Kyrsten Sinema boldly fights her own party — to save another tax break for the rich

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., is pushing back against another Democratic proposal to crack down on a tax break that has been abused by the wealthy in negotiations over President Biden’s Build Back Better bill.

Sinema, who already killed Democratic efforts to roll back some of the Trump-era tax cuts for the ultra-rich and big corporations — a proposed change that even fellow “centrist” holdout Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia supported — is the only Democrat opposed to cracking down on abuse of the conservation easement tax deduction, three sources told The Daily Beast.

The conservation easement deduction allows landowners who donate land for conservation to claim tax deductions on their income. It was originally intended to protect land from development but has long been abused by “syndicates” of investors, who often buy up cheap properties, persuade an appraiser to overvalue it and then reap the benefits of large tax breaks, frequently worth many times the amount originally invested, ProPublica detailed in an investigation last year. Former President Donald Trump currently faces a New York state investigation into whether he improperly inflated the value of his Westchester County mansion to score a $21 million tax break under the program. IRS efforts to crack down on abuse of the tax break have largely fallen flat, leading both Democrats and Republicans in Congress to push for a fix.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, is pushing for the BBB package to include the Charitable Conservation Easement Program Integrity Act, which would bar conservation easement deductions exceeding 250% of the total amount invested in the property. Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., who introduced the bill in the House, said the bill would protect the tax deduction from “bad actors” abusing the program.

Groups backing the tax break, which have spent $9 million on lobbyists over the past four years, are fighting to kill the proposal, according to Bloomberg. So is Sinema, whose opposition led to the provision being axed from the bill passed by the House last month. Democrats and conservation advocacy groups are still trying to get Sinema on board with the bill, which even has support from some Republicans, including Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Steve Daines, R-Mont.

“We respectfully ask you to stand with us — and all in our community — by urging your leadership to curb abuse and restore the integrity of this cherished and worthy conservation program,” a coalition of more than a dozen conservation advocacy groups wrote in a letter to Sinema, according to the Daily Beast.

Sinema spokesman John LaBombard told the outlet that constituent groups like hospitals and colleges have raised concerns with “the approach under consideration for this legislation.” While some groups that oppose the proposal have indeed complained that the bill would apply to past transactions as well as future ones, Sinema has also rejected a compromise deal that would limit the ban to future transactions, according to the Daily Beast report.

Sinema “shares the goal of stopping abusive comprehensive easement practices and believes that comprehensive reforms are needed” but “believes that such reforms must be designed thoughtfully, after a robust review process that includes the views of impacted stakeholders — because oversimplified legislation could have a chilling effect on legitimate charitable donations of lands for conservation, hurting states like Arizona,” LaBombard told the Beast. “The senator looks forward to continuing discussions with the bipartisan group of senators examining this challenge.”

Conservation groups have warned for years that the tax break is being abused. The Land Trust Alliance, which represents organizations that receive conservation easements, says that syndicated conservation easements, in which promoters organize groups of investors who buy land to generate big tax deductions, accounted for $9.2 billion in deductions to fewer than 300 entities in 2018, compared to $1 billion in deductions for 2,000 to 2,500 non-syndicated landowners.

“The IRS and Treasury Department have stepped up their efforts to halt this abuse,” Andrew Bowman, the group’s president, told Bloomberg. “It is time for Congress to do its part.”

Wyden told Bloomberg that efforts to crack down on the abuse have been stymied by industry groups. “There have been loads of lobbyists running around standing up for policies that really flagrantly abuse” the tax break, he said.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

Sinema, who has repeatedly met with lobbyists fighting provisions in the BBB, previously torpedoed efforts to roll back the Trump tax cut on corporations and top earners even though she previously voted against them. She told The Washington Post last month that she is focused on “maintaining American competitiveness and ensuring that businesses of all sizes in America, and particularly in Arizona, have the ability to grow and to compete.”

Sinema was also instrumental in gutting the Democratic proposal to allow Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices, drastically limiting which drugs can be negotiated after receiving hundreds of thousands in donations from the pharmaceutical industry.

Democrats say it’s imperative to seize this opportunity to crack down on abuse of the deduction. “These types of conservation easements, some of them are the shadiest of the shady transactions,” Wyden told HuffPost earlier this month. “We’re working hard to get all the senators on board.”

Even Republicans opposed to the overall package hope that Wyden will be able to win over Sinema.

“Democrats aren’t going to listen to me on that,” Grassley told HuffPost, “but if they listen to Wyden, that’d be OK with me.”

Read more on BBB and attempts to end tax breaks for the wealthy:

Tucker Carlson’s “red-faced man” conspiracy theory about Capitol rioters just fell apart

January 6, 2021 was among the most horrifying days in U.S. history — a day in which a violent mob of far-right insurrectionists attacked the U.S. Capitol Build in the hope of preventing Congress from certifying now-President Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory over their idol, then-President Donald Trump. Yet Tucker Carlson and other far-right Fox News hosts have not only been apologists for the January 6 coup attempt, but also, pushed the nonsense conspiracy theory that some of the rioters were really leftist Antifa members. Washington Post opinion writer Aaron Blake examines some of Carlson’s January 6-related claims in his December 10 column, explaining why they are so ludicrous and detached from reality.

“From basically the moment the January 6 Capitol insurrection concluded, supporters of Donald Trump have sought to pitch the event as a ‘false flag’ — and ultimately even some kind of government conspiracy,” Blake explains. “It looked bad, after all, to have allies who believed Trump’s bogus stolen-election claims resort to violence and chant about killing (then-Vice President) Mike Pence while marauding through the halls of Congress. So, for 11 months, the likes of Tucker Carlson and conspiratorially-minded members of Congress such as Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) have sought evidence in support of that conclusion. It continues to go poorly.”

In his column, Blake draws heavy on an article by journalist Ryan J. Reilly that HuffPost published on December 9. Blake, describing Reilly’s article as a “must-read piece,” discusses the claims of attorney Joseph McBride, who has represented some of the January 6 defendants.

McBride’s conspiracy theory is that some of the Capitol rioters were really government provocateurs who wanted to make Trump and the MAGA movement look bad. Appearing on Carlson’s show on December 6, Blake notes, McBride “proceeded to highlight one specific supposed agent provocateur, who stood out because he was wearing red face paint.”

“McBride describes the red-faced man as ‘clearly a law enforcement officer,'” Blake writes. “His evidence? On video, the man ‘interacts with uniformed personnel.’ McBride has said the man was also passing out things that could be used as weapons…. A journalist at this point might have asked for some more compelling evidence…. But Carlson was impressed with a theory that confirmed his priors.”

Reilly, Blake notes, has shed light on who the man wearing red face paint on January 6 was.

“He reported that the red-faced man is actually something of a minor local celebrity in St. Louis known as the ‘Rally Runner,'” Blake writes. “The Rally Runner is known for sprinting around Busch Stadium during St. Louis Cardinals baseball games. He even does so wearing the same red face paint. The Rally Runner also happens to be a big fan of Carlson’s show and was visited by the FBI shortly after the Capitol riot, apparently thanks in part to posting regularly on social media about it. And in a twist, he has also promoted the idea that the Capitol riot was a ‘setup.'”

According to Blake, “The pièce de résistance involves McBride’s response to Reilly. When pressed on his claims, McBride stated that he was representing his client and didn’t ‘need to be right’ in all his claims. ‘If I’m wrong, so be it, bro. I don’t care,’ he said. ‘I don’t give a shit about being wrong.’ That last quote should perhaps be the new motto for those most forcefully pushing this baseless conspiracy theory.”

Mark Meadows is having a really bad week — and Trump’s is even worse

It has been a very bad week for former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows —maybe even the worst week of his life. And it’s not over yet.

Late on Tuesday night, the House of Representatives voted to hold Meadows, a former GOP congressman from North Carolina, in criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena issued by the bipartisan Jan. 6th Committee. The vote fell mostly along party lines, with only Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the only two Republicans serving on the committee, being the only two Republicans who voted with every Democrat to hold.

Meadows contempt citation will now be referred to the Justice Department, which will decide whether to prosecute. Most of the TV lawyers seem to think this will be a hard call since Meadows really was in the White House during the period in question, unlike podcaster Steve Bannon, who was referred a few weeks ago on the same charge. On the other hand, before Meadows decided to defy the subpoena, he had turned over around 6,000 documents including many text messages, which the committee claims it wants to ask him about. So Meadows is claiming that they can look at his documents but his knowledge of them is privileged information? That doesn’t make any sense.

The documents he turned over which the committee has released in the last few days have been dramatic and compelling. Among them was the PowerPoint presentation that had been circulated in the White House and to Republicans in Congress and the right-wing media prior to the insurrection. It’s a shocking document that outlined several possible strategies to illegally overturn the 2020 election. Subsequent reporting revealed many GOP officials knew that Trump and his henchmen had cooked up plans to stage a coup and didn’t say anything about it.

Then on Monday, as the committee was preparing to vote, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-WY., read off some of Meadows’ text messages showing that Fox News personalities such as Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity had been frantically texting Meadows during the insurrection asking him to get Trump to call off his troops. Even Donald Trump Jr. exhorted Meadows to tell his daddy that he needed to “lead now” and do an Oval Office address. There were dozens of such texts from people all over Washington, begging the president to tell his followers to stop the violence.

We know that Trump sat on his hands for hours sending out lame tweets about respecting the police until he finally released a video in which he commiserated with the violent thugs and told them that they were very special and he loved them.

We’ve learned that there were texts to Meadows after the fact from unnamed congressional lawmakers telling him they had tried their best but “nothing worked.” On Tuesday night before the floor vote, members of the committee read more, some of which revealed that members of Congress were offering advice on how to carry out the coup even before January 6th:

Don't think this one has fully sunk in yet: A member of Congress suggested that GOP-controlled states anoint Trump electors **before those states were even called.**

This wasn't overturning the election. This was scrapping democracy before the votes were even counted. pic.twitter.com/gzf89U52jD

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) December 15, 2021

The Jan. 6th Committee is planning to start holding public hearings shortly after the new year and the word is that they will release the names of those GOP officials who helped with the coup planning.

One can only imagine what’s happening down at Mar-a-Lago now that Trump has seen that his own son Don Jr. was calling his (formerly) trusted majordomo Mark Meadows on that day, telling him his father had to “lead.” After the recent debacle of Meadows’ book, in which he revealed the former president’s pitiful, weakened state as he was lying to the country about having COVID, Trump now has to grapple with the fact that Meadows inexplicably turned over all these documents to the committee and is only now exerting executive privilege after the cat is out of the bag.

So Trump may be having a worse week than Meadows.

Not only is he dealing with the fallout of Meadows’ document dump, a judge just ruled on Tuesday that he’s going to have to give up his tax returns after all. That the ruling came from a judge who Trump appointed, must really chap his hide. It’s been stayed pending appeal, but the gyrations the higher courts would have to go through may not be worth the trouble. If he runs again in 2024, there’s a good chance the country will at least be able to see what he’s been hiding.

He’s also been called to appear for a deposition by the New York Attorney General’s office in regards to the civil fraud investigation into his real estate business. Since the Manhattan District Attorney is running a parallel criminal investigation, this puts Trump at risk if he is forced to take the Fifth Amendment in the civil case to avoid incriminating himself criminally. In civil cases, you are allowed to infer guilt from a Fifth Amendment plea.

The bad news quickly piled up for Trump this week when the New York Times reported late Tuesday that the prosecutors in the criminal investigation have called his accountant and his longtime banker before the grand jury to determine whether Trump committed fraud when he applied for loans. It appears that these two cases may be coming to a head.

But perhaps even more threatening, for the first time we are seeing the contours of what the January 6th Committee may be leading up to: a criminal referral of Donald Trump for obstruction. Liz Cheney spelled it out on Monday during the Committee hearing to hold Meadows in contempt of congress:

Hours passed without necessary action by the President. These privileged texts are further evidence of President Trump’s supreme dereliction of duty during those 187 minutes. And Mr. Meadows’ testimony will bear on another key question before this Committee: Did Donald Trump, through action or inaction, corruptly seek to obstruct or impede Congress’ official proceedings to count electoral votes?

Journalist Marcy Wheeler explains that this seems to be following the same legal framework the DOJ is using to prosecute the most serious January 6th rioters. She writes, “Liz Cheney was stating that Trump’s actions on January 6 may demonstrate that he, along with hundreds of people he incited, had deliberately attempted to prevent the vote count.”

The language Cheney used tracks closely with those other cases, which is a clue that this is how they may be seeing this case going forward. The courts have so far been amenable to this interpretation of the law 18 USC 1512(c)(2) which makes it illegal to obstruct an official proceeding. Whether that holds up through the inevitable appeals process is yet to be determined, but when you look at the evidence it’s clear that Donald Trump spent weeks planning to do just that and when his followers resorted to violence to accomplish it, he sat on his hands for hours and watched them do it.

I am not particularly optimistic that any of these cases will come to fruition. But Trump and his henchmen are feeling the heat right now for what his long-time fixer Michael Cohen always calls “his dirty deeds” and maybe that’s the best we can hope for.

Judge rules against Trump, releases his taxes to Congress

A federal judge on Tuesday ruled that Donald Trump’s tax filings can be released by the Treasury Department, striking a death blow against the former president’s years-long crusade to keep them hidden from public scrutiny.

The decision, handed down in a 45-page opinion by Judge Trevor McFadden of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, specifically gives the House Ways and Means Committee access to Trump’s long-sought tax returns. The committee could then vote on whether to publicize the documents.

“A long line of Supreme Court cases requires great deference to facially valid congressional inquiries,” McFadden wrote. “Even the special solicitude accorded former presidents does not alter the outcome.”

The judge, however, did note the potential for unintended consequences in the case that Trump’s taxes are made public.

“Anyone can see that publishing confidential tax information of a political rival is the type of move that will return to plague the inventor,” McFadden said. “It might not be right or wise to publish the returns, but it is the chairman’s right to do so.”

McFadden further granted Trump’s legal team a 14-day stay on the ruling to provide the former president ample time to appeal.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass, the committee chair, first requested Trump’ taxes back in 2019, arguing that the committee was seeking to review and improve the federal government’s presidential audit program.

Traditionally, the committee has held a broad right to request anyone’s tax information from the Department of Treasury. However, over the past two years, Trump’s legal team has refused to disclose them, claiming that the committee’s inquiry had no legitimate aim and was instead politically motivated.

“Just more harassment,” Eric Trump, Executive Vice President of The Trump Organization, wrote of the Democrats’ lawsuit in July. “The weaponization of politics and evilness of the far left is hard to comprehend.”

