As COVID-19 cases skyrocket in children, doctors warn of lifelong side effects

In the 1940s and 1950s, the polio epidemic left tens of thousands of people disabled for the rest of their lives. Even after virologist Dr. Jonas Salk announced a successful vaccine in 1955, there were still heart-wrenching photographs of paralyzed children for whom that inoculation was released far too late. Some of the most powerful imagery from that period involves showing children in leg braces or wheelchairs, their miserable expressions suggesting a deep mourning for the quality of life they had forever lost.

Roughly 70 years later, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has released a report which includes a familiar warning that those who lived through the polio era will recognize: If children are not protected against COVID-19 through vaccination, it could haunt them for the rest of their lives.

Although children rarely become severely ill due to COVID-19, the AAP wrote that “there is an urgent need to collect more data on longer-term impacts of the pandemic on children, including ways the virus may harm the long-term physical health of infected children, as well as its emotional and mental health effects.” This refers to the growing body of evidence that a wide range of physical and psychological issues can persist for COVID-19 sufferers long after the disease itself has supposedly passed. (Hence the term “long COVID.”) Common physical symptoms of long COVID include fatigue, coughing, shortness of breath, joint pain, dizziness and loss of smell or taste. In terms of their mental health, patients with long COVID report feeling depressed, having brain fog, experiencing anxiety and having trouble with their memory.

This matters more than ever because, as the AAP explained in their report (which will be released on Nov. 30), the number of children developing COVID-19 is on the rise. A staggering 141,905 child cases were added in the United States over the past week, an increase of 32 percent from the figure two weeks ago. That figure is also more than one-fourth of all new COVID-19 cases from the past week; at the start of the pandemic in early 2020, children comprised only three percent of confirmed cases.

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This also marks the 15th consecutive week in which the number of new child COVID-19 cases has exceeded 100,000. While the current peak is 252,000 new cases (for the week of Sept. 2), the ongoing figures remain “extremely high,” according to the AAP. Overall nearly 6.8 million American children have been diagnosed with COVID-19 infections since Nov. 18. Despite this, a recent Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) survey found that roughly two-thirds of parents are either waiting to vaccinate their young children against COVID-19 or are outright refusing to do so.

The Kaiser survey also made it clear that, while there are a number of variables that influence people who oppose the COVID-19 vaccines, the most common culprit is right-wing partisanship.

“Although COVID-19 vaccination rates have increased over time with majorities across partisan groups reporting being vaccinated, Republicans make up an increasingly disproportionate share of those who remain unvaccinated and political partisanship is a stronger predictor of whether someone is vaccinated than demographic factors such as age, race, level of education, or insurance status,” KFF explained.

Because the COVID-19 pandemic has lingered for longer and more severely than it would have if most of the population had gotten vaccinated, President Joe Biden announced a series of vaccine mandates in September that he hopes will begin to close the gap. In that speech he specifically blamed the ongoing problem on unvaccinated Americans, arguing that a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” had caused people to feel “frustrated with the nearly 80 million Americans” who have access to free inoculations but refuse to get them.

Jury finds three men guilty in killing of Ahmaud Arbery

All three defendants in the murder trial for the 2020 killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a young Black Georgia man shot to death in broad daylight while jogging, were found guilty Wednesday.

Brian McMichael, 65, and his son Travis, 35, both white, each faced nine charges, which include “one count of malice murder, four counts of felony murder, two counts of aggravated assault, one count of false imprisonment and one count of criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment,” according to AP News.

The case centers on an incident dating back to May of last year, when the McMichaels grabbed guns and followed the 25-year-old Abrery throughout their neighborhood in Brunswick, Georgia allegedly under the assumption that Arbery was the perpetrator of several break-ins within the area. Armed with a .357 Magnum handgun and a shotgun, Gregory and Travis – along with neighbor William Bryan, 52 – pursued Arbery in their pick-up truck.

According to a police report, while pursuing Arbery by car, McMichael yelled out to him: “Stop, stop, we want to talk to you.” Eventually, all three pursuants pulled up Arbery, with the younger McMichael approaching him with a shotgun. Travis McMichael and Arbery shortly engaged in a physical altercation, at which point Travis fired his gun at Arbery, killing him.

More than two months passed until the McMichaels were officially arrested, according to The New York Times, sparking widespread accusations of racial injustice.

According to a surveillance video published by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Arbery had previously walked into a home under construction, eventually fleeing the building. But police reports indicate that he did not steal anything on site.

“Ahmaud Arbery was out for a jog,” S. Lee Merritt, a lawyer for Arbery’s family, said in a statement. “He stopped by a property under construction where he engaged in no illegal activity and remained for only a brief period. Ahmaud did not take anything from the construction site.”

Gregory McMichael’s defense attorney, Laura Hogue, broadly in court argued that Arbery willfully escalated the conflict.

“He chose to fight,” Hogue said during the trial, adding that Arbery decided “without any sense of reason to run at a man wielding a shotgun, leaving [Travis] with no other alternative but to be placed in a position to kill him.”

Kevin Gough, Bryan’s attorney, posited a more outlandish defense, calling his client’s pursuit of Arbery “divine providence.”

“Somebody is guiding Mr. Bryan, whether it’s a conscious thought process or not. Something is guiding Mr. Bryan down this street to document what’s going on,” Gough said.

Meanwhile, prosecutor Linda Dunikoski argued to the court that Bryan, and the two McMichaels had no reason to believe Arbery had engaged in any criminal activity, instead acting on baseless social media gossip.

“They made the decision to attack Ahmaud Arbery in their driveways because he was a Black man running down the street,” Dunikoski said. “They shot and killed him. Not because he was a threat to them but because he wouldn’t stop and talk to them.”

She added that the three men had established an atmosphere for violence, nullifying their right to self-defense: “You can’t create the situation and then go ‘I was defending myself.'”

Critics of the trial have said that the defense attorneys engaged in a number of racist tropes, according to CNN, which may have impacted the jury’s decision. In one particular instance, Hogue described Arbery with language evocative of a “runaway slave,” pundits said.

“Turning Ahmaud Arbery into a victim after the choices that he made does not reflect the reality of what brought Ahmaud Arbery to Satilla Shores in his khaki shorts with no socks to cover his long, dirty toenails,” Hogue said to the predominantly white jury, with just one of twelve Black.

Civil rights attorney Charles Coleman Jr. said in a CNN interview that Hogue’s “word choice was intentional” and “unnecessary,” adding that they reflected an “attempt to sort of really trigger some of the racial tropes and stereotypes that may be deeply embedded in the psyche of some of the jurors.”

The case spanned 10 days, featuring testimony from 23 witnesses.

FBI probes another attempted election data breach linked to MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell

The FBI is investigating a second attempted local election data breach linked to conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell, this time in Ohio, after raiding the home of a Colorado election clerk accused of leaking voting system passwords last week.

FBI and state investigators are looking at an attempted breach of an Ohio county’s election system at the office of John Hamercheck, the Republican president of the Lake County Board of Supervisors, The Washington Post first reported last week. The incident appears to be similar to a data breach in Mesa County, Colorado, where election clerk Tina Peters is under federaI investigation after voting system passwords were leaked to right-wing blogs and QAnon conspiracy theorists. Data from both incidents were featured at the MyPillow founder’s conspiracy-laden “cyber symposium” in August. Both Hamercheck and Peters discussed voter fraud claims with Lindell’s sidekick Douglas Frank before the symposium, according to the Post.

State and county officials told the Post that no sensitive information was obtained in the attempted Ohio breach but they determined that a private laptop was plugged into the county network at Hamercheck’s office. Routine network traffic data obtained in the breach was distributed at Lindell’s event.

The FBI confirmed that it is investigating the breach. A spokesman for Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, told the Post that investigators believe that a government official “facilitated the attempted breach.”

Officials said several layers of security prevented the laptop from accessing sensitive information.

“It’s concerning that somebody would — especially somebody in a government office, somebody who is an elected official, or somebody who’s part of county government — would not realize all of those safeguards exist and would try to engage in some sort of a vigilante investigation,” LaRose told the outlet. “The good news is that our system of cybersecurity in Ohio is among the best in the nation.”

Hamercheck denied any knowledge of any breach attempt during a board meeting on Tuesday, saying there has been “much false or misleading information” about what happened.

“To my knowledge, there was never an attempt to access or breach the Lake County Board of Elections computer network that day,” Hamercheck claimed, though he did not elaborate.

Hamercheck said he has not been interviewed in the investigation but vowed to share more information “as soon as we are finished gathering and verifying the appropriate materials.”

The attempted breach came after Frank, a part-time math and science teacher who has claimed to have discovered secret algorithms used to rig the presidential election against former President Donald Trump, traveled the country to recruit local election officials into Lindell’s conspiracy theory campaign, ostensibly aimed at undoing the 2020 election result and “reinstating” Trump. (There is no constitutional pathway for doing that.) Frank previously told the outlet he had traveled to more thant 30 states and met with 100 election administrators, claiming that his presentation had convinced Peters to pursue his baseless conspiracy theory. He told the Post he had no recollection of speaking with Hamercheck but the newspaper reported that Frank took part in a phone conversation with the official earlier this year.

“Do I remember that call? No,” Frank said. “Does it sound like me? Yes.”

County records obtained by the Post show that Hamercheck, an engineer, used his security badge to swipe into the offices where the attempted breach originated multiple times and that a private laptop was connected to the county network.

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Local resident Lois Osborn pressed Hamercheck on the incident during Tuesday’s board meeting after saying she was “very disturbed” by the news reports.

“There was a breach coming from John Hamercheck’s office,” she told the board, calling for him to be censured. “In my mind, this was something very inappropriate for an elected official in Lake County.”

Ron Young, one of the other commissioners, told Osborn it was too early to consider sanctions.

“We have very sophisticated, very skilled law enforcement — nationally, state level, locally — working on this issue,” Young said. “And I think it’d be absurd for me to stand up and offer some sort of censure of this gentleman, who at least from my observation has always performed ethically, morally and properly.”

The FBI and state authorities last week raided the home of Peters and three others, including Sherronna Bishop, who previously worked as campaign manager for Rep. Lauren Boebert’s, R-Colo. Bishop has spoken at events with Peters and introduced Frank during a recent event in Colorado. Search warrants in the raid suggest the FBI is investigating potential wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud and damage protected computers.

State investigators say Peters shut off surveillance in her office and allowed an unauthorized person to access voting machine servers, data from which were later leaked to conspiracy theorists and featured at Lindell’s August symposium.

A judge last month barred Peters from overseeing elections. Peters has denied wrongdoing and accused the Justice Department and state officials of political bias.

Lindell has used the leaked data and Frank’s “research” to push wild conspiracy theories that Dominion voting machines were set up to flip votes from Trump to President Joe Biden. Dominion sued Lindell and other TrumpWorld conspiracists for $1.3 billion over the false allegations earlier this year.

After his August “cyber symposium” failed to show any evidence of a massive election-fraud conspiracy, Lindell on Tuesday announced that he would hold a 96-hour “Thanks-a-thon” live stream on his web channel to rehash his claims.

Lindell promised over the summer to bring a fantastical lawsuit to the Supreme Court “before Thanksgiving” that would overturn the election and reinstate Trump. Lindell claimed that “tons” of state attorneys general were ready to sign on to the suit, though he did not name a single one. On Tuesday, Lindell appeared to reverse field once again, claiming that attorneys general had backed away from his case under pressure from Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel, who admitted last week that Biden won the election — which Lindell sees as another part of a grand conspiracy.

“You can’t tell me why Ronna McDaniel, the head of the RNC, made a statement saying Biden won three days before this Supreme Court complaint was supposed to go to the Supreme Court,” he said. “What about the timing of that, America!”

Editor’s note: This article was updated after it was published to clarify that the Ohio incident was an “attempted” breach. A spokesman for LaRose told Salon that “no election information, no election data, and nothing from inside the Lake County board of elections was compromised or even ever in any jeopardy.”

Read more on the Republican snipe hunt for “election fraud”:

Why Donald Trump exalts Kyle Rittenhouse: Nothing gets the base going like violence

The strangest thing about Donald Trump and the GOP’s increasingly open embrace of political violence is how unnecessary it is, even by the right’s own grotesque standards.

Ever since Trump’s failed coup that culminated in the January 6 insurrection, Republicans have been carefully laying the groundwork for a bloodless destruction of democracy. They’ve commandeered election offices and filled them with Trump lackeys eager to break the law for their leader. They’ve gerrymandered elections so that Republicans “win” even when Democrats have strong majorities. And they toss on a robust amount of voter suppression so Democrats can’t get to the polls in the first place. Even Trump’s path to retaking the White House despite quite likely losing in 2024 is laid out without the need to fire a single gunshot: Republican-controlled state legislatures and Congress could nullify the vote in districts Joe Biden wins and throw the election to Trump.

“Democracy’s primary assailants today are not generals or armed revolutionaries,” Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt explained in The Atlantic, but rather politicians “who eviscerate democracy’s substance behind a carefully crafted veneer of legality and constitutionality.”

But even though a bloodless fascist takeover is in the works, Trump and other leaders of the Trumpist movement have spent the past years ratcheting up enthusiasm on the right for political violence. For months, Trump and his allies have been trying to rewrite the narrative of January 6, casting the insurrectionists as heroes and martyrs. Now, in the wake of the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse — who shot three people, killing two, at a Black Lives Matter protest in August 2020 — they’re doing the same. Rittenhouse is cast on the right as a noble hero, instead of what he is, an unsettling creep who had no business swinging an AR-15 around in a volatile situation.

As soon as the trial was over, Fox News host Tucker Carlson brought Rittenhouse on for an interview, praising him as “the kind of person would you want many more of in your country.” (As a reminder, Rittenhouse was photographed in a Michigan bar in January, partying with Proud Boys and flashing a white nationalist hand gesture.) Trump also brought Rittenhouse to Mar-A-Lago to pose for pictures in front of a wall showily festooned with a photograph of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. Trump called Rittenhouse — who shot and killed Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26 — a “nice young man.”

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Trump and Carlson are doing this, even though they know full well that it’s encouraging more insecure men to view political violence as a way to ameliorate their own gnawing fears of mediocrity. Indeed, manipulating men into committing violence appears to very much be the point. As Mark Follman wrote in Mother Jones last week, “Trump has made freshly evident, in other words, that he is serving as the inspirational leader for a domestic terrorism movement.”

But again, the question is why?

Most available evidence suggests that not only can Trump’s desired fascist takeover happen without violence, it would actually be more likely to work if it was bloodless. The best weapon of the 21st-century autocrat is not violence, but demoralization — wearing down the opposition by making it seem there’s no legal avenues to save democracy. As Michelle Goldberg explained Monday in the New York Times, there’s a “growing hopelessness born of a sense that dislodging Trump has bought American democracy only a brief reprieve,” and the result is “progressives retreating into private life to preserve their sanity, a retreat that will only hasten democracy’s decay.”

Without violence, the Trumpist right can pretend their gutting of democracy is above-board and grind their opponents into a state of learned helplessness. Violence, however, makes it very hard to pretend that rising fascism is anything but what it is. Without the Capitol riot capturing the public’s attention, Trump’s attempts to steal the 2020 election through bureaucratic corruption could have been shoved down the memory hole. Right-wing violence, on the other hand, is unambiguous. It solidifies the left’s resistance instead of undermining it.

Part of the infatuation with violence is due to Trump’s personality. Unlike his father, who was arrested in a KKK riot in 1927, Trump is a physical coward. He loves the idea of violence, however, and adores sending minions out to commit violence in his name. That was true when he praised rioting neo-Nazis as “very fine people” in 2017, when he sent cops to tear gas peaceful protesters in Lafayette Park in 2020, and when he incited the Capitol riot in 2021.

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Trump likely understands that his most ardent followers also love violence and are also caught up in fantasies of beating and killing liberals — and of getting away with doing so. An analysis from Media Matters released Tuesday shows that the Rittenhouse verdict was a traffic bonanza for right-wing pages on Facebook. Such pages got nearly 30 million interactions on November 19, an especially high number since the verdict was announced late on a Friday, which is usually a low traffic period online. The only other days these pages got more traffic were in response to January 6 and its aftermath, Trump’s acquittal for inciting the riot, and Biden’s inauguration. Notably, 4 out of the 6 highest traffic days were due to Trump and his allies exalting or inspiring political violence. Clearly, the base is really into the idea of cracking skulls in the name of Trumpism.

