrency

The estate of J.R.R. Tolkien does not mess around. They’re been known to go after tourism and merchandise companies who reference “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings,” but just lately they vanquished a new sort of dragon: a cryptocurrency called JRR Token, which did business at JRRToken.com.

If the reference wasn’t already obvious, JRR Token styled itself as “The One Token That Rules Them All.” According to the Financial Times, the Tolkien estate lodged a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), which found that the developer “aware of Tolkien’s works and created a website to trade off the fame of these works.” And this despite JRR Token arguing that “token” was a generic term and couldn’t possibly be confused with “Tolkien,” nor was it infringing on any intellectual property. Can you believe the administrative panel didn’t buy that?

The Tolkien estate has now recovered the JRRToken.com domain name, which goes nowhere. The developer will stop all operations under the JRR Token name and delete any infringing content from its and social media accounts. The lawyer for the Tolkien estate said this was a “particularly flagrant case of infringement.” I daresay they’re right.

Cryptocurrencies have been popping up all over in recent years, and the proprietors don’t seem overly concerned about crossing any legal lines. Did you know there’s one called the Dracarys Dragon Token? Might wanna get on that, HBO.

If you’d like to watch something the Tolkien estate has approved, Amazon is working on a wildly expensive “Lord of the Rings” series set during the Second Age of Middle-earth and due out next September.

Aloof, silent and disengaged: Why the Biden White House is in crisis

The announcement over the loudspeaker in the White House informed us that a small group of mayors from cities across the country would be “at the sticks” of the stakeout area outside the West Wing in five minutes.

“Who are they and why are they here?” asked a reporter in the basement with a hint of amusement in her voice.

“Exactly,” another chimed in.

Honestly? No one knew. Up until the announcement, Biden’s communication staff had told us next to nothing about the meeting.

A handful of reporters and photographers dutifully trotted upstairs on Tuesday afternoon, from our tightly-packed working spaces in the bowels of the West Wing, and gathered outside the entrance as seven mayors from six different states walked out to the microphones and began talking.

The first thing we asked was for the mayors to identify themselves and why they were at the White House. In previous administrations, both of those questions would have been answered by a statement from the White House before the mayors took questions. They told us they had met with the Cabinet to discuss infrastructure and other issues the mayors face.

Jim Ross, the mayor of Arlington, Texas, praised the bipartisan atmosphere of the meeting.

“I’m tired of this not-working-together stuff,” Ross told me afterward. He made a point of praising President Biden. “I’m conservative,” he said. “But we’re working together for everyone.”

The upbeat messaging from a diverse group of mayors from Atlanta, St. Petersburg, Arlington, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chattanooga and Boston also contained a warning for members of Congress. “This is how we get it done. We want Congress to work together the way mayors do. If we can do it, so can they,” Ross explained.

The mayors also had an impromptu meeting with the president and a tour of the Oval Office. They were all excited about that. The White House downplayed the event.

Earlier in the day when asked about it, press secretary Jen Psaki was unable to speak about the mayors at the White House. Steve Portnoy of CBS News Radio asked specifically about that, and about the lack of guidance on the president’s schedule for Tuesday.

“Can you tell us — the public schedule you guys put out last night is rather thin today. What is the president doing today?” Portnoy asked.

“Well, let’s see,” Psaki answered. “The president has two local interviews he will be doing later this afternoon. He has a number of internal meetings with senior members of his staff that have happened throughout the course of the day today. His Presidential Daily Brief. And I believe there’s some mayors who are visiting today as well.”

“What’s the purpose of the meeting with the mayors?” Portnoy asked.

“It’s not a meeting with the president. … They’re here. I’m not going to get ahead of it beyond that. But he has a full schedule today.”

It left us wondering if anyone knew what was going on at the White House. During previous administrations such a meeting of mayors would’ve been promoted, if for no other reason than to give the mayors support and publicity for the local news consumer. You know: “Coming up at six. Our mayor is at the White House. We’ll have full details right after this commercial break.”

During the Trump administration, someone like Kellyanne Conway would’ve made the morning shows, preaching about how great Trump was by reaching out to mayors and how he had personally solved all the world’s ills by bringing them to the White House. Every day Trump had White House officials on morning shows, talking to reporters and preaching his company line. He never let an opportunity go by to make a public pitch.

Biden? We were in the dark until the mayors showed up to talk to us.

Houston, we have a problem.

While the mayors put a decidedly positive spin on the activities of the White House, it’s hard to tell from recent media headlines that Biden is doing his job. “To defend democracy, Biden must identify its foes,” a recent Washington Post headline read. “We’re Edging Closer to Civil War,” a New York Times headline read on Dec. 12. In the Hill, it was reported that the Biden administration, rattled by bad poll numbers and bad publicity, is blaming the press: “The Biden White House, plagued by low approval ratings that have weakened the president’s clout and raised fears among Democrats over next year’s midterm elections, is blaming the media for some of its problems.”

“Well, that’s the Hill,” a senior White House adviser said. “What do you expect?”

To be honest, the Biden White House has never blamed the media for its shortcomings — at least not in my experience. But that’s also because the White House doesn’t admit to any. Another senior White House official said the country is concerned about “COVID and the economy” and the closest this person would come to blaming the media for any public relations problems was to note that only reporters seem concerned about the president’s public relations.

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It’s true that if you look at social media or watch Fox News you’d think the country is overwhelmed with concern about a flaming Christmas tree, but that’s only because that’s what the country sees. It’s what they don’t see that matters. What the president is doing — that matters.

But the White House official who said COVID and the economy are major concerns isn’t wrong. Those are the main issues. It’s just that Biden’s administration continues to be confused in its messaging and often misses great opportunities — like the mayors showing up at the White House — to promote what the administration is doing about major issues. You’d think the White House would benefit from a diverse group of mayors promoting Biden’s achievements.

If regional reporters had known ahead of time the mayors were coming, there’s a better chance when they walked out to the sticks there would have been regional reporters with regional issue questions ready to greet them. NBC’s Peter Alexander, myself and one or two other reporters asked the bulk of the questions. Few were specific to the mayors’ respective cities, states and regions.

There’s no denying that COVID and the economy continue to be major issues for everyone in this country, but the question of what the president is doing about those issues has people concerned. Unless you’re of the anti-vaxxing crowd, the anti-science crowd or the “Only Trump can save us” brand of lunatic, then Biden has done well in dealing with the pandemic.

But what is killing the president’s popularity right now is inflation. Biden hasn’t proposed anything as ridiculous as the WIN buttons (“Whip Inflation Now”) that Gerald Ford infamously rolled out in the mid-1970s, but the current White House hasn’t framed the issue well, nor addressed it well enough to convince voters that Biden knows what he’s doing.

At first, the administration told us in briefings that inflation was a temporary blip on the radar screen. Later the story changed, and it still doesn’t appear Biden or his administration understands the difference between appearance and reality. True, inflation isn’t as bad today as the 12.3% increases that prompted Ford to invest in millions of useless buttons. But Biden has let his opposition frame the argument, casting him as a classic liberal intent on taxing and spending us into oblivion and also allowing his political opponents to use gas prices as the wedge to destroy his credibility. That is the story dominating a lot of media coverage.

I’m sure this angers Biden. Every president I’ve covered since Ronald Reagan wants to shoot the messenger. Reagan’s deputy press secretary, Larry Speakes, once famously told us that he wouldn’t tell us how to report the news and we shouldn’t tell the administration how to stage the news.

Every president has fought with us. That’s not unusual. It is expected. The president, rightly so, is trying to put his best foot forward. We in the press are supposed to try and dig for the truth. We’re not, nor should we be, cheerleaders for the administration. Each administration hires their own cheerleaders.

The Biden administration, smarting from falling polling numbers, the rise of inflation and the orange-hued mosquito that still draws blood (i.e., Trump) is understandably upset. But the administration still misunderstands the problem.

There is no denying there is a problem in the press. Right-wing media has portrayed liberals as drooling over the damage done in Kentucky by tornadoes. A burning Christmas tree is seen as a sign of bad government and gets more airplay on some networks than members of the Republican Party engaging in treason.

Government intervention over the last 40 years (starting with Ronald Reagan and including every president since) has led to the demonization of the media. At the same time, the government has removed all the guardrails that led to institutional trust. Obama misused the Espionage Act. Reagan killed the Fairness Doctrine. The 1996 Telecommunications Act set off a wave of mergers that have killed independence in the press. George W. Bush’s Patriot Act killed independent reporting.

Yes, the press is bad. But it’s hypocritical to blame anyone or anything other than our own government for making it that way.

Donald Trump called us the enemy. He was a bully. He tried to marginalize us and demonize us. In doing so, Trump used up all the oxygen in the room as the press tried to deal with a madman running loose through the countryside, taking a hatchet to the Constitution.

Biden’s problem is the opposite: He doesn’t take all of the oxygen in the room. He doesn’t have to do that by destroying the Constitution. He could do it by showing people what he’s actually doing, but his skittish nature in personally addressing the public or sending his surrogates out to the television shows or to “the sticks” in front of the West Wing, has left an unfulfilled demand for news. Since nature abhors a vacuum, there’s plenty of room left for Donald Trump and his addled acolytes to preach their poison.

There are some on Biden’s staff who believe reporters like Trump more than they like Biden. But many who are at the White House today didn’t even cover Trump, and those of us who did are in no way pining for the return of a man who kept us up late every day, having to rewrite stories at the last minute because he had just said something outrageously mean, stupid or dangerous. Most of us spent those years drinking coffee by the gallon and sweating in cheap suits so much that the White House press offices smelled like chicken noodle soup. With Trump’s departure, death threats against us abated. I haven’t had to sue Biden to keep my press pass and life has returned to a boringly numb routine during press briefings.

But there is continued animosity against Biden. He hasn’t had a press conference in a year and has limited interaction with the press. I asked again about that on Tuesday and was told by Psaki that if Biden were to have a press conference I would know and I’d be invited.

What do I say to that? Thanks?

We didn’t come to Washington to cover a press secretary. We’re here to cover the president. Most of the animosity against Biden among the press would ebb away should he decide to engage in a news conference or send his people out more frequently to fill up the news shows.

Senior staffers think it’s just the press, “and not the American people,” who want more interaction. But ratings and polling show otherwise. The electorate needs to be constantly informed. Repetition, as Trump showed, has a strategic benefit.

After the missed opportunity with the mayors on Tuesday, I’m beginning to wonder if anyone in this administration understands this.

More from Brian Karem on the troubles and travails of the Biden White House:

Ron DeSantis’ “Stop WOKE” bill, modeled after Texas’ anti-abortion law, targets teachers

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who previously banned the New York Times’ 1619 project from Florida public schools, took his anti-wokeness crusade to the next level on Wednesday, introducing a bill that would formally ban the instruction of “critical race theory” in school classrooms and purports to protect corporate workers from diversity initiatives.

The bill – dubbed the “Stop WOKE Act” – would legally enshrine the Florida Department of Education’s ban on critical race theory (CRT) from June. Key to legislation, Politico reports, is a provision that effectively incentivizes parents to sue local school districts that defy the bill by giving them a “private right of action.” It’s a provision that’s structured similarly to Texas’ six-week abortion ban, which deputizes private citizens with the right to sue anyone who aids and abets in an abortion after six weeks.

