Does the omicron variant mean vaccines will have to be updated? Here’s what scientists say

On Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced the omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 has arrived in the United States.

While little is known about transmissibility and if this variant causes more severe COVID-19 or not, its mutational profile has scientists concerned — hence, the worldwide political reaction to the variant. Across the variant’s entire genome, there are 50 mutations; 32 are in the spike protein, which is implicated in the virus’ ability to attach and gain entry into human cells. Most of the current vaccines train the human body’s immune system to recognize a specific spike protein on the coronavirus, which is how we build protection against the virus overall. However, many modifications to the spike protein could result in vaccinated individuals’ immune systems no longer being able to recognize the spike protein — which would mean they could be infected despite vaccination.

As a result, vaccine manufacturers are already putting the wheels in motion to modify existing vaccines if needed. That’s because many experts expect the variant to resist current vaccines.

Yet other scientists see this as putting the horse before the cart. That’s because the jury is still out on whether or not this variant will escape vaccine-induced immunity. Some scientists estimate it will be at least another two weeks before the world has answers regarding how the current vaccines respond to the variant.

If that’s the case, then at what point will a new vaccine — or an updated one — be needed? And how will we know?

The answer, experts tell Salon, is maddeningly subjective.

“There are no established rules for this, but likely will involve a combination of transmissibility, virulence, and immune evasion data that will need to emerge,” said Litjen Tan, chief strategy officer of the Immunization Action Coalition. “Data indicating superior transmissibility over delta (thereby increasing its chances of becoming dominant), increased virulence (so leading to greater severe illness) and reduction in the existing immune response (either natural or vaccine-induced) will lead to consideration of tweaking the existing vaccines.”

Tan said when it comes to modifying the vaccine, there is no threshold for vaccine efficacy — meaning, how effective the vaccine is against a variant.

“That would be hard to determine,” Tan said. “Efficacy against what? Severe illness, hospitalizations, infection?”

Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center, told Salon that determining if a vaccine update is needed goes back to the initial goals of the vaccines.

“To me, the most important thing is that a vaccine has efficacy against a serious disease,” Adalja said. He noted that in the cases of some variants, like beta and gamma, the vaccine meant that the infected generally had only mild symptoms — meaning that even if the vaccine sometimes did not prevent a breakthrough case, it still did its job in stopping death or severe disease.

“Because omicron has some immune-invasive associated mutations and is spreading, the threshold is getting very close to being crossed to update the vaccine; there is no magic number for efficacy and early in the pandemic the FDA was poised to approve anything that had at least 50% efficacy against symptomatic disease,” he noted.

While vaccine effectiveness has waned slightly now that the delta variant has become dominant, data suggests that the normal two doses of the Moderna vaccine are still approximately 50 to 95 percent effective against delta. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is 39 to 96 percent effective against Delta. The vaccines are around 60 to 95 percent effective at preventing hospitalization from the Delta variant.

Tan said data indicated that the existing vaccines work well against delta, especially against hospitalization, and when supplemented with booster shots.

“So it makes sense to keep getting people protected against the delta [variant], rather than lose capacity to manufacture existing vaccines as a result of switching to a new strain,” Tan said.

Monica Gandhi, infectious disease doctor and professor of medicine at the University of California–San Francisco, said fears of the omicron variant evading vaccine-induced immunity do not appear to be playing out clinically,

“There is simply no evidence that the variant is evading the vaccine, from WHO and from doctors on the ground,” Gandhi said.

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Republicans’ war on education is the most crucial part of their push for fascism

In his famous 1995 essay delineating the signposts of fascism, philosopher and linguist Umberto Eco singled out the authoritarian’s loathing of learning as a critical indicator that what you’re dealing with is not just garden variety conservatism, but outright fascism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity,” to the fascist, and “[t]hinking is a form of emasculation.” Therefore, Eco argued, “Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism.”

So really, it’s no surprise that the Republican Party — which has never been a friend of schools — has dramatically escalated its war on education on its march to becoming a fully fascist institution. Most of this is done under the guise of fighting “critical race theory. It’s a real term in academia, but in GOP hands, “critical race theory” amounts to a conspiracy theory used to scare white people into supporting a full-blown assault on the teaching of history or literature in public schools. But with the early success of this tactic, particularly in the Virginia gubernatorial race, Republicans are feeling empowered to dramatically broaden their assault on all forms of education, from pre-K to the university level.

Most of these attacks use race-baiting to stir up emotions and bamboozle people about what is, ultimately, an anti-education agenda. But not always. For instance, as the Washington Post reported Tuesday, Republicans are already working on a plan to do whatever it is they can to kneecap President Joe Biden’s plan to make pre-K available to all American children. Modeled on the strategy for depriving eligible people of Medicaid, the idea would be for red state governments to simply reject free federal funds that would expand pre-K programs to all 3- and 4-year-old children.

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Decades of research shows that pre-K is hugely beneficial to educational development, helping kids not just with early education but also leading to higher rates of high school and college graduation. Of course, in the eyes of authoritarians, that is the argument against pre-K. Children learning skills like literacy, reasoning, and even skepticism? All that cuts against the social control goals of fascists. Unsurprisingly, then, efforts to bamboozle parents into backing an anti-education movement are starting to expand beyond conspiracy theories about “critical race theory.”

As Judd Legum of Popular Info reported last month, the new scare tactic on the right is to freak out about “social-emotional learning.” Far-right dark money groups are busy propagandizing against this educational concept with false accusations that it’s “‘racist garbage,’ ‘anti-white,’ and ‘a vehicle for introducing leftist propaganda in the classroom.'” In reality, social-emotional learning is merely pedagogical jargon for teaching kids “critical thinking, emotion management, conflict resolution, decision making, teamwork,” all of which are necessary for “academic success, employability, self-esteem, relationships, and civic and community engagement.”

Critical thinking skills and good emotional management tend to inoculate people against joining QAnon or listening to Tucker Carlson, so it’s no surprise Republicans are opposed to it. It is important to note that they’re using the same tactic that they use with “critical race theory”: Exploiting unfamiliar jargon to terrify people over educational concepts that, when described in plain English, are downright banal.

Of course, this expansion doesn’t mean that Republicans are giving up on the “critical race theory” nonsense. Far from it — they’re clearly excited about the way the scare term can be used as cover to intimidate educators out of teaching anything that might lead to those dreaded “critical thinking skills.” In particular, Republicans seem excited about the possibility of simply erasing huge chunks of American history from public school education altogether.

In Tennessee, the misnamed “Moms for Liberty” group has been leveraging the state’s newly passed anti-“critical race theory” law in an effort to ban books about Martin Luther King Jr. and Brown v. Board of Education. The group claims these lessons make kids “hate their country, each other and/or themselves.” The state’s department of education rejected the complaint, although —notably — not on its merits but over a technical concern about how the complaint was filed. There is still a possibility that the next complaint will be upheld and the books banned. But even if that doesn’t happen, these complaints have a chilling effect.

“Part of the goal of this is just to strike fear and hesitation with teachers — that if they mess up, it could be catastrophic for them professionally,” a former school board member in Tenneessee told Legum for another newsletter. To protect their jobs, many teachers may simply skip over lessons on slavery, Jim Crow, or the civil rights movement. That’s the clear goal of groups like Moms for Liberty. They want to indocrinate children with a fake American history that pretends those things never happened.

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In Wisconsin, the GOP-controlled legislature is moving foward with a similar bill meant to silence any public school discourse about race or racism. While Republicans are promoting this as a strike against “critical race theory,” the list of banned terms attached to the bill by its main sponsor, Republican state representative Chuck Wichgers, tells the true story: This is about intimidating teachers from ever talking about the history of American racism.

Among the list of banned terms are “racial prejudice,” “racial justice,” and “equitable.” There is simply no way, of course, to talk about an event like the March on Washington — which demanded equitable treatment and racial justice, after a history of Black people enduring racial prejudice — when the very words to describe the situation are banned from schools.

This war on public schools is, unsurprisingly, also playing out on the university level.

The University of Nebraska at Lincoln has been under a full-blown assault by state Republicans, including Gov. Pete Ricketts, because the school released a plan to improve on-campus diversity. In particular, Republicans have been trying to force chancellor Ronnie Green out of his office because he signed off on this plan “to attract, recruit, retain, and support students, staff, and faculty from racially minoritized populations.”

The whole thing is playing out how one would expect, with Republicans making bad faith claims about how the chancellor is promoting a “radical ideology.” As UNL professor Ari Kohen explained, the campaign is working not just to stir up racist hysteria, but to stigmatize the very idea of college education among the general public.

“When I moved to Nebraska in 2007, the university was universally beloved,” Kohen explained in a long Twitter thread. But now when he tells people he teaches there, they “sneeringly refer to me as ‘professor’ because it meant I was an out-of-touch ivory tower liberal.” For this, he blames the GOP’s relentless propaganda campaign against the school.

Their goal–and it is & has been a long term right wing goal nationally–has been to permanently damage the prestige of the University of Nebraska, to convince people who love it that it doesn’t respect them or represent their values, and that enrolling their kids will harm them.

— Ari Kohen (@kohenari) November 29, 2021

As Eco noted in 1995, thinking is the enemy of fascism. So of course the increasingly fascist right is doing everything they can to shut the whole “thinking” thing down.

First they push kids away from going to school, as demonstrated by the attacks on pre-K or, as Kohen notes, discouraging kids from applying to universities. If keeping kids out of school isn’t possible, the strategy is to intimidate teachers out of any lesson that could provoke critical thinking. And in the general public, there’s a sowing of hostility to schools, so that when some education actually slips through to kids, the parents will scare children away from actually learning from it.

It’s been clear for a long time that the right values obedience in young people, and shuns intellect. But Republicans know that being upfront about their goals will cause parents to reject them. So they swaddle their campaign in conspiracy theories about “critical race theory” and other such scare tactics. Their actions, however, belie their true goal: the mass production of right-wing automatons who unthinkingly support unjust and authoritarian systems.

Missouri’s GOP governor attacked mask mandates — and concealed evidence that they work

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson’s administration withheld an analysis showing that COVID mask mandates saved lives as Parson railed against mask requirements, according to an investigation by the Missouri Independent.

A study conducted at the request of Parson’s office in early November found that mask requirements helped reduce COVID infections during a spike following the spread of the delta variant, according to the report. The study compared infection and death rates in St. Louis and St. Louis County and Kansas City and Jackson County with the rest of the state. The state’s health director, Donald Kauerauf, wrote to Parson’s office that the analysis showed that mask mandates were effective, according to emails obtained by the Independent and the Documenting Covid-19 project.

“I think we can say with great confidence reviewing the public health literature and then looking at the results in your study that communities where masks were required had a lower positivity rate per 100,000 and experienced lower death rates,” Kauerauf wrote.

But the analysis was never made public and was not even shared during cabinet meetings with top state officials, according to the emails.

Missouri is one of just six states that never implemented a statewide mask mandate at any point in the pandemic. Parson has repeatedly criticized mask mandates, calling them “WRONG” in a tweet earlier this year and arguing that vaccinated people should not be subject to mask requirements, even though data shows that vaccinated people can still be infected and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that vaccinated people wear a mask in public in areas of substantial or high transmission. Missouri is currently experiencing another increase in infections after a delta variant wave over the summer. The state reported a positivity rate higher than 12% on Thursday, more than twice the national average.

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt earlier this year even sued St. Louis, St. Louis County, Kansas City and Jackson County in an effort to block their mask requirements.

The local governments “imposed an unlawful, arbitrary, and capricious mask mandate that is not supported by the data or the science,” Schmitt’s lawsuit argues. He filed a similar lawsuit against Columbia Public Schools.

The state’s own data shows that between April and October, jurisdictions that imposed mask mandates reported 15.8 cases per day per 100 residents compared to 21.7 per day in communities without mask requirements.

“More than anything it confirms for us what our public health experts have been saying, that masks are an effective tool for reducing community transmission,” Nick Dunne, a spokesman for St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones, told the Independent.

Despite Schmitt’s lawsuit and Parson’s criticism, the administration has allowed local governments to set their own health rules. St. Louis County and St. Louis still have mask mandates in place, though they’ve been lifted in Kansas City and Jackson County.

“This data shows that the public health experts, the St. Louis Metropolitan Task Force, and the St. Louis County Department of Public Health make good decisions to protect our community,” St. Louis County Executive Sam Page told the outlet.

Kauerauf has also backed mask requirements since starting the job in September.

“I rely (on) the experts at the CDC on that. Everything I’ve read, everything I’ve seen: Masks work,” he said at his first press conference.

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Schmitt’s office said that the analysis will not affect its lawsuits challenging mask rules.

“We dispute this premise and these charts,” spokesman Chris Nuelle told the Independent. “We’ve been clear that Missourians should have the right to make their own decisions, and that government bureaucrats shouldn’t be mandating masks or vaccines. We will continue to fiercely litigate our lawsuits against mask mandates in Missouri.”

Medical experts called out the state for putting residents at risk by fighting mask mandates and withholding data showing that they work.

“It’s devastating to see what the Missouri governor did since mask policies do reduce the spread of COVID-19 and would reduce the number of people who become sick and die in Missouri,” Julia Raifman, a health law and policy professor at Boston University who oversees the COVID-19 U.S. State Policies Database, told the Independent. “It’s devastating to see policymakers not implement policies that would reduce the number of children who are growing up without their parents.”

Read more on the political battles over pandemic policy:

Lidia’s chocolate chip cookies are an easy Italian spin on the classic

I learned to cook from watching my imaginary aunties and uncles. I may not have grown up in a gastronomically inclined home, but the warm, encouraging stars of food television — Julia, Martha, Sandra, Rachael, Emeril, Alton, the Two Fat Ladies, and, of course, Lidia — showed me the way. They talked me through my early faltering steps as a home cook, and they teach me still.

As accessible as she is meticulous, author and restauranteur Lidia Bastianich has always made cooking great food look as pleasurable as eating it. Now in her newest book, “Lidia’s a Pot, a Pan, and a Bowl: Simple Recipes for Perfect Meals: A Cookbook,” she creates low-stress versions of Italian classics, like a one-pan chicken and eggplant parm.

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“This is how I cook,” Bastianich says during a recent Zoom call. “I pull out a pot, and try to get everything in there. It’s very Italian to put vegetables with proteins all together. Maybe at the most, add a pot of water for the pasta or for the starch. But otherwise, it’s all in that one pot.”

The whole book is full of relaxed seasonal dishes like cod and lentil salad, and skillet lasagna. But reading it, I zeroed in on the desserts, and a cookie that nods to one of the greatest confections ever invented — the cannoli. Plump with ricotta, Lidia’s chocolate chip cookie is not the golden tollhouse cookie of your American dreams. This is a pillowy soft little bite that will remind you of your favorite Italian bakery, the kind of thing that ought to come in a box tied with a red string. “Sometimes I put in some lemon or orange,” Bastianich says, and so I happily follow suit. The hit of lemon gives these a punchy freshness that plays well with chocolate. “Also,” she says, “instead of chocolate chips, you can put candied orange or candied lemon and all of that in there. Really delicious.”

Because I believe every chocolate chip cookie recipe should have way more chocolate, I have doubled Lidia’s suggested amount of chips. If you are of a more restrained bent than I, use just one cup of chips.

I also like to bake my cookies to order so they’re always warm and fresh, keeping the reserved dough in the fridge. You can do likewise here, or bake your cookies all at once if you are feeding a group.

***

Cannoli-ish chocolate chip ricotta cookies
Inspired by Lidia Bastianich’s “Lidia’s a Pot, a Pan, and a Bowl: Simple Recipes for Perfect Meals”
Makes 3 dozen, maybe more

Ingredients

1 stick of butter, softened

1 cup of granulated sugar

2 large eggs

8 ounces of fresh ricotta (Fresh is extraordinary, but I have made these with the supermarket stuff from the tub too with zero complaints.)