To be certain, Republicans have other uses for political violence.

The beatification of Rittenhouse, like the tear-gassing of protesters in Lafayette Park, is about scaring progressives away from protest. That could matter if and when progressives take to the streets in response to efforts to steal elections. Cleaning house of honest election officials, to replace them with Trump stooges, is also being aided through violence, as demonstrated by the number of election officials quitting rather than put up with death threats.

But mostly, the violence seems to be about motivating the Trump base. The idea of a bloodless fascist takeover doesn’t really get the right-wing juices going. What fires them up is memes celebrating the deaths of political opponents. A lot of these folks have been spending thousands of dollars for years, even decades, building up arsenals. Destroying democracy through paperwork probably feels unsatisfactory. As one man at a Turning Point event in October plaintively asked: “When do we get to use the guns?”

Keeping these folks activated and engaged means dangling the fantasy of political violence. Trump and Carlson get that, which is why they’re determined to turn Rittenhouse into a right-wing hero.

The best non-alcoholic wines to serve at Thanksgiving

The traditional Thanksgiving dinner has a reputation for being particularly challenging to successfully pair with wine, but finding a nonalcoholic accompaniment that works with white and dark meat turkey, half a dozen (or more!) sides, and heavily spiced desserts used to be all but impossible. Until recently, the only wineglass-appropriate beverages for nondrinkers were sparkling apple ciders. While there’s nothing wrong with a good old-fashioned bottle of Martinelli’s, it’s just too sweet to bring out the best in herbed stuffing, tart cranberry sauce, and cinnamon-spiced pies. Luckily, there are now plenty of sophisticated nonalcoholic wine alternatives, from those that try to directly emulate wines, to more adventurous flavor combinations beyond a winemaker’s wildest dreams! For something a bit more grown-up than what you used to drink at the kid’s table, there are now zero-proof options to satisfy any palate.

Sparkling alternatives

In general, dealcoholized wines are horribly disappointing, even those made by actual winemakers. Many have flummoxing rave reviews and taste like expensive bottles of too-sweet grape juice to me. Dealcoholized sparkling, however, is the exception that proves the rule. Among wine drinkers, the easiest pairing that will get you from the first hors d’oeuvres to the last bite of pumpkin pie is a good, dry sparkling, and there are some excellent zero-proof options.

For an autumn-fruit-forward sparkling, with notes of floral pear and tart green and sweet red apples, Fre Sparkling Brut comes in both individual cans and full-size bottles. Freixenet Alcohol Removed Sparkling White has a creamier mouthfeel, and a yeasty, shortbready body with a dry, lemon-juice finish to balance bites full of heavy cream, butter, and gravy.

Bright white wine alternatives

For white wine alternatives, a bright and bracing Sauvignon Blanc analogue, with tart green apple and sharp green bell pepper, like Acid League’s Sauvage Wine Proxy is an excellent choice. Though made with Sauvignon Blanc grapes, Sauvage is not an imitation of the wine varietal; it does, however, fill the same niche. An evergreen forest’s worth of piney notes from spruce, cedar, and juniper are even better than the original at rounding out a rich and carb-heavy Thanksgiving meal.

Further afield from the traditional Sauv Blanc, but with the same mouthwatering mineral quality, is Unified Ferments Qi Dan. Brewed with oolong tea, the semi-roasted halfway point between a grassy summer green and a cozy winter black tea, Qi Dan is redolent with guaiac wood on the nose, with a finish of flint and pumice to counterbalance each bite of buttery mashed potatoes.

Non #2 Caramelized Pear and Konbu is a unique, lightly fizzed wine alternative that smells like a richly spiced poached pear, with huge star anise, cardamom, and vanilla on the nose that made me want to bury my face in my wineglass. I worried it would be too sweet for the savory parts of the meal, but the first sip proved my fears entirely unfounded. On the tongue, Non #2 has an effervescent salinity and clean mineral finish that clears the palate and makes you crave more (both of food and the drink itself)!

Buttery white wine alternatives

Buttery white wines like California Chardonnays are discouraged with Thanksgiving dinner because their barrel-aged oakiness clashes with most foods. Luckily, deliciously buttery nonalcoholic wine alternatives without the oak barrel baggage are more readily available, and will pair beautifully with your bird, or whatever else is on the table.

Empress Ficus Zing is a nonalcoholic take on mead that, while made with honey, is neither heavy nor sweet, but rather nicely acidic, with toasty flavors from hojicha tea and a buttery yeastiness that tastes like drinking brioche.

Unified Ferments Snow Chrysanthemum is a honey bomb on the nose, but green and savory on the palate, with a pink Prague Powder saltiness that gives it a deliciously fatty mouthfeel.

For a fruitier option, Honeycrisp apple fans will love Jukes 1. It comes in with the creamy round sweetness of the popular apples joined by refreshing notes of cucumber. All Jukes Cordialities come in tiny, travel-friendly bottles that contain enough concentrate for two glasses, and I found that one part Jukes 1 to eight parts water was the best ratio for an easy-drinking, food-friendly white wine alternative.

Bold red alternatives

Just because turkey is white meat doesn’t mean you must banish reds from the table. Like Zinfandel or Syrah/Shiraz, nonalcoholic wine alternatives that are easy on the tannins, with high acidity from juicy red fruits and a bit (or a lot!) of spice will complement the richness of many Thanksgiving sides without overwhelming even the whitest part of the turkey breast.

For a Zinfandel parallel, Jukes 6 bursts with dark berries like blackberry and black currant, and is sweet, tart, and just a tiny bit bitter in all the right amounts. For this one, I like to mix only six parts of water to one part concentrate, which yields a luscious red wine consistency.

Non #4, made with beet, sansho, and jalapeño, reminded me of an old-world Syrah: a lighter-bodied red with lovely umami flavors and a distinctly vegetal spiciness, plus just enough savory saltiness to make you reach for another sip. While excellent for a traditional turkey dinner, Non #4 would also pair brilliantly with vegetarian entrées, and especially enlivens anything mushroom-based.

Though described as tasting like a smoked cherry old-fashioned, I found Curious Elixir No. 5 to be a dead ringer for a new-world Shiraz. A big, meaty mouthfeel, dark cherry flavor, and a very zesty black pepper finish would sing alongside herbed stuffing, white and dark meat, and fatty foods like gravy and macaroni and cheese. It’s also unmatched on this list when it comes to pairing with chocolate desserts.

Blushing rosé alternatives

If you prefer to drink nonalcoholic rosé all day, you’ll want a wine alternative that isn’t too sweet, with some fruity acidity and maybe some unexpected tongue-tingling notes.

Jukes 8 takes you from the end of summer, with a big watermelon nose, to autumn apple and a crisp, vegetal rhubarb on the tongue; it finishes with a seasonally appropriate pomegranate that lends just a touch of necessary astringency to pair with food.

Woodland, another lightly fizzy honey wine from Empress, is more linear than Ficus Zing, with a dry green tea base, tart pink berry notes, and an inspired blast of cool juniper on the finish.

Acid League’s Zephyr, with sweet strawberries brought along into harvest season by biting red cranberries and pomegranate, plus zesty herbal notes of lemon verbena and hibiscus, are offset by the tickle of pink and Sichuan peppercorns. This one is easy to sip on its own, too, so maybe stash a few extra bottles for when the company goes home.

Bitter apéritif alternatives

Not a fan of wine or wine alternatives? Bitter drinks stimulate saliva production and settle the stomach, so they’re ideal to serve with big meals. But who wants to mix cocktails while trying to pull a turkey out of the oven and make sure that the sweet potato and green bean casseroles make it to the table warm?

For Bitter For Worse’s premixed cocktails take the measuring, shaking, and stirring out of making meal-enhancing cocktails; just mix one to one with water or seltzer over ice. The Saskatoon varietal is halfway between a cocktail and a light-bodied red wine, with just enough astringent tannins to complement but not overwhelm traditional poultry herbs, and a vegetal bitterness that offsets cranberry sauce’s pucker. For an unexpected accompaniment to pumpkin pie, Smoky No. 56amplifies the eugenol, the molecule in the spices (especially clove) that makes your tongue go just a little bit numb, making for a delicious and unusually multisensory dessert.

For a complete cocktail that’s ready right out of the bottle, Curious Elixir No. 4‘s citrus bite, with notes of bergamot, blood orange, and Sicilian lime, makes sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce in particular sparkle. Ginseng, turmeric, and holy basil add some grounding, earthy herbal flavor. Curious Elixir No. 1, with pomegranate and orange, both bitter and sweet, herbal fennel, and familiar, earthy gentian root tastes like a classic amaro, and contains rhodiola to fight stress and fatigue (great for anyone who had to deal with holiday travel!).

With so many options to choose from, it’s tempting to go all out and pick a bubbly to start, a red and a white for the main course (or a rosé to split the difference), and a nice, tummy-soothing bitter spritz as a digestive. Whatever your choice, any of these meal-enhancing, zero-proof alternatives to wine will make sure that you or your alcohol-abstaining guests enjoy Thanksgiving dinner as much as — maybe more than! — wine drinkers.

It’s not just Joe Biden — being president has always been incredibly unpopular

President Joe Biden is getting an awful lot of advice these days. This happens whenever a president’s approval ratings drop and members of his party start to panic. It seems to be a congenital condition for Democrats in particular, as Republicans are more adept at keeping their heads down and barreling over rough political terrain.

Biden’s approval ratings are averaging in the low to mid-40s, where Donald Trump was mired throughout his entire presidency. I don’t recall the Republicans publicly wringing their hands over that fact, but then the Trump presidency was so overwhelmed with scandal and corruption that there literally was no time to worry about such ordinary political concerns. Every day seemed like a survival test. But Biden is a standard-issue president and his low numbers have become a focus of the media so, therefore, it’s a crisis.

I’m sure the administration is frustrated by this since, by all objective standards, they’ve accomplished a great deal in the 10 months they’ve been in office. Considering the fact that they took office with a floundering economy, a once-in-a-century pandemic at its peak and on the heels of an attempted coup, it’s even more impressive. They were handed a giant mess.

And they’ve done a lot. They initiated the biggest vaccination campaign in history and, all in all, it’s been massively successful despite a large faction of anti-science holdouts who have kept the virus going by refusing to get vaccinated. It’s not over yet, and people are still dying in large numbers, but a whole lot of Americans feel a lot safer today than they did a year ago.

They passed two gigantic pieces of legislation, the first of which, The American Rescue Plan, has revived the economy at an astonishing pace, rapidly helping to bring down unemployment and raise wages. They are still dealing with the fallout from the global pandemic with disrupted supply chains and pent-up demand, which has sparked inflation, putting a damper on people’s perception of the recovery. But there is an expectation that these are temporary hiccups — as the markets evidently believe since they have been soaring. (The supply chain problems are already easing.)

With the narrowest possible majorities, they also managed to pass a big infrastructure bill with bipartisan support, which is something of a unicorn in these polarized times, and have successfully passed their big Build Back Better legislation through the House with the hope of getting the two hold-out Democratic centrists, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, to sign on before the end of the year. If that passes it will end up being the most consequential first year of an administration since Franklin Roosevelt.

So why are Biden’s approval ratings so low?

Yes, there is inflation and people really don’t like seeing those gas prices go up. It feels like a slap in the face after all the fear and panic over the last year. And the Delta variant dashed everyone’s hopes that we were putting COVID behind us. But the mood is sour everywhere.

Many foreign leaders are experiencing a similar hit to their approval ratings. French President Emmanuel Macron is at 40 percent, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is just above him at 41 percent and even the leader who was once exalted as the COVID star, Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand, is down in the low 40s. Joe Biden is wildly popular compared to Britain’s Boris Johnson of Britain, a conservative, who is all the way down to 32 percent. Germany’s Angela Merkel is at 70 percent, but she’s leaving office and her party lost the recent election so … (In case you were wondering, Trump’s approval rating is also at 41 percent.)

But here in the U.S., it’s also the case that this is simply something that tends to happen whenever a new president comes into office and tries to do big things — whether it’s trying to right the ship, make major progress or effect some massive rollback.

Jamelle Bouie in the New York Times recently called up the ghost of the GOP’s (former) favorite president, Ronald Reagan, to illustrate this phenomenon. He quotes an article from this point in Reagan’s term which could have easily been written today about Joe Biden. The man whom everyone thinks of as being a hugely popular president actually had a major decline in popularity in his first year. In fact, it’s not at all uncommon because, as Bouie explains, “public opinion functions like a thermostat, in which voters try to adjust the temperature of policy when it moves too far in either direction.”

The more ambitious a president is or appears to be, the stronger the thermostatic reaction against him. Biden has spent most of this year broadcasting the size and scope of his proposed agenda and has signed, thus far, two bills totaling nearly $3 trillion in spending. That is ambitious, to say the least, and we should expect the public to react in response. Combine a thermostatic response against Biden with the usual first-year decline (as we saw with Reagan), and you have the first part of a structural explanation for the president’s political woes.

In other words, these things happen.

When you combine all the events outlined above, inflation, the pandemic, the normal thermostatic public reaction, it’s not too hard to see why Biden’s approval is slumping. Yet all across Democratic punditland there are people calling for Biden to make more speeches, change his message, get out there and sell, hold press conferences, conscript party members to do the same, fight back! The press is covering it as a major crisis, largely driven by “wokism,” culture war issues and yes, an agenda that they are pushing the public to see as far too ambitious. (I heard one anchor on MSNBC ask a while back, “is the Biden administration just too liberal for America?” when reporting on the latest poll numbers.) It’s a wonder that Biden’s numbers are as high as they are.

But as Bouie says in his column:

It is hard to act as an ambitious president without incurring a penalty, even if your policies are popular, as Biden’s are. It is also hard, as president, to be popular, period. Every person who has held the office has hit a rough spot and struggled to regain his footing.

Perhaps Joe Biden, having been around for a very long time, has a sense of this and is just carrying on without responding to the carping and hand-wringing with the knowledge that much of this is out of his hands and that which isn’t will not be solved by “messaging” or speeches. A lot of being a successful president is just how skillfully you ride the wave.

Our 24 best vegan Thanksgiving sides for meatless magic

A vegan side dish or two at your table this Thanksgiving is, like Audrey Hepburn once said about Paris, always a good idea. (Better, in fact, as it’s much more doable.) Whether your centerpiece is turkey or plant-based, these sides will stitch your feast together to make a wonderful and very edible tapestry.

24 best vegan Thanksgiving side dishes

Greens

1. Grilled Broccolini Salad with Basil-Walnut Vinaigrette

Don’t let “grilled” put you off if you don’t have a grill! You can use a grill pan or just sear on a hot cast iron skillet. Make extra of the vinaigrette, too, to keep on hand for future salads.

2. Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Pears and Pistachios

The winner of our Best Green Holiday Side contest, this dish comes together in one baking sheet. It has only five ingredients and you know three of them (the others you almost certainly have already).

3. Suzanne Goin’s Slow-Cooked Cavolo Nero (aka Tuscan Kale)

This kale side was originally conceived as a step in a recipe, but it’s so good just as is that a lot of cooks who’ve made it just abandon the other steps to eat it on its own.

4. Roasted Endive with Walnut Vinaigrette

We’re so happy somebody roasted an endive, typically spotted in salads, and confirmed it is indeed very good, especially contrasted with a sweet walnut vinaigrette.

5. Molly Stevens’ Roasted Fennel, Red Onion, and Orange Salad

It’s hard to resist a dish with a description like this: ingredients “walk into an oven together, and morph into a warm winter salad that virtually dresses itself.”

6. Spicy Oven-Roasted Okra

Not the usual green you expect to see at the Thanksgiving table, but it won’t disappoint (no slimy texture here).

7. Cashew Milk–Braised Cabbage with Crunchy Chile Oil

This savory, spicy, dramatic dish has main course potential, but is just as good as part of a larger spread.

8. Miso–Brown Sugar Cabbage

This dish comes together in a flash—perfect for making last minute if you have these staples in your cupboard.

Roots

9. Balsamic-Roasted Shallots

While this recipe does require one special ingredient (sherry), if you have it or plan on getting it, there’s no excuse not to make this with any onion of choice.

