You can bet on anything these days, but should you?

When I was growing up in Memphis, gambling was illegal in the state of Tennessee. Fortunately for Delta region residents, you could drive across state lines to Mississippi if you wanted to visit a casino.

Then in 2004, when I was 15, Tennessee launched its state lottery. Proceeds went to the HOPE scholarship, a statewide grant for local students attending Tennessee colleges and universities.

Since then, it seems like gambling has exploded, especially since 2018, when the Supreme Court made sports betting legal.

Betting markets eye expansion after predicting Trump's win

And nowadays, it feels like you can bet on almost any kind of event, even beyond sports. However, is it safe to bet on presidential elections, Oscar winners or celebrity breakups?

What can you bet on?

First, understand the difference between a regulated legal bet and an off-shore betting app or website. Regulated betting can include both digital betting that occurs on an app or website or in-person betting that occurs at a casino or through off-track betting. Gambling and betting is legal under U.S. federal law, but that’s not all.

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“It’s also regulated by the governing bodies of those respective sports, like the NFL, NBA and MLB,” said David Vinturella, sports betting and marketing expert at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.

Sports betting is regulated by each state individually — not by the federal government. What you can bet on also depends on where you live. There are 12 states that don’t allow betting, including California and Texas.

“That area is highly licensed and highly regulated by the state regulators,” said Quinton Singleton, gaming expert and president/chief operational officer of Microbetting analytics startup nVenue.

Major U.S.-based platforms, like FanDuel, DraftKings and BetMGM, stick to sports because it’s one of the few events that no one can truly predict

Major U.S.-based platforms, like FanDuel, DraftKings and BetMGM, stick to sports because it’s one of the few events that no one can truly predict. If you bet on the Oscars, there’s a non-zero chance that you know the outcome. If you bet on the winner of “The Great British Bake Off,” there’s a chance that you’re friends with a producer who’s given you an inside scoop.

Funnily enough, it only became legal to bet on the U.S. presidential election in early October, despite there being no way for someone to know the outcome ahead of time.

What is unregulated betting?

While apps like BetMGM, DraftKings and FanDuel are some of the most popular betting apps, sites like Polymarket and Predictit have become more well-known.

Through Polymarket and Predictit, you can bet on major pop culture events like the Oscars, whether Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce will break up or get engaged or who will be announced as the next James Bond.

However, sites that offer betting on non-athletic events are different from the more famous sports betting companies. First, they’re almost always based outside the U.S., which means they’re not subject to U.S. betting regulations.

This can hurt you if you place a bet, win and don’t receive the promised payout. If you wanted to file a dispute, you’d have little recourse.

“You’re essentially conducting an illegal transaction in the United States,” Vinturella said. “So if you were to go to the Better Business Bureau and say, ‘Hey, I placed an illegal bet in an unregulated market in an organization not based in the U.S.,’ there’s virtually nothing they could do.”

Whether you’re using a site like Polymarket or Predicit or a traditional sports betting app, the risk is the same as with any other kind of bet

Another issue is that sites like Polymarket require users to jump through hoops to place a bet. First, you don’t just put down a sum of money — you have to buy shares. Fortunately, you’re not locked in. You can sell your shares before the event.

“That’s the power of prediction markets. If something new happens, you’re not stuck where you are,” said Thomas S. Gruca, professor at the University of Iowa and director of the Iowa Electronic Markets, an online prediction market.

There’s another barrier to entry: Technically, U.S. citizens aren’t allowed to use Polymarket.

“It’s all theoretically people outside the U.S.,” Gruca said.

Also, if you want to bet on Polymarket, you can’t just deposit money from your bank account or credit card and start placing bets. You have to use crypto, which can be a hassle for some users. However, U.S. citizens are allowed to bet via Predictit. You also don’t have to use cryptocurrency to place bets.

Whether you’re using a site like Polymarket or Predicit or a traditional sports betting app, the risk is the same as with any other kind of bet.

“It depends on what you’re using it for,” Gruca said. “If you’re using it to make money, make sure you know more than the people already participating.”

about personal finance

What just happened in Syria, and who benefits most? Well, that part is easy

Trying to make sense of what just happened in Syria — where the seemingly impregnable regime of Bashar Assad abruptly collapsed two weeks ago in the face of an unexpected rebel onslaught — runs straight into the central paradox of global affairs: Everyone believes they’re on the right side of history, and can tell the good guys from the bad guys. They’re likely to be wrong on both counts, but even if they’re not, that kind of moral certainty leads to disaster.

There’s not a whole lot of moral clarity available in the treacherous political and historical landscape of Syria, except that almost no one laments the downfall of the 54-year Assad dynasty. Like most nations of the modern Middle East, Syria was carved out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, although in a different sense it’s the oldest country on earth, since it contains the archaeological remains of the earliest known human civilization. Today it’s a uniquely strategic and highly diverse “crossroads of religions, ideologies and terrain that borders five other Middle Eastern nations,” as Liz Sly writes in a useful Washington Post analysis.

Syria is also the site of this century’s longest civil war and worst refugee crisis, and its self-destruction under the Assad regime has changed the world. At least six million Syrians have fled the country over the past 12 or 13 years, creating an interlocking set of humanitarian and political emergencies that have fueled the rise of far-right or neo-fascist movements in more than a dozen countries (our own included). The ugly international scramble now underway in Syria resembles an old-fashioned Great Power struggle of the early 20th century in more than one sense: While the players on the global chessboard plot their moves, regular people struggle, suffer and die.

Emmanuel Macron's last act: France's pretty-boy Napoleon faces his Waterloo

At least four different nations have troops on the ground in the wake of Assad’s fall: Israel, Russia, Turkey and the United States, which recently and begrudgingly admitted that its military presence was larger and more entrenched than was publicly known. That’s without counting the various Islamist, Kurdish, Druze, pro-Iranian and/or leftist militia groups who may or may not have played a role in overthrowing Assad, or the remnants of the official Syrian military, most of which has either melted into the civilian population or fled into Iraq or Lebanon.

At near-certain risk of oversimplification, here’s the summary: The Israelis are there to guard their frontier along the Golan Heights, which most of the world still thinks should belong to Syria. The Turks are there to suppress the Kurdish nationalists, who most of the world believes should get their own territory. The Russians and Americans … well, that’s confusing. They were both there to combat Islamic State militants, at least officially, but at times have also waged a proxy war to prop up or undermine Assad, respectively.

The collapse of the Assad regime marked the end of a Cold War-style “confrontational status quo,” in which Israel, the U.S. and their allies tolerated Syria’s alliance with Russia and Iran as preferable to the alternatives.

Exactly what those Russian and American troops in Syria have been up to since Dec. 8, when Assad fled to Moscow and the Islamist rebel faction known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, rolled into Damascus, is not entirely clear. At least on the surface, that event took all the above-mentioned nations and the rest of the world by surprise. Lina Khatib of the London think tank Chatham House calls it “an earthquake in the regional order,” whose long-term effects may be comparable to the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe.

That remains to be seen, but Khatib’s essay for Foreign Policy hints at a chilling but compelling possibility: Some parties to the Syrian conflict were less surprised than others by what happened, and most Western media analysis has failed to perceive the underlying dynamics. Her most important observation is that the dramatic collapse of the Assad regime marked the end of a Cold War-style “confrontational status quo,” in which Israel, the U.S. and their various Arab and European allies tolerated Syria’s deepening entanglement with Russia and Iran as preferable to the alternatives: “They saw it as lower risk compared with the unknown forces that sudden political change in Iran or Syria could unleash.”

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That raises the question of whether certain players in the Syrian drama concluded that the time to roll the dice on “sudden political change” had arrived, and who might benefit most from this disruption. Khatib never flat-out says that Israel was the driving force behind the lightning victory of HTS, but her entire analysis could be read as pointing in that direction. (Any such relationship, for obvious reasons, would have been painstakingly concealed and conducted through multiple intermediaries.)

At the very least, the “cui bono” question is clear enough: Khatib concludes that “the collapse of the Assad regime will inevitably mean the end of the Iran-dominated regional order,” to be replaced by a new order built around Israel as “the Middle East’s agenda-setter.” This was the denouement, she suggests, of a three-part Israeli power play aiming for regional supremacy, in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack: First came the destruction and depopulation of Gaza, next was the decapitation of Hezbollah in Lebanon and then, last but not least, the ouster of Assad. Israel's real target the whole time, in this scenario, was Iran, until now the dominant Muslim power in the Middle East.

Khatib goes even deeper by implying that Israel’s relatively amicable relationship with Russia — perhaps it's not surprising that Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu feel a certain kinship — could be a factor in building that new order. Conventional wisdom may suggest that Assad’s fall was a major defeat for Putin, but she speculates (again, without exactly saying so) that from Russia's point of view this might have been a strategic withdrawal. Russian troops could likely have stepped in to halt the advance of HTS at any point, with little risk of direct military confrontation with U.S. or Turkish forces. But they didn’t, and recent reporting by the New York Times suggests that Putin concluded the Assad regime couldn't be saved. As Khatib suggests, Putin decided to abandon his “transactional partnership” with Assad and focus on other priorities — for instance, a favorable conclusion to the Ukraine war under the incoming Trump administration.

It’s stretching the circumstantial evidence past the breaking point to suggest that Putin cut a secret deal with Benjamin Netanyahu: You get the Middle East, I get Ukraine. But considered as a hypothesis or a thought experiment, it’s a parsimonious explanation of why Assad’s government collapsed so quickly and when it happened, barely a month before Trump takes office.

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That also underscores that the Biden administration, with its endlessly mockable insistence on a “rules-based order” (in which it sets the rules), was caught flat-footed by events in Syria, while most mainstream media commentary remains imprisoned by the moral blindness I mentioned above, and unable to shed its Cold War beer-goggles.

This affliction is found clear across the ideological spectrum, from the neocon dinosaurs who still dream of regime change in Iran (and damn near everywhere else) to the “liberal interventionists” who are still mad that Barack Obama declined to go to war in Syria a decade ago to the galaxy-brain, left-wing “anti-imperialists” who have made endless excuses for the inexcusable crimes of the Assad regime and its Kremlin sponsor.

The basic premise that the U.S. is always and everywhere a baleful influence is not easy to falsify. But siding with Assad, Putin and the Iranian mullahs is taking the enemy-of-my-enemy fallacy to pathetic extremes.

On one side we have New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, voice of the foreign policy establishment stuck in the mud, literally suggesting that the U.S. should try nation-building just one more time in another Middle Eastern country that would much rather we didn’t. This of course comes from the dude who told us that Mohammed bin Salman was the young lion who would reform the Arab world, and also made sweeping promises of a “Biden doctrine” that would free the Israeli hostages from Gaza, forge a two-state solution and bring peace to the entire Middle East.

On the other side we have a loose alignment of left-wing critics of U.S. policy who, for various reasons and to various extents, bought into the myth of Assad’s Syria, in alliance with Iran and Russia, as the backbone of “anti-Western, anti-Israel resistance in the Middle East,” in Khatib’s words. (These people, some of whom I know personally, lack Tom Friedman's platform and prestige. Many have honorable records in other respects. In the interests of not punching down, I'm not going to name or shame anyone.) This is about halfway defensible: Their basic premise that the U.S. is always and everywhere a baleful influence is one widely shared around the world, and not easy to falsify. But siding with the small-minded torturers, zealots and dictators in Damascus, Tehran and Moscow was taking the enemy-of-my-enemy fallacy to an absurd and pathetic extreme; it was like a third-generation, low-ink photocopy of the leftist romance with the Soviet Union, which at least pretended to believe in something.

To make matters very slightly worse, some of the more deluded or imaginative of those left-wing thinkers have occasionally pretzeled themselves into optimism about Donald Trump’s foreign policy, basically on the stopped-clock theory. It’s true that Trump’s ignorance, carelessness and xenophobia render him uninterested in overseas power plays that lack any obvious short-term benefits. He doesn’t care what happens in Syria or Ukraine or any other incomprehensible sh**hole trouble spot, at least not until Elon Musk or Stephen Miller or some paleocon underling convinces him that a Fox News propaganda victory is there for the taking.

If there was actually some private understanding between Putin and Netanyahu, Trump will be angry he was left out — an early sign of his lame-duck irrelevance, but only the first of many. Needless to say, he will not lift a finger or waste a thought on the future of the Syrian people, who were never consulted about any of this. What are the odds that's likely to change?

from Andrew O'Hehir on world politics

Transforming the party: Democrats have failed us — it’s time to rebuild from the ground up

Would it not be simpler for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?
— Bertolt Brecht

It took just over three weeks for top aides on the Kamala Harris campaign to appear on "Pod Save America" and, as a HuffPost writer put it, suggest they'd been doomed all along by a fossilized sense “that there just wasn’t much else Harris could have done to beat Donald Trump,” even after a record fundraising surge. That raises an obvious question: If you couldn’t see a way to win it, why not bring in someone who could? That's the problem in a nutshell, not just for the 2024 Harris campaign, but for the Democratic Party over the past two generations, the neoliberal world order and liberal democracy as a whole.

Some have called Harris “the female Obama,” and that reflects the problem on three different levels: As with Barack Obama, her emotional but hazy promise of transformation was betrayed by insider faux-realism. Obama mobilized a two-million-strong grassroots army, then disbanded it once elected, as Tim Dickinson and Micah Sifry explained after two electoral debacles: the loss of Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in 2010 and Donald Trump’s first election in 2016. Similarly, Harris launched with a series of unprecedented grassroots Zoom sessions, but squandered her momentum with a Wall Street-friendly economic message, while her massively-funded field operation in Pennsylvania was riddled with problems reported in The Nation, The American Prospect and Politico, capped off by the post-election revelation that thousands of Black and Latino voters in Philadelphia were ignored until a handful of staffers went rogue in the last few days.

