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“Presidents are not kings and plaintiff is not president”: Judge rules Trump can’t block Jan. 6 docs

A federal judge on Tuesday rejected former President Donald Trump’s attempt to block the release of White House documents to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

D.C. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled that Trump had no authority to block the National Archives from turning over the records after President Biden declined to assert executive privilege over the documents.

Trump “does not acknowledge the deference owed to the incumbent president’s judgment. His position that he may override the express will of the executive branch appears to be premised on the notion that his executive power ‘exists in perpetuity,'” Chutkan wrote in a 39-page opinion. “But presidents are not kings, and plaintiff is not president.”

Chutkan added that presidential executive privilege “exists for the benefit of the Republic, not any individual.”

The National Archives is expected to turn over the documents to the Jan. 6 committee on Friday unless a court steps in. Trump’s attorneys immediately filed an appeal to the D.C. appeals court, where he may draw a more favorable three-judge panel that includes two of his appointees. The case could well reach the Supreme Court, which would delay the release even further.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chair of the Jan. 6 special committee, called Trump’s lawsuit “little more than an attempt to delay and obstruct our investigation.”

“Along our country’s history, the Executive Branch has provided Congress with testimony and information when it has been in the public interest,” Thompson said in a statement. “This evening’s ruling is consistent with that tradition. And in my view, there couldn’t be a more compelling public interest than getting answers about an attack on our democracy.”

Thompson told CNN that the committee plans to inspect the documents with a “fine-tooth comb to make sure that our government was not weaponized against its citizens.”

RELATED: Trump pleads with judge to “slow down” Jan. 6 probe

In August, the committee requested that the National Archives turn over White House records related to Trump’s actions ahead of the January assault on the U.S. Capitol, including documents from his top aides and visitor and call logs. Trump, who has demanded that former officials of his administration do their utmost to stonewall the investigation, filed a lawsuit seeking to block the release, arguing that the Constitution allows former presidents to retain the right to assert executive privilege.

Trump’s lawyers cited a Nixon-era Supreme Court ruling that former presidents retain a “residual” interest in keeping White House records secret. But Chutkan, an Obama appointee, wrote that the argument did not “hold water” because the sitting president at the time did not weigh in on the matter while Biden agreed to allow the records to be turned over.

“This is a dispute between a former and incumbent President,” Chutkan wrote. “And the Supreme Court has already made clear that in such circumstances, the incumbent’s view is accorded greater weight.”

Chutkan also rejected the Trump team’s proposal for her to review every document to determine whether it should be turned over to the committee, writing that the court “declines to intrude upon the executive function in this manner” and would not “second-guess” the Biden administration.

Trump’s lawyers also argued that the request was overly broad and “untethered from any legitimate legislative purpose.”

Chutkan, who opened her opinion with several pages detailing Trump’s “unprecedented attempt” to subvert the results of the election, wrote that Congress and the administration “contend that discovering and coming to terms with the causes underlying the Jan. 6 attack is a matter of unsurpassed public importance because such information relates to our core democratic institutions and the public’s confidence in them. The court agrees.”

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The case is a major test of presidential powers and could stretch well beyond Friday. Trump has made the same claim of post-presidential executive privilege to demand that former top aides, including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former chief strategist Steve Bannon, refuse to cooperate with the committee’s subpoenas.

Bannon was the first person to defy the panel’s subpoena, leading the House to file a criminal referral to the Justice Department for contempt of Congress.

Former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, who pressured the department’s leaders to help Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, cited Trump’s executive privilege claim during his scheduled interview last Friday and refused to testify. Instead, his lawyer, who also worked on a lawsuit seeking to overturn the election results in Georgia, submitted a 12-page letter defending Clark’s refusal to speak to the committee pending Trump’s lawsuits.

Thompson told CNN on Tuesday that he expects the committee to refer Clark to the DOJ.

“We’re pursuing the criminal contempt proceedings on Bannon, we will probably do that on Clark,” he said, “and anybody else who refuses to come before the committee.”

More on the continuing investigation of the January insurrection:

The ultimate guide to stocking up (and organizing) your kitchen pantry this fall

The crisp and cool air of fall is beckoning us to seek comfort within our kitchens and cook-up an assortment of warm meals. Think oven roasted veggies, garlic and herb mashed potatoes, bone broth stew, apple tarte tatin and plenty more. Long gone are the refreshingly cool flavors of summer — they are just so last season. Now, as we teeter-totter between cool mornings and warm afternoons, it’s time to revitalize our kitchen pantries with an assemblage of earthy and spicy aromas.   

But stocking up a kitchen pantry, especially during the turn of a season, is no easy feat. Where does one start? Which specific items should be included and which ones should be dumped? What are some ways to keep a pantry organized? How much is too much?

RELATED: The secret ingredient in this magical grilled cheese is pumpkin butter

To help make the process easier — and a little fun — Olivia Roszkowski, chef-instructor of Health-Supportive Culinary Arts at the Institute of Culinary Education, offers a few tips and tricks on how to efficiently build the perfect fall pantry.   

Step One: Evaluate your pantry and its contents

Get ready to dive into the deepest and most inner crevices of your pantry. Roszkowski says the first and most important step is to thoroughly evaluate all your stocked items and create an inventory. Don’t be afraid to get messy with this step and disassemble all the contents inside your pantry, if need be.  

“You’re going to use what you have, which [is] like the beauty of it,” Roszkowski says. “So, I would say the first step would be… making a list of things you might want to replenish.”

Versatile items, such as oils, spices, legumes and grains, can be re-worked in fall dishes. And so can traditional summer ingredients. Think twice before tossing out your olive roasted red peppers and canned corn from last season — they’ll come in handy for autumnal themed stuffed peppers and hearty chili.

Step Two: Understand what can (and can’t) go into a pantry

A kitchen pantry is a small and enclosed space that should not under any circumstances include foods prone to moisture or leakage. Things like butter, jams, condiments and mayonnaise are better suited for the refrigerator rather than the pantry.

Pungent and odiferous foods, such as vinegars and fermented staples, should also be kept out of the pantry, according to Roszkowski. Their strong smells tend to linger in a confined space and can easily interfere with the flavorings of other fresh ingredients.

Fresh produce should also stay out of the pantry and instead, be kept in the refrigerator or a designated counter-top bowl. Vegetables such as potatoes and sweet potatoes, however, can be safely stashed away in your pantry. To help preserve their freshness, Roszkowski advises putting them in mesh baskets to help maintain some air-flow. There’s truly nothing more repulsive than opening a pantry that reeks of rotten potatoes.

Overall, Roszkowski’s take-away message is to continuously monitor your pantry and make sure there aren’t any possibilities for unexpected surprises. Remember, a fresh pantry also allows for fresh meals.  

Step Three: Brainstorm a list of items to add

Now that you know what items are already in your pantry, it’s time to create a list of additional items to purchase and include. Roszkowski recommends building your list around specific recipes. For Roszkowski, the South Asian dish of khichuri is a popular meal within her household. Thus, her own pantry is filled with ample amounts of turmeric, rice, lentils, onions and potatoes.  

Fall meals, in general, rely heavily on anti-inflammatory spices, oils and root vegetables. For spices, Roszkowski suggests adding these fall-must-haves to your list: cinnamon, clove, ginger powder, cardamom, all spice, chili powder and cumin.

And for oils, Roszkowski offers a few unconventional options to try.

“I would add in a really nice roasted nut oil,” Roszkowski says. “I really like walnut oil, pistachio [and] macadamia — you could just drizzle that or make salad dressings.”

For the more ambitious home-cooks, Roszkowski recommends stocking up on chili oil, chocolate oil and pumpkin seed oil, which features a bright green hue and an extraordinary nutty taste.

Step Four: Go out and purchase those must-have items  

This step is pretty self-explanatory. After completing the required prep-work, head on over to your local super market and stock up! To avoid over-spending and purchasing unnecessary items, be sure to carry your handy list with you.

Step Five: Organization is key

After a successful trip to the market, you’ve finally returned home with bags of fresh seasonal ingredients. Now what?

Don’t haphazardly toss these new items into your pantry. Your kitchen pantry is not a disposable ground but rather, a useful and vital storage space.

Instead, Roszkowski recommends stashing away dry ingredients in clear bins, containers and jars, which aid in assessing their freshness. To distinguish between spices, Roszkowski suggests labeling them in clear jars. Oils should also include a dated label to avoid spoiling. Flours, nuts, seeds and powders should be included in clear containers. Potatoes and onions are best kept in baskets.   

“I think, also, people shouldn’t be scared to switch it up,” Roszkowski says. “I think it’s fine to move things around a little bit as you go through.”

Roszkowski recommends grouping items by purpose and need. For example, canned items and oils occupy one shelf, spices occupy another while baking supplies make up a separate shelf. Pantry items can also be grouped by liquids and dry ingredients — this particularly helps to avoid any future mishaps.