2 1/2 cups of all purpose flour

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract (I think next time I’m going to swap in lemon extract for even more punch.)

2 teaspoons of baking powder

Pinch of sea salt

2 cups of mini chocolate chips (or regular sized if you can’t find minis)

Confectioners sugar, for dusting (optional)

Lemon zest (optional)

Directions

Preheat your oven to 350°F.
Line two baking sheets with parchment.
In a large bowl, cream your butter and sugar until airy and fluffy, about two minutes.
Reduce mixer speed and add eggs, vanilla and ricotta.
Add your flour, baking powder and salt and mix until just combined.
Stir in your chips until combined.
Scoop tablespoon sized drops of dough on your baking sheets, leaving space between the cookies to spread. If you are baking the whole amount, you will likely need to do this in two batches.
If you wish, grate some fresh lemon peel on top of the cookies.
Bake approximately 16 – 18 minutes, rotating your trays halfway through the baking. They should be browned on top and puffed. They will not get as brown as traditional chocolate chip cookies.
Remove from oven, and cool on a wire rack. Serve dusted with a little confectioner’s sugar.

More Lidia we love:

Ghislaine Maxwell trial: Epstein victim testifies she was taken to Trump at 14 years old

An alleged victim of the late hedge fund manager and sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein, who stood accused of running a teen sex trafficking ring with British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, testified during Maxwell’s trial that she was introduced to Donald Trump when she was fourteen.

Though the woman – testifying as “Jane” – alleged no improper conduct between herself and the former president, Jane confirmed Wednesday that she met Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida in the 1990s.

“[Epstein] took you to Mar-a-Lago when you were 14, you claim?” Lara Menninger, Maxwell’s defense attorney, asked Jane.

“Yes,” Jane replied.

Jane also spoke of being part of a Miss Teen USA beauty pageant at the time, an event directly associated with Trump. During the competition, Jane alleged, she wore a $2,000 dress bequeathed to her by Epstein.

Epstein died by apparent suicide in August in his jail cell shortly after he was arrested on charges of child sex trafficking. Epstein was known to have socialized with the likes of numerous high-profile business leaders and government officials, including Trump, former President Bill Clinton, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and Prince Andrew, former-CEO of private equity Leon Black, and billionaire Leslie Wexner.

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Maxwell, who has been accused of recruiting scores of teen girls into Epstein’s inner circle, has vehemently denied criminal wrongdoing.

Jane further alleged on Tuesday that she was sexually abused by Epstein on multiple occasions in his Palm Beach residence. She also noted that others, including Maxwell, directly participated in sexual encounters with her.

Maxwell’s defense has largely sought to undermine Jane’s recollection of her timeline with Epstein in order to cast doubt on whether Maxwell was present in the abuse. For instance, during the trial, Menninger referred the judge to a previous claim Jane made about Epstein flying her out to see a Broadway production The Lion King in 1994. The show, however, did not open until three years later.

“My timeline was wrong,” Jane said.

That same day in trial, Epstein’s pilot, Larry Visoski, made testimony to the court with added insight into both Maxwell and Jane’s alleged relationship with Epstein.

Visoki described Maxwell as the late financier’s “number two,” adding that she was “go-to person to handle everything else that was not business related.” The pilot also alleged that Eptstein introduced Jane to him on a plane set for Palm Beach back in the 1990s.

Asked about whether he’d seen any sexual activity with underage girls, Visoki replied: “I never saw any sexual activity, no.”

Trump DOJ lawyer held in contempt after Jan. 6 committee vote

The House committee charged with investigating the Capitol riot on Wednesday moved to hold a Trump-era DOJ official, Jeffrey Clark, in contempt for refusing to cooperate with its congressional subpoena.

The panel, led by chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., unanimously voted to recommend charging Clark, but also conceded in delaying an official House vote on his contempt charge since the ex-DOJ lawyer agreed to be deposed on Saturday. The agreement came after weeks of slow-walking by Clark, who has repeatedly shut down the committee’s attempts to uncover his role in backing Trump’s election fraud claims.

Thompson this week called the Clark’s maneuver “a last-ditch attempt to delay.”

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“Even though Mr. Clark previously had the opportunity to make these claims on the record, the Select Committee will provide him another chance to do so,” the panel’s chairman said. “I have informed Mr. Clark’s attorney that I am willing to convene another deposition at which Mr. Clark can assert that privilege on a question-by-question basis, which is what the law requires of someone who asserts the privilege against self-incrimination.”

Clark, the former assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, first made headlines over his alleged role last year in pressuring state lawmakers and Trump-era DOJ officials to pursue the former president’s baseless claims of allegation fraud. Specifically, Clark circulated a letter last December calling on the Georgia state assembly to investigate voter fraud in the Peach State.

“The Department will update you as we are able on investigatory progress, but at this time we have identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States, including the State of Georgia,” Clark wrote at the time, even when the agency held concerns of no such significance.

At one point, Trump and his allies reportedly hatched a scheme to replace then-Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen – who refused to support Trump’s claims – with Clark, but the plan never materialized.

Despite Wednesday’s agreement, the extent to which Clark will ultimately cooperate with the January 6 panel remains unclear, The New York Times noted.

Early last month, Clark made an appearance for a deposition schedule on November 5, but exited before the proceeding was finished. Investigators reportedly intended to ask him questions about his letter addressing alleged voter fraud in Georgia, among other matters, but the ex-DOJ official refused to answer them, citing executive privilege.

“The privileges that are under the overall umbrella of executive privilege are numerous,” Harry W. MacDougald, Clark’s lawyer, told the committee at the time.

On top of this gambit, The Wall Street Journal reported that Clark has also invoked his Fifth Amendment for fear of self-incrimination.

Meanwhile, Trump has filed a lawsuit against the committee for seeking access to White House records related to the Capitol insurrection, though his legal attempts to block the committee’s offensive have yet to prove successful in court.

Joe Biden’s Christmas reboot: A tightly wound presidency badly needs some holiday cheer

Stay on point.
Keep POTUS moving in quick, short bursts.
Limit press access.
Don’t engage the crazies.

I would not be surprised to see those statements, or something similar, written on White House chief of staff Ron Klain’s desk.

Each day in the Biden White House is a march down the same road with those guardrails. Each day the administration tries to choreograph a perfect day using them.

And whatever you may wish to think, the Biden administration has had considerable success controlling the press. The AP begins each news briefing with press secretary Jen Psaki, the front two rows in the Brady Briefing Room get to ask whatever they want — which usually amounts to a variant of the same question being asked by whoever needs the soundbite. A few hands will be called on in the back, but usually only those known and accepted by the administration as “mainstream” media. After 45 minutes, a press briefing ends, usually generating little interest and very little news.

The daily briefing remains the fundamental way the administration interacts with the public. Outside of the briefing, the president’s interaction with the press is equally calculated, controlled and limited. Wednesday he spent a great deal of time in front of the public speaking — but very little time answering questions.

That is exactly how the administration wants it. Biden’s communication staff plays a strange game of cat-and-mouse with the large media companies that constitute the “press pool.” Access. Attraction. Seduction. The relationship between the two is so incestuous, it is often just two steps away from a certified Greek tragedy — or a family reunion straight out of “Deliverance.”

Meanwhile, continuing problems with the pandemic and inflation have prompted the White House to change its game as polling numbers have fallen. It is, as one senior staffer explained, “all about getting the president in front of as many eyes as possible.”

Some in the White House still think Biden should be seen less rather than more. But either way, most of the Biden staff agree that limiting access — while providing video proof of Biden doing “something” — is a key strategy to prop up the sagging numbers.

As evidence of this, Biden was set to speak in public every day this week — and three times on Wednesday. He spoke just after the noon hour about the nation’s supply chain problems and lowering costs for families. He took about three minutes of questions at that meeting. Later in the afternoon he showed up in the East Room to commemorate World AIDS Day. He took no questions there. Early in the evening he was scheduled to celebrate Hanukkah with his wife, Vice President Harris and her husband.

We got to see a lot of the president on videotape. Very few reporters got to see him in person and less than a handful got to ask him anything about his administration. Oddly enough, voters on the right and the left have similar thoughts about the lack of quality of the questions asked by reporters.

The administration relies heavily on a press strategy that boils down to this argument: “We’re the good guys compared to Trump.” But does it work? The president of the United States is defending himself against sagging popularity in the polls, inflation and the continued effects of the pandemic, while trying to promote an infrastructure bill, lower unemployment and medical science. That’s just an average Monday.

Biden hopes to deal with this by heading into the Christmas holidays in campaign mode. He’s on the road. He’s in the East Room. He’s in the South Court Auditorium and he’s talking to us.

He sticks to the script. He sticks to it so much he has even been heard complaining about supposed restrictions imposed upon him in public appearances. That causes more than a few heads to wag because as president, Biden always has the option to do whatever he wants. Truth is, he does stick to the script. He’s highly disciplined in that respect.

Donald Trump, of course, could never show such self-discipline and as a consequence constantly said the most insane things imaginable. How long until we live down his statement about shooting up Clorox to cure the pandemic — or calling the pandemic a hoax? Or claiming it was a hoax, while also claiming he pioneered the vaccine? Of course Trump was further hampered by his administration, which was an undisciplined mess of unprofessional liars, grifters and louts. Biden has a different problem. His staff is more disciplined and smarter, but often condescending toward a press corps that finds itself fighting for access and getting less than they got from the guy who called them “enemies of the people.” Still, the current White House wants to make sure we know they’re “the good guys.”

Biden continues to have trouble with some reporters and members of the public who do not buy what he’s selling. It’s surprising to find a president so personally unpopular while his policies remain overwhelmingly so.

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So Biden cruises into his first Christmas as president with a country still unsure about him, but also, for the most part, thankful that the Trumps and their perpetually inchoate staff are no longer decorating the White House for Christmas like Dr. Seuss on ecstasy and Peruvian marching powder. Dr. Jill Biden has proven to be a far more subdued Christmas decorator, and a majority of Americans welcome any return to Christmas traditions — but that still doesn’t help her husband’s popularity.

One would think that a Supreme Court hearing arguments about taking away a woman’s right to choose and a member of Congress baselessly accusing another of being a terrorist would make clear that Biden’s administration is the best thing going in D.C. this holiday season.

Hell, Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, revealed this week that Trump tested positive for COVID three days — three damn days! — before debating Biden last fall, and then Trump went and exposed himself (er, I mean the virus) to Gold Star families. Yet Trump remains as popular as he ever was with his core supporters.

Biden finds himself struggling and he has actually accomplished something Trump never could: He got an infrastructure bill passed and signed.

Still, all it took was the price of gas going up and Biden is now in campaign mode.

In fact, his falling poll numbers probably have more to do with the continuing COVID pandemic. The Omicron variant of the virus is the latest rage, scaring millions of people, but many of them still won’t get vaccinated. At this point it is inconceivable that we will vaccinate anywhere near a large enough portion of the world’s population to conquer this virus — at least if the enlightened denizens of dystopian America are any gauge. Vaccine unbelievers are as prevalent as Lauren Boebert fans at a Klan rally.

Predictions?

I won’t make any. The only one I’ve made in the last few years wasn’t about politics. One day after a Washington Football Team game, I found myself talking to “Captain Kirk” Cousins, then the team’s quarterback, in the locker room. He was an unassuming young man with a good team attitude and great decision making. “You’re going to be the NFL MVP one day,” I told him. He has moved on to the Minnesota Vikings, but if all continues as is, that may well be this year.

That’s it: Kirk Cousins will one day be the NFL’s Most Valuable Player.That’s all I can predict.

Politics? I would never have bet that Trump would be elected in the first place, and I was concerned he would actually win re-election and finish the job of killing off our democracy that he began when he took office.

But now we have Biden, and we still have COVID. If I were going to predict anything political, it would have something to do with what Dr. Anthony Fauci told me during Wednesday’s press briefing.

I asked him how he saw the pandemic ending. The flu pandemic of 1918 didn’t end until that especially virulent strain of the flu virus evolved into a less lethal form. Is that how we will end the current pandemic? Or did Fauci see vaccination as the answer?

Fauci urged everyone, worldwide, to get vaccinated and said the U.S. should continue to spearhead the effort.

“Eventually this will end,” Fauci said.

Sure. Everything ends eventually.

Giving the facts to the American public, free of spin, is one thing that ended decades ago.

We are left with a cacophony of mediocre voices in Congress, at the White House and the Supreme Court, feeding us words that few will hear and fewer will believe.

Our media companies are overrun with questionable characters engaged in a wide variety of unacceptable behaviors.

A president who actually got bipartisan support to pass a historic infrastructure bill finds himself squeezed between incompetence in government and incompetence in the press.

Is it any wonder he has adopted a “Stick and move” policy in dealing with the public? Struggling to get his word across without having his words twisted beyond recognition, Biden is nonetheless playing into the hands of those who will use anything he does and everything he says against him. For those people, reality is never an issue.

I would love to hear real answers on real issues. But Biden doesn’t speak much to anyone but the press pool, and his answers are short and incomplete. So I’m offering him an invitation:

Sit down. Let’s talk.

You don’t have to play stick and move.

I won’t play gotcha.

A good question-and-answer discussion will only benefit us all.

I am vaxxed and boostered.

The ball’s in your court, Mr. President.

More from Brian Karem on the Biden White House:

Omicron and other coronavirus variants: What you need to know

Americans, already weary of a pandemic nearly two years long, were dealt a new blow during the long Thanksgiving weekend: the announcement that a new coronavirus variant had emerged.

The omicron variant, officially known as B.1.1.529, surfaced in November in several southern African nations. It set off alarm bells worldwide when public health officials in South Africa saw it beginning to outcompete the previous reigning variant, delta. This suggested that omicron could eventually spread widely. Indeed, omicron has since been reported on multiple continents, likely due to international travel by people unknowingly infected.

After the emergence of omicron was announced, several nations imposed travel bans hoping to contain the virus. Whether those bans will effectively slow the spread remains unknown. “Travel bans don’t help once the horse is already out of the barn, as we’ve seen before and are seeing now,” said Tara Smith, a Kent State University epidemiologist.

Scientists caution that it’s still too early to say whether omicron will prove as dangerous as delta. Other variants that initially seemed worrisome have flamed out.

For now, here’s what we know, and don’t know, about the omicron variant.

What Is a Variant?

A variant of a virus is one that has mutated in a way that bolsters its spread or severity compared with the original strain that emerged in Wuhan, China. “RNA viruses like the coronavirus can mutate when they replicate, especially when circulating at high rates,” said Dr. Monica Gandhi, professor of medicine at the University of California-San Francisco.

Coronaviruses do not mutate as readily as influenza viruses do, but they do mutate over time. The variants generally produce the same range of symptoms as the original strain of the coronavirus. But the mutations may help the virus spread more effectively from person to person, or have an advantage in sneaking past either natural or vaccine immunity.

What Variants Were Already Circulating in the United States?

To date, public health officials have noted five “variants of concern,” plus two “variants of interest” not yet considered as worrisome. So far, no variants have emerged that fit the most worrisome of the three official categories — “variants of high consequence.”

The World Health Organization decided early this year to name the variants after Greek letters, both to simplify the discussion and to limit the stigma of having a variant named for a country.

The first four “variants of concern” — alpha, beta, gamma and delta — have been circulating in the United States for most of this year. But the most dominant variant has been delta, due to its ability to spread from person to person more quickly than other variants. For months, delta has accounted for more than 99% of coronavirus infections in the U.S.

There were no confirmed cases of omicron in the United States as of midday Nov. 29, but experts warn it’s just a matter of time. It could be in the U.S. already, merely undetected.