Second, both Obama and Harris exemplified personality-focused politics, which have been dominant since the Reagan era and inherently favors performative splash over solving fundamental problems and party-building as the necessary path to doing that. Third, elite leadership has inherent limitations, and can't restrain itself from undermining the common good in the long run — as the climate crisis so vividly demonstrates. As a result, the worldwide resurgence of authoritarianism threatens humanity’s future, feeding off the failure of liberal democracy to deliver on its promises.

Why Democrats can't get over the grief of losing to Donald Trump

So the problem is not a single electoral defeat, or even a party facing a string of them. It is the problem of how to fundamentally transform our politics. Realistically, any possible solutions must be developed and advanced within, and around, the Democratic Party.

In my article on "Why Kamala Harris lost," I argued that the neoliberal world order crumbling in the aftermath of the pandemic set the stage for worldwide incumbent losses this year. Democrats might have avoided that fate had they passed a robust package of reforms exemplifying a "politics of care," which enjoyed supermajority popular support, but they were thwarted by Republicans and corporate Democrats in the Senate. This specific example reflected a more general problem: Our political system and structures are not set up “to promote the general welfare,” as the preamble to the Constitution promises.

To realign our system with that promise, we must refocus our politics around solving major policy questions through public deliberation, or a "politics of care and deliberation." In my follow-up article on strengthening democracy, I outlined four ways to do just that: citizens’ assemblies, public interest polling, a citizens’ agenda for political journalism, and reforming social media to promote deliberation. I now want to look at realistic efforts to reform the Democratic Party, which in turn can help lead to deeper systemic transformation.

Party reform — and space for deliberation

A model for those efforts was recently laid out by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which issued a memo with a roadmap for rebuilding and reorienting the party, proposing "four core principles" for the next Democratic National Committee chair:

Reform, restructure and rebrand the party from the ground up and commit to a 50-state strategy that builds power through state parties;
Embrace grassroots donors and reject special interest and dark money, reinstating the DNC's 2008 ban on corporate PAC donations, and pushing to prohibit super PAC spending in state primaries;
Rebuild the party's multiracial, working-class base by uplifting poor, low-, and middle-income voices and concerns;
Highlight recent electoral successes while working to build broad coalitions to win elections.

Within this framework, there’s a specific, bullet-point breakdown of each item — and a long-overdue proposal to grapple with the information ecosystem. One bullet point calls for creating "an authentic Democratic brand that offers a clear alternative and inclusive vision for how we will make life better for the 90% who are struggling in this economy,” as well as fighting those who have rigged the system. Politics of care is a natural part of that brand, with historic examples like Social Security, Medicare and environmental, worker and consumer protections. Although it's a bit more hidden, the politics of deliberation can be found there too.

Within the third principle one bullet point urges "rebuilding our multiracial poor and working-class base" as a "top priority by launching new efforts to engage with multiracial low-income and working-class voters in all 50 states."

Voters will be listened to and heard, in a process designed to produce a clear picture of their real-world priorities are — and a process driven by them, rather than being marketed to them.

All four ways I've outlined for strengthening deliberative democracy can be integrated into this, although only the first two can be done by the party and its allies alone. But successfully implementing those could help lay the foundations for the others. A combination of public interest polling and a citizens’ assembly process could play a vital role in doing this. Focus groups with voters could help shape the polling questions, which would be intended to surface areas of hidden consensus, as well as to identify points of genuine conflict. Those results could then inform the citizens’ assembly process — identifying core subjects to discuss, as well as the kinds of information needed to answer the most important questions. In this way, voters will be listened to and heard, in a process designed to produce a clear picture of their real-world priorities are — and that's driven by them, rather than being marketed to them.

It’s equally important that this deliberative process, driven by voter concerns, help bring clarity and coherence to those concerns. That's the power of public deliberation in a nutshell: It’s not just about listening — which is essential — but about facilitating a conversational process, so that what people want can be clarified, made coherent and translated into specific policy ideas.

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While the party and its allies can do public interest polling and stage citizens assemblies on their own initiative — working with nonpartisan partners to assure fairness and objectivity — these processes can help drive the development of the other deliberative forms mentioned above. First comes the citizens' agenda model for media campaign coverage, which is entirely centered on voters and issues — just like the process involving focus groups, public interest polling and citizens’ assemblies. And while the party has no direct control over social media, and shouldn't exert any, it can certainly take advantage of existing social media forums to bring people into the deliberative process.

Other facets of the CPC roadmap suggest further connections. Under its fourth principle, one bullet point urges investing in and coordinating with "rank-and-file Democrats and grassroots organizations who lead party-building efforts and campaigns in communities across the United States." Focus groups, public interest polling and citizens' assemblies are ideally suited to help there.

It’s the 50-state strategy, stupid!

Everything I’ve just said presumes a fundamental commitment to the CPC memo’s first principle, and its first bullet point: a commitment to "rebuild our party from the ground up, committing to a 50-state strategy that builds power through the state parties, is year-round rather than transactional, and that respects all voters within our big tent."

The need for a 50-state strategy should be obvious, given Democrats’ worsening weakness virtually everywhere outside the battleground states, where they managed to keep things relatively close. Elsewhere, they lost ground far more dramatically — losing the key Senate races in Montana and Ohio even as progressive ballot measures passed. The party's well-known failure to invest in rural red states is only one side of this story, since it lost ground in blue states and major cities as well. But it’s clearly important, and addressed at length in "Harvest the Vote: How Democrats Can Win Again in Rural America" by Nebraska Democratic chair Jane Fleming Kleeb (Salon interviews here and here). So I sought out Kleeb's perspective once again.

“We have to break out of the D.C.-centric thinking and model that concentrates messaging into talking points which often have no relevance and concentrates funding into a handful of states,” she told me. “We aren't running a national party. We are running a battleground-state party focused on the White House rather than fighting for voters and securing wins up and down the ballot in every single state and territory.

“The vast majority of resources should be going to the states to make critical messaging and party-building investments so we can win elections everywhere, year after year," she continued. "This sets us up as a stronger party to then win the White House.” To do that, she added, “We've gotta get out of our heads and get back into communities, so our leaders are talking like our base again, rather than like a robot using a message box and white paper.”

"We aren't running a national party," Jane Kleeb told me. "We are running a battleground-state party focused on the White House rather than fighting for voters and securing wins up and down the ballot."

Anyway, it’s not as if the battleground-state focus is working all that well. A New York Times postmortem on the Pennsylvania campaign cited Lancaster County as a relative bright spot, where Democrats held Trump close to his 2020 margin (which was 16 points!). "Hundreds of Democratic volunteers knocked on thousands of doors in the county," the paper reported. while county Democratic chair Tom O'Brien claimed, "The Republicans, they really didn’t have a ground game."

That just doesn’t square with what I heard from a pseudonymous activist known as Lancaster Examiner, as I reported here. So I reached out again for a second opinion. “To assert that the GOP didn’t have a ‘ground game’ is uninformed, at best,” the Examiner replied by email. “The GOP ground game has been the long game. Creating a national and then state-level infrastructure for organizing the vote via churches has been happening in plain view since the 1970s, but too few have been willing to take it seriously.”

Those decades of GOP work paid off handsomely this year, the Examiner continued: “Pennsylvania Family Institute’s Church Ambassador Network, for example, tirelessly crisscrossed the state organizing churches and pastors," they said, focused on a message of "'We are voting for the Cabinet positions that will be filled after the election. We are voting for the platform.’ That was a continued refrain from church networking leaders and was echoed clearly from the pulpit. Assuming that the GOP ground game didn’t exist because it didn’t resemble the Democrats’ efforts is a mistake, and one that needs to be learned from in short order.”

Making meaning — and the politics of care

But it’s not just the get-out-the-vote power that Democrats should be worried about, as explained by sociologist Jessica Calarco, author of "Holding It Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net" (author interview here). There's a deeper and more fundamental worry: the shaping of meaning that is enforced by the lack of a strong social safety net. That takes us back to the importance of a politics of care.

“In our current, DIY system, the absence of solidarity has left many people feeling not only isolated but adrift, identity-wise,” Calarco told me. That “opens the door for right-wing radicalization, through groups that promise support and a place to belong,” as in conservative churches like those described by the Lancaster Examiner.

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“Child care costs, for example, can push mothers not only out of the workforce but also, maybe ironically, into political conservatism," Calarco said. "Moms pushed out of paid work often struggle with loss of identity, and conservative Christian moms' groups often step in to fill that void.” she said. She cited the case of Kara, a woman with a masters degree profiled in her book who left her job as a mental health counselor after giving birth, because she couldn't find affordable, high-quality child care. “Kara struggled with the isolation and loss of identity and social connection that came with stay-at-home motherhood," Calarco said, and resented that her husband didn't help more with housework and child care.

"Then a friend urged Kara to join an evangelical Christian moms’ group, which offered instrumental support like hand-me-downs, meal trains and babysitting swaps, a community for emotional support around the challenges of parenting, and a newfound sense of purpose and identity in stay-at-home motherhood. Before joining the group, Kara would ask herself: 'Why can’t my life be the way I want it? I could go change the world and I’m stuck here at home!' The moms' group taught her instead, 'We are changing the world with the kids we’re raising, and it's, like, really important work."

Four days before Joe Manchin killed the Build Back Better plan in December 2021, Data for Progress released polling showing greater than two-to-one support for a full suite of care-oriented policies.

Such church groups may claim they’re teaching timeless truths, but in reality they’re exploiting a historically contingent situation. As Calarco explains in her book, America created a national child care system in record time during World War II, only to dismantle it afterwards. Now it's time to remake what we’ve thrown away, and we came achingly close to doing that with Joe Biden’s original Build Back Better plan.

Four days before Joe Manchin killed that plan in December 2021, Data for Progress released polling showing greater than two-to-one support for a full suite of care-oriented policies: universal pre-K, paid family and medical leave, investments in child care to limit costs, long-term care for seniors and people with disabilities. While Manchin later supported a much-diminished bill (the so-called Inflation Reduction Act), those care-oriented policies were not just abandoned but virtually forgotten. Returning them to the center of our politics should be a top priority for Democrats, integrated into whatever else they do. The process of focus groups, public interest polling and citizens assemblies could help make that happen.

Public health: Taking a stand

More than three years ago, I proposed that "public health" could be understood as the key to saving democracy from fascism. It could “serve as a long-term, overarching framework to reframe our politics, to provide us with new common sense in addressing a wide range of diverse issues by highlighting common themes and connecting what works.”

The fact that our entire health care system is under attack, with the crown jewel of vaccination squarely in the crosshairs, doesn’t mean we should shy away from that potential. If anything, the frontal assault on public health should help us understand the central role it can play in unifying us politically, just as it plays a central role in protecting us.

In that frame of mind, we can look at all the attacks that Donald Trump and his followers are prepared to unleash — on immigrants, on the trans community, on women seeking abortion care, on freedom of expression and so on — as attacks on our collective public health that require a public health response — that is, not a response focused on protecting isolated individuals, but on protecting all of us as members of the human community, who share a profound a interest in protecting our bodies, our environment and our future.

Threats to jail Democratic mayors or governors who defy or oppose Trump's deportation plans, for instance, would provide the perfect occasion to convene a citizens assembly on the topic. It’s one thing to witness a high-stakes political drama between high-profile public officials. It’s quite another if that can become an occasion for prolonged and thoughtful public deliberation. The entire nature of the confrontation could be changed by doing that. Fascism feeds on spectacle, after all, particularly spectacles of domination and cruelty. Democracy feeds on deliberation, on openness, on building community. We should give the public much more of those things. That's the key to transforming and rebuilding the Democratic Party, and creating a better future for everyone.

from Paul Rosenberg on politics and power

Caffeine is everywhere. Is it actually harmless?

When I finally confronted my dependency and gave up coffee three months ago, my body wasn’t happy. In the mornings during the time that I would normally have my espresso, my thoughts tried to bargain with me to find some way to consume caffeine: How about just one cup? Maybe I could stop by the cafe on the way home and order a small one? Each day for nearly a week when I didn’t succumb to the temptation, a pounding headache took over instead. I was moody and irritable, sensitive to loud noises and the slightest inconvenience.

Caffeine appears in so many foods, drinks and we even allow children to freely consume it. But it doesn't take long to develop a dependency on it and, for me, the withdrawal was so strong, I started to question: Is caffeine actually the harmless drug we all say it is?

Caffeine overdrive: The dark side of America's "no sleep" hustle culture

“For healthy adults, caffeine consumption is relatively safe, but for some vulnerable populations, caffeine consumption could be harmful, including impairments in cardiovascular function, sleep and substance use,” according to a 2017 review on caffeine’s safety.

Caffeine and coffee in particular has been credited with “changing the world.” The rise of coffee essentially coincides with the rise of capitalism, as people would gather in coffeehouses to exchange ideas and do business in the 16th and 17th centuries. Soon after, colonists started taking over Indigenous lands and enslaving people to cultivate their coffee plantations.

Today, between 80 and 90% of the population consumes some form of caffeine every day. People rely on it to stay up all night, get through the workday, or even boost their exercise performance by guzzling preworkout drinks. Arguably, our work culture has become completely dependent on caffeine, but this substance isn't without risks.

Between 80 and 90% of the population consumes some form of caffeine every day.

Like with any substance, the safety of caffeine depends largely on the dose. Decades of research has shown that up to 400 milligrams a day, or the equivalent of roughly two or three cups of coffee, is safe for the general population. However, a portion of the population drinks more than that, especially with the proliferation of energy drinks and other supplements that may have extremely high caffeine content.