Step Six: Revel in your hard work

The last but most essential step is to give yourself a big pat on the back. You finally put together the most efficient and well-stocked kitchen pantry on the block! Reward yourself with a homemade fall meal and get ready to flaunt your pantry the next time guests are over for dinner.

 

More stories about pantry staples: 

“Critical race theory” is a fairytale — but America’s monsters are real

My grandmother was the wisest person I have ever known. She had a fifth-grade education. She lived under and survived the terror regime of Jim and Jane Crow in the South. She and my grandfather owned a small farm — they were not sharecroppers or tenant farmers. They raised many children related to them by blood or marriage: nieces and nephews, younger cousins and so on. They also took in the children of neighbors and other people who, for whatever reason, needed help. No one was turned away if they needed food or a place to stay. Many of the children my grandparents cared for went on to become doctors, bankers, teachers, lawyers and morticians.

My grandmother also offered prophecies and interpreted dreams. What she foretold and interpreted almost always came to pass. I wish I had listened to her more than I did. Sometimes prophecies and predictions must be forced into being; outcomes are never preordained. That is the riddle and paradox of such things.

My grandmother was also a master storyteller. She would make strange faces and change her voice to become the monsters, shape-shifters and other strange entities she told me about that haunted the woods, roads and swamps of North Carolina when she was a child.

One of my favorites was about the Goat Man who prowled the backwoods and dirt roads in little towns all across the South.

In fact, my friend, the author Joe Lansdale, knows of the Goat Man too. He recently wrote a story for Halloween about him: “The Tall Tale of the Sabine River Goat Man and the Haunted Cemetery.”

My grandmother told me that the Goat Man would scream and howl while galloping through the town where she grew up, clomping on his flaming, hoofed feet during the twilight hours between day and night. His awful noises were a warning for all to keep away, an announcement that the Goat Man was here and there was not a damn thing you or anyone else could do about it. If he wanted to get you, he would.

RELATED: How higher education can win the war against neoliberalism and white supremacy

The Goat Man grabbed little Black boys and Black girls and put them in a sack and stole them away into the night. Maybe he ate them or tortured them to death for his own amusement. Maybe it was even more horrible than that.

My grandmother would always scare me with that part of the story, but she’d tell me the really good part was coming up, so I’d best pay close attention.

One day the tough and proud Black men in the town decided to kill the Goat Man — assuming that such a thing was even humanly possible. They told some of the teenage boys to walk on the road at dusk, when the Goat Man was sure to come after them. Then they were supposed to run up to the barn where the posse was waiting. The plan was going perfectly, she explained. The Goat Man, so bold, took the bait and ran after the boys to that barn before realizing it was a trap. Then he stood there, so damn arrogant, telling them all to come out or he was gonna gobble every single Negro up, including the adult men, and maybe, if his belly got too full, save the other Negroes for a snack.

My grandmother started to laugh at that point. She told me that the Black men finally had enough of his mess and jumped on the Goat Man. They kicked and pummeled him. They shot him with their hunting rifles and shotguns. They beat him with chains and axe handles and anything else they thought would brain him. But that Goat Man was tough and strong with evil. He tore one man’s arm off. He took one of the teenage boys and kicked him so hard that “his privates,” as my grandmother put it, came out of his mouth and nose. He grabbed one member of the posse, ripped his head clean off his shoulders and threw it out into a field. Apparently, that man was a loudmouth, a troublemaker and a bully, and no one was terribly sorry when the Goat Man killed him.

Finally the Goat Man ran away with that posse of Black folks chasing after him. The Goat Man never came down that dirt road again. People claimed they could still hear him, in the woods or deep in the swamp. But people stopped randomly disappearing. Parents used the story of the Goat Man, naturally enough, to scare children into behaving. When I asked my grandmother what really happened to that Goat Man, she leaned in, lowered her voice, and said sternly and clearly that he was still out there, just waiting for the right time to come back. “Monsters like that never really go away,” she said.

Years later, while reading Lawrence Levine’s book “Black Culture and Black Consciousness,” I felt that I finally understood the wisdom and truth of my grandmother’s Goat Man stories. Those terrifying tales were (and still are) a way for adults to teach Black children how to survive Jim and Jane Crow white supremacy and the other injustices they would suffer throughout life because of the color of their skin.

The Goat Man’s howling was the sound of curfews and sundown towns and police sirens. His fiery, strange appearance was like that of the Klan members and other white mobs with their torches and lynching ropes and other forms of racist terror. At their core, the Goat Man and other such monsters were a reminder that real evil takes the form of flesh-and-blood human beings, not ghosts or demons or spectral fiends.

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

The Age of Trump has empowered human monsters. As much as many people wish these were phantasmagoric bogeymen, they are real monsters, with a plan to remake America in their own evil vision.

Their goal is to reclaim uncontested white power and white privilege over every significant aspect of American society. Their evil fairytales about “critical race theory” or “parental control” are but a means to that end. The real meaning of those words does not matter; the emotions and the behavior they encourage is what is important. Indeed, for fascists and other authoritarians, reality and truth are mere functions of power, arbitrary constructs that can be changed to meet the needs of the leader and the movement.

The right-wing propaganda machine’s version of “critical race theory” is a lie, an empty floating signifier that can be made to mean almost anything the propagandists and their audience want it to. Once objective truth and reality are destroyed or abandoned, democracy and human freedom become impossible.

What about the everyday white folks, regular people who are not of the political class and not deeply knowledgeable about public policy — for example those who voted for Republican Glenn Youngkin in Virginia last week because of claims about “critical race theory” or “the woke socialist Democrats” or whatever else?

Those people are doing the work of racism and white supremacy. Of course, a great many of them, perhaps most, would take great umbrage at such a description. But on these matters, intention is irrelevant.

Supporting Republican fascists who tell evil fairytales about “critical race theory” — or, more directly, about the teaching of America’s real history — is by definition an act of white supremacy and racism.

I have no doubt that many white people alarmed about “critical race theory” have their own intergenerational family stories about some version of the Goat Man — memories of terror and resistance and being abused by the powerful and privileged. Those stories may stem from histories of poverty or perhaps being sharecroppers or small farmers who lost their land or their homes to crooked banks. Everyday white folks in the Rust Belt and other parts of post-industrial America definitely have stories of how big corporations and gangster capitalists reduced them to misery and destroyed their communities.

Many everyday white folks also have stories about how their ancestors lived in mining towns and were paid in script and abused by the Pinkertons or company goons. And of course, there is the white ethnic fable — partly true and partly fantasy — about how their ancestors survived hardship in Europe and came to America with “nothing,” and then rose by “working hard,” making it to middle-class affluence with “no help” — unlike certain “lazy” or “undeserving” others, who for the most part already lived here.

Somewhere along the way too many everyday white folks in America lost or forgot what the real lessons from their personal and family stories about disempowerment and hardship. They learned or decided that it was preferable to side with the powerful — and in time, perhaps, even join their ranks — than to ally with those who are oppressed and marginalized and work together to make society better for everyone.

Many historians and others who study the history of white folks and the color line have described this as “the price of entry” into the collective notion of whiteness (a relatively recent invention) and all the material and psychological privileges that come with it.

Those bargains of whiteness — and the type of anxious and paranoid white identity politics and white rage that all too often follow them — have helped to create America’s current condition of existential peril. In effect, and in many cases in reality, they have created monsters.

Decent Americans — and especially sheltered and privileged white liberals — still need to prepare themselves for what is likely next in our country’s downward and spiral into neofascism. Too many Americans are still fueled by antiquated fairytales about American exceptionalism, and the naive notion “it can’t happen here,” in the indispensable nation, supposedly the greatest on Earth. 

Understand this: America’s fascist monsters are real. Unlike the Goat Man, they are not metaphorical. They are coming to get you and destroy democracy. They will not stop until they devour all that is good in America or are completely vanquished. Get ready. 

More from Chauncey DeVega on the resurgent white supremacy of the Trump era:

New York Times message to progressives, in translation: Give up on challenging corporate power

A few days after the Nov. 2 election, the New York Times published a vehement editorial calling for the Democratic Party to adopt “moderate” positions and avoid seeking “progressive policies at the expense of bipartisan ideas.” It was a statement by the Times editorial board, which the newspaper describes as “a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values.”

The editorial certainly reflected “longstanding values” — since the Times has recycled them for decades in its relentless attacks on the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Here’s our attempt to translate the Times’ sometimes baffling or misleading language and decode what it’s really saying.

  • The Times editorial board began its polemic by calling for the party to “return” to “moderate policies.” 

Translation: Stick to corporate-friendly policies of the sort that we applauded during 16 years of the Clinton and Obama presidencies.