How Did Omicron Emerge?

Though scientists aren’t sure precisely where omicron first surfaced, it was most likely in a southern African nation.

Experts say low vaccination rates in that part of the world probably played a role in creating a favorable environment for the mutations that produced omicron. (It can be pronounced either AH-mi-crahn or OH-mi-crahn.)

“Many countries in Africa have populations with very low immunity — about 30% in South Africa are vaccinated,” Smith said. “In a largely non-immune population, the virus can sweep through, and each new person infected is a chance for the virus to mutate.”

Why Did Public Health Officials React So Urgently to Omicron?

The concern stems from the scope and nature of the new variant’s mutations. South African health officials noted 50 notable mutations, 30 of which are on the spike protein, a key structure in the virus, New York magazine reported. That’s more than previous variants have had.

“If we were looking out for mutations that do affect transmissibility, it’s got all of them,” University of Oxford evolutionary biologist Aris Katzourakis told Science magazine.

Still, what’s uncertain at this point is how effectively those mutations will work together in creating a variant that can consistently outcompete delta.

What Do We Know About Omicron’s Degree of Infectiousness?

The omicron variant is so new that scientists are just beginning to learn about its characteristics. Because of this, experts urge caution in drawing conclusions, especially from anecdotal evidence.

That said, scientists say they would not be shocked if omicron becomes as easily transmissible as delta.

“The answer is uncertain, of course, but it looks as though it will be at least as infectious as delta,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.

One complicating factor, Schaffner said, is that the initial areas of fastest spread have been in areas of Johannesburg populated by young adults and college students, who tend to have lower vaccination rates. The vulnerability of these groups to infection may be exaggerating how rapidly omicron seems to be spreading.

What Do We Know About Whether Omicron Makes Patients Sicker?

The early evidence is somewhat conflicting, but there are signs that symptoms from omicron may not be more severe than previous variants. Dr. Angelique Coetzee, who chairs the South African Medical Association, has said that the early cases being seen among the unvaccinated are mild.

It remains to be seen, however, whether older and unhealthier patients will also see milder symptoms. Another caveat is that it may be too early in omicron’s spread to see cases that have seriously progressed.

Will Existing Vaccines Be Effective Against the Omicron Variant?

Scientists are cautiously optimistic that existing vaccines will also be effective against omicron, just as they have been against delta, at least in being able to prevent illness severe enough to require hospitalization.

“Scientists in South Africa and Israel, where the variant has also been detected, have indicated that they are not seeing severe disease among the vaccinated,” Gandhi said.

Gandhi added that the immunity-providing B cells produced by the vaccines have been shown to produce antibodies against variants, and that T-cell immunity, which protects against severe disease, is robust and should not be at risk from the mutations being seen in omicron. The vaccines also produce polyclonal antibodies that work against multiple parts of the spike protein, she said. Finally, booster shots have been shown to be effective in strengthening immunity quickly.

“Most scientists believe we should still have protection against severe disease with vaccinations, and vaccination remains the mainstay of control,” Gandhi said.

Bottom line: If you haven’t been vaccinated, and especially if you haven’t had the disease yet, get vaccinated. And if you’ve already been vaccinated, get a booster.

How Long Will It Be Before We Have a Better Handle on the Threat From Omicron?

Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech and Johnson & Johnson are all testing the effectiveness of their existing vaccines against omicron in the lab, based on variant-analysis protocols developed early this year. Those results should be available in a week or two.

Other questions — including whether omicron makes you sicker, and whether it’s more transmissible — will take longer to answer because they require careful contact tracing and accurate diagnoses of those infected.

To better answer those questions, Smith said, “I think, at a minimum, it will take a month to get some preliminary data, and quite possibly longer to really know the fuller picture. We also won’t know about real-world experience in vaccine breakthroughs until that time.”

Can We Expect a Specific New Booster to be Developed for Omicron?

It’s unknown whether the omicron variant will require a reformulated booster. A newly formulated booster wasn’t necessary for delta, because researchers determined that the existing formulation was still effective.

That said, vaccine makers can jump in with a new booster quickly if they have to.

In the event that such a variant emerges, Pfizer and BioNTech “expect to be able to develop and produce a tailor-made vaccine against that variant” within 100 days, pending regulatory approval, a Pfizer spokesperson told The Washington Post.

Dr. Matthew Laurens, a specialist in pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, said he’s confident boosters could be developed and tested quickly if needed, “likely within a few months.”

What Happened to the Other Variants?

Between May 2021, when delta was named a variant of concern, and November 2021, when omicron was given the same label, two other variants were elevated to the lower “variant of interest” status: lambda from Peru and mu from Colombia. Other variants, such as one discovered in Nepal called “delta-plus,” attracted notice during that period as well. But none of these managed to outcompete delta in a consistent way, so they were never elevated to “variant of concern.”

This is the most hopeful outcome for omicron. The other variants “all had similar concerns around them, but they didn’t expand to any significant degree after the initial reporting,” Gandhi said.

Is It Reasonable to Think the U.S. Is in a Better Position to Handle Omicron Than It Was for Delta?

Experts generally agreed that the United States should be better prepared to battle omicron than it was when delta emerged earlier this year.

“We are in a much better position since we have higher rates of vaccination, the availability of boosters for everyone over 18 and vaccine eligibility down to 5 years old,” Gandhi said. “We also have higher rates of natural immunity in this country due to the delta variant’s spread since July 2021. And we have oral antiviral therapeutics on the horizon. So we have the tools to fight this new variant.”

The challenge, Schaffner said, will be to make sure Americans continue to get vaccinated and boosted, and to make use of testing and maintain safe behavior in public.

“All these tools are available,” he said. “The big question is how inclined the general public is to use these tools.”

Is the Coronavirus Going to Be Around Permanently, Like the Flu?

Experts now believe it’s unlikely that the coronavirus will either be eradicated from the globe, like smallpox has been, or even eliminated in the United States, as polio was following near-universal vaccination. The combination of rapid mutations and too-low vaccination rates make it likely that COVID-19 won’t follow smallpox and polio into submission.

“This will more likely be the influenza model, where we have to track mutations annually and alter the boosters accordingly,” Schaffner said. In fact, he said, efforts to create combined coronavirus-flu shots are already underway.

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If America really surrenders to fascism, then what? Painful questions lie ahead

Each week brings us further confirmation that Donald Trump and members of his regime staged a coup attempt. It appears abundantly clear that they will face few if any consequences. Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Department of Justice give no impression that they are prepared to prosecute Trump personally, or any of the other major organizers of the Jan. 6 insurrection — and what little they are doing is moving very slowly.

Without significant intervention, the world’s so-called “leading democracy” will go quietly to sleep.

The Guardian offers new details about Trump’s leadership role in the January coup attempt, which was more extensive and serious than previously known. According to Hugo Lowell’s reporting (drawing on multiple unnamed sources), Trump made several calls from the White House to his “top lieutenants” at the Willard Hotel in Washington on the afternoon of Jan. 5 and the morning of Jan. 6, all on the topic of “ways to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election win.”

Trump told his team at the Willard that Vice President Mike Pence was reluctant to go along with a plan “to commandeer his largely ceremonial role at the joint session of Congress” and try to engineer a second term for Trump. These conversations “reveal a direct line from the White House and the command center at the Willard,” Lowell writes, and “also show Trump’s thoughts appear to be in line with the motivations of the pro-Trump mob that carried out the Capitol attack.”

Trump was furious, as we already know, after Pence resisted his entreaties in an Oval Office meeting. But Trump wasn’t done. He followed up with “several calls” to loyalists at the Willard, a group that included Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Boris Epshteyn and Steve Bannon:

On the calls, the former president first recounted what had transpired in the Oval Office meeting with Pence, informing Bannon and the lawyers at the Willard that his vice-president appeared ready to abandon him at the joint session in several hours’ time.

“He’s arrogant,” Trump, for instance, told Bannon of Pence — his own way of communicating that Pence was unlikely to play ball — in an exchange reported in “Peril” [the book by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa] and confirmed by the Guardian.

But on at least one of those calls, Trump also sought from the lawyers at the Willard ways to stop the joint session to ensure Biden would not be certified as president on 6 January, as part of a wider discussion about buying time to get states to send Trump electors.

The fallback that Trump and his lieutenants appeared to settle on was to cajole Republican members of Congress to raise enough objections so that even without Pence adjourning the joint session, the certification process would be delayed for states to send Trump slates.

Of course, this new reporting cannot be considered a “revelation.” It simply adds more evidence to an already huge pile, making clear that the Trump cabal was vigorously engaged in a conspiracy to nullify the results of the 2020 presidential election, with the goal of making Trump a de facto dictator.

Effectively, the coup was not defeated; and America’s democracy crisis is worsening.

Our failing democracy is close to being fatally undermined by a rigged electoral system designed to ensure that it will be almost impossible for Republicans to lose an election.

Public opinion polls and other research has shown that those Americans who are deeply concerned for democracy and want to see Trump and his cabal punished for their obvious crimes are increasingly exhausted. Many have stopped believing that true justice will ever be done.

By comparison, most Republican voters have internalized the Big Lie that the 2020 election was “stolen,” and are inclined to believe that Donald Trump is still the legitimate president. A large percentage of Republicans also believe that their “traditional” way of life is under threat, and are willing to endorse or condone violence to “defend” it.

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In the end, a plurality of Americans, if not a majority, through tacit consent or just plain indifference, are surrendering to the neofascist tide and allowing themselves to be submerged in it. Trump’s followers and other “conservatives” are energized by their belief that the rising fascist tide will carry them back to their imagined “greatness” as the “real Americans.” They will be drowned too — that will just take longer.

America’s supposed pro-democracy leaders should be rallying the people to resist the Republican fascist assault. Most are not. In the most high-profile example, President Joe Biden is choosing to publicly embrace “bipartisanship,” in the empty hope that the Democratic Party’s legislative successes will somehow blunt the power of the Republican-fascist movement.

Meanwhile, the mainstream news media remains trapped in obsolescent norms of “fairness,” “balance” and “objectivity,” rather than engaging in the type of pro-democracy advocacy journalism demanded by the country’s escalating political crises.

The right-wing media and its larger echo chamber is a propaganda and disinformation machine. Its foremost role is to convince the right-wing public — and “low information” voters as a whole — that empirical truth and reality no longer exist, or are tools of a condescending “elite” and “deep state”.

Many Americans are overwhelmed with a feeling of civic death, which is only compounded by the literal and unending plague of the coronavirus pandemic. These feelings of despair and doom are a further consequence of the Age of Trump, in which what was heretofore unimaginable becomes almost normal. This normalization process involves both large and small acts of surrender as a means of maintaining relative sanity in a deranged society. A country cannot easily purge itself of such a state of malignant normality.

America is not the first country to experience such a crisis. Lessons of the past are supposed to help us better understand the present as to avoid repeating those same mistakes. That becomes more difficult in a country afflicted with organized forgetting.

In his book “They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45,” Milton Mayer reflects on his experiences living under the Nazi regime in Germany. In one passage, he shares a friend’s insights:

To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it — please try to believe me — unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, “regretted,'”that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these “little measures” that no “patriotic German” could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice — “Resist the beginnings” and “Consider the end.” But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have. And everyone counts on that might.

That remarkable passage serves as both testimony and warning. Many Americans, especially white people, lack a real understanding of the country’s history: The price of admission into “whiteness” is a type of myopia and intentional forgetting. Black and brown Americans, Native Americans, Muslims, many recent immigrants and others who have suffered under power are not allowed such fantasies.

As such, many white Americans will soon be forced, against their collective will, to relearn these historical lessons about fascism and authoritarianism and how societies can be driven to madness. For those Americans who do understand the depth of the country’s democracy crisis, important choices await. What does effective resistance look like? What can be salvaged from the country’s democracy in the years ahead? Is it better to stay here and fight toward another day, or give up and leave?

In the most recent installment of her newsletter, historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat explores that final question, and her insights merit extensive quotation:

The hand of the US government and its enforcers will become heavier if the Republicans do well enough in the 2022 midterms to take control of the House and the Senate. Things could accelerate after that.

Anyone in public education, from kindergarten through advanced degree institutions, is fair game in red states. South Carolina is considering a bill to abolish tenure at public colleges and universities. It will also be increasingly dangerous, no matter where you live, to be a transgender person.

So, one answer would be: start exploring your options now if you are in a threatened category of people, as are many of those who write to me. “Better exile than prison,” wrote former Italian Prime Minister Francesco Nitti to King Victor Emmanuel III in 1925, explaining why he’d left Italy when the Fascists took power. Nitti worked from abroad to counter authoritarian propaganda about what was happening in his native country, as exiles from Hong Kong, Myanmar, and other places do today.

It’s unlikely that Republican rule would mean mass imprisonment for political opponents, the way there is in Erdogan’s Turkey. Viktor Orbán, darling of the GOP, has not gone that route. And it’s a shame to lose capable people when they are most needed at home — which would be the situation in the USA if Republicans gain more power and if they retake the White House in 2024.

Numbers matter for the success of nonviolent protests, for compensating at the ballot box for manipulated elections, and for constructing the kind of broad-based democracy movement America desperately needs, in which everyone finds their own way of working to protect our freedoms — or regain those we might lose.

Each person acts for their own reasons, and each situation is unique. But there is one constant in the history of exile. It means watching from afar the travails of your country, and, for those who desire to return, entering into a state of suspension: waiting for things to get better, waiting for the tyrant to die, waiting for freedoms to be restored.

If American democracy was a patient, it is self-medicating to numb the pain, but the fascist disease is almost fatal and time for effective treatment is rapidly running out.

What should a people do — individually, collectively or both — when there is so much more work to be done and they are already exhausted? Or when fatalism seems more rational than hope? The current crisis will put these questions to the American people, sooner rather than later. Tomorrow is not guaranteed — and we certainly cannot assume it will be better than today.

More commentary on America’s deepening crisis of democracy:

Former federal prosecutor: We’ll see “a tidal wave of criminal charges against Donald Trump”

Former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner has been speaking the blunt truth about Donald Trump’s criminal conduct for years. He’s not stopping now just because most of the media, and most Democrats in Congress for that matter, have moved on. I spoke to Kirschner, who is now an NBC News legal analyst, in a recent “Salon Talks” episode about Steve Bannon’s indictment and more.

During our conversation, we kept coming back to is Kirschner’s conviction that the disgraced former president is still a very real threat to our nation. And Kirschner, who served for more than 30 years as a federal prosecutor, is adamant that the only way to neutralize that threat is by prosecuting Trump for his crimes, ranging from those he may have committed in his effort to overturn the 2020 election to possible crimes arising from his mishandling of the pandemic.

Kirschner believes there’s actually a case to be made against Trump for all the lies and misinformation he spread about the coronavirus and how to defeat it, from his intentional falsehoods about the nature of the threat to his disgraceful conduct designed to undermine safeguards, such as mask mandates, entirely because he believed it helped him politically. Kirschner, who formerly headed up the homicide unit of the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., told me that Trump’s “grossly negligent conduct was reasonably likely to result in death or serious bodily injury to another.”

Regarding the possible crimes arising from the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, Kirschner said this about Trump’s apparent role: “If you don’t punish an attempted overthrow of the government, an insurrection, a rebellion, we’re going to get more rebellions. That’s just common sense.” Watch my Salon Talks interview with Kirschner here or read a transcript of our conversation below to hear him lay out the case for manslaughter charges against Trump himself, and discuss the likelihood that prominent Trump allies are on their way to prison.

This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Let’s start with Steve Bannon. He’s been indicted. Can you explain why there was a delay in this indictment? What do you think actually prompted the Department of Justice and the U.S. attorney in D.C to finally indict him?