10. Roasted Vegetables with Bright and Crunchy Herbed Topping

This dish is a celebration of MSG, but if you’re skeptical, replace it in equal parts with nutritional yeast.

11. Carrots Cooked Forever, à la Roy Finamore

The rare find that’s sophisticated enough for adults but simple (and soft) enough for babies, this is a good recipe to have going in the background as you prepare the other players of your feast.

12. Miso-Maple Roasted Roots

Use a medley of any roast vegetables you like for this neat little concoction.

13. Whipped Hummus with Roasted Carrots and Za’atar Oil from Hetty McKinnon

The star of this recipe is 100% the whipped hummus, the result of a kitchen “accident.” Use it with any roasted roots or crudité, or on its own as a dip.

14. Vegan Mashed Potatoes

If you need a solid back pocket plant-based mashed potato recipe, this is it.

More colorful things!

15. Crispy Delicata Rings with Currant, Fennel, and Apple Relish

The winner of our Best Vegetarian Holiday Side is vegan, and who doesn’t love delicata, the least fussy squash of them all?

16. Roasted Cauliflower with Cumin and Cilantro

A sort of pared-back aloo gobi you can make in the oven, this is a dish you can keep on rotation well after Thanksgiving.

17. Moro’s Warm Squash and Chickpea Salad with Tahini

Think of this as a gratin without the cheese—rich but not food coma-inducing (on its own, anyway).

18. Mushrooms with Caramelized Shallots and Fresh Thyme

This recipe comes with a warning that you may need to have someone by the smoke alarm fanning away the fumes—and that’s how you know it’s worth it.

19. Bon Appétit’s Radicchio Salad with Sourdough Dressing

Bread masquerading as dressing? Sign us up.

20. Better-Than-Canned-Pumpkin Butternut Squash Purée

It’s not a bad idea to sub this in for a pumpkin pie recipe, either!

We love bread

21. No-Fuss Vegan Cornbread

A go-to for any vegan feast.

22. Mama’s Bread Rolls

A mash-up of bread and potatoes that’s then deep fried to perfection, this is a crowd-pleaser of a dish that’s just as good at room temperature.

23. Scallion Star Bread

Vegan butter comes to the rescue in this festive showstopper you should probably repeat in December and beyond.

24. Kombucha Muffins from Jerrelle Guy

Ready in less than 30 minutes, this Genius recipe shape shifts between sweet and savory based on what you serve it with.

25. Vegan Sweet Potato Biscuits

Like the muffins above, you can choose your own sweet or savory adventure here.

Profound climate change may be inevitable, but society can go on

The news reports from the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow this month followed a predictable pattern. World leaders took to the stage one after the other, each of them issuing dire warnings about imminent climate disaster and concluding with urgent calls to action: It’s not too late…but we must act now!

This message feels tired, its urgency attenuated from decades of repetition. “Now” was once the 1970s, with the birth of the modern environmental movement; “now” was the Kyoto Protocol and its carbon-reduction commitments of the 1990s; “now” was Paris 2015. Now, some believe, is now too late: The tipping point has come. We’re at the apex of the curve, on the verge of an unstoppable cascade that will irreversibly alter the systems governing the natural world. It’s too late. And if we, as a society, copped to that fact, we’d all benefit immensely.

This is the argument of Deep Adaptation, a movement launched in 2018 by Jem Bendell, a professor of sustainability leadership at the University of Cumbria in the United Kingdom. The movement situates the conversation about society’s future in a new realm, one in which catastrophic climate change is taken as a given. Bendell says the world will become an unfamiliar place: Everything we’ve known about the dynamics driving our lives will be overturned by climate-induced disruption, leading to societal collapse. Only when we accept this inevitability can we prepare for the coming catastrophe “in ways that may reduce harm, especially by reducing conflict and trauma,” writes Bendell.

Deep Adaptation has attracted a worldwide following: The founding document was downloaded more than a half million times, according to Bendell, and forums have solidified a base of participants, from students to psychologists to scholars. Recently, more than 500 scholars signed an open letter espousing the main tenets of Deep Adaptation, and urging policymakers to “engage openly with the risk of disruption and even collapse of our societies.”

As an author who delved into climate-change science for my book “Deep Salt Water,” I’m compelled by the sober and dispassionate honesty of Deep Adaptation. I find Bendell’s scientific conclusions convincing, even though many experts disagree with them. I’m also heartened by his framework: Solutions can’t be found unless the problem is posed correctly. Where I diverge from Deep Adaptation is in its emphasis on societal collapse. Where Bendell sees a sort of fait accompli, I see accumulating evidence that, despite the imminent climate crisis, technology will bolster the pillars that uphold society.

I discovered Deep Adaptation after reading a preprint study about climate anxiety among youth. The study — submitted to Lancet Planetary Health but yet to undergo peer review — surveyed 10,000 people aged 16 to 25, from 10 countries. It revealed a population riddled by fear and angered by the betrayal they ascribe to people in power. The authors of the study are part of a burgeoning community of psychologists who specialize in dealing with climate anxiety.

These psychologists urge their colleagues to recognize climate-related grief and fear as a rational response to actual events, not as a manifestation of an underlying psychopathology such as anxiety or depression. Despite offering a necessary forum to youth in distress, this therapy continues to promote the idea that climate catastrophe can be avoided, or at least reduced. As Caroline Hickman, a co-author of the youth climate anxiety study and a lecturer at the University of Bath, tweeted last month: “Between apocalyptic thinking and naive misplaced optimism is radical hope. Things are bad, AND we can change the end of this story.”

To me, that message is disingenuous, if not unintentionally cruel. How can youth be supported if their anxieties are initially validated, only to be amplified as climate commitments are broken by leaders, and disasters keep coming?

The Deep Adaptation movement creates a better framework, arguing that people build psychological resilience by contemplating four guiding questions:

What do we most value that we want to keep and how? That’s a question of resilience. What could we let go of so as not to make matters worse? That’s a question of relinquishment. What could we bring back to help us with these difficult times? That’s a question of restoration. With what and whom shall we make peace as we awaken to our common mortality? That’s a question of reconciliation.

Through this framework, Bendell succeeds in distilling a terrifying future into a series of questions that invite people into conversation. By doing so, he gives us a language to speak the unthinkable.

Bendell’s 2018 manifesto, which laid the foundation for the movement, has been sharply criticized on scientific and moral grounds. The most comprehensive critique argues that Bendell misinterprets the predictions of climate models, ignores important caveats, and adopts a “doomist” narrative that, the critics say, will lead to despair and inaction, exacerbating existing inequalities and sapping energy from the fight for climate justice. Bendell accepted some of these criticisms, making a few corrections and updates to his original manuscript. But he countered others, holding steadfast to the broader principles motivating Deep Adaptation. (The New York Times reported that Bendell’s original manuscript was “submitted to and rejected by a peer-reviewed sustainability journal.”)

In my assessment, the political context tips the scale in favor of Bendell’s view: Even if, on a purely scientific level, we could stop the feedback loops already set in motion, our political, economic, and governance structures have proven incapable of proactively responding with measures commensurate to the threat.

Despite its significant contribution to the thinking about climate change, Deep Adaptation contains a weakness at its core: the premise that climate change will lead to society’s collapse, defined as “the uneven ending of normal modes of sustenance, shelter, security, pleasure, identity, and meaning,” Bendell writes.

Bendell’s logical leap from catastrophic climate change to societal collapse betrays his stance against capitalism, which he has blamed for the climate crisis. Bendell denigrates mainstream adaptation efforts as “encouraging people to try harder to be nicer and better rather than coming together in solidarity to either undermine or overthrow a system that demands we participate in environmental degradation.” By implication, those efforts — the unglamorous work of revamping infrastructure, engaging in urban and ecosystem planning, coordinating supply chains for food, water, and raw materials — are superficial, unlike the profound ethical and spiritual transformation that Deep Adaptation envisions. Societal collapse, in this worldview, becomes the event that triggers a creative reimaging of human civilization.

Blinded by utopian visions, Bendell seems to overlook the advancements, in science and technology and other realms, that are capable of upholding society. In sectors such as energy, water, materials science, and agriculture, basic science and innovative technology are spawning new realities that could stabilize societies, even amid horrific shifts in the natural world. Some of this technology, including large-scale nuclear fusion reactors and smaller nuclear batteries, will reduce carbon emissions. Other technologies, especially those developed with synthetic biology, may help us adapt to a warming planet by, for example, improving crop yields and revolutionizing manufacturing. By seizing a power once reserved for nature — the power to direct evolution — scientists can tackle some of the very problems humans have created through their consumption of fossil fuels.

None of these developments is a panacea. None will stop catastrophic climate change. None prefigure a world I want to live in. Yet they all refute the idea of societal collapse.

Bendell’s failure to recognize the promise of technology is a tremendous loss for policymakers, activists, psychotherapists, and industry. We currently lack a framework for discussing the work needed to prepare for climate change. That work pertains not only to physical infrastructure but to psychology and ethics — especially as it regards the predicted mass migration of people whose homelands will no longer be habitable.

In my view, Deep Adaptation is perfectly poised to facilitate this difficult conversation — if it eases its focus on societal collapse. Bendell’s framework encourages us to “make sense of our situation in ways that discourage defensive or violent approaches and encourage more kind, wise, and accountable responses.”

This type of thinking is lucid, productive, and necessary. I’ll hold it more fiercely than any vapid statement coming from Glasgow.

Marianne Apostolides is an award-winning author of seven books, most recently the novel “I Can’t Get You Out of My Mind.”

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

Escape from TrumpWorld: “Anonymous” White House aide Miles Taylor on post-Trump trauma

Almost every week we learn “new” information about the Trump regime’s attempted (and ongoing) coup and other crimes against democracy and the rule of law. These supposed revelations are now barely newsworthy. This new type of normal is the way democracy dies.

Donald Trump’s underlings, as it turns out, issued detailed instructions to Vice President Mike Pence on how to sabotage the counting of the Electoral College votes last Jan. 6, in order to send the results of the 2020 presidential election back to Republican-controlled state legislatures in “battleground” states. If that failed to change the outcome, the final decision — as specified in the Constitution — would have been made in the House of Representatives, where Trump would presumably have been “elected.”

It’s impossible to know exactly how bad things would have gotten after such an outcome. The United States likely would have seen mass public unrest on a virtually unprecedented scale, perhaps offering Trump an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act, order the military into the streets, and suspend the Constitution. In effect, that manufactured emergency would have granted Donald Trump the powers of a dictator — which was quite likely his goal all along.

Ultimately, Donald Trump and his regime’s array of crimes against democracy, American society and humanity should not have been a surprise to any reasonably intelligent person. When future historians look back on the Age of Trump, one central theme will likely be that America’s political class almost unanimously knew about Trump’s misdeeds, and for a variety of reasons were silent or complicit or both.

There were certainly whistleblowers — but they were far too few.

There were the “adults in the room” who tried to rein in Trump’s worst impulses, including the retired generals John Kelly, H.R. McMaster and Jim Mattis, who at least prevented him from starting a nuclear war or provoking another global catastrophe. But for the most part these “adults in the room” remained silent both during and after their time in Trump’s administration, and did not act to remove him from office or aid in his impeachment.

There were opportunists, who for personal or political reasons (or both), found ways to advance their own agendas through Trump’s malfeasance. They may have personally disliked or even detested Trump but, in the end, he was a valuable means to an end.

There were people with books to sell and other ways to cash in on their privileged access to Trump, often by hoarding the secrets about his misconduct that they had accumulated.

Miles Taylor, who worked as chief of staff to former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, was one of the few members of the Trump regime who attempted to resist from within. Under the name “Anonymous,” Taylor wrote the much-discussed 2018 New York Times op-ed “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration,” in which he warned the American people and the world about the great danger that Trump represented. Taylor also sought to reassure onlookers that there were rational patriots within that unhinged regime, doing their utmost to control Trump’s worst inclinations.

One can debate the morality of Taylor’s choice to remain inside the Trump regime as a truth-teller and human guardrail, but there can be no question he has paid a price, becoming a major enemy for Trump and his loyal supporters. Taylor has also been maligned by many in the political class and the media, as well as liberals and progressives, because he did not resign, make himself public and reveal what he knew.

Taylor later wrote the book “A Warning,” still as “Anonymous,” before later revealing his identity. His op-ed “Inside the fight for the GOP’s soul” was recently featured in the Deseret News.

In this interview, to be published by Salon in two parts, Taylor discusses the threats that he and other former members of the Trump regime have endured for speaking out, and what this reveals about America’s worsening democracy crisis. He also reflects on his initial decision to join the Trump administration, in hopes of goal of bringing some level of professionalism to what he and others knew would be a volatile and dangerous presidency.

Later in this conversation, Taylor explains his views of that the events of Jan. 6, which he says were utterly predictable, adding that senior officials in the Trump administration and the Republican Party’s leadership knew all along that such a destructive outcome was more likely than not.

Given all that has happened since your decision to speak out against the Trump administration, with the events of Jan. 6 and America’s escalating democracy crisis more generally, how are you feeling?

I recently spoke with someone else who left the Trump administration in protest. He told me, “It never really gets easier.” That comment really resonated with me. People who made that choice have post-traumatic stress disorder. Those of us who joined the Trump administration to try to do the right thing and then left in protest have been under siege by MAGAworld ever since. This is also emblematic of the bigger picture of American politics at present. The discourse has gotten very violent. It is not just vitriolic, it is violent. Those of us who left Trumpland and have spoken out against him are experiencing this in a very visceral way.

The person I just spoke with no longer lives in their home and in a sense is really on the run and living with day-to-day personal life trauma, from having made what they felt was the correct professional choice.

Let me contrast my experience with leaving the Trump administration with what would have happened if I had resigned from the Bush administration in protest. In that event, I would have been maligned by GOP figures and then they would’ve forgotten about me. I wouldn’t be fearing for my life and on the run. But people who’ve made such a choice in the Trump era are literally still fearing for their lives. In some cases, some are still on the run. Many others have lost homes, jobs, marriages and the like.

It’s a really different environment. This is because of Trump in many ways. Trump is the person who has really given a permission slip to the people who want to inject violence into American politics as a means of intimidation, to silence the opposition.

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What did you expect would happen when you and others decided to leave or otherwise stand up against Trump and the administration?

I fully expected from the moment that I submitted an op-ed years ago to the New York Times that it would have severe negative repercussions for my life. It was clear what our political environment was like. In some ways it is actually encouraging that all these people who knew that opposing Trump from the inside would lead to a self-detonation of their personal lives still went ahead and did it anyway.

That gives me some cause for hope. There is strength in numbers. I’m hopeful that we will see a slow snowball rolling through MAGAland consisting of people who are disaffected, that left the president’s orbit and are tired of it all and want to move on. If more people en masse are willing to speak the truth about Trump and this moment, to stand up to the Big Lie or Trump in their actual communities, then the price for doing so will go down.

I actually see that in my own small sample size of the community I grew up in. People who were afraid during the four years of Trump to admit how crazy they thought the guy was, and then, after Jan. 6, felt like, “Oh, thank God! One, he’s out of office. Two, it culminated in something terrible.” Now they feel more comfortable to speak the truth, but they’re not going to do so if there’s not air cover, if there are not more people willing to speak up.

Puzzle through this scenario and decision-making process with me. People lingered on in the Trump administration and larger orbit. They got what they wanted, be it policies or visibility and some amount of power and other rewards. Then at some point they decide, “I’m going to bail.” But what about accountability? What about responsibility?

Let’s use the example of someone joining the Mafia or another criminal organization. They extort a neighborhood and burn down all these houses. But then when they get to the school, one of them decides that is going too far — they’re going to go public and write a book about their time in the mob. That decision does not exonerate that person for burning down all those houses.

This is of course totally self-serving, so I don’t blame someone for writing me off by saying this. But the people who went in at the beginning of the administration were far and away not Trumpers. The vast majority of people who went into the administration at the beginning were solid Republicans who’d worked in past administrations, hadn’t supported Trump at all, but felt like, “All right, this thing’s pretty crazy. Let’s go in and try to stabilize the ship.”