Additionally, certain people, like those with mental health disorders, underlying health conditions, or even about half of the population with a certain genetic predisposition, may experience negative effects of caffeine, like heart arrhythmias or increased anxiety. Because of some negative impacts on fetal development shown with consuming high levels of caffeine, it is recommended that pregnant people limit caffeine intake, drinking a maximum of just 200 milligrams a day. But there are not different recommendations for other vulnerable groups.

Caffeine is often linked to health benefits. In several studies, it was associated with increased cognitive performance in aging populations and even a reduced risk of Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. Another 2012 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine following a group of coffee drinkers and a group of non-coffee drinkers over 13 years found those who did drink it were less likely to die from heart disease and diabetes.

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It has also been shown to decrease inflammation and is even sometimes used as a medical treatment. For example, caffeine is sometimes used to help premature babies breathe, said Dr. Shannon Kilgore, a neurologist at Stanford University School of Medicine. Excedrin brand migraine medication contains caffeine, in addition to acetaminophen and aspirin, because it helps constrict blood vessels in a process called vasoconstriction, enhancing pain relief.

“That is related, of course, to people who stop drinking caffeine and their withdrawal symptom is often a headache,” Kilgore told Salon in a phone interview. “That is a response to that lack of vasoconstriction.”

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Caffeine is a psychostimulant that works by blocking the adenosine receptors in the brain, which are linked to sleep, memory and learning. Blocking these receptors leads to a more wakeful state that can increase focus, said Dr. Oliver Grundmann, who studies how plants affect the brain at the University of Florida. It can also increase dopamine signaling in the brain.

Like many psychostimulants, including amphetamine or prescription drugs, caffeine can also increase heart rate. This could be positive for certain people who have a low heart rate, which has been linked to depression — and may be why some people report feeling less depressed with caffeine, in addition to the increased dopamine. In others who are more sensitive to caffeine, however, it could lead to heart problems like an abnormal heart beat.

“For somebody who already has cardiovascular issues, an increased heart rate, or high blood pressure, that can be detrimental and lead to sustained cardiovascular damage that we really don’t want,” Grundmann told Salon in a phone interview. “For example, cardiomyopathies can occur, but that is usually if somebody is a really heavy consumer of caffeinated beverages.”

This sensitivity is in part due to a genetic predisposition estimated to exist in up to 50% of the population that determines whether people metabolize caffeine faster or slower. Essentially, those with a certain expression of an enzyme that makes them metabolize caffeine more slowly will feel a greater effect, as it stays in the body longer. In contrast, those with a different expression who metabolize it faster will likely not feel its effects as strongly, Grundmann said.

In one study published in the journal Hypertension, people who had the “slow” caffeine metabolizing gene allele were at an increased risk of hypertension compared to those who had the “fast” gene allele.

Interestingly, people with the genetic predisposition to metabolize caffeine more quickly report consuming more caffeine, according to research conducted by Dr. Marilyn Cornelis, who studies genetics and caffeine at Northwestern University.

“They're probably trying to consume more in order to compensate for that increased metabolism so that they can maintain the psychostimulative effects of caffeine,” Cornelis told Salon in a phone interview.

Hidden danger: How much caffeine is actually safe to drink in a day?

Smoking tobacco also increases the activity of this enzyme and can accelerate the metabolism of caffeine, meaning people who smoke may be more likely to consume more caffeine. Relatively little is known about how caffeine interacts with some other substances like cannabis, although one study in rats showed that caffeine worsened memory lapses induced by THC, the main drug in marijuana.

In another study comparing the effect of drinking four versus eight cups of coffee a day, Cornelis found that endocannabinoids in the body decreased as people consumed more coffee, which is typically something that happens as a response to stress. This is generally the opposite of what happens when using cannabis.

“Perhaps the heavy coffee consumption was a stressor, though it’s all speculative,” Cornelis said.

Similar to tobacco, the body can also develop a tolerance to caffeine, where repeated exposure to this blockage of the adenosine receptors makes them less sensitive to the substance and more caffeine is needed to accomplish the same effect. The official Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illnesses (DSM-5) does not include any official diagnosis for caffeine use disorder, although a decade ago it was acknowledged as something that requires further study. However, the manual does include caffeine withdrawal as an official diagnosis.

It took me years to work up the courage to give up coffee. I knew it was making me feel anxious and sleep more poorly, and I even sometimes had heart palpitations when I drank too much. Since abstaining, I have noticed I’m sleeping better and feel less anxious. I might not accomplish tasks as rapidly as I did after a double shot of espresso — but is that necessarily a bad thing? In my experience, I am able to approach my day with more intention and presence, using the energy I have and resting when it runs out, instead of outsourcing more of it from a cup of Joe.

But my experience is likely dependent on my genes and sensitivity to caffeine, which will be different for everyone.

"It's not black-and-white, like it’s clearly great or it's clearly bad,” Kilgore said. “It has to be taken in the context of the person, though it's probably fine for most healthy people.”

about caffeine

Netflix’s current Christmas slate has left us cold. What went wrong after its promising start?

It may seem unimaginable now that we’ve once again found ourselves covered in cheap tinsel and fake snow every time we hear the tu-dum! sound, but a mere 10 years ago, there was no such thing as the Netflix Christmas Universe, known to fans as the NCU. Shocking, but it’s true. It took less than a decade for the most popular streaming service in the world to build its red-and-green grain silo that, each year, dumps a multitude of new movies onto viewers just as we’ve clawed our way to safety, gasping for air. But by now, we’re old pros. We take a deep breath as the chintzy, 90-minute holiday sewage piles onto us, ready to watch it all and come out victorious on the other side. One could compare this annual little death dance to “Squid Game,” but I don’t think Netflix needs any more credit.

It’s like everyone has forgotten that by-the-numbers holiday movies can be good silly and not garbage silly.

Why do we endure? That’s the eternal question I find myself asking this year when Netflix has released some of its worst Christmas content yet — and I say “content” because, really, that’s what these movies are — with its latest films “Hot Frosty” and “The Merry Gentlemen.” Believe me, I’m completely aware that I sound like a Scrooge, a buzzkill harping and carping about innocuous movies that are meant to be little more than background noise while people scroll on their phones. But is that really what holiday movies should be, something to appease loud relatives during the holidays, like they’re dogs we’re leaving the TV on for? The NCU was once a charming if ridiculous way for the streamer to create holiday fare that even occasionally pulled at the heartstrings. Now, the NCU has become little more than a factory line, churning out homogenous products with an ever-so-slight degradation so as not to ruffle any feathers in the time it takes for the slop to calcify.

Lindsay Lohan’s renaissance should be bigger than Netflix original movies

And worst of all: No one seems to care! It’s like everyone has forgotten that by-the-numbers holiday movies can be good silly and not garbage silly. If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything, and it’s time for me to take my stand. We desperately need a State of the Union on the Netflix Christmas Universe, and it’s both my honor and my curse to give it to you.

Once upon a time, there was a little country of modest reign called Aldovia. It’s not real, but then again, what in the NCU is? Aldovia was the base upon which the Netflix Christmas Universe was built, beginning with 2017’s “A Christmas Prince.” In that film, a plucky, young reporter named Amber (Rose McIver) travels to Aldovia to write a story on the country’s nobility but ends up in the sights of Prince Richard (Ben Lamb), who’s looking for love outside of his stuffy Aldovian prospects. It’s a solid premise that showed some early promise for Netflix holiday originals. The streamer had enough money to pour into “A Christmas Prince” to believably pull off the whole grand royal scandal thing, while setting itself apart from the smaller-scale Christmas fare airing on The Hallmark Channel and Lifetime.

The Princess Switch: Switched Again (Netflix)Until “A Christmas Prince,” Lifetime and Hallmark were the premier destinations for an annual dose of feel-good holiday cheer. Their original movies were predictable and provincial, but enjoyable in their monotony. The networks had their roster of stars like Candace Cameron Bure, Lacey Chabert and Alicia Witt to hold down the snow fort with some decent performing skill. Viewers like me who were looking for bad acting could depend on the roster of smaller, unknown Canadian actors to fill in the gaps for some hearty laughs. It felt OK, even encouraged, to laugh at these movies, largely because they were actually entertaining. At peak depression, I passed the languid days of December by posting the funniest out-of-context clips to my Snapchat story (when Snapchat was still a thing) and got my friends hooked on these movies too.

Films like 2011’s “Dear Santa,” 2015’s “The Spirit of Christmas,” 2016’s “Christmas Ranch,” and 2017’s “The Christmas Train” were all a ton of fun because they knew what they were and didn’t take themselves too seriously. They didn’t stray too far from a set path or take a stab at something new, they followed the formula: a snooty city girl has to return to the country to save a family establishment; a grieving husband rediscovers the magic of Christmas (sometimes quite literally); a rich woman learns that poor people have feelings too. They were fantastically mindless, and they were perfect.

And then, Netflix kicked down the door like a S.W.A.T. team carrying giant candy canes. In the absence of a total streaming monopoly, the execs surely knew that they could corner the market on holiday movies with their seemingly endless resources. One of the best things about Hallmark and Lifetime’s Christmas films is that they look like they were slapped together with $52 and a dream. Netflix, however, began with a different approach that I initially admired: believability. Fake snow to make it actually look like Christmastime, decorations in every single frame and an overall production value that made some of their movies look almost decent enough to be released in theaters. But when “A Christmas Prince” evolved into a trilogy that spawned the entire NCU, the flair fell off fast. More movies meant more money, and those funds had to be split up between productions. Suddenly, the NCU became little more than explainer articles and chatter about its increasingly ludicrous plots and even more ludicrous wigs.

They were fantastically mindless, and they were perfect.

The NCU has transformed into a self-aware entity, more interested in tying its films together through loose connections than actually making a decent — i.e. respectably bad — movie. The “Christmas Prince” trilogy is directly linked to the “Princess Switch” trilogy, yet the star of the latter series, Vanessa Hudgens, also leads “A Knight Before Christmas.” Hudgens plays three different characters in “The Princess Switch” universe but an entirely different woman in “A Knight Before Christmas,” yet they take place in the same universe, implying the existence of four different Vanessa Hudgens doppelgangers running around the NCU. It’s a goddamn mess, constructed for one purpose and one purpose only: to distract us from the fact that none of these movies have a single redeeming quality anymore.

Dustin Milligan as Jack Snowman in “Hot Frosty” (Netflix)This year, it almost seemed like the bigwigs at Netflix were starting to get the hint. (Whoever greenlit “Our Little Secret,” the closest thing Netflix has had to a genuine, theatrical Christmas movie in years, is a saint.) There was a clear attempt at trying to shake up the NCU with a shot of sex appeal, and it provided a brief, interesting new ripple. A sexy snowman with abs appears in “Hot Frosty,” while Chad Michael Murray’s washboard tries to hold up “The Merry Gentlemen.” Now that production values have fallen so far, maybe sex could be the factor that sets Netflix apart from its network competitors once more. But shirtless meatheads alone aren’t enough to carry a Christmas movie, and these two supposedly hot new entries into the extended NCU were ironically cold.

So, now that we know even sex couldn’t sell, where the hell does the NCU go from here? Is there that much joy left in Netflix holiday movies at all? I’m not sure there is. We’re merely a society trained to lap up the crud served up to us on a platter just because it’s sitting there, screaming at us from the autoplay feature in Netflix’s infuriating user interface. Being the loudest doesn’t equate to being the best, it merely keeps Netflix in the conversation. Sure, as long as there are NCU movies to watch, people will suffer them. But this close to the new year, we should already be getting a jump start on our resolutions, adjusting our habits to better ourselves more easily, and not having one last roll in manure for old times’ sake. It’s okay to want better things for ourselves and more from our Christmas movies, even the terrible ones. We don’t have to simply accept everything is bad now, especially not when we spend so much of the year making that concession already.

about the highs and lows of Christmas movies

Nostalgia for Justin Bieber’s “Mistletoe” and my early days as a Belieber

I became a Belieber more than a decade ago in summer, but my love for Justin Bieber felt like it mattered the most during Christmas.

Christmas in Pennsylvania used to be magical. I remember the times it was actually cold enough to snow in December. Being snowed in automatically meant we were going to have a cozy, jolly but mostly drunk-off-of-hot-chocolate time. Christmas and birthdays were really the only time my siblings and I were ever given anything. Growing up middle class in Pennsylvania means you have to earn your small luxuries.

If did my chores, made my bed and dusted our house, it was only then I earned my allowance money. My diligent dad would give me a couple of dollars as my well-earned reward. So week by week, month by month, I’d save up every bill to buy an iTunes gift card. I would use this trusty $15 card to buy some of the pop music that would change the course of my life when I was 12 years old.

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That was in 2011, when I purchased Bieber’s Christmas classic “Mistletoe” on my iPod Touch. A mere $1.29 would fundamentally shift my adolescent life forever. The dopamine hit that fired into my brain while hearing Bieber’s teenage falsetto felt like Christmas morning magic. This was an era of my life when boys just became an endless parasocial fantasy, and Bieber in particular was who I had my sights set on. I would call myself a big Belieber back then. But in my Evangelical household, I attempted to keep my obsession with Bieber a secret — one only he and I would know about — my parents be damned.

In "Mistletoe," the 17-year-old pop star sings, “It’s the most beautiful time of year. Lights fill the street spreading so much cheer.” Oh boy, he was right. I don’t know if you’ve heard “Mistletoe” but it’s almost impossible to ignore the sense of whimsy and lightness hearing Bieber sing that he doesn’t want to miss out on the holiday, “But I can't stop staring at your face. I should be playing in the winter snow. But I'ma be under the mistletoe.” I can remember hearing "Mistletoe" on my way to school in my earbuds or it playing during a Christmas party at school.