“Nobody wants this crap,” DeSantis said of CRT during a Wednesday press conference, where he did not unveil the bill but rather a one-page flyer. “This is an elite-driven phenomenon being driven by bureaucratic elites, elites in universities and elites in corporate America. And they’re trying to shove it down the throats of the American people. You’re not doing that in the state of Florida.”

Although CRT has become a flashpoint in the conservative culture war, there is little to no evidence that Florida public schools are teaching the concept on a systematic or widespread basis. None of the examples cited by DeSantis’ office on Wednesday took place in Florida.

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News 6, for instance, asked every Central Florida school district about CRT. Of those who answered – Lake, Marion, Orange, Osceola and Seminole – none of them said CRT is used in classrooms. Orange, Flagler, Marion, Osceola, Sumter and Volusia school officials also told the outlet the same.

Critical race theory was developed as an academic tool that centers race as a social construct, situating racism as a core set of practices and/or beliefs that are embedded in America’s policies and legal system. Critics of the concept have largely argued that it breeds an us-versus-them mentality with respect to racial politics.

As an example of the CRT being used in schools, NBC News reported, DeSantis cited an “Equity Toolkit” posted online by the Arizona Department of Education, arguing that it was being used to teach the notion that “babies show the first sign of racism by three months old.” However, the department’s graphic simply affirms evidence that three-month-old babies prefer to look at the faces of people who share their same ethnicity.

Democratic state Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, said who campaigned on improving the state’s education system, argued that DeSantis is “dividing” the state with “fake problems,” adding that he should “start focusing on crises in front of us including the exodus of educators, unaffordable housing” and “awful health disparities.”

Florida Education Association (FEA), Florida’s largest teachers union, has come out against DeSantis’ bill.

“Teachers are trained and experienced in educating children and have a duty to prepare their students to be successful contributors to society,” FEA President Andrew Spar in a statement. “Teachers should have the freedom to teach honest, complete facts about historical events like slavery and civil rights without being censored by politicians.”

Jan. 6 committee heats up as Liz Cheney takes center stage: Is it Watergate yet?

It happened twice on Tuesday, and one person was involved both times: Liz Cheney. The House Jan. 6 committee has been moving in the same direction the Watergate investigation moved for a while now, but the thing with Mark Meadows’ text messages is what turned the corner. Cheney took center stage the way Sen. Howard Baker gained the spotlight during the Senate Watergate hearings in the summer of 1973 when he asked his famous question: “What did the president know, and when did he know it?”

Baker’s question was prompted by the testimony of former White House counsel John Dean, who had just blown the roof off the Senate hearing room when he testified that he discussed the cover-up of the Watergate burglary with Richard Nixon at least 35 times. Cheney’s question was apparently prompted by the revelation of a series of texts between former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and several members of Congress on Jan. 6 as the assault on the Capitol was underway. “We know hours passed with no action by the president to defend the Congress of the United States from an assault while we were trying to count electoral votes,” Ms. Cheney stated grimly. “Mr. Meadows’s testimony will bear on a key question in front of this committee: Did Donald Trump, through action or inaction, corruptly seek to obstruct or impede Congress’s official proceeding to count electoral votes?”

Cheney’s question was more pointed than Baker’s, but in both cases it was as if these conservative lawmakers from the same party as the man under investigation found themselves flabbergasted that they would be wondering whether the president of the United States had committed a crime while in office, and just as amazed that the question would arise at more or less the same point in the investigation.

At the time they asked their questions, Baker and Cheney had access to more information than that which was provided to the public. Dean had been questioned for days by the Watergate committee’s staff of lawyers and investigators before he took the oath and began his testimony in full view of the entire country — the hearings were being covered live by all three major television networks, something impossible to imagine today.

In the case of Mark Meadows, staff lawyers and investigators for the Jan. 6 committee have interviewed, under oath, some 300 witnesses and gone through tens of thousands of pages of evidence that has been provided to the committee. At the time Cheney asked her bombshell question on the floor of the House on Tuesday, we had been informed that Meadows exchanged texts with several Fox News hosts as well as Donald Trump Jr., all of whom were trying to get Meadows to influence the president to call off the assault on the Capitol. Cheney read several texts written by lawmakers who were cowering in their offices off the floors of the House and Senate chambers trying to convince Meadows to do the same thing.

Cheney has clearly seen other texts that she didn’t read out loud during the debate over whether to hold Meadows in contempt, and she has not named the lawmakers who sent them. But her question indicates that at least some of the testimony they have taken from witnesses, and other texts she has seen from lawmakers, indicate that the committee has concluded there was a conspiracy between Donald Trump and lawmakers from one or both sides of the Capitol to disrupt the counting of electoral ballots and possibly to influence several battleground states to change their slates of electors from Joe Biden to Trump.

All of that is speculation at this point, but it’s important to remember that investigations like Watergate and the assault on the Capitol largely don’t unfold in the light of day. Here’s how the New York Times framed it on Wednesday: “In closed-door interviews held in a nondescript federal office building near the Capitol, Ms. Cheney has emerged as a leader and central figure on the panel, known for drilling down into the details of the assignment she views as the most important of her political career. She is well-versed in the criminal code and often uses language borrowed from it to make clear she believes the former president and others face criminal exposure.”

According to the Times, Cheney has also “pressed to assemble a team of former intelligence analysts and law enforcement specialists on the committee’s staff, some of them Republicans — a move that bolstered the committee’s bipartisan bona fides.”

The Watergate committee staff had its offices in an unoccupied movie theater on Capitol Hill a short distance from the Senate hearing room. The floor of the theater had been transformed into cubicle-like spaces with temporary overhead fluorescent lighting where the staff worked. David Dorsen and Terry Lenzner, the two deputies to Sam Dash, the chief Democratic counsel to the committee, shared an office behind the curtain on the stage of the theater.

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I know this because I used to travel from New York to Washington to meet with Lenzner and Dorsen in mostly futile attempts to glean non-public information from the committee’s investigation. That’s the way reporting on one of these investigations goes: you run around and do as much reporting as you can and gather information on the subject at hand, and then one of the places you use to check the veracity of the information is the committee investigating the crime.

My particular corner of the Watergate investigation was Bebe Rebozo, described at the time as Nixon’s best friend and neighbor on Key Biscayne, Florida, location of the so-called Winter White House. Rebozo was far more than that, of course, which was the reason I was writing a series of investigative reports on him.

The Senate Watergate committee had also become interested in Rebozo and the role he had played in laundering illegal donations to Nixon’s 1972 re-election campaign, among other things. Rebozo was an interesting guy, the only money launderer I ever encountered who actually owned a chain of about 70 laundromats — which he used, in part, to launder funds for Nixon using the all-cash nature of the laundromat business to do his dirty work. The other way he did it turned out to be through the Key Biscayne Bank, which he owned and was located in a narrow storefront in a strip mall on the island. I became suspicious of it the day I walked in and attempted to open an account. There was exactly one “window” and one teller, who informed me that Key Biscayne Bank wasn’t “that kind of bank,” as in a bank in which you opened accounts and deposited and withdrew money.

One day, loaded down with a huge suitcase of documents I had assembled on Rebozo, I took the train down to Washington, went to the Watergate committee’s Capitol Hill theater and exchanged my files for at least some of what the committee had assembled on Rebozo. They copied my files and returned the originals and I took the train back to New York. I can’t tell you how dramatic all this was, to enter that old theater and quite literally go behind the curtain of the Watergate investigation.

A few days later, Lenzner sent one of the committee investigators to Florida with a subpoena for Rebozo’s Key Biscayne Bank. Late that night, my phone rang and it was Lenzner. “You won’t believe what happened,” he said. The investigator had shown up at the Rebozo bank just as an employee was leaving for the day carrying a suitcase. He served the subpoena on the spot and opened the suitcase. It was loaded down with $750,000 in cash, and the man had a plane ticket for the Bahamas in his pocket. It turned out he ran a concession at the Paradise Island Casino, and the money in the suitcase was destined to be laundered there.

I’m telling this story because I think that’s roughly the point we have reached in the investigation by the Jan. 6 select committee. They’ve gathered far more information than they’ve made public, and late on Tuesday they announced they will begin holding hearings in January.

But I think we can begin to see the outlines of where they’re headed in the question Cheney asked during the debate over Meadows’ contempt citation. What we know publicly right now is that the assault on the Capitol was planned in advance and organized at least in part by several right-wing militia groups, including the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, possibly with the help of figures like Steve Bannon and Roger Stone. Both of them have been subpoenaed by the committee and one of them, Bannon, has already been found in contempt of Congress and is facing federal charges for refusing to testify.

We knew fairly early on that the Watergate break-in of the Democratic Party headquarters was planned by the burglars themselves, assisted by figures on the edges of the Nixon campaign like Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy. What we didn’t know was whether the conspiracy reached into the White House and involved the president, Richard Nixon.

The White House tapes would reveal the truth about that conspiracy, and it’s beginning to look like the Meadows text messages, along with other evidence gathered by the Jan. 6 committee, will reveal a similar White House connection to the assault on the Capitol. The break-in at the Watergate was a crime, and so was the break-in at the Capitol. Covering up the planning and organization behind Watergate turned out to be a crime that brought down a president. It’s looking like covering up the same kind of conspiracy involving the assault on the Capitol will turn out to be yet another crime, one that may bring down several members of Congress, perhaps to face federal charges for a crime that Liz Cheney has already named out loud.

Things are getting interesting, folks. The assault on the Capitol is being Watergated.

More from Salon on the slow-unfolding Jan. 6 investigation:

Tim Kaine becomes first Democratic senator to ditch National Prayer Breakfast

One of a series about the Fellowship Foundation, the secretive religious group that runs the National Prayer Breakfast and is popularly known as The Family. This series is based on Family documents obtained by TYT, including lists of breakfast guests and who invited them.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., a former co-chair of the National Prayer Breakfast, has “no intention” of attending the event next year, a spokesperson says.

In the wake of recent calls for members of Congress to distance themselves from the event, TYT asked a handful whether they planned to participate in the February 2022 event. Kaine press secretary Ilse Zuniga responded, saying, “Sen. Kaine has not been to the National Prayer Breakfast since 2016 and has no intention of attending.”

Zuniga did not say what led to Kaine’s decision, but TYT’s email referred to recent activist warnings that Democratic participation in prayer breakfasts helps far-right organizers expand their networks and mainstream their opposition to LGBTQ and reproductive rights.

Family spokesperson A. Larry Ross did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But Kaine’s statement was applauded by two activist groups that have reached out to members of Congress with concerns about the private, secretive event.

“We’re thrilled that Sen. Kaine has opted not to attend this pay-to-play political event that alienates nonreligious Americans, tramples the constitutional separation of state and church, and has a disturbing history of anti-LGBTQ bigotry,” said Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor. The FFRF has long opposed the breakfast and had recently asked Kaine not to participate.

Another group raising alarms about the event is the European LGBTQ advocacy group Forbidden Colours. In response to TYT’s reporting on anti-LGBTQ Ukrainians involved in the breakfast, Forbidden Colours sent congressional Democrats a briefing paper, saying that Rep. Juan Vargas, D-Calif., had been “misled” in participating in September’s Ukraine breakfast organized by far-right anti-LGBTQ activists.