Shortly after Trump’s refusal to comply, the committee filed a lawsuit against the former president. During the Trump administration, this suit saw little to no progress. However, in July of this year, President Biden issued a 39-page Justice Department memo to the Justice Department, noting that Neal “has invoked sufficient reasons for requesting the former President’s tax information.”

In a statement on Wednesday, Neal said that McFadden’s ruling was “no surprise.”

“The law is clearly on the committee’s side. I am pleased that we’re now one step closer to being able to conduct more thorough oversight of the I.R.S.’s mandatory presidential audit program.”

Tornadoes and climate change: What a warming world means for deadly twisters

The deadly tornado outbreak that tore through communities from Arkansas to Illinois on the night of Dec. 10-11, 2021, was so unusual in its duration and strength, particularly for December, that a lot of people including the U.S. president are asking what role climate change might have played — and whether tornadoes will become more common in a warming world.

Both questions are easier asked than answered, but research is offering new clues.

I’m an atmospheric scientist who studies severe convective storms like tornadoes and the influences of climate change. Here’s what scientific research shows so far.

Climate models can’t see tornadoes yet — but they can recognize tornado conditions

To understand how rising global temperatures will affect the climate in the future, scientists use complex computer models that characterize the whole Earth system, from the Sun’s energy streaming in to how the soil responds and everything in between, year to year and season to season. These models solve millions of equations on a global scale. Each calculation adds up, requiring far more computing power than a desktop computer can handle.

To project how Earth’s climate will change through the end of the century, we currently have to use a broad scale. Think of it like the zoom function on a camera looking at a distant mountain. You can see the forest, but individual trees are harder to make out, and a pine cone in one of those trees is too tiny to see even when you blow up the image. With climate models, the smaller the object, the harder it is to see.

Tornadoes and the severe storms that create them are far below the typical scale that climate models can predict.

What we can do instead is look at the large-scale ingredients that make conditions ripe for tornadoes to form.

Two key ingredients for severe storms are (1) energy driven by warm, moist air promoting strong updrafts, and (2) changing wind speed and direction, known as wind shear, which allows storms to become stronger and longer-lived. A third ingredient, which is harder to identify, is a trigger to get storms to form, such as a really hot day, or perhaps a cold front. Without this ingredient, not every favorable environment leads to severe storms or tornadoes, but the first two conditions still make severe storms more likely.

By using these ingredients to characterize the likelihood of severe storms and tornadoes forming, climate models can tell us something about the changing risk.

How storm conditions are likely to change

Climate model projections for the United States suggest that the overall likelihood of favorable ingredients for severe storms will increase by the end of the 21st century. The main reason is that warming temperatures accompanied by increasing moisture in the atmosphere increases the potential for strong updrafts.

Rising global temperatures are driving significant changes for seasons that we traditionally think of as rarely producing severe weather. Stronger increases in warm humid air in fall, winter and early spring mean there will be more days with favorable severe thunderstorm environments — and when these storms occur, they have the potential for greater intensity.

What studies show about frequency and intensity

Over smaller areas, we can simulate thunderstorms in these future climates, which gets us closer to answering whether severe storms will form. Several studies have modeled changes to the frequency of intense storms to better understand this change to the environment.

We are already seeing evidence in the past few decades of shifts toward conditions more favorable for severe storms in the cooler seasons, while the summertime likelihood of storms forming is decreasing.

For tornadoes, things get trickier. Even in an otherwise spot-on forecast for the next day, there is no guarantee that a tornado will form. Only a small fraction of the storms produced in a favorable environment will produce a tornado at all.

Several simulations have explored what would happen if a tornado outbreak or a tornado-producing storm occurred at different levels of global warming. Projections suggest that stronger, tornado-producing storms may be more likely as global temperatures rise, though strengthened less than we might expect from the increase in available energy.

The impact of 1 degree of warming

Much of what we know about how a warming climate influences severe storms and tornadoes is regional, chiefly in the United States. Not all regions around the globe will see changes to severe storm environments at the same rate.

In a recent study, colleagues and I found that the rate of increase in severe storm environments will be greater in the Northern Hemisphere, and that it increases more at higher latitudes. In the United States, our research suggests that for each 1 degree Celsius (1.8 F) that the temperatures rises, a 14-25% increase in favorable environments is likely in spring, fall and winter, with the greatest increase in winter. This is driven predominantly by the increasing energy available due to higher temperatures. Keep in mind that this is about favorable environments, not necessarily tornadoes.

What does this say about December’s tornadoes?

To answer whether climate change influenced the likelihood or intensity of tornadoes in the December 2021 outbreak, it remains difficult to attribute any single event like this one to climate change. Shorter-term influences like the El Niño-Southern Oscillation may also complicate the picture.

There are certainly signals pointing in the direction of a stormier future, but how this manifests for tornadoes is an open area of research.

[Over 140,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletters to understand the world. Sign up today.]

John Allen, Associate Professor of Meteorology, Central Michigan University

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

How the age of Trump has changed fandom

If you think that the true focus of the recent World Series was what the Houston Astros and Atlanta Braves were doing on the field, you were either living in Texas, Georgia, or on some billionaire’s space station. In the world that lies somewhere between rabid fandom and total baseball disinterest, the fall classic actually proved to be a contest pitting the cheaters against the racists with a disturbing outcome that might be summed up this way: to the spoiled belongs the victory.

And don’t think this was purely a baseball phenomenon. I can’t wait to see who will be competing in next February’s Super Bowl, although the most obvious early contenders are homophobia, sexism, and vaccination misinformation. As for the basketball, hockey, and Olympic seasons, I’m putting my money on the likelihood that predatory sexuality, financial inequality, and transgender discrimination will be right up there alongside the commercials for Nike and gambling.

I consider all this the upshot of what appears to be a shift in the very nature of fandom, a moral drift. Fandom has traditionally been mostly regional. In recent years, however, it has begun to take on the worst of the corrupted tribalism that has dominated so much of life outside the arena, the ballpark, and the stadium ever since Donald Trump became America’s coach. Before that, sports was generally considered a crucible for character, a place to define righteous principles, or at least to pay lip service to the high road, whether anyone was on it or not.

Of course, as Trump himself was more a symptom of ongoing developments in this country than the originator of them, this moral drift in sports started years ago when TV and shoe company money further corrupted the arms-race competition among colleges for box-office athletes. Think of Trump as the blowhard who fanned the already growing flames, or perhaps more accurately — by provoking the fanatics — flamed the fans. This shifting sense of sports, fandom, and life in America started gathering velocity in the late 1990s as performance-enhancing drugs proliferated and the National Football League’s (NFL’s) ongoing cover-up of the brain traumas the sport caused so many of its players began to be revealed.

Soon enough, though, cover-ups of just about any sort became unnecessary as the world of Trumpism affirmed that the strategic use of lies and bad behavior was at least as acceptable as were well-thought-out personal fouls in soccer and basketball. And all of that was before the complications of the Covid-19 pandemic led professional athletes to realize that it was about time they assumed active responsibility for their own physical and mental health — if they wanted to survive.

International stars like tennis champion Naomi Osaka and Olympic medal winning gymnast Simone Biles found themselves crushed by the pressure exerted on them by major sports institutions whose only interests, whatever their fates, seemed to be eternal profits. Even pro football players are becoming involved in their own mental health.

The Fall Classic

A milestone of the current moral drift was the World Series just past.

Like every major sporting event these days, it opened with a media-generated narrative. Such story lines generally feature a star’s comeback (from a slump, an injury, or more recently, suspensions for drug use or domestic violence) or perhaps a franchise’s chance to finally win a title and so repay a city for its endless sufferance of mediocrity and tax breaks. Such narratives help ratings and circulation. Baseball, losing popularity lately, depends on them, especially to reel in the “cool” Black audience so important to current pop culture and style.

That’s why this year’s baseball narrative was so startling — and effective in terms of ratings. I think of it as: root for the lesser of two evils. In this case, the lesser of those was either a team that broke the rules to win the title or a team that marketed its racism.

Three years ago, the Houston Astros won the 2017 World Series, apparently with the help of an intricate system of cheating, which involved shooting video of the opposing team’s pitching signals and relaying them to their own batters. The subsequent punishments meted out by Major League Baseball (MLB) were clearly designed not to be harsh enough to damage the Astros’ future possibilities in any way. And when the team showed up at the 2021 World Series, it was with a new manager, Dusty Baker, a highly appropriate yet seemingly cynical selection of the team owners.

Baker, after all, is Black and celebrated for his integrity and decency. As a player, he was mentored by Atlanta slugger Hank Aaron. As a veteran manager, he was well-liked by his players and by the media. For a team that had cheated the last time around, he was, in other words, a seemingly unassailable and all-too-necessary figure. (Well, actually, maybe not quite. Despite managing slugger Barry Bonds for 10 years at San Francisco, he claims to have had no idea whether Bonds used steroids, which, for some at least, makes him either a liar or a self-blinkered leader.)

In any case, Baker’s reputation made it possible for fans and the media to look past the Astros’ previous transgressions long enough to focus instead on those of the Atlanta Braves. In a time when the Cleveland Indians have changed their name to the Cleveland Guardians and the former Washington Redskins have dropped their (as yet to be replaced) terrible name, Atlanta and Major League Baseball nevertheless defended not only that team’s use of what was considered a racist slur (“Braves”), but its promotion of the despicable tomahawk chop gesture among its fans in the stands, which former President Trump so notoriously demonstrated when he attended game four of the series.

If perhaps you don’t know what happened but still care, the “Braves” beat the Astros, four games to two, to win the series. In what once was arguably the national pastime, they seemed to prove that racism tops cheating in Trumpist America during this season of moral drift.

Email Slurs

But what about the sport that left baseball in the dust, and now passes for the national pastime? Can diverse bigotry beat anti-vaxx mendacity in pro football?

Last October, Jon Gruden, justifiably famous for good-old white mediocrity, resigned as head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders after a trove of emails revealed him to be an equal-opportunity slinger of slurs. Those emails were discovered while lawyers were investigating alleged sexual harassment at the Washington Football Team (those former Redskins). The Gruden emails had mostly been exchanged 10 years ago with Bruce Allen, then the Washington team president when Gruden was an ESPN sports analyst. Racial and homophobic slurs abounded in those old, white, frat-boy-style exchanges.

Allen was fired and Gruden is now suing the NFL and its commissioner, Roger Goodell, for allegedly leaking those emails in an attempt, he claims, to divert attention from the transgressions of the league and of Goodell himself. It’s not all that far-fetched a notion in this time of conspiracies. Who knows what medical, racial, and financial wrongdoing pro football continues to conceal today?

It may be unlikely but, should the upcoming Super Bowl feature, say, the Raiders or that still-to-be-renamed Washington team against the Green Bay Packers, it could rival the World Series as a “lesser of two evils” (or greater of two evils?) event. Matched against the bigotry that lost Gruden his job would be the peculiar prevarications of the Packers’ once exemplary quarterback, Aaron Rodgers. He lied about getting his Covid vaccinations, putting teammates, fans, and sports reporters at risk.

One of my favorite sports commentators weighed in mightily on the subject. The Washington Post‘s Sally Jenkins wrote:

“Lord knows Rodgers is inventive with the football, but of all the dodging, narcissistic, contrived moves. ‘Yeah, I’m immunized,’ he said, so artificially, when asked in the preseason whether he was vaccinated. That was a lie by omission. And not just a single lie but a daily willful deception along with a weirdly callous charade. On multiple occasions he went into postgame news conferences — which tend to be closely packed, fetid affairs — unmasked. And there should be some queries about the steam and sauna and rehab rooms, too.”

Former National Basketball Association star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was fearful of the damage Rodgers might have done to the very image of pro athletes by, among other things, claiming that

“this idea that it’s a pandemic of the unvaccinated, it’s just a total lie… If the vaccine is so great, then how come people are still getting Covid and spreading Covid and, unfortunately, dying of Covid?”

As Jabbar pointed out,

“Those two statements don’t even belong together. Statistics from many sources conclude that around 97% of those being hospitalized or who have died in the past several months are unvaccinated. The CDC found that the unvaccinated are 11 times more likely to die than those vaccinated. If he thinks that’s a lie, what credible evidence does he have? None.”

Fun fact: Rodgers also auditioned to be the new host of the TV game show Jeopardy, a potential job he soon put in… er, jeopardy.

Sadly, pro football was not exactly “woke,” despite the sustained courage of Colin Kaepernick, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback. Just before Trump was elected president, he dropped to a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial mistreatment in this country. His stature has only grown since, even if he could never again get a job in the NFL. In fact, this February, your time might be far better spent on the new book just published about Kaepernick’s impact on our world or the new TV series on his life than watching the Super Bowl.

On Thin Ice

The drifting morals of major league sports have even tainted the whitest and usually least controversial of those leagues, the National Hockey League. In October, it began its latest season dealing with one old tumult and a whopper of a new one, both involving the same team.

The old controversy has been dragging on for years, the slur-ish name and logo of the Chicago Blackhawks. The new one concerns the cover-up of the sexual abuse of a young pro player by a coach, a shocking tale in a particularly stoic, macho, and tight-lipped sport. The club and the league at first professed surprise at the charges for an incident which allegedly occurred in 2010. Nobody knew anything, as usual… until, of course, it turned out that they did but, in the interests of the sport and of winning, had kept quiet.

In a remarkable interview with Rick Westhead of TSN’s SportsCentre, the victim, former Blackhawk player Kyle Beach, said:

“I am a survivor. And I know I’m not alone. I know I’m not the only one, male or female. And I buried this for 10 years, 11 years. And it’s destroyed me from the inside out. And I want everybody to know in the sports world and in the world that you’re not alone. That if these things happen to you, you need to speak up.”

Had Kyle Beach spoken up earlier, it might have helped Jonathan Martin, a football player whose mental health issues were triggered by the homophobic and racist harassment of a teammate. Martin is only now coming to terms with his psychological needs. His nemesis, Richie Incognito, had a long college and pro history of aggressive behavior, but his size — 6-4, 322 pounds — and his skill allowed him to flourish even as he appeared on police blotters and was considered by some of his peers to be the dirtiest player in the league.

There is a moral to this story. A discouraging one. The bad guy wins. Martin was driven out of pro football in 2015 at age 26, his early talent unrealized. Meanwhile, Incognito, 38, is still in the league, a Trump supporter now playing for the Las Vegas Raiders. Don’t you wonder if he misses his former coach, Jon Gruden?

But before you get too discouraged, take heart in this Ohio State University study which finds that less than half of Americans surveyed think “that sports teach love of country, respect for the military, and how to be an American.” Those who do think that way tend to be “men, heterosexuals, Christians, and Republicans… groups that have traditionally had high status in the United States, been comfortable with their situations, and therefore have positive feelings about these values.”