While I felt like I was the special someone he was singing to in “Mistletoe” so did millions of other girls. The song sold 164,000 copies in its first week of release, placing it at No. 5 on the Billboard charts. Currently, the Christmas bop has nearly one billion streams, sitting at the top of Bieber’s most popular songs on Spotify with 800 million streams. So let’s just say, with 500 million views on YouTube, I know I wasn’t going to be actually kissing Bieber under the mistletoe like he was singing about.

Beliebers, unite

I’ve been a Belieber since the early days of his career when he was discovered on YouTube, playing guitar and sitting on stairs singing his little heart out. But when millions of other pre-teen girls, including myself, fell for Bieber, the rest of the world felt the opposite. In 2010, the internet specifically was a place where the young singer, who was only 15 going on 16, was ridiculed for his particularly lovestruck song “Baby," which has amassed a whopping 15 million dislikes on its YouTube video. His high-pitched voice and cringy bowl cut with side-swept bangs didn’t really help either. But I and every other teenage girl felt it was within our power to shield Bieber from this kind of hate. So we made him even more popular.

This love was amplified the following year with Bieber's revealing concert film/documentary “Never Say Never” directed by John M. Chu. Besides "Step Up 3D," the success of this music documentary allowed Chu to move on to direct “Crazy Rich Asians” and two big-screen musicals: "In the Heights" and “Wicked.” And in return, Chu had helped shape Bieber's public persona. I saw “Never Say Never” with the full 3-D experience during opening week with my closest childhood friends. Afterward, I even painted the 3-D glasses with Bieber’s favorite color, purple. I felt so close to Bieber, so it’s no wonder that when “Mistletoe” came out, it was guaranteed to be the fantastical, Christmas fangirl song of my dreams. (Oh, I can't forget that I also purchased other songs off his Christmas album “Under the Mistletoe” too like “Christmas Love” and “Drummer Boy” featuring rapper Busta Rhymes.)

"Mistletoe" marked a turning point, showing a maturing Bieber whose voice had deepened. He had even ditched the bowl cut to show a different side of himself and transition into a more fully dimensional bonafide star. And that’s exactly what happened. After Bieber’s Christmas album, he dropped his third studio album “Believe” which featured the grown, more mature version of Bieber in his lead single “Boyfriend” and pop radio hit “Beauty and The Beat” featuring Nicki Minaj.

This is the Bieber I closely associate with my coming of age. He no longer felt like the “Baby” singer everyone was so hellbent on pigeonholing him as. He was more reminiscent of a new, slightly edgy version of Justin Timberlake who had just left NSYNC. But the thing I fondly remember of this era was that I was growing alongside Bieber – even though he is five years my senior. I remember 13-year-olds grinding and dance-battling to “Beauty and The Beat” at my middle school dances. My awkward, short limbs moved frantically whenever one of his songs came on. My parents would have no idea what kind of unholiness was happening at these dances — young, impressionable girls screeching to Bieber.

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As of this March, Bieber has officially entered his 30s, and his life has now radically shifted from some of his high highs as a Millennial child star. He’s married to model Hailey Baldwin, now Hailey Bieber. The couple also just had their first son, Jack Blues Bieber. His last album “Justice” was released nearly four years ago and garnered a handful of Grammys nominations, even the coveted nod of album of the year. It seems like the singer’s life has slowed down.

Memories of "Mistletoe"

“Mistletoe” is now 13 years old, nearly the same age I was when it first hit my iPod. More than a decade later, I’m 25 and I listen to it in my cozy, warm apartment, singing along to it with my roommate. Or more recently, on a cold, rainy December night at The Witching Hour in Bushwick. My friend and I were sitting at the bar when the first few twinkling notes of "Mistletoe" began.

For most of my adult life, my Bieber obsession has faded into a faint memory, creeping back in when small moments like this trigger it. The nostalgia washed over me as the karaoke singer attempted to hit some of Bieber's silky high notes, and my friend and I are the only ones who acted as his backup singers. I don't really know if I have the same glint in my eye that I did when I first heard this song but it still hits just the same.

"Mistletoe" brings back the familiar feeling of yearning for something during the holiday season. Maybe I just want a shawty to spend it with as Bieber sings. But really, it brings me back to the 12-year-old who loved Christmas and never wanted that feeling to end. So I’d hit replay on “Mistletoe” again.

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From diner waitress to James Beard Winner: How Karen Akunowicz became Boston’s “queen of pasta”

Over the past decade, Karen Akunowicz has emerged as one of Boston’s most celebrated chefs, carving out a niche as both a culinary innovator and a force of personality. From winning a James Beard Award to becoming a fan favorite on “Top Chef “— twice — Akunowicz has built an impressive career centered on her love for handmade pasta and Italian-inspired cuisine.

Now at the helm of three restaurants and a nationwide pasta company, she’s redefining what it means to lead a food empire in New England. As for what's next? Boston — or perhaps the world — is her oyster.

"Top Chef" alum Shota Nakajima wants you to swap your salt for soy sauce

In a lively conversation, Akunowicz opened up about her journey from a New Jersey diner to the forefront of Boston’s dining scene, the lessons learned along the way, and how a simple touch of cream can elevate even the humblest dish. Her humor, authenticity and passion are evident in every word, as she reflects on her past, celebrates her present and hints at what’s to come.

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

This is neither here nor there, but my brother and I have developed this tradition of watching older "Top Chef" seasons whenever he's home for the holidays. So, we actually just so happened to watch your first season back again last week, which was really great.

Can I tell you something? I swear this is true. You are the third person to tell me that this week. Yeah! [People] gathering with their brother[s] and they're like, I was just watching your season. I was just watching your first season. And I was like, really? Yeah. So I think that might be a tradition. I think "Top Chef" has really become, of course, a household name, but kind of a tradition for a lot of people in a lot of families.

That's so cool. I am so happy to hear that. And I did also want to note that I live, I don't know, 20, 25 minutes from Kearny.

So I saw in your bio that you were from New Jersey and I was like, 'Oh, I definitely want to ask about that then.' [But] I was like, 'OK, I'm not going to do that.' Where do you live?

I grew up in Bloomfield!

Yeah, my parents still live in Kearny and my sister's in Parsippany, my aunt is in Vernon. Yeah, everyone's still there.

That is so cool. How funny! Initially, why did you head to Boston?

So I did my undergrad at UMass Amherst. And so when I was in school, I had a summer where I was an intern at the State House in Boston. I worked for a representative Ellen Story … and I lived in Boston that summer. And so when I graduated I was kind of like, yeah, I'll give that a summer — and then 20, oh gosh, 26 years later, I'm still here.

That's amazing. I was such a fan of yours on "Top Chef." I followed your career since, but I did want to check in terms of for anyone who's not familiar with your journey, could you break that down a little bit for them?

So my first season of "Top Chef" was in, I believe we filmed it in 2015. So I just said to somebody recently like, oh my gosh, that was 10 years ago.

Yeah! The anniversary's coming up.

Yeah, big anniversary. So that was 10 years ago. And at the time, I was the executive chef and managing partner at a restaurant in Boston called Myers and Chang. The year that I filmed "Top Chef," I got my first James Beard nomination for Best Chef Northeast and I was nominated three consecutive years after that. And in 2018, I won my James Beard Award for Best Chef Northeast.

Congrats, belatedly.

Thank. Oh, thank you so much. If you look, my… [she gestures above her, where the plaque is affixed to the wall]. You know what? We have to celebrate all the things, all things we can celebrate.

Right? A hundred percent.

At that point, I was working with my partners at Myers + Chang, Christopher Myers and Joanne Chang. We’d talked about opening another restaurant together, but they decided it wasn’t in the cards. Joanne, who’s the pastry chef and owner of Flour Bakery—and wildly successful—wanted to focus on the bakeries. They told me, “We love you, and if you have other ideas or projects you want to do, you may want to move on and pursue them.”

That happened right before I won my award. I’d been with them for seven years and decided it was time to go out on my own and open a restaurant. While I was excited, it was also scary — raising money independently, being both the chef and the sole operator of my restaurants. I was lucky to find a spot in South Boston that I fell in love with immediately. It wasn’t a big, shiny new building — it was this quirky, old space with a lot of history. A million years ago, it was a Whitey Bulger bar. It has a weird layout and a ton of problems, but my spouse and I tend to love spaces like that.

That’s how Fox & the Knife came to be. It’s a 75-seat space and my love letter to Emilia Romagna, Italy, where I lived for a year and a half, working as a pasta maker and chef. We opened in 2019, and a year later, the pandemic hit. But we stayed open.

In 2021, I opened Bar Volpe, also in South Boston. It’s a bigger space, focused on Southern Italian cuisine, with an event space, a private dining room, and a beautiful bar. It lets us do things we couldn’t at Fox & the Knife because of its size. Then, this past March, I opened Fox & Flight at Logan Airport. That menu is a “greatest hits” from both restaurants, and it’s a beautiful space—especially for an airport, but even as a standalone restaurant.

That's wonderful.

They're all very exciting. And in between those times, I wrote two cookbooks and I am fortunate enough to work at the Food Network.

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That's fantastic. Thank you for that. Going back a little bit, I wanted to ask, I think you said it was 2018. I was wondering, after those years of nominations, how validating was that James Beard win?

I think we've all heard people say, 'Oh, it's just an honor being nominated.' Let me tell you: It really, truly is. It's such an honor to be nominated. But you get nominated and nominated and it's four years and it remains such a huge accomplishment. Everyone says it's something you always dreamed of. [They'd ask], 'Did you always dream about winning a James Beard award?'

And I said, 'No, I never dreamed about winning a James Beard Award because I never thought that it was something that was attainable to me.' I never thought that someone like me would even be in consideration because I have never worked in fine dining. And I don't know, I said it in my speech when I won all those years ago, I was literally a waitress in a diner in New Jersey, in the black and whites. I worked at the Arlington Diner in Belleville. And so truly so to think that somebody like me, that's amazing. A waitress from the Arlington Diner could win one of the most prestigious culinary awards in the country. I never even believed that it could happen to me.

That's incredible. Congrats! And then pivoting a little bit to present day, I was saying how I love the moniker, the nickname Boston's Queen of Pasta and I was wondering what that nickname means to you?

Thank you for asking, I don't know if anyone's ever asked me that before, but Boston Magazine wrote a great article about me, I believe it was Jackie Cain who wrote the article and really was like, Karen, it's like the undisputed Boston's queen of pasta. So cool!

In addition to Fox the Knife, I mean, both restaurants really focus on handmade pasta. I never freeze any of my pasta. It is literally made fresh every day.

We have a glass walled pasta room at Bar Volpe where you can watch, you can walk down the street and watch our pasta makers. I also own a fresh pasta company called Fox Pasta, Fox Pasta Company, which started during the pandemic. We started as many people did, but still, we ship our pasta nationwide with Gold Belly who are our partners. And I think we do it and we do it really well. I've spent not only the time that I spent living in Italy where I trained as a pasta maker, but I go back to Italy all the time and whenever I'm there, I make pasta with women all over the country. So I never stop learning and I never stop being amazed by the opportunities that I have and the people that I have to work with. So we really try and bring all of that back to Boston and share that with everyone here in our city.

Lovely. That's so cool. Seperately, what would you say sets Hood apart from other brands from other brands?

Oh my gosh. I am a New England girly and so I mean, I know who's the best.

Whether [or not] you've grown up putting Hood cream in your coffee, it's synonymous with the gold standard. It is the best of the best. It is consistency, it is quality in and I mean, it's what I have in my house. I have a two-year-old daughter. I mean, that's what I give to my daughter, to my family.

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What are some of your favorite uses for heavy cream in general?

I am not a pastry chef. I'm a savory chef through and through and the thing that I love about cream is that it really brings a touch of luxury to any dish that you're making.

I talk a lot about in my cookbook or when I'm teaching, I talk a lot about giving home cooks recipes that are really attainable, but giving them a little bit of that restaurant magic, a little bit of that picking up that makes restaurant food so special. And for me, one of my secret weapons — just a dash of Hood cream is going to really enrich or enliven any dish that you're making.

Do you have any unique uses for heavy cream?

I'm a very traditional cook. I mean, I think that's one of the things I say. I don't do a lot of crazy things, but I think that one of the recipes that I love and that I is actually on the menu at Bar Volpe and that people just kind of go crazy for, it's a very traditional pasta dish, but I think that people are a little bit like, huh? It's pasta al limone, it's spaghetti al limone. So it's a dish that has cream and fresh lemon juice. Plus lemon zest. I add some herbs and I like to add crab to it.

It's rich and it's bright and the crab is sweet and tender and all of these textures and flavors together, it makes it a super crave-able dish.

But I think that people think sometimes you'd be like, 'Oh, cream and citrus together, it going to curdle?' Or do those things go together? One, if you're using a great product, the quality and consistency is amazing. Your sauce is not going to break. It's going to be beautiful and homogenous. It's going to be the perfect mouthfeel, but also acid and fat love each other because they play off of each other. You never want to add fat or richness to a dish without adding salt and acidity You also want it to feel light enough that you can go dancing afterwards. And that's the perfect balance of the spaghetti.

There were some photos with the spaghetti and then a mushroom risotto and a parsnip white miso soup and that soup really stood out for me. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the development of that as well.

So, the parsnip white miso soup, I think this time of year — especially in New England and the Northeast in general — it's root vegetable time. And so it's like "squash, squash, squash, squash, squash," which is fine, but I think can sometimes be a little bit sweet.

Parsnip White Miso Soup (Agustin Floriano for Hood Cream)

Yeah, I agree.

You see a lot of butternut squash. So, this is my take on a soup that's made with a root vegetable. It's made with a parsnip. I think parsnips are very interesting. I think they're the character actor of the root vegetable world. You have your leading ladies, your butternut squash, carrots and then you have the character actor that you can't look away from. And I think that's what a parsnip is, right? It has this earthy, almost menthol flavor to it. It's light and it's rich at the same time. And so how do you take that and for me? It's all about balance.