On Tuesday, Forbidden Colours executive director Rémy Bonny responded to Kaine’s decision. “After ringing the bell for years about the deceptive methods of the anti-LGBTQ+ movement, it is great to see a senator finally seeing the real goal of organizations such as the National Prayer Breakfast,” which Bonny described as “bringing the world back to a patriarchal society” and undermining the interests of the U.S.

Kaine — who served as the event’s co-chair in 2016 until pulling out after becoming the Democratic vice presidential nominee — is only the latest Democratic member of Congress to distance themselves from the event, held every year on the first Thursday of February.

Others have included Reps. Charlie Crist of Florida, Ro Khanna of California, Ann Kirkpatrick of Arizona and Ted Lieu of California, as well as former Rep. Janice Hahn, now a Los Angeles County supervisor. Responding to recent reports that a longtime Chick-fil-A executive was inviting anti-LGBTQ guests to the breakfast, Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute tweeted, “Time to end this farce; create a genuine National Prayer Breakfast that is not a front for right-wing activists.”

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Due to COVID, this year’s breakfast was held virtually, as next year’s may be as well. (There has been no official announcement.) But President Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi both submitted videos that were played as part of this year’s virtual event.

Pelosi’s office did not immediately respond when asked whether she would participate again next year. A White House spokesperson said about Biden’s potential participation, “We will circle back with you when we have something to share.”

In October, the FFRF wrote to members of Congress who served on the 2021 honorary host committee, asking them not to participate. Kaine was one of those Democrats, although it’s unclear whether he specifically authorized The Family to use his name this year. Zuniga did not immediately respond to follow-up questions. One congressional staffer told TYT earlier this year that “they’ve had a hard time getting Democrats” to lend their names to the event.

Kaine has been on the honorary host committee three out of the past five years. He has a history of involvement with Capitol Hill prayer groups, defending the secrecy that surrounds them, and developing relationships with Family insiders on both sides of the aisle, including Sens. Chris Coons, D-Del., and John Boozman, R-Ark.

Like most Democrats, Kaine has a strong rating from the Human Rights Campaign. On the rare occasions when he and a handful of other Democrats have broken from HRC’s agenda, it has often been on legislation involving religion, according to HRC’s vote tracker.

Democratic allies of The Family, including Coons and Vargas, have refused to disclose specifics about how the breakfast is run or what due diligence, if any, is done to ensure both that breakfast invitations are issued equitably and that the event itself is not being used for political purposes. Even Democrats who have distanced themselves from the event have declined to discuss its internal workings.

While LGBTQ issues have drawn the focus of Forbidden Colours and other advocacy groups, the FFRF’s list of complaints with the breakfast is much broader. It includes a number of revelations that have arisen from internal Family documents this year.

TYT has reported, for instance, that the breakfast’s sole financial donor is evangelical pastor Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham and one of the world’s leading anti-LGBTQ activists. (The Family’s biggest known patron overall is Republican megadonor Ron Cameron). Despite Biden’s well known religious faith as an observant Roman Catholic, Graham used Biden’s participation in the 2021 National Prayer Breakfast as an opportunity to attack him for insufficient piety.

Amid right-wing grumbling that Biden didn’t say the word “God” in his video for the breakfast, Graham said he was “saddened” by Biden’s remarks, which Graham called “dangerous” for not reinforcing Christian theology.

The breakfast has also been used to elevate and, in at least one case, create extremist voices on the right.

Ben Carson became a right-wing cause célèbre for confronting Barack Obama at the breakfast. Then a handful of Family leaders and associates succeeded in converting MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell to both evangelical Christianity and right-wing politics.

According to Lindell’s own accounts, the National Prayer Breakfast — including private side meetings and a speech by U.S. Senate chaplain Barry Black — helped to radicalize Lindell’s politics and weaponize his faith. With support from Family insiders, Lindell last year became one of the most prominent voices preaching that Democrats had stolen the 2020 presidential election.

In February, TYT reported that a number of Family leaders and key players in the breakfast supported Trump’s election lies almost immediately after the election — without losing any Democratic support for the breakfast.

These recent revelations come atop decades worth of secrets spilled by journalist Jeff Sharlet, author of multiple articles and two books on The Family, and one of the people responsible for Netflix’s documentary series, “The Family.” The organization’s 20th-century roots, as Sharlet reported, lay in the Christian business community’s backlash to the rise of organized labor and the New Deal reforms of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Nevertheless, longtime Family leader Doug Coe cherished and nurtured the organization’s apolitical reputation. But that didn’t prevent the involvement of Family insiders and leaders with Uganda’s infamous anti-LGBTQ death penalty legislation.

Coe died in 2017, leaving Family leadership in the hands of conservative Republicans such as former Tennessee congressman Zach Wamp and former South Carolina governor David Beasley, who was later appointed by Donald Trump to run the UN’s World Food Programme.

The following year, the Russian spy scandal became public — with Trump-supporting Family insiders at the heart of it.

A source who has been involved with the breakfast told TYT earlier this year that the event has changed. “We used to think we were nonpartisan: Democrats were welcome,” the source said. “I was like, yes, that’s true in many respects, but now that Trump stuff’s here, there’s a lot laid bare that’s typical Christian conservative. It’s a conservative Republican thing.”

More from TYT on the National Prayer Breakfast and the shadowy organization behind it:

A sociologist explains the biggest mistakes the media is making about our political moment

You already know the House Select Committee released text messages sent to Mark Meadows while the January 6 insurrection was underway. Some of them came from three hosts at Fox, imploring the former White House chief of staff to get the former president to stop the violence. What you did not know was that some came from Jake Sherman. The founder of Punchbowl News said so Tuesday night.

“I knew I had communicated a ton with White House officials that day as I sat in the Capitol,” Sherman wrote on Twitter. “This thread stuck out to me. That’s because they were my texts to meadows.” He posted a screenshot of text messages read by ranking Republican Liz Cheney. The full House voted last night to hold Meadows in criminal contempt.

That the press corps was caught up in the sacking and looting of the US Capitol that day is a story only now coming to light. However, that we are only learning of it now is, to put it mildly, amazing. You’d think people whose lives were in danger might set aside their professional interests and tell the American people who’s doing what to whom. Instead, since January, the press corps has done more of the same. That might be good for the bottom line. It’s bad for democracy.

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Among those finding all this amazing is Jeremy Littau. He’s a media sociologist at Lehigh University. His weekly newsletter, The Unraveling, covers the press and internet culture. After news broke of three Fox hosts messaging Meadows, thus revealing that they knew who was responsible for the insurgency, Jeremy wrote that the revelation was “one of the most critical political stories of our time. Not media stories. Political stories.”

This morning, I asked why.

Jeremy Littau: The press has a habit of treating political coverage and politics as separate categories. There are exceptions, but daily political coverage is churned out by news outlets as if the media environment itself isn’t a factor. I think a lot about what Walter Lippmann wrote in Public Opinion almost 100 years ago, that one of the most powerful functions media have is creating narratives out of facts. Politics doesn’t happen in a vacuum, but rather it is shaped by media narratives.

What’s happening now with Fox is at the nexus of two longer-term trends: the rise of conservative media over the past 30 years and the fracturing of the media landscape. The narrative power pre-1990 was for a general audience. Conservative media is only trying to reach a loyal fraction of that audience. Its rise has coincided with technology change that allows people to self-isolate in their media use.

Those powerful narratives are not just shaping a large portion of the electorate anymore. This is Lippmann’s idea on steroids. They have become the way that portion of the electorate sees reality. So when Fox personalities behind the scenes are saying the 1/6 insurrection was a horrible event but going on the air downplaying it, they’ve been caught misusing that power. That is a damning thing for their claim to be doing news, and it’s dangerous for our democracy.

JS: In your reaction to the news yesterday, you said any other news organization would be concerned about misleading audiences. But credibility for CNN is different from credibility for Fox, right?

JL: The news industry largely has treated Fox as a legitimate news operation practicing the same methods as everyone else. That’s a reason you don’t see journalists doing rigorous work about the broader narratives emanating from the network. That’s what I was getting at yesterday. The details of those texts really aren’t that shocking if you have some skepticism about how Fox turns its worldview into a methodology that dictates how it gathers and reports news.

It’s fair to say consumers have different expectations. Fox’s viewers expect conservative news. Hannity hosting political rallies, anchors shaping the news to make Trump look good – those are expectations. Loyalty to ideology and party (not the truth no matter where it leads, as journalism is supposed to be) are the expectation, because that’s what was sold to the audience to hook them in the first place.

The only time you lose credibility is if you violate that social contract. Witness what happened when Fox (correctly!) called Arizona for Joe Biden. The audience savaged the network for this. Accurate news didn’t fit the expected conservative news network narrative.

JS: I have said before the power of Fox is proportional to the respect given to it by the press corps. You seem to be saying as much.

JL: Yes, though I think the power from peers has less impact now that Fox is a mature brand. Respect from peers has largely meant not challenging Fox’s news operation on the whole even though we have evidence going back more than a decade of Fox working with GOP operatives on talking points in ways that shaped the news.

Aggressive coverage 15 years ago might have had an impact on public opinion such that it hurt the channel’s credibility. It still would, but the audience is so fractured and stuffed into echo chambers that that effect likely would be diminished. The ship has sailed for the industry to have a real powerful agenda-setting effect on the Fox brand itself.

What might help: sustained storytelling about what Fox is, what role it plays. It should be embedded in stories about everyday political fights. It’s hard to really understand anything in politics without assessing the role of conservative media. You have to expose audiences to the sources and vectors of bad information. It’s not enough to fact-check.

JS: There is some debate about what Jake Sherman should have done with his experience during the insurrection. Do you have a take?

JL: My first reaction was empathy. How harrowing that must have been! That said, how broken does journalistic objectivity look there? The modern convention that a journalist is there to report the facts, not be chummy with sources and not be the story, gets exposed in moments like this. Objectivity says he shouldn’t have sent that text message because that put him in the position of asking sources for favors. Once he sent it, though, he should have revealed he did.

But objectivity really denies humanity. Journalists depend on sources for access and safety. So Sherman played it straight with some expectation the system will work on his behalf – and it doesn’t. An introspective industry would try to rebalance the equation here.

That Sherman has to beg, and that he still gets radio silence, tells you what attempts to play it straight have gotten the press. They can’t even expect basic decency, let alone leaders protecting a free press.

JS: You said “the power from peers has less impact now that Fox is a mature brand.” I might agree if not for the fact that mainstream reporters are ready to amplify Fox’s propaganda on account of Fox representing what “the other side” thinks.

JL: I mean let’s think through what it would look like to have the industry turn on Fox and aggressively tell stories about its propaganda and misinformation role. The audience is so fractured at this point that such journalism isn’t reaching the mass audience it would have 15 years ago. Whole days go by where Fox viewers aren’t exposed to the events of the day being told by most other mainstream outlets. So that’s why I say “less impact” instead of “no impact.” It’s about the extent of the reach. Trying to reframe the Fox brand is a real challenge that can’t be solved by mere aggressive reporting at this point.

JS: Jeremy, many thanks for chatting with me today!

JL: Absolutely. Thanks for having me!

“Are they trying to lose?” Watchdog groups fume after Pelosi defends stock trading by lawmakers

Progressives and government watchdog groups on Wednesday condemned House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s defense of individual stock trading by members of Congress, days after an extensive report revealed dozens of conflicts of interest by lawmakers who own stocks related to the healthcare industry and other sectors Congress is supposed to regulate.