RELATED: Democrats can win the culture wars — but they have to take on the fight early and often

  • While scolding “a national Democratic Party that talks up progressive policies at the expense of bipartisan ideas,” the editorial warned against “becoming a marginal Democratic Party appealing only to the left.”

Translation: The Biden administration should reach across the aisle even more solicitously to the leadership of an obstructionist, largely racist, largely climate-change-denying, Trump-cultish Republican Party.

  • The election results “are a sign that significant parts of the electorate are feeling leery of a sharp leftward push in the party, including on priorities like Build Back Better, which have some strong provisions and some discretionary ones driving up the price tag.”

Translation: Although poll after poll shows that nearly all elements the Build Back Better agenda are popular with the broad public — especially increased taxation on wealthy and corporate elites to pay for it — we need to characterize the plan as part of “a sharp leftward push.”

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

  • “The concerns of more centrist Americans about a rush to spend taxpayer money, a rush to grow the government, should not be dismissed.”

Translation: While we don’t object to the ongoing “rush to spend taxpayer money” on the military, and we did not editorialize against the bloated Pentagon budget, we oppose efforts to “grow the government” too much for such purposes as health care, child care, education, housing and mitigating the climate crisis.

  • “Mr. Biden did not win the Democratic primary because he promised a progressive revolution. There were plenty of other candidates doing that. He captured the nomination — and the presidency — because he promised an exhausted nation a return to sanity, decency and competence.” 

Translation: No need to fret about the anti-democratic power of great wealth and corporate monopolies. We liked the status quo before the Trump presidency, and that’s more or less what we want now. 

  • “‘Nobody elected him to be F.D.R.,’ Representative Abigail Spanberger, a moderate Democrat from Virginia, told the Times after Tuesday’s drubbing.”

Translation: Spanberger, a former CIA case officer and current member of the corporate-friendly Blue Dog Coalition in Congress, is our kind of Democrat.

  • “Democrats should work to implement policies to help the American people.”

Translation: Democrats should work to implement policies to help the American people — but not go overboard by helping them too much. We sometimes write editorials bemoaning the vast income inequality in this country, but we don’t actually want the government to do much of anything to reduce it. 

  • “Congress should focus on what is possible, not what would be possible if Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema and — frankly — a host of lesser-known Democratic moderates who haven’t had to vote on policies they might oppose were not in office.” 

Translation: We editorialize about social justice, but we don’t want structural changes and substantial new government policies that could bring it much closer. We editorialize about the climate crisis, but not in favor of government actions anywhere near commensurate with the crisis. Our type of tepid liberalism is an approach that won’t be a bottom-line threat to the Times owners and big advertisers — and won’t diminish the leverage and holdings of wealthy elites, including New York Times Company chairman A.G. Sulzberger and the company’s board of directors. We want change, but not too much! 

  • “Democrats agree about far more than they disagree about. But it doesn’t look that way to voters after months and months of intraparty squabbling. Time to focus on — and pass — policies with broad support.”

Translation: Although progressives are fighting for programs that actually do have broad public support, we’ll keep on steadfastly declaring that the truth is otherwise. Progressives should simply give up and surrender to the corporate forces we like to call “moderate.”

More on the post-Trump plight of the Democratic Party:

“Drinking through a lead straw” — $15B approved to fix dangerous water pipes

HOUSTON — No one knows exactly how many lead pipes deliver water to homes, schools and businesses throughout America — or even where they all are. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates at least 6 million lead service lines exist. Environmental groups say it’s probably many more.

What is known is that with every pot of boiling sweet potatoes, bottle of reconstituted baby formula or sip of tap water delivered through lead pipes, millions of Americans risk ingesting lead, a powerful neurotoxin long known to cause irreversible organ and cognitive damage in children and adults.

“As a starting point, we don’t even fully know the extent of all this, even though because of situations like Flint and other places, we know it’s real,” said Joseph Kane, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who focuses on infrastructure.

Now, he and other experts say, the nation can finally start to make a dent in the problem. The bipartisan infrastructure bill that Congress approved Friday calls for allocating $15 billion for lead pipe remediation. An additional $9 billion to help with lead reduction in disadvantaged communities and $970 million for rural water and waste-water programs, including lead remediation, are still on the table as part of the pending reconciliation spending bill to fund President Joe Biden’s social and climate agenda.

While some say the infrastructure bill is not enough — industry experts and environmental advocates estimate the actual cost of fully replacing lead pipes could be $60 billion — others believe the infrastructure package will bring significant change.

“Is this better than nothing? Absolutely, 100%,” said Scott Berry, director of policy and government affairs at the US Water Alliance, a nonprofit focused on sustainable water policies. “This is going to be transformative for some communities.”

The lead-poisoned water in Flint, Michigan, elevated the issue of lead pipes to national attention in 2015. But some places, such as Houston’s Fifth Ward neighborhood that is saddled with other environmental hazards amid aging homes, are just beginning to track the plumbing contamination.

Lead service lines were banned nationwide in 1986, but fixing this largely underground problem has been taking longer than community and environmental advocates would like.

Earlier this month, before the infrastructure bill passed, the EPA ordered the city of Benton Harbor, Michigan, to take “immediate action” to improve its drinking water system after several years of inaction on high lead levels. Illinois recently established a 50-year timeline to replace all lead service lines, including in Chicago, which has the most of any U.S. city with an estimated 400,000 lines.

After the Flint water crisis, officials with Greater Cincinnati Water Works developed a plan to remove lead pipes; the city provided financial assistance to property owners for their share of the project. When fewer owners than expected signed up, city leaders agreed to cover the full cost, said Jeff Swertfeger, superintendent of water quality. Officials hoped to complete the project in 15 years — until the bill passed.

“That will allow us to do it more quickly,” Swertfeger said, if his city gets some of the money.

The EPA said in 2012 that there is no safe level of lead exposure. However, rules governing allowable levels in drinking water have been largely unchanged since 1991, said Adrienne Katner, an associate professor of environmental and occupational health at Louisiana State University.

Katner said when blood lead levels fell following bans on lead in paint and gas, many Americans — including medical professionals — thought the problem of lead poisoning was largely solved. She said that mindset has continued to this day.

“But the lead story isn’t over,” Katner said. “Because we’ve created cities that are pretty much hazardous waste sites now because of the amount of lead we put in the environment.”

Lead-based paint and lead-contaminated dust continue to be primary sources of lead exposure, but the reality is that lead in water poisons children and adults at troubling rates. The EPA estimates that, for the general public, drinking water can account for 20% or more of lead exposure. Infants who drink reconstituted formula can receive up to 60% of their lead exposure from the water.

“Lead pipes are unpredictable,” said Tom Neltner, chemicals policy director at the Environmental Defense Fund, a science-based environmental advocacy organization. “One day they can be low and later really high. It may be flow, water chemistry, temperature or something else. That is what makes them particularly hard to manage safely — and why replacing them is so important.”

Lead accumulates in the body over time. It is known to cause organ damage and reduce impulse control, IQ and cognitive abilities in children. It can cause fertility issues. For those who are calcium-deficient while pregnant, it can leach from the bones and cross the placental barrier, exposing the fetus to lead. In adults, it can cause liver damage and cardiovascular disease.

While lead-contaminated water can affect all populations, low-income and minority communities are hit the hardest, Katner said. Many of those communities exist in older, more industrialized and more polluted areas in any given city, where residents are less likely to have the financial resources or political clout to get lead pipes removed.

“There are many communities of color, Black and brown communities specifically, that because of policies that have resulted in segregation and environmental racism, are cumulatively disadvantaged,” said Grace Tee Lewis, a senior health scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund.

Houston’s Fifth Ward, in the shadow of downtown Houston’s gleaming office towers and expensive condos, is faced with numerous environmental and health challenges. Within its borders sit three Superfund sites, chemical plants, metal recyclers and cement plants. Two cancer clusters have been identified there.

The Rev. James Caldwell formed the nonprofit Coalition of Community Organizations to help residents there tackle health, environmental, economic and social issues. In 2019, the Houston Health Department gave Caldwell’s group a map identifying homes and businesses with potential lead-based paint contamination. Because those homes were likely built before 1978, the year lead paint was banned nationally, and aging infrastructure was already an issue, it seemed possible that lead service lines were delivering water to the area, too.

“We don’t know if we have people in our community bathing in lead water, drinking lead water, pouring the water in their plants, on their food — and they don’t know,” Caldwell said. “That’s a problem.”

The Coalition of Community Organizations created a working group of residents and experts to sample water, soil and dust for multiple particulates — including lead — from homes throughout the Fifth Ward. Leanne Fawkes, a doctoral candidate in Texas A&M University’s School of Public Health who is working on the project, said so far about 30% of water samples collected from 200 homes show elevated lead levels.