So how do you add a little bit of sweetness and a little bit of tartness to it? I add green apples to the soup. How do you do add richness? I add Hood cream to the soup, so it's creamy, but it's still light. And we're adding unctuousness and umami and savoriness to it because I don't want something that's cloying or sweet. So we add white miso or shiro miso to it.

And so you have these ingredients that are all beautiful ingredients and when you put them together, they all really sing. So you have this light, but rich, creamy, earthy, yum, umami-full kind of soup. And it's one of my favorites. It's a standby in my house and it's also in my cookbook, as well.

Stay tuned for part 2 of my conversation with Chef Akunowicz, to come shortly.

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“Gossip is an evil”: Pope Francis admonishes Vatican staff for workplace toxicity

If the 2024 film “Conclave” dramatized the Vatican's inner workings with intrigue, Pope Francis delivered something of a real-life sequel on Saturday, urging Vatican bureaucrats to cut the backstabbing and embrace humility during his annual Christmas address.

“Gossip is an evil that destroys social life, sickens people’s hearts and leads to nothing,” the 88-year-old pontiff admonished. “The people say it very well: Gossip is zero.”

"Conclave" is just "Mean Girls" with priests

Francis’ holiday speeches to the Curia have become infamously candid, often shining a light on what he perceives to be workplace toxicity. As reported by the Associated Press, in 2014, he outlined the “15 ailments” of Vatican life, accusing priests, bishops and cardinals of power-grabbing and spiritual complacency. This year, he revisited gossip as a recurring evil, likening the Curia’s atmosphere to any insular office rife with whispered critiques.

The pope also denounced global cruelty, condemning the bombing of children in Gaza as “not war, but cruelty.”

Francis’ call for humility and collaboration comes as the Vatican gears up for the 2025 Holy Year, with over 32 million pilgrims expected in Rome.

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“Who is in charge?”: Top Democrats criticize Musk’s role in government shutdown drama

Prominent Democrats lambasted Elon Musk’s influence on negotiations to avert this weekend’s potential government shutdown, questioning his behind-the-scenes role in shaping Republican strategy. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said Musk’s involvement suggested he was “calling the shots for Trump and Republicans,” asking pointedly, “Who is in charge?”

The criticism followed a turbulent week on Capitol Hill as Speaker Mike Johnson navigated intense GOP infighting and last-minute demands from President-elect Donald Trump. The Senate ultimately passed a bipartisan funding bill early Saturday, 85-11, avoiding a shutdown hours before the deadline. The package, which temporarily funds federal operations through March and provides $100 billion in disaster aid, excluded Trump’s call for a long-term debt ceiling increase.

Democrats bail out Johnson, pass bill that could avert government shutdown

The Associated Press reported that Johnson secured House approval, 366-34, after scaling back earlier proposals rejected by Trump and Musk. “This is a good outcome for the country,” Johnson said, adding Trump was “certainly happy about this outcome as well.”

Democrats provided crucial support for the bill, while nearly three dozen conservative Republicans opposed it. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer declared, “There will be no government shutdown,” but emphasized the challenges ahead as Republicans prepare to address the debt ceiling debate next year.

Musk’s involvement, viewed by critics as emblematic of an outsized influence by wealthy individuals, sparked broader concerns. Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders described it as “not democracy, that’s oligarchy.”

President Joe Biden is expected to sign the measure Saturday, bringing a temporary reprieve to federal workers and programs.

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Psychedelics rejected, Captagon factories and “pink cocaine”: The drugs that defined 2024

In the U.S., about half of the population takes a prescription drug every day, and half of adults have tried illicit drugs at least once. Drug use is a routine part of life for most Americans, whether it's coffee in the morning, alcoholic drinks at night or using anything else to get by. This past year saw some major changes in drug trends, which could give a good indicator of what's to come in 2025 and beyond.

In the 2024 election cycle, Kamala Harris made history by becoming the first presidential candidate to promise to legalize cannabis at the federal level if elected. While that policy change is not something President-elect Donald Trump has said he supports, Harris and President Joe Biden did move to reschedule cannabis from a Schedule I substance (in the same category as heroin) to a Schedule III substance (in the same category as ketamine) this year, pardoning thousands of convictions for possession.

Russia’s dark web markets prove the drug war can’t be won

Outside of policy, researchers in the lab continued to learn more about how drugs affect the body. Lenacapavir, a new drug being tested to prevent HIV, successfully prevented infection in 100% of patients tested in clinical trials. With one million people being infected with HIV each year, the journal Science named this drug development as the 2024 breakthrough of the year.

Meanwhile, scientists began to better understand the effects of weight loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy (known by the generic name semaglutide) on not just the gut but the brain, and they started to be tested to treat addiction, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson's. Researchers also discovered a new compound in mouse experiments that helps the life-saving opioid reversal medicine naloxone bind to the opioid receptor, which could potentially fight off stronger opioids.

There were plenty of other important news stories about drugs in 2024, but here are four you shouldn’t miss.

Deaths declined for the first time since the overdose crisis began

In September, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released data that show overdose deaths declined nationally by about 10% between April 2023 and April 2024. Although an estimated 94,000 Americans were lost to a fatal overdose this year, it was the first time overdose deaths declined since the crisis began in the 1990s.

While any life saved from an overdose is a win, many were quick to highlight stark racial disparities in these statistics, with deaths still increasing among Black, Hispanic and American Indian and Alaska Native populations.

“In Black communities across this country, the diminishing death rates are not the story,” Tracie Gardner, co-director of the National Black Harm Reduction Network, told Salon earlier this year. “What the numbers don't show are what I would say are the policy realities and the narratives of the communities that have been the hardest hit.”

The FDA rejected MDMA for PTSD

This summer, many psychedelic advocates were hopeful that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would approve the psychedelic drug MDMA for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Media coverage reported positive effects in veterans, and Lykos Therapeutics, the organization submitting the new drug application, previously won “breakthrough therapy” designation from the agency after presenting its earlier phase trials.

Yet in August, the FDA did not approve MDMA with psychotherapy as many had hoped. Earlier in the year, a report from the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, an independent nonprofit, concluded that therapists in the trials encouraged patients to report positive experiences, putting into question the validity of the data. More concerning, one trial participant came forward with allegations that she was sexually abused by her therapists. And ultimately, some of the studies were retracted by the journal that published them, though not those that were submitted in the new drug application.

This wasn’t the only setback for psychedelics in 2024. Massachusetts voters also rejected a ballot measure that would have allowed home-use and growing of psilocybin (the ingredient in "magic" mushrooms), dimethyltryptamine (DMT), mescaline and ibogaine. Psilocybin remains illegal at the federal level, but it has been legalized in Colorado and Oregon, where treatment centers have opened or will soon. Meanwhile, the FDA also granted “breakthrough therapy” status to psilocybin and companies are studying its effects on depression in clinical trials with the hopes of a future approval. In the meantime, many on the political right, including conspiracy theorists like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have latched onto the psychedelic movement, as this class of drugs is also embraced by Silicon Valley.

Florida, Dakotas rejects marijuana legalization measure, Massachussetts rejects psychedelic reform

Public health concerns arise in the Middle East with destruction of Captagon factories

In December, the White House accused President Bashar al-Assad's government in Syria of profiting from sales of an illicit stimulant called Captagon (fenethylline) that many people who work long hours use to stay awake. Searches amid the chaos as Assad's regime falls apart have turned up warehouses and labs poised to ship out large quantities of the drug, which is sold throughout the Middle East and parts of Europe. These were only discovered because a rebel group overthrew Assad, whose brutal regime had ruled over Syria for decades.

In the fallout of this discovery, large quantities of Captagon have been destroyed, which many are concerned could push users to other stimulants and relocate industrial manufacturing to other countries like Iraq. On Dec. 8, Biden said the fall of the regime was a “historic opportunity for the long-suffering people of Syria to build a better future.” However, it is also a vulnerable time in the region with very little stability.

"Pink cocaine" entered the mainstream

One of the most popular drugs this year doesn't really exist. "Pink cocaine" is a hot pink mixture of drugs, that often contains all kinds of substances, including MDMA, ketamine, and 2C-B, but doesn’t typically contain actual cocaine. Also known as “tuci,” the drug mix, which is essentially just dye, has been around for years. But it made headlines in 2024 when it was reported to have been used prominently by Sean “Diddy” Combs’ in the fallout of his arrest.

Tuci, typically snorted in powder form, got increasingly popular in 2024 and has been detected in Latin America, Europe and the U.S. Because it is a cocktail of various mystery drugs, users often don’t know what they are getting, and it makes it harder for drug researchers to track the supply as well, said Dr. Joseph Palamar, a drug researcher at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

“It could be somebody up the block had some cocaine, meth, ketamine and some food coloring, and they made their own batch of tuci,” Palamar told Salon in a phone interview. “What I worry about is that fentanyl is going to make its way into the supply and it’s going to turn deadly.”

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the MDMA studies that were retracted were part of Lykos Therapeutics' drug application. The article has been updated.

about drug policy

Shopping scams are using AI to up their game

Last spring, a well-meaning mom shared a Facebook ad with our parenting group — Chico’s was going out of business and every piece of clothing was $9.90! With a vacation looming before me, I clicked on the ad and went shopping, gleefully filling my online cart. I noticed that no matter how many times I clicked “buy,” my total remained at $56.40.

“How clever I am for finding these deals on quality merchandise! And how lucky that every size and color I desire is available!” I thought to myself.

You can see where this is going.

Are you shopping out of loneliness?

I entered my credit card information and the site glitched. My email inbox filled with a barrage of messages from “Chico’s online,” but with a bizarre reply address prompting me to complete my order.

Even though the site looked completely legitimate, the amateur copywriting and reply email made me suspicious. I googled “Chico’s out of business,” and no news came up. And going directly to the Chicos.com website with its regular pricing and normal sales made me understand fully that I’d been fooled. “But the website looked so real,” my defensive brain whispered.

I reported the fake ad to Facebook, where my complaint was whisked off into the metaverse. Then the same ad kept popping up, and I kept reporting it. Apparently the metaverse is a vast place where things get ignored.

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The fake site was likely created quickly and targeted to women like me via the savvy use of AI tools, and I'm sure it's only going to get worse from here on out.

“It's not so much that these are new scams. It's that they've put a super jet-powered engine behind some of the old tricks, and now there's just so much more of this out there, and it's so much more polished,” said Identity Theft Resource Center’s president and CEO, Eva Velasquez.

In addition to slick websites indistinguishable from the real ones, AI helps to create hyper-personalized email messages and texts that seem like they’re coming from a trusted brand.

"It's not so much that these are new scams. It's that they've put a super jet-powered engine behind some of the old tricks"

“They may even be able to reference recent browser purchasing history, because of there's so much information about us out there from breaches, from what we're putting out there on social media, what we're sharing, what we're liking,” she said, adding that what would have taken lots of time, energy and money to create even two years ago can now be done quickly and cheaply with current AI tools.

Protective software is fast, scammers are faster

A spokesperson from Meta, Facebook’s parent company, said they detected 1.1 billion fake accounts via AI before the accounts were reported. Users who see suspicious content should report it, she said. The company didn't directly answer questions such as why the ads are going directly to Facebook users, and what the platform is doing to protect them.

“Our research shows that 70% of people whose pages are taken over just walk away and create a new one,” Velasquez said. “They can't get any information back from the platform, and they can't wrestle control away from the scammers.”

Scott Shackleford, a professor at Indiana University Kelley School of Business and executive director of the Center for Applied Cyber Security Research, said, “It's gotten easier than ever before to create those types of phishing websites … and you can also use those same tools to scan for vulnerabilities."

And while defenders can use AI to scan their own sites and software, attackers can use the exact same technology to spot bugs and launch malware. When people click or enter their information, “without even realizing it, their system has been compromised,” he said.

How to protect yourself

Velasquez advised shoppers to slow down, especially if they’re on a site for a smaller or newer business. We’re most vulnerable when we’re hurrying to check things off the to-do list and get a good deal, especially one too good to be true. “But if you step back and take a few minutes to think, that can make all of the difference,” Velasquez said.

If you’re interested in an item you see in an ad that comes your way via text or email or online, go directly to the site instead of clicking a link that can lead you to a fake one. While you may get the credit card charges reversed, scammers still could have already collected valuable information about you and sold it.

Fake charity scammers can also target big-hearted givers. Even if you recognize the charity, go directly to the actual site before you donate. Charity Navigator or an IRS tool are good places for verifying.

And finally, it’s never a bad idea to go to an actual store. “There's a lot to be said for shopping local,” Shackleford said. “Not only is it good for the economy and good for our communities, but it's much, much less likely that you're going to be hoodwinked.”

about personal finance

Black adults with long COVID report higher levels of hopelessness and suicidal thoughts

Black adults living with long COVID pointed to challenges with their physical health – rather than their mental health – when asked to describe their long-COVID symptoms. That is one key finding from our new study, published in the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities.

When we examined the data further, however, we found that those living with long COVID in the U.S. had significantly more anxiety, depression, hopelessness, psychosis and suicidal thoughts than those without long COVID.

In other words, while participants clearly explained how long COVID impaired their physical health, they were less likely to attribute their recent mental health struggles to any issues stemming from their experiences of long COVID.

Why conditions like chronic fatigue syndrome and long COVID are still so mysterious

For the study, we asked nearly 500 Black adults in the U.S. to respond to a series of psychological questionnaires measuring various mental health outcomes in the spring of 2022. All participants, regardless of their long-COVID status, provided responses to these survey questions.

Next, we asked study participants to describe their long-COVID symptoms by using their own words to type short phrases or sentences. When analyzing their written responses, we found that participants most often pointed to physical or cognitive health conditions such as chest pain, troubled breathing, prolonged coughing, headaches, memory loss, impaired vision or smell, and sharp bodily pains.