After being asked by Business Insider at her weekly press conference whether members of Congress and their spouses should be barred from trading stocks, Pelosi said the practice should be permitted to continue because “we are a free market economy.”

REPORTER: "Should members of congress and their spouses be banned from trading individual stocks while serving in congress?"

PELOSI: "No…We are a free market economy. They should be able to participate in that." pic.twitter.com/2SNqSCwFEU

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) December 15, 2021

Speaking to Business Insider after the press conference, Pelosi’s spokesperson said the STOCK Act—which was passed in 2012 and requires members to disclose security transactions and ensure they don’t make individual stock trades based on knowledge they gain as lawmakers—prevents members of Congress from insider trading.

But the outlet’s “Conflicted Congress” investigation released Monday, showed that at least 49 lawmakers and 182 senior congressional staffers have violated the STOCK Act, including dozens whose stock holdings may have allowed them to benefit from the coronavirus pandemic.

At least 11 senators and 34 representatives held shares of Pfizer, the manufacturer of one of the Covid-19 vaccines. The investigation also found stocks held by lawmakers from both major political parties in 3M, which makes personal protective equipment; Quest Diagnostics, which provides Covid-19 tests; and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, the maker of a treatment for the disease.

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As Common Dreams reported in April 2020, in the weeks before the pandemic, members of Congress made nearly 1,500 stock transactions worth up to $158 million—in many cases buying stocks in companies that might see a boost during the crisis and selling stocks that seemed likely to decrease in value.

When asked about the lack of compliance with the STOCK Act at her news conference, the speaker said only that members of Congress “should be” reporting their holdings.

The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) was among the first watchdog groups to respond forcefully to Pelosi’s comments.

“Members of Congress should not be able to trade stocks because it’s not ‘participating in the free market’ for some of our nation’s most powerful to benefit financially from inside information,” the group tweeted. “It’s a conflict of interest, plain and simple, and it needs to stop.”

Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, government affairs manager for the group, added that lawmakers’ ability to trade individual stocks—and Pelosi’s vehement defense of the practice—could significantly damage the public’s perception of Congress and the federal government.

Um, actually, @SpeakerPelosi, members of #Congress should not be allowed to trade stocks. Real and perceived public concerns about insider trading and other kinds of conflict of interest feed into distrust in government and that leads to worse governance #Ethics #FixCongress https://t.co/091KQmsTJA

— Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette (@Veritas_DHG) December 15, 2021

Progressive lawmakers including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) have spoken out about the issue, with Warren telling Business Insider on Wednesday, “The American people should never have to guess whether or not an elected official is advancing an issue or voting on a bill based on what’s good for the country or what’s good for their own personal financial interests.”

Some critics suggested Pelosi defended stock trading on Capitol Hill because she has personally benefited from the practice; her husband, venture capitalist Paul Pelosi, trades corporate stocks and in 2020 owned shares worth as much as $25 million in Apple, Amazon, and Visa. The couple’s net worth grew by $16.7 million last year.

Others noted that Pelosi’s defensive comments came just as it was reported that the Democratic Party is planning to shelve the Build Back Better Act—the $1.75 trillion reconciliation package that would invest in climate action and anti-poverty measures—due to objections to the Child Tax Credit from right-wing Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia—and as the Biden administration is preparing to force millions of Americans to restart payments of the student debt, leading to questions about how the party will inspire voter turnout in 2022 and beyond.

Letting the child tax credit disappear, making people pay back student loans, mocking the idea of at-home covid tests, and now defending members of congress trading stocks. It's getting harder and harder to convince me the Democrats want to win.

— Read Starting Somewhere (@JPHilllllll) December 15, 2021

“Are they trying to lose?” asked journalist Kate Aronoff.

Watch this “Ted Lasso” stop-motion animated Christmas short that’s both creepy & heartwarming

Move over, Rudolph and the Abominable Snowman. There’s a new stop-motion animation classic for the holidays.

Christmas comes early (again) for Apple TV+’s Emmy-winning series “Ted Lasso,” which has dropped a bonus short film following the adventures of our favorite Midwestern football coach in England. Clocking in at around four-and-a-half minutes, it’s a yuletide amuse bouche for those who are getting impatient with opening the tiny flaps on their advent calendars.

In the short, we see clay versions of Ted (Jason Sudeikis) & Co. come together to solve a dilemma, not passively waiting around for a Christmas miracle. Each character, from Roy and Beard to Nate and Keeley, offer their best efforts but to no avail. Of course, since this is a “Ted Lasso” Christmas treat that is family-friendly (yes, even Roy gets bleeped), the quandary is fixed in the St. Nick of time so that all may be merry and bright. (Although, as is tradition with holiday stop-motion fare, it is still a bit creepy.)

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While the short features the actual voice talents of the actors for their clay counterparts, it doesn’t feature any AFC Richmond players with the exception of Jamie Tartt (Phil Dunster), complete with his signature scarred eyebrow. Each of the characters are recognizable to varying degrees, but the attention to detail paid to recreating the main title sequence and the locker room, even the yellow “Believe” sign, is spot-on.

Of course, this is the second dose of yuletide cheer that “Ted Lasso” has doled out this season after the Christmas one-off episode “Carol of the Bells” debuted in August. This installment is a sweet and silly interlude that lives in that pocket of time and space before all of those heartbreaking betrayals.

Watch “Ted Lasso – The Missing Christmas Mustache” below, via YouTube.

More “Ted Lasso” for your reading pleasure:

“Reckless misuse of resources”: Congress passes $778 billion military budget

In bipartisan fashion, the Senate passed a massive military spending bill on Wednesday. The U.S. House of Representatives passed a sprawling military policy bill last week that contains nearly twice as much funding on an annual basis as Democrats’ flagship social spending and climate bill that has stalled out.

That reality led Stephen Miles, executive director of Win Without War, to slam the $778 billion National Defense Authorization Act as “a reckless misuse of resources, a windfall for war profiteers, and proof positive that most in Congress have little concern for the actual security of people in the United States or around the world.”

“Little could be more revealing of our nation’s broken budget priorities,” Miles added, “than the fact that this rubberstamp of three-quarters of a trillion dollars for warmaking was prioritized and will soon pass with bipartisan support, while the Build Back Better Act — which would invest in meeting real human needs — has been watered down and pushed to the back burner.”

The House passed the NDAA Tuesday night by a vote of 363-70, with the measure ultimately receiving more votes from Republicans than Democrats even though the latter control the chamber and led negotiations over the bill. Of the 70 no votes, 51 were Democrats.

In a tweet explaining his vote against the NDAA, Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., wrote that “it is astounding how quickly Congress moves weapons but we can’t ensure housing, care, and justice for our veterans, nor invest in robust jobs programs for districts like mine.”

“There was no CBO score needed,” Bowman added, a jab at conservative Democrats who have complained incessantly about the size of the Build Back Better Act without raising similar concerns about the bloated military budget.

“No concern about the deficit,” Bowman continued. “No mention of inflation.”

The House-passed NDAA includes $25 billion more in spending than President Joe Biden requested in his budget blueprint earlier this year. As Rep. Andy Levin, D-Mich., pointed out, it would cost the federal government roughly $22.5 billion to fund 12 weeks of paid family leave for a year.

According to Defense News, the legislation in its current form contains “12 F/A-18 Super Hornets that were not requested; five more Boeing F-15EX jets than the request for 17 total; and 13 ships total — including two attack submarines and two destroyers ― for five more than the request.”

Additionally, as Miles noted, the bill “fails to end U.S. complicity in the war in Yemen, excludes critical measures to rein in out-of-control executive war powers, and doubles down on a dangerous Cold War mindset towards China” with $7.1 billion for the so-called Pacific Deterrence Initiative, which progressives have deemed an “anti-China slush fund.”

The House just passed a $778 billion Pentagon budget during a pandemic. It’s $37 billion higher than last year’s military budget, which they passed during the same pandemic.

So much “national security” spending, so little security to show for it. pic.twitter.com/YB0SO8BI2l

— Stephen Semler (@stephensemler) December 8, 2021

Robert Weissman, president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said in a statement that “as the national debate centers around how much is ‘too much’ to be spending on the true needs of the American people, it is unconscionable to approve three-quarters of a trillion dollars for war-making.”

“What possible justification is there for throwing $768 billion at the Pentagon at the very same moment that we’re being told there isn’t enough money to provide dental care to seniors, establish a paid family leave, or provide free community college?” Weissman asked. “Why is there more money for the military-industrial complex — providing no additional protection for our national security and arguably diminishing it — at the same time the U.S. is refusing to spend the $25 billion needed to make enough additional vaccines to vaccinate the world?”

The NDAA now heads to the Senate, where it is expected to pass over the objections of progressives such as Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Ed Markey, D-Mass., who have introduced amendments aimed at bringing the bill’s spending levels back into line with Biden’s request and redirecting 1% of Pentagon spending to global climate programs.

“Cutting the Pentagon’s budget could help fight threats like COVID, climate change, and more,” Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., said following his no vote on the NDAA. “Our work to cut the Pentagon’s budget and reallocate funds to help communities across the country is just beginning. The fight doesn’t end tonight.”

Zendaya promises she’ll have a bigger role in “Dune: Part 2”

“Dune” had one of the most impressive casts in recent memory — Timothée Chalamet as lead character Paul Atreides, Oscar Isaac as his dad Duke Leto, Jason Momoa as Atreides family swordsman Duncan Idaho, and the list just went on. It included big names even in small parts, like “Euphoria” and “Spider-Man” star Zendaya playing the Fremen warrior Chani.

Of course, Chani is a major character in “Dune” by Frank Herbert, but since the movie only covers the first half of the book, she barely shows up. Although I’ll be honest: she was onscreen for longer than I thought she’d be given how many interviews downplayed her screentime. By the time I actually watched the movie I was impressed she was in there for more than 30 seconds.

Still, she’ll have a much bigger role in “Part 2,” as she herself promised Deadline. “I can be there for longer, which is cool,” she laughed.

Timothée Chalamet praises Zendaya in “Dune”

Filming on “Part 2” hasn’t begun yet, but when it does it sounds like Zendaya and the rest of the crew already have a nice shorthand in place. “[Director Denis Villeneuve] is great at giving you structure, but then also giving you freedom within it,” Zendaya said. “I could come to it with a sense of who Chani was . . . I felt immediately connected to her. I wish I had more time with her, and with everybody. I didn’t want to leave.”

Chalamet was effusive with his praise for her: “Zendaya is Chani, and it’s incredible to witness,” he said, remembering the day she pulled her mask down on set: “On the day, it was like, Holy s**t, Chani has arrived . . . Not only was the relationship between us alive in Jordan [where we filmed], and not only does it live on the screen now, it was there just at the first chemistry read. It felt obvious.”

Enjoy a bad lip reading of “Dune”

That all sounds very exciting, but we have a while to wait for the second “Dune” movie. Until then, please enjoy this bad lip reading of the first:

https://youtu.be/VYMq27uygsY

“Dune: Part 2” is due out on October 20, 2023.

Pho, menudo and Old Sober: A love letter to breakfast soup

Chicago’s Little Vietnam, a crowded strip of businesses clustered around the Argyle Red Line stop, seems to come to life just a little earlier than the rest of the city — especially on winter weekends. After sunrise, as the fog hovers level with the red paper lanterns strung through the trees that dot the sidewalk, folks pull open the doors to restaurants like Pho 888 and Nhà Hàng Vietnam Restaurant, causing a rush of steam to erupt as the blasting heat momentarily meets the crisp air.