Maybe there’s a better moral out there and hope for sports yet. If we can drive the moral drifters off the field, maybe we can have a brand-new ball game.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel, Songlands (the final one in his Splinterlands series), Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.

Robert Lipsyte is a TomDispatch regular and a former sports and city columnist for the New York Times. He is the author, among other works, of SportsWorld: An American Dreamland.

Text-gate fallout: Hannity, Ingraham and Don Jr. unveiled as whiny MAGA wimps!

What happened last Jan. 6 in Washington created a momentary rupture in what we might call the fascist narrative of 21st-century America — that is, the dismal collective dream state, fueled by paranoia and self-loathing, in which Donald Trump and his allies hoped (and still hope) to envelop the entire nation.

You almost certainly remember that feeling, even if you don’t want to think about it now: For about the 217th time in the Trump presidency, it seemed as if we were all going to wake up, blinking and startled, like TV characters returning from an especially dire alternate universe at the end of the episode. Things would begin to return to “normal,” whatever we variously (and hilariously) believed that was. Republicans would feel at least a little ashamed about their five-year Burning Man festival on the blasted plains of Mordor, and would revert to their familiar routines of sanctimonious hypocrisy, dog-whistle racism and blatantly disastrous economic policy. It was morning in America!

We were young and innocent then, weren’t we? No, I’m not mocking anyone for believing that Jan. 6 was a turning point. I believed it too. Several Republican senators, including Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham, clearly felt — perhaps for as long as 48 hours! — that a mob assault on the U.S. Capitol, incited by the president before whom they had shamelessly prostrated themselves, was going too far. A second impeachment seemed inevitable, but this time conviction felt not just possible but likely (which might, or might not, have barred the soon-to-be-former president from running again).

It even seemed conceivable — and here was our laughable mistake, oh gentle, coddled reader — that the horror and outrage expressed on TV by the Jake Tappers and Anderson Coopers of the world might transmit itself to the general public, and that a significant proportion of people who had voted for Trump but were not otherwise profoundly psychotic might shake their heads and say, Jeez, you know what? Enough with this guy!

Trigger warning: It didn’t work out that way.

As we have learned this week, even purported true believers like the Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, and even the not-yet-defrocked president’s feckless eldest son, Donald Jr., were at least temporarily swayed by the prospect of a return to the realm of previously-existing political reality. While roving bands of Proud Boys and Three Percenters and Kekistanis and random rootless yahoos ransacked the Capitol, crapped in the potted plants and half-heartedly hunted for Mike Pence, Ingraham lamented (in a text to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows) that Trump was “destroying his legacy.”

Why, Laura, that’s positively adorable — but in which beautiful, bell-shaped flower filled with dew were you born yesterday? He was creating his legacy, girlfriend — and along the way creating another sadistic test to figure out who’s utterly, cravenly loyal to him and who isn’t. How do you think you did?

Once again completely justifying his father’s withering contempt (and addressing him through an intermediary) Donald Trump Jr. told Meadows that Pop had “to condemn this shit ASAP” with “an Oval Office address. … It has gone too far and gotten out of hand.” It’s difficult to parse Junior’s thought process here, using that term loosely, but the implication seems to be that overturning the election via quasi-constitutional chicanery and exploiting the loopholes in vague 18th-century laws was one thing, while a violent insurrection staged by cosplaying losers with zip ties and bear spray was quite another. Perhaps his father has since instructed him, with exactly as much sarcasm as the occasion demanded, that going “too far” and getting “out of hand” was precisely the point, and would yield benefits for their family dynasty long into the future.

Because you know who never bought any of this “sobering return to reality” crap, not even for one second? You know who never believed that the magic spell had been broken, and that Cinderella’s Chick-fil-A-branded MAGAmobile — pulled by the enchanted cows of Devin Nunes — was about to turn back into an empty can of pumpkin pie filling? Donald J. Trump, that’s who.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

Donald Trump never believed that America would return to “normal” after his presidency because he clearly understood — with the distinctive stupid-brilliant insight that is uniquely his — that America hadn’t been normal for a long time. He never believed that “reality” would reassert itself after Jan. 6, or at any other time, because he doesn’t believe reality exists at all (or at least not independent of him). For him, reality is always contingent, always manufactured; it’s the story you convince yourself to believe about yourself, built to appeal to the weaknesses and hidden desires of others and make them believe it too.

Whatever squeaky noises Mark Meadows may have made in the White House on Jan. 6, it was immediately clear that Trump was thoroughly delighted with what happened at the Capitol, and exceedingly reluctant to say or do anything to dissuade his followers from carrying their re-enactment of the storming of the Bastille all the way to its logical conclusion. When Trump finally began to issue public utterances that day, it was hours later, when police and National Guard troops had largely regained control of the Capitol. There wasn’t the slightest hint of regret or admonition, only the already-familiar litany of grievance and injury, couched in his inimitable pseudo-declamatory prose: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away.”

Whether anything resembling a coherent plan to delay or prevent the electoral-vote certification was in play on Jan. 6 is not clear. That’s certainly a matter of legal and historical interest, but in terms of Donald Trump’s world-building enterprise, it’s somewhat beside the point. Trump both believed in the righteousness of his cause — since his only cause is his own glorification — and understood that the art of the long con (or the creation of an alternate universe, which is much the same thing) has a few simple rules. Never break character or let down your guard; never admit doubt or regret or uncertainty.

If Trump had any private doubts about the way his public would understand the events of Jan. 6, he certainly didn’t express them — and I don’t even think the concept of “private doubt” makes sense with this person. He was confident his followers would accept whatever alternative facts he installed in his alternative universe: The insurrectionists were heroes and patriots and martyrs, showering the cops with kisses, or they were a bunch of antifa false-flag provocateurs, funded by George Soros. Or — somehow — both were true at once! “Reality,” for the MAGA faithful, is first and foremost whatever Trump says it is, and is secondarily the fanfics they create for themselves. (Trump certainly did not create QAnon, and might have been telling the truth when he initially claimed he didn’t know what it was.)

As for the grifters and weasels and toadies of Fox News, and as for his own first-begotten son, Trump now knows what he has always suspected: They sucked up to him for all the usual reasons — money, power, fame and other personal advantage — but were never true believers. How sharper than a serpent’s tooth! Fundamentally, those whiny MAGA hangers-on and wannabes were still tethered to the world of Jake Tapper and Anderson Cooper, where there were still norms and standards and a shared sense of bottom-line reality, where it was still possible to go “too far” and where the horrified reactions of polite and normal people in the coastal cities still mattered. They can never possibly eat enough crow — or enough of something else, also a word of four letters — to fully make up for this betrayal.

Donald Trump always thought that world was bullshit — a long con executed by people who read books and went to Harvard — and now he thinks he can replace it with his own. He might have been right about the first part. I guess we’ll find out about the second.

More on the Jan. 6 committee’s latest revelations:

False prophets: When preachers defy COVID — and then it kills them

For millennia, religious leaders have offered guidance, redemption and fellowship for those interested in dedicating themselves to a life of charity, compassion and hope. But what happens when religious leaders support beliefs or prevailing social customs that significantly harm others?

Today, just as in centuries before, there are religious leaders propagating beliefs that are both harmful and deadly. Since March of 2020, more than 5 million people worldwide, including 800,000 Americans, have died from the coronavirus. Americans are still dying at a rate of about 1,400 people per day. Despite these incontrovertible facts, confirmed by a long trail of death certificates, burials and cremation urns, some religious leaders around the U.S. continue to deny the severity of the pandemic and discourage others from taking basic life-saving precautions to protect themselves from infection.

On Aug. 17, Roger Dale Moon, pastor of Revelation Fire Ministries in South Carolina, wrote that he did not fear COVID-19 since “the blood of Jesus that covers me stops every kind of disease or virus that tries to enter my spirit, soul and body.” He died on Oct. 19, shortly after contracting COVID-19.

Tim Parsons, pastor of Center Point Church in Lexington, Kentucky, died on Aug. 26 from COVID-19, after his church had advised members “not to worry” about the virus since God was “in control.”

So many white evangelical Christians are so openly hostile and dismissive of public health measures that users of the social media platform Reddit recently created an archive and discussion thread documenting individuals who make public declarations of their anti-mask, anti-vaccine or COVID-hoax views — and then die from the disease. The archive is a sad and sobering catalog of Americans who have vilified Dr. Anthony Fauci, mocked mask-wearers and dismissed the danger of the very virus that eventually takes their lives.

A shocking number of church pastors appear in the archive. Recently deceased clergy members have come from all over the United States: Bob Enyart of Denver Bible Church in Colorado, Dean Kohn of Descending Dove Outreach International in California, Robert Marson of Umpqua Valley Community Fellowship in Oregon and Rob Skiba of Virtual House Church, a Texas-based online community.

The beliefs of these church leaders not only led to their own deaths, but also likely contributed to the deaths of others in their social networks and members of their congregation. Some believed that God would not allow them to fall ill. When many were hospitalized with severe symptoms after contracting COVID, they believed that “prayer warriors” might heal them, while distrusting or even rejecting life-saving treatment from doctors and nurses. Families who turn to faith-based healers and preachers in lieu of professional health care providers when facing crisis — whether physical, emotional or psychological — endanger their long-term health and all too often their lives.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

Misplaced faith in religious leaders who eschew logic and reason are as harmful and dangerous today as they were in previous generations and societies.

As painful as it is to acknowledge this, Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities joined their peers in the trafficking and sale of other humans for centuries. When ancient empires engaged in the conquest of neighboring lands and massacred indigenous peoples, religious literature characterized and praised such actions as divinely sanctioned. When free-thinkers and heretics questioned what was considered orthodoxy in premodern Christian or Muslim societies, religious leaders justified their persecution and execution.

Religious leaders derive their authority from their piety and knowledge of a religious tradition. But such piety and knowledge grants them neither infallibility nor expertise in matters outside their purview, be it public health or science. The sanctity and beauty of religion does not safeguard its figureheads from having blind spots and supporting some of humanity’s worst ideas. We are losing parents, spouses, brothers and sisters in this pandemic in the most tragic way: without the opportunity to say goodbye or provide them comfort in their final moments. The above pastors — and too many of their parishioners — are dying isolated, in pain and intubated in COVID wards. There is a profound sense of loss when we lose those we love, but this grief is compounded when we are prevented from seeing and speaking to them one last time.

World religions are communities with ancient stories and parables. Some of them are inspirational and triumphant, while others are cautionary tales. I cannot help but consider how the above pastors have become the subjects, rather than the preachers, of a cautionary tale that we must now share with future generations.

More on the resurgent alliance between Christianity and the far right:

Fine-tuning the doomsday machines: Understanding the nuclear-missile dispute

Nuclear weapons are at the pinnacle of what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the madness of militarism.” If you’d rather not think about them, that’s understandable. But such a coping strategy has limited value. And those who are making vast profits from preparations for global annihilation are further empowered by our avoidance.

At the level of national policy, nuclear derangement is so normalized that few give it a second thought. Yet normal does not mean sane. As an epigraph to his brilliant book “The Doomsday Machine,” Daniel Ellsberg provides a chillingly apt quote from Friedrich Nietzsche: “Madness in individuals is something rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule.”

Now, some policy technocrats for the U.S. nuclear arsenal and some advocates for arms control are locked in a heated dispute over the future of ICBMs, or intercontinental ballistic missiles. It’s an argument between the “national security” establishment — hell-bent on “modernizing” ICBMs — and various nuclear-policy critics, who prefer to keep the current ICBMs in place. Both sides are refusing to acknowledge the profound need to get rid of them entirely.

Elimination of ICBMs would substantially reduce the chances of a worldwide nuclear holocaust. ICBMs are uniquely vulnerable to effective attack, and thus have no deterrent value. Instead of being a “deterrent,” ICBMs are actually land-based sitting ducks, and for that reason are set up for “launch on warning.”

As a result, whether a report of incoming missiles is accurate or a false alarm, the commander in chief would have to quickly decide whether to “use or lose” the ICBMs. “If our sensors indicate that enemy missiles are en route to the United States, the president would have to consider launching ICBMs before the enemy missiles could destroy them; once they are launched, they cannot be recalled,” former Defense Secretary William Perry wrote. “The president would have less than 30 minutes to make that terrible decision.“

Experts like Perry are clear as they advocate for scrapping ICBMs. But the ICBM force is a sacred cash cow. And news reports currently feature arguments over exactly how to keep feeding it.

Last week, the Guardian reported that the Pentagon has ordered an external study of options for ICBMs. Trouble is, the two options under consideration — extending the life of the currently deployed Minuteman III missiles or replacing them with a new missile system — do nothing to reduce the escalating dangers of nuclear war, whereas eliminating the nation’s ICBMs would greatly reduce those dangers.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

But an enormous ICBM lobbying apparatus remains in high gear, with huge corporate profits at stake. Northrop Grumman has landed a $13.3 billion contract to proceed with developing a new ICBM system, misleadingly named the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent. It’s all in sync with automatic political devotion to ICBMs in Congress and the executive branch.

The sea-based and air-based portions of the “nuclear triad” (submarines and bombers) are invulnerable to successful attack — unlike ICBMs, which are completely vulnerable. The subs and bombers, able to destroy any and all targeted countries many times over, provide vastly more “deterrent” than anyone could ever reasonably want.

In sharp contrast, ICBMs are the opposite of a deterrent. In effect, they’re prime targets for a nuclear first strike because of their vulnerability, and for the same reason would have no “deterrent” capacity to retaliate. ICBMs have only one foreseeable function — to serve as a “sponge” to absorb the start of a nuclear war.

Armed and on hair-trigger alert, the country’s 400 ICBMs are deeply entrenched — not only within underground silos scattered across five states, but also in the mindsets of the U.S. political establishment. If the goal is to get big campaign contributions from military contractors, fuel the humongous profits of the military-industrial complex, and stay in sync with the outlooks that dominate corporate media, those mindsets are logical. If the goal is to prevent nuclear war, the mindsets are unhinged.

As Ellsberg and I wrote in an article for The Nation this fall, “Getting trapped in an argument about the cheapest way to keep ICBMs operational in their silos is ultimately no-win. The history of nuclear weapons in this country tells us that people will spare no expense if they believe that spending the money will really make them and their loved ones safer — we must show them that ICBMs actually do the opposite.” Even if Russia and China didn’t reciprocate at all, the result of U.S. closure of all its ICBMs would be to greatly reduce the chances of nuclear war.

On Capitol Hill, such realities are hazy and beside the point compared to straight-ahead tunnel vision and momentum of conventional wisdom. For members of Congress, routinely voting to appropriate billions of dollars for nuclear weaponry seems natural. Challenging rote assumptions about ICBMs will be essential to disrupt the march toward nuclear apocalypse.