“I would just like more Houstonians to be aware that this was happening in their backyard,” she said.

The city’s Public Works department has been conducting a separate public survey to help determine locations throughout the city to target for water testing, said city spokesperson Erin Jones.

The Environmental Defense Fund’s Neltner said it’s imperative to raise awareness nationwide that these pipes and plumbing fixtures pose dangerous health concerns. Removing them will not eliminate the risk of lead-contaminated drinking water, but what potentially remains will be more easily managed with proper mitigation, he said.

Now that the infrastructure bill is approved, he said, the priority must be on ensuring low-income communities, where residents have the fewest resources to participate in fixing the problem, have access to the funds.

“If you’re drinking water through a lead straw, while that might be safe right this moment, the next moment it’s not,” Neltner said. “People need to be confident that their water is safe.

Meet the warty comb jelly, the only animal with a disappearing anus

Staring at a comb jelly, it’s not very obvious which end is mouth and which is butt.

A quick search of “comb jelly” shows how many of us get it wrong. We often depict comb jellies butt up (like the image for this article), though they tend to swim and rest mouth up. Comb jellies look so much like a marine bedsheet ghosts, it’s understandable we’d assume the domed part is the mouth side instead of the butt.

If you keep watching a comb jelly, you may be able to tell which end is the butt, because you’ll see it eat and you’ll also see it poop. However, unless you have a microscope trained on the jelly’s rear end, you wouldn’t necessarily be aware of a vanishing act you just witnessed. A few years ago, researchers discovered that the warty comb jelly (Mnemiopsis leidyi) has a disappearing anus. Every time a warty comb jelly needs to poop, the outer skin and the digestive system fuse to form an opening. Then after the poop is completed, that nexus vanishes without a trace.

Making and unmaking an anus sounds like such an ordeal, you might imagine comb jellies poop rarely. However, comb jellies are constant consumers, and thus frequent poopers. Exactly how often the comb jelly poops scales with its body size. In a large adult comb jelly, the transient anus appears and disappears about every hour. The tiniest of comb jellies, only a fifth of a centimeter long, form and then reabsorb their anuses every 10 minutes. Still, even these tiny comb jellies spend most of their time without an anus. This vanishing act is fast. Appearing, pooping, and disappearing takes the anus just a few minutes.

The transient nature of the comb jelly anus was discovered in 2019 by Sidney L. Tamm at the Marine Biological Laboratory. However, we’ve known since 1850 that comb jellies have an anus, unlike many similar looking but not closely related species. Comb jellies are their own group separate from jellyfish, who have no anuses and thus poop out their mouths. An anus was in fact one of the key differences that led invertebrate zoologist Libbie Hyman to reclassify comb jellies as distinct from jellyfish in 1940, well before genome sequencing confirmed their evolutionary distance.

Prior to the discovery of the transient anus, we didn’t just think comb jellies had anuses, but that they might have two. A comb jelly has a pair of structures on its rear end known as anal lobes. Both of these anal lobes swell prior to pooping, but one swells more than the other. The anus always appears on the more swollen side, while the less swollen side remains anus-less. All of the poop then moves towards the more swollen side to be ejected out of the new anus. For an individual comb jelly, it’s also always the same side that gets more swollen, giving them a sort of butt “handedness”. Stranger still, this “handedness” is the only feature that breaks the comb jelly’s radial symmetry.

Comb jellies are the only creatures so far known to have transient anuses. Though if any organism was going to have one, it’s not too surprising it’s the comb jelly. Comb jellies are anatomical trailblazers. They have a nervous system and muscles, but theses systems have very different biology from all other animals. Comb jelly genetics even indicate that their neurons and muscles evolved entirely separately. So why wouldn’t comb jellies have their own way to have a butt?

Comb jellies are also some of the most plastic organisms we know of. Cut a comb jelly in half and it can completely rebuild its body in just four days, not even leaving a scar behind. If being sliced in half is just an off week, creating and reabsorbing an anus dozens of times per day may not be such a big deal.

Though comb jellies are alone in having disappearing anuses, the invertebrate world is full of strange butts. The face mite, an arachnid that is exactly what it sounds like, has lost its butt. In its fleeting 16 day life, it feasts but never poops once. Some scorpions join the face mites as butt-less arachnids. Scorpions can drop their tails to escape being eaten, but woefully sacrifice their anuses in the process.

Among the other weird butts scuttling around the ocean, there are species that breathe through their anuses, including sea cucumbers, whose anuses are also homes for fish. The ocean’s other strange symbiotic butt, or butts rather, belongs to the worm Ramisyllis multicaudata, which lives inside a sea sponge. With its head buried deep down in its host, the hundreds of butts of the worm’s branching body poke out like a reverse hydra.

The disappearing anus is just one of many recent developments in our understanding of comb jelly biology. Marine biologists have studied wild comb jellies for centuries, but recently scientists have succeeded in growing comb jellies in the lab. Comb jellies are well on their way to becoming an exciting new research organism. Because they do everything so differently, studying comb jelly biology could help find creative solutions to human biological problems. And as comb jellies pop up in more labs around the world, we might also learn a little more about what it means to have a disappearing butt.

Another Republican ensnared? Rep. Darrell Issa may be implicated in Fortenberry scandal

The federal case against Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb. — who was indicted last month on charges of lying to federal investigators and concealing information about illegal campaign donations — appears to have ensnared another Republican congressman. The Department of Justice stated last week that a protective order was “necessary” in the Fortenberry case to protect “evidence related to sensitive and ongoing investigations, including those related to public officials.”

One public official in question, who is identified in court filings only as “Candidate C,” is Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican who is now the apparent target of a DOJ investigation — and may indeed have been the object of a sting operation. Issa retired from Congress in 2018 after serving nine terms from a Southern California district, but then moved to an adjoining district in San Diego County and was narrowly elected in 2020. The former CEO of an after-market auto accessories company called Directed Electronics, Issa has an estimated net worth of $250 million and is one of the richest members of the House.

On Sept. 10, 2014, Issa dined at the same table with Gilbert Chagoury, a shadowy figure identified as a “foreign billionaire” in the charges against Fortenberry, at a Washington event hosted by the group In Defense of Christianity (IDC). Two weeks later, Issa’s campaign and the National Republican Congressional Committee received a total of $60,000 in donations, on the same day, from Dr. Elias Ayoub and his wife Mireille, an affluent Los Angeles couple who had also attended the IDC dinner. According to documents filed with the Justice Department, the $30,000 that went to Issa’s victory fund actually came from Chagoury, a Nigerian citizen who may not legally contribute to federal candidates.

RELATED: Behind the Fortenberry scandal: Another member of secretive Christian network goes down

According to Deferred Prosecution Agreements (DPAs) for Chagoury and a Lebanese national named Joseph Arsan, Chagoury met with Elias Ayoub — identified in the documents as “Individual H” — at a “special interest conference” in Washington in September 2014. That event was clearly the IDC Summit, held Sept. 9 to 11 at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, which for years has served as a gathering spot for Washington’s conservative elite and formerly hosted the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) events. 

The IDC event was hosted by a man named Toufic Baaklini, who acted as a middleman for the straw donations from Chagoury to political candidates. Ayoub and his wife were both attendees and speakers at that same event. According to the DPAs, Chagoury suggested that Ayoub host a political fundraiser for “Candidate C,” who is now known to be Issa, and asked him to “contribute $30,000” to Issa’s Victory Fund, which Chagoury made clear he would reimburse to Ayoub. 

Photos reviewed by Salon (but no longer available on the internet) show that Chagoury and Issa sat next to each other at the gala dinner during the IDC summit.

On Sept. 28, 2014, Ayoub and his wife contributed $30,000 to Issa’s Victory Fund, which made the Ayoub family’s LLC the 10th largest employer to donate to that committee in the 2014 election cycle. According to the Justice Department, on Oct. 21, Joseph Arsan — at Chagoury’s direction — wired $30,000 to Ayoub, indicating on the wire form that the funds were for a “wedding gift.” That was actually the payment to reimburse the Ayoubs for their donation to Issa’s campaign. 

The Ayoubs made an additional $30,000 in federal contributions on the same day as the known straw donations: $2,600 each to Issa for Congress, $7,400 each to the NRCC and $5,000 each to Issa’s PAC, which was called Invest in a Strong and Secure America. It remains unclear whether those funds really came from the Ayoubs or from someone else, but at any rate, those contributions are not included in the reviewed DOJ agreements.

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Ayoub was also the co-host and a straw donor for a 2016 fundraiser for Fortenberry — the event that led to the Nebraska congressman’s indictment last month. According to federal prosecutors, Ayoub began cooperating with authorities in September 2016 and told agents for the FBI and IRS about the illegal contributions to Fortenberry in 2016, as well as a $45,000 contribution to 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney and the $30,000 to Issa’s victory fund in 2014. 