Once inside, they’re greeted by a muddled symphony composed of a few reliable sounds: the plink-plink of Café du Monde percolating tableside; the drone of a small TV set to local cable; and the light spoon-scrapes and gentle slurps associated with generous bowls of pho.

Pho, which is considered Vietnam’s national dish, is a deceptively simple soup consisting of rice noodles, a shock of green herbs like mint and basil, meat and delicate broth. It’s considered an ideal breakfast, since it’s hearty enough to start the day but not so heavy that it weighs one down before work.

This is the case in both Vietnam and Vietnamese-American enclaves throughout the U.S. So much so that Alex Lam, the owner of Vietnam Kitchen, my favorite Vietnamese restaurant in Louisville, Ky., recently told me that his business survived for the first few years by serving early morning “$2 iced coffees and bowls of pho” to other resettled Vietnamese refugees in his neighborhood.

However, soup of any sort remains, in many Americans’ minds, a lunch or a dinner dish. America is one of the few regions that doesn’t have much of a soup breakfast tradition, though it isn’t completely devoid of one. Perhaps this winter is the time to change that, borrowing inspiration from countries where soup is considered one of the best ways to start the day.

“In the Jewish Moroccan household I grew up in, harira was served on colder evenings in the late fall and throughout the winter as a dinner soup,” food writer Liz Vaknin told me via email. “We would eat the leftovers for lunch, and it was the kind of lunch that made you sleepy and put a silly smile on your face. When I traveled to Morocco a few years ago with my father to learn more about my roots, I discovered (to my delight) that the soup was served for breakfast during the colder months, and I absolutely fell in love with the idea.”

Harira, as Vaknin describes it, is a velvety smooth tomato-based soup, spiced with warming cinnamon and ginger and earthy cumin and cilantro, and fortified with lentils, chickpeas and even thin pieces of noodles. It can be made with lamb, chicken or beef, but the version she grew up eating was vegan.

“There wasn’t a single breakfast buffet at the hotels we stayed at that didn’t serve the soup for breakfast, and since then, I’ve readily adopted the idea at home,” Vaknin said. “After sharing this find with my mother, I learned that her family would make harira for breakfast, too. It was only when she and my father moved to the U.S. that she stopped making it for breakfast because ‘it just wasn’t something that Americans did.'”

That’s not totally accurate, though I didn’t realize this until reading Lauren Shockey’s 2019 book “Hangover Helper,” which includes an entire chapter of hangover soups and stews, which as Shockey puts it, “weave a common thread through the tapestry of global hangover cuisine.”

Some of these — like Japanese ochazuke, a simple soup featuring rice and other savory bits partially steeped in green tea, and Mexican caldo de camarón, a spicy prawn stew — aren’t exclusively peddled as hangover cures. However, New Orleans is home to Yaka Mein, a Chinese-Creole beef noodle soup that is so associated with reviving oneself after a night of heavy drinking that it’s been given the affectionate nickname “Old Sober.”

“It’s basically a beef broth that’s been seasoned with Creole spices,” Shockey said. “But what makes it unique is that it’s done with spaghetti and hard-boiled eggs. So, you definitely see the tradition of the Asian noodle soup that you might enjoy, like ramen, but it has this very American culinary conception.”

She continued, “They think that it might have come to Louisiana by way of the Asian workers who were working on the railroads.”

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While researching this chapter of her book, Shockey found some commonalities between the soups served for breakfast across the globe. Typically, they fell into two categories: They were either spicy and energizing, so as to help “sweat out the toxins” (like the caldo de camarón or Bolivian fricasé, a pork stew that’s amped up with aji amarillo peppers) or more nurturing and comforting, like ochazuke or Albanian tarator, a chilled cucumber soup studded with garlic.

Even within those two categories, the spread is varied. There’s Mexican menudo, a peppery soup made with tripe and hominy, and Polish milk soup, which writer Olga Mecking described for “Roads & Kingdoms” as basically “warm milk, sometimes served with pearled barley, oats or with zacierki — tiny dumplings made by grating pasta dough directly into the soup.” There’s caldo de costilla, packed with ribs and potatoes, and Cambodian kuy teav.

Expand even further to include dishes like congee or jook, which straddle the line between porridge and stew, and the options for breakfast are seemingly limitless. For the past few weeks, writers — myself included — have heralded the start of soup season; if you aren’t already in the habit, let this be the year you take it seriously enough to start your winter days with it, too.

Some of our favorite soup recipes:

Scientists are closing in on an HIV vaccine

mRNA vaccines, a revolutionary new technology long-considered the “holy grail” of vaccine research, were researched for decades before being brought to commercial fruition during the COVID-19 pandemic. Indeed, two of the most prominent and efficacious COVID-19 vaccines, Pfizer/BioNTech’s and Moderna’s, used mRNA vaccine technology.

Now, after the success of the mRNA vaccine technology with treating SARS-CoV-2, scientists have turned their sights on other diseases that were previously difficult to vaccinate against. In particular, mRNA vaccines show hope in treating HIV — a virus that has, for decades, frustrated scientists working on conventional vaccine platforms in attempts to treat it.

Thanks to researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which is part of the National Institutes of Health, there is evidence that an experimental mRNA vaccine has been successful in treating against an HIV-virus relative in mice and rhesus macaques. Such animal research is generally the first step towards producing a successful human vaccine.

mRNA vaccines differ from their conventional vaccine counterparts, which typically contain dead or weakened versions of the target pathogen — or, alternatively, contain pieces of the genetic code of a pathogen wrapped up in a different, harmless virus’s genetic code. However, mRNA vaccines actually inject a strand of bespoke RNA that instructs one’s cells to produce proteins similar to the ones found on pathogens (microscopic organisms that cause disease). One’s immune system then recognizes those proteins and produces antibodies for fighting them.

This new experimental vaccine does this against simian-human immunodeficiency virus (SHIV), which is similar to HIV. The SHIV vaccine actually targets two proteins that appear on the SHIV virus, known as Env and Gag, and thus contains the mRNA instructions for one’s (human) cells to replicate those proteins.

As lead researcher Paolo Lusso of NIAID’s Laboratory of Immunoregulation told Salon, Env is analogous to an “outer coat,” while Gag is a “major component of what we call the core of the virus.”

The vaccine convinces muscle cells in inoculated animals to produce virus-like particles (VLPs) with copies of Env all over its surface. Lusso added that Gag was also included because it is “a big inducer of T-cell immunity, which to use an imprecise but useful metaphor are cells that will recognize and infect the [pathogen] and kill it, or facilitate destruction.”

In the case of the experimental SHIV vaccine, the early results are promising. When the studies included mice, two injections of the mRNA vaccine induced neutralizing antibodies in all of the tested animals. After the scientists moved on to rhesus macaques — which, as primates, are closer to humans than mice — they found that the inoculations (dispensed in a much more complex study) were largely successful. They produced only mild side effects, like loss of appetite. By the 58th week of study, all of the monkeys had measurable levels of neutralizing antibodies against most of the strains in an SHIV test panel.

When the macaques were then infected with a chimeric version of SHIV, two out of seven of those who received 13 weekly inoculations remained uninfected; the rest delayed onset of infection for an average of eight weeks. The unimmunized macaques, by contrast, were infected in an average of three weeks.

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While Lusso was excited as he described the vaccine’s future, he also cautioned that scientists are in the very early stages of developing it. Vaccine clinical trials require multiple complex phases of human testing so that experts can be as certain as possible that a vaccine is safe before it is distributed to the public. Usually there are three or four phases in a vaccine trial; the COVID-19 vaccine — which was made in under a year and can thus be considered an unusually accelerated case of vaccine development — was sped up by having multiple phases take place simultaneously. In contrast, the SHIV vaccine has yet to officially commence with phase one. Once it does, researchers will have their work cut out for them.

[Go deeper: Here’s what the “phases” of a vaccine trial really mean]

“The major challenge will be to make this vaccine practical,” Lusso told Salon, noting that HIV is a difficult target for the immune system, and therefore immunologists need to figure out how to reduce the number of necessary booster shots.

“It’s hard to imagine that we could use less than four booster injections, or let’s say four injections altogether, one initial vaccine and three boosters,” Lusso explained. “And we may still not get the level of protection we want, so that may require even additional boosters, but there are ways probably to just make each of these boosters more efficient.”

He emphasized that this is necessary for logistical reasons; “we cannot go in Africa and implement a vaccine that needs seven boosters. That is clearly impractical.”

Dr. Russell Medford, Chairman of the Center for Global Health Innovation and Global Health Crisis Coordination Center (who was not involved in the study), told Salon that he feels it is “very promising” and “demonstrates a pathway for the development ultimately of a safe and effective vaccine for HIV in humans for the first time.”

Dr. Monica Gandhi, infectious disease doctor and professor of medicine at the University of California–San Francisco, also told Salon by email that “this is an extremely exciting study that shows us — for the first time in a primate model — that an mRNA vaccine against HIV reduced the risk of acquiring an HIV-like virus infection in macaques.” Gandhi added that it was important that the study showed “a 79% lower risk of infection (per exposure) in vaccinated versus unvaccinated animals.”

Still, Medford also noted that there are challenges facing scientists fighting HIV that are much different than those which they addressed fighting COVID-19. (Lusso made the same observation during his conversation with Salon.)

“HIV is a much more complex problem biologically and immunologically than COVID-19,” Medford explained in an email. “Thus the challenges of developing an effective vaccine that for example blocks every HIV viral particle to prevent its integration into the human genome is significantly greater than that for COVID-19. Prior to eventual studies in humans, more work will needed to, for example, simplify the vaccine protocol and refine and optimize the immunogens needed to elicit an effective immunologic response.”

Gandhi said that there is also a track record of HIV vaccines disappointing, pointing out that “although vaccine candidates have shown promise in primate studies before, they were later not found to be successful in human trials, so we still have to see if this technology will transfer to human HIV” although scientists “remain excited about the promising macaque study nonetheless.”

HIV is not the only disease that scientists hope can be successfully overcome with mRNA vaccines. Because the platform is so versatile, there are scientists who believe that a universal vaccine against influenza strains could one day be developed with the technology. Others propose that the technology be adapted to help the immune system fight against various forms of cancer.

“I think the mRNA vaccine technology is going to have a huge role to play for other pathogens,” Gandhi explained. “The mRNA platform allows the human host to generate a protein of the virus or other pathogen to which to raise an immune response, and has been revolutionary for COVID-19. So, after trying so many other vaccine candidates before for HIV without success, this is a very promising platform to hopefully reach this elusive goal.”

Read more on the future of mRNA vaccine technology:

Author, activist and scholar bell hooks has died at 69

Author, cultural critic, and scholar bell hooks has died, her family announced in a statement. hooks died Dec. 15 at home in Berea, Kentucky. She was 69.

Born Gloria Jean Watkins in 1952 in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, hooks was one of seven children. As a child, she attended segregated schools. She went on to Stanford University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree; the University of Wisconsin, where she received a master’s degree; and the University of California at Santa Cruz, where she earned a doctorate in English Literature.

bells hooks was a pseudonym, intended to honor her great-grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks, a name which she first adopted in 1978 upon the publication of her poetry collection “And There We Wept,” according to her family’s statement. hooks utilized lower-case letters in her pseudonym because she wanted readers to center on the “substance of books, not who I am.”