We were on Steve Bannon indictment watch for 22 days from the day he was voted in contempt and referred for prosecution to the D.C. U.S. attorney’s office until the U.S. attorney finally presented it to the grand jury and the grand jury indicted him for two counts of contempt of Congress. Twenty-two days. We know historically it’s been done in as few as nine days. It was done to a Reagan-era EPA official named Rita Lavelle. Twenty-two days may sound like a long time. First of all, it wasn’t that long. It takes some time to put a quick investigation together, present it to the grand jury and have them vote out an indictment. But I really think the holdup was because there was an acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia in place at the front end of that 22-day period.

I’ve worked for more than 10 U.S. attorneys in D.C. Some of them were acting, some of them were interim, some of them were presidentially appointed and Senate-confirmed. Ordinarily when you have an acting U.S. attorney, that person just tries to keep the trains running on time, not make a lot of waves, not take on a lot of high-profile decisions. The new permanent U.S. attorney was confirmed by the Senate and took over one week before Steve Bannon was indicted. His name is Matt Graves, a former colleague of mine. He’s a good man. He’s a thoughtful man. He was a public corruption prosecutor when he was in my office. One week after he arrived, bam, Steve Bannon indicted. I think that’s an important tell and some foreshadowing about how promptly the new D.C. U.S. attorney is going to go about his business.

Steve Bannon said at his press conference, after going to court for the first time, “They took on the wrong guy this time.” He said, “It’s the misdemeanor from hell.” You know the new U.S. attorney in that district. How do you think he’s going to respond to that?

Steve Bannon has a rude awakening coming, because he’s going to be convicted if he opts to go to trial. Why? Because the offense he committed, contempt of Congress, requires the prosecutors to prove that he was served a lawful subpoena and that he failed to appear. The fact that he is raising executive privilege — first of all, he doesn’t have any. He could say, “I am invoking magical unicorn privilege,” and it would be equally persuasive.

I don’t want to get down into the weeds of executive privilege, but when you get a subpoena, you have to show up. If you have any privilege — executive privilege, attorney-client privilege, parishioner privilege, doctor-patient privilege — you begin answering questions. If the questions begin to make their way into privileged information, you say, “I hereby invoke the privilege.” The Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, for example.

The way you don’t handle it is to thumb your nose at a subpoena and refuse to show up. This is going to be a very easy criminal case to prove. Steve Bannon will be convicted. And under the statute, if he’s convicted of contempt of Congress, each count carries a minimum of one month in jail and a maximum of one year in jail. He will see jail time in the event he’s convicted.

In your view, it’s clear he has no legal defense. What about the case of Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff? He seems to be communicating, through his legal counsel, with the Jan. 6 committee, but he seems very reluctant to respond to a subpoena. Does Meadows have a potentially more valid defense?

Mark Meadows has no defense for failing to appear on the subpoena. Now, he may have a more legitimate, more viable executive privilege claim, because he was actually part of the administration at the time these communications were had. But what he was required to do under the subpoena is to appear and assert, question by question, whether he was invoking executive privilege or not.

I’ll give you an example, Dean. The first question is going to be, “Sir, please state your name.” “No, I invoke executive privilege.” Mark, you have no executive privilege over your name. And the questions would have progressed in that fashion until maybe questions involving executive privilege got asked. That’s when you invoke the privilege. What that does is it creates a record and defines the parameters of what the witness is actually invoking executive privilege on, and then that can be litigated.

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You make a great point for people who think, well, maybe Mark Meadows has executive privilege, as he was White House chief of staff until the very end. You’ve got to go there, and you or your counsel invoke the privilege. You don’t just blow off a subpoena. I saw you tweeting about Stephen Miller, yukking it up on Fox News. He was served as well. Maybe Meadows sends a message to Miller, Kayleigh McEnany, Bernard Kerik and all the rest, because I imagine they’re going to follow suit. If nothing happens to Meadows, they’re going to claim the same things.

You are far more likely to see the McEnanys and the Stephen Millers appear on the subpoenas now and then maybe try to invoke whatever privilege they believe they have. I do predict that, as you say, other witnesses are now going to begin appearing and they’re going to challenge the subpoena in other ways. That’s why this was a really important step for both the House Select Committee and the Department of Justice to have taken against Steve Bannon.

I want to shift gears a little bit. A lot of people have talked about the potential criminality of Donald Trump in connection with Jan. 6, which we’ll talk about in a minute. But everyone has just forgotten or not even addressed the idea of Trump’s potential criminal culpability for his lies and what could be manslaughter charges around COVID. You just put out a video on this very point. Please tell people why you think, as a former federal prosecutor who was chief of the homicide unit in D.C., why Trump may have committed crimes in connection with his handling of COVID.

If you look at a relatively low level of homicide, every jurisdiction, every state has its own laws, its own statutes. They call the crime different things. Some jurisdictions call it negligent homicide. In D.C. we call it involuntary manslaughter, but it’s a relatively low level of homicide. Donald Trump’s conduct, even just what we’ve seen publicly reported, satisfies — in my opinion as a former career homicide prosecutor — the three elements that we’re required to prove to hold somebody accountable for involuntary manslaughter.

Those are that somebody acted in a grossly negligent way. Donald Trump acted in an intentionally criminal way when he lied to the American people about the nature, the transmissibility and the way that you can protect yourself against contracting COVID. He lied to the American people about that. We can prove that because he told Bob Woodward, on tape, the true state of affairs and then he walked right out to the cameras and he lied to us.

The one incident that really sticks with me, that I think would be a marquee piece of evidence in a Donald Trump prosecution for avoidable COVID deaths, would be when he told Jeff Mason, wonderful reporter standing in the Rose Garden during a press conference. He told him, “Take off the mask.” And Jeff Mason said, “Mr. President, I choose to protect myself. I’ll speak up my more loudly but I’m not going to take off the mask.” Trump then mocked him and said, “Oh, I guess you want to be politically correct.”

Dean, what message did Donald Trump’s base, the people who for whatever reason, decide to listen to and credit what Donald Trump says, what message do you think they took away from that? “Oh, the president just told me I don’t need a mask. And beyond that, he would mock me. He would belittle and demean me and call me ‘politically correct’ if I wore a mask. I am not wearing a mask.” Donald Trump put people in harm’s way unnecessarily.

The three elements: that he acted in a grossly negligent manner. He did. That his grossly negligent conduct was reasonably likely to result in death or serious bodily injury to another. When we’re dealing with a deadly pandemic, you can check that element off the list. The third element is the one that sounds more complicated or harder to prove, which is that your grossly negligent conduct caused the death of another. But causation has a legal definition. It is that your conduct is a substantial factor in bringing about the death of another. And Donald Trump’s conduct was a substantial factor in people declining to protect themselves against the coronavirus. That is a strong case for involuntary manslaughter. It just takes some strong, brave prosecutors to bring the charge and then put it in front of a jury. As long as it’s a fair and impartial jury, they will hold Donald Trump accountable, in my opinion.

To remind people, because so much has gone on since then, on Feb, 7, 2020, Trump told Bob Woodward point blank that COVID-19 was “deadly stuff,” noting it was five times more deadly than even the most serious flu. Then, on Feb. 26, Trump goes before the cameras, when America’s looking for answers, and says, “We view this the same as the flu.” He lied to the American people, knowing the risks. That’s really where the crux of the criminality could be in this: knowingly misleading people when you know the risk, you know people are looking to you, you have an obligation. You’re not some random guy. You’re the president of the United States and people are misled to their death because of this. What would it take for a prosecutor to have the courage to file that complaint against Trump?

If I were still at the D.C. U.S. attorney’s office, working murder cases on Jan. 21, I would have begun presenting evidence to the grand jury of Donald Trump’s responsibility for avoidable COVID deaths. The Department of Justice could not have stopped me. They could have fired me. That’s the only way they could have stopped me, because it’s the right thing to do to honor the victims and to the community.

What is it going to take, Dean? I think nobody, no prosecutor in New York or Georgia, at the Department of Justice or elsewhere, wants to be the first person to bring criminal charges against a former president. I predict, though, he will be charged and then every prosecutor will want to be the second one to bring charges, because the white-hot glare of media and political and citizen attention will be on the first prosecution. But because Donald Trump committed crimes in virtually every jurisdiction in our nation, anywhere someone died of COVID and they didn’t have to, there is criminal liability. You’re going to begin to see a tidal wave of criminal charges against Donald Trump, I suspect, once the first jurisdiction indicts him.

There’s two other buckets of potential criminal liability against Donald Trump that I want to cover. One is the lead-up to Jan. 6. We’ve learned more about what we saw that day. We keep learning more and more information about Donald Trump behind the scenes, working with people, trying to get the DOJ to help him overturn the election based on a lie. There was no good faith. It was corrupt. It was bad motive. What potential criminality could Trump face?

There is one overarching conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States that I believe Donald Trump and Jeffrey Clark and John Eastman and Donald Trump Jr., Rudy Giuliani, Mo Brooks — all the people who participated in not only the run-up to Jan. 6, lying to the American people to gin them up, to get them upset about their vote being stolen when in fact it wasn’t stolen, but then also participated in the events of Jan. 6 and beyond. I believe there is a very easy charge and it’s been brought in the recent past by Bob Mueller. It’s called conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States.

I urge everybody to go to the DOJ website because it sets out in a paragraph, in layman’s terms, just how broad and sweeping a criminal offense that is. Remember Bob Mueller indicted the Internet Research Agency in Russia on that charge. Why? Because they interfered in our free and fair elections. That is precisely what Donald Trump and company did. They tried to overthrow election results, overthrow our democracy.

That is one overarching conspiracy charge that they’re on the hook for. There are lots of other pigeonhole crimes. There is a seditious conspiracy, rebellion. There are any number: Inciting an insurrection is a crime I maintain that Donald Trump fulfills all those federal criminal statutes. I’m optimistic that the Department of Justice is quietly, the way they should be, investigating all these crimes. It’s not just a House select committee. I believe in my heart of hearts, knowing many of the people at the Department of Justice, that they’re quietly going about their business. How can you not? When you see all this evidence of criminality and there’s clearly what we call adequate predication — enough evidence to open a criminal investigation — I don’t believe for a minute DOJ is turning a blind eye and saying, “We’re happy to give our republic away to Donald Trump. We’re not going to investigate these crimes.” I don’t believe that for a minute.

For Jan. 6, you touch on the idea of seditious conspiracy, which is a crime. But what about the simplest one, incitement to riot? Because we’re learning more and more that it seems that it really was, I’m not going to say organic. Those people showed up because Trump lied to them for two months. He radicalized them like an ISIS recruiter. They came there for that but it doesn’t seem they planned it, “We’re going to attack the Capitol this way or that way.” Trump’s speech, the fact that he brought them there, incited this. That was what lit this fuse. What rises to the level of inciting a riot? Which was on federal property so it would be a federal crime.

I think one of the most important evidentiary components of what Donald Trump did on Jan. 6 that makes him criminally responsible for what his supporters did after he ginned them up is that everything he said and did came from a place of fraud and lies and deception. He took that group of people and he said to them, “Your vote was stolen from you. Your election was stolen from you. Your president is being stolen from you and if you don’t go up the street and fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

Then Rudy Giuliani said, “Go down there, trial by combat.” Mo Brooks, Don Jr.: They said, “Go down there, kick ass and take names.” This all came from a platform of lies, fraud and deception, which gives not only the act that you need but gives the mental state, because he lied to the people about all of it. He basically used that angry mob as a weapon in his hand. He pointed that weapon at the Capitol and pulled the trigger. And that bullet headed up the street and they attacked the Capitol. To do what? To stop what was going on in the certification of the Electoral College vote count.

That’s what Donald Trump told them to do. He gave them a directive, an action word: Go up there and stop it. And the fact that he called it a steal, he was saying, “Stop the vote count” — that is an attack on our democracy. He used the word “steal,” which is a fraudulent word. That’s what gives him the corrupt intent necessary to hold him accountable for those crimes.

And think about what came before this: His Department of Justice officials telling him, “Mr. President, there is no systemic fraud that undermines the election results.” Donald Trump said, “I don’t care. Just say there was and leave the rest up to me and my Republican friends in Congress.” Dean, what I’ve just described in the last three minutes is the opening statement in the trial of Donald Trump for inciting the riot and the insurrection. It’s right there plain as day, we just need to present it to a jury.

Let’s take it a little broader. Right now we’re seeing violence from people on the right against school board members, against nurses and doctors over COVID mandates, even against Republican officials who speak out against Donald Trump. If Trump is not prosecuted criminally for his actions — the fact that he’s not been prosecuted so far, is that emboldening his people to do this?

Yeah, not only is it emboldening everybody because, listen, if we didn’t punish bank robbers, we’d have a whole lot more bank robberies. If you don’t punish an attempted overthrow of the government, an insurrection, a rebellion, we’re going to get more rebellions. That’s just common sense. But even beyond emboldening people, here’s how Donald Trump will spin it if he is not indicted by the Department of Justice for the many crimes he inarguably committed. He will say, “The Department of Justice has given me a stamp of approval for everything I did because if it was a crime, they would have prosecuted me. They didn’t. That means they vouch for me in everything I did. It wasn’t criminal and I’m going to do it again.” Again, this is not rocket science. This is just common sense law enforcement.

When you take a big-picture look at where we are now as a nation, how concerned are you for our democracy given that Trump has not been prosecuted and people on the right are celebrating, including Republican elected officials. We’re seeing Republicans who are more upset with other Republicans who vote for the infrastructure bill than with Congressman Paul Gosar, who put out a video cartoon where he’s literally killing AOC. It seems that the GOP has embraced violence or at least has no problem with it. And at the same time, they’re passing laws — at least 33 laws in 19 states — to make it harder to vote.

Here’s something that I think is a positive that is likely to come out of all of this. I think the Republican Party is writing its own obituary because I don’t believe that what they’re doing is sustainable. I don’t believe it’s a way to grow the party or even to keep the Republicans that have thus far not walked away. When everything you’re banking on involves voter suppression laws and demonizing minorities, whether immigrants or African Americans, or when you have no actual agenda to offer, all you have is hate and division and propping up a criminal former president, that’s not a winning formula for the future. It may be the only thing they feel like they have at this moment to try to retain power, but it’s not a long-term winning strategy.

I think the Republican Party falls and there’s probably a new version of it that is born from the Liz Cheneys and the Adam Kinzingers of the world, who retain their conservative principles but they also retain their morality and their love of country and their defense of democracy. That is where the future of the Republican Party is. But the old Republican Party is dying. I think it has to die completely and then a new Republican Party has to come up from the ashes to replace it. That is what I see as the long-term strategy, as long as we can keep our democracy up and running in the meantime. That, I think, is the challenge.

The Federalist Society built this Supreme Court — but how did it get its dishonest name?

One of the pleasures of writing is you often surprise yourself. Poets and fiction writers try to get out of the way to allow the work to go where it wants to go; nonfiction writers, like journalists, do due diligence with research on the stories they write. In the doing of the work, writers learn new things and often disabuse themselves of notions they’ve held — often for a long time — that were incomplete or just plain wrong.

I planned a little piece poking fun at the Federalist Society, the wildly successful, now four-decades-old institution for conservative and libertarian thought — which is largely responsible for the current Supreme Court, the one right now on the verge of reversing or undermining the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion — for going by that particular name. I’ll still poke fun at the society, but the project turned out to be a whole lot less simple than I imagined.