Another Los Angeles resident, Ramez Toubassy (named as Individual I in DOJ documents), was “recruited” by Ayoub to make a $50,000 donation to the Romney campaign in the fall of 2012. Around the same time, Toubassy and Ayoub also each made $30,800 contributions to the Republican National Committee and to state Republican organizations in Idaho, Vermont, Massachusetts and Oklahoma. Toubassy gave $3,550 to each group and Ayoub gave $2,925. At the time, Toubassy was the “president of Brand Sense Partners, a Century City brand-consulting firm that counted Britney Spears and MGM among its clients.” He has not been named or charged in the scheme to this point.

Notably, the Ayoubs had never previously donated to any of Issa’s campaign committees and did not do so again until three and a half years after they apparently began cooperating with federal authorities. On March 28, 2020, shortly after Issa finished second in the top-two nonpartisan primary in California’s 50th congressional district, Dr. Ayoub made two additional donations to Issa: $2,000 to his victory fund and $2,000 to Darrell Issa for Congress. (Issa went on to win the general election in November.)

The timing of those contributions, roughly a year before the DOJ announced “Non and Deferred Prosecution Agreements” with Chagoury and Arsan, is striking. It seems plausible that the Ayoubs were used as part of the DOJ investigation into Issa. The indictment of Fortenberry includes the following:

The Federal Investigation also sought to uncover whether and when any politicians were aware they had received illegal foreign national or conduit contributions and whether any person sought to impermissibly influence the recipient politician in exchange for the contributions.

“No, I don’t have the same issues [as Fortenberry],” Issa told Politico’s Haley Fuchs and Olivia Beavers in late October. “I made no statements to any FBI — or anything else.” 

Neither Rep. Issa nor the Department of Justice responded to Salon’s requests for comment. Gilbert Chagoury along with Elias and Mireille Ayoub could not be reached.

More from Salon on corruption in Congress:

Rep. Paul Gosar may face ethics probe over anime-style video of him killing AOC

Rep. Paul Gosar., R-Ariz., the fervent pro-Trump dentist who has refused to disassociate himself from multiple white nationalist groups, now faces calls for investigation over his recent release of a crude anime-style video in which a fantasy version of himself kills Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.

On Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for ethics probes into the video’s release, urging House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to join her in rebuking the “horrific video.”

“Threats of violence against Members of Congress and the President of the United States must not be tolerated,” the top House Democrat tweeted. 

Reps. Matt Cartwright, D-Pa., Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., Ted Lieu, D-Calif., and Joe Neguse, D-Colo., echoed Pelosi in a joint statement, writing that McCarthy needs to take a stand against “violence” and “chaos.”

“In any other job in America, if a coworker made a video killing another coworker, that person would be fired,” the four members wrote. “Mr. McCarthy needs to decide whether he will finally stand with the American people on the side of law and order or he will continue to support violence and chaos.”

The video, released on Sunday, pulls clips from the Japanese manga series “Attack on the Titan.” In his video, Gosar puts a xenophobic twist on his mashup by retitling the video “Attack of Immigrants,” alternates between the show’s interstitials and real-world footage of border-patrol agents corralling immigrants as they attempt to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. 

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At one point, the video shows the main character scaling a European-style urban landscape with Gosar’s face photoshopped atop his, alongside images of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Lauren Boebert, R-Colo. — two of Gosar’s closest far-right allies in the House. Toward the end of the clip, the animated Gosar slays a “titan,” the nemesis of the Japanese show, crudely rendered as Ocasio-Cortez.

RELATED: Republican congressman tweets anime-themed video of him killing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

In response to the video, Ocasio-Cortez tweeted: “a creepy member I work with who fundraises for Neo-Nazi groups shared a fantasy video of him killing me.”

“And he’ll face no consequences,” she added, “bc @GOPLeader cheers him on with excuses.”

Gosar, first elected to the House in 2010, is an ardent Trump supporter who has become notorious for his apparent connections to white nationalist and anti-government groups and his unapologetic defense of the Jan. 6 insurrection.

In February, the Arizona lawmaker attended and spoke at the America First Political Action Conference, a white nationalist event, later posing in a picture alongside overt white supremacist Nick Fuentes, a key figure at the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, who has become unofficial leader of the “groyper” movement.

RELATED: GOP Rep. Paul Gosar called out by House colleague for white nationalist tweet

In October, Gosar was implicated in planning the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the Capitol assault last January, with two organizers reportedly telling Congress that Gosar promised “blanket immunity” to protesters in the event of federal prosecution.

“I was just going over the list of pardons and we just wanted to tell you guys how much we appreciate all the hard work you’ve been doing,” Gosar allegedly told the organizers. 

RELATED: Jan. 6 organizers say they held “dozens” of planning meetings with House Republicans: report

In a March interview with Salon, all three of Gosar’s siblings expressed their belief that the Republican congressman is a white supremacist and should be expelled from the House.

“I don’t think he stands for anything. I don’t think he has any character left. It’s like, ‘What do I need to say? Who do I need to pander to to get money or get ahead?'” said Dave Gosar, an attorney. “This is who Paul is.”

Coalition demands AT&T sever ties with pro-Trump “propaganda channel” OANN

A coalition of prominent rights organizations demanded Monday that AT&T and DirecTV completely sever ties with the One America News Network, a rabidly pro-Trump media outlet that the groups slammed for “spreading anti-democratic disinformation, promoting Covid-19 conspiracy theories, and fueling racism.”

In a letter to AT&T CEO John Stankey and DirecTV CEO Bill Morrow, the coalition points to a recent report that exposed the major role AT&T—the world’s largest telecom company—played in creating and funding OANN, which the media-justice group Free Press described as a “propaganda channel.”

AT&T owns a 70% stake in DirecTV, which the telecom behemoth spun off earlier this year.

“OANN has the right to air whatever content it chooses,” reads the letter led by Free Press and signed by 16 other groups. “However, AT&T’s support for OANN runs contrary to its public commitment to equality given OANN’s role in funding and promoting anti-democratic policies as well as its track record of providing a platform for disinformation and calls for acts of violence that undermine trust in our institutions.”

The coalition—which includes Color of Change, Greenpeace USA, Common Cause, and Global Project Against Hate and Extremism—argues that since its inception in 2013, OANN “has provided an open platform for purveyors of disinformation to spread dangerous and hateful messages that undermine our democracy.”

“OANN is a major supporter of the Stop the Steal movement and is currently being sued by Dominion for spreading election fraud lies that claimed the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump,” the letter states. “OANN has provided ongoing coverage of ‘fraudulent’ results and played a role in fomenting the Jan. 6 deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. OANN is continuing to run content that spreads election disinformation and seeks to cast doubt over the results of the 2020 presidential election.”

The groups go on to note that OANN “has a history of featuring false information about the pandemic, which breeds distrust in public health officials and in the efficacy of the vaccine.”

“In November 2020, the OANN YouTube channel featured information about a guaranteed ‘cure’ for Covid which YouTube flagged as violating its Covid-specific misinformation policies. YouTube suspended the OANN channel for the violation and remarked that the ‘demonetization of all OANN content will be permanent, unless the network addresses its issues.'”

Yosef Getachew, director of the Media and Democracy Program at Common Cause, said in a statement Monday that “the harmful disinformation OANN spreads has had real-world impacts on democracy and public health, from the violent insurrection on our Capitol to the death and suffering of so many who were misinformed by the network’s coverage of the pandemic.”

“AT&T must be held accountable for its role in building and bankrolling OANN,” Getachew added, “and DirecTV must no longer carry this dangerous disinformation network.”

Citing court records, Reuters reported last month that AT&T “has been a crucial source of funds flowing into OAN, providing tens of millions of dollars in revenue.”

“Ninety percent of OAN’s revenue came from a contract with AT&T-owned television platforms, including satellite broadcaster DirecTV, according to 2020 sworn testimony by an OAN accountant,” the outlet noted. “Without the DirecTV deal, the accountant said under oath, the network’s value ‘would be zero.'”

Nora Benavidez, senior counsel and director of digital justice and civil rights at Free Press, said Monday that “AT&T helped conceive, finance, and provide a megaphone for Donald Trump’s big lie.”

“One America News would not exist without AT&T’s money and DirecTV’s national platform,” said Benavidez. “It wouldn’t have been able to mislead millions with dangerous, hateful, and dishonest messages that undermine our democracy and threaten our diverse communities.”

“These two media giants continue to spout talking points about race equity while supporting a network that’s given a national stage to white supremacists and promoted lies about public health,” she added. “We’re calling on AT&T CEO John Stankey and DirecTV CEO Bill Morrow to account for their hypocrisy and are urging both of their companies to cut all ties with One America News.”