In 1981, hooks published “Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism.” That was followed by the publication of over three dozen books from collections of essays to poetry to children’s books, often focused on issues and stories of love, race, gender, socioeconomics, culture, and her native Appalachia. As the BBC wrote, “In particular, hooks wrote about how a person’s race, gender and social class were interconnected.”

In a 2000 interview with the NPR program “All Things Considered,” hooks said, “I’m so moved often when I think of the civil rights movement, because I see it as a great movement for social justice that was rooted in love…I tell this to young people, you know, that we can love in a deep and profound way that transforms the political world in which we live in.”

The bell hooks Institute at Berea College, where hooks taught since 2004, opened in 2010. In 2018, hooks was inducted into the Kentucky Writers’ Hall of Fame.

Golf club tax scheme lands Trump in legal trouble as New York investigation heats up

A small town in New York has confirmed it received subpoenas for two different investigations into Donald Trump’s golf course there.

The town has valued the Trump National Golf Club Westchester at about $15 million since 2016, but the former president’s company has tried every year to list its value much lower — despite declaring on White House financial disclosures that the property was worth more than $50 million, reported The Daily Beast.

“At least one of them is false,” said former prosecutor John Moscow, who worked 33 years at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. “This is a relatively clean way to prove these people lie to evade taxes and push the tax burden on honest taxpayers.”

Federal, state and local investigators are each looking into those fluctuating valuations, and both New York Attorney General Letitia James and Westchester District Attorney Mimi Rocah have subpoenaed records from the Ossining town clerk’s office.

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The Daily Beast obtained copies of the official complaints the Trump Organization filed against the town as it attempted to reduce its tax burden, including one challenge that valued the property at $7.5 million, less than half the town’s assessed value of $15.1 million.

The operation’s general manager signed off on a similar effort on Trump’s 71st birthday, June 14, 2017, the exact same day the then-president signed an official government disclosure valuing the property at more than $50 million.

Donald Trump Jr. signed papers in 2018 claiming the golf club’s value had dropped by $1 million, although his father continued to value the property at more than $50 million in forms submitted to the Office of Government Ethics, and Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg signed off on that $6.5 million valuation in 2019 and 2020.

Trump Organization sued Ossining last year, and the town agreed to a settlement that reduced $24.1 million from the golf course’s value over a six-year period — which essentially wiped out two years worth of taxes — and now Ossining, the local public school system, the village of Briarcliff Manor and Westchester County each owe the Trump family thousands of dollars in refunds.

The Trump Organization and its company officials are potentially exposed to New York corruption laws, but the twice-impeached one-term president could be personally implicated if he inflated the value of his assets on government disclosure forms.

“There will be an investigation into what the value really is, and whether they knowingly lied on the value,” said government ethics attorney Melanie Sloan, a senior adviser to the independent watchdog group American Oversight. “If he deliberately filed false information with the OGE, that would violate the False Statement Act.”

“Hawkeye” is a pandemic fable

I fell asleep the first time we watched “Black Widow,” the 2021 Marvel film starring Scarlett Johansson. In my defense, it had been a long week. “What happened to Yelena?” I asked when I woke on the couch. My son, who had been glued to every scene, said frankly: “I honestly do not know.”

In Wednesday’s episode of the Disney+ show “Hawkeye” we know. And it’s not good.

Yelena (Florence Pugh) the assassin sister of Black Widow Natasha was blipped, part of half of the world that disappeared when Thanos snapped his fingers in Marvel lore. Just as suddenly, but actually years later, Yelena reappears, indicated with gasping spectacle early in the episode. Wisely, this opening is set from Yelena’s point of view. She’s gone to an opulent house to try to rescue the contract killer there who she believes is still under the Red Room’s control — Yelena’s mission now is to free other Black Widows.

But in the bathroom, the water in her hands turns to dust. The wallpaper changes. Outside in the living room, there’s a strange man, different furniture, a child.

Before she went into the bathroom, Yelena and a fellow Black Widow vigilante joke about what they will do when all the Black Widows are free: “You and Natasha will be reunited and live your ‘Sex and the City‘ fantasy in New York.” It will stay that, a fantasy — and Yelena will only go to New York for the first time later, alone, to try to kill Clint Barton (Jeremey Renner), the man she believes is responsible for her sister’s death.

Because Clint got his family back after the blip. Yelena never will.

Importantly, Yelena also never got to say goodbye. Natasha’s death happened when Yelena was gone. Natasha never got to say goodbye to her, either.

So much of “Hawkeye” is about separation. Clint is separated from his family at Christmas, the most allegedly together time of the year. Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) is separated from the life she wants, her childhood dream of fighting alongside Barton’s Hawkeye, a dream so close and yet so far away. Kate also drifts further away from her family, as the mother she thought she knew is revealed to be involved in increasingly criminal activities.

Mob leader Maya, the glowing Alaqua Cox, is separated from the world by ableism — her deafness keeps her apart.

As Clint meets Maya to try and dissuade her from avenging her murdered father, a revenge path he knows well as the Ronin, “Hawkeye” once again suffers from not having deaf writers on staff. The show assumes that Maya would not notice the multiple members of her gang being incapacitated and dragged away. Speaking as a deaf person who’s had to be hyperaware my whole life: she would notice. Her fighter character wouldn’t be ill-prepared enough to run out of bullets, either.

Clint suddenly has gotten better at sign language, and Maya at the near-impossible task of lip-reading, and the two can magically understand each other. “You and I, we’re the same.” Clint says. “We’re weapons. But when you’re filled with rage, it makes you blind.”

It’s frustrating that show that did so well with deaf characters in an earlier episode makes an ableist blunder in this one.

This scene is also a missed opportunity for the communication mistakes that define “Hawkeye.” The entire show hinges on misunderstandings that spiral out of control: the domino effect of Natasha’s death, the mistaken identity of Kate as the Ronin, even the Ronin himself.

What will save the characters may be friendship. The centerpiece of this episode is a lovely and funny moment with Kate and Yelena. Yelena has broken into Kate’s fire-ravaged apartment, made boxed mac and cheese (“My daddy says it’s good for you”), and in a scene reminiscent of “Killing Eve” when agent Eve sits down with the charming killer Villanelle, implores Kate to have dinner with her.

Pugh is hilarious, deadpan and believable as Yelena, a role she seems to disappear into, rappelling out the window like a Russian Punky Brewster. And Pugh and Steinfeld have a real chemistry, perhaps even more so than the buddy-buddy-ness of Steinfeld and Renner. In a genre where women are often pitted against each other — Maya fighting Kate, Yelena fighting Maya — it’s refreshing to see two young woman characters banter. “Thank you for the girls’ night, truly,” Yelena says as she takes her window exit. Their connection feels as unlikely as it does inevitable.

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“Hawkeye” is also about saying goodbye to the life you thought you knew. As Kate can’t return to her ruined apartment, so too she can’t go back to being just a college archer with a really rich mom. Not after knowing what she knows now. And though Clint has left the bloodthirsty Ronin behind and is back to being a family man, his actions still resonate, ringing through Yelena, who says, “The trail of blood that follows him, it could wrap around the entire world.”

Yelena and the Ronin have more in common than they realize. Yelena never got the chance to grieve. Clint didn’t allow himself to, instead becoming the Ronin. Characters never get the opportunity to speak their truth, or like Maya, are not understood when they do.

Which is something that may resonate especially now as we approach year three of the pandemic. Many viewers have commented on the setting of “Hawkeye” at Christmastime, which gives it a kind of “Die Hard” joviality. And loneliness. And so perhaps Hawkeye is a pandemic fable too, about how some of us never get to say goodbye or grieve, about loss we can’t even count or imagine how it will live in us forever, not yet.

More stories like this:

Joe Manchin goes off after reporter asks about Biden’s stalled agenda: “You’re bull—-“

After months of hard-fought negotiations, President Joe Biden’s landmark Build Back Better bill is hanging on by a thread in the evenly divided Senate, with a new report alleging that Democrats are ready to shelve the $1.7 trillion measure until next year after facing continued roadblocks from conservative Democrats.

“This is bull—-,” Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, barked to a reporter when asked about the holdup on Wednesday. “You’re bull—-,” Manchin reportedly said to HuffPost political reporter Arthur Delaney.

Democrats just don’t have the votes as Manchin remains a holdout. As a result, sections of Biden’s so-called human infrastructure bill remain unfinished while party leaders continue to make last-minute changes in the hopes that they can sway Manchin’s vote. This includes still-to-be finalized local tax measures and environmental rules on methane gas, according to NBC News.

Party insiders who spoke with the network say any vote on Build Back Better may now be delayed until March, breaking Senate Democrats’ self-imposed Dec. 31 deadline and putting Biden’s domestic agenda in jeopardy as Congress’ upper chamber reportedly returns to voting rights measures ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

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Manchin’s continuing recalcitrance toward the sprawling social safety bill comes amid reports that he is opposed to the inclusion of a permanent child tax credit — hoping to “zero it out,” according to CNN.

“I’ve always been for child tax credits. We voted for it many times,” Manchin said when asked about his opposition to the measure, and whether it was connected to the child tax credit, before unloading a series of expletives at reporters.

Without an extension, Wednesday marks the last day child tax credit payments will go out under pandemic relief measures — though Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., says he isn’t quite ready to throw in the towel on the payments, or Build Back Better, just yet.

“The president and Sen. Manchin are having many discussions, and we’re waiting to see the outcome of those,” Schumer said Wednesday. His office also maintains that it expects both the social safety net bill and a voting rights bill to reach a vote by the end of 2021, despite the challenges.

A beginner’s guide to using an Instant Pot

The Instant Pot is still going strong. The popular multi-cooker launched in 2010 and has since captivated home cooks everywhere for its easy, efficient cooking prowess. If your partner finally picked up on the hints you’ve been dropping for years and bought you an Instant Pot Duo Nova for your birthday, you may be thinking, “but . . . how does an Instant Pot work, anyway?” This multi-tasking tool can operate as a rice cooker, electric pressure cooker, air fryer, steamer, slow-cooker, yogurt maker, and sauté pan.

Setting up your Instant Pot

I hate instruction manuals. I get bored after the cover page, quickly skim the steps for setting up any new device, and assume that I’ll just figure it out as I go. Of course, that never works and I end up begging my fiancé or parents to read the booklet for me and tell me what I need to do. This is not a great way to set up your Instant Pot, or any other new gadget for that matter. You should take the time to read the instruction manual thoroughly before playing around with your new toy, especially when heat and high pressure steam are involved. But if you too want to immediately recycle the manual, here’s what you need to know about setting up your Instant Pot.

Instant Pots contain a few different pieces of equipment — the cooker base, which is the exterior pot that has the control panel and power cord; the stainless steel inner pot, which is what you actually use to cook the food; and the lid. You may also find a stainless steel round rack inserted into the inner pot, but you can put that aside for now. You don’t need it unless you’re boiling eggs. Insert the inner pot into the cooker base, place the lid on top, and then twist the lid clockwise to lock it into place. When you’re done cooking, open the lid by turning it counterclockwise to unlock and remove it.