More from Norman Solomon on military spending and corporate power:

Inconsistencies in National Guard’s response to Jan. 6 raise more questions

As the mob of angry Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, high-ranking officials for the U.S. Armed Forces mulled over ways to quell the chaos. But, The Bulwark’s Amanda Carpenter is posing one question that no one can seem to answer:

“What actually happened amongst the Army’s leadership on January 6 during the crucial three hours between when then the U.S. Capitol was breached by a pro-Trump mob and when the grounds were secured?”

It’s been 11 months now and, still, no one knows.

In a new 36-page memo, Maj. Gen. William Walker, the current House Sergeant at Arms, who was serving as commanding general of the D.C. National Guard and his former Army counsel Col. Earl Matthews offered their account of what occurred during that three-hour period. The two claimed the D.C. National Guard “was prevented from quickly deploying to the Capitol and that Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy was strangely incommunicado during that time period.”

However, Carpenter has highlighted the biggest problem with their claims.

“Yet Walker and Matthews say that these supposed calls from McCarthy never took place and that they never saw the plan that Army leadership supposedly produced. When the Guard finally got the go-ahead to move, they claim, it followed its own plans as it intended in the first place.”

To make matters worse, their accounts have been supported other high-ranking officials including Robert Contee and Steven Sund, the police chiefs for the Metropolitan Police Department and the United States Capitol Police.

Much of their version of what transpired reportedly stems from a Department of Defense Inspector General Report released in November 2021. It also highlights a call between the four men, former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, Lieutenant General Walter Piatt, and Lieutenant General Charles Flynn.

Per The Bulwark the inspector general report states:

“Mr. Sund told us that during the conference call, LTG Piatt commented on the “optics of [the] National Guard standing in line with the Capitol in the background,” and that he [LTG Piatt] “would rather relieve your [USCP] officers off traffic posts” so the officers could respond to the Capitol.

“The DCHSEMA Director told us that either LTG Piatt or LTG Flynn said it would not look good to have Soldiers confront “peaceful protesters.” Chief Contee told us that an Army official commented on the “optics” of having “boots on the ground” at the Capitol.

“MG Walker stated that LTG Piatt and LTG Flynn said they would not advise Mr. McCarthy to send Guardsmen to the Capitol; it would not be a good optic and could incite the crowd.”

However, as part of their testimony earlier this year, Flynn and Piatt deny expressing concern about optics.

The inconsistences in the claims raise even more questions about what really happened behind closed doors. To make matters worse, Trump loyalists are continuing to create challenges as the investigations continue which increases doubt about the real truth ever coming to light.

Fireworks erupt on Fox News after Geraldo Rivera blames Trump for inciting Capitol riots

Fireworks erupted on Fox News Tuesday night after Geraldo Rivera directly implicated former President Donald Trump of inciting riots at the United States Capitol building.

Host Sean Hannity began by asking Rivera why Congress was only investigating the Capitol riot and not the assorted riots that took place in response to the murder of George Floyd last year.

Rivera replied that those riots were not an attack on the American republic and system of government the way that this one was.

“This was a riot that was unleashed, incited, and inspired by the president of the United States, which targeted the heart of American democracy” Rivera charged.

Hannity tried to deflect blame by claiming that Trump had urged protesters to act “peacefully,” without noting the fact that Trump for more than three hours refused to tell the rioters to leave the Capitol after the riots had begun.

Rivera responded by citing Hannity’s own texts that he sent to Meadows during the riots asking Trump to put out a statement telling people to leave.

“I beg you, Sean, to remember the frame of mind you were in when you wrote that text on January 6,” he said. And when Laura did. And when Brian did. And when Don Jr. did! Remember that concern you had. Remember the frustration you had at our beloved 45th president.”

Guest Dan Bongino wasted no time in accusing Rivera of disloyalty.

“The backstabbing of the president you’re engaging in is really disgusting!” he fumed.

Watch the video below:

Geraldo to Sean Hannity: "I beg you, Sean, to remember the frame of mind you weren’t when you wrote that text on January 6. And when Laura did. And when Brian did. And when Don Jr. did!"

Dan Bongino reacts by blasting Geraldo for "backstabbing" Trump. pic.twitter.com/YSPYfBwAf4

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) December 15, 2021

Tom Holland clarifies comment about not wanting to play Spider-Man at 30

Tom Holland has played Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man, for years now, ever since he showed up in 2016’s “Captain America: Civil War.” His third solo movie as Spider-Man, “No Way Home,” is about to come out, and you get the sense that there’s a part of Holland that’s had enough. “If I’m playing Spider-Man after I’m 30, I’ve done something wrong,” he recently told GQ.

At the same time, we also just learned that he’s going to be in a whole other Spider-Man movie trilogy, so if he wants to leave, he wants those aircraft carriers full of money more. Backtracking a bit, he explained his “not when I’m 30” comments to Extra TV:

What I was referring to in that interview where I said, ‘If I was playing Spider-Man when I’m 30, I’ve done something wrong,’ is because I would be taking up an opportunity for someone to come in and change what being Spider-Man means. You know, Spider-Man can be more diverse, it could be a female character, it could be anything.

Indeed, Holland is eager to get some fresh blood into the franchise. “I’d like to see Miles, I’d like to see Silk. I think you could do a really cool Jackpot movie,” the actor said.

At the same time, I still think there’s part of him that wants out, cause he keeps saying stuff like this:

I don’t know what the future of Spider-Man looks like. I don’t know whether I’m going to be a part of it. Spider-Man will always live on in me, and I know that Amy [Pascal] and the studio are keen to figure out what the next chapter of Spider-Man looks like. If that happens to be with me, then that’s very exciting. But, you know, if it’s time for me to walk away, then I’ll do so proudly.

But again, all this is moot, cause he’ll be in at least three more Spider-Man movies. If the third one comes in while he’s 29, he’ll just sneak under his self-imposed ceiling.

Tom Holland wants to be in “Across the Spider-Verse” (Part One)

And it’s not just Holland’s own Spider-Man movies that he’ll be a part of; he may have a voice in the upcoming sequel to “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” which is due out next October. “Love them and I’m just waiting for the phone call,” he told SyFy Wire about the animated features. “Guys, call us. Put us in your movie, we want to be in it.”

The “Spider-Verse” movies actually do star Miles Morales, voiced by Shameik Moore. Sooner or later, we’ll definitely get a live-action Miles Morales movie, mark my words.

In the meantime, “Spider-Man: No Way Home” comes out on December 17.

A study on how genetics affects suicide risk is causing a scientific quarrel

The distressing topic of taking one’s own life has an unfortunate timeliness to it, as the COVID-19 pandemic has indirectly caused an increase in suicides among young people, while leaving an overall sense of collective trauma. Thus, as a topic is of concern, it is perhaps a prime moment for scientists to research suicidality.

Indeed, a new study, which was published last month in the journal Biological Psychiatry, involves the thorny question of genetics and suicidality. In the process, these scientists have raised provocative questions about free will — ones that they addressed when corresponding with Salon by email.

The research study constituted the most expansive analysis of genetic links to suicide ever conducted, involving research from an international consortium of scientists and DNA sequences of nearly 550,000 people (including almost 30,000 who had attempted suicide). The scientists discovered that on one part of the human genome, Chromosome 7, certain DNA variations are associated with an increased risk that a person will try to commit suicide. Additionally, they found overlap between genetic characteristics linked to suicide and those linked to both psychiatric disorders (such as depression) and non-psychiatric disorders (such as risk-taking behavior). There was an especially notable overlap with major depressive disorder, PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and alcoholism.

This suggests “that many of the biological pathways underlying these disorders, overlap with the biological pathways underlying suicide attempt,” corresponding authors Douglas Ruderfer from Vanderbilt University, and Niamh Mullins from the School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, told Salon by email. “However, an important outcome of this work is that there is genetic risk that contributes directly to suicide attempt and not solely through risk of psychiatric disorders like major depressive disorder.”

Yet this doesn’t mean that genes can be used to predict suicide risk.

Want more health and science stories in your inbox? Subscribe to Salon’s weekly newsletter The Vulgar Scientist.

“This would be an inappropriate and inaccurate interpretation of our study,” Ruderfer and Mullins told Salon. They pointed Salon to the statement in their manuscript explaining that “genetic risk does not currently have meaningful predictive utility” for suicide attempts. “Finally, it’s important to note that for most common illness and conditions, genetics are not destiny. Genetic risk for suicidal behaviors is just one of many contributing risk factors.”

At the same time, the scientists explained that there are genetic markers associated with suicidal tendencies that warrant more research.

“These are all previously known risk factors for suicide attempt,” the authors pointed out. “This work shows a biological link through sharing of genetic risk that is potentially contributing to both suicide attempt and these non-psychiatric risk factors.” That is why they feel suicide needs to be studied independently of known psychiatric risk factors.

Not all scientists are happy with the latest study. Brian L. Mishara, the founder and former director of the Centre for Research and Intervention on Suicide and Euthanasia, referred Salon to a paper he co-authored earlier this year with legal psychiatry and biomedical ethics professor David Weisstub. The two scholars believe that genetic testing for suicide is, simply put, a bad idea. “My views about this sort of research is expressed in the recent article printed in Preventive Medicine I have attached,” Mishara explained. The paper expressed serious reservations about the ethical implications of trying to predict whether people are suicidal.

“There is no empirical evidence of its usefulness, and there are grave concerns for its potential negative impacts, even if it were to be proven accurate,” Mishara and Weisstub wrote.

They argued that, although there are likely genetic factors associated with suicide, “the relationship between genetics and suicide is complex; multiple genetic components, epigenetically modified by early life experiences, may increase vulnerability to suicide in a manner that we may someday be able to better understand.” Because suicide is a behavior rather than an inherent trait, there is a risk that making it possible for people to “test” whether they could be suicidal would lead to adverse psychological outcomes rooted in a deep misunderstanding of the underlying science. At the very least, making it possible to test people for genetic tendencies toward suicide would be riddled with potential ethical problems.

“There is currently no evidence that genetic testing can or will provide any value in predicting risk of suicidal behaviors for an individual,” Ruderfer and Mullins told Salon in response to the Mishara and Weisstub paper. “The goal of this work is to expand our biological understanding of suicide attempt through characterization of genetic risk in the context of psychiatric disorders and other risk factors.”

If you are in crisis, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 (TALK), or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.

HBO’s “The Slow Hustle” director: “We’re all carrying some level of mass grief as Black people”

Most cops are good, we just have “a few bad apples.” Too often, I hear potential mayors or governors or congressmen or presidents answer the big question about the problems with policing, with this same untrue, uncreative, underwhelming response.

It’s almost like they are paid to make that statement or are just insensitive –– so insensitive that they ignore the hundreds of people killed by police officers every year, the thousands of people who protest against law enforcement ever year, the countless amounts of brutality cases on the books, on top of the thousands of exonerations because of DNA, or just plain old crooked policing mixed with prosecutorial misconduct. Mounds of evidence that could be used to reflect how broken our system of law enforcement actually is patiently waits at the other end of a simple Google search. So why is it the country and many of its leaders can’t escape this “bad apple,” narrative?

In Baltimore city, the bad apple narrative has been taken to another level with the downfall of The Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF) –– eight elite officers who were granted special privileges to remove guns off of the streets. Led by celebrated wonder cop, officer Wayne Jenkins –– the GTTF did get guns off of the streets; however, they also planted guns on the streets, robbed and extorted citizens, committed overtime fraud, sold hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of illegal narcotics, all while costing the city taxpayers millions of dollars in misconduct settlements. Many officers knew of the GTTF’s actions, yet chose to remain silent, which cancels the ever so popular “bad apple narrative.” Detective Sean Suiter was one of the few officers willing to testify against some of these so called “bad apples,” but ended up dying the day before he was supposed to take the stand. Some say it was a homicide and others are calling it a suicide. Director Sonja Sohn spoke to me recently on “Salon Talks” about her attempts to get to the bottom of what happened to Suiter in her new HBO documentary, “The Slow Hustle.”

Many know Sohn from her days as detective Kima Greggs on “The Wire.” She’s since moved her skills to the other side of camera directing the acclaimed documentary “Baltimore Rising” and now “The Slow Hustle,” which takes a deep dive into the mystery of Suiter’s case. In the film, Sohn releases footage from the crime scene, along with a collection of interviews with Suiter’s family, close friends, reporters, experts, residents in the neighborhood where Suiter died. And, in the documentary, Sohn talks to me about my reporting on GTTF with Salon and my firsthand experiences with police growing up in Baltimore. All of us offer our own unique takes on the case and what we think happened.

Watch my “Salon Talks” episode with Sonja Sohn here, or read a Q&A of our conversation below.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

One question that I’m sure a lot of people want to know is how you pick projects. People may be familiar with your first documentary “Baltimore Rising,” which was about the unrest in Baltimore, the movement and everything that happened after the death of Freddie Gray. This time with “The Slow Hustle” you chose to focus in on a personal story. Did it feel different this time as a documentarian?

Yeah, it did feel different, but I don’t think I could have moved forward if it didn’t feel authentic, like it was coming from an authentic place within me. The story was brought to me by an executive at HBO who had been following the GTTF corruption case and thought that this mystery here was very unusual and wanted to know if there was something I could bring to it or maybe be able to help unlock what was going on. It was six months beyond detective Suiter’s passing. The rumblings of the theories was starting to evolve already. Sean Suiter passed away the night before the “Baltimore Rising” premiere, if you recall.

Yes. Before we get too deep, can you just talk about GTTF? Because a lot of people aren’t really familiar with the story and I just want to put everything in context for them.

The general gist of it is, these detectives, seven, eight detectives were basically violating the civil rights of folks that they “suspected” of having guns on them, but basically were profiling egregiously. You can break it down more than I can, and we can let people watch the film, but within that, the Sean Suiter case arises because he knew and worked with one of the cops, one of those detectives back in the day. And that’s where we sort of take off.

I’ll give everybody the really quick overview. Baltimore has had a serious problem with gun violence and murders. And it’s been going on for a long time, before I was even born. And to fight that, every once in a while, the police department creates these flex squads, these units of plain-clothed police officers that have the luxury of policing however they want to police, which means a lot of civil rights of citizens go flying out the window. But these guys have the luxury of just running up on people and doing whatever they have to do to find guns.

This particular squad that Sonja referenced, the Gun Trace Task Force led by Wayne Jenkins took it to a whole different level. They robbed citizens, they sold drugs, they robbed pharmacies. They did any and everything, but they hid behind the idea of them being a perfect unit. They got a lot of guns off the street. And their bosses were really happy with that, but what the bosses allegedly didn’t know is that these guys were stealing money, stealing overtime, stealing from citizens, stealing from residents and selling more drugs than some of the city’s biggest drug dealers. And one thing about this time, and this is why I think your film is so important, this is why your film is not just a piece of art, but it’s an important film because all of these crazy cases were going on. Allegedly these Gun Trace Task Force cops robbed a stripper who was actually a little person. These guys dressed up like mailmen and robbed citizens. They did all of these wild, crazy stories, but it didn’t get reported. People all over the world, when I went to different places to talk about this story, they didn’t know what I was talking about. I would like you to speak on that.