 

Kayleigh McEnany and Stephen Miller subpoenaed by Capitol riot committee

The House Select Committee investigating the January 6th Capitol riots has sent out a fresh batch of subpoenas, highlighted by former Trump White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany and Trump aide Stephen Miller.

In addition to McEnany and Miller, the committee also sent out subpoenas for lesser known Trump world figures Johnny McEntee, Ben Williamson, Keith Kellogg, Nick Luna, Christopher Liddell, Molly Michael, Cassidy Hutchinson, and Kenneth Klukowski.

As Politico’s Kyle Cheney writes, Johnny McEntee appears to be a key figure among those subpoenaed, as he led a Trump-approved effort to purge the administration of officials who were deemed insufficiently loyal.

However, just because these witnesses have been subpoenaed, there is no guarantee that they will testify.

Trump ally Steve Bannon has openly defied the committee’s subpoena request and has so far faced no criminal charges despite the fact that the House of Representatives sent a criminal referral to the Department of Justice against him.

“Squid Game” Season 2 could change the world: “Do we really have to live in a world like this?”

The key to our salvation may lie with Gi-hun, the now red-haired protagonist of Netflix’s hit Korean drama “Squid Game.” At a For Your Consideration screening and Q&A that Salon attended on Monday night, creator Hwang Dong-hyuk hinted as much to the audience gathered at NeueHouse Hollywood. 

“I made ‘Squid Game’ in hopes that it’s not just going to be a show that you watch and you’re just done with it,” Hwang told the audience through an interpreter. “But like you see in the last scene when Gi-hun looks directly into the camera, and it’s almost like he’s asking you this question, ‘Do we really have to live in a world like this? And is there anything we can do to change that?'”

This comment appears to dovetail with the lastest news that the thrilling series will return for a second season that’s already in the works.

“There’s been so much pressure, so much demand and so much love for a second season,” Hwang told the Associated Press on the red carpet for the event, in a video posted Tuesday. “So I almost feel like you leave us no choice! But I will say there will indeed be a second season.

“I do think it’s too early to say when and how that’s going to happen,” he continued. “So I will promise you this: Gi-hun will come back. He will do something for the world.”

In “Squid Game,” hundreds of desperate, impoverished people play deadly versions of children’s games for a chance at winning a $40 million pot, while wealthy VIPs bet on their fates. Gi-hun, played by Lee Jung-jae, triumphs in the end, but the finale implies he hasn’t spent any of his earnings on himself but is instead set on putting an end to the games.

RELATED: “Squid Game”: The real debt crisis shaking South Korea that inspired the hit TV show

The last scene portrays Gi-hun as a man on the mission, turning away from boarding the plane bound for America and heading back to confront and presumably stop the founders of the games.

“I thought that might be a good, simple-but-ambiguous way to end the story for Gi-hun,” Hwang said to The Hollywood Reporter in October. He originally saw this as the ending of the series, but has more ideas to explore the show further — specifically, with regard to how Gi-Hun is now “going to navigate through his reckoning with the people who are designing the games.”

It’s to be noted that while Hwang confirmed he’s working on developing a second season, Netflix has yet to make an official announcement. Of course, seeing as how “Squid Game” is its most watched show ever, a follow-up installment is a no-brainer. The streamer’s push for show to get awards recognition, as evidence by the FYC event, is another clue to the show’s expected renewal.

Hwang’s declaration is the first time he’s acknowledged having a solid idea for moving forward. The acclaimed director is best known for his insightful films that have tackled topics ranging from transnational adoption to the abuse of students at a school for the deaf. Writing the eight-episode “Squid Game” was taxing in a way that he hadn’t experienced before, and left him almost bereft when it came to even considering continuing the series. 

In the past Hwang had also considered other ideas for Season 2, such as exploring the story of police officer Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon), who discovers that the masked Front Man running the games is none other than his brother, who disappeared years ago. “If I end up creating Season 2, I’d like to explore that storyline — what is going on between those two brothers?” Hwang said at the time, adding, “And then I could also go into the story of that recruiter in the suit who plays the game of ddakji with Gi-hun and gives him the card in the first episode.”

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In other words, yes, most of the show’s most prominent characters died in Season 1, which makes sense because the show is literally about a series of games designed to kill as many people as possible. But there are still many threads left to be pulled, more back stories to explore, and plenty more critiques to be made about the deadly nature of predatory capitalism, not just in Korea but around the world.

It’s worth noting that Hwang told the AP that Gi-Hun “will do something for the world” — he could be speaking generally, but it’s also entirely possible that “Squid Game” may next explore how different variations of the games exist not just in Korea, but everywhere. The foreign VIPs in the series mention that the South Korean version of the contest was their favorite, implying that others exist elsewhere. 

Taking the series beyond South Korea could make sense. After all, the show is a hit for Netflix’s global audience, resonating with viewers on multiple continents. Its anti-capitalist themes and observations about poverty are unfortunately all too relatable in this COVID world. While Hwang and his stars certainly celebrated the show’s success at the glitzy Hollywood event Monday, it’s clear that his mind was still on the show’s original purpose and on real-life matters. 

“During production, of course, the pandemic hit everyone globally, and that also has exacerbated the huge growing gap between the wealthy and the poor,” he said. “We read it in the news, and we also feel it in our lives. I studied here back in early 2000s. And I actually visited LA about three or four years ago. And when I first visited after many years, this time I was very saddened to see so many people without homes. And I thought to myself, ‘So many more people are now in pain.’ There is such a huge and worsening wealth gap that so many people unfortunately have to go through.”

Clearly, problems with wealth inequality and the deadly, exploitative perils of capitalism are by no means limited to Korea. Here in the U.S., one need only look to the rise of an American game show to get your student loans paid off, or the ways military recruitment relies on the promise of paying prospective students’ tuition to know that wealth inequality is a pretty serious issue here, too. Poverty, desperation, and bored rich people exist everywhere in the world, and it sounds like in Season 2, Gi-Hun might very well confront this reality outside of his home country or at least have his actions reverberate beyond South Korea.

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“Ferguson Rises” explains why America needs its modern civil rights movement through a father’s eyes

“Ferguson Rises” arrives on PBS at an inflection point in the United States about systemic racial disparity and whether we, as a nation, are ready to do the hard work of addressing it. That is to say, it comes before us at precisely the right time.  

All you need to do is look around you at the political pressure being placed on local school boards over the critical race theory canard or the efforts to delegitimize the civil rights gains made by the Black Lives Matter movement. A film breaking down the impact of 18-year-old Michael Brown Jr.’s killing in 2014 on the community of Ferguson, Missouri provides a crucial understanding of how and why we got to where we are now, but only to people who actually want to understand these factors.

But Mobolaji Olambiwonnu’s hour and 20-minute film illuminates two very clear truths about American society that get in the way of transformative change. One is that there is a large segment of the nation that views achieving racial equality as an inconvenience and unnecessary, mainly because they don’t experience the ramifications of racial profiling and over-policing in their communities.

RELATED: How American police got militarized

The other is a part of the story told time and time again through special news reports, documentaries such as this and even fictionalized film treatments, which is the human response beyond the toll of tears and anger. The frustration of Ferguson is the fact that it is a replay of any number of furious, bloody uprisings throughout history.

Community organizer Osagyefo Sekou succinctly describes what it was like to be on the ground in Ferguson during the 2014 riots. He was studying at Stanford University before a friend urged him to return home. “And so I got on a plane and I flew back in time,” he says, explaining how his home had transformed into a place reminiscent of scenes in cities around the country throughout the 20th century.

Renita Lamkin, the pastor at St. James AME Church, sums up the show of force by police by calling it an atmosphere of evil is so thick, that “sometimes that it weighs on you.”

Olambiwonnu makes Brown’s father Michael Brown Sr. a primary focus of “Ferguson Rises” however, to show how he and others transformed their mourning into service. He and others make “Ferguson Rising” a brightly burning candle of hope emerging from a fuse lit by frustration and despair. It is not a plea, but a stalwart explanation as to why social justice movements are necessary to move a democracy forward and to slow and halt rollbacks like the ones being legislated into existence now.

Many documentaries and news reports about unarmed Black men and women killed by police or who die while in police custody do this. “Ferguson Rises” goes a step further, though, by depicting Ferguson and the movement that rose out of it as a multiracial concern. That refers to what’s required of direct participants and people watching protests unfold in their cities.

It’s that second faction Olambiwonnu and the film’s producer David Oyelowo carefully include that explains why a large segment of the nation doesn’t understand Black Lives Matter or view the uprisings as inconvenient or needlessly destructive.

Nor do they comprehend why so many view then-St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch’s refusal to charge former police officer Darren Wilson for killing Brown as the ultimate injustice.