Slow-reading the “Federalist Papers”

During the pandemic, I began to make my way through the Federalist Papers, the 85 essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay and published, under the pseudonym “Publius,” from the fall of 1787 to the spring of the following year, urging New Yorkers to ratify the new Constitution. The Hamilton-Madison-Jay project began in response to 16 articles questioning the need for a new Constitution being published by one of the lesser founders under the pseudonym “Brutus.” The pieces arguing for a strong central government were collected and published, in 1788, as “The Federalist,” in the hopes that citizens of other states would be persuaded to also ratify the Constitution. The necessary nine states would ratify the Constitution by early that summer, but things didn’t appear so certain when Hamilton kicked off the project, on Oct. 27, 1787, by penning his “General Introduction.”

The articles — many burdened with a lumbering heading, like “The Necessity of a Government as Energetic as the One Proposed to the Preservation of the Union” (No. 23) — are often dense and make for slow reading. (For me, Hamilton’s essays — he wrote or co-wrote the bulk of them — have more verve; Madison’s can be, as was once politely said, soporific). The Federalist essays are still frequently described as an aid in interpreting what the founders intended in the writing of the Constitution.

But there are pithy thoughts in each essay, many of which read as if they might have been keyboarded yesterday, rather than quill-penned nearly two and a half centuries ago (like this one, from Hamilton’s No. 28: “An insurrection, whatever may be its immediate cause, eventually endangers all government.”) The Federalists addressed the arguments made by “Brutus,” who not unreasonably worried, among other things, about the size of the proposed democratic republic, citizens not personally knowing their representatives, and a federal judiciary growing too powerful. Hamilton and Madison (Jay dropped out due to illness after writing five essays) spelled out, in detail, what the writers of the Constitution were trying to accomplish in moving the United States from a loose confederation of states to a democratic republic, a nation.

A new society ponders a name

While I was first reading the Federalist Papers (as they became known in the 20th century), I kept seeing the Federalist Society referenced in the news — almost always in the context of packing the federal and supreme courts with conservative judges with the help of Mitch McConnell — and wondered how it was that a group largely advocating against the federal government could have ever come to adopt that name.

In a fascinating 2018 article on the origins of the society, “The Weekend at Yale That Changed American Politics,” Michael Kruse of Politico provides details of how some conservative and libertarian law students from Yale, Harvard and the University of Chicago, inspired by the election of Ronald Reagan, determined to work together to provide a forum on campus to welcome like-minded thinkers:

At Yale, [Steven] Calabresi and a couple of conservative law students formed a student group in the fall of 1981. Eating lunch one day, according to a subsequent telling in the journal at Harvard, they batted about possible names. The Ludwig von Mises Society? The Alexander Bickel Society? The Anti-Federalist Society? The Anti-Federalists, after all, were the ones who sought a more decentralized government at the time of the founding of the country. They landed, though, on the Federalist Society, because it invoked the “Federalist Papers” and the long-running American debate about the appropriate balance of power between the national and state governments.

The other proposed names are illuminating: Ludwig von Mises was a libertarian free-market advocate who once wrote that fascism could be a necessary temporary stopgap against socialism; Alexander Bickel, who while clerking for Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter (who himself had a storied career, one that included turning down Ruth Bader Ginsberg, in 1960, for a clerkship because of her gender) had advocated that Brown v. Board of Education be reargued and wrote extensively about the concept of judicial restraint. (Both Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito have pointed to Bickel as a major influence.)

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In Kruse’s article, the naming question comes up again, this time in a letter addressed to Robert Bork from Lee Liberman, who, with David McIntosh, was helping set up a conservative law symposium at Yale, from where they were studying at the University of Chicago Law School:

Finally, our group out here settled on Federalist Society as a name, which I suppose makes up in euphony what it lacks in accuracy. If you have any brilliant ideas for a better name, however, that would be splendid.

It was a smart, instinctive move. Naming it the Federalist Society was a bit like anti–abortion rights people dubbing themselves “pro-life.” It sounds good but, as Liberman noted, may lack in accuracy. It is pleasing both to the ear and to the mind because it trades on positive connotations. (Who wants their group’s name to be “anti-” anything?) And the writers of “The Federalist” were capital-letter Founders of the country; to this day, apparently, no one is certain who was behind those “Brutus” anti-federalist pieces.

A bit of grift

So, as now happens more and more frequently with conservatives — indeed, this is their standard modus operandi — they chose to appropriate a term, to gloss over the truth, to create their own reality and deceive the public for all time with a nifty bit of grift. As easily as a faux patriot attaches an American flag pin to his lapel and then raises a fist of solidarity to treasonous insurrectionists, the anti-federalists simply proclaimed themselves … federalists.

Which, I hate to admit, is not exactly wrong. Federalism is indeed a political system where power is shared between a central government and smaller sub-units, like territories, provinces or states. There has indeed been a “long-running American debate about the appropriate balance of power between the national and state governments.” How the term “federalism” is applied around the world depends on its historical context in a particular country.

In the context of 18th-century America, however, to be a federalist meant that you felt it was imperative to establish a stronger national government, largely to do things that the individual states could not do so well or consistently for their citizenry — mount a coherent defense, maintain a foreign policy and govern trade. Readers of Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton may recall the accounts of Gen. Washington and his aide-de-camp, Hamilton, seeing their troops suffering in the snow without proper boots and hoping against hope that more troops and supplies would be forthcoming, as promised, from the individual states.

And yet, coming from the context of having strong, independent states under the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union (its full name, which had been ratified in 1781 and had created the entity named the United States of America), some citizens were naturally suspicious of giving up any of their local control and so had to be cajoled into ratifying the Constitution. While the federalists saw strength in more collectivism, others saw such sharing as a critical loss of autonomy. Call it the masks/no masks, vaccine/anti-vax controversy of that day — all in the name of freedom, or “free-dumb,” depending on your point of view.

This modest “debating society”

The election of Ronald Reagan had inspired those law students at Yale, Harvard and the University of Chicago to form the society, which continued to portray itself as a modest debating society long after it had grown and been abundantly funded and had determined to flex its muscle to remake the federal judiciary in support of conservative principles. The first advisers were archconservative law professors Robert Bork and Antonin Scalia. Right-wing funding from the John M. Olin, Bradley, Charles G. Koch and Scaife foundations poured in — reportedly $5 million by 2001. Society-sanctioned reading lists for pre-law students were drawn up, including books by the likes of Bork and Scalia and Lino Graglia, a University of Texas law professor who decried affirmative action and school integration.

It used to be that a conservative president could be surprised by the independent thinking of one of his nominees to the high court — think of Justice Harry Blackmun (nominated by Richard Nixon) or Justice John Paul Stevens (nominated by Gerald Ford) or Justice David Souter (nominated by George H.W. Bush). The Federalist Society swung into action to ensure this sort of thing would not happen again. In his 2016 campaign, erstwhile Democrat Donald Trump helped build his conservative street credibility by openly declaring that all his nominees would come from a list provided by the group — and he got that list. It was an extraordinary admission by Trump of something that normally happened behind the scenes.

We now have a Supreme Court essentially executive-produced by the Federalist Society: six of the nine justices are FEDSOC approved (and, it seems worth noting, Roman Catholics), along with hundreds of conservative judges (some not considered qualified) methodically pushed onto the federal bench during the George W. Bush and Trump years.

So what’s all this effort on the part of the Federalist Society all about?

As historian Heather Cox Richardson patiently tries to remind us, the high court has been stacked with conservative ideologues to put an end to the so-called activist government that movement conservatives have decried (but often benefited from themselves) since the policies of the New Deal helped Americans climb out of the Great Depression. As she explains, this approach goes back even further. After the end of the Civil War, during the period known as Reconstruction, Southern Democrats turned to racial messaging and extolling the values of a mythical individualist, represented by the American cowboy — who, Richardson notes, was often an ex-Confederate soldier, a man who knew how to ride a horse and handle a gun. Taxation had been instituted, largely to help with the reconstruction of the South and to help destitute citizens and farmers in the former Confederate states, but some whites resented that any of their tax dollars might go to people of color, and a political formula was fashioned that would be reutilized by conservatives in a new era. As Richardson notes:

Since the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954, Movement Conservatives have tapped into the idea that an activist government redistributed wealth to lazy minorities. But they have also pushed hard on the idea that true Americans are Western individualists. Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater launched this association in 1964 by dismissing Brown v. Board as governmental overreach and fictionalizing his wealthy upbringing as a hardscrabble Western frontier story; Ronald Reagan made it even more explicit by contrasting his image of the Welfare Queen with his own cowboy hat and Western ranch.

So, this dark money–funded “debating society” acts to identify and install judges who favor limiting the ability of the federal government to do much of anything: regulate business, protect the environment, protect public health and safety, provide a decent social safety net for citizens and ensure the rights of women and minorities — including the right to choose an abortion and the right to vote without intimidation and to have that vote count.

Of course, when the government works on behalf of conservative interests or comes to the rescue of a “red” state after a disaster, that’s to be expected. (As Richardson points out, this hypocrisy also goes back to the years after the Civil War: The cattle industry that employed those “self-reliant” cowboys was heavily subsidized by the American taxpayer.)

Let the record show

I’ll admit that my conception of federalism was somewhat lacking. Call me a victim of the Dunning-Kruger effect of knowing just enough to be dangerous. Reading the Federalist Papers, I was enthralled by the arguments of Hamilton and Madison (and Jay) and had never read about the devolution-focused so-called New Federalism that was created by movement conservatives in reaction to the expansion of federal powers created by the New Deal. I’d never even heard the political concept of devolution. Apparently, Richard Nixon had a strong hand in that New Federalism and the creation of block grants to the states to let them do as they might on social issues with minimal federal oversight, which was sold to the public as an engine of innovation.

And in some ways, that approach has worked. For example, California has led the country in establishing environmental goals, including higher gas mileage standards. These days, with Republican governors competing against each other with ever-more idiotic decrees on health policy and advocating laws to strangle voting rights of their citizens, we can all judge their peculiar style of “innovation”: anti-democratic, even deadly. (The sound of devolution seems to capture our whole sad moment; not only is devolve there, one can imagine a devil dancing around it.)

Still, the record should show that the people who created the society were themselves a bit abashed at choosing to name it after the Federalist Papers. Yes, in No. 39 Madison went out of his way to calm the nerves of those who were loath to give up any political power at the state level, but he was doing so while writing strongly in favor of the adoption of a stronger central government. (It is Madison’s silhouette, apparently with an altered nose — alt-nose leading to alt-facts? — that serves as the FEDSOC logo.)

So, who really cares if the right appropriated “federalism” to fight tooth and nail to limit the ability of the federal government to protect the health and rights of its less privileged citizens? Is it sour grapes on my part that this group grabbed the better name?

Sure it is.

But one must admit it is ironic that this organization, founded in part to push an “originalist” reading of the Constitution, blithely ignored the same reading of the Federalist Papers. Talk all you like about Hamilton’s disquisition on judicial restraint in No. 79, the spirit of the thing, its raison d’être, was a call for a stronger central government.

Is it any leap to go from naming a states-rights group the Federalist Society to naming an anti–voting rights effort the “Honest Elections Project”?

I encourage everyone to take an originalist view of the Federalist Papers. I would also encourage people to know the history of this organization and to always, at least mentally, append “anti-” or that Nixonian “New” to any mention of it. Its founders chose, at the moment of inception, to be intellectually dishonest — which, I would further argue, is in keeping with their purposively constipated “originalist/textualist” approach.

Considering the power this “debating society” has amassed, its factory-line approach to producing lawyers and judges steeped in pro-business small-government ideology and its dark-money backing — it seems appropriate to end with a line from one of the authors of the Federalist Papers, not from those who may cherry-pick from it.

As Hamilton wrote in the concluding line of the final essay, when ratification of the new Constitution seemed almost at hand but calls for further amendment continued:

I dread the more the consequences of new attempts, because I know that powerful individuals, in this and in other States, are enemies to a general national government in every possible shape.

For the originalists and textualists out there, the emphasis was his.

More on the post-Trump Supreme Court:

How Steve Bannon exploited Google Ads to monetize extremism

Almost a year ago, Google took a major step to ensure that its ubiquitous online ad network didn’t put money in the pocket of Steve Bannon, the indicted former adviser to Donald Trump. The company kicked Bannon off YouTube, which Google owns, after he called for the beheading of Anthony Fauci and urged Trump supporters to come to Washington on Jan. 6 to try to overturn the presidential election results.

Google also confirmed to ProPublica that it has at times blocked ads from appearing on Bannon’s War Room website alongside individual articles that violate Google’s rules.

But Bannon found a loophole in Google’s policies that let him keep earning ad money on his site’s homepage.

Until Monday, the home page automatically played innocuous stock content, such as tips on how to protect your phone in winter weather or how to improve the effectiveness of your LinkedIn profile.

The content likely had no interest for War Room visitors, especially since it was interrupted every few seconds by ads. But the ads, supplied through Google’s network, came from such prominent brands as Land Rover, Volvo, DoorDash, Staples and even Harvard University.

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Right below that video player was another that featured clips from Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, which routinely portrays participants in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot as patriots and airs false claims about the 2020 election and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The video player running Google ads amid innocuous clips disappeared from Bannon’s website on Monday, after ProPublica inquired with Google, Bannon and advertisers. The change was not Google’s doing: Google spokesperson Michael Aciman said the player did not break the company’s rules. He said Google’s policies were effective in preventing ads from ending up on sites with “harmful content.”

“We have strict policies that explicitly prohibit publishers from both promoting harmful content and providing inaccurate information about their properties, misrepresenting their identity, or sending unauthorized ad requests,” Aciman said. “These policies exist to protect both users and advertisers from abuse, fraud or disruptive ad experiences, and we enforce them through a mix of automated tools and human review. When we find publishers that violate these policies we stop ads from serving on their site.”

A spokesperson for Bannon, who was indicted this month for stonewalling Congress’ bipartisan investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection, declined to answer questions for this article.

Zach Edwards, the founder of Victory Medium, a consulting firm that advises companies on online advertising, said the digital ad industry, including Google, is rife with loopholes and bad behavior, and its complexity prevents advertisers from understanding what they’re funding. “A lot of times ad buyers just shrug their shoulders and are like, ‘It’s video ads, what can you do?'” he said.

Of Bannon’s dodge and Google’s acquiescence to it, Edwards added, “Nothing about this is aboveboard.”

The vast majority of online ads aren’t purchased through direct relationships with the sites on which they appear. Instead, brands use automated ad exchanges like Google’s that rely on real-time auctions to automatically place ads in front of people who fit a brand’s target audience. As long as Google keeps the War Room website in its network, and as long as brands don’t specifically block it from their ad buys, Bannon’s site can keep collecting money. Warroom.org draws between 450,000 and 1 million visits a month, according to traffic tracker SimilarWeb.

And Google takes a cut of each dollar from ads it places on the War Room site.

“For most advertisers, having an ad placed on a Steve Bannon-affiliated outlet is the stuff of nightmares,” said Nandini Jammi, the co-founder of Check My Ads, an ad industry watchdog. “The fact that ad exchanges are still serving ads should tell brands that their vendors are not vetting their inventory, and I wouldn’t be surprised if advertisers who have found themselves on War Room request refunds.”

Companies contacted by ProPublica said they didn’t intend to advertise on War Room’s site and would take steps to stop their ads from appearing there. Land Rover called the ad “an error.” Harry Pierre, a spokesperson for Harvard’s Division of Continuing Education, said the school is working with its ad buyer to update its list of unwanted websites. Adobe said its ad was a violation of its brand safety guidelines. “We worked with the ad partner to remove the ads from the site,” a spokesperson said.

DoorDash also blamed a third-party vendor. “DoorDash’s mission is to empower local communities and provide access to opportunity for all, and we stand against the spread of disinformation that undermines those principles,” the company said in a statement.

Spokespeople for Volvo did not respond to requests for comment.

Meanwhile, Google may have banned a different site affiliated with Bannon. Until recently, the site Populist Press earned money via Google’s ad network. The site, styled to imitate the Drudge Report, was prominently linked on the War Room homepage and draws roughly 5 million visits a month, according to SimilarWeb.