There are two other things to check before you cook anything in the Instant Pot. There is a valve on the top of the lid that can adjust to either “Sealing” (pointed upwards) or “Venting” (pointed downwards). As the Instant Pot cooks food, you want the valve to be in the sealed position, which keeps the steam and pressure inside the pot. (After you’re done cooking, you can manually release the pressure by switching the valve to the “Venting” position).

The Instant Pot also includes a small plastic drip cup that locks into the back side of the cooking base. This catches any excess steam or moisture and prevents it from dripping on the counter (just be sure to clean them after every use to prevent them from becoming grimy).

How to cook anything in the Instant Pot

Before you try braising chicken thighs or making pulled pork in the Instant Pot, try out the multicooker using the “water test.” This is an initial test run that will allow you to familiarize yourself with the Instant Pot’s functionality. First, plug the pot into an outlet. Seems obvious but hey, I want to make it clear! Add three cups of water to the inner pot. Twist the lid onto the cooker and lock it into place. Select “Manual” or “Pressure Cook” and adjust the cook time to five minutes. Once the cooking cycle has completed, the cooker will beep and switch to “Keep Warm.” At this time, use the quick release method to switch the valve to the “Venting” position, which will force release the pressure. Do this carefully, using an oven mitt or pot holder. The hot steam will quickly shoot straight from the vent into the air and you presumably don’t want to burn yourself.

Once all of the steam has fully released from the pot, you can dump the water out and get cookin’!

* * *

Instant Pot recipes

Now that you (hopefully) have a better understanding of how to use an Instant Pot, it’s time to put it to the test with these 5 classic Instant Pot recipes.

Instant Pot Macaroni and Cheese

Our entire team has been turned on to the magic of mac and cheese made in an Instant Pot. Why? “It comes together in about 20 minutes, is cheesy-as-heck, and best of all, won’t take up any valuable oven space,” writes recipe developer Ella Quittner.

Instant Pot Chili

Like a slow-cooker, the Instant Pot is great for dishes that cook low and slow, like this all-beef chili. Once all of the ingredients are added to the pot, the chili cooks on high pressure for just 8 minutes before the pressure is released naturally.

Instant Pot Homemade Yogurt

One of the coolest features of the Instant Pot is that it can make yogurt. But know that, unlike many quick and speedy Instant Pot recipes, it’s an all-day process. The incubation time takes eight hours, and then the yogurt needs an additional six hours to chill in the refrigerator before it’s ready for a quick snack, breakfast parfait, or smoothie.

Instant Pot Triple Citrus Cheesecake

The Instant Pot goes beyond savory recipes! There are thousands of delicious sweet applications too. Cheesecake is historically finicky, especially when it’s baked in the oven, so prepping it entirely in an Instant Pot is an easy win.

Instant Pot Beef Bourguignon

“This is my own rendition of beef bourguignon, a traditional French stew in red wine sauce. Everything goes into a pressure cooker and takes only 45 minutes to cook (versus several hours the traditional oven or stovetop way),” writes recipe developer Carlos C. Olaechea.

9 recipes inspired by Starbucks holiday drinks

It’s the most wonderful time of the year — that is, if you’re the type, like me, who has already made a dent in their holiday shopping list, started hanging string lights, baking sugar cookies, and playing the Hallmark Christmas movies on TV all day. long. (Yes I know about Thanksgiving, shhhh). It’s also coffee lovers’ favorite time of year. Starbucks has just announced their lineup of seasonal holiday beverages, which will be released on November 4th, 2021, and they will inspire a playlist of Mariah Carey and Harry Connick Jr. from here until 2022 commences.

Starbucks 2021 holiday drinks include fan favorites that we’ve seen for years and years, like the Peppermint Mocha Latte, which is made with chocolate syrup and peppermint syrup; Toasted White Chocolate Mocha made with caramelized white chocolate and topped with whipped cream, red sprinkles, and edible white pearls; Caramel Brulee Latte featuring rich caramel brulée sauce, whipped cream, and a topping of caramel brulée bits; and the Chestnut Praline Latte, which is made with a caramelized chestnut syrup and topped with praline crumbs.

There’s also a new vegan holiday drink at Starbucks this season — the Iced Sugar Cookie Almond Milk Latte, inspired by everyone’s favorite buttery spritz cookies. “We wanted to harness the buttery and vanilla notes of the cookie, which you can pick up in the aroma from that first sip from the sugar cookie flavored syrup and sprinkles. It reminds me of making cookies with my mom and sisters growing up. It gives me all the nostalgic feels of the holiday,” said Erin Marinan, product development manager for Starbucks, in a statement. All of Starbucks holiday lattes are available iced and hot.

Another returning member of the Starbucks holiday menu is Irish Cream Cold Brew, which first debuted in 2019. Cold brew coffee is sweetened with Irish cream syrup, and topped with a cloud of vanilla sweet cream cold foam and a hint of cocoa.

Of course, there’s always Starbucks’ suite of dark and white chocolate beverages. Order Hot Chocolate with whipped cream and mocha drizzle or a White Hot Chocolate made with white chocolate sauce and topped with a generous swirl of whipped cream for a beverage as pure as freshly fallen snow.

And it wouldn’t be an official Starbucks holiday drinks launch without their signature red cups, too. This year’s theme features four different designs inspired by gift wrapping and complete with gift tags that say phrases like “Together at Last,” “Missed You,” “Welcome to the Family,” and “Love You, Nai Nai.” After a year and a half of living through a global pandemic, we can’t wait to wrap our hands around one of these cozy beverages and raise a caffeinated cup to our loved ones near and far.

Recipes inspired by Starbucks holiday drinks

There’s nothing like the real Starbucks holiday lattes and we know that no copycat recipe would suffice. So instead, we rounded up our most cheerful recipes that have the same flavors as some of the beloved beverages, like Toasted White Chocolate Mocha and Pumpkin Spice Lattes.

Peppermint Patties

Chocolate and peppermint is a classic Christmas combo and they’re also the key players in Starbucks’ Peppermint Mocha Latte. These no-bake, six-ingredient cookies will surely get you in the spirit.

Sweet Roasted Chestnuts with Vanilla and Fennel

Inspired by Starbucks’ new Chestnut Praline latte, these melty, rich chestnuts are a sweet rendition on a Christmas staple — no open fire needed.

Caramelized White Chocolate and Toasted Milk Cookies

Obsessed with Starbucks’ White Chocolate Mocha and now their new Toasted White Chocolate Mocha? Go beyond a cup of coffee and enjoy all of the same flavors in the form of these caramely cookies.

Salted Pumpkin Crème Brûlée

Out with the old and in with the new. Or in this case, out with the PSL and in with the hot cocoa. But if you want to hold on to the iconic latte just a little bit longer, this salty-sweet pumpkin spice crème brûlée will help you do just that.

Irish Cream

In celebration of Starbucks’s new Irish Cream Cold Brew, here’s our recipe for homemade Irish cream, which you can stir into your own coffee or give as a DIY food gift to friends, neighbors, co-workers, or the family member who insists they don’t want or need anything.

Dorie Greenspan’s Hot (and Cold) Chocolate

When there’s a blizzard and you can’t quite make it out to your local Starbucks to grab hot cocoa, make it at home using Dorie Greenspan’s satisfying three-ingredient recipe.

Vegan Sugar Cookies

“If you’re looking for authentic, amazing-tasting sugar cookies that are 100% dairy- and egg-free, this is the recipe for you,” writes recipe developer Gena Hamshaw.

Spritz Butter Christmas Cookies

Starbucks’s new vegan drink — the Iced Sugar Cookie Almond Milk Latte — was inspired by these German-style butter cookies. Here, we dyed the dough green and pressed it into the shape of mini Christmas trees because of course.

Salted Vanilla Bean Caramels

Grab a Caramel Brulee Latte in one of Starbucks’ signature red holiday cups . . . or make these homemade candies that boasts really good vanilla flavor, complex caramel notes, and a finishing touch of flaky salt.

Where are Ivanka Trump’s texts? Questions arise after Lindsey Graham reveals Jan. 6 contact

Ivanka Trump has been implicated in the Jan. 6 investigation by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and now calls are being made to see her text messages from that day.

The senator told CNN’s Manu Raju that he asked former president Donald Trump’s eldest daughter, then a senior White House adviser, to deliver a message to her father as his supporters violently stormed the U.S. Capitol as Congress was set to certify Joe Biden’s election win, reported The Independent.

“Sen. Lindsey Graham said he didn’t text with [Mark] Meadows on Jan. 6,” Raju tweeted, “but told me he spoke with Ivanka Trump to deliver a message to her dad. He said he wanted then-President Trump to ‘tell his people to leave.'”

Sen. Lindsey Graham said he didn’t text with Meadows on Jan. 6 —- but told me he spoke with Ivanka Trump to deliver a message to her dad. He said he wanted then-President Trump to “tell his people to leave.”

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) December 14, 2021

Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., read a text from Donald Trump Jr. to Meadows, then the White House chief of staff, begging him to ask his father to call off the mob, but it’s not clear what actions — if any — his sister took as Graham reportedly begged her to intercede.

“You need to get these people out of here,” Graham told her, according to the Washington Post. “This thing is going south. This is not good. You’re going to have to tell these people to stand down. Stand down.”

The newspaper has reported that Ivanka Trump went between her office in the West Wing, where she saw TV footage of the riot, and the president’s dining room, where her father was watching news coverage and tweeted a message of support for law enforcement.

“Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement,” Trump tweeted at 2:38 p.m. “They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!”

Ivanka Trump reportedly tried to get him to use more forceful language to calm his supporters, and thought she had convinced him at one point, but Meadows later called to say that wasn’t the case.

“I need you to come back down here,” Meadows told her. “We’ve got to get this under control.”

Ivanka Trump retweeted another one of her father’s statements, which aides reportedly didn’t think was sufficient under the circumstances, although she quickly deleted that after she was criticized for referring to the rioters as patriots.

“American Patriots – any security breach or disrespect to our law enforcement is unacceptable,” Ivanka Trump tweeted at 3:15 p.m. “The violence must stop immediately. Please be peaceful.”

Other Twitter users are asking what Ivanka Trump and her husband, then-White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, were communicating with Meadows as the riot unfolded.

“I want to see what Jared and Ivanka were texting to Meadows,” tweeted Rick Wilson, a former Republican strategist and co-founder of the Lincoln Project.

I want to see what Jared and Ivanka were texting to Meadows.

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) December 14, 2021

My husband intentionally exposed my family to COVID-19

Dear Pandemic Problems,

My husband (unvaccinated and conspiracy-theory minded with anger against authority issues) deliberately exposed himself to COVID over this last weekend and brought it home to me (double vaccinated) and my two children (7 years old, and 15 month old baby, neither of whom have yet been authorized to receive the vaccine in the country where we live.)

Last Friday he found out that a friend’s wife tested positive. On Saturday, he decided to drive two hours to spend the weekend overnight at their place.

He insists he wasn’t “planning” to catch COVID, he just “refuses to live his life in fear” … but when he returned on Monday, he already had symptoms coming on, and on Tuesday I insisted he get tested. He tested positive for delta.

I kept both my children home from school and childcare since I knew he had been exposed, so as of right now I’m not immediately concerned about them having exposed anyone outside our household. We will go to get tested tomorrow ourselves, and the kids will be in quarantine for 17 days (when they will be tested again). I’ll have to do home-schooling and cope with the fallout from his decision entirely on my own, including missing work.