(A subsequent investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2015 concluded that Wilson shot Brown in self-defense. Current St. Louis prosecutor Wesley Bell revisited the case and in 2020 ultimately declined to bring manslaughter or murder charges against Wilson while specifying that this did not exonerate the now-former cop.)

“I’ve never had a problem with the police,” says one Ferguson resident who goes on to talk about how her local cops would bring her dog home whenever it escaped. She expressed gratitude for that, because if animal control got ahold of her dog, she explained, she’d have to pay hundreds of dollars in fines.

“I don’t know to say it without it sounding like ‘we’ and ‘them,’ but protesters are still wanting to gripe about things,” says Ank Ankenbrand in a voiceover as he placidly cooks in his kitchen with his wife Susan. “To me, it almost seems like they’re . . . [having] tantrums.”

Yet another, Jeannie Boettcher, admits, “I guess I always thought the police were fair, but let’s face it: I’m white, and you know, with maybe the exception of a speeding ticket a couple of times in my life, I’ve really never had to encounter the police as a law enforcement.”

Without specifying any other characteristics about these folks, you can probably guess these people are white and live in a part of the town of 22,000 where interactions with their Black neighbors are likely infrequent.

They aren’t part of the population preyed upon by Ferguson’s police department to generate revenue, according to a Justice Department investigation mounted in 2015 that confirmed protesters assertions that local law enforcement disproportionately targeted Black residents. That same report also found that African Americans make up 67% of Ferguson’s population, yet account for 93% of arrests made from 2012-2014.

One enraging sequence shows Wilson describing the 18-year-old he gunned down to ABC’s George Robert Stephanopoulos as huge and demonic before claiming, “You can’t perform the duties of a police officer and have racism in you.”

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To be inflamed by all of this is natural and part of the point. Even so, Olambiwonnu ensures this isn’t the whole point. All of those subjects cited above are simply sharing their view of how they see their town and their place in it; they simply can’t comprehend the fear of a teenage boy from their same town who says that whenever he walks out of his house he can’t be sure if make it back, “and that’s scary.”

The most frustrating part of watching “Ferguson Rises” is knowing that the people who would most benefit from what it has to say, those asking why an honest reckoning with race is necessary, will not watch. Not might not – they won’t.

Boettcher in her interview struggles to understand why it’s wrong to simply say all lives matter. To this when community activist Cathy Daniels answers with, “We understand that all lives matter, but until you see me in the same light that you see yourself, I have to keep being specific,” one can’t help assuming that her white neighbor still won’t comprehend.

Michael Brown Sr. doesn’t let any of that concern him as the founder of Michael Brown Chosen for Change. In one of the film’s most powerful scenes he gathers the surviving relatives of unarmed Black men and women killed by police together for an event to recognize and support each other, and each explains that none of them wanted to be in that room. But since they are, they must keep pushing for justice.

Witnessing the passion and commitment among those who are listening is heartening. “They probably think that we’re crazy, that we’re probably a bunch of young Black radicals who just want to burn the city down,” activist Tory Russell says. “That’s not true. We’re just mad and want to see some change.” 

“Ferguson Rises” is now streaming at PBS.org and on the PBS app.

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“Big Mouth” tackles the shame and dangers of No Nut November

The horny tweens of Bridgeton Middle School are back in Season 5 of “Big Mouth,” and things immediately get off to bumpy start when Jay convinces friends Nick, Andrew and Jessi to join him in the #NoNutNovember challenge.

“It’s a challenge for your mind and your d**k,” he explains. “You don’t come for the entire month. Everybody’s doing it. Chris Pratt, Anthony Mackie, the dad from ‘Father of the Bride,’ Guy Fieri. I mean, everybody! We should do it too!”

Jay himself is convinced to participate by a video of actor Kumail Nanjiani – guest starring as an animated and jacked version of himself – endorsing the challenge, as Jay continues to struggle to move on from his doomed relationship with Lola.

“I was a slave to my seed!” a shirtless Nanjiani declares as he works out in the video Jay shows to his friends. “But ever since I’ve stopped nutting, my life’s been Mark Wahlberg good!

“One month of no sex, no masturbation, no wet dreams, no nutting in any form . . . So cork that c**k, stay rock-soft, and I’ll see you for Decimate Your D**k December!”

Since the kids of “Big Mouth” are, well, kids, for them, the challenge mostly pertains to masturbation and wet dreams, and the first to lose owes the others granola bars. This is also a nod to the “Seinfeld” episode “The Contest,” in which Jerry and his friends bet to see who can hold out on masturbating the longest, which “Big Mouth” acknowledges by spoofing the music and iconic diner from the hit sitcom.

The demonization of nutting

While Nanjiani’s endorsement of No Nut November is fictional, the trend itself remains real. It refers to a social media challenge in which participants swear off orgasms, and primarily masturbating, for the entire month, supposedly to alleviate dependency on sex, porn consumption and masturbation. 

But what is its appeal? Even the Bridgeton students are leery of denying themselves this pleasure at first.

RELATED: “Big Mouth” Season 3 masterfully decodes the “politics of childhood”

“It sounds awful. I mean why would anybody not jerk off for a month? You gotta get the poison out, am I right?” Andrew asks, reluctant to participate until his ego comes into play.

Missy refuses outright, declaring, “I’d like to say that No Nut November demonizes masturbation, which is a perfectly healthy activity.”

“Demonizes” seems to be the key word here to understanding why this trend has gained in popularity.

A cursory search for the trend on social platforms like Reddit and Twitter reveals it’s increasingly been co-opted by far-right users. This shouldn’t be surprising, considering the impetus for the challenge is at least somewhat derived from incel thinking: that men’s dependency on sex, porn and masturbation is dangerous, and they can regain their power through disavowing these vices. And to be clear, one can certainly become dependent on porn and masturbating to porn to the point that this interrupts their daily life and relationships, and they might benefit from therapy.

There’s nothing wrong with abstinence in and of itself, but when the idea of self-control is transmuted into equating sex and masturbation with immorality, that can lead to misplaced anger and blame. Thus, in addition to abstaining from, well, “nutting,” No Nut November can also lead to increased vitriol among participants against sex workers, whom they blame for ensnaring them in states of masturbatory dependency, per reporting from Rolling Stone. 

In some right-wing circles, failing No Nut November makes one a “beta masturbator,” using language and shame to define a specific type of toxic masculinity. You’re a “real” man if you can beat the challenge. 

The “Big Mouth” version of Nanjiani even uses catchphrases like “the gospel of No Nut November” and “protect your precious seed,” to reveal how this simple act of abstinence has taken on the qualities of some higher purpose other than personal self-improvement.

The dangers of not nutting

“Big Mouth” doesn’t explicitly tackle the right-wing politics that No Nut November has increasingly become ensconced in. But it does address the ways stigma and shame around ordinary, healthy sexual behaviors like masturbation can manifest in unhealthy ways, especially for young people who are still learning about their bodies and desires.

Neither Jay nor any of his friends are able to last the month of November, shockingly enough. Jay’s vulnerability and depleted sense of self from not masturbating lead to him almost getting back together with Lola, the classmate with whom he shared a toxic relationship, and who’s been at war with him ever since the end of Season 4. 

Andrew, who arguably struggles the most among his friends with dependency on masturbation, experiments with something called “edging,” which entails allowing himself to masturbate but not orgasm. Consequently, Andrew’s new obsession with edging leads to him engaging in this while watching a movie about the horrors of child abuse within the Catholic Church with Nick and Jessi, and ejaculating on Nick’s couch in front of his friends and Nick’s family. 

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Jessi and Nick don’t fare particularly well, either. Jessi winds up so hot and bothered from the challenge that she steals and later masturbates with Nick’s brother’s t-shirt, while Nick has a wet dream about him and Jessi as characters in the aforementioned Catholic Church movie having a forbidden romance. 

Ultimately, the No Nut November challenge winds up bringing out the worst in the kids of Bridgeton Middle School, manifesting in behaviors that are certainly less healthy than just masturbating. 

“Big Mouth” has often gone the route of chaotic, exaggerated ridiculousness, but believe it or not, No Nut November is actually just as ridiculous as the adult cartoon portrays it. And in a changing, increasingly digitized world where today’s kids are going to get most of their knowledge about sex, sexuality and their bodies from the internet and social media, they’re the prime targets of challenges like No Nut November. 

Kids’ shame about their natural bodies and inclinations lies at the heart of nearly all “Big Mouth” storylines, this season as much as any other, as the kids go from shame about masturbation to shame about body hair, “back-ne” and the size and shape of their genitals during the swim unit in PE.

This shame has always been a part of growing up, but it certainly isn’t any easier when online challenges like No Nut November convince kids to be ashamed of and repress their natural feelings and desires. And as “Big Mouth” aptly demonstrates, it’s this shame and repression that can lead to even more unhealthy behaviors — like blaming your sexual desires on and punishing sex workers, or, in Andrew’s case, awkward incidents on your friend’s couch.