According to an online disclosure from a former advertising partner, Populist Press is affiliated with August Partners, a Colorado company registered to Amanda Shea, whose husband, Tim Shea, was a partner of Bannon’s in We Build the Wall initiative. Bannon and allies used We Build the Wall to solicit money to fulfill Trump’s campaign promise of a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. Federal prosecutors accused Bannon, Tim Shea and other associates of misusing the money, and Trump pardoned Bannon before leaving office. An attorney for Tim Shea, who is awaiting trial, declined to comment, and Amanda Shea did not respond to a request for comment.

At some point during the week of Nov. 15, Populist Press stopped showing Google ads — and it stopped being promoted on the War Room homepage. Aciman, the Google spokesperson, declined to comment on whether Google had banned Populist Press, but said that the site “is not monetizing using our services.”

Bannon’s “War Room” podcast draws a massive audience, with more than 100 million total downloads across more than 1,000 episodes, available on platforms including Apple’s. A sort of far-right “Meet the Press,” it’s the go-to talk show for pro-Trump influencers and Republican hopefuls. Frequently using violent imagery, Bannon and his guests promote new ways of trying to overturn the election, such as demanding “audits” of the 2020 ballots. Since February, Bannon has inspired thousands to take over local-level Republican Party committees, unlocking influence over how elections are run from the ground up.

On his podcast in 2020, Bannon called for the beheading of Fauci and FBI director Chris Wray. On the eve of Jan. 6, Bannon said, “We’re on the point of attack” and “all hell will break loose tomorrow.” Bannon was also reportedly involved in the Trump team’s command center on the day of the riot, which is part of congressional investigators’ interest in his testimony and records. Since the insurrection, Bannon has taken up the cause of people held on charges related to the Capitol riot.

In addition to his podcast, Bannon has spun a complex web of political and business ventures. He co-founded a training academy for right-wing nationalists that got mired in a legal dispute with the Italian government over control of a medieval monastery near Rome. A media company he launched with Guo Wengui, a fugitive Chinese billionaire on whose yacht Bannon was arrested in 2020, was part of a $539 million settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission in September for illegally marketing digital currency. Before advising Trump, Bannon had a wide-ranging career in finance and movies, and his pardon from Trump lifted a $1.75 million lien against his house in Laguna Beach, California.

Bannon’s megaphone is not just influential. It’s also lucrative. His show and website have promoted fellow election fraud evangelist Mike Lindell’s MyPillow business, as well as a cryptocurrency investing newsletter called TheCryptoCapitalist. (The marketers of an unproven COVID-19 treatment that Bannon promoted were sued by the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission in April. The chiropractor behind the treatment denies the government’s accusations.) The War Room site also contains ads from MGID, a network that places content ads that look like links to related articles and sometimes promote dubious health or financial products.

It’s not clear how much money Bannon makes from online ads. But industry data shows that the links placed by MGID are much less profitable than the video ads facilitated by Google. (MGID did not respond to a request for comment.)

The issue is that major brands likely have no idea that they’re advertising on the site of one of the biggest perpetrators of bogus election fraud claims. That disconnect between brands and where their ads and money end up is a failure of digital advertising and a concern for consumers, according to industry experts.

“Over the past few years, consumers have become really vocal about buying from brands that are aligned with their values,” said Jammi of Check My Ads. “When they find out a brand is funding toxic content, that matters to them.”

A similar scenario has played out with ads that aired during Bannon’s podcast airing on a right-wing website called Real America’s Voice. In March, for instance, an ad for prescription coupon company GoodRx appeared on Bannon’s show.

“We take the trust and reputation of our brand very seriously and have strict advertising standards in place, which include not participating in heavily editorialized news programming,” the company said in an emailed statement to ProPublica. “This placement was an error in the media buying policies.”

Bannon’s show also airs on Pluto TV, a streaming service owned by ViacomCBS that is available on Roku and other devices. This month, the show on Pluto featured ads for such major companies as Men’s Wearhouse, Lexus and Procter & Gamble, according to monitoring by the liberal watchdog Media Matters. As with the Google video ads on the War Room website, these ads are not placed directly, and companies were at a loss to explain why they had appeared on Bannon’s show. (Bannon’s podcast is available in the Google Podcasts app, but the company does not place ads in it.) A Lexus spokesperson said the company’s ad was briefly on Bannon’s site and taken down. A spokesperson for Procter & Gamble did not respond to a request for comment.

“Our marketing spend follows targeted customers, rather than choosing specific programs we want to appear alongside,” said Mike Stefanov, a spokesperson for Tailored Brands, which owns Men’s Wearhouse. “The team continually refines the criteria used, but the appearance of advertising on a specific program does not necessarily mean the company agrees with or endorses the views espoused.”

Jan. 6 rioter starts sobbing in front of FBI agents when asked about Trump calling him to D.C.

Newly released video shows an emotional MAGA rioter crying in front of FBI interrogators after being asked about former President Donald Trump calling him to Washington D.C.

The video, which was posted on Twitter by NBC 4 Washington’s Scott MacFarlane, shows Capitol rioter Danny Rodriguez being grilled by the FBI about the reasons he came to Washington to take part in the siege of the United States Capitol.

“How did he let you guys know to come to D.C.?” asked one agent.

“He was the commander-in-chief and the leader of our country,” an emotional Rodriguez recalled. “And he was calling for help! I thought he was calling for help! I thought he was…”

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At this point, Rodriguez started openly sobbing.

“I thought I was doing the right thing,” he continued.

Rodriguez is currently facing multiple criminal charges, including conspiracy, assaulting a police officer, entering a restricted building, and theft and destruction of government property.

Watch the video below:

MORE: “Trump called us to DC”, video of FBI questioning of defendant DJ Rodriguez. pic.twitter.com/ocY7bYlFGW

— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) December 1, 2021

A timeline of Alice Sebold’s “Lucky” saga, from a wrongful conviction to a redemptive documentary

On Tuesday, author Alice Sebold formally apologized to the man who, almost 40 years ago, was charged with her rape. Anthony Broadwater had his conviction overturned last week, for which he served 16 years in prison.

Before that fateful event, Sebold was best known for her 2002 novel “The Lovely Bones” and her memoir “Lucky,” which tells her story of being raped as a freshman at Syracuse University and was heralded as a narrative-changing memoir about sexual assault. The book sold over 1 million copies and examines the aftershocks of the attack on Sebold, including her subsequent heroin use and depression. Now, the book’s legacy is connected to the systemic failure of the legal system against an innocent Black man and the knowledge that the true perpetrator of Sebold’s rape has never been found.

As a result, Simon & Schuster’s imprint Scribner, the publisher of “Lucky,” announced on Twitter that it had ceased distribution of the book, which also details the trial of Broadwater, whom Sebold calls Gregory Madison in her narrative. Furthermore, plans for a movie adaption of “Lucky” have been scrapped . . . but a documentary of Broadwater’s experiences has cropped up in its place.

But how exactly did all of this come to pass four decades after the conviction? Salon breaks down the timeline of events, from Sebold’s assault to the aftermath of Broadwater’s exoneration.

May 8, 1981: Alice Sebold, as a freshman at Syracuse University, is sexually assaulted while walking through a tunnel on campus.

October 1981: Sebold identifies Anthony Broadwater as her rapist after passing him on the street. The AP reports that during the investigation she identifies a different man as her rapist from a lineup because of “the expression in his eyes.” Nevertheless, it’s Broadwater who is brought to trial as Sebold says the two men she identified were “almost identical.” He maintains his innocence during the trial.

1982: Anthony Broadwater is convicted of rape and sentenced to eight to 25 years in prison. He is denied parole five times as he maintains his innocence throughout.

1998: Broadwater is released from prison and placed on New York’s sex offender registry.

August 4, 1999: Sebold’s memoir “Lucky” is published.

2002: Sebold’s “The Lovely Bones,” a novel told from the point of view a 14-year-old girl who was raped and killed, is published. It’s highly acclaimed and becomes an instant bestseller.

2009: Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of “The Lovely Bones,” starring Saorise Ronan as the young girl, premieres. The following year, Stanley Tucci is nominated for an Academy Award for his supporting role in the film.

June 3, 2019: Variety reports that “Lucky” will be adapted as a feature film under director Karen Moncrieff, who had directed episodes of “13 Reasons Why,” Netflix’s YA adaptation of a novel about a high school girl who kills herself after being assaulted.

May 28, 2021: Victoria Pedretti (co-star of Netflix’s “You”) is announced to play young Alice Sebold in the “Lucky” adaptation.

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June 2021: “Lucky” executive producer Timothy Mucciante leaves the film over disagreements with Moncrieff, whom he claims wanted to cast the rapist as white, even though he was Black. Mucciante is also bothered by discrepancies in the story and told the New York Times, “I started having some doubts — not about the story that Alice told about her assault, which was tragic, but the second part of her book about the trial, which didn’t hang together.”

Mucciante hires a private investigator to look into Broadwater’s trial, and the two bring their findings to a lawyer for review, who also happens to be the lawyer that Broadwater hires to clear his name.

Mid-2021: The film adaptation of “Lucky” is shelved after losing financing, reports Variety.

November 22, 2021: Broadwater’s conviction is officially overturned by the New York Supreme Court, which found serious issues with the case, including the use of a now-debunked forensic identification tool, microscopic hair analysis, and issues with Sebold’s identification of him in 1981.

Broadwater breaks down in the courtroom upon hearing of the charges being overturned, saying in a statement to the New York Times,”It’s a long day coming.” He also spoke about his alienation from society following his release in 1998. “On my two hands, I can count the people that allowed me to grace their homes and dinners, and I don’t get past 10,” he said. “That’s very traumatic to me.”

November 30, 2021: Sebold finally releases a statement, apologizing to Broadwater.

“I am sorry most of all for the fact that the life you could have led was unjustly robbed from you, and I know that no apology can change what happened to you and never will,” she writes. “40 years ago, as a traumatized 18-year-old rape victim, I chose to put my faith in the American legal system. My goal in 1982 was justice — not to perpetuate injustice. And certainly not to forever, and irreparably, alter a young man’s life by the very crime that had altered mine.” Read the full statement on Medium.

The same day, Simon & Schuster releases a statement on Twitter: “Following the recent exoneration of Anthony Broadwater, and in consultation with the author, Scribner and Simon & Schuster will cease distribution of all formats of Alice Sebold’s 1999 memoir LUCKY.”

There are no plans for updating the memoir

Broadwater responds to Sebold’s apology in a statement reported by the AP, saying that he’s “relieved that she has apologized . . . It must have taken a lot of courage for her to do that. It’s still painful to me because I was wrongfully convicted, but this will help me in my process to come to peace with what happened.”

December 1, 2021: A documentary titled “Unlucky” will be made about Broadwater’s wrongful conviction, his struggles after being released from prison, Mucciante’s efforts and the eventual exoneration, reports Variety. Broadwater and his team are participating in the film, which is currently shooting.

More stories to check out:

How to make holidays any time, any place

It’s late afternoon on Dec. 24 in Las Cruces, N.M., where my sister recently relocated. I’m at an AirBnb on a shrubby desert hillside, chopping an onion with a dull chef’s knife on a glass cutting board. I flinch a little with each queasy scrape of the blade against the glass, but all 10 fingers remain miraculously intact.

I tip the rough-hewn pile of onions into a wok with a couple of smashed garlic cloves and a glug of olive oil, pressing ahead with the tomato sauce for my annual Christmas Eve spaghetti and meatballs. As garlicky pork-and-beef meatballs sizzle away on a flimsy sheet pan in the oven, I add spaghetti to the biggest aluminum pot I can find; sadly, it’s not large enough to prevent a third of the pasta from protruding out the top and eventually fusing into half-cooked clumps.

When we finally tuck into dinner — half of us with little salad forks — my ad-hoc, slightly crunchy pasta tastes as rich and sustaining as ever. Its quirks are a hallmark of the small reunion holidays I plan throughout the year with a few close friends and family in a smattering of home rentals across New Mexico and the Midwest.

Baked pasta and wine line a dinner table in Michigan. (Photo courtesy of Maggie Hennessy)As years pass and lives inevitably disperse (even when lived nearby), quality time comes in ever-shorter supply. Beyond hasty catch-ups over dinner or Zoom once a month, my chosen family and I like to convene for a few long weekends each year to cook, eat and drink; play games; build fires; stay up late; and laugh until we can’t breathe. COVID only supercharged the notion that holidays can occur whenever and wherever friends gather — especially when circumstances out of our control keep us necessarily apart. Over the past two years, we’ve toasted missed birthdays, holidays and anniversaries and the months-ago start of a new year that fused indistinctly with the last.

Over several years of cobbling meals together in an assortment of home rental kitchens, I’ve learned a few tricks. If I’m driving and have space in the car, I’ll carefully wrap up my chef’s knife and nestle it into my favorite dutch oven along with my three other essential kitchen tools: a zester, a stick blender and a pepper grinder. I’ve come to embrace loose menu planning — as in, “buy enough eggs for scrambling on Saturday and shakshuka on Sunday; buy enough bread for BLTs, tuna melts and big salad croutons” — but I also accept the inevitability that one big shopping trip may not cut it.

A wreath hangs on the door of an A-Frame home in Illinois. (Photo courtesy of Maggie Hennessy)

Oh, and I always pack an extra wine opener.

I’ve discerned that grilling is a cook’s best friend for a quick and satisfying dinner spread, no matter the weather outside. My go-to meal for the first night when everybody trickles in at different times typically involves marinating a mix of sturdy veggies and meats in herbs and garlic and parboiling cubed potatoes. Once everyone arrives and has a drink in hand, I throw the whole melange on the grill, along with a few thick slabs of bread rubbed with oil. A drizzle of chimichurri or lemon juice and herb oil over everything makes the charred flavors sing.

A look at the author’s Christmas 2020 snack spread (Photo courtesy of Maggie Hennessy)Another easy crowd pleaser that feels lush is ricotta gnudi. The flour, egg and ricotta dough comes together in minutes; plus, I like recruiting idle hands to roll it into ropes and cut gnudi out in between sips of wine. After boiling, toss them in garlic butter and herbs or quick pomodoro sauce for a comfy, veg-friendly feast.

And while we’re on the subject of group prep, might I suggest smorrebrod aka Danish open-faced sandwiches? Divvy up toppings for everyone to pile on slices of toasted rye, such as smoked fish, dill and horseradish mayo; seared steak and arugula; caponata and feta; or blue cheese, pear and a drizzle of honey. Paired with crudites, olives and mini squares of tortilla española made the day before, it’s a handheld feast fit for grazing on while you tackle a 1,000-piece puzzle.

Smorrebrod is part of the snack spread on this table in Cloudcroft, N.M. (Photo courtesy of Maggie Hennessy)The most crucial things to remember when cooking for a crowd in a strange place are to roll with the punches and enjoy it. Nothing teaches you to improvise better than working in an unfamiliar kitchen. My largest stainless-steel water bottle has doubled nicely as a rolling pin in a pinch. My go-to quick pesto now involves mashing each ingredient together with the side of my knife on a big cutting board. (I’ll often dribble over some vinegar or add minced chiles while I’m at it.)

I’ve found that manchego and black pepper gougeres bake up rounder and taller in higher altitudes; likewise, your focaccia will never impress more than when you bake it in a high desert oven. On the other hand, you may have to adjust the liquid content up in your holiday cookie recipe to prevent cracks; the dryness is real.

Manchego and black pepper gougeres (Photo courtesy of Maggie Hennessy)Still, even the most Type A among us can’t prevent the occasional, often spectacular mishap.