I mean that all the way up to the Cabinet. In fact, I would argue that at the beginning of his term, the Cabinet was largely of that worldview: that the man who had just assumed the presidency was probably unqualified for the job and needed people who knew what the hell they were doing around him. They were largely of the view that he probably wouldn’t acclimate to the job, but they could manage the fallout. Over time, I think almost all of those folks came to the conclusion that it was worse than they had even imagined when they decided to join the administration.

Then comes that next moral question. Someone may have joined a mob and not known it was a mob, and then said, “Well, now they’re burning down houses.” Alternatively, maybe they joined the mob and said, “Hey, we’re going to dismantle this thing from the inside or change them to go do bake sales instead of burn down houses.” But then, once you don’t succeed, you have another moral choice to make.

The first is, can you do any good and stop the bad from happening? And once you realize you’re not able to do good anymore, you arrive at a key decision. This is when saying no is no longer enough — that has really got to be the time to go.

I’ve got personal opinions about folks who stayed too long. In my case, once we hit that inflection point of saying no, and it no longer stopped bad things from happening because Trump would just start overruling us, to me the moral choice became very clear.

At this point, you’re no longer doing any good. So, you just have to call it out. That’s where I think the inflection has to be for folks. Unfortunately, you’ve got a lot of people who ended up at the end of this administration who were the echo chamber for Donald Trump. They benefited from being the echo chamber because it let them get closer to him. This is not dissimilar from what one sees in authoritarian regimes.

I don’t look at the administration and say, “Every person that went in was a Trumper, and therefore they were bad.” Most of them were just general public servants. But what happened over time, and what decisions they made along the way, is how history will and should judge those folks.

But in the meantime, the recriminations can come later. I think what’s most important is that even those who were loyal up until Jan. 6 and have not spoken out yet still have an obligation to do so. They should share the things that they would say privately, have the courage to come out and tell the world who this man really is. Because I don’t know what the hell else will wake up people who still support Donald Trump. Other than that his whole inner circle could come out and say, “He’s a bad, bad man, and he is totally incompetent.”

What was your reaction to the events of Jan. 6, the attempted coup and attack on the Capitol?

Watching those events, there was no doubt to me that a coup was in progress.

If war beget war after 9/11, what happens after Jan. 6? That’s what we need to be thinking about here. This is not over. There is an ongoing effort to subvert our democracy. It is now being actively systematized by Donald Trump and enabled by his elected acolytes in Congress and candidates running for Congress. They want to rewrite the rules, literally, to benefit them. I can’t imagine something more antithetical to a democratic republic than that. It’s a true test, and a huge proportion of the American people are blind to that threat. We are in one of those inflection moments where truly horrible things can happen.

In my career I have focused on national security and public safety work. To me, this is the single biggest national security threat this country has faced in my lifetime. The threats to our democracy are greater now from an illiberal, unreformed GOP than they were from al-Qaida or than they were from ISIS or have been from Russia. And perhaps even from the threat of the Chinese Communist Party. That’s how serious the strain of illiberalism that’s coursing through our political veins is to the health of our democracy.

Given your experience in the Trump administration, were the events of Jan. 6 a surprise? Or was it just confirmation of what you always suspected could happen?

Genuinely, anyone who voted for Donald Trump should have had enough data points to anticipate this could potentially be the outcome. It’s why during the campaign and the GOP nomination in 2016, so many of us behind the scenes were actively working to thwart Trump’s rise.

It was not even the thought that he could win the presidency, because none of us thought he could win it. I can’t remember a single person that was working with me among the House Republican leadership who thought Donald Trump could win.

But they did all think that merely his achievement in becoming the GOP frontrunner, and then the nominee, would have severe negative repercussions on not just the party but on the country. For example, there was real fear in Paul Ryan’s office that if Trump got the nomination, it would give legitimacy to his very isolationist, bigoted worldview.

Given all the things that Donald Trump said during the campaign, one should have been able to extrapolate a straight line to something like Jan. 6. And it’s also why people went into the administration.

It’s firmly my view that I should let people speak for themselves who haven’t spoken publicly. But one very prominent person in the administration, who’s not come out, in my opinion, hard enough publicly against the president, said to me toward the very beginning, “I’m joining this team because I’m scared as hell for the country.” That was one of their explanations to me about why I should come join the team. So here was someone at the Cabinet level at the beginning, who was already foreseeing how bad this could end up.

Jan. 6 was not an aberration. If you ran this scenario a thousand times, it is probably the result you would get 900 of those times. I think 50 of those times it ends up far worse and more tragically. Maybe another 50, they don’t breach the walls of the Capitol. But in almost every scenario, Trump ends up doing exactly what he did and fomenting exactly what he did on Jan. 6. That should have been foreseeable and now it’s been made real.

That outcome and events should factor into the public’s considerations on whether to support Trump if he runs in 2024. Moreover, it should factor into whether we embrace the people that Donald Trump selects to be his heirs. The latter is crucially important because it has now been proven that Donald Trump is that large of a danger to our republic. Therefore, it is incumbent upon us to act.

Coming next week: More on the inner workings of the Trump White House, in the second part of this conversation.

More from Salon on Donald Trump’s revenge tour:

Wisconsin GOP wants to seize control of elections — and even send commissioners to jail

Wisconsin Republicans are pushing to seize total control of elections in the state, even calling for criminal charges against state election commissioners while stoking conspiracy theories about former President Donald Trump’s electoral defeat.

The most powerful Republican state lawmaker is backing calls to charge members of the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC), which was actually created by the GOP-led legislature just five years ago — and this comes in response to an investigation that turned up no evidence of voter fraud. A Republican member of the state Assembly’s Constitution and Ethics committee wants to decertify last year’s election results. And U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, a Republican and Trump loyalist, is calling for state lawmakers to stage a complete takeover of elections.

The Republican proposals are a “blatantly partisan and coordinated attempt to baselessly challenge the integrity of democracy in our great state,” WEC administrator Meagan Wolfe, the state’s top election official, said in a statement.

These Republican complaints center on a vote by the WEC during the early days of the pandemic last year. A recent report by the state’s Legislative Audit Bureau found no evidence of fraud in the 2020 election but issued recommendations to improve WEC operations. The WEC was created by Republican lawmakers in 2015, over Democratic objections, to eliminate the oversight powers of the state’s former Government Accountability Board, which Republicans claimed was biased against them in the wake of a campaign finance investigation. The WEC unanimously voted in March 2020 to suspend a rule requiring special voting deputies (SVDs) to visit nursing home residents before allowing them to vote by mail, because long-term care facilities had barred most visitors from entering to control the spread of COVID. The commission determined there was not enough time before the state’s April primary to send out SVDs only to have them turned away.

“We knew that for the protection of residents, only essential workers (which did not include SVDs) were being allowed into facilities across the state,” Commissioner Julie Glancey said in a statement. “As such, we knew it was essential to preserve the right to vote for those residents, so rather than require the absurdity of sending SVDs to knock on a locked door, we pivoted to the absentee voting process.”

The WEC also urged lawmakers to change the law so nursing home residents could vote more easily, but the Republican-led legislature refused to act.

Although no lawsuits were filed at the time, Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling, a Republican who once spoke at a Trump rally and has pushed voter-fraud conspiracy theories, last month accused the WEC of violating state law during a press conference alleging that nursing home workers had “victimized” residents with cognitive problems by filling out their ballots. Schmaling recommended felony and misdemeanor charges against five of the commissioners who voted to change the rule and called for Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul to launch an investigation.

The WEC said that such allegations merit investigation but that they fall out of the commission’s jurisdiction.

“The Commission finds it horrifying and offensive if that sort of thing happened in Racine, or anywhere in Wisconsin,” commissioner Dean Knudson said in a statement. “Nobody should ever be coerced or otherwise influenced as part of exercising their right to vote. We would encourage and expect the full force of the law to investigate that situation and prosecute any identified offenders.”

WEC chairwoman Ann Jacobs also stressed that while Schmaling cited family members’ concerns during the press conference, only a judge can declare a voter incompetent and that absentee ballot rules allow voters to receive assistance in filling out their ballots.

“The statutes are very clear on this,” Jacobs said in a statement.

The commission said it had consulted advocates for nursing home residents and that voters could have been disenfranchised if the rule was not changed.

“If we had waited for two unsuccessful attempts by SVDs to enter nursing homes, we would have been in danger of missing the deadline to get their votes collected and counted,” commissioner Mark Thomsen said in a statement. “Our goal was to allow as many eligible voters as possible to participate in the election.”

The state is ready to investigate “any case involving credible evidence of fraud,” a spokeswoman for Kaul told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, but no charges have been filed in the case brought by Schmaling. Kaul later dismissed the press conference as a “disgraceful publicity stunt” and an “abuse of authority.”

But Republicans appear to rallied behind Schmaling’s allegations. Republican State Assembly Speaker Robin Vos told reporters earlier this month that the commissioners should “probably” face criminal charges, including Knudson, whom he himself had appointed to the commission.

Knudson accused Trump loyalists of trying to find a “fall guy for Trump’s loss.”

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“There’s nothing here that that comes close to shifting the results of the election,” Knudson told the Journal-Sentinel. “There are a lot of individuals that are under pressure to try to find some explanation other than the obvious one,” he added. “That Biden got more votes in Wisconsin than Trump did.”

Vos also led Republican calls for Wolfe to resign.

“Clearly there is a severe mismanagement of WEC, and a new administrator is needed,” he said last month.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat who called the GOP push “nothing more than a partisan power grab,” slammed Vos for targeting bipartisan election officials.

“Speaker Vos’ comments are unbecoming of his office and the people we serve,” he said in a statement. “It’s my expectation — and one Wisconsinites share — that elected officials in this state treat others with civility and respect. The speaker’s behavior today fell woefully short of those expectations.”

At least 10 Republican lawmakers have joined in calls for Wolfe to step down. Wolfe told The New York Times that the Republicans’ goal was to “pressure nonpartisan election administrators like me into resigning or vacating the election space so we can be replaced by political actors who can be convinced to carry out a partisan mission.”

The Republican calls come as some in the party are still seeking to somehow undo the results of the election more than a year after votes were cast and counted. A former judge who has pushed voter fraud conspiracy theories is leading an investigation into unsubstantiated allegations of fraud and some Trump allies are further demanding an Arizona-style “audit,” even after the effort in Maricopa County effort revealed nothing untoward.

Republican Assemblymember Tim Ramthun, who sits on the Committee on Constitution and Ethics, last week introduced a resolution to reclaim “Wisconsin’s 10 fraudulent electoral ballots cast for Joseph R. Biden and Kamala Harris” and conduct a “full forensic physical and cyber audit of the 2020 general election.” Lawyers for the Republican-led legislature explained to lawmakers earlier this month that “there is no mechanism in state or federal law for the Legislature to reverse certified votes cast by the Electoral College and counted by Congress.”

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., a staunch Trump ally who has promoted baseless voter fraud allegations, wants the legislature to go even further and seize total control of the state’s elections, based on his reading of the U.S. Constitution. He has even argued that Evers could not stop Republicans from taking over federal elections if they wanted to.

“It says state legislatures, and so if I were running the joint — and I’m not — I would come out and I would just say, ‘We’re reclaiming our authority’ … I think the state Legislature has to reassert, reclaim this authority over our election system,” Johnson told the Journal-Sentinel, echoing an argument rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1932 and the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 1964. Johnson told The New York Times that he made the call because he believes that Democrats cheat, offering no evidence to support his allegation. Though Republicans have repeatedly accused Democrats of voter fraud or without evidence, numerous voters have been charged with illegally voting for Trump, though cases of fraud are extremely rare.

Republican leaders say they are unsure Johnson’s plan could work, but they’re not ruling it out.

“The idea of somehow that we’re going to take over elections and do all those things, I’ve never studied that,” Vos told the Wisconsin State Journal. Asked if the legislature could get around the Democratic governor, Vos said, “I have no idea.”

State Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu told WISN he is not sure there is a “legal opportunity” to execute Johnson’s plan and is “not sure how that would work.”

David Canon, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told the outlet that the legislature would have to rewrite the entire election law, which it has the power to do, but that Evers could veto any such legislation.

Johnson’s idea, which is rooted in the obscure “Independent State Legislatures doctrine,” has grown increasingly popular among Trump allies. The theory posits that the Constitution gives state legislatures alone the power to set all election laws. “Taken to its natural extreme, it holds that election laws set by state legislatures supersede any rights guaranteed in state constitutions or even initiatives passed by voters,” David Daley, a senior fellow at FairVote, and Gaby Goldstein, co-founder of the progressive group Sister District, wrote in a Salon op-ed earlier this year. “It effectively concludes that there can be no possible checks and balances on state legislatures’ authority when it comes to election law.”

This formerly fringe theory has been embraced in right-wing circles by groups like the Federalist Society and its Honest Elections Project and effectively by some conservative lawmakers who want to give legislators the power to choose electors if election results are “unclear.” The idea has gained some support among conservatives on the Supreme Court as well. Even if Johnson’s proposal is unsuccessful in Wisconsin, voting advocates worry that such schemes could soon be exported to other states.

“This is all part of a coordinated and well-funded strategy to enlarge the power of state legislatures,” Daley and Goldstein wrote. “Now these bodies are taking advantage of any audacious power play they can imagine — or any wild-eyed reading of the U.S. Constitution — that might keep themselves entrenched in office, no matter how outrageous the scheme or how antithetical it may be to the founding ideals they claim to venerate.”

Read more on the Republican effort to remake American elections:

How long are Thanksgiving leftovers actually good for?

It’s a few hours, maybe a day or two at most after Turkey Day, and you’re hungry for Thanksgiving leftovers. Or maybe you’re not hungry but you’re craving pumpkin pie. And turkey. And a side dish or two such as mashed potatoes and stuffing and green bean casserole and Grandma’s corn casserole and cornbread and leftover cranberry sauce. You know, the fixin’s. So you go to the fridge or the freezer to grab a storage container packed to the brim with turkey leftovers from Thanksgiving dinner and wonder, “is this safe to eat?” How long do leftover turkey and other Thanksgiving leftovers last?

On Food52, we’ve dedicated a contest and many, many posts to tips on how to let all those Thanksgiving leftovers live their best lives — because eating leftover Thanksgiving turkey for an entire week straight can wear down even the most avid of poultry fans.

But we also turned to James Briscione, the Director of Culinary Development at the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE), just to make sure our freezer and storage methods for all our great leftovers were sound. Learn how to store Thanksgiving leftovers to keep them safe indefinitely . . . or until they all run out (whichever comes first).

Storing Thanksgiving leftovers

If it’s still Tukey Day and you’re getting ready to pack up your leftover Thanksgiving turkey, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reminds hosts to remember the “two-hour rule” for food safety. According to the USDA, “all perishable items should be refrigerated within two hours of coming out of the oven or refrigerator.” The reason is that after two hours, perishable food such as turkey and stuffing enter what’s known as the Danger Zone, where foodborne bacteria can quickly multiply and cause the food to become unsafe to eat. “If foods have been left out at room temperature for more than two hours, discard items to prevent foodborne illness,” says the USDA, per their website.

How to freeze Thanksgiving leftovers

If you don’t think you’re going to eat leftover cranberry sauce or apple pie right away (First of all, who are you? Please come forward and explain yourself), you may want to place them in freezer bags or storage containers to store for months to come. James’ advice is to be realistic — and not just freeze for freezing’s sake. This boils down to keeping fresh what you can and freezing things that take to cold well, like purées, soups, sauces, and anything with a higher liquid content.

As for what not to freeze, this includes starches, like potatoes and cooked vegetables. The one exception is dinner rolls, which can easily be frozen, as long as they are stored in a freezer-safe plastic bag in a single layer. When frozen, the water inside starch turns to crystal and breaks the cells, drastically altering its texture. “Even mashed potatoes will lose so much water out of their structure. They’ll be very dry and unappealing,” James says. No super-dry starches. Got it. You also shouldn’t freeze soups or purées made with cream, as the dairy won’t reheat properly. It’ll sort of curdle and won’t blend into a luscious liquid again. However, pure vegetable purées such as butternut squash or carrot soup, plus stocks and broths, that don’t contain any cream can be frozen.

How long is turkey good in the fridge?

Leftover Thanksgiving turkey that is fully cooked will last in the fridge for about 3 to 4 days. As for the freezer, the lifespan of your leftover turkey depends on the quality of said freezer. “If you have a really good freezer that maintains a temp of 0°F or below, it’s indefinite,” James says. If the temperature doesn’t waver, the food stays safe, essentially.