Well, yeah. What was interesting was it was a huge story for about a week. We do have footage from NBC and other major national networks, but this also came up in November the year after Trump was elected, right, and so there was a lot of other news eclipsing this corruption scandal. And then I believe there were things going, popping off all over the place. I just remember it was so huge and I thought that folks were going to latch onto it and we were going to get to the bottom of this because it just seemed like surely we were going to get to the bottom of a cop being killed on duty. We might not be able to solve these other 300 homicides, but we going to solve this one, right?

That’s one of the main issues that I have with that particular time period. Everyone was so addicted to following Trump that you have a case as wild and as big as this and it doesn’t receive a fraction of the attention that it deserves. Can you try to transport us into the world of Sean Suiter at that particular time? He was a homicide detective, right? And he was also set to testify against one of the members of GTTF.

Right. He was. And the day that he went out, which you’ll see in the film, into that neighborhood, he was supposedly in search of a witness.

What do you think was his mindset that day?

That’s really hard to say, but hanging out in the homicide department, throughout the shooting of “Baltimore Rising,” they do their job, but there’s one aspect of this is “going to work,” you know what I mean? Some people might think some of the work that you do is glamorous or what I do is glamorous, but I’m just going to work, and it’s just a regular sort of thing. I certainly don’t believe he thought he was going to roll up and be killed that day. But I think also there’s some things that are out . . . His state of mind’s outlined a little bit or at least there’s some alluded to because of the fact that he was set to go and speak to his lawyer later that day. I don’t know how that plays into it, but I wouldn’t want to speak to that too much.

One thing that you did that was really good and I think that people who want to learn more about this case is going to appreciate is you included his family in the film. How important was that to you?

I don’t think the film could have been executed without the family. Yeah, as a director, there’s always ways where you find ways to give every aspect of a story the weight that you feel like it deserves and it’s a challenge. It became that way with Nicole and the family, because I thought that they really went on quite a journey. Without them allowing us into their lives and their experience, the heart of the soul of the film would just not be there.

It’s the impact of when an institution fails the people and the people who actually serve it. It was important to show the fallout. The fallout basically landed in the laps of the family. They were the fallout. And it seemed as though, for me, I was hoping that the long game was not a hustle of the family by the department. That’s one of the reasons why I’m so attracted to the title because it played in a couple of ways. In the end, at least they were able to, it appears they’re able to get the compensation that they deserve, though no one is joyous about getting a compensation for the death of a loved one.

I wonder how difficult was it for you to just be close to them and as they dealt with that kind of trauma.

It was a little difficult. They taught me a lot just by being around them because I think part of being a director is really connecting to people, and I love people as you know. I love connecting to folks, but I had to be mindful of how to connect with these folks. The whole thing about being a director is you let them direct you on how to connect. My first layer of that was with “Baltimore Rising,” but with this film, I hadn’t been dealing with anyone who was in such direct, immediate grief.

I think we’re all carrying some level of just mass grief as Black people. And in Baltimore, we’re all survivors of homicide on some level, you know what I mean? And that’s a whole another conversation, but this family they were right in it, and they were also a police family and they were Black. That’s a lot, you know what I mean? I don’t know how they’re going to take me. So them allowing me into their space, I felt very honored and I was just trying to be respectful. And we found a way to communicate and get there.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

I remember me and you, we’ve had so many conversations about corruption, about policing and what it looks like. And I want to know has making “Baltimore Rising” and making “The Slow Hustle” changed your stance on a current state of corruption? Are you hopeful for the department?

It’s not about being hopeful for the department so much as of having to take a broader view of life and how it works in general. I think I got very closed and tight after “Baltimore Rising.” The making of the film impacted me very deeply and really opened up within me a whole another journey of just how deeply impacted I have been by structural racism and white supremacy and oppression. And so I feel like I’m coming out of a very bitter period.

Being someone who really just in my DNA and my bones just feel like the structures, just the whole makeup in which we live in is an illusion. I have felt that way prior to the Black Lives Movement. When I was little I just looked and all I could see is the multiple ways where there are protocols and ways of operating that just are built on lies. And we’re expected to play the lie and act like nothing’s happening.

I realized that there’s a rage within me that had welled up and through “Baltimore Rising,” it touched upon that. And so now, having had to process that, that’s why I didn’t . . . It was really challenging to first go into this film, going, “Oh gosh, the law enforcement energy again.” And that’s a very specific kind of energy. And when you touch it and it touches you, you’re doing a dance with it and all of this. But having gone into that tight space with it, and then having this process, all of that energy and alchemize the traumatic pieces that were there, I am coming into a place where there is a real, I think, a deep understanding for me and a real soul need to not embrace hope because the reality is the reality, but to be expansive and say, “Hey, can I embrace a softer narrative around change?” Hope is in the fertilizer, but there needs to be much more than that for things to be different.

If I look over the span of my lifetime, there are periods where things are hard and then they’re better. They’re hard and then they’re better. That is a cycle. And that follows the seasons and the winter and the spring and the summer, you know what I mean? And so if I can just ground down in that and just say, “We’re going to be in this cycle, but I think that out of the toughness that we’ve gone through, I think we may be,” especially Baltimore, “may be giving birth to some new leadership that’s younger, that’s more true to their authenticity.”

I hope so.

I’m hoping. Listen, I’m in this lane, I’m playing this lane as true as I can play it. And so that’s where, I know it’s a long answer, but it’s deep. Listen, maybe I should ask you a question or two.

Okay.

When you think about the film and your experience in the film, going into the film and coming out of the film, what did you think when I came to you and asked you to be in involved? Why did you decide to be involved and did any of your perspectives shift throughout and in the end?

The biggest shift for me was the humanity piece in watching the family from a distance. I don’t have a relationship with Sean Suiter’s family. I’ve met some of his family members through you. As difficult as my history with police has been, I will say that this is the first time I felt a pain that was very, very familiar to me. I connected in that way. Even after meeting them, my language and how I talked about what happened changed because I’m not talking about a news story, I’m talking about a person who has a family that looks just like my family.

The other thing is for you allowing me to participate, I was happy because as far as your body of work, one of the reasons why I’ll always look up to you, why I always look up to Michael K. Williams, rest in peace, is that some of the documentaries in the work and the language that you guys just have is just full of empathy for people who got to go through the system, full of empathy for people who are in this system. He had a documentary about some young people in prison and just having that language for us, it means everything. And I don’t think it gets highlighted enough. It’s one thing to work in television and to be able to tell these stories on the screen. It’s another thing when you take your personal time and your passion projects and what you believe in and you create pieces of art that I can use in a classroom, that I can say, “Oh no, well, you need to check out ‘The Slow Hustle’ to see how the real Baltimore city police officers are.”

After watching the film yourself, what would you like folks to be walking away discussing and why do you think they should watch the film?

I think people should watch the film to truly understand the other side of policing. I think we have this general idea and I’m not speaking from people that solely represent my perspective. I’m talking about people from the other side who can’t tap into the stories that I can tap into. I think it gives them an opportunity to tap into a side of policing that they’re never going to get in the media.

If we weren’t addicted to covering Trump, there would’ve been another reason to bury this story or push it. There have been great books written on the topic of this film. There have been great articles written on the topic of this film. You made a great film, all of these amazing pieces of art exist. However, it’s very, very easy for people, producers, as a lot of these networks to shuffle this to the back of their desk because that’s not their experience. “Let’s talk about this Trump rally in Dayton, Ohio.” It’s easier the stomach because you can’t see the reality of what people are going through.

So, the whole world wants “The Wire” back, but we know we won’t get it, but what we do want to know is what can we expect next from you, are you going to be directing projects, are you going to be doing more documentaries, what’s next for you?

I really love documentary. It’s like I just discovered it’s my sweet spot. I’ve wished I discovered it 10 years ago. So yeah, I got my hands in a couple of pies on that side, nothing that I feel comfortable talking about right now. And then acting-wise, I am going to be in the George Foreman biopic “Heart of a Lion.” I got cast as George Foreman’s mother. It’s a period piece. That’s going to be exciting.

“The Slow Hustle” is available on HBO Max. Watch a trailer for it below, via YouTube.

More stories you might like:

Our big issue with “And Just Like That…” has nothing to do with the 911 debate

Presumably if you’re reading this, you already know the story behind this holiday season’s most colossal death – other than the annual passing of good taste, I mean. The Internet is abuzz with disbelief over the demise of a certain outsized presence within the “Sex and the City” universe, and not necessarily because said character will be missed.

For the most part, the problems people have with the cashing out of Carrie Bradshaw’s (tainted) love of a lifetime Mr. Big (Chris Noth) in the “SATC” sequel “And Just Like That . . .” are in the execution. Granted, some of us are truly sad to lose the guy for the same reasons we’re compelled to chase any emotionally unavailable lover. Big was the ultimate in that department. No matter what he did to push Carrie away, she kept running back to him.

Now that he’s taken that leave from which there is no return, the main question is whether his fatal heart attack was avoidable. Should he have been blasting through that 1,000th Peleton ride with his heart condition? Could Carrie have saved him if she had called 911 and administered CPR instead of yelling “John! John!” and cradling him in the shower as he blinked out?

A cardiologist confirmed to Vulture that the answer is yes on both counts.

However, the bone I must pick with this whole development speaks to problem that’s larger than the circumstances of Mr. Big’s trip at that giant steak house in the clouds: I should not have seen it coming.

Please understand, I am not one of those killjoys who delights in sniffing out twists. I was genuinely knocked sideways by Bruce Willis’ situation in That Movie. I refuse to monitor clue-hunting forums dedicated to solving puzzle shows, preferring to find out the true nature of Dolores Abernathy’s reality in “Westworld” in real time with all the other rubes.

Meaning, if I called Big’s death long before he suited up for his final ride with his favorite instructor, Allegra, that is a problem. That’s an early sign of lazy writing, which doesn’t portend a positive outcome for this show.

When did I know? Sometime after Carrie, during a rare sexy moment within this decidedly unsexy comedy, asks Big to put on a show for her. He raises an eyebrow, admits surprise, and reaches for the bedside table. For lube, he explains. “I thought you were reaching for your emergency nitroglycerin pill,” she jokes with a “ha ha old man” lightness.

This doesn’t necessarily qualify as the episode’s equivalent of Chekhov’s gun, but it does remind us that Big has heart a condition, established in the sixth season “Sex and the City” episode titled “The Domino Effect.” By that point other signs and portents have dropped. Before their chaste made-for-TV sexual interlude Carrie and Big dance in the kitchen, proving there’s still magic in their marriage by indulging in their lockdown ritual of playing the album du jour from Big’s vast vinyl collection. On this night the selection is Todd Rundgren – “That’s my favorite f**king album!” Big hoots, before launching into its opening verse.

Hello it’s me
I’ve thought about us for a long long time
Maybe I think too much but something’s wrong
There’s something here doesn’t last too long
Maybe I shouldn’t think of you as mine

Death, in its capacity as an unseen TV character, loves to be tempted with love songs about breakups. Honestly, if there’s an anti-Cupid, the Man in Black is it. And I’ll credit Michael Patrick King, who both wrote and directed this episode (as he did “Sex and the City 2,” never forget) for not making that night’s song selection a cut from Blue Oyster Cult’s catalog, because that really would have clanged the cosmic cowbell.

But there are any number of tropes that signal death is at the door, like showing the doomed character indulging in risky activities he deems ordinary (“The weekly cigar and Allegra on the same night?”). Or his soon-to-be widow pulling out a meaningful accessory she hasn’t worn in a while on a whim (the blue wedding shoes!). Then they drop one of the most potent death lures around: a change in plans (“I was thinking, if get home early enough, maybe we can drive out east tonight. Would you be up for that?”).

A writer can get away with stacking a few of these into an episode without raising too much of an alert. But King stuffs Carrie and Big’s remaining hours on this Earthly plane together with Polaroid-perfect romantic moments, one after the other, none of which appear to move her story forward.

And Just Like That… (Craig Blankenhorn/HBO)

If we didn’t suspect Big was on his way out when the shoes clacked out of the closet, surely when Carrie turns around on her way out the door to gaze at Big one more time, for no apparent reason, you could sense something was amiss. I mean, the man is framed by their the apartment’s window, softly lit, nary a hair out of place and arms crossed in a full “Cigar Aficionado” cover model pose. He smiles and says, “I’m just looking at you. ” And just like that . . . I knew he was goner.

Moments later, as he keeled over while Charlotte’s daughter sails through the presto agitato section of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata,” I resented being proven correct. And that was before the idiotic failure to call 911 or at least grab the emergency nitroglycerin pill she knew was in the bedside drawer.

What constitutes a good TV death? There are many correct answers to that question along with scores of wrong ones. Television is a veritable charnel house containing the bones of characters who died unnecessary or stupid deaths. Many sport the tatters of red shirts.

But from my point of view, a major character deserves to go out in a way that catches us off guard, that changes the story in a significant way and doesn’t brazenly telegraph their departure. Think of the utter shock of Poussey’s senseless killing during a mealtime uprising on “Orange Is the New Black,” when a guard crushes the breath out of her. Before Poussey’s death, she was . . . living.

So was Nate Fisher before his last conk-out in “Six Feet Under.” In fact, he created a problem that would haunt his survivors for all time by screwing a woman who wasn’t his wife and then, shortly afterward casually remarking, “My left arm is numb . . . numb . . . arm . . . NARM!” Famous last words that include one that isn’t a word.

For “Buffy the Vampire Fans” the GOAT may be “The Body,” but Buffy’s blithe comments to her mother as gets home in the previous episode, before she notices her cold corpse on the floor – that’s the gutting part. Back in the day, we agonized for a full a week before the story confirmed Joyce Summers was gone. That is the power of a good character death.

Even if we know an actor is leaving the show, the nature of their character’s egress should remain a mystery until it happens. Case in point: Dan Stevens announced moving on from “Downton Abbey” prior to the season that Matthew Crawley is written off. We knew Stevens was leaving, but Matthew’s fatal car accident came out of nowhere, albeit at the height of his joy. (DING-DONG!)

And to clarify, I’m not including characters who are part of shows where death is part of its engine, like “24” or “The 100.” “Lost” is a bit of an exception, in that the deaths were almost always unexpected and, similarly, also almost always well-earned and creatively carried out. (RIP Charlie, and thanks for letting the living know that was Not Penny’s Boat.)