Say you’re new to the whole electric cooktop thing, and you accidentally melt the (plastic) spoon rest, plus the handle of your sole (also plastic) serving spoon. Or perhaps your first-ever attempt at smoking brisket occurs using a finicky smoker on a brutally windy day in Las Cruces. (Did you know it gets quite windy there?) Eleven hours (plus one in the oven to get the damn thing up to temp), a whole box of Cheez-Its and a case of Santa Fe Brewing Co. pilsner later, you tuck into succulent, richly smoky beef and somewhat over-roasted potatoes. (By the way, the next day’s leftovers made for a sublimely flavorful ragu.)

Another time, someone in your party may slightly underestimate the bake time and temp on his famous garlic bread, and the dramatic unveiling from its foil jacket reveals fat slivers of uncooked garlic and still-solid butter. On that same trip, half a dozen resident barn cats could slip into the house at odd hours to ravage the cold cuts shelf in the fridge and climb all the way into the potato chip bags.

Runty examines the fridge in Wisconsin. (Photo courtesy of Maggie Hennessy)Or maybe you book a cozy, lakeside AirBnb in rural Wisconsin without knowing that wall-to-wall carpeting doesn’t only include the living room and both bedrooms but also the bathroom and kitchen. There’s nothing quite like wobbling a platter of saucy braised chicken all the way to the table over a berber kitchen carpet after 1.5 Manhattans.

Then again, these are the sorts of memories that will sustain you, however many miles, months and obligations separate you and your nearest and dearest, until the next gathering with its inevitably strange miscellany of cookware.

Tiny holidays in Northern Michigan (Photo courtesy of Maggie Hennessy)

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Wildfires are erasing Western forests. Climate change is making it permanent

The trees were not coming back. In the years following the 2000 Walker Ranch Fire, Tom Veblen, a forest ecologist at the nearby University of Colorado, Boulder, saw that grass and shrubs were regrowing in the charred foothills, but he had to search to find the rare baby version of the tall ponderosa pines that had dominated the area before the fire.

“I kept watching and I was barely seeing any seedlings at all,” Veblen said.

One of his graduate students at the time, Monica Rother, who now leads her own lab at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, took a closer look, formally sectioning off research plots and returning year after year to count little trees. More than a decade after the Walker Ranch Fire most of her plots had zero tree seedlings.

Now that the winter has cooled the 2021 fire season, scientists are looking at the big burn scars across the West with the grim understanding that, in some places, the pine and Douglas fir forests will not return.

The driving force here is that the rising global temperature is wiping out seedlings. In many spots around the U.S. West, summer temperatures are already high enough to cook young trees before they can develop thick protective bark. Others have become so dry that seedlings shrivel before their roots can grow deep enough to reach groundwater. Both circumstances can thwart forest regeneration. Mature trees can survive in these areas long after they stop reproducing. But when fires wipe out these forests and seedings can’t get a foothold, they are replaced with grasses and dense brush.

Climate change has already shifted biomes. Intense fires simply clear away the last vestiges of the old regime.

When Veblen told the Forest Service about his early observations, around 2003, officials shrugged off the concern. Back then, during President George W. Bush’s administration, the idea that climate change was already producing changes was still somewhat taboo. It would probably just take a few years for trees to get reestablished, the government foresters said.

But over the years, the evidence piled up. And new research has cemented the scientific consensus that climate change is making it much harder for forests of Western mountains to return after fires.

Kimberley Davis is a plant ecologist at the University of Montana and the lead author of an influential study on how climate change is altering forest regeneration after fire, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In her research, she found site after site where new climatic conditions no longer supported the growth of young pines. Adult trees can survive in conditions that kill their seedlings, but they have no future: Like the humans in the science-fiction movie “Children of Men” they’ve outlived their ability to reproduce. With no seedlings, when a fire eventually passes through that is strong enough to wipe out mature trees, it means the woods are gone for good.

When trees fail to regenerate after a fire, new plants take their place. To generalize, in the northern Rocky Mountains, it’s a mix of grasses and shrubs of the genus ceanothus — like snowbrush. In parts of the Southwest, juniper and oak savannas replace pine forests. In New Mexico, thorny locusts often dominate. In northern California, its dense hip to head-high thickets of manzanita and ceanothus. The general trend: fewer forests, more shrublands.

Examples of this ecological shift abound. Twenty years have passed since the Valley Complex Fire burned down the mature forests in Bitterroot National Forest in Montana, and yet there are no signs of young trees returning to the big swaths of landscape. Sixteen years after the Peppin Fire in Lincoln National Forest in New Mexico, it appears the pines are gone for good in many places, replaced by scrubby Gambrel oaks that can survive in the hotter conditions. After the 2007 Moonlight Fire in Plumas National Forest, dense stands of chaparral whitethorn and greenleaf manzanita grew back, rather than trees.

“It’s already happening, it’s not just something we are modeling in the future,” Davis said. “We are definitely at a point where we are all noticing significant impacts of climate change in terms of lack of forest regeneration across the West.”

One study, published last year, found that if forested areas in the Rocky Mountains burned, just half would recover well. It’s generally the south facing slopes and the fringes, where woods meet the plains, that can no longer nurture young pine and fir trees, because those are the parts of forests with the highest temperatures, said Kyle Rodeman, the lead author of that paper, and a scientist studying forest recovery at Northern Arizona University. Southern slopes get more sun in the northern hemisphere, which makes them hotter and drier. And the low-elevation edges of forests mark the line where conditions become inhospitable for trees — with smaller plants in the hotter lowlands, and trees appearing at higher, cooler elevations. It only makes sense that these spots have been the first places forced over the tipping point, into conditions unsuitable for forests, as climate change has turned up the heat. As the years pass, those unsuitable conditions for forest creep uphill.

We’ve long known that it takes water and cool weather to support mountain pine forests. “In a way you would say, ‘Duh, what did you expect? Under warmer drier conditions you are going to get fewer forests,” Veblen said. But it took time to document, and back up the logic with data. At this point, he said, “there’s really no resistance to that idea anymore.”

Today, land managers are scrambling to slow the transformation in many places, by planting trees and killing shrubs. For instance, the Forest Service has proposed a plan to wipe out brush with herbicides in Plumas National Forest. There, climatic conditions would still allow young trees to survive, if they were not crowded out by fast growing shrubs, experts say. When fires enter forests every few years, they tend to burn gently, creeping along the ground and clearing out plants that compete with young trees, without killing the mature ones. But in a landscape dominated by brush, fires burn hot, wiping out the remaining trees and favoring the scrubby species that can quickly grow back. It looks like that’s exactly what happened when the 2021 Dixie Fire swept through the brushy areas created by the 2007 Moonlight Fire. By clearing the brush, the Forest Service hopes to give trees a chance to tip the ecosystem back into a self-sustaining forest.

These efforts to control habitats can succeed in areas teetering on the edge — where temperatures are still low enough to allow a few young pine trees to take root. But they don’t control the most important variable determining the fate of these forests: “The earlier we start dealing with the root problem, climate change, the better chance we have,” Veblen said. “If you want to keep these forests, keep fossil fuels in the ground.”

As walls closed in on Theranos’ Elizabeth Holmes, she turned to Rupert Murdoch

As the walls closed in on Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes in late 2015, she turned to an unlikely source for help stopping a damning investigation into her company from going public: Rupert Murdoch.

She made the admission during testimony this week as part of her fraud trial, claiming she turned to the international media mogul in an attempt to kill a then-unpublished piece on her biotechnology company’s shortcomings written by John Carreyrou of the Wall Street Journal, which Murdoch owns.

Holmes said that she had sent an email to Murdoch, who was himself a Theranos investor, saying she thought he would want to be “in the loop” about any story concerning her startup. By then, Murdoch had reportedly sunk more than $100 million of his own money into Theranos, according to CNBC.

Holmes said that she “couldn’t say it more strongly, the way we handled the Wall Street Journal process was a disaster.”

“We totally messed it up.”

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This was the first time that prosecutors were able to question Holmes directly about her role at Theranos. Holmes is currently on trial for nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, after being charged alongside her business partner and former lover, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani. Holmes faces a maximum of 20 years in prison.

Assistant US Attorney Robert Leach and the prosecution team used Holmes’ Murdoch admission to undermine her legal strategy, which centers around painting herself as an entrepreneur with good intentions who had simply made mistakes. Prosecutors also zeroed in on one other example — this one concerning an employee who was fired after providing information to the Wall Street Journal. At the time, Holmes and Theranos referred to the employee in question as “disgruntled.”

Holmes said that while she still disagreed with that employee’s feelings, “I sure as hell wish we treated her differently.”

Reporting from the Wall Street Journal about Theranos signaled the beginning of the end of the buzzy start-up, which had drawn high-profile backers like Murdoch and former Education Secretary Betsey DeVos’ family.

Leach even asked at one point if Holmes believed that, as the founder, “Anything that happens at your company is your responsibility at the end of the day, right?”

“That is how I felt.” Holmes replied.

More on Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes:

Dr. Oz is officially running for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania

Dr. Oz is officially running for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania as a Republican.

The celebrity doctor and cardiothoracic surgeon, whose full name is Dr. Mehmet Oz, enters a crowded GOP primary for the position. Other candidates include Philadelphia businessman Jeff Bartos, former Trump Administration official Carla Sands, former George W. Bush Administration official David McCormick, among others.

The announcement comes on the heels of fellow candidate Sean Parnell’s departure from the field following allegations of domestic abuse against his wife and three children. Former President Donald Trump had endorsed Parnell prior to the scandal, and it’s unclear who he will back now — if anyone.

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Dr. Oz first shared the news of his upcoming Senate bid in an op-ed for the conservative Washington Examiner Wednesday, writing:

“We are angry at our government and at each other… We have not managed our crises as effectively as past generations.”

“During the pandemic, I learned that when you mix politics and medicine, you get politics instead of solutions. That’s why I am running for the U.S. Senate: to help fix the problems and to help us heal.”

“Over 750,000 in the United States have died from the virus, a devastating toll for families and communities… Many of those deaths were preventable. COVID-19 became an excuse for the government and elite thinkers who controlled the means of communication to suspend debate. Dissenting opinions from leading scholars were ridiculed and canceled so their ideas could not be disseminated. Instead, the government mandated policies that caused unnecessary suffering. The public was patronized and misled instead of empowered.”

Dr. Oz has came under fire over the past year for promoting unproven COVID-19 treatments, including hydroxychloroquine, as well as fighting against preventative public health measures like lockdowns and vaccine mandates.

“Washington got it wrong,” he said in a video announcing his candidacy. “They took away our freedom without making us safer,” he added.

It’s not Dr. Oz’ first brush with controversial medical opinions — he testified at a Senate hearing in 2014 over alleged “deceptive advertising” of so-called “miracle” weight loss drugs, like green coffee extract and the “fat-burning magic” of raspberry ketone, that appeared on his daytime talk show, “The Dr Oz Show.”

At that hearing, former Sen. Claire McCaskill made headlines when she told Dr. Oz that “the scientific community is almost monolithic against you.”

Some locals have also questioned Dr. Oz’ ties to the state of Pennsylvania. He is a long-time resident of Cliffside Park, New Jersey and only changed his voter registration late last year — to his in-law’s house in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania. The residence is still listed as Dr. Oz’ home address on his website.

More on the burgeoning U.S. movement toward celebrity politicians:

If “The Beatles: Get Back” has a villain, it might be Michael Lindsay-Hogg

Since last week, the Internet has been obsessed with “The Beatles: Get Back,” Peter Jackson’s three-part documentary on Disney+ about the Beatles’ January 1969 struggle to cobble together new material for a return to the stage. And for many viewers, the docuseries even produced a new supervillain for us to collectively disparage.

Was it Yoko Ono, daring to sit stoically beside her man John Lennon in the Fab Four Boys Club? Or Paul McCartney, reprising his familiar Bossypants role as he attempted to rally his fellow Beatles into action? Or even Allen Klein, the notorious New York City businessman cum thug who would plunge their managerial world into new levels of disarray?

Nah. Would you believe that it was none of the above?

Enter Michael Lindsay-Hogg, the cigar-chomping director of “Let It Be,” the 1970 film that had the misfortune of being released in the days after McCartney announced the Beatles’ demise to a crestfallen world.

For consumers of the “Get Back” series, Lindsay-Hogg has earned nearly wall-to-wall disdain. Don’t believe me? Mosey on over to the Steve Hoffman Music Forums, the longtime home of the most engaging Beatles conversations on the web. Registering their disgust with Lindsay-Hogg’s conspicuous appearances in the docuseries, viewers have lambasted the then-28-year-old director for being “annoying,” a “spoiled prick” and, my favorite, “the upper-class twit of the year.” At one point among the rancor, one commentator good-naturedly proclaimed that “it’s official, Michael Lindsay-Hogg broke up the Beatles :D.”

As it happens, when it comes to Lindsay-Hogg the class derision isn’t entirely out of place. Born into the family of an English baronet, young Lindsay-Hogg grew up among the small world of Hollywood royalty. Thanks to his mother, actress Geraldine Fitzgerald, Lindsay-Hogg was on intimate terms with such cultural stalwarts as William Randolph Hearst, Olivia de Havilland, Humphrey Bogart, and Henry Miller. He may have even been the son of Orson Welles—a mystery that has plagued him throughout his life.

Seasoned Beatles fans know that Lindsay-Hogg was already something of a Beatles insider by the time he settled into the “Get Back” production, having directed the promotional videos for “Paperback Writer” and “Rain” back in 1966, and helming the video shoot for “Hey Jude” and “Revolution” only a few months before undertaking the original Beatles doc at Twickenham Film Studios in January 1969. By that time, he was fresh off the set of “The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus,” the ill-fated production that would lie dormant for nearly 30 years.

Love the Beatles? Listen to Ken’s podcast “Everything Fab Four.”

And Lindsay-Hogg would later direct “Two of Us,” a kindhearted, highly speculative TV movie about Lennon and McCartney’s last day together. Even the most callous Beatles aficionados couldn’t help shedding a tear as Lindsay-Hogg’s narrative imagined a passion-filled reconnection between the vaunted members of the twentieth century’s most celebrated songwriting duo.

With Jackson’s docuseries, fans have found great humor in poking fun at the often obsequious and self-deprecating Lindsay-Hogg. As “Get Back” demonstrates, he’s absolutely game for anything that might move his clumsy, stumbling documentary along. At one point, he is hoisted up to the famous rooftop where the story will climax with a lunchtime concert for the ages. As he is lifted atop the building, Lindsay-Hogg doesn’t even break character, his ever-present stogie clutched tightly between his teeth.

As for me, I hold no ill will towards Lindsay-Hogg. For me, he never comes off as “annoying.” And while he may be pompous, at times, it has nothing to do with his fancy lineage. Rather, he acts as a stand-in for us Beatles fans, glibly wondering what direction the story might take — will they perform their much ballyhooed concert in the desert or on a ship at sea? Like us, he seems desperate to know where the Beatles are heading. Is this really their swan song? Are the Beatles donesville? At one point after George Harrison briefly quits the band, Lindsay-Hogg quips that he too might leave, although he doubts that anyone would truly care.

No, Michael Lindsay-Hogg isn’t some insufferable arch villain dead-set on needling us into oblivion. Like us diehards, he’s hoping against hope that the Beatles haven’t already played their best hand, that they’ve got a few more winning cards up their sleeve. In short, he is a fan. Just like us.

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Deep Dives Into the Beatles with “Everything Fab Four”:

Stacey Abrams is running for Georgia governor — again

Stacey Abrams is running for Georgia governor — again.

The Democrat, who has been propelled to household name status as the face of a nationwide movement to safeguard voting rights in the face of a right-wing assault on ballot access, is eyeing a potential rematch against the state’s current Gov. Brian Kemp after narrowly losing the last gubernatorial race to him in 2018.