However, here’s the bad news: Most consumer freezers aren’t able to maintain temperatures of 0°F or below. They often don’t close solidly and, with frequent opening and shutting, the temperature fluctuates. In this case, keep your leftover turkey in the freezer for 6 months max and then discard it to avoid food poisoning.

So, how long will the rest of my Thanksgiving leftovers last?

Back to those other delicious Thanksgiving staples like buttery biscuits, cooked vegetables, and pies, pies, and more pies. As a rule of Thumb, the USDA says to use the Monday after Thanksgiving as a reminder that it is the last day you can safely eat leftovers. Ahead, find out how long are Thanksgiving leftovers good for.

Cranberry sauce: About 2 weeks in the fridge and 2 months in the freezer.
Stuffing: About 4 days in the refrigerator and a month in the freezer.
Pies: A couple of months in the freezer.
Mashed potatoes: Don’t freeze these! See why above; instead, make cakes or soup.
Cooked vegetables, including green bean casserole: We echo the “don’t freeze” sentiment of the mashed potatoes.
Bread, like rolls: About 3 months in the freezer. How long they’ll stay fresh out of the freezer depends on the kind of bread.

But wait, what about the gravy — how long do dairy-based gravies last?

The problem with dairy-based gravies is that they don’t take well to freezing. The dairy, when thawed, has a tendency to separate (this isn’t the case with stock-based gravy; see here). If you have lots of leftover dairy-based gravy and don’t want it to go to waste, your best choice for taste and safety is to 1) Keep it in the fridge. 2) Every 3 days, take it out and bring it back to a boil. 3) Let it cool properly, over a bowl of ice. And 4) stick it back in the fridge. It’ll last for a week (or more!) this way.

Bringing the gravy back to a boil kills off bacteria. However, James stresses, how you cool the gravy is very, very important. You want it to cool quickly — hence, the ice bath. The longer the gravy spends out of the fridge, the greater the likelihood of bacteria growth.

If you’ve defrosted something, but don’t use it all, can you refreeze it? Does this pose a safety danger?

You can, but it’s not ideal. You’re just increasing the moisture loss in that freeze-thaw cycle.

As for safety, “Bacteria isn’t really a concern then if you’re thawing it properly,” James says. Thawing food properly means that prior to cooking you’re not allowing it to go above 40°F, when bacteria begins to multiply — fast. To thaw food safely, there are two options (there’s also the microwave, however this really warrants a whole other safety-related post): in the refrigerator and in cold water. To thaw in the refrigerator, be sure to plan ahead because it’s going to take a while (overnight, most likely, depending on what you’re thawing). The quicker option is to submerge your food (in its freezer bag, of course) in cold tap water and change the water every 30 minutes.

What’s the best way to prevent freezer burn?

First things first, James says: You want to get it frozen as quickly as possible. But at the same time, you don’t want to put warm things in the freezer. This can increase the internal temperature of the freezer and actually start to slightly defrost what’s already in there. Secondly, you want to minimize the exposure to air. James suggests storing food in freezer bags.

Is there any special scrap/extra seasonal food I can be saving to use next year? Like, is it safe to freeze leftover cranberries for 12 months?

Again, James says, this comes down to the quality of your freezer. For most commercial freezers, the answer would be no. It just doesn’t stay cold enough to keep food for that long (see the reasons above).

Also: “Well, why? Why do you want to keep it that long?” James says. Good point. Might we suggest these Cranberry Cookie Bars, then?

What’s the worst or scariest thing you can do in terms of food safety with leftovers?

“Probably the worst thing you can do is fall asleep on the couch and leave things sitting on the counter,” James says. Allowing food to sit out for 3 to 4 hours at room temperature is dangerous territory in terms of bacteria growth.

Conversely, the faster you can get things chilled, the safer your leftovers are. Instead of waiting until after dinner to start storing things, James suggests to start chilling as you go. So, when you carve the turkey, put half of it in the fridge to get it chilled as quickly as possible. The same goes for everything, really: Put what you think people are going to eat into a bowl or onto a serving platter and cool the rest.

How to reheat Thanksgiving leftovers

We talked about this a little bit in the context of gravy, but what’s the best way to reheat things like slices of pie, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and of course, turkey? According to the USDA, when reheating in the microwave, cover and rotate the food for even heating. Arrange any food evenly in a covered microwave safe glass or ceramic dish and add some liquid if needed (this is a great time to use up extra turkey stock). Microwaves often have cold spots, so check the internal temperature of the food in several places with a food thermometer. It will obviously take longer to heat up denser foods such as turkey and stuffing, whereas dinner rolls, roasted vegetables, and gravy will heat up quickly.

James’ final piece of advice: “Trust your nose as an indicator of quality.” If leftovers smell bad, don’t eat them.

* * *

Thanksgiving leftover recipes

If you don’t want to just reheat a plate of Thanksgiving leftovers or make a sandwich (with Monica Geller’s signature “moist maker” gravy-soaked slice of bread, too, of course), here are some other recipes that make use of roast turkey and side dishes. There’s a genius twist on a turkey pot pie that uses precooked shredded turkey breast (though feel free to use both the light and dark meat), plus fresh veggies like cremini mushrooms, leeks, carrots, and herbs. For dessert, skip a slice of pie and bake a chocolate cake using mashed potatoes. Yes, you heard that right. Mashed potatoes, people! They make chocolate cakes miraculously moist and fudgy. You can thank recipe developer janeofmanytrade for that invention.

1. Turkey Pot Pie for Another Day

Leftover turkey is pretty much a given after Thanksgiving, but even the most ardent turkey fans probably don’t want to eat it for days and days on end after the holiday. A very tasty solution: Whip up a few of these turkey pot pies, freeze them for up to 2 months, and bake ’em in the oven when you need a cozy, comforting dinner on the fly.

2. Pull-Apart Thanksgiving Leftover Stuffed Bread

This fluffy pull-apart bread welcomes all your Thanksgiving leftovers, from cubed turkey to mashed potatoes to stuffing. Serve ’em warm with butter or — our favorite — with leftover cranberry sauce or gravy.

3. Micki’s Turkey, Cranberry and Cream Cheese Comfort Sandwich

It doesn’t get more classic than a turkey leftovers sandwich, doused with cranberry sauce. This version does offer a fresh few twists, however, with the addition of cream cheese (you could also use mashed potatoes), avocado, tomato, and vegetable sprouts.

4. Cranberry Cookie Bars

We can’t think of a better use for extra cranberry sauce — aside from, ahem, that turkey sandwich — than these crumble-topped cookie bars. Calling for just six ingredients (all holiday baking staples, like cinnamon, butter, and flour), another bonus of these cookies is that they come together in a snap.

5. Chocolate–Mashed Potato Cake with Ganache

The secret to the moistest-ever cake? Mashed potatoes! Yep, that’s right — your leftover mash (make sure it doesn’t have garlic or other strong herbs) is just the thing your chocolate cakes have been missing.

“Total asymmetric warfare”: Georgia GOP redraws political map as Senate Democrats do nothing

Voting rights advocates within and beyond Georgia ramped up calls for congressional action after the Peach State’s Republican lawmakers became the latest to approve a gerrymandered political map intended to give the GOP a political advantage for the next decade.

Following similar moves by GOP-controlled state legislatures in Ohio and Texas, the Georgia General Assembly sent the new congressional map to the desk of Republican Gov. Brain Kemp, who is expected to sign it into law. These redistricting efforts have come as right-wingers in the evenly split U.S. Senate block various voting rights bills and a handful of Democrats refuse to support killing the filibuster.

The Georgia GOP’s map is designed to increase the number of congressional districts the party controls from eight to nine, leaving Democrats with just five. According to an analysis by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “Though Georgia’s voters are split between the two political parties, none of the state’s 14 congressional districts would be competitive.”

It’s not just the new congressional districts that serve Georgia’s GOP. Democracy Docket notes that “the state House and Senate maps … were criticized by Democrats for cementing a Republican advantage in the General Assembly and failing to account for the growth of Georgia’s minority population.”

Common Cause Georgia executive director Aunna Dennis said in a statement Monday that “when the redistricting process is led by the politicians, the maps will be drawn to benefit the politicians—and that’s exactly what state legislators have done today.”

“While these maps might be beneficial to the politicians in power, they are a complete disgrace to the voters of Georgia,” Dennis declared. “None of the maps accurately reflect the changing population of our state.”

“Our preliminary analysis shows that despite population growth in the state being driven largely by Black, Latinx and Asian populations, and despite the state’s share of the white population decreasing by about 5% from 2010 to 2020, the amount of majority-BIPOC districts in these proposed maps have extremely marginal increases,” she noted. “In fact, the new congressional map decreases the amount of majority-Black districts from the former district map.”

Dennis said the maps were “intentionally designed to silence” communities of color and accused state leaders of continuing “to ignore the voters throughout the entire process.” She also reiterated her group’s support for independent redistricting commissions, saying that “district lines need to be drawn putting the interests of people, not politicians, first.”

The Journal-Constitution reports that Georgia Rep. Mariam Paris, a Democrat, said the new district lines endanger two Democratic Black women in the state’s congressional delegation, Reps. Nikema Williams and Lucy McBath.

“At a time when women are already underrepresented, particularly women of color, we should not be drawing maps that target women incumbents to make it harder for them to run and win in new districts,” Paris said during the House debate. “But the map before us today does exactly that.”

As the newspaper details:

The map redraws the Democratic-leaning district held by McBath, making it more Republican by extending north from metro Atlanta into conservative strongholds in Forsyth and Dawson counties. McBath won reelection last year with 55% of the vote, but under the new map, Republican voters would outnumber Democrats by 15 percentage points in next year’s elections, according to the AJC‘s analysis.

McBath flipped the 6th Congressional District in 2018, winning election in an area that was once a Republican bastion represented by Newt Gingrich, who became speaker of the House and led the GOP to take control of the U.S. House in 1994. Now the district is poised to return to Republican representation.

McBath — whose 17-year-old son was shot and killed in 2012 by a man who confronted him about the volume of his music — said Monday that Kemp, the Republican Party, and the National Rifle Association (NRA) “will not have the final say on when I am done fighting for my son.”

The GOP couldn’t beat me, so they redrew the lines.

Here is what they didn’t account for: Brian Kemp, the NRA, and the GOP will not have the final say on when I am done fighting for my son.

Support here: https://t.co/TYqvI1JqrQ pic.twitter.com/vkLmEN25MK

— Lucy McBath (@lucymcbath) November 22, 2021

Voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams — a Democrat who formerly served as minority leader in the Georgia House of Representatives and narrowly lost the gubernatorial race to Kemp in 2018 — suggested in a series of tweets Monday that the new map shows the GOP is struggling to compete in the state.

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“The bill will be eagerly signed by a man who has spent more than a decade using his status to disempower voters of color and intimidate the groups and individuals who organize them,” Abrams said. “But neither Lucy McBath nor Georgia’s organizers and voters of color will give up so easily.”

As the GOP continues to move backwards, every R under the Gold Dome supported a Congressional map designed to remove a black Congresswoman who took on the NRA after she lost her son, simply because they know they can’t compete in Georgia’s suburbs. #gapol

— Stacey Abrams (@staceyabrams) November 22, 2021

President Joe Biden narrowly won Georgia in 2020 — prompting then-President Donald Trump to pressure Kemp to call a special election and to ask Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” more than 11,000 votes, moves that have led to a criminal probe in Fulton County.

Mother Jones’ Ari Berman, author of the book “Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America,” noted Monday that the new congressional map gives Republicans “64% of seats in a state Biden won with 49.5%.”

Highlighting that the Georgia map is part of a national trend of GOP state lawmakers trying to give Republican congressional candidates clear advantages, Berman expressed frustration with Sens. Joe Manchin. D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., who refuse to support abolishing the filibuster to pass federal voting rights protections.

“It’s beyond enraging that Manchin and Sinema continue to say voting rights legislation needs 60 votes when [the] GOP [is] rigging elections and shutting Dems out of power for next decade on simple majority party-line votes,” he said, calling it “total asymmetric warfare.”

“We are in a 1965 moment for democracy” I told @maddow recently. “Congress has to pass legislation protecting voting rights. Economic legislation is critically important, but there is nothing—nothing—more important than protecting American democracy” pic.twitter.com/FYHQ0SfUPC

— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) November 22, 2021

Calls for Senate Democrats to scrap the filibuster have mounted as the chamber’s Republicans have blocked the For the People Act, Freedom to Vote Act and John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance on Monday even labeled the United States a “backsliding” democracy.

“Voters should choose their politicians, not the other way around,” tweeted Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga. “Today’s partisan redistricting decision at Georgia’s State Capitol undermines voters’ voices and harms our democracy.”

“Congress must pass federal voting rights legislation,” he added. “We can’t wait any longer.”

More on the redistricting battle that will shape the 2022 midterms:

Charlottesville verdict: White supremacists ordered to pay millions for “Unite the Right” rally

On Wednesday, a federal jury found all defendants in a lawsuit stemming from the “Unite the Right Rally” – a violent demonstration led by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia – guilty of violating a Virginia state conspiracy law.

The suit, whose plaintiffs argued that they had violated an 1871 bill designed protect African Americans from vigilante terrorism, took aim at a number of white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and members of the alt-right who attended or organized the rally, including neo-Nazi Jason Kessler and conspiracist Richard B. Spencer.

Also among them are Christopher Cantwell, Michael Peinovich, Andrew Anglin, and James Fields – a white supremacist accused of deliberately ramming his car into a crowd of counter-protesters during the rally, leaving 35 injured and one dead.

The jury specifically found the defendants guilty of violating multiple claims brought by the plaintiffs, including the violation of a state conspiracy law and the violation of a law “prohibiting racial, religious or ethnic harassment or violence,” according to CNN.

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According to BuzzFeed News’ Christopher Miller, a number of defendants will be expected to pay $500,000 each in punitive damages. Among those named include Spencer, Cantwell, Kessler, Robert “Azzmador” Ray, Nathan Damigo, Eliott Kline, Matthew Heimbach, Matthew Parrott, Michael Hill, and Michael Tubbs. Five white nationalist organizations are expected to shell out $1 million each on the same conspiracy count.

During the rally, organized back in August of 2017, demonstrators chanted a variety of anti-Semitic and racist rhetoric, including: “Jews will not replace us.” In court, Spencer attempted to distance himself from this slogan, claiming: “I’m ashamed of it. Those are not my sincerely, thoughtful beliefs.”

The suit was originally filed on October 11, 2017 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia by a group of Charlottesville residents who were injured as a result of the violence that unfolded during the rally. The plaintiffs were represented by Integrity First for America, a nonpartisan nonprofit formed in response to the rally, in addition to an outside legal team led by commercial litigator Roberta Kaplan.

“This is a HISTORIC legal victory against the forces of violent hate that threaten our communities & our democracy,” the group said in a statement following the jury’s decision.

West Virginia Governor Jim Justice faces justice for coal crimes in Kentucky

West Virginia Governor Jim Justice used coal to propel himself into public office in the coal-friendly state, but a few hundred miles away his association with coal is not so positive. Earlier this month in Kentucky, the billionaire politician and his son-turned-business partner were personally fined $2.9 million by the state for failing to reclaim three of their Eastern Kentucky mines, a process that makes them environmentally safe for redevelopment.

The proprietor of the Greenbrier Resort owns more than 50 coal mines and businesses and has faced fines before — along with community opposition — for failing to pay taxes and suppliers, inadequately implementing mine safety requirements, and ignoring court-ordered environmental remediation work.

He joins other high-ranking elected officials, such as Senator Joe Manchin and Congressman Michael McCaul, who are in the business of passing climate legislation while having interests in the fossil fuel industry. Justice’s attorneys claim the missed deadline that prompted the most recent fine is not his fault; the coronavirus pandemic made it impossible to safely get the reclamation work in time.

“It’s always been our intent to complete this work,” said Richard A. Getty, who represents the Justices, in a statement following the ruling. However, as the state made clear in its ruling, various deadlines had passed before COVID-19 and at least one site had been left untouched since 2015.