On procedurals and ridiculous thrillers featuring bullets, explosives and psychopathic randos roaming around, we enter each episode expecting someone may not make it through the end credits upright.

Then again, it’s been 30 years since “L.A. Law” dropped its resident wicked witch Rosalind Shays down an elevator shaft in the middle of an uncomfortable conversation she’d never finish, and even though the show isn’t streaming anywhere, those who saw it will never forget.

The list of memorable, shocking and tragic “good” TV deaths is much, much longer that what’s listed here. But the common qualification is that we do not see them coming – not even Charlie’s – because the writers prioritized realism over maximizing emotional impact.

Taking that level of care of one’s characters proves they’re thinking seriously about the loss’ impact and how it will complicate what comes next. Mind you, Big’s death is followed by the world’s chicest minimalist funeral, allowing Carrie to serve up quite the lewk. But if Big’s death is meant to awaken Carrie and the rest to a fresh purpose in this new chapter, I shudder to picture the quality of the prose spelling out that part of the story.

For various reasons, a few having to do with King’s track record with the “SATC” movies, expectations already were not high for “And Just Like That.” Despite that, with the right handlers the show could have sobering and inspiring truths to convey about what it means to be older and single in a society in which women who are Carrie’s age are tacitly expected to resign themselves to invisibility.

If there are exceptions to that unspoken (and untruthful) rule about a middle-aged woman’s irrelevance, it should be Carrie Bradshaw.

Want great food writing and recipes? Subscribe to Salon Food’s newsletter, The Bite.

In the original series, the thought of being older and unmarried made 30-something Carrie seize up with dread. That’s also why some people felt betrayed that the woman who chose herself at the end of one season leaps at the chance to be rescued by Big in the series finale. Most folks were delighted that Carrie’s prince came to Paris to get her, without questioning why that was an acceptable goal for a supposedly independent-minded woman. Later he’d abandon her at the altar.

It was Mr. Big’s time. That much we can probably agree on. His track record as a boyfriend was spotty. It took him a couple of times to get him to stay put long enough to marry Carrie. The fact that these two made it for as long as they did is a miracle, even in TV fiction terms.

But even difficult men deserve a thoughtful exit. If “And Just Like That” can’t get that guy’s goodbye smooch right, how can we trust our heroine’s next chapter to the people responsible for mucking it up?

New episodes of “And Just Like That…” premiere Thursdays on HBO Max.

More stories like this:

Kentucky, New York . . . and Maryland? Distillers revive state’s rye whiskey history

In 2020, hundreds of cars containing thousands of masked passengers formed a start-stop line from the entrance to Sagamore Spirit all the way to I-95. The customers spent the morning inching closer and closer to the Baltimore distillery, where samples of their three-and-a-half-year-old rye whiskey were on offer a full year before it would be fully aged.

Sagamore Spirit isn’t the only distillery to have released a whiskey product that would be considered “adolescent.” For instance, Kentucky’s Buffalo Trace has their White Dog, a 125-proof nod to the moonshines that came before it, while Hudson New York Corn Whiskey was the foundation for the company’s “Baby Bourbon.”

However, while Kentucky has a long history of producing bourbon whiskey, and New York’s reputation as a craft whiskey distilling hub is only being further cemented with the introduction of the Empire Rye designation, a new generation of whiskey makers are currently in the process of trying to put Maryland back on the map.

“In hindsight, it was a risky move,” Sagamore Spirit president Brian Treacy said. “But what inspired it was the fact that so many people, especially here in Maryland, kept asking, ‘When will we actually be able to drink your whiskey?’ We decided there were so many great supporters. Why wouldn’t we bring them along on this journey?”

The feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Penny’s Proof — named after Sagamore Spirit’s 40-foot-tall copper column still — had warming baking spice notes on the nose and palate, with a cardamom-studded honeycomb finish. The buy-in from locals was immediate. “We always joke, but it’s a little bit true,” Treacy said. “Maryland loves Maryland.”

But will the country as a whole come around to the idea of Maryland-style rye whiskey?

“It’s a challenge that we’ve happily accepted,” Treacy said. “I mean, Kentucky did it. Why can’t others do it?”

Unless you’re from Maryland, you may not know that the state had a long tradition of rye whiskey production. It was once home to more than 40 distilleries, over half of them located in central Baltimore, and produced a third of the country’s rye whiskey.

Want more great food writing and recipes? Subscribe to “The Bite,” Salon Food’s newsletter.

According to the New York Times, many distillers and historians “agree that Maryland rye did have a different flavor profile — sweeter than the rye made farther west, with less spice and a supple, perhaps buttery palate.”

This persisted through prohibition, a period of time that even wiped bourbon producers out of Bourbon County, Ky. However, during World War II, distilleries were forced to shut down to produce ethanol to help the war effort, and they never reopened as spirits-producing facilities. Thus, Maryland-style rye was lost for a period of time, as was much of the documentation that outlined what exactly made the regional style distinctive.

Over the last decade, however, more than 20 distilleries have opened in the state that are making Maryland-style rye, including Baltimore Spirits Company (whose co-founder Max Lentz told The Local Palate that “Maryland rye history was a big part of our decision to launch the Baltimore Whiskey Company”); McClintock Distilling Co.; and of course, Sagamore Spirit.

A month ago, the distillery released their fully aged four-and-a-half-year-old rye. It’s a deep brown pour with caramel and honeycomb notes and enticing hints of tropical fruit and citrus zest. Already, it’s receiving attention from spirits critics and connoisseurs, which could aid in spreading the word about Maryland rye.

“It will take some time to get to a place where people recognize ‘Maryland rye,’ but we know it can be done,” Treacy said. “Other regional entities — whether it’s wine, beer or spirits — they’ve all done it right, like West Coast IPAs or New England IPAs, so this is a great time for us to be bringing this story to life.”

More from Salon Food:

Is America experiencing mass psychosis?

In 2020, 34 percent of Republicans and independents who lean to the right surveyed by Pew Research Center agreed that it was “probably” or “definitely true” that powerful people intentionally planned the COVID-19 outbreak. Eighteen percent of Democrats and left-leaners agreed, too. That same year, results from a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist survey found that approximately three-quarters of Republicans did not trust the 2020 presidential election results.

It should go without saying that these kinds of beliefs are fantasy, not rooted in any rational fact or evidence. Hence, someone observing from afar the rise in conspiratorial beliefs and pseudoscience might characterize a vast swath of the American public as delusional. From the COVID-truther movement to people believing the 2020 presidential election was rigged, it appears that the body politic is — to put it mildly — no longer on the same page.

Given the perturbed psychological state of so many Americans, it is worth asking if something is happening — psychologically speaking — that is causing many Americans to live in very different realities.

Psychologists say yes; and, moreover, that what is happening was actually predicted long ago by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. Indeed, Jung once wrote that the demise of society wouldn’t be a physical threat, but instead mass delusion — a collective psychosis of sorts.

“Carl Jung noted that ‘the wolf inside’ man was far more a threat to human existence than external forces,” Dr. Carla Marie Manly, a clinical psychologist and author of “Joy From Fear,” told Salon. “When mental forces become so toxic as to harm our overall well-being on an individual and collective level a ‘psychic epidemic’ can result.”

Indeed, Jung himself warned that modern society was prone to collapse due to a pandemic of “delusional ideas.”

“Greater than all physical dangers are the tremendous effects of delusional ideas, which are yet denied all reality by our world-blinded consciousness,” Jung wrote. “Our much vaunted reason and our boundlessly overestimated will are sometimes utterly powerless in the face of ‘unreal’ thoughts.”

Notably, Jung believed that the United States was particularly prone to society-breaking delusions.

“Anything new should always be questioned and tested with caution, for it may very easily turn out to be only a new disease; that is why true progress is impossible without mature judgment,” Jung wrote. “The man who is unconscious of the historical context and lets slip his link with the past is in constant danger of succumbing to the crazes and delusions engendered by all novelties.”

Some psychologists believe that this is what the country is experiencing right now — more or less.

“Something’s definitely happening, and I think COVID amplified it to a painful point, you could say,” Katharine Bainbridge, a Jungian analyst, tells Salon.

Want more psychology and science stories in your inbox? Subscribe to Salon’s weekly newsletter The Vulgar Scientist.

But there are caveats. “It’s complicated,” Bainbridge said. “From the left’s point of view, people that aren’t being vaccinated or think the election was rigged are psychotic, right? If you’re on the right, you think the left is psychotic and has lost its mind in identity politics. Both sides look at each other and say, ‘you’ve lost your mind.'”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the concept of a “mass psychosis” has been seized upon by conspiracy theorists as a rationale for their conspiracies. For instance, anti-vaccination influencers like Joseph Mercola employ the term to suggest that those who are getting vaccinated are the real “delusional” ones.

Bainbridge said in order to contextualize what’s actually happening in America through a Jungian lens, one must consider the role of a central guiding myth.

“Jung said man cannot live without religion — so you make it up,” Bainbridge said. “You can’t not have a central myth to live by. He would say maybe in this time that we’ve lost that — we don’t have a collective unifying principle.”

Cultural theorists often describe the history of human civilization as one of a transition between different central guiding myths. In the Western world, Christianity undergirded everyday existence and society for over a thousand years. After the Renaissance, the central guiding myth became a belief in rationalism; then, in modernity, a belief that technology might improve the lot of all humans.

Though the phrase is often reviled, the postmodern era — which, roughly, began in the 1960s or 1970s depending on who you ask — merely means the cultural transition into an epoch into which there were no longer any fundamental guiding myths that unified human societies and drove progress. Such an era is, by its nature, more fractured socially; two humans plucked at random from a postmodern epoch might find themselves believing wildly different things about human society, progress and morality, with little in common.

Jung believed, Bainbridge explained, that people needed myths to live by — hence the importance of religion. Yet interestingly, there has been an ever-increasing number of Americans leaving organized religion. In return, many people — perhaps those who were never religious in the first place — have turned to New Age spiritual beliefs, which in some circles have curiously syncretized with the tenets of the far-right conspiracy theory QAnon.

Bainbridge noted the contrast between New Age circles and QAnon in Jungian terms.

“One is super dark and apocalyptic and the other is utopian,” Bainbridge said. “The problem with New Age thinking that is it leaves out the shadow — and then QAnon is obsessed with the shadow.”

“Unfortunately, many people were gravitating toward conspiracy theories prior to the pandemic,” Manly observed, “yet this trend has intensified during the pandemic due to surges in online time, anxiety, and feelings of helpless.”

Manly connected this to Jung’s “wolf within” idea. “Individuals and groups who perpetuate conspiracy theories are often intentionally ‘feeding the wolf inside’ masses of people — often with substantial negative mental health effects.”

But why is this happening now? As Bainbridge noted, the coronavirus pandemic appears to have amplified existing rifts. Joe Kelly, a cult intervention specialist, also told Salon that humans are often drawn to extremism when they are suffering.

“If an individual is hurting — financially, on any level, losing a job, having trouble with their mortgage, having trouble feeding themselves — then they’re more likely to listen to extremist ideologies and talk about a conspiracy around them that is beyond their control,” Kelly said.

Social psychologists like Jung often see the government as a stand-in for authority figures like parents. Indeed, Bainbridge said, one might analogize the draw to conspiracy theories and New Age religions as children acting out when their “parents” (meaning, the state) are not taking care of them properly.

“If the parent isn’t taking care of a child, then the child acts out, right? The child is angry because it’s not getting its needs met,” Bainbridge said. “And there are lots of people, like left-progressives, who asked: ‘How did Trump get elected?’ But once you really look into it, you’re like, that was obvious because there’s a huge part of America that’s in between New York and LA, and those people are fed up and they feel forgotten.”

Bainbridge says the way out of this conundrum, from a Jungian perspective, is to embrace humanism and empathy.

“We have to find our humanity, and [ask], ‘what does it mean to be a human being?'” Bainbridge said. “It means that you have to integrate your own darkness, wrestle with your own paradoxes and stop projecting out onto other people the opposite inside of you.”

Bainbridge added: “There are no simple answers. But we have to hold on to our own humanity, instead of projecting out and demonizing other people. That’s how we survive.”

Read more on America’s mass delusions:

Jan. 6 committee just proved Fox News knowingly lies on air — but don’t expect their viewers to care

Monday night, the House of Representatives’ bipartisan Jan. 6 committee voted to advance a contempt of Congress resolution against Donald Trump’s former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, for suddenly dropping his cooperation with the probe after Trump engaged in his favorite sport, witness intimidation. While the vote was expected, it came with a true and welcome surprise when the committee offered what can only be described as dispositive proof that Fox News hosts knowingly and shamelessly lie on air.

Text messages that were turned over to the committee by Meadows, prior to his withdrawal from further cooperation, prove two things: Fox News hosts like Sean Hannity, Brian Kilmeade and Laura Ingraham, as well as Donald Trump Jr., all believed Trump was to blame for inciting the Capitol riot — and believed Meadows was the only person who could call it off.

Yet all of these people turned around and told Republican voters the opposite story.

After pleading with Meadows for Trump’s help, these same Fox News hosts told their audiences that the siege on the U.S. Capitol wasn’t Trump’s fault, that it wasn’t really a Trump riot and that Trump’s coup is no threat to democracy. The texts revealed on Monday, however, prove that these folks have spent 11 months lying and gaslighting, and that not one of them believes a single word they say publicly about the attempted coup or the Capitol riot.

But don’t hold your breath waiting for the Fox News audience to express outrage that they’ve been lied to for 11 solid months. Most of them already know the hosts and frequent GOP guests on their favorite network are a bunch of liars. That’s why the average Fox News viewer tunes in. They don’t care about the truth. They just want to learn the favored lies of the day, so they can parrot them and be active participants in the destruction of American democracy.

The text messages released by the committee are too extensive to recount here — though it’s well worth reading them all — but what really comes across is how much these people were not confused about who was responsible for the riot: Donald Trump. Fox host Laura Ingraham texted, “He is destroying his legacy.” Trump Jr. texted that this has “gone too far and gotten out of hand,” language that indicates he saw the riot as a continuation of other efforts to overturn the election. Meadows repeatedly replied that he was “pushing” Trump to call it off, but Trump refused. This went on for six hours.

Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics? Subscribe to her newsletter Standing Room Only.

But while Fox News hosts, Meadows and Trump Jr. clearly saw the insurrection as Trump’s fault, and tied to the larger conspiracy (which they eagerly backed) to overturn the election, that’s not at all what they said on air. As has been extensively documented, Fox News has spun out a bunch of often-conflicting narratives about Jan. 6. Tucker Carlson alone, as Media Matters documented, shamelessly switches between contradictory accounts on his highly rated show:

Tucker Carlson began painting an alternate reality about the event, insisting there was no insurrection and pushing the repeatedly disproven claim that white supremacists were not responsible. In Carlson’s telling, moreover, the rioters were indeed great American patriots: “A mob of older people from unfashionable zip codes somehow made it all the way to Washington, D.C., probably by bus. They wandered freely through the Capitol, like it was their building or something. … They talked about the Constitution and something called their rights.”