This mismatch between how individuals described their long-COVID symptoms versus what they reported in the survey highlights the importance of collecting multiple forms of data – particularly when studying complex topics such as long COVID among marginalized populations.

We used qualitative and quantitative analysis techniques to identify points of overlap and divergence across the two data sources.

These approaches align with our work as suicide prevention and preventive medicine researchers, where we study topics at the intersection of race, mental health and physical health promotion.

Why it matters

During the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic, Black Americans were more likely to work in the service industry or in front-line positions, and in turn were at greater risk for COVID-19 exposures and infections.

Research confirms that members of this group also experienced disproportionately higher rates of COVID-19-related hospitalizations and deaths during the earliest waves of the pandemic. Additionally, Black communities across the U.S. faced structural barriers to accessing COVID-19 vaccines once immunizations became available.

One might anticipate that the cumulative impact of these disparate experiences would lead researchers, clinicians and government officials to prioritize the study of long COVID among vulnerable populations.

This, unfortunately, has not been the case. Black Americans’ mental and physical health experiences have gone largely understudied within existing long-COVID research.

Getting a long-COVID diagnosis or help for the condition has been especially challenging for people of color.

What other research is being done

Researchers are currently focused on understanding the underlying biological pathways leading to long COVID, along with potential biological markers that predispose some individuals to long COVID.

Yet much of this work does not account for differences that may emerge either within or across race groups. Amid the rapidly evolving research on long COVID, several scholars are working to understand both the development and progression of long COVID in various communities across the globe.

What still isn’t known

We analyzed surveys from only one point in time and would need to collect multiple surveys over an extended amount of time before being able to determine whether long COVID causes negative mental health outcomes, or vice versa.

As a result, the findings from our study should be understood as correlational, meaning that while there is a statistically relevant relationship between these variables, we cannot rule out the potential influence of other external factors that may also affect Black adults’ mental health during the pandemic. More research is needed to understand how long COVID is linked to psychological outcomes and mental health over time.

While the U.S. COVID-19 public health emergency ended in May 2023, the mental and physical health needs of those living with long COVID are ongoing. We, therefore, plan to continue examining how long COVID is affecting people across different age, gender, economic and other important demographic groups in order to respond to the urgent need for evidence-based research and treatment options.

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

Janelle R. Goodwill, Assistant Professor of Social Work, Policy, and Practice, University of Chicago and Tiwaloluwa Ajibewa, Assistant Professor of Preventive Medicine, Northwestern University

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

about long COVID

Why ABC settled a case with Donald Trump they knew they would win

Since 2012, the U.S. Dept. of Justice has defined rape as “the penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object… without the consent of the victim.” To be redundant, no penis is required.

On May 9, 2023, a New York jury determined that Donald Trump had shoved his unwelcome fingers into E. Jean Carroll’s vagina, after he pushed her against a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room wall, and that he later defamed her. Trump’s ‘what’s a little groping among friends’ defense argued that $5m in damages was excessive because the jury didn’t say Trump raped Carroll, only that he sexually assaulted her.

Trump’s claim led presiding U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan to clarify in a memorandum that, in legal parlance, inserting anything into a woman’s vagina against her will, including Trump’s nasty fingers, was, indeed, rape:

The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape…’ Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.

ABC settled a case they knew they would win

Months after Kaplan’s clarification of the jury’s finding, ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos said on the air that Trump was found liable for rape. Because Trump relies on frivolous lawsuits to silence his critics and uses protracted and unethical litigation as his bullwhip, he sued ABC for defamation.

Given Kaplan’s clarification that the jury found Trump had legally raped Carroll, Stephanopoulos’s on-air statement was judgment proof. And yet, to protect the separate corporate interests of its parent company, Disney, ABC News decided to ‘settle’ the case, pay Trump $15m, and officially apologize for telling the truth.

ABC News capitulates to Donald Trump. Is this the future of American media?

Under controlling jurisprudence on the free press, Times v. Sullivan, Trump had no chance of winning the case because he would have to prove Stephanopoulos spoke with reckless disregard of the truth, a finding blocked by the presiding judge’s clarification of ‘rape.’ ABC’s decision to pay Trump and apologize nonetheless is an Orwellian warning that, when covering an ascendent fascist, up will be down and down will be up, and only Trump can decide which is which.

The Lincoln Project shows us how it’s done

ABC’s capitulation is a study in contrast with another 1^st Amendment case from last week. In Flynn v. Wilson, right-wing provocateur Mike Flynn sued Rick Wilson, one of the founders of the Lincoln Project, a group of Republicans committed to fighting Trump’s criminality.

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For context, Flynn was Trump’s former national security advisor who championed using the military to overthrow the federal government after Biden won in 2020. Flynn also admitted he lied to the FBI about communications with Russia in order to protect Trump, a performative ‘admission’ since the FBI already had him on a wiretap doing what he claimed he hadn’t.

Following Flynn’s dalliance with Putin, Wilson referred to him on X as "Putin employee Mike Flynn," retweeting separately that, "FYI, Mike Flynn is Q." In Wilson’s book, “Everything Trump Touches Dies: A Republican Strategist Gets Real About the Worst President Ever,” Wilson wrote that “Flynn, a disgraced former army general was so outrageously in bed with the Russians that even Trump was forced to fire him.”

Taking a page out of Trump’s lawfare book, Flynn sued Wilson for defamation. Flynn argued that although he’d been paid for speaking at a Russian RT event, it wasn’t legally the same thing as being “a Putin employee” (just like rape isn’t the same as sexual assault). Flynn also argued that there was a difference between being "Q" and marketing products and conspiracy theories associated with Q, which Flynn could hardly deny. Wilson moved for summary judgment, arguing that his tweets were protected opinion and that Flynn could not prove he acted with "actual malice.”

Last week the Florida Court of Appeals agreed with Wilson and affirmed the lower court’s dismissal. Citing N.Y. Times Co. v. Sullivan, the appellate court found “no error in the trial court's determinations that Flynn's lawsuit against Wilson lacked merit and that it was brought "primarily" because of Wilson's exercise of his First Amendment rights.” Whether Flynn was a Putin employee or, in fact, embodied “Q,” was splitting hairs as to the overall message Wilson was conveying: that Trump’s own national security advisor was a moron who supported Russian interests over the U.S.

Journalists worried about Trump’s vexatious litigation should tape the appellate court’s conclusion to their refrigerators for courage: “We (have) a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks… Like it or not, such attacks are a characteristic feature of our democracy… Wilson's tweets may not have been polite, and they may not have been fair. But the First Amendment required neither, and so we affirm.”

Corporate elites are digging their own graves

In Trump v. ABC, the president of ABC News was no doubt opposed to caving to Trump on his specious claim. But ABC News has a bigger boss: the Disney corporation. Bob Iger, the $31 million a year CEO of Disney, calculated that making nice with an unhinged president was in Disney’s long term corporate interests, free speech be damned.

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

ABC’s capitulation reflects a chilling pattern among corporate-owned media outlets: Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Washington Post’s Jeff Bezos and Time magazine’s Mark Benioff have all similarly and prematurely capitulated to Trump. L.A. Times’ Patrick Soon-Shiong groveled even lower, killing an editorial criticizing Trump’s clown-car Cabinet picks. Soon-Shiong has now officially limited the L.A. Times’ criticism of Trump.

Each of these CEOs acted to subordinate the 1^st Amendment- and thereby democracy itself- to the bottom line of their other corporate concerns. For Bezos, it’s Amazon and Blue Origin, a federal NASA contractor. For Soon-Shiong, it’s for-profit healthcare corporation NantWorks, involved with federal vaccine distribution. For Benioff, it’s Salesforce’s lucrative contracts with the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, while Altman’s Open AI is positioned to become a major contractor with the Pentagon.

These corporate tycoons, prematurely capitulating on free speech to protect their unrelated corporate interests, have demonstrated the perils of for-profit legacy media. Doing so, they have all but guaranteed that Trump will attempt to imprison his media critics. They need a reminder of their own, taped to their sub-zero refrigerators, from the BBC’s History Magazine:

“Many members of (Germany’s corporate elites) thought Hitler was going to be the useful idiot who was going to play their games… they wanted to ride the Nazi movement like a horse.. They would use the momentum and the political potential of the Nazi party (to advance their corporate interests) but still keep it at bay… Within three or four months, they discovered that they were the horse and that Hitler was the horseman.”

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Trump’s “McCarthy era” throwback: A promise to deport protesters

With President-elect Donald Trump promising to make mass deportation a top priority in 2025, one related campaign promise has fallen off the radar. During the campaign, Trump said several times that he would seek to deport pro-Palestinian protesters, which would be an obvious test of the new president's willingness and ability to challenge long-established First Amendment rights.

Trump’s Agenda 47, his official platform for the 2024 election, lays out 20 planks, including promises to seal the border, stage mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and end inflation. Tucked away in the 18th bullet point, however, is a promise to crack down on campus protesters: "DEPORT PRO-HAMAS RADICALS AND MAKE OUR COLLEGE CAMPUSES SAFE AND PATRIOTIC AGAIN," it reads.

"A chilling effect": Research finds governments across the globe are cracking down on free speech

That was hardly Trump's only statement that appeared to support the potential deportation of American citizens. He has also said he plans to end birthright citizenship, which is guaranteed under the 14th Amendment, and to deport entire families, including U.S. citizens, when a family includes undocumented immigrants.

Matt Cameron, an immigration lawyer at Cameron Micheroni & Silvia, told Salon that deportation has been used throughout U.S. history to threaten or punish political dissidents. Perhaps the most famous example was the activist and writer Emma Goldman, who had immigrated to America as a teenager but was deported to Russia under the Anti-Anarchist Act in 1919.

Seeking to deport someone based on political speech would almost certainly violate the First Amendment. That doesn't mean the Trump administration won't try it.

Cameron said he expects Trump and his allies to rely on a statute that allows for non-citizen U.S. residents to be deported if they are found to have engaged in “material support” for “terrorism” — a category that Cameron described as problematically broad — or to have their visas denied if they are found to have endorsed or supported "terrorist activity."

From the late 19th century "all the way through the McCarthy era" of the 1950s, Cameron said, the immigration system was used to "threaten" political dissidents.

An investigation by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University found that even government lawyers believed that removing people from the country based on their political speech would violate the First Amendment. But Cameron said that doesn’t mean the Trump administration won’t try it. Something as normal as a social media post or a visible presence at a high-profile protest could be used as potential evidence.

“I certainly believe them when they say they going to try this,” Cameron said. During the Trump era, he added, “We’re getting used to the idea that just because something is illegal doesn’t mean it won’t happen.”

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For U.S. citizens, Cameron noted, any such proceedings would be more complicated. The Trump administration might seek to pursue a policy of "denaturalization," a rare procedure under which someone is stripped of their citizenship. Although denaturalization was established in 1906, it is typically reserved for people accused of having obtained their citizenship through false statements.

Cameron said he suspects the Trump team may go after recently naturalized citizens, especially immigrants from Arab or Muslim countries, who express opposition to Israel’s war on Gaza or are critical of U.S. policy in the Middle East. There is no possible procedure for pursuing denaturalization en masse, Cameron added, and it could probably only be applied to movement leaders or high-profile individuals.

Esha Bhandari, the deputy director for speech at the American Civil Liberties Union, cautioned that while deporting U.S. citizens may prove too difficult even for Trump loyalists, the new administration could find other ways to stifle pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel protest.

Protesters could potentially be charged with crimes unrelated to their political speech, for instance, which could make foreign citizens here on visas immediately deportable. The government could also pressure colleges and universities to suspend protesters, which could end or endanger their student visas. Private individuals could also take anti-activism efforts into their own hands and file strategic lawsuits against public participation, or SLAPP suits, which be expensive for defendants even if the cases have no merit.

“I think the point of these broad statements threatening pro-Palestinian activists on campus," Bhandari said, "is to put people who might already be vulnerable because of their immigration status into a position where they will self-censor."

about protests and the law

NASA’s Webb telescope seemingly confirms controversial theory on planet formation

Back when the stars in our universe were initially being formed, they created rotating disks of dust and gas known as protoplanetary disks. These protoplanetary disks slowly congealed into planets — so slowly, in fact, that astronomers speculated all of the protoplanetary disks that once existed have since blown away.

Yet recent images captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope seem to contradict that notion by showing protoplanetary disks in a dwarf galaxy adjacent to our own Milky Way, the Small Magellanic Cloud. Focusing on a cluster known as NGC 346, which contained conditions analogous to those of the early universe, NASA analyzed spectra of light and learned that these stars still have protoplanetary disks.

Cracks in cosmological theory: James Webb telescope is challenging what we know about the universe

Although this debunks the previous assumptions about protoplanetary disks, it also confirms earlier images from the mid-2000s from NASA’s Hubble Telescope.

“The Hubble findings were controversial, going against not only empirical evidence in our galaxy but also against the current models,” study leader Guido De Marchi of the European Space Research and Technology Centre in Noordwijk, Netherlands said in a statement. “This was intriguing, but without a way to obtain spectra of those stars, we could not really establish whether we were witnessing genuine accretion and the presence of disks, or just some artificial effects.”

Researchers have two hypotheses as to why these protoplanetary disks persist. The first is that, if these disks form around large gas clouds and form Sun-like stars, it may take a very long time for them to fade away. The second is that NGC 346 is taking more time to dissipate its protoplanetary disks because of radiation pressure being expelled from its stars.

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“You wanna be speaker?”: Johnson jokes he offered Musk House leadership role

House Speaker Mike Johnson says he joked with Elon Musk about taking his job after several members of the Republican delegation in the chamber floated the billionaire Tesla CEO for the role.