I feel devastated, betrayed, and furious. I feel like he absolutely knew what he was doing, understood potential consequences — not just for his own health but for his family — and decided that neither me or my kids had any right or say in his choice to do this. He told me that he hadn’t “planned” to catch Covid, but I don’t see many other ways of interpreting this, outside of sheer stupid recklessness and the belief that consequences apply to everyone except him.

I haven’t blown up or said anything in anger beyond expressing — sadly and with a huge amount of fatigue — that I didn’t understand how he could do this. I made soup for him, went to the pharmacy to stock up on painkillers and fever medication, masks … I’m letting him rest and trying to manage the rest because I simply don’t know what to do. I’m numb.

Now he wants to go spend a week over Christmas with the very same couple that infected him in the first place.

He says if I refuse to go, he will take both kids and go anyway.

I don’t trust him. I feel helpless and I don’t know how to approach any of this.

I have no family in the country and I would not want to potentially expose them or anyone else, even if I did.

Sincerely,

Numb on my Next Move

Dear Numb on my Next Move,

To be honest, my fingers are feeling a bit numb on what to type here. In part, because you are yet another writer whose spouse does not believe that COVID-19 is a big deal. But mostly because your husband intentionally exposed himself, you and your children to COVID-19.

So, yeah, I’m a bit speechless, too.

Regardless if your husband’s intention was to “catch” COVID or not, his behavior was, indeed, selfish and reckless. Point blank. And this type of selfish behavior doesn’t bode well in a marriage with kids in the middle of a deadly pandemic.

I have a lot more to say, but before I do, I reached out to clinical psychologist Dr. Carla Marie Manly — and author of “Joy from Fear” and “Date Smart” — to help.

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“Partners who are emotionally intelligent tend to, by default, mindfully factor in their partner’s needs and well-being . . . and when children are in the picture, their needs and safety are also paramount for the emotionally healthy partner,” Manly said. “When a partner fails to consider the needs, rights, and safety of the other partner or children, this type of overtly selfish behavior can create mental and physical health issues in the long term.”

Manly added that while your husband can certainly decline to get vaccinated, that is a minor harm compared to deliberately exposing you and your children to COVID-19.

“This type of behavior not only exposes his wife and children to harm but also impacts their ability to engage in normal social and school/childcare interactions,” Manly said. “The selfish and thoughtless nature of husband’s behavior may be indicative of underlying narcissistic tendencies that will make the relationship difficult to bear in the long term.”

You are “absolutely entitled to feel devastated, betrayed, and furious” Manly said. In addition to feeling your feelings, and exploring your options, Manly said “a bit of boundary work is in order.” In other words, no more rewarding any behavior from him that clearly crosses your boundaries.

“The wife may want to create clear boundaries that help the husband understand the personal consequences of his reckless, inconsiderate behavior,” Manly said. “For example, perhaps this is a good opportunity to allow the husband to make his own soup and obtain his own medicine. It is only through exercising natural consequences of reckless behavior that he might learn to consider the impact of his actions”

As for Christmas, Manly said, “if he threatens to take the children to an unsafe situation, a call to the police may be in order.”

I’m so sorry you’re going through this. You and your children deserve better.

Sincerely,

Pandemic Problems

“Pandemic Problems” is an advice column that answers readers’ pandemic questions — often with help from epidemiologists, philosophers and psychologists — who weigh in on how to “do the right thing.” Do you have a pandemic problem? Email Nicole Karlis at nkarlis@salon.com. Peace of mind and collective commiseration awaits.

Read more from Pandemic Problems:

Multiple residents from Florida’s Trump-loving “The Villages” arrested for voter fraud

Three Republican voters in a Trump-loving Florida retirement community have been arrested on charges of casting multiple ballots.

Jay Ketcik, Joan Halstead and John Rider, all residents of “The Village,” a retirement community that’s served as a hub of support for the former Republican president, have been apprehended by police for voter fraud. Ketcik, 63, allegedly voted by mail in Florida last October 2020. But according to another ballot, Ketcik also voted in his home state of Michigan, court records indicate. Joan Halstead, 71, was arrested two weeks ago for allegedly voting in Florida last year but also through an absentee ballot in New York. John Rider, 61, was earlier this month arrested on suspicion of casting two ballots, though the details of his arrest are not fully known. Prosecutors have indicated that Rider submitted ballots both in Florida and in another state.

Both Ketcik and Halstead have entered not guilty pleas, aiming to challenge “the sufficiency” of their charges.

According to prosecutors, their arrests come amid allegations of voting irregularities in the county. County Supervisor of Elections Bill Keen said that Sumter is conducting an active investigation into the matter.

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It remains unclear which candidates Ketcik, Halstead, and Rider voted for. However, Ketcik and Halstead are registered Republicans hailing from the deep red county, 67.8% of whose population voted for the Republican Party in the presidential election. According to The Independent, both Ketcik and Halstead’s Facebook activity suggests they are Trump supporters. Rider, meanwhile, has no known party affiliation but was a registered Republican at the time of his arrest. All three face third-degree felony charges punishable by up to five years in prison.

The arrests come only a month after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed a sweeping restrictive voting law apparently designed to bolster “election security” in the Sunshine State. The bill specifically heightens voter ID laws, limits the use of ballot drop boxes, and outright bans the practice of “ballot harvesting” – which allows third-party organizers and election officials to collect ballots on behalf of voters. Despite the professed need for these new rules, Florida state officials have repeatedly failed to find any evidence of widespread outcome-altering election fraud.

According to an Associated Press review of every potential case of voter fraud in Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, fewer than 475 fraudulent ballots may have been cast in the 2020 election – a number that would not have made any difference in the outcome. “The review also showed no collusion intended to rig the voting,” AP added. “Virtually every case was based on an individual acting alone to cast additional ballots.”

Fox News passes Trump’s loyalty test: It’s about more than lying — it’s about teaching how to lie

After a full day of silence, the hosts of Fox News finally quit ignoring their bombshell text message scandal and came out swinging. It’s unclear, however, why they needed an entire day to draft their responses as what they finally offered was both lazy and incoherent.

The text messages sent to Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, on Jan. 6 indisputably prove that Fox News hosts deliberately lie to their audiences.

Privately, the network’s biggest stars were freaked out by the Capitol insurrection. They clearly, and correctly, saw it as something Donald Trump purposefully instigated. Publicly, however, they were willing to deflect blame from Trump, defend the rioters and minimize the violence. But rather than apologize to their viewers for spending 11 months lying to them, the hydra-headed Fox News monster just threw out a bunch of contradictory and not even remotely persuasive excuses.

Laura Ingraham whined about “left wing media hacks” who are in “spin and defame mode.” Tucker Carlson flatly claimed that the texts were “exculpatory” and “a tribute to the people who wrote them.” Sean Hannity sneered that the release of his text messages was “a weak attempt to smear yours truly and presumably I guess President Trump.” In reality, Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming — who is a hardcore conservative, but is just an outlier in finding fascist insurrections distasteful — simply read the texts verbatim, no garnish needed to expose these two as sleazy liars.

They pretended their “privacy” was being invaded, even though the texts were turned over under legal subpoena. And they continued to pretend that the insurrection didn’t actually happen while also insisting that their texts show they took it seriously while it was happening. Hannity even tried to revive the talking point that the insurrection was actually the fault of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, instead of the guy that gathered his supporters together with promises that it would be “wild,” and then unleashed them on the Capitol for six hours.

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Don’t try to make sense of all these Fox News excuses. They aren’t meant to be rational, logical, or persuasive. On the contrary, the swirl of rationalizations is intended to discombobulate.

While good faith actors are busy picking apart Excuse A, Fox News hosts are busy churning out Excuses B, C, D, and E. There’s no keeping up with the firehose of bullshit. This is gaslighting and not just garden variety lying. There’s no intent here to fool anyone — not the media, not liberals, and certainly not Fox News viewers. Instead, the intent is to flood the zone with so much nonsense that the opposition becomes exhausted and gives up fighting for truth. Most importantly, Fox is training their audiences to embrace the same approach to politics.

What the average Fox viewer gets from this grotesque display is not a convincing argument that the hosts are blameless victims of a left-wing smear campaign. What he is being persuaded of is the importance of releasing any lingering attachment to truth or decency. Facts and rationality are direct threats to the authoritarian ideology and must be crushed under the heel. What Fox viewers are learning is shamelessness. Fox News hosts are demonstrating a willingness to say or do whatever it takes to advance the cause of what is, ultimately, fascism.

As Andrew O’Hehir argued at Salon Wednesday morning, for Trump, “reality is always contingent, always manufactured.” Selling this fake reality does not depend on a convincing or even logical story. Instead, the key is belligerence: “Never break character or let down your guard; never admit doubt or regret or uncertainty.” Just keep repeating the lies, loudly and ad nauseum, and exhaust your opponents into giving up.

The tornado of bullshit emanating from Fox News in response to the text scandal is proof that the students of Trump have become the masters.

Gone are the fearful mice that were worried that inciting an insurrection might make the GOP look bad, or scare their followers away from taking the fascist movement to the next level. Instead, they are more committed than ever to the belief that truth doesn’t matter. All that matters is power. Indeed, the more ridiculous and unjustified the claims, the more power they demonstrate by standing by them anyway. This is something Trump has always understood, which is why his first act in office was to insist that his inauguration crowd was bigger than Barack Obama’s, and refuse to relent in the face of what should have been indisputable photographic evidence that showed otherwise.

The bellicosity worked. A study swiftly demonstrated that, when shown pictures of both the Trump and Obama inauguration crowds, a significant percentage of Republican voters rejected the evidence of their own eyes to insist the Trump crowd was bigger. They aren’t crazy or deluded. They just understand what is expected of them: Facts don’t matter. All that matters is toeing the party line.

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Back in 2017, more than 40% of Republican voters were shameless enough to parrot the “Trump’s crowd was bigger” line, even when they were being embarrassed by pictures that showed otherwise. The situation has only gotten worse since then. Now 7 out of 10 GOP voters will tell a pollster they believe the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen, even though their actual behavior indicates they do not believe this at all. The average Republican voter is now committed to doing and saying whatever it takes to end democracy and has no compunction about telling obvious lies to achieve that goal.

The situation has gotten worse since 2017, in no small part because Fox hosts spent the past five years or so instructing their audiences in the art of gaslighting. As Trump demonstrated, the trick is to make claims that both the liar and their targets know are untrue, but to make them “true” through the simple but effective method of relentlessness.

In a sense, it’s not even really lying. Lying is an attempt to deceive. Gaslighting, however, does not try to convince anyone of anything, except their own powerlessness. Trump’s incessant insistence that the election was “stolen” convinces no one. But, by grinding at it day and night, Trump has indoctrinated his followers into parroting the lie, not because they believe it, but as a means to demonstrate loyalty.

So Fox News hosts lie to their audience. They know it, their opponents know it, and most crucially, their audiences know it. The excuses being fanned out to justify it aren’t persuasive in the slightest, nor are they meant to be. The only purpose is to fill Fox viewers with hot air that they can, in turn, spew back out when defending their support for Trump. Lies do not offend GOP voters, because they understand that lies are a tactic in gaining power. And power is, ultimately, all that matters to them.