This most recent fine adds to more than $15 million in taxes and safety penalties he has owed state governments for his coal mines across six states, according to a 2016 NPR investigation. That analysis revealed Justice’s mines as a hotbed for workplace injuries, holding the most unpaid safety violations of any American-owned coal operator.

It also comes on the heels of a recent announcement that Justice’s company was attempting to acquire new permits to resume mining and reclamation work at four surface mines that were previously closed. The new fine, however, forces the company to be listed in a federal violator system that will prevent them from getting new permits or amending existing permits until the violations are cleared up — prohibiting the company from cashing in on a 50 percent rise in coal production in Kentucky this year.

The fine might also just happen to turn the tide in improving environmental and safety habits in the region, too, says Willie Dodson, a field organizer with the environmental labor group Appalachian Voices. “Regulators have been giving these companies just second chance after second chance for too long,” Dodson told Grist. “It is clear now, that to stop these companies from trying to squeeze more money out these dying mines at the expense of the community and jobs, states need to start revoking permits and going after the full array of personal and corporate assets held by these billionaires.”

Not only will it ease the taxpayers’ burden by forcing the Justices to foot the bill, it’ll also create hundreds of jobs. Kentucky, one of the poorest states in the country, has nearly a dozen counties with a poverty rate above 30 percent, nearly triple the national average. An analysis by Appalachian Voices found that reclamation work at Justice’s mines alone would employ 220 to 460 workers for five years. A big boost is expected soon, at the hands of the recently passed Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. According to the Reclaiming Appalachia Coalition, the $11.3 billion earmarked in the law for abandoned mine cleanup will result in nearly 3,000 jobs and $7.45 billion in economic output across Appalachia.

The practice of leaving coal mines unreclaimed and abandoned isn’t unique to Justice’s operations. Today, the once economically vibrant state is left with the remnants of a dying industry: more than 20,000 abandoned coal mines. According to Appalachian Voices, roughly 55,000 acres of these abandoned mines are unreclaimed — meaning they did not go through an environmental remediation process — and another 139,000 acres are partially unreclaimed.

“Companies like Justice’s have been breaking promises for years,” Dodson said. “The way forward is for the regulators to bring down the hammer and hire contractors to reclaim the mines and now they have the support to do so.”

The newly signed law could have quick implications on the environment as unreclaimed mines pose a huge threat to both the environment and the people who live in proximity to them. Unreclaimed mines pose a huge threat to both the environment and the people who live in proximity to them. Mining alters the physical landscape, disturbs ecosystems, increases the likelihood of landslides, and contaminates groundwater with toxic chemicals and heavy metals.

From 2016 to at least 2018, an unreclaimed mine in Pike County, Kentucky owned by Justice’s family, caused multiple flooding incidents, racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of damage, destroying homes, and depositing potentially hazardous materials from the mine in people’s yards, according to reporting from the public broadcasting collaborative Ohio Valley Resource.

In 2018, then 81-year-old Betty Short slipped and broke her collarbone outside her home as a result of a Justice mine-induced flood, which she told the Ohio Valley Resource continued to haunt her. “You’re really afraid to lay down and go to sleep at night,” she said in 2018. “It’s like a nightmare. You never know what’s going to happen next.” The mine, which was scheduled to be completely reclaimed by 2015, is still not reclaimed as of November 2021.

Justice first inherited ownership of his coal operations following his father’s death in 1993. In 2009, he sold some of his coal business to the Russian company Mechel for nearly $600 million. Then in 2015, the same year he declared his candidacy for governor as a Democrat, following a massive drop in the price of coal, he bought back his business for just $5 million — less than one percent of the earlier price. Two years later, Justice, infamously, rejoined the Republican party at a Donald Trump rally reportedly to get in good with Trump, who favored the coal industry.

From the very beginning, Dodson says, it has been evident that Justice’s agenda was to “squeeze as much money out of his mines by running roughshod over the regulations, externalizing out costs, and then just walking away.”

It’s a process that is widely utilized across the region. Since coal production started its steady decline in Appalachia, beginning in the 1990s, businesses, like Justice’s, have followed a template to profit off of dying mines before abandoning them, often leaving them unreclaimed for years. Due to historically lax relationships with regulators, coal operators have been allowed to cut losses by short-changing workers’ pensions, ignoring relatively-expensive safety procedures, and delaying costly environmental remediation processes before ultimately declaring bankruptcy and sticking taxpayers with the bill. But the impact is felt most intensely on the “spectacularly sick and retired mine workers and their communities,” Carl Pope, the former Executive Director of the Sierra Club, wrote in 2016.

However, with the right attention to ensuring environmental justice with economic opportunities and jobs, the new influx of federal support might just stop the practice in its tracks. “For years, there has been no accountability,” Dodson said. “It has hurt the communities where I work and it’s hurting people that I care about.”

“Now we can work towards taking over any of these mines where it’s appropriate and hiring people to reclaim them,” he added, “focusing our attention on the environmental impacts of mines and the community impacts of needing reclamation.

“Drive My Car” director says conversing in vehicles “makes it easier to reveal parts of yourself”

Directed and cowritten by Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, the exquisite, moving drama, “Drive My Car” is an adaptation of Haruki Murakami‘s eponymous short story from his collection, “Men Without Women.”

Yûsuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) is a theatre director and actor whose wife Oto (Reika Kirishima) works in television. Their lives and relationship are shown in scenes that include a car accident that befalls Yûsuke, to the couple grieving over their child who died years ago, to Oto’s affair with Kôji Takatsuki (Masaki Okada), a young actor. However, after an unexpected event, Yûsuke finds himself alone.

Cut to two years later when Yûsuke is doing a theatre residency in Hiroshima. Yûsuke is assigned a young driver, Misaki (Tôko Miura), whom he resists at first, but eventually befriends. And one of the actors in the production of “Uncle Vanya” is, surprisingly, Kôji Takatsuki.

Hamaguchi slowly builds the drama over three leisurely but compelling hours. The long scenes between Yûsuke and Misaki in the car (a cherry red Saab with a moonroof; not the yellow Saab 900 convertible from Murakami’s story) are especially lovely and engrossing as these strangers come to know each other through discussions of their lives and experiences.

In addition, there are many narrative threads that emphasize the power of storytelling, from an idea Oto is creating for television, to multiple productions of “Uncle Vanya,” to Misaki’s tales about her late mother. As the main characters interact, they discuss fate and guilt, as well as pain and trauma, eventually finding a common humanity. They come to the realization that the best way to learn about yourself is through others.

Hamaguchi spoke with Salon, with the assistance of translator Stacy Smith, about his new film, fate, and his most memorable car trip.

What was it about Murakami’s story that resonated with you that you adapted this story?

The biggest reason for me was that a lot of these conversations took place in the car. The main characters have no connection to each other; their relationship is one of driver and passenger, which, on its own, is not a deep relationship. But through them revealing themselves to each other, they end up revealing their deepest selves. I thought this process was interesting and that this took place in the space of a car, a staging ground, where they are just relying on their voices to share things. In a way, it almost makes it easier to reveal parts of yourself in that set up. This is very close to how I think people relate to one another.

At the heart of the film is the idea that the best way to know yourself is through others. Can you talk about that idea?

That line comes from Murakami’s story — needing to know others to really know yourself deeply and honestly. I changed many portions from the original, but this is one of the few portions I left unchanged. In terms of knowing yourself and your emotions, this is something you really have to get from your interactions with others. I agree with that. To know yourself, you can only measure that via your reactions to others. Meaning, when someone asks you a question, via your answers, it enables you to see yourself, how you think, and to confirm what kind of person you are.

Yûsuke has a very deliberate approach to the plays he directs. How did you approach storytelling and directing — especially when you have multiple narratives crisscrossing over three hours?

Honestly, my basic stance is focusing on the characters’ emotions, and how changes take place over the course of the film. It’s also about the relationship among the characters, so I try to find the easiest way for viewers to receive those emotions and feelings. That’s really how I approach my storytelling. I am making the story easy to understand by consolidating what I am showing to viewers. I am focusing on the pasts of my characters, and their emotions — what’s inside them. This might not always be directly expressed in the film itself, but it is something the actors can convey to the viewers, through my text. It might give hints to the motivation for a character’s behavior — even if it is not explicit. I’m not saying my text is supreme or always correct, but it is a vehicle that the performers can use to activate their imagination via the words and in that way convey to the audience the characters and their motivation.

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I like that we hear Oto’s (disembodied) voice in the car, reading lines from “Uncle Vanya” and the actress in the play uses sign language to communicate. What are your thoughts about the use of sound and voice, silence and talking?

Sound is important for conveying information that is taking place off screen, outside the frame. When you hear a certain sound, you can tell what environment a character is in, and it is also, probably, giving you a sense of the character’s behavior as well. Voice is something that is coming across, but it is not a physical thing. But a lot of emotional information is being conveyed from the voice, and that is very honest. It is coming from the actor, who is acting as a character, but the voice is theirs. For them to convey the emotional state of the character, they are not actually becoming the character, but they are coming as close as they can by using their voice as a tool.

There is a line in the film that comes from “Uncle Vanya” that truth isn’t frightening, but not knowing it is. Can you talk about this theme of truth in “Drive My Car”?

When we talk about truth, this is something that in actual life, we can live — or we do live — without actually knowing what is true, and what isn’t. It’s really an issue of what we believe or what we perceive the truth to be. And very often, there are cases where we can’t — or don’t want to know — what the truth is. In many cases, we are actually believing what is convenient, or best, for one’s self. Maybe something that you don’t want to notice or don’t notice, is something where you have your own version of the truth. But the actual truth is something different, and in many cases, we don’t want to recognize this; it involves a recalibration if you actually recognize what this truth is. And depending on where you are in life, this timing is different. I think “Drive My Car” is a story that really addresses this.

The film addresses issues of loss, guilt, and memory. How did you develop these themes in your work?

This came from a short story collection, “Men Without Women.” It was “Drive My Car,” as well as two other stories, “Kino” and “Scheherazade.” They all share this theme of absence, especially in regard to women. Something that was there is no longer there. They had this experience, and now it is a different experience. They keep thinking about the way things had been, and now that that person is not there; it is as if the world is not as it should be. This is a theme found in these stories. This relates back to what we were talking about with truth and having to re-believe or recalibrate what you believe. Once you have this kind of absence, you can’t overturn it, it can’t be revoked. This absence is still going to be there. What a person has to do is almost remake their own life in light of this absence. This is the process that takes place.

There are also ideas of fate expressed in the film. Do you believe in fate?

I don’t particularly believe in the idea of fate, but I’ve only traveled on one path. That is my particular path, but I don’t think it was the only path I could have traveled. I know there are some people who do have this idea of fate, but I don’t believe things are decided. I think it’s more a matter of chance.

What can you say about a car trip you have taken that has had importance in your life?

I have a very clear memory of an influential experience in a car. This is going back a decade, to when Japan got hit with the big earthquake and tsunami. I made my way to this Northern part of Japan to make a documentary film. I was interviewing survivors of the disaster. I was there with a codirector, and we would drive up and down the coast together during our time there. I really felt a lot of words were born in the car. Through my experience of driving with him, this is something I felt deeply. As you are driving, you have a lot of scenery, so you have visual stimulation and there is auditory stimulation — the different sounds, the engine, and other things. And from this, a lot of words are born, at least a conversation. We mentioned this earlier in regard to voice. I think a lot of information is contained within one’s voice when you are having these conversations. As a result, you are able to build and deepen your relationship. That was my experience during this time, and this is really reflected in “Drive My Car,” and why I have such an affinity for this work.

“Drive My Car” releases in select theaters on Wednesday, Nov. 24 and will expand on Dec. 3. Watch a trailer for it below, via YouTube.

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Brad Leone on food, family, foraging — and these maple-glazed sweet potatoes

Most of the action in Brad Leone’s new cookbook, “Field Notes for Food Adventure” takes place outside the confines of the kitchen walls — a creative direction that is likely welcome after over a year of rolling pandemic lockdowns and stay-in-place orders.

Over the course of 13 chapters, Leone, a longtime “Bon Appetit” staffer and host of the publication’s YouTube series “It’s Alive,” forages for ramps and mushrooms, gets into open water to source squid and seaweed, hunts for deer alongside his dad and taps trees to make maple syrup. The result is recipes like Shrimp and Sap Soup, Venison Andouille and Grilled Maitakes.

Taken together, it’s also a meditation on seasonality and how it impacts the way we eat, a reality that we’ve gotten away from as more and more of us shop at big box supermarkets with a static produce department that looks mostly the same whether you’re shopping in January or June.

As Leone writes in the introduction to “Field Notes,” he loves how the Northeast is impacted by all four seasons.

“Sure, it’s always sunny and nice in California, but summer all year sounds kind of terrible to me,” Leone said. “Call me crazy, but I need that change and all the great things that follow with it. It reminds me that I’m alive and part of this mystery that we call life.”

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Leone spoke with Salon about the development of the cookbook, his tips for embarking on a food-based expedition in your own backyard and his plans for Thanksgiving. He also shared a recipe from “Field Notes for Food Adventure” that belongs on your table this holiday season.

Ashlie Stevens: So, one of the major themes in this book is seasonality. Simple question: But at what point in the book-writing process did you know that you wanted to use that as an organizing principle?

It’s something that’s always been super important to me — part of the reason why is that I still live on the east coast. I wasn’t necessarily shopping around a book, but I met the folks from Voracious (a food-focused imprint at Little, Brown and Company) and they were kind of into me having this vision.I think at the end of the day, the last thing I wanted to do is make just a cookbook of just recipes and food and recipes and food. There’s a lot of that out there and I’m glad, but I wanted to do something that more encapsulated, I don’t know, the “broadness” of myself.

AS: I wouldn’t classify myself as an “outdoorsy” person, but I wanted to get outside after reading this book. What tips do you have for folks who are apprehensive about getting out in nature to get more connected to their food or don’t know where to start?

First of all, amazing. Mission accomplished in getting you inspired to want to go outdoors. I think at the end of the day, no matter what you do outside, I guarantee you that you’re going to be hungry. So that ties right into making a cookbook of the outdoors that inspires people to get outdoors.

Advice for people — I mean, don’t overthink it. If you’re allergic to poison ivy, stay away from poison ivy [laughs]. If you’re new to the trail, stay on the trail. Other than that, just let your inner child out. I think folks are more in tune to the outdoors than they let themselves be.

AS: I know that COVID changed a lot of people’s relationship with food and cooking. Was that the case for you and did that inform the book in any way?

Yeah, I mean, it was 100% a pandemic project. At times, it was rather scary. But in a positive light, it helped me achieve something that I was working on doing and saving money to do, which was to get out of New York City and I bought an old farmhouse up on the coast of coastal Rhode Island on the border of Connecticut.

I’ve just really been able to grow vegetables and can tomatoes and do a lot of fishing, raise chickens and feed my family. It’s been amazing to become more involved in my own personal food chain.

AS: Well, you bring up family. I was curious — what did it mean for you to be able to include your father’s recipes in this book?

It’s a very emotional and sentimental book to me. I mean, to be honest, I made this book for my family — I was able to put my kids in it. Looking at my dad and thinking, “Oh, man, he’s going to be 70.” I think of this as a major time capsule and no one from my family has ever done anything remotely like this.

To be honest, the only thing I wish there was more of was my mom. We have one photo where we are crabbing, but there were a couple times she didn’t feel like she was ready for a picture in a book, that kind of thing. But there’s a whole chapter in homemade to my dad, “Deer Dad.” He was a huge part of the man I am today, regarding my love for the outdoors, my personality and my sense of morality. It comes from how my parents raised me, being very outdoorsy, hunting and fishing and having respect for nature.

Also, both my folks were very good cooks that just had access to whatever was on sale at the supermarket or what we grew. I don’t think I’d be in a situation where people cared about what I thought about in the food space and the human space without having a really healthy and nice family.

AS: Fishing and hunting are ever-present through this book. You talk about this a bit in the introduction to the chapter “Deer Dad,” but did learning to hunt and fish make you more conscious of ethical meat consumption/compassionate killing? Does it impact the type of meat you eat at home?

Oh, 100%. I mean, the more you know — you can’t go back once you see the truth in the light. I’ve made a video about pheasant hunting and wild boar hunting and stuff. It’s all about your perspective. At the end of the day, I don’t think anyone likes factory-farmed food, and the industrialization of our food chain is a major, major problem, as is the destruction of the localization of our food.