“It wasn’t real” directly contradicts “it was a glorious act of patriotism.” But the seamless shifting between these two lies doesn’t seem to rattle the Fox audience. Viewers aren’t deluded or confused about what is going on. They watch because Fox News is propaganda. They know the riot was real and that it was an attempt to overthrow the government. What they seek from Fox News is to learn the official party line — or lines — that they can use when lying online or to the people in their lives. Fox viewers shouldn’t be viewed as innocent dupes, but as active participants in an effort to rewrite reality and stand up a fake story that justifies the insurrection.

All of which is why few Fox viewers will be rattled when faced with this direct evidence that Fox hosts deliberately lie to them. Lies are what they tune in to hear. If confronted about it, most will resort to the usual tactics of deflection and whataboutism, falsely accusing the “liberal” media of doing the same thing. That’s why Republicans love yelling “fake news” at the real news. It helps them rationalize their own love of lies with an “everyone does it” excuse. Which is, of course, just another lie.

Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics? Subscribe to her newsletter Standing Room Only.

This is another example of a crucial rule of right wing propaganda, as articulated by professional debunker Brooke Binkowski: Disinformation is permission, not persuasion.

Fox viewers aren’t fooled by the lies, generally speaking. What they get out of lies is permission to be liars themselves. Seeing famous people on TV openly lie in the name of fascism emboldens Fox viewers to do the same. Which is why countering your uncle’s nonsense on Facebook with facts doesn’t change his mind. He always knew it wasn’t true. He just doesn’t care.

All of which is why Democrats are fooling themselves if they believe that simply getting the truth out there is enough to move the needle. Everyone already knows that Trump, the people that surround him and his propagandists at Fox News are shameless liars. Liberals know this, but so do the most enthusiastic Fox heads. Proof is important for the historical record, but as it just confirms what everyone already knows, it’s not going to change voting behavior or motivate new activism.

If voters and activists are going to care, they need to start seeing consequences happen, and not just to the foot soldiers who stormed the Capitol. Trump, Meadows and other co-conspirators who organized and led the coup are all walking around free, openly plotting another coup, while also cooking up various schemes to defraud their own supporters. As long as the Department of Justice treats an organized conspiracy to overthrow the government as beneath attention, Democrats can’t expect voters to take this seriously. Yes, even if they release a bunch of text messages proving what everyone already suspected.

Joe Manchin cites “fake” GOP numbers to demand last-minute cuts to Biden’s Build Back Better

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., is pushing for more cuts to the Democrats’ Build Back Better package as Senate Majority Chuck Schumer races to pass the bill before Christmas.

Manchin, who appears to be the last major Democratic holdout on President Biden’s signature legislation, again called for changes to the bill on Monday, citing a Republican-requested analysis by the Congressional Budget Office of what various programs in the bill might cost if they are extended beyond what the legislation actually calls for.

The CBO said in November that the actual bill would cost $1.7 trillion and add $367 billion to the deficit over the next decade, though the Treasury estimates that it will actually raise money, thanks to increased IRS enforcement in the bill. But Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., in an apparent bid to sway Manchin’s vote, requested a CBO analysis of how much it would cost to make all the programs in the bill permanent for 10 years. The CBO in a report on Friday said that hypothetical bill would add nearly $3 trillion to the deficit over 10 years.

Manchin on Monday called the report “very sobering.”

“Everyone has to choose basically what we can sustain,” he told reporters.

The White House on Monday rejected the deficit projection as “fake.”

“What you’re talking about here is a fake CBO score that is not based on the actual bill that anybody is voting on,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters. “This was a request by Sen. Graham to score a bill that is not currently being debated. That is his prerogative to do. But what our focus is on is on the existing bill that will lower the deficit, that will also, over an additional 10 years, pay for the $2 trillion tax cuts that Republicans didn’t pay for. They’re welcome for that.”

Though the original proposal included funding for programs like paid family and medical leave for a 10-year period, Democrats have been forced to slash the length of programs to appease both Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., who oppose corporate tax increases and other revenue-raising measures. Democrats now appear set to cut the paid leave program entirely in order to win Manchin’s vote.

Psaki said Monday that Biden is committed to extending certain programs if he can find the funding but added, “We should really focus on the actual bill everybody is going to vote on and considering in Congress right now.”

Manchin, who has long expressed concern that the BBB package would contribute to rising inflation even though rating agencies say it will not, said he is still “engaged” in discussions with Biden on the bill but is not ready to commit to voting for it. He appears determined to extract “major changes” in the final version, according to Politico.

“Listen, let’s at least see the bill. Need to see what they write, what’s the final print. That tells you everything,” Manchin said.

Manchin’s pushback comes as Schumer continues to meet with the Senate parliamentarian to finalize the bill this week. The Democratic leader said Monday that the party is “working hard to put the Senate in a position to get the legislation across the finish line before Christmas.”

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

It’s unclear whether Democrats can win over Manchin by then, especially after an updated draft released over the weekend included the paid leave proposal he opposes. Schumer has urged Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., who has led the push on paid leave, to “keep fighting” to include it in the final proposal, according to Politico. Gillibrand has expressed optimism that Democrats can “get Joe Manchin to yes” by Christmas.

Manchin has also pushed back against the proposed extension of the expanded Child Tax Credit, which expires within days, because it may be extended beyond the one year included in the bill.

“Where does the money come from? We go back and another bite and more and more funding? Or do we just throw caution to the wind and have debt financing, which has been done by both parties for far too long?” he said. He added that he wants to see more funding from the revenue raised by the bill to go toward paying down the national debt instead of funding social programs.

Manchin has also repeatedly urged Democrats to delay the bill until next year.

“People have been in a hurry for a long time to do something, but I think, basically, we’re seeing things unfold that allows us to prepare better,” he reiterated on Monday. “And that’s what we should do.”

Manchin’s continued reluctance on the bill has frustrated many Democrats, who are hungry for a big legislative win to finish the year.

“There’s nothing more to be gained from more talk,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass, told The New York Times. “We have talked and talked and talked. It’s time to make some final decisions and vote.”

Read more on the slow-unfolding battle for Build Back Better:

REVEALED: Fox News hosts, Donald Trump Jr. bombarded Mark Meadows during Capitol riot

Three Fox News hosts sent desperate texts to Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s White House Chief of Staff, begging him to make Trump call off the January 6 Capitol riot as it unfolded.

The texts, read aloud during a January 6 committee hearing by Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., were made public late Monday as part of the panel’s investigation into the riot. This week, the committee narrowed in on Meadows’ communications during the leadup to January 6 with various Trump allies. On Friday, the panel voted to recommend that Meadows be charged in contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with its probe.

Among those who sent desperate texts to Meadows include Laura Ingraham, the host of the nighttime show “The Ingraham Angle”; Sean Hannity, the host of “The Sean Hannity Show”; and Brian Kilmeade, a host of “Fox & Friends.” All three sent direct texts to Meadows asking him to persuade the former president to neutralize the riot.

“Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home,” Ingraham wrote to the Trump aide. “This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.”

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

“Can he make a statement?” Hannity echoed in a separate message. “Ask people to leave the Capitol.”

Kilmeade asked Meadows if he could “get [Trump] on TV,” adding that the insurrection was “destroying everything you have accomplished.”

According to the panel’s investigation, even Donald Trump Jr. shared the Fox News hosts’ concerns.

“He’s got to condemn this shit ASAP. The Capitol Police tweet is not enough,” Don Jr. told Meadows. ”We need an Oval Office address. He has to leave now. It has gone too far and gotten out of hand,” the president’s son responded.

Ingraham’s texts, The New York Times notes, flew in the face of the host’s subsequent remarks regarding the election and the ensuing riot. For instance, Ingraham baselessly floated the notion that antifa agitators were among the rioters and cited “legitimate concerns” about how the election was handled. In a radio broadcast, Hannity likewise vaguely alluded to possible antifa infiltration, suggesting that he’d “heard these reports that [antifa] might even wear MAGA gear.”

On Monday, Meadows appeared on a Fox News interview with Hannity to air out his grievances over the January 6 panel’s contempt recommendation.

“Let’s be clear about this, this is not about me, holding me in contempt. It’s not even about making the Capitol safer,” he told Hannity. “We’ve seen that by the selective leaks that are going on right now. This is about Donald Trump and about actually going after him once again. “

Conveniently, the text exchanges between Meadows and Hannity were not mentioned once during the broadcast, The Daily Beast’s Justin Baragona noted.

The newly unearthed texts are likely to be just a fragment of a vast trove of communications currently under federal scrutiny.

Earlier this week, the House committee revealed an email wherein Meadows promised an unnamed recipient that the National Guard was on standby to “protect pro-Trump people.” Meadows also recently turned over a 38-page powerpoint presentation outlining an extensive plan to overturn the 2020 election.

Mark Meadows reveals he doesn’t even understand Trump’s election lawsuits

Mark Meadows new book, The Chief’s Chief, reveals how “despondent” former President Donald Trump was after the Supreme Court refused to hear the Texas case to overturn the 2020 election.

Trump was evidently so certain that his three appointed justices would hand him a victory that he and Meadows agreed that they couldn’t “believe” the decision to ignore the case.

“Considering what had occurred during the last four years, it was sadly believable,” Meadows claimed.

But when it comes to the way Meadows understood the cases brought to court, he made it clear he didn’t fully grasp the reality of the election lawsuits brought by Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Lin Wood.

“When we brought these credible accusations of voter fraud to court, however, they were dismissed quickly, before anyone even reviewed the evidence,” Meadows falsely characterized.

As is being reviewed in the cases to sanction Trump’s lawyers, the cases complaining of voter fraud were outright false. Those accusations were so egregiously false that Giuliani could be sanctioned by the court. He confessed that he didn’t have “time” to verify if any of the cases cited in his list were actual voter fraud or to even confirm if they were true.

During Giuliani’s Dec. 2020 hearing, The Detroit News explained, “the purported expert, retired Col. Phil Waldron, repeated widely debunked statements about Michigan’s election results, which were certified by bipartisan boards in all 83 counties.” Waldron made it clear that he didn’t fully understand how elections work, explained Michigan Live. Of the thousands of claims cited by Giuliani, only eight could be actual voter fraud. That wouldn’t change Biden’s 154,000-vote lead over Trump, but the eight could be investigated by authorities for actual charges. Still, they would require proof.

“For the most part, the cases were dismissed because the judges believed that states had no ‘standing’ to bring the cases,” Meadows wrote. They didn’t have standing because Texas can’t challenge the election results of Pennsylvania. It’s not their state and they don’t run Pennsylvania’s elections.

“Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections,” the court wrote in the unsigned ruling.

“The facts of fraud were not looked at by the judges and courts” was another false claim from Meadows. That’s a lie that has made the rounds of Facebook memes, Reuters explained in a fact-check, there were judges, some appointed by Donald Trump, who examine 60 lawsuits. The reason judges dismissed them is that the “rumors” or claims of fraud don’t provide evidence necessary to prove fraud. Courts don’t change an election because someone says they saw a suspicious person walking through a neighborhood.

“In the court’s opinion, the president of the United States had no standing to bring a challenge to an election that he was running in — one that was unfairly decided against him,” wrote Meadows. This was also untrue. In the case of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Trump lost the lawsuit complaining that local and state officials shouldn’t be able to decide their own rules for elections.

In Trump’s case, the court didn’t say he lacked standing. The court said that you don’t change the rules after people have already cast ballots. Even in Justice Clarence Thomas’ comments acknowledges that fact.

Meadows closes the section by saying that the Supreme Court would have listened if Joe Biden brought the complaint. It implies that Meadows thinks Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Thomas, and John Roberts are all in the pocket of Biden.

If Trump was “despondent,” it was likely due to none of his aides being willing to explain the reality to him.

Meadows’ book, The Chief’s Chief, is on sale now.

CNN puts Fox on blast with brutal supercut of overwrought Christmas tree arson coverage

This week, a huge Christmas tree outside of the News Corps/Fox News building in Mid-Town Manhattan was set ablaze, and a 49-year-old Brooklyn man has been arrested in connection with the arson attack. Fox News has been giving the attack nonstop coverage — and CNN’s Brianna Keilar is calling out the right-wing cable news outlet’s blatant hypocrisy in light of how badly it has “downplayed” the violence that occurred at the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6.

On the CNN morning show “New Day,” which Keilar hosts with her colleague John Berman, she showed clips of Fox News hosts bloviating and hyperventilating over the arson attack, including Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. “Fox and Friends” host Brian Kilmeade was especially melodramatic, saying, “It’s emblematic of cities across America that are out of control.” And his “Fox and Friends” colleague Steve Doocy said, “This city has gone south when it comes to safety. We don’t feel safe when we come to work in the morning.”

The Christmas tree fire at Fox was a serious incident.
Obviously it's incredibly scary to feel your work place is under attack.
Unless your work place is the Capitol.
Then, according to Fox hosts, it's not such a big deal.#RollTheTape pic.twitter.com/8kdsfzxFOn

— Brianna Keilar (@brikeilarcnn) December 9, 2021

Keilar called out the arson attack as an appalling criminal act. But the CNN host, noting that Fox News has made the arson attack “the centerpiece of its coverage,” emphasized that Fox’s hosts didn’t express nearly as much outrage after a violent far-right mob attacked the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6.

Keilar said of the arson attack and the Christmas tree, “Now, no one was injured in this incident, but they could have been. This is a serious incident. Obviously, it’s incredibly scary to feel that your workplace is under attack — unless your workplace is the Capitol. Then, according to many, many Fox hosts, it’s not such a big deal.”

To illustrate her point, Keilar showed clips of Carlson and Doocy claiming that the January 6 insurrectionists were generally peaceful. Carlson, in one clip, is seen saying of the rioters who invaded the Capitol, “They don’t look like terrorists; they look like tourists.” And in another clip, Carlson describes the Capitol riot as “a political protest that got completely out of control.”

Keilar commented, “At Fox, when the target is a Christmas tree at their workplace, it is a sacrilege. But when the target is the seat of American democracy, it’s not. The whole of Congress, as they certify a presidential election that was fair and secure — when the perpetrators are Trump supporters in the thousands, four of whom died that day, when the victims are police officers…. Fox downplays the attack, and in many cases, flat-out doesn’t cover it, ignores that it ever happened. Just imagine if Fox hosts could muster, for an armed attack on the Capitol, the same outrage that they did for their Christmas tree — perhaps some of the almost half of Republicans who think January 6 was a legitimate protest might actually see it for what it really was.”