Johnson successfully passed a resolution to continue funding the federal government after days of GOP squabbling. The third attempt at funding the government beyond midnight tonight was without an agreement package to suspend the federal debt ceiling for two years, something President-elect Donald Trump insisted upon.

The speaker lost 34 Republican votes on the bill, some of whom lambasted the speaker earlier in the week for playing ball with Democratic Party leadership on a budget extension. If Johnson is worried that those defectors will take the gavel from him in next year's Congress, he didn't show it while chatting with reporters.

"I'm gonna just sit back and sip my tea": Democrats won't save Johnson's speakership

“Elon Musk and I talked about an hour ago. We talked about the extraordinary challenges of this job,” Johnson said on Friday. “I said, ‘Hey, you wanna be Speaker of the House? I don’t know.’ He said this may be the hardest job in the world.' I think it is.”

Speaker Mike Johnson: Elon Musk and I talked about an hour ago. We talked about the extraordinary challenges of this job. I said, “Hey, you wanna be Speaker of the House? I don’t know.” He said this may be the hardest job in the world. I think it is pic.twitter.com/l2UbByD4C7

— Acyn (@Acyn) December 20, 2024

Johnson, who took the speaker role in a MAGA-led revolt against former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, faces a difficult path in retaking the position. He will have to contend with a slim 5-vote GOP majority in January when the caucus chooses a speaker. Any alternative candidate could block Johnson’s selection with just a handful of votes.

Prominent Republican voices, including Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Utah Sen. Mike Lee, have argued that Johnson has to go. Musk’s name has been tossed around as a serious alternative contender by Republicans.

“The Speaker of the House need not be a member of Congress… Nothing would disrupt the swamp more than electing Elon Musk… think about it… nothing’s impossible,” Rand Paul wrote in a post to X.

about Mike Johnson

Democrats bail out Johnson, pass bill that could avert government shutdown

The House of Representatives voted to keep the government afloat until mid-March on Friday evening after GOP infighting brought the country within hours of a lapse in federal funding.

The bill passed with the support of nearly all Democrats in the House and 170 Republicans. The 34 votes against the proposal all came from the GOP caucus. Those naysayers were holding a line from earlier in the week when they voted down representatives who voted down two prior measures. The bill will still have to pass the Senate to avoid a shutdown.

A failed proposal on Thursday drew the ire of deficit-hawk conservatives, as it would have suspended the debt ceiling for two years. That pause was excluded from the Friday bill, which extended current apportionments until March 14 and funded Democratic-backed disaster relief and farm aid packages.

"One tweet and they run for the hills": Republicans don't know who's in charge

The bill is expected to pass easily in the Senate and head to President Joe Biden’s desk tonight, skirting a midnight shutdown.

Embattled House Speaker Mike Johnson turned to Democrats after a number of his colleagues signaled an unwillingness to tweak the debt ceiling or approve more spending. Billionaire Elon Musk, a close confidant of Trump, called for the party to let government funding expire until the president-elect’s January inauguration.

Johnson called the bill’s passage a “good outcome for the country,” adding that he discussed the package with Trump before the vote.

“[I] spoke with him most recently about 45 minutes ago. He knew exactly what we were doing,” Johnson told reporters. “I think he certainly is happy about this outcome.”

Trump previously vowed to support primary challengers for any Republican who voted for a funding bill without the debt ceiling extension.

The shutdown aversion could ultimately doom Johnson on Jan. 3, when House Republicans are slated to select a new speaker. The GOP holds an exceptionally slim majority in the lower chamber, and many House Republicans are already floating names for his potential replacement.

about the funding fight

2 dead, dozens injured as car drives through German Christmas market in suspected attack

A man drove into a crowd at a Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, on Friday evening, killing two and injuring at least 70, officials say.

Officials in the central German city apprehended the car’s driver, identifying him as a Saudi Arabia-born doctor with a practice in a nearby town. Local authorities are investigating the incident as an attack.

“As things stand, he is a lone perpetrator, so that as far as we know, there is no further danger to the city,” local governor Reiner Haseloff told reporters, per The Associated Press.

More than a dozen of the injured were seriously hurt, with Haseloff suggesting the death toll could climb further. German public media outlet Phoenix reported that a suspected explosive device was found in the driver’s vehicle.

What we talk about when we talk about terrorism

Christmas markets are common in Germany. The Magdeburg market, one of over 1,000 in the country, was especially busy on the final Friday evening before Christmas.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz condemned the suspected attack on social media.

“My thoughts are with the victims and their families. We stand by their side and by the side of the people of Magdeburg. My thanks go to the dedicated rescue workers in these anxious hours,” Scholz wrote.

Officials have not yet announced any potential motives in the incident, which mirrors a 2016 Berlin attack that killed 12 and injured 48. ISIS ultimately claimed responsibility for that strike.

about Germany

“One tweet and they run for the hills”: Republicans don’t know who’s in charge

With less than twelve hours to go until a lapse in federal funding will force a government shutdown, House Republicans aren’t sure who to listen to.

House Speaker Mike Johnson failed to whip votes for a Thursday evening bid to fund the government. That bill came after Trump sunk a deal agreed upon by bipartisan leadership in both the House and Senate. The second attempt, spearheaded by Johnson, lost by a vote of 174-235, with nearly 40 Republicans jumping ship.

President-elect Donald Trump’s demand on Thursday that “all Republicans” should vote yes on the second bill fell on deaf ears. Some of Trump’s most ardent supporters voted against the bill, which included a Trump demand to suspend the debt ceiling for the first several years of his presidency.

Johnson is still trying to hammer out a deal as of Friday evening, but Trump and his campaign financier Elon Musk seem willing to let the government flounder.

Johnson announced on Friday afternoon that a "Plan C" deal was done. The new proposition would split a resolution to continue funding the government, a farm aid bill and a disaster relief bill into separate votes, caving to the demands of some GOP reps who voted down the first package.

“We will not have a government shutdown,” Johnson told reporters.

Elon Musk just killed Donald Trump's honeymoon

Senator Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said that the package could be dead in the water, arguing that Musk pulls the strings in the lower chamber and could tank the bid with a post to social media.

“This may not pass the House because all it takes is one tweet from a billionaire 15 minutes from now, and House Republicans will go running for the hills,” Murphy told CNN on Friday. “Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, they’re in charge of our government right now, it seems.”

Chris Murphy on the latest House Republican funding plan: "This may not pass the House because all it takes is one tweet from a billionaire 15 minutes from now and House Republicans will go running for the hills. Musk and Ramaswamy are in charge of our govt right now it seems" pic.twitter.com/hrcoSv5IiC

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 20, 2024

The man Democrats have dubbed “President Musk” has exerted his influence to stop previous budget deals. During a day-long tirade on X against the original deal, Musk argued that the House should shut the government down until Trump is sworn in as president.

All this back-and-forth has made a deal seem unlikely. Democrats aren’t willing to hand Trump a political win on raising the debt ceiling, and the GOP’s hardline fiscal hawks are even less likely to budge.

Given the stacked odds of getting what he wants, Trump has come around to Musk’s contention that the whole apparatus of government should grind to a halt.

“If there is going to be a shutdown of government, let it begin now, under the Biden Administration,” Trump said in a pair of posts to Truth Social on Friday. “Congress must get rid of, or extend out to, perhaps, 2029, the ridiculous Debt Ceiling. Without this, we should never make a deal.”

Johnson’s congressional allies seem unconvinced the speaker can rally the troops before a midnight deadline to fund the government.

South Dakota Rep. Dusty Johnson, who voted in favor of the collapsed Trump-Johnson deal on Thursday evening, told reporters that a “technical shutdown” was a strong possibility as in-fighting persisted.

Johnson’s stewardship of the House might be up for renegotiation, too. Trump’s allies are increasingly critical of his leadership, with some suggesting Musk might be a better fit.

Trump ally Marjorie Taylor Greene of Florida endorsed the co-head of the as-yet unofficial Department of Government Efficiency for the role on Thursday, denouncing Johnson’s support for higher spending.

“I'd be open to supporting @elonmusk for Speaker of the House,” Greene wrote on X. “DOGE can only truly be accomplished by reigning in Congress to enact real government efficiency.”

Senator Mike Lee, R-Utah, sees a future where either Musk or Vivek Ramaswamy hold the gavel in the House.

“I don't think the speaker is going to remain in power,” he shared with Fox News. “We need bold new leadership.”

Lee: I don't think the speaker is going to remain in power.. We need bold new leadership, outside leadership and I think it needs to be a doge speaker. Needs to be either Vivek Ramaswamy or Elon Musk. pic.twitter.com/W7TrN0Ptjq

— Acyn (@Acyn) December 20, 2024

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre suggested on Friday that any shutdown would be the GOP's to own, regardless of who controls the presidency.

“They created this mess,” Jean-Pierre said. “Republicans decided to…give space to their billionaire friends and not put the American people first. That's what is happening.”

KJP: They created this mess… Republicans decided to instead listen and give space to their billionaire friends and not put the American people first. That's what is happening. pic.twitter.com/5LcBieOHEN

— Acyn (@Acyn) December 20, 2024

about the potential government shutdown

Louisiana Department of Health ordered to stop promotion of vaccines

Louisiana officials Department of Health employees were ordered to stop promoting common vaccinations, including immunizations against COVID-19, influenza and mpox.

NPR reports that the state shifted its policy on vaccines over the last several months. Employees who spoke to NPR said officials asked that the anti-vaccine policy tweak be “implemented quietly” and kept out of writing but warned that it applied to every aspect of their work. Employees say they are barred from posting notices that the vaccines are available, making posts promoting inoculations, or giving press interviews encouraging the public to seek them.

The state employs over 6,500 health officials now constrained by the policy and reported the first severe human infection from bird flu in the U.S. this week.

A new round of anti-vax misinformation could ruin an otherwise calmer RSV season

Louisiana medical professionals condemned the state for quietly promoting an anti-vax message amid a rise in public vaccine skepticism.

“Public health is local. While we pivoted our attention to the damaging pending impact of an RFK Jr appointment, our local health department was already carrying out many of the very things we feared re: vaccine disinformation,” Louisiana pediatrician Kim Mukerjee said in a pair of posts to Bluesky. “Breaking down our public health infrastructure, instead of investing in and building it up, is shameful and reckless.”

Louisiana had one of the highest rates of flu symptoms in the nation last week, per CDC data, as respiratory illnesses in that state outpaced national averages this flu season.

The state policy comes as doctors brace for a radical shift in federal government vaccine guidances, with infamous vaccine misinformation pusher Robert F. Kennedy Jr. set to take the lead on the nation’s health policy in Donald Trump's second term.

about Louisiana

Earth’s moon might be older than previously thought

It’s widely believed that Earth’s moon is 4.35 billion years old, an estimated age based on lunar samples brought back to Earth. However, a new study published this week in Nature suggests that scientists might be off on their current estimate. A new calculation indicates that the moon could be 100 million years older.

In the paper, scientists propose that the moon underwent a "remelting" 4.35 billion years ago due to a tidal pull of the Earth. As a result, this caused geological upheaval and intense heating essentially resetting the age of the lunar rock, disguising the true age of lunar samples.

NASA detects more dark comets

“We predict that there shouldn't be any lunar rocks that are older than 4.35 billion years because they should have experienced the same resetting,” Francis Nimmo, a professor of Earth and planetary sciences at the University of California-Santa Cruz and author of the paper, said in a media statement. “Because this heating event was global, you shouldn't find rocks anywhere on the Moon that are significantly older than that.”

The authors state that the moon likely formed between 4.43 and 4.53 billion years ago. The paper offers a new perspective on the moon, which could spark new interest in the moon’s formation and early life.

“As more data becomes available—particularly from ongoing and future lunar missions—the understanding of the Moon’s past will continue to evolve,” Nimmo said. “We hope that our findings will spark further discussion and exploration, ultimately leading to a clearer picture of the Moon’s place in the broader history of our solar system.”

about astronomy

Party City ends nearly 40 years of fun

Every party ends the same way: unassumingly, a little later (or earlier) than you thought it would and yet simultaneously all of a sudden.

For Party City, it was no different. The largest party supply company in the U.S. is closing all of its stores after almost 40 years of being in business, CNN reported, with operations shutting down immediately and all locations shuttering in February.

Walgreens to close 1,200 stores across U.S.

In a video conference call, Party City CEO Barry Litwin told corporate employees that Friday would be their last day of employment. A Party City employee who wished to remain anonymous told CNN that management had previously expressed optimism about the company’s business.

Party City had approximately 6,400 full-time and 10,100 part-time workers as of 2021, CNN reported.

The chain declared bankruptcy in January 2023 and announced Litwin as its new CEO four months ago. Party City exited bankruptcy a month later, with more than $800 million in debt to repay.

The company’s previous debt totaled $1.7 billion. Party City closed more than 80 locations between 2022 and 2024, though more than 800 stores stayed open.

Like other retailers that have closed in recent months, Party City faced rising costs due to inflation and competition from e-commerce sites like Amazon and Walmart. A helium shortage hurt Party City’s balloon business.

“It’s really important for you to know that we’ve done everything possible that we could to try to avoid this outcome,” Litwin said during Party City’s last meeting. “Unfortunately, it’s necessary to commence a wind-down process immediately."

about this topic

Biden scraps plans to cancel widespread student loan debt

The Biden administration has withdrawn its proposals for large-scale student loan relief programs, closing the door on mass loan forgiveness in the remaining weeks of his term.

The U.S. Department of Education is rescinding two of its major student loan proposals, which would have considered some amount of loan forgiveness for at least 38 million Americans, according to Politico. One of those had been blocked by a Trump-appointed federal judge.