There’s this massive paradigm shift of people caring and then realizing that we do have a lot more power and control of the market through how we shop. The big companies tend to follow if we demand it. We are the shepherds of our food on this planet. To me, having kids, it really clicked the light to how fragile this food system is and how important it is.

AS: If folks are looking for a recipe or two from your book to toss on their Thanksgiving table, what would you point them to?

First, I’m going to give you a recipe that’s not from the book. I really want to do it this Thanksgiving. I wish it was in my book; maybe if I make another one it will be.What I’ve always wanted to do is break the turkey into parts and then do a real kind of semi-shallow braise in a gravy. So fill it up until it’s almost submerged, and by the time it renders down in the oven, you’ll have a perfectly tender and juicy turkey that has also built a perfect gravy as it cooked. You get two birds stoned at once.

***

The next recipe comes from “Field Notes for Food Adventure.” These sweet potatoes topped with maple syrup-glazed pecans would be the perfect addition to your holiday table.

Brad: I have nostalgia in my heart for sweet potatoes. My mom made them every week, along with meatloaf. Everyone likes them, from kids to old cranky people—kind of like maple syrup.

Sweet potatoes do have a little natural sweetness, but they’re also quite earthy and savory. Maple syrup highlights those flavors, but even with the nuts and butter, this does not come across as a dessert. It could be a simple vegetarian meal or a side dish to something like roasted monkfish tail. Go ahead and load it up with other stuff—what’s great about sweet potatoes is their versatility.

People freak about how long to cook steak or potatoes, but listen, we’re not building a rocket engine here. If your potatoes aren’t cooked through at 40 minutes, let ’em go for longer. They’re done once a cake tester pushes easily through them

RECIPE: Maple-Pecan Sweet Potatoes
Serves 6

Ingredients
6 small sweet potatoes
4 tbsp. salted butter
1 cup pecans, chopped
2 tbsp. maple syrup
Pinch cinnamon
1 cardamom pod
1/3 cup sour cream
½ tsp. lemon juice
Kosher salt and ground black pepper
Chives, sliced (optional)

Directions
Preheat the oven to 375°F. Wrap the potatoes in foil with a little bit of water trapped inside. Place on a sheet pan or directly on the oven rack and bake until soft and liquid begins to caramelize in the foil. This will take a good 40 minutes or more depending on the potato.

In a small saucepan, melt the butter and add the pecans, allowing them to get toasty and bloom in the butter for a couple minutes. Add the maple, cinnamon , and cardamom. Cook over low heat until the nuts are loosely glazed.

Mix together the sour cream and lemon juice. Season with salt and some pepper.

Split the roasted potatoes and spoon the pecan mixture over them. Spoon a little sour cream mixture on top. Sprinkling on some chives wouldn’t hurt you.

Excerpted from “Field Notes for Food Adventure” by Brad Leone. Copyright © 2021 by Brad Leone.
Used with permission of Voracious, an imprint of Little, Brown and Company. New York, NY. All rights reserved

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Scientists peered into an octopus’ brain — and were astonished at what they saw

Among the smartest animals on Earth, octopuses are unique for being utterly weird in their evolutionary path to developing those smarts. Philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith has called the octopus the closest thing to an alien that we might encounter on Earth, and their bizarre anatomy speaks to this: An octopus’ mind isn’t concentrated in its head but spread throughout its body. Their tentacles are packed with neurons that endow each one with a hyperaware sense of touch, as well as the ability to smell and taste. Marine biologists have remarked that each tentacle sometimes seems like it has a mind of its own. Every octopus is a tactile thinker, constantly manipulating its surroundings with a body so soft it almost seems liquid.

All of these things are surprising, at least in theory, because scientists have learned to associate intelligence with vertebrates and a tendency to socialize. Octopuses are either asocial or partially social — and all of them are invertebrates. This raises an obvious question: How did octopuses become so smart?

Scientists know surprisingly little about this subject, as a great deal of the research on octopus neuroanatomy up to this point has focused on one species, the European common octopus (Octopus vulgaris) — which has about as many neurons in its body as a dog. Thanks to the scientists behind a new study in the scientific journal Current Biology, we now know more about the neural wiring of four very different types of octopuses (or, in one case, octopus-like animals): the vampire squid (Vampyroteuthis infernalis), which dwells in the deep sea and is technically neither an octopus nor a squid; the blue-lined octopus (Hapalochlaena fasciata), a venomous creature that keeps to itself while roaming the ocean at night; and “two diurnal reef dwellers,” Abdopus capricornicus and Octopus cyanea (also known as the day octopus).

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The scientists also examined data about four other species of coastal octopuses based on material in previously published literature. Using that information and their new research, they concluded that octopus intelligence evolved in ways similar to vertebrate animals — specifically, based on the need to accommodate their surroundings. That implies that they had a convergent evolutionary path towards developing intelligence despite having diverged from vertebrates long ago.

“Our study uncovered new insights to confirm that octopus brain structure indeed evolved as those of many other animals,” Dr. Wen-Sung Chung, the lead contact on the paper and a postdoctoral research fellow at the Queensland Brain Institute in Australia, told Salon by email.

Chung analogized octopus evolution to shark evolution, noting that sharks evolved differently based on the ocean depths at which they preferred to swim. “It is probably [unsurprising] as they have a short life span and live in a broad range of ocean (from reef to deep sea, from tropical to temperate waters),” all of which have different conditions in terms of predators to evade and other pressures on survival.

“Octopuses and other cephalopods are very likely more complicated than we expected before,” Chung added. “Expanding studies toward various species from different habitats, rather than narrowing down to one/a few iconic species, can be a way to study this amazing and apparently smart creature. I believe we can learn more by embracing the diversity of these creatures.”

Among other things, scientists did not expect to find as much folding as they did in the octopus brains. The process in which the brain develops what appear to be wrinkles is known as gyrification, and is associated with vertebrates whose highly evolved brains are capable of processing large quantities of complex information. Yet wrinkles have been observed in brain sections for roughly 20 octopus species already, and the new studies revealed unmistakable new evidence of brain structural folding in the octopod’s central nervous system.

“The brain folding is certainly a big surprise to us,” Chung wrote to Salon. “In order to confirm this, we had to catch different-sized individuals (no way to get them from the animal house or pet shop) to eliminate the possibility of structural deformation caused by the handling during capture, fixation and imaging.”

The study also provided new information about the vampire squid, a species that is neither octopus nor squid but rather the last surviving member of its own order. By looking at its brain, scientists were able to learn that it has a strange hybrid of both squid-like and octopus-like features. They also found that, for octopus species that live in reef systems, their entire visual system undergoes major changes to accommodate their daytime-dwelling lifestyle.

Does this mean octopuses are as intellectually complex as humans? Not so fast, Chung warned, noting that scientists can only say for sure that octopuses are smart enough to remember landmarks and break out of their housing tanks. (“This is the nightmare for most octopus researchers,” he noted.)

“Honestly, this study is just the very first step to investigate the differences/similarities between octopuses/cephalopods, and we know too little about octopuses in many ways,” Chung added. “We should be cautious for this and avoid over-interpretation at this stage until more solid evidence available in the future.”

Guards openly brag about being white supremacists in Florida prison

Officers with the Florida Department of Corrections (DOC) openly brag about being white supremacists.

Three white officers recently beat, pepper sprayed, and used a stun gun on a Black inmate who was screaming that he couldn’t breathe, in full view of surveillance cameras. The next day, the officers did it again.

In a new report from the Associated Press, who interviewed inmates of several Florida prisons and prison guards, this problem goes deeper than a couple of bad apples in the bunch. One inmate, Jamaal Reynolds, wrote that “Black officers and white officers don’t even mingle with each other. Every day they create a hostile environment trying to provoke us so they can have a reason to put their hands on us.”

In 2017, three DOC officers, who were members of the Ku Klux Klan, were arrested by the FBI for planning the murder of a Black former inmate. This summer, one guard allowed for a meeting of white supremacists to take place. A Black officer, interviewed by AP, who reported the meeting, said that the incident report they filed went nowhere, and there was no consequence for the guard who allowed the meeting to take place. In late September of this year, another Black inmate was beaten by a guard who said “You’re lucky I didn’t have my spray on me, cuz I would gas yo Black ass.”

The culture created within the DOC doesn’t encourage officers “snitching” on other officers by reporting misconduct. The Black officer that spoke to AP about filing an incident report spoke anonymously, and is attempting to leave their job with the DOC. Mark Caruso, a former sergeant who was fired and reinstated for being a whistleblower of misconduct, described the body as a “good old boys” club. Despite intimidation tactics, including other officers spitting on his windshield, Caruso continued to call out other officers for violent behavior. Caruso was fired for allegedly not reporting an inmate beating, which he claims he never saw, in 2019. His claims that it was retaliation for his whistleblowing were unsuccessful.

This issue is not a new one for Florida.

From AP, “In the early 2000s, the corrections department was forced by a St. Petersburg Times expose to investigate a clique of racist guards who all carried rope keychains with a noose. The Times reported that the noose keychains were used to signal a racist officer who was willing to inflict pain, particularly on Black inmates.” In April of this year, one AP reporter found “Confederate flags, Q-Anon and Thin Blue Line images.” on officers’ cars in the parking lot of one facility.

Democratic Florida state Rep. Dianne Hart has called for a federal takeover of the prison system and a formal investigation.

There is a nationwide pattern of those with extremist views being hidden within law enforcement and prison administration. Prison Legal News, a prisoner rights publication, has reported cases of “Nazis and klan members working as correctional officers in California, New York, Texas, Illinois and many other states.” Paul Wright, a founder of Prison Legal News, said that “There’s an institutional acceptance of this type of racism…What’s striking about this is that so many of them keep their jobs.”

How to keep your cool while playing host (it’s possible)

Should you ask your guests to bring something? How do you keep people out of the kitchen? How do you serve everything at the right temp? Feel like you’ve forgotten how to be a good host? (Same.) In our latest series, Be My Guest, a friendly expert takes on questions from our community and deftly puts fears to rest, suggesting all the ways in which we can all get back to hosting safely — and confidently. It is (almost) the holidays after all!

A few years back, I invited a handful of friends over for polenta and short ribs, the coziest meal I could think of on that chilly late-fall night. One of them asked if their then-girlfriend could come, and I said of course, the more the merrier, and then they told me that it was actually her birthday, and I said we’ll have a toast, and then she showed up, and let me know that actually, she was a vegetarian — so she wouldn’t be eating the main course that I’d been cooking for three hours, and I didn’t have an alternative planned. I was embarrassed and flustered — I should have asked! I’m a horrible host! And why didn’t she tell me! But her eyes got wide at the pot of bubbling, cheesy polenta on my stove, which she indicated would be her birthday present. We all ate well; the vegetarian and my friend are now happily married.

What’s the moral of this story? Maybe it’s that you should always have extra polenta hanging around. But it’s also a reminder that things don’t always go as you’ve planned them, and it’s important to stay flexible, and stay gracious. This week, I’m taking your questions on what to do when guests don’t exactly act how you expect them to, and how to keep your cool in the process. Just don’t forget the polenta.

What do I do about an uninvited guest?

Repeat after me: we do not turn guests away.

Uninvited guests are occasionally a happy surprise, and every so often a terror, but as the host, it is your job to roll with the punches and squeeze as much hospitality out of your sweet little heart as you can muster. So long as this uninvited guest has not done/will not do harm to anyone you’ve actually asked to come, find an extra chair, or plop them on the couch with a mismatched plate, and make them feel welcome. Most importantly, remember that tonight’s uninvited guest is tomorrow’s morsel of gossip. Tasty!

But if you’re particularly concerned — for issues of space or budget — feel free to make a direct but gracious note in your invitations that unfortunately, you won’t be able to accommodate extra guests.

Should I open up the wine that guests bring — or save it?

Well, that depends. Is it good wine? Good enough to drink before or during dinner? Or is it too good for this particular party, which is populated by your rowdy college friends who just want to gossip over some gin and tonics?

Guests should be free to drink what they want, and hosts should serve what they want to serve. I’d worry less about whether it’s appropriate to serve or save a gifted bottle, and listen instead to what you want to do with it. Just explain to your guest what you’re doing and why. Say something like Oh this looks amazing, let’s open it now! Or this is incredible — if it’s OK with you, I’m going to save it for a special occasion. If they insist on opening it, don’t make a fuss: they’ll drink as much as they want to, and if you have some leftover plonk in the morning, you can save it for next week’s coq au vin.

When a guest starts cleaning, should I stop them or let them keep going?

We all have different relationships to the ideas of control, reciprocity, and obligation. Some of us are, as Dayna Tortorici called them in her brilliant essay on taking ownership of one’s cooking space, “Kitchen Alphas”. We need to be in control of all things, and will only accept the presence of others through our own delegation of tasks. Some of us feel like we need to go to confession if we are served dinner by a friend and don’t help clean up. Some of us are layabouts, and would rather be fed trays of supremed citrus than lift a finger to scrub or serve.

Hosting requires understanding these personality types — our own, and those of our guests. If you’re a hardcore alpha, don’t be afraid to gracefully refuse help. And remember that, ideally, no cleaning will be done until at least most of your guests leave (unless you’re doing it as a gentle gesture to let them know it’s 2 a.m. and time to go home). Of course, some people — your mom, maybe, or your best friend — might insist on helping. Often, these beloved people cannot be stopped. But remember that the rules of tidying depend on the formality of the event. If it’s a casual affair, it’s fine to let a few people clear plates. Just make sure that the whole party doesn’t feel like they’re being put to work scrubbing their cake off your plates.

The Wisconsin parade and Gabby Petito: People keep dying because the law blows off domestic violence

For hours Monday morning, the nation held its breath, awaiting word on the identity and motive of the alleged murderer who plowed his car over a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, killing five people and injuring dozens of others. There’s been so much political violence lately, the killings happened so close to where Kyle Rittenhouse had recently been acquitted, and the method was a preferred one of right-wing terrorists. But, in this case, the suspect is Darrell E. Brooks Jr., a 39-year-old who was allegedly fleeing the scene of a knife fight. “There is no evidence this is a terrorist incident,” Waukesha Police Chief Dan Thompson told reporters.

Well, yes — but no.

It is true that Brooks appears to have no motive related to electoral politics, nor does this seem to be a racist murder spree like the ones in El Paso, TX or Pittsburgh, PA. But the killing appears to be tied to one of the oldest and most common forms of power-related violence around: domestic violence.

Most people don’t think of domestic violence as “political” because it’s so common, it’s as if it comes from nature, when it is in fact rooted in misogyny and male privilege. This failure to take domestic violence seriously leads, over and over again, to needless death and destruction. The Wisconsin case is looking very much to be another tragic example of that.

Shortly after police released Brooks’s identity, the Washington Post reports, it came out that Brooks had a long criminal history, including two open cases – both related to domestic violence. “Criminal complaints detailed allegations that Brooks ran over the mother of his child with his red SUV on Nov. 2 and fired a gun after getting into ‘a physical fight’ with his nephew in July 2020.”

Brooks was released on $1,000 bail, however, despite being charged with running over a woman with his car — the same method he allegedly used to murder five people on Sunday. The district attorney’s office has already admitted that this bail was “inappropriately low,” and promised to open an internal review. Sadly, however, this is no surprise to anyone who has witnessed the long-standing problems of law enforcement failures arond domestic violence.

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The Wisconsin case comes close on the heels of another high profile killing, of 22-year-old Gabby Petito, in August. In the days before Petito’s death, cops in Utah were called by a bystander who reported Petito’s fiancé, Brian Laundrie, chasing and beating Petito. Body camera footage from the police, however, shows that instead of taking the situation seriously, the cops seemingly ignored signs that Petito was the victim and instead eagerly accepted a narrative that allowed them to avoid arresting Laundrie by blaming Petitio. They even leverage the threat of arrest against her to get her to go away.

The sexism that guides this kind of police reaction is sadly all too common. In the video, Petito is crying and upset, while Laundrie is calm and even cheerful. Instead of treating her distress and his calm as clear evidence that he was the aggressor and she the distraught victim, the cops leaned on sexist stereotypes about “hysterical” women and poor, beleagured men who have the task of controlling them. Unsurprisingly, Petito ended up murdered a few days later and Laundrie, the top suspect, fled. His remains were eventually found in a Florida reserve.