The execution of Julian Assange: He exposed the crimes of empire — and that can’t be tolerated

Let us name Julian Assange’s executioners. Joe Biden. Boris Johnson. Scott Morrison. Theresa May. Lenin Moreno. Donald Trump. Barack Obama. Mike Pompeo. Hillary Clinton. Lord Chief Justice Ian Burnett and Justice Timothy Victor Holroyde. Crown Prosecutors James Lewis, Clair Dobbin and Joel Smith. District Judge Vanessa Baraitser. Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia Gordon Kromberg. William Burns, the director of the CIA. Ken McCallum, the director general of the U.K. Security Service, or MI5.

Let us acknowledge that the goal of these executioners, who discussed kidnapping and assassinating Assange, has always been his annihilation. That Assange, who is in precarious physical and psychological health and who suffered a stroke during court video proceedings on Oct. 27, has been condemned to death should not come as a surprise. The 10 years he has been detained, seven in the Ecuadorian embassy in London and nearly three in the high-security Belmarsh prison, were accompanied with a lack of sunlight and exercise and unrelenting threats, pressure, anxiety and stress. “His eyes were out of sync, his right eyelid would not close, his memory was blurry,” his fiancée Stella Morris said of the stroke.

Assange’s steady physical and psychological deterioration has led to hallucinations and depression. He takes antidepressant medication and the antipsychotic quetiapine. He has been observed pacing his cell until he collapses, punching himself in the face and banging his head against the wall. He has spent weeks in the medical wing of Belmarsh. Prison authorities found “half of a razor blade” hidden under his socks. He has repeatedly called the suicide hotline run by the Samaritans because he thought about killing himself “hundreds of times a day.” The executioners have not yet completed their grim work. Toussaint Louverture, who led the Haitian independence movement, the only successful slave revolt in human history, was physically destroyed in the same manner, locked by the French in an unheated and cramped prison cell and left to die of exhaustion, malnutrition, apoplexy, pneumonia and probably tuberculosis.

Assange committed empire’s greatest sin. He exposed it as a criminal enterprise. He documented its lies, callous disregard for human life, rampant corruption and innumerable war crimes. Republican or Democrat. Conservative or Labour. Trump or Biden. It does not matter. The goons who oversee the empire sing from the same Satanic songbook. Empires always kill those who inflict deep and serious wounds. Rome’s long persecution of the Carthaginian general Hannibal, forcing him in the end to commit suicide, and the razing of Carthage repeats itself in epic after epic. Crazy Horse. Patrice Lumumba. Malcolm X. Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Sukarno. Ngo Dinh Diem. Fred Hampton. Salvador Allende. If you cannot be bought off, if you will not be intimidated into silence, you will be killed. The obsessive CIA attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro, which because none succeeded have a Keystone Kop incompetence to them, included contracting Momo Salvatore Giancana, Al Capone’s successor in Chicago, along with Miami mobster Santo Trafficante to kill the Cuban leader, attempting to poison Castro’s cigars with a botulinum toxin, providing Castro with a tubercle bacilli-infected scuba diving suit, booby-trapping a conch shell on the sea floor where he often dived, slipping botulism-toxin pills in one of Castro’s drinks and using a pen outfitted with a hypodermic needle to poison him.

The current cabal of assassins hide behind a judicial burlesque overseen in London by portly judges in gowns and white horsehair wigs mouthing legal “Alice in Wonderland” absurdities. It is a dark reprise of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Mikado,” with the Lord High Executioner drawing up lists of people “who would not be missed.”

I watched the latest installment of the Assange show trial via video link on Friday. I listened to the reading of the ruling granting the appeal by the United States to extradite Assange. Assange’s lawyers have two weeks to appeal to the Supreme Court, which they are expected to do. I am not optimistic.

Friday’s ruling was devoid of legal analysis. It fully accepted the conclusions of the lower court judge about increased risk of suicide and inhumane prison conditions in the United States. But the ruling argued that U.S. Diplomatic Note no. 74, given to the court on Feb. 5, which offered “assurances” that Assange would be well treated, overrode the lower court’s conclusions. It was a remarkable legal non sequitur. The ruling would not have gotten a passing grade in a first-semester law school course. But legal erudition is not the point. The judicial railroading of Assange, which has eviscerated one legal norm after another, has turned, as Franz Kafka wrote, “lying into a universal principle.”

The decision to grant the extradition was based on four “assurances” given to the court by the U.S. government. The two-judge appellate panel ruled that the “assurances” “entirely answer the concerns which caused the judge [in the lower court] to discharge Mr. Assange.” The “assurances” promise that Assange will not be subject to Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) which keep prisoners in extreme isolation and allow the government to monitor conversations with lawyers, eviscerating attorney-client privilege; can, if the Australian government agrees, serve out his sentence there; will receive adequate clinical and psychological care; and, pre-trial and post trial, will not be held in the Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX) in Florence, Colorado.

“There is no reason why this court should not accept the assurances as meaning what they say,” the judges wrote. “There is no basis for assuming that the USA has not given the assurances in good faith.”

And with these rhetorical feints the judges signed Assange’s death warrant.

None of the “assurances” offered by Biden’s Department of Justice are worth the paper they are written on. All come with escape clauses. None is legally binding. Should Assange do “something subsequent to the offering of these assurances that meets the tests for the imposition of SAMs or designation to ADX” he will be subject to these coercive measures. And you can be assured that any incident, no matter how trivial, will be used, if Assange is extradited, as an excuse to toss him into the mouth of the dragon. Should Australia, which has marched in lockstep with the U.S. in the persecution of their citizen, not agree to his transfer, he will remain for the rest of his life in a U.S. prison. But so what? If Australia does not request a transfer, it “cannot be a cause for criticism of the USA, or a reason for regarding the assurances as inadequate to meet the judge’s concerns,” the ruling read. And even if that were not the case, it would take Assange 10 to 15 years to appeal his sentence up to the Supreme Court, more than enough time for the state assassins to finish him off. I am not sure how to respond to assurance number four, stating that Assange will not be held pre-trial in the ADX in Florence. No one is held pre-trail in ADX Florence. But it sounds reassuring, so I guess those in the Biden DOJ who crafted the diplomatic note added it. ADX Florence, of course, is not the only Supermax prison in the United States that might house Assange. Assange can be shipped out to one of our other Guantánamo-like facilities. Daniel Hale, the former U.S. Air Force intelligence analyst currently imprisoned for releasing top-secret documents that exposed widespread civilian casualties caused by U.S. drone strikes, has been held at USP Marion, a federal penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, in a Communications Management Unit (CMU) since October. CMUs are highly restrictive units that replicate the near total isolation imposed by SAMs.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

The High Court ruling ironically came as Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced at the virtual Summit for Democracy that the Biden administration will provide new funding to protect reporters targeted because of their work and support independent international journalism. Blinken’s “assurances” that the Biden administration will defend a free press, at the very moment the administration was demanding Assange’s extradition, is a glaring example of the rank hypocrisy and mendacity that makes the Democrats, as Glen Ford used to say, “not the lesser evil, but the more effective evil.”

Assange is charged in the U.S. under 17 counts of the Espionage Act and one count of hacking into a government computer. The charges could see him sentenced to 175 years in prison, even though he is not a U.S. citizen and WikiLeaks is not a U.S.-based publication. If he is found guilty, it will effectively criminalize the investigative work of all journalists and publishers, anywhere in the world and of any nationality, who possess classified documents to shine a light on the inner workings of power. This mortal assault on the press will have been orchestrated, we must not forget, by a Democratic administration. It will set a legal precedent that will delight other totalitarian regimes and autocrats who, emboldened by the United States, will gleefully seize journalists and publishers, no matter where they are located, who publish inconvenient truths.

There is no legal basis to hold Julian in prison. There is no legal basis to try him, a foreign national, under the Espionage Act. The CIA spied on Assange in the Ecuador embassy through a Spanish company, UC Global, contracted to provide embassy security. This spying included recording the privileged conversations between Assange and his lawyers. This fact alone invalidates any future trial. Assange, who after seven years in a cramped room without sunlight in the embassy, has been held for nearly three years in a high-security prison in London so the state can, as Nils Melzer, the UN special rapporteur on torture, has testified, continue the unrelenting abuse and torture it knows will lead to his psychological and physical disintegration. The persecution of Assange is designed to send a message to anyone who might consider exposing the corruption, dishonesty and depravity that defines the black heart of our global elites.

Dean Yates can tell you what U.S. “assurances” are worth. He was the Reuters bureau chief in Baghdad on the morning of July 12, 2007, when his Iraqi colleagues Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh were killed, along with nine other men, by U.S. Army Apache gunships. Two children were seriously wounded. The U.S. government spent three years lying to Yates, Reuters and the rest of the world about the killings, although the army had video evidence of the massacre taken by the Apaches during the attack. The video, known as the “Collateral Murder video,” was leaked in 2010 by Chelsea Manning to Assange. It, for the first time, proved that those killed were not engaged, as the army had repeatedly insisted, in a firefight. It exposed the lies spun by the U.S. that it could not locate the video footage and had never attempted to cover up the killings.

The Spanish courts can tell you what U.S. “assurances” are worth. Spain was given an assurance that David Mendoza Herrarte, if extradited to the U.S. to face trial for drug trafficking charges, could serve his prison sentence in Spain. But for six years the Department of Justice repeatedly refused Spanish transfer requests, only relenting when the Spanish Supreme Court intervened.

The people in Afghanistan can tell you what U.S. “assurances” are worth. U.S. military, intelligence and diplomatic officials knew for 18 years that the war in Afghanistan was a quagmire yet publicly stated, over and over, that the military intervention was making steady progress.

The people in Iraq can tell you what U.S. “assurances” are worth. They were invaded and subject to a brutal war based on fabricated evidence about weapons of mass destruction.

The people of Iran can tell you what U.S. “assurances” are worth. The United States, in the 1981 Algiers Accords, promised not to interfere in Iran’s internal affairs and then funded and backed the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran (MEK), a terrorist group, based in Iraq and dedicated to overthrowing the Iranian regime.

The thousands of people tortured in U.S. global black sites can tell you what U.S. “assurances” are worth. CIA officers, when questioned about the widespread use of torture by the Senate Intelligence Committee, secretly destroyed videotapes of torture interrogations while insisting there was no “destruction of evidence.”

The numbers of treaties, agreements, deals, promises and “assurances” made by the U.S. around the globe and violated are too numerous to list. Hundreds of treaties signed with Native American tribes, alone, were ignored by the U.S. government.

Assange, at tremendous personal cost, warned us. He gave us the truth. The ruling class is crucifying him for this truth. With his crucifixion, the dim lights of our democracy go dark.

More of Salon’s coverage of the Julian Assange case:

Texas toughens ban on medication-by-mail abortions with jail time and hefty fine

Texas already had the most restrictive abortion laws in the U.S. — and they just got tougher. On Wednesday, a new law took effect that adds penalties of jail time and a fine of up to $10,000 for anyone who prescribes pills for medication abortions through telehealth or the mail.

Texas bans all abortions after cardiac activity can be detected in the embryo, which typically occurs about six weeks into pregnancy — often before people realize they’re pregnant. Medication abortions via telehealth or mail were already illegal in Texas, and the new criminal penalties took effect on the day the Supreme Court heard arguments in a Mississippi case that ultimately could overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that established a constitutional right to abortion.

In contrast to a surgical abortion, which usually takes place in a clinic, a medication abortion involves two pills, taken 48 hours apart, that manipulate the hormones to end a pregnancy. Many people prefer this process early in a pregnancy because the pills can be taken at home. The Food and Drug Administration approved the drugs in 2000, and the procedure is effective up to 10 weeks into a pregnancy.

Texas is not the only state that restricts medication abortion and telehealth. This year alone, five other states have passed laws against sending abortion pills through the mail, said Elizabeth Nash, a state policy analyst with the Guttmacher Institute.

“It’s a squeeze play on abortion,” she said.

Nash said this crackdown is partially a response to the pandemic, which propelled interest in medication abortions.

“We saw the increase and, really, sort of the coming out of telehealth as part of medical practice,” she said.

Texas’ new law, known as SB 4, also narrows the legal window for medication abortion to the first seven weeks of pregnancy. State legislators passed this new law on Sept. 17 during a special session — more than two weeks after the other abortion law, often called the “six-week ban,” took effect on Sept. 1. Attempts to halt that law as groups challenge it in court have failed.

“We already have the most extreme abortion ban in the U.S. and yet our legislature made it a priority to add this additional abortion restriction,” said Sarah Wheat, chief external affairs officer with Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas.

Because of the six-week ban, the new limits on medication abortions won’t have an immediate impact. “Most people at this stage of a pregnancy are already banned from accessing abortion in Texas,” Wheat said.

But the new law could significantly affect future access to abortion.

By criminalizing the use of telehealth and mail-order prescriptions to acquire abortion pills, the state seeks to forestall a possible workaround to the shrinking number of reproductive health clinics in Texas.

Already, many Texans live hundreds of miles from the nearest clinic offering abortion services. Advocates have promoted the use of telehealth for medication abortions in places where clinics are few and far between, and some states experimented with greater telehealth flexibility — including for abortion pills — during the pandemic shutdowns.

The new law “is creating additional fear and additional stigma for people who may be seeking access to medication abortion,” Wheat said.

Anti-abortion groups in Texas hailed SB 4 as a victory — an important second step, after the six-week ban, in their efforts to curtail all access to the procedure in the state.

John Seago, legislative director for Texas Right to Life, said his group wanted to ensure that law enforcement officials could prosecute people who skirt the state’s strict limits by administering medication abortions.

“This piece is really important for this period but also moving into the future, when we see even after [Roe v. Wade] we have organizations and individuals advertising that they will mail abortion-inducing drugs,” he said.

Nash of the Guttmacher Institute said that in some states it has become easier for people to obtain medication abortions through telehealth services.

Seago said he wants to make sure that doesn’t happen in Texas.

“This is going to be a future public policy issue around abortion, no matter what happens to Roe v. Wade,” he said.

So far, no lawsuit has challenged Texas’ law restricting access to abortion pills. Mounting a legal challenge to halt the law is complicated because Texans already are effectively prohibited from all abortions after six weeks. Finding legal standing to sue would likely be difficult for any Texas plaintiff.

Ultimately, Wheat said, Texas’ latest law is a sign of what could happen elsewhere. She said it shows there is no end to efforts aimed at making abortions harder to get.

“Take note of Texas, because what you see is that our politicians, they do not quit, and they can find endless ways to add fear, intimidation and restrictions,” Wheat said.

This story is part of a partnership that includes KUT, NPR and KHN.

Subscribe to KHN’s free Morning Briefing.