Stop taking out student loans

If the proposed regulations were left in their current state, the Trump administration would be able to rewrite them and advance its agenda more quickly, The Associated Press reported. Trump has criticized federally-funded student loans and forgiveness programs.

In its official withdrawal notice, the DOE emphasized the Biden administration plans to make use of its remaining time "[committing] its limited operational resources to helping at-risk borrowers return to repayment successfully.”

On Friday, the Biden administration announced $4.28 billion in forgiveness for 54,900 student loan borrowers across the country who work in public service.

This brings the total loan forgiveness by the Biden administration to roughly $180 billion for nearly five million Americans, according to the U.S. Department of Education, including through adjustments on student loan payments to be income-based.

“Time is running out, and what Biden doesn’t do in the next four weeks will mean tens of millions of working people suffer for four years,” Braxton Brewington, spokesperson for the Debt Collective, told CNBC.

about personal finance

“I’ve done my time”: Annette O’Toole talks “Virgin River” and leaving Superman behind for good

When you've spent nearly 60 years in show business, you might be justified in thinking about cutting back or hanging it up. But for "Virgin River" star Annette O'Toole, other people's retirements are her golden opportunities.

"As you get older," she said during our recent "Salon Talks" conversation, "more actresses just say, I don't want to do this anymore.' And if you just stick in there, you get some parts."

Over the years, those parts have sent her into the orbit of the man from Krypton, as Lana Lang in "Superman III" and Martha Kent on "Smallville." These days, she's better known for Netflix's long-running juggernaut, as Virgin River's indomitable mayor Hope McCrea.

Now, with her character on solid ground after romantic turbulence and a life-threatening traumatic brain injury, O'Toole is still impressed at the show's devoted fandom. "I knew it was going to be popular. I knew it would do well," she observes as the series enters its sixth season. (It's already been renewed for a seventh.) But she adds, "I had no idea it would do what it's done."

Watch my conversation with O'Toole here, or read it below, to hear more about her Oscar-nominated songwriting turn with husband Michael McKean for "A Mighty Wind," why she doesn't watch her own show, and how after two iconic roles within the Superman universe, she has no interest in James Gunn's new superhero reboot. "I've done my time," she says. "That's it."

The following conversation has been edited and clarity and length.

Your character, like everybody in Virgin River, has been through it. When we meet you now in this new season, you're in a different place. Tell me about where we meet Hope now.

She's in the best place she's been since the very beginning. Not "no more traumatic brain injury," because you never fully get over that. I had a little issue with that, because I thought, "This is quick for her to be so recovered." Especially at her age, you don't recover as quickly.

They wanted her back being in the town and in everybody's business like she's been, so I've had to deal with that. Sometimes I play a scene with a splitting headache and people don't even know, but I know, so that makes some sense.

"It's nice to see this community not having to deal with so much trauma for once. There's still some trauma."

It's a short season, so it takes, I think, three and a half weeks to get from the beginning of Season 6 to the end and the culmination of the big wedding. There's not enough time for her to get into too much trouble, but she gets into some. She and Doc [Tim Matheson] have a little issue about something, but it doesn't last long. This season is about getting our two lovebirds together, and we do it and the whole town's behind it. It's nice to see this community not having to deal with so much trauma for once. There's still some trauma. It's a journey.

You've got to still have some trauma, but there's a different tone this season.

There is. I don't know if it'll last. Who knows? We'll see what's in store for Season 7.

Tell me about when you were first approached about this show. What was it that drew you to it? Because you seem to be pretty selective in the things you do.

I don't know if I am or not. I've been lucky, and I've tried not to repeat myself too much, and like you say, I can do musical stuff. As you get older, more actresses just say, "I don't want to do this anymore." And if you just stick in there, you get some parts. That's what happened.

Sue Tenney, who was our original writer and showrunner, called me, and I knew that Tim [Matheson] was involved. I knew that if it was something Tim was in, that it was something I wanted to be in, because I've worked with Tim, known him a long time, and I just loved the idea of it.

I wasn't crazy about going to Vancouver again, but who knew if it was going to be successful? It could have been a one-season thing, 10 episodes and you're out. It's like my friend [and "Smallville" co-star] John Glover says, it's the golden handcuffs. You get to be on this great show and do fun work, but you're also away from your family. It's only four months of the year, so listen, I have nothing to complain about. I'm very, very excited to be part of it.

"All love stories end in tragedy": "The Notebook" author Nicholas Sparks defines his genre

You've talked about Tim Matheson. You've been playing married couples for 50 years now.

Pretty much. We played a married couple, then we played an engaged couple, and now we're a married couple again. Every other time. We're not quite married.

There was a period on the show where you were not quite married either.

Well, we've always been married. We've never been officially divorced. People say, "When are they going to get married again?" I say, "They've never not been married since you've known them, and they renewed their vows already." People say, "When are you going to renew?" We did that under a montage, so maybe you didn't quite figure it out.

The other thing about this show is how it resonates on so many levels with people. Were you surprised when it became the thing that it has become almost instantly, almost from the day it dropped?

I knew it was going to be popular. I knew it would do well. I had no idea it would do what it's done. Everywhere I go, I'm recognized. I've done some other things years ago that I was visible for, but this is something else, and people love it. They're genuinely happy to see me and excited to talk about the show, and there's not much I can say about it. It's like, "Yes, when you see it, that's what it is. We all look like we're having a good time. We are." They're so involved.

I could never have foreseen this. My husband and I wanted to watch the new "Beatles '64" the other night. We watched the trailer and he said, "That phenomenon will never happen again."

We have Taylor Swift and stuff like that, but that kind of world-changing overnight? I remember I was in grade school when I heard about The Beatles. I went to school one morning and suddenly people were running in the hallways saying, "The Beatles." I said, "What's that?" I thought they were talking about bugs in the school or something.

Anyway, a show that becomes this popular with so many age groups and so many types of people all over the world, it's really interesting. It doesn't change my life, but I'm grateful for it. It sounds like I'll have a paycheck for a little bit longer.

Recently we have seen how strongly people feel about their health care in this country, and this is a show that also deals with that. You see it from both sides. Many of the characters have been patients, have had medical emergencies. You also see it from the side of the providers and the frustrations they have. Do you think that's an element of it as well, that people connect with it in that level of sickness, injury, dealing with doctors?

You know, I hadn't thought of that. I was just thinking that it was the drama and the love and all the stuff that happens in the beautiful scenery, but you're right. I think maybe that is an issue that people are interested in. Now, after people see Season 6 and see the end of it, they'll realize it going into Season 7. I hope they pursue that more. I haven't talked to the writers about what they're doing, but I do hope they pursue that because especially for my character and for Tim's character, it's something we can delve into that's important.

Without giving anything away, you set up that there will be some examinations of the health care industry to come.

Right.

There's a moment in this season where a character talks to you about the lengths you go for love, and he's speaking to your character.

Who says that? Do you remember?

Doc tells you that.

"People get mad at me for not watching it, but I cannot."

I don't watch it. I don't. I'm sorry. People get mad at me for not watching it, but I cannot. I can't watch myself, and I've already done it. It doesn't help me to go back and look at it. Normally in your day, you see somebody and you have a conversation. You can't go back and look at it. Actors can do that, or directors and writers, but it's not fair. I just feel like I've seen myself on film enough. Anyway, thank you for reminding me.

It's a beautiful, lovely scene, and it made me think. It feels like that could apply to you as well, because you have gone to lengths for love. You stepped away from this very successful show, and you did it for love. Talk to me about that.

It was right at the beginning of COVID, and we were getting ready to go back for Season 3. I'm in LA, and it's getting closer and closer to time. I'm thinking, "What am I going to do?" My mother's now 99, so then she was 96 or 95. What scared me was there was no vaccine. Canada was extremely strict about it, good for them, so I was afraid about getting to Vancouver and not being able to come home, or getting sick up there and having to stay. Not so much being sick and being alone with that, but being separated and not knowing when I could get home, and nobody could come up and be together.

Michael, my husband, was just beside himself. I thought he was going to have a heart attack. He was so worried about my going. He was as upset as I've ever seen him. Finally, they said, "OK, we've got to make flight arrangements for you."

He's talking about my going and being separate, all that stuff, and I said, "I don't have to go." He said, "Yes, you do. You've got a contract. You have to go." I said, "No, no, no. This is an act of God if there ever was one, this thing that we're dealing with, and we have no idea what it is." We didn't know how it was communicated. We didn't know anything then.

I said, "I don't think I can do it," so I called Sue and told her. It was really hard, and I felt like I was letting everybody down. But I thought, "I'm always the one there. I'm always the one who's right there on time. This is something else. This is a life thing, a choice, and it's really about my family."

9/11 is very connected to it to me because I was in Vancouver when 9/11 happened. I'd flown up the day before it happened. All airports were closed, so maybe it was like a sense memory thing. I get chills now thinking about it.

She said, "Oh, would you?" I thought they were going to fire me. I didn't go, and she was kind enough and Netflix was nice enough to want me to stay present in the show, so they couldn't even send a crew to my house. My daughter is very savvy with a camera, and she can do anything on a set. She's a set decorator now but she's been everything, so she came over and filmed four scenes on my phone.

Monika Mitchell was the director for one of them, and she did a location shoot through my house. We walked through the entire house, and she said it was supposed to be in South Carolina after a hurricane. I have this one wall where some ivy was taken down and it just ripped all the paint off. It was horrible. I said, "This wall is perfect." You look out that window and see that. It was hard. It was weird not to be involved in something, but I was glad I was still kind of in it.

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This is not the first time you have walked away from a big thing as well — a show called "Smallville."

Well, I finished my contract. I signed on for six, I did six, and then I came back for a couple of guest star things. Who knew how long it was going to go? I felt my character had done everything she was going to do and more. They were grasping at straws trying to keep me in the show, and it was lovely. It was really fun.

The best thing for me that came out of that was my friendship with John Glover. We would go on the plane back and forth together all the time, because we were both commuting from LA. My kids were in high school, and his husband was back here, and we were constantly on the plane together. That's where we became close.

I saw a clip of you talking on the "TalkVille" podcast about your biggest regret about that show. It had to do with Christopher Reeve.

I never understood it. I should have picked up a phone and called the producers and said, "What are you thinking? You've got the prior Lana Lang and Superman. Why aren't you putting them in a scene together?" It kind of broke my heart. I felt like it was like, "If they don't see, I'm not going to tell them. They don't understand." Yeah, and so who's regretting it? Not them. Because I knew it would be the last time I'd ever get to see Chris, I'm very sad about that. [Reeve died in October of 2004, three years after the debut of "Smallville."]

You are so indelibly connected with the Superman world. You're two iconic characters, Annette. Nobody else can say that. I wonder how you feel about the Superman world now. There's another movie coming out next year.

They come out every freaking year, don't they? My God. They do.

They do. With different Supermans.

Yeah. How do you keep it straight?

I was going to say, do you keep it straight? Do you keep abreast of the Supermans?

No, I don't. You know, I've done my time. That's it.

You are also a songwriter. You mentioned 9/11. I want to ask how you and your spouse wound up becoming Oscar-nominated songwriters for "A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow."

Right after that event [9/11], I couldn't get a flight back from Vancouver so I drove back [to Los Angeles]. I almost made it in one trip but I didn't. I left at four or five in the morning in this rental car, but I had to stop in Redding because I couldn't see anymore, and I was so upset anyway. I got permission from the unit production manager. I said, "You're not going to need me, right?" He said, "No, no, no. We're not going to need you for at least four days." I said, "I'm going home. I'm driving." He said OK.

I get home, the second I get home, they call me and say, "We need you tomorrow." I said, "You gave me permission to come home. I told you I was driving. I can't get a flight. I can't even charter a flight. You're going to have to wait two days." I'm so mad, and I don't do this. I'm always the good girl, and I show up and do my job. This was maddening. Michael said, "Well, OK. I'll come with you," so we turned around and drove back.

In between Portland and Seattle, I had this melody in my head that I couldn't get out of my head. I said, "Am I making this up, or is this something old?" He knows every song ever written. I hummed it to him, and he said, "I think you're making that up." We started putting little lyrics to it, just to hold it so we would remember, because it's 2001. We didn't have recording devices on our phones and all that stuff, so we were trying to remember it until we got to a hotel or to Vancouver, So, "Dah-dah-dah, Potato's in the paddywagon, blah, blah." I said, "Yeah, but Potato's got to be a girl, and it's got to be about that's her nickname." We just started making up the stupid song.

We got there, we recorded it on something. He was writing music for "A Mighty Wind" with Chris Guest and Eugene Levy and everybody else who was in the movie. He said, "I think this might work. Let's send it to Chris." He sent it to Chris, and Chris loved it. He said, "Yeah, that'll work for The New Main Street Singers." He asked Michael, "Would you like to write this song that's the signature song? It's for Mitch & Mickey and it has to have a kiss in it. You have to mention kiss in the song." Michael told me about it. He said, "You want to write it with me?" I said, "Sure."

When we finally both got home, we sat down at the piano and wrote it like in an hour, and finished it on the walk with the dog, so about an hour and a half. It's kind of based on us, as a lot of our songs are. Then he wrote a lot of music for that movie, but "Fare Away. " The sea shanty, the music was written by C.J. Vanston, who is the musical genius who does all the Spinal Tap stuff and all Chris's movies. He had this melody, and so we had a Patrick O'Brian book we took off the shelf and looked up every nautical term we could see. We threw it in the song, and it was really fun.

There you have it. That's how you get an Oscar nomination.

Well, it has to be a good song. The thing about the song, though, was when we first sang it for Chris, he said, "I don't think this will work. It's too good. It's like a real song." It is, and we felt like that's why it worked. [Guest's wife] Jamie Lee Curtis was there and said, "No, that's the song." I think her little nudge helped.

Thank you, Jamie Lee Curtis.

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