Cops often treat domestic violence victims with contempt, blaming them for wasting their time and threatening to arrest them. Victims of domestic violence are so often arrested alongside their abuser that multiple states are rewriting their laws to make it harder for cops to just round up a victim’s self-defense into an excuse to arrest her, too. Just as the culture of policing has a racism problem, it has a sexism problem. Domestic violence is still seen, all too often, as a “personal” matter and not treated with the gravity that such assaults would receive if they happened in non-domestic situations.

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That attitude is troubling on its face, as it’s rooted in sexist ideas about men having a right to dominate and control women and other family members. It also suggests that violence is somehow more acceptable if it’s perpetrated in the name of patriarchal control. But, as the Wisconsin killings suggest, the impact extends far beyond the danger that abusive men present to their families. Domestic violence is a red flag that a man is ready to commit violence against all sorts of people.

Research has repeatedly shown that domestic violence is at the center of most mass murders. In over half of mass shootings between 2009 and 2020, the killer murdered at least one former or current partner or a family member. And killers who target strangers frequently turn out to have a long history of domestic violence prior to the incident. A report from Bloomberg found that 60% of mass shootings are either domestic violence incidents or committed by someone with a history of domestic violence. The Pulse nightclub shooter who killed 50 people in 2016, Omar Mateen, had a history of abusing his wife. The 2017 church shooting in Sutherland Springs, TX, that led to 26 deaths was committed by Devin Patrick Kelly, who was lashing out as his wife and her family.

By treating violence against women as a red flag for future violence, law enforcement could do much to actually prevent violence, instead of just show up after the fact, like they did in Waukesha. But instead, the law often treats domestic violence as a lesser concern. In 2005, the Supreme Court even went as far as to say the cops are under no obligation to enforce restraining orders, on the grounds that no “property interest” was at stake when a woman is being terrorized by an abuser. Just this week, a Maryland police officer convicted of rape and assault was put under “home detention” instead of prison, because the judge deemed that the victim did not suffer sufficient “psychological injury.”

Men who hurt women are a threat to public safety, but the law keeps treating them like little more than a public nuisance. And the result is, over and over, deaths that could have been prevented.

Alex Jones, Roger Stone slapped with subpoenas by Jan. 6 committee

Former Trump political adviser Roger Stone and far-right conspiracist Alex Jones have been hit with a summons to appear before the House panel charged with investigating the January 6 Capitol riot.

The subpoenas, served just following the committee’s 200-plus interviews with various witnesses, suggest a sustained interest in the “Stop the Steal” rally, the key event in the leadup to the insurrection.

“The Select Committee is seeking information about the rallies and subsequent march to the Capitol that escalated into a violent mob attacking the Capitol and threatening our democracy,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss. “We need to know who organized, planned, paid for, and received funds related to those events, as well as what communications organizers had with officials in the White House and Congress.”

According to a letter penned by the committee, Jones aided in “facilitating a donor, now known to be Julie Fancelli, to provide what [he] characterized as ‘eighty percent’ of the funding” for the “Stop the Steal” rally. Jones was also apparently denied a speaking spot on the lineup, though according to CNN, he made comments indicating that he intended “lead a march to the Capitol, where President Trump would meet the group.” A picture shared by Huffington Post reporter Arthur Delaney further indicates that Jones addressed the January 6 mob atop the steps of the Capitol.

“Trump’s not gonna come if we don’t calm down,” Jones reportedly yelled into a bullhorn during the riot. “Everybody be peaceful.”

Stone was reportedly more instrumental in the rally’s formation. Immediately following President Joe Biden’s election, Stone fashioned himself as one of the leading proponents of Donald Trump’s voter fraud conspiracies. The New York Times reports that Stone had “promoted his attendance at the rallies on Jan. 5 and 6, and solicited support to pay for security through the website stopthesteal.org.” He also reportedly employed members of far-right extremist groups as personal security guards, per the committee’s subpoena.

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Speaking during the rally, Stone explicitly told Trump’s supporters to “fight like hell” against the then-impending certification of Biden’s electoral college victory.

In a Monday statement, Stone disputed his apparent role in fueling the Capitol riot, calling it “categorically false.”

“I have said time and time again that I had no advance knowledge of the events that took place at the Capitol on that day,” the Trump associate added.

Also among those targeted include Dustin Stockton and Jennifer Lawrence, an engaged couple who assisted in the organization of multiple demonstrations following the election.

According to CNN, Stockton was instrumental in the moderation of a “Stop the Steal” Facebook group that at one point boasted hundreds of thousands of users. The group was shut down by the social media giant on November 5, just a day before the riot ensued. Stockton reportedly told the select committee that he was worried the January 6 rally at the Ellipse would lead to “possible danger” – a concern Stockton to expressed White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.

How to keep guests out of the kitchen (when you’re busy preparing Thanksgiving dinner)

Dinner parties: They’re back! We’ve missed them so much! We can’t wait to throw them again! All we want to do is feed more than two people at once, especially if they’re not people we list as dependents on our tax returns! And don’t even get me started about Thanksgiving — think of all the starches we’ll be smothering in fat! Will this be the greatest holiday entertaining season ever? Will 2022 be lined with tasteful glassware and French oak serving boards? We can’t WAIT to find out, one heaping serving of pasta at a time!

That said, dinner parties can be a little stressful, even in the most placid of times. There are so many factors to consider, and so many tiny disasters to fear. What if the people you seat next to each other are, unbeknownst to you, sworn enemies? What if the custard curdles? What if someone pulls a Nicole Richie and lights their hair on fire while blowing out candles? I am here, today, to help assuage some of those worries and talk a little bit about dinner party etiquette, a topic that sounds antiquated when spoken aloud but which still plagues us while we lie awake at night, worrying over place settings.

Do you really need ALL the spoons and forks in a place setting?

This is a question that need only be asked in a house with a formal dining room. That may be your house, in which case, congratulations, and I’d simply love for you to have me over for dinner. I don’t have any dietary restrictions! Even so, and in hopes that my grandma Bull doesn’t roll over in her grave, clutching her silver, while reading this on the afterlife internet, I’d wager you almost never need ALL the spoons and forks in a place setting.

The extent of your table settings should match your aesthetic vision for the evening. Are you serving mashed sweet potatoes and a simple roast bird? Then no, your guests would probably prefer to have some elbow room rather than get crowded in by your entire collection of silver spoons. Are you, as a friend of mine has long dreamed, serving a dinner party inspired by the menu on the Titanic, and have you asked your friends to dress accordingly? Well, then, sure! Go all out, and offer them the escargot forks you got ten years ago at Brimfield and you’ve been promising your partner you’ll use some day, and for good reason.

Formality has its place, and should be embraced when you’re in the mood for it. But otherwise, I think that as long as your guests aren’t eating cake with the fork they just used for bolognese, you’re in good shape. Sometimes when I’m feeling lazy or rushed, I’ll just put out three nice ceramic tumblers or small vases on my table, and fill them each with forks, knives, and spoons, respectively. (That’s assuming we’ll even need spoons.) Nobody has ever complained about this system, mostly because it allowed me to feed them a (hopefully) delicious meal without getting overwhelmed/going overboard. Work with what you’ve got, and present your plan confidently; your guests will marvel at your grace, whether they’re digging into cornbread stuffing or Detroit-style pizza.

How do you serve the food all at the same time and/or temperature?

This is a question that haunts every single person that has ever hosted a Thanksgiving dinner. It has two answers.

Not all your (hot) food needs to be the same temperature. There, I said it! You’re the host, which means you make the rules, and if you’ve got a hot chicken and a room temperature plate of roast carrots, you should serve them both proudly. Decide which dishes are most important to be served hot — or which need to be served most immediately after cooking — and make your plan from there. And remember, you can always pop in things like vegetable sides or even roasts to reheat in the oven. Consider keeping yours at 200° Fahrenheit, and leave trays of hot side dishes in there until dinner is ready. Or opt for cooler sides: replace your green bean casserole with a classic kale salad, or choose a squash side dish that’s perfect at room temp.
As far as time is concerned, embrace things that can be made ahead and reheated — or made ahead and then simply served — and plan your prep conservatively. If you think dinner will take you three hours to make, give yourself five. Decide which thing needs to be cooked last (a stir-fry maybe, or a soufflé ), and work back from there in descending order of temporal priority. Rework your menu until it works for you. Embrace room-temperature food. And if things are feeling a little hairy half an hour before you’ve scheduled dinner, don’t be afraid to ask for help.

How do you get guests to talk to each other instead of you when you’re busy in the kitchen?

The easiest way to do this, of course, is to lovingly shoo your friends out of the kitchen while expertly chopping an onion and say charmingly, “Go socialize! I’ve got to make dinner!” (I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, people love being told what to do.) You can even guilt-trip them by explaining that talking too much might make you chop off a finger.

If you want to be a little gentler, or even a little more commandeering, you can play platonic matchmaker. Ask your chatty friends if they’ve met the person in the other room who just so happens to share their bird-watching hobby. Tell them how excited you are for them to meet your cousin, or make them the hero by asking them to check on the shiest person at the soiree. Give them a small social task, so you can get back to yours.

And always, always put out snacks and drinks in the place where you want people to congregate. Your little social gadflys will flock back to them eventually. Think about the different zones where you’d like for people to congregate, and set them up with snacks, or a bar cart, and comfortable seating. Avoid the awkward setup of a room lined with chairs, where everyone must sit in a large circle as if participating in a kindergarten game. People want to get cozy and chat! Set up your seating in pods, to encourage intimate and exciting conversation.

RNC using donor funds to pay Donald Trump’s legal bills in N.Y. criminal probe

The Republican National Committee is paying some of former President Donald Trump’s personal legal bills in a New York criminal investigation examining his company’s business practices, the RNC acknowledged on Monday.

The RNC paid $121,670 to the law firm of Trump attorney Ronald Fischetti after a request from Trump’s team over the summer, according to The Washington Post. The RNC’s executive committee approved the payments in recent weeks, a source told the outlet. Though some in the party have urged RNC chair Ronna McDaniel to show more independence from the former president, her allies told the Post that “Trump remains the biggest fundraising draw for the party, and it is important to stay in his good graces.”

The payments are highly unusual, especially since the New York investigation, led by Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance and New York Attorney General Letitia James, has nothing to do with Trump’s presidential campaigns or his time in the White House. Rather, it’s a long-term criminal inquiry into the business practices of the Trump Organization and various other Trump private entities. A source familiar with the RNC decision told the Post that the party agreed to help pay Trump’s bills after James vowed to aggressively investigate the former president’s businesses during her 2018 campaign for her current seat, even though Trump has not been personally or directly accused of wrongdoing to this point.

“I will be shining a bright light into every dark corner of his real estate dealings, and every dealing, demanding truthfulness at every turn,” James told supporters in her victory speech.

The source told the outlet that the RNC is not paying Trump’s other legal bills, including those stemming from his battle with the House committee investigating his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

“As a leader of our party, defending President Trump and his record of achievement is critical to the GOP,” the RNC said in a written statement. “It is entirely appropriate for the RNC to continue assisting in fighting back against the Democrats’ never ending witch hunt and attacks on him.”

The RNC has previously helped fund Trump’s legal bills, despite his claim to be a billionaire and his own massive political fundraising operation, which has more than $100 million in cash on hand, according to the Post.

“The RNC is our important partner in advancing America First policies and fighting back against the endless witch hunts,” Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich told the outlet. “The Democrats have become obsessed with weaponizing their offices against President Trump, which is a complete abandonment of their Constitutional obligations.”

The RNC previously paid for lawyers that represented Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. in the Russia probe and other campaign-related investigations. The payments drew a Federal Election Commission complaint because the funds came from an account intended only for recounts and other election-related proceedings, though the FEC ultimately dismissed the complaint because it had yet to “provide guidance” on the use of such accounts. The latest payments came from the RNC’s general account, which means they are unlikely to violate campaign finance law, Brendan Fischer of the Campaign Legal Center told the Post.

But party committees have avoided paying personal legal bills over concerns that they could lose their tax-exempt status. While the RNC’s spending in the Russia probe was related to Trump’s presidency and campaign, the idea that the New York criminal probe is linked to Trump’s politics “seems like a real stretch,” Fischer told the outlet.

“Ronna McDaniel and the Republican National Committee are using their donors’ money to finance Trump’s personal legal defense while he sits on hundreds of millions of his own money as well as campaign funds,” Adonna Biel, a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee, told CNN. “This is today’s GOP — a party that will do anything for a divisive and incompetent ex-president who cost their party the House, Senate, and White House and thousands of Americans their lives and livelihoods. If we were the RNC’s donors, we would certainly be asking questions.”

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New York prosecutors have been investigating the Trump Organization for years. Vance over the summer indicted longtime Trump Organization financial chief Allen Weisselberg and two of Trump’s companies on charges of felony tax fraud. Weisselberg and the Trump companies have pleaded not guilty.

Vance earlier this month convened a new grand jury to hear new evidence in the investigation. Prosecutors are examining whether the Trump Organization inflated the value of its assets to secure loans while deflating the value of the same assets on its tax bills, which former longtime Trump Organization vice president Michael Cohen alleged during testimony before Congress in 2019. Cohen has since met with New York prosecutors more than a half-dozen times.

Prosecutors are looking at documents related to properties like Trump’s 40 Wall Street building, which the company told potential lenders was worth $527 million while telling tax officials it was worth $16.7 million, according to the Post. The company’s valuation of its California golf club also ranged from $900,000 to $25 million, depending on the audience. An estate in the New York suburbs was similarly estate valued by the company at anywhere between $56 million and $291 million.

“This is way, way beyond anything that’s believable,” Norm Miller, a real estate finance professor at the University of San Diego, told the outlet. “I’ve never seen anything with a gap that extreme.”

More on Donald Trump’s growing legal troubles:

Ted Cruz confronted on CBS over his continued false claims of election fraud

On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” host Margaret Brennan confronted Senator Ted Cruz on his continued false claims of voting fraud.

She pressed Cruz on his role in the events of Jan. 6.

“What I did was lead 11 senators in a constitutional option which I think would have been much better for our democracy because we right now have a substantial chunk of our country that has real doubts about the integrity of the election,” Cruz said. “And if we had a credible electoral commission, do an emergency audit. It would have enhanced faith in democracy.”

“But instead, Democrats and a lot of the press decided to just engage in incendiary rhetoric rather than acknowledge voter fraud is real. It is a problem and one of the allegations of voter fraud needs to be examined on the merits,” continued Cruz.

“OK, senator. There is no evidence of fraud that would have really drawn the outcome of the election into doubt. You know that,” Brennan pushed back.

WATCH: @margbrennan presses @SenTedCruz on his repeated and debunked claims of voter fraud in the US:

BRENNAN: "Senator there is no evidence of fraud that would have drawn the outcome of the election into doubt." pic.twitter.com/xfXP5HQLsa

— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) November 21, 2021

“Voter fraud has been persistent since the very first election,” Cruz remarked, as Brennan changed the topic to whether Cruz was running for President in 2024, without pressing further and disputing Cruz’s claims.

MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan criticized Brennan on Twitter, writing “if you’re going to platform an election denier and insurrection inciter like Ted Cruz . . . you need to press him, and push back, on his dangerous lies, much, much harder than this.”

Sorry, but if you’re going to platform an election denier & insurrection inciter like Ted Cruz – & personally I wouldn’t – you need to press him, & push back, on his dangerous lies much, much harder than this. Have we in the media learned nothing from 4 years of Trump plus 1/6?? https://t.co/7rCNHVnwu9

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) November 21, 2021

“Call a lie a lie!” Hasan continued in a thread.

Before a mob of pro-Trump rioters stormed the U.S., Cruz was leading a small cohort of senators that planned on objecting to the certification of electors in the 2020 election in what many called a political stunt. In a speech, Cruz said that if the election was certified, Americans would get the message that “voter fraud doesn’t matter, isn’t real and shouldn’t be taken seriously.”

After the Capitol was cleared and the Senate and House of Representatives reconvened to vote to certify the election, Cruz was one of eight senators — all Republicans — to vote to overturn the election. Cruz has continued to perpetuate former President Trump’s false claims of fraud in the 2020 election.