She announced her bid in a brief video posted to Twitter Wednesday, outlining her work on Georgia’s electoral system and the state’s COVID-19 vaccine campaign, among other things.

“Opportunity and success in Georgia shouldn’t be determinde by your ZIP code, background or access to power,” she said.

If Adams were to win the race, it would make her the first Black woman governor in U.S. history — in a state that has become in recent years one of the country’s foremost electoral battlegrounds. She lost by just over 1% of the vote in 2018, and even refused to concede after decrying what she called an “erosion” of voting rights in Georgia.

Democratic insiders have long expected Abrams to run again, setting up a grudge match against the two bitter rivals. But Kemp also faces a crowded primary field and a high-profile opponent in former President Donald Trump, who tangled with the governor after he refused to overturn his state’s 2020 election results. Trump and his allies have since vowed to seek revenge — he even went so far as to suggest at a rally earlier this year that he may prefer Abrams to Kemp.

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This will make it difficult for the governor to hold his position as the presumptive nominee. Rumors have been circulating for months that former U.S. Sen. David Perdue is considering a challenge against Kemp, a bid that Trump is likely to support, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Others have attempted to stake their claim as the pre-eminent pro-Trump Republican candidates, including a former state representative named Vernon Jones.

Still, what’s shaping up to be a competitive primary hasn’t stopped Kemp — or any of the other potential candidates, for that matter — from talking about Abrams ad nauseum. Many pundits have observed that, even before Abrams announced her candidacy, Republicans in the state already acted as if she were their general election opponent.

“Never underestimate the unifying power Stacey Abrams can bring to Republicans in Georgia,” Stephen Lawson, a veteran Republican strategist based in Georgia, told the Journal-Constitution.

More coverage of Stacey Abrams and Georgia politics:

“Ku Klux Klan caucus”: Democrats rally in defense of Rep. Ilhan Omar against GOP attacks

After a second video was released of Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., suggesting to a crowd that Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., was a “black-hearted” terrorist was unveiled on Tuesday, Democrats are now rallying to condemn the GOP.

The video, first reported by CNN, comes just a week after the conservative lawmaker made an anti-Muslim at joke at Omar’s expense to a Colorado crowd during Thanksgiving break. In the September video – originally published that month – Boebert is seen making remarks at a Staten Island Conservative Party dinner referring to both Omar and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., as “black-hearted evil women.” Later in the video, Boebert alleges that she had felt comfortable riding an elevator with Omar, a Muslim, because she wasn’t wearing a backpack.

“One of my staffers, on his first day with me, got into an elevator in the Capitol, and in that elevator we were joined by Ilhan Omar,” Boebert said in the video. “It was just us three in there and I looked over and I said, ‘Well, looky there, it’s the Jihad Squad.'”

“She doesn’t have a backpack,” Beobert continued, with audible laughter from the crowd. “She wasn’t dropping it and running so we’re good.”

The video bears strong resemblance to another one published last week in which Beobert repeats a similar story – with minor tweaks – to a crowd in her home state. In the more recent iteration, Boebert describes making the same joke about Omar police officer in an elevator, ending with a similar punchline: “Well, she doesn’t have a backpack, we should be fine.”

In both instances, Boebert alleges that she told Omar that she is a member of the “Jihad Squad.”

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But Omar has called the entire account a “fabrication,” tweeting this week that the Colorado conservative “looks down when she sees me at the Capitol, this whole story is made up. Sad she thinks bigotry gets her clout.” Omar said she has since received death threats.

“People truly don’t understand the scale, intensity, & volume of threats targeting [Omar],” Ocasio-Cortez said in a tweet posted Wednesday morning. “Kevin McCarthy is so desperate to be speaker that he is working with his Ku Klux Klan caucus to look aside & allow violent targeting of woc members of Congress.”

People truly don’t understand the scale, intensity, & volume of threats targeting @IlhanMN.

Kevin McCarthy is so desperate to be speaker that he is working with his Ku Klux Klan caucus to look aside & allow violent targeting of woc members of Congress.

This cannot be ignored. https://t.co/ppridf6bZl

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) December 1, 2021

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said to the House Democratic caucus Wednesday that “these people do not respect the House that they serve in. We have to make sure that the public understands that we do.” According to ABC News, House leadership is considering a possible resolution condemning Islamophobia.

On Monday, Boebert revealed that she and Omar had set up a private call to tide things over. “I never want anything I say to offend someone’s religion, so I told her that,” Boebert alleged over Instagram, summarizing the details of the call.

But Omar has claimed that Boebert refused to apologize during the call. “Instead of apologizing for her Islamophobic comments and fabricated lies, Rep. Boebert refused to publicly acknowledge her hurtful and dangerous comments,” the progressive said. “She instead doubled down on her rhetoric and I decided to end the unproductive call.”

Multiple Democrats have meanwhile called on House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., to condemn Beobert’s remarks, but the California conservative has repeatedly refrained from doing so.

“She has apologized for what she said and has reached out to Congresswoman Omar to meet next week,” McCarthy said in a statement to CNN.

The omicron variant has now reached the United States

The omicron variant of COVID-19 has, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), reached the United States.

The virulent coronavirus strain, which was first detected in South Africa, was confirmed to have arrived in California via a person who had recently visited that country. According to President Joe Biden’s health adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci, the individual was fully vaccinated but had not yet received a booster shot, meaning that theirs constitutes a breakthrough case. (Fauci added that policymakers may need to redefine what it means to be fully vaccinated.)

This person only displayed mild symptoms, which are now improving, and has self-quarantined since being diagnosed. Everyone who had close contact with that individual has tested negative, although the patient continues to test positive.

Speaking to the American public last week about the omicron variant, Biden closed America’s borders to countries where the variant had been identified, urged fully vaccinated Americans to get booster shots so they could protect themselves, and pleaded with those who were not vaccinated to change that. He also suggested that the international community address the problem of vaccine inequality, noting that no one will be safe from outbreaks if only citizens of affluent countries have unfettered access to inoculations.

“The United States has already donated more vaccines to other countries than every other country combined,” Biden claimed. “It is time for other countries to match America’s speed and generosity.”

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The omicron variant is alarming to medical experts because B.1.1.529 (omicron’s formal name) has 50 mutations, 32 of which are in the spike protein. That protein, so-named because it constitutes the spikes that stick out of the virus’ central sphere like spines on a sea urchin, helps SARS-CoV-2 viruses enter your cells and cause infections. Since mRNA vaccines work by helping the immune system identify SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins, any mutations to the spike protein could help coronaviruses evade the vaccines. This is why other strains with these mutations have also been labeled as “variants of concern.”

The omicron strain also has new mutations, including one that may make it more effective at infecting cells. Another study (which has yet to be peer reviewed) points out that omicron shares a mutation with alpha and mu that might help the virus replicate more quickly.

“The 32 mutations across the spike protein doesn’t mean that it evades immunity, but it is the most [mutations] we’ve seen,” Dr. Monica Gandhi, infectious disease doctor and professor of medicine at the University of California–San Francisco, told Salon yesterday. “In one region in South Africa, cases [of omicron] are going up really fast — it’s really just dominating the screens there — and that made some people say, ‘it looks like this is really transmissible’ because we thought that delta was the pinnacle of being transmissible right now.”

In addition to the vaccine inequity caused by unequal vaccine access internationally, new COVID-19 outbreaks and mutations have also been facilitated by the fact that many people who have access to vaccines refuse to get them. Biden announced a round of vaccine mandates in September as a means of closing that gap.

The best gluten-free cookie recipes from Food52

When someone offers me gluten-free cookies or baked goods, a part of me bristles a little bit. I completely respect anyone who has a gluten allergy, but I find that most gluten-free cookies taste “stodgy,” to quote Paul Hollywood. But the bristling isn’t necessary. These days, there’s no need for gluten-free cookies to mean tasteless or tough. Incredibly delicious, perfectly textured gluten-free cookies are possible! In fact, we know quite a few ways to make them. This is the 21st century, after all. Below are some gluten-free cookie recipes that we’re totally sweet on.

Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies with Oat, Buckwheat, Teff, or Mesquite Flour

We stan a classic chocolate chip recipe with regular flour, but oh my word are these delicious. Depending on which flour blend you use, the approach will vary slightly. For instance, if you’re using oat flour or mesquite flour, you will want to use a sifter, as these flours tend to clump. With other comfy-cozy ingredients like brown sugar, vanilla bean, bittersweet chocolate, and flaky salt topping, you just may wind up with a new go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe.

Gluten-Free Sugar Cookies

Speaking of classics, who doesn’t love a good sugar cookie? For this recipe, the unconventional touches include gluten-free all-purpose flour and a bit of xanthan gum or psyllium husk powder. Otherwise, it’s your pretty standard, melt-in-your-mouth butter, sugar, and flour cookie recipe. These would work as your typical Christmas sugar cookies, but you can dress them up for any occasion by adding the buttercream frosting included in the recipe.

Almond Citrus Cookie

Even with the implied refinement of its name, these cookies are deceptively easy to make, and kid-friendly. It’s akin to a kind of brittle, with the principal ingredients of sugar, egg whites, almonds (duh), and some parchment paper. Even if you’re not the biggest fan of almond, you won’t be able to resist these tart and nutty treats.

Gluten-Free Ritornelli Cookies

This recipe is a take on a traditional children’s breakfast cookie that is typically dipped in milk. Yes, breakfast cookies are a thing in Italy.

Grain- and Gluten-Free Coffee Chocolate Cookies

Some people get into gluten-free baking out of curiosity, others out of necessity. If you’re one of those people always passing on dessert because of an allergy, this grain-free and dairy-free recipe will satisfy your sweet craving without sending you home early for fear of total digestive annihilation. Oh, and did we mention it tastes good?

Gluten- and Dairy-Free Afghan Cookie

This may be one of the most delightful gluten-free cookie recipes on the list. I mean, come on: chocolate and cornflakes? These soft and chewy treats that hail from New Zealand (go figure) can be ad-libbed, too. You can use any kind of nut that suits your fancy, including none at all, to make this unconventional cookie.

Pretzel Shortbread Cookies

OK, so technically this is not a gluten-free original, but you can easily replace the regular pretzels with gluten-free ones without compromising the cookie’s structural integrity. And it’s just as delicious. All the recipe calls for is butter, sugar, pretzels, and chocolate — you can whip these up and enjoy them in minutes.

Gluten-Free Oatmeal Lace Cookies

When I hear “lace” in a cookie recipe, it’s hard not to think “cookie dust,” but this recipe holds up. Like many recipes on this list, the directions are simple, which is no small feat for gluten-free baking. The cookies themselves taste just like old-fashioned oatmeal cookies from Grandma’s cookie jar.

Divine Gluten-Free Chocolate Cookies

This meringue-like cookie is made for those who find themselves eating most of the chocolate chip bag before they even start baking. The egg whites are really just a vehicle for dark chocolate. You’re going to want to space the cookies out on the baking sheets because the batter tends to spread in the oven. Anyway, why am I prattling on? Just look at the photo of these things.

Gluten-Free, Mostly-Whole-Grain Chocolate Shortbread Cookies

When I read the title of this recipe, I was skeptical. Since when do whole-grain chocolate shortbread cookies actually taste like chocolate? (Smash cut to me polishing off an entire bag of chocolate chips while making the above recipe — I may be biased.) Anyway, rest assured, these cookies do, indeed, taste like chocolate. We promise.

Benedict Cumberbatch is intimidating in Jane Campion’s exquisite and potent “Power of the Dog”

Set in 1925 Montana — but filmed in New Zealand — “The Power of the Dog” is an exacting drama about masculinity, toxic and otherwise. Written and directed by Jane Campion, who adapted Thomas Savage’s novel, this drama is exquisitely made, from the breathtaking landscapes to the detailed interiors. Much of the film is lensed with an amber glow. It is almost too pretty given that the lead character, Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch) is as ugly as he is grimy. “I stink and I like it,” he says defiantly at one point, and viewers can almost smell him.

Phil is both the hero and the villain of the piece. He is a cunning, wealthy rancher and a bully. He calls his brother George (Jesse Plemons) “fatso.” At a restaurant run by the widow Rose Gordon (Kirsten Dunst), Phil teases her effeminate son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee) for making flowers out of paper and because Peter speaks with a lisp. Rose, who is supportive and accepting of her son, just cries at how Phil treats Peter, and holds Phil in contempt, eyeing him with both fear and hatred. In contrast, Phil is respected by his men because he sees something in the nearby hills his men can’t, indicating his superiority.

The first half of the film is a long, slow setup. George marries Rose, which infuriates Phil. (He is so mad, he takes his anger out on his horses, signifying he is, without a doubt, a bad person). A lovely scene has the newlyweds stopping in a field along the road to drink some tea. Rose teaches George how to dance, and he actually cries, happy that he has someone to share his life with — other than his domineering brother. Campion generates just the right amount of emotion here, and the gorgeous Big Sky backdrop certainly helps.

But the couple’s happiness does not last. Phil makes Rose very uncomfortable inside the house where they all live. He mocks her when she plays the piano George gets her, and spies on her as she secretly takes sips of bourbon in the alley behind the house. Rose drinks too much and kind of crumbles over the course of the film — in part because she is paralyzed by fear. Watch her when the Governor (Keith Carradine) comes for dinner and Rose is too stricken to talk or play piano. Dunst makes Rose’s fragility and vulnerability poignant, even tragic, but it is a flimsy role, given the narrative shift the film takes. (George disappears for long stretches).

When Rose and George make love, Phil is so exasperated, he oils up the saddle that belonged to Bronco Henry, Phil’s mentor, who died a while back. Phil has a sexual, almost fetishistic devotion to Bronco Henry, and it slowly becomes clear why. Cumberbatch is playing a repressed homosexual, who overcompensates for his longings by acting tough. (Watch him castrate an animal without gloves!) Campion frequently shoots Phil from below, to make him more menacing, and it works. She also captures him stealing away to pleasure himself, indicating how he compartmentalizes his sexuality.

“The Power of the Dog,” however, gets interesting when Peter, who has gone away to school around the time his mother marries George, reenters the picture. While Peter tries to avoid Phil, circumstances keep pulling these men together, and eventually, Peter discovers Phil’s dirty little secret. Peter and Phil may be two very different men, but they are, of course, more alike than either want to admit. An unlikely friendship of sorts soon develops between them, cemented when Peter can see what Phil does in the hills.

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And so, Phil teaches Peter how to ride a horse, and Rose trembles at the thought of her son being alone together with a man she despises. Campion generates much of this leisurely drama’s tension here as something is definitely going to happen between these two men — it is just a matter of what and when. They do have a heart to heart one afternoon that is encouraging, and Phil admires Peter’s ability to dispatch a wounded rabbit. When they later share a cigarette, the moment brims with homoeroticism. Campion, however, lets what is coming sneak up on viewers, just as it does the characters. It is a nice payoff (even if she plants some clues), because the story gets more involving once Peter and Phil become chummy.

Cumberbatch gives another strong performance here, making Phil a brute who sucks all the oxygen out of the room, but also someone whose every word, every gesture has purpose and meaning and intent. He knows how to push buttons, and delights at it. Just watch him goad George who tries to deliver a message to him (to clean up) in one scene. Or how he drawls, “Ain’t that purdy” about Peter’s paper flowers, before using one to light his cigarette. Cumberbatch also slyly reveals his shame in a scene where he happens upon his men frolicking naked in a river, before riding away to be alone.

“The Power of the Dog” is certainly an allegory about control and love, lost and found, and Campion’s masterful command of the material, in addition to the strong performances and the striking visual style make this a potent piece of filmmaking.

“The Power of the Dog” is now streaming on Netflix. Watch a trailer for it below, via YouTube.

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