“Big Mouth” Season 5 is now streaming on Netflix.

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Sandra Lee makes dinners on TV for people raised on TV dinners

You know that song that was in the Billboard top ten for a year even though everyone you know seemed to actively despise it? Sandra Lee is that song.

An Emmy winner, a best-selling author, an entrepreneur, a philanthropist, a woman so popular she once had two television series going on the same network at the same time, Sandra Lee is nevertheless best known in many circles as that lady who makes questionable cocktails on the Food Network, the creator of that notorious, corn nut bedecked Kwanzaa cake, the apparent living antithesis of bougie farm-to-table cottage-core. I love her.

I trace my fascination with Lee right back to the moment she ascended as a television star in the early 2000’s, when I was a perpetually awake new mother. She seemed to always be on the air, regardless of the hour I happened to turn on my TV, creating scenarios she called “tablescapes,” marinating meat in ranch dressing mix and cheerfully glugging out very generous pours of vodka. The effect was utterly hypnotic. I was at the time enmeshed in an extremely Brooklyn, extremely mill-your-own organic baby food milieu, and Aunt Sandy was a comforting antidote. Lee didn’t just open tubs of Cool Whip with gusto, she enthusiastically, audaciously served up her recipes with the message that what she was making was amazing. Imagine that — not a “store bought is fine” caveat with the subtext that, well, it’s not really. Sandra was intentional about that onion soup mix.

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Of course, she was sneered at right from the beginning. A 2003 New York Times review of her first cookbook references, aghast, a recipe involving Velveeta. “With hundreds of delicious and interesting cheeses available in this country,” the author writes, “many of them in supermarkets, it is difficult to understand how a responsible author could choose a tasteless, industrial cheese like Velveeta.” I’ll tell you why. Because Velveeta is cheap, familiar, and, in certain moments, hits the spot. Because the person who was perhaps not raised to appreciate “hundreds of delicious and interesting cheeses” or doesn’t have the time or emotional energy to discover them might well appreciate a recipe that doesn’t demand they understand all the subtle permutations of comté out there.

Lee also famously riled Anthony Bourdain, who referred to her as “pure evil… the frightening hell-spawn of Kathie Lee and Betty Crocker.” (When Bourdain died in 2018, Lee graciously declared that “He was a really gifted, smart, articulate man and his humor will be missed.”) In a cultural moment when the Bourdains and Batalis and Changs reigned supreme — and before their own reckonings — it was the easiest thing in the world for critics to take potshots at the Sandras and Emerils and Guys of the world, folksy crowd pleasers who appealed to the tuna casserole demographic. I think what infuriated them most was her guileless lack of apology. Behold my beautiful creation, she’d say, pointing to, say, a salisbury steak made with cream of mushroom soup. She didn’t just refuse to be ashamed to make family feasts from humble ingredients, she seemed downright proud of herself. This is the kind of thing that tends to enrage a person’s imagined betters, when someone can sincerely enjoy things, and without having someone else with more privilege telling them they’re doing it wrong.

RELATED: 5 creative recipes that use canned pumpkin and pumpkin pie filling

Lee comes by her appreciation of cake frosting from the can authentically. The eldest child in her family, she grew up on food stamps and welfare, learning to care for her younger siblings while her abusive mother — who had her when she was just 16 — was in and out of the picture. Her recipes reflect the ingenuity of a latch-key kid foraging and making do with what’s available in the cupboard, what’s the weekly special at the supermarket.

In the past few years, there has been a kinder reconsideration of Sandra Lee. In 2015, she was diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), an early form of breast cancer, and underwent a bilateral mastectomy. She now, in addition to her philanthropic work for a variety of anti-hunger charities, is an advocate organizations like the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. In 2019, she broke up with her boyfriend of 14 years — some guy named Andrew Cuomo.

The pandemic, inevitably, has brought about its own reckoning. Cooking from the stuff in your cupboards, stuff from cans and boxes, overnight went from something stigmatized to something essential for survival. And in the midst of economic chaos, her television show about “Money Saving Meals” seemed deeply relevant. In a 2020 interview with the New York Times — the same paper that 17 years earlier sniffed that Lee “gives people an excuse for feeding themselves and their families mediocre food filled with preservatives,” she showcased her pantry’s cans of cream of celery, cream of mushroom and cream of potato soups and called them “great bases for anything you want and they all last forever.”

If, over the years, the foodie elite found her laughable, they have never been her audience anyway. Sandra Lee is instead the culinary star for the person who’s made pizza bagels with ketchup, the one whose gastronomic education comes not from Larousse but the recipe on the back of the package. She doesn’t benevolently lecture you on how you could, if you just tried, be economically simmering a pot of beans on the stove and roasting a chicken in the oven. Instead, she embraces food without assigning a moral judgment to it. Whenever I watch Sandra Lee, I still, as someone whose own palate was forged in Hamburger Helper, feel incredibly seen. And I find something profoundly moving about a woman who has built an entire empire around the ethos of the big sister, creating nice and pretty meals and “tablescapes” out of stuff from the bottom shelf.

From her earliest Food Network appearances to her current instagram feed, Lee keeps smiling. She remains endlessly, unpretentiously true to form — even her recipe for grilled lobster involves frozen orange juice concentrate.  “I think you just have to figure out how to do with what you have and how to make it the best you can,” she told the Times last year. “You have to see what’s there, not what’s not there.” It’s a wise way to cook, and an even wiser way to live. And for a woman whose brand identity includes the word “semi,” there’s nothing that’s ever been half-measured about Sandra Lee.

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Opinion: What LeBron James gets wrong about vaccine activism

A few weeks ago — almost five months after he first Euro-stepped reporters’ questions about his vaccination status — NBA megastar LeBron James announced that he has indeed been vaccinated against COVID-19. In explaining the decision, he said he chose to protect himself and those around him, but also that he would not use his platform to encourage others to get vaccinated. “We’re talking about individuals’ bodies,” he said. “Not something political or racism or police brutality or things of that nature.”

His stance is a familiar one. When my Aunt Deb got vaccinated, I had hoped she would share a vaccine selfie in our family group chat, to encourage other family members to do the same. As a resident physician in internal medicine, focused on primary care for marginalized individuals, I know that social cues from trusted family members can be critical in breaking down vaccine hesitancy. When I pressed my aunt about it, however, she refused and I recall her saying, “Look, it’s an individual decision. Let people make their choice.”

But two things can be true: Getting vaccinated is both an individual and a collective decision. And LeBron James, with his outsized influence, should not only acknowledge the complete reality but take it a step further and encourage those who will listen to him to get vaccinated. 

It is tempting to treat vaccination as solely a private matter. All of us who opt for it subject our deltoid muscles to some trauma, and some of us must endure a day or two of fever, chills, and night sweats. Few public policy measures are felt more viscerally by everyone who abides by them. But the benefits of vaccines vastly outweigh the drawbacks and go beyond personal protection. Because vaccines help break the chain of infection, we all stand to gain when people around us are vaccinated. The concept of herd immunity crystalizes this idea: When enough people in a community are immune to a pathogen, it has so few places to go that it eventually peters out. Even among the vaccinated, the chances of suffering a breakthrough infection are higher in areas with low vaccination rates and high infection rates. Plus, some people have underlying conditions that prevent them from getting vaccinated — or that render the vaccine ineffective for them. They have no choice but to rely on the rest of us to protect them from the risk of infection. In other words, vaccination isn’t merely about individual choice; it is also about showing solidarity with others. 

And while it may not seem so on the surface, community-level vaccine uptake is no less of a social justice issue than racism, police brutality, and other political causes that James has deemed worthy of his activism. Ample evidence has highlighted how structural racism shaped the disproportionately high rates of COVID-19 infections and mortality in Black, Indigenous, and Hispanic communities, and the racial disparities in vaccine uptake during the early phases of the vaccine rollout. Lower vaccination rates among Black people may at least partly explain why Washington, D.C., for instance, saw its gap in COVID-19 infection rates between White and Black people widen dramatically last spring; Black residents went from representing 46 percent of the city’s new cases in December 2020 to representing 82 percent of new cases in May 2021.

A recent study, yet to undergo peer review, assessed data for over 3 million fully vaccinated patients in the Veterans Health Administration system and found that Black and Hispanic vaccinated people were more susceptible to breakthrough infections than their White counterparts. This disparity is likely attributable to racial disparities in vaccination uptake and to our racially segregated society and social networks. In other words, the diminished returns of vaccination, too, are shaped by racism. 

To be clear, celebrities don’t have to address social issues when governments fall short. To borrow from James’ language, they are individuals and get to use their currency how they want. But LeBron James — who has made tremendous investments in the education of inner-city children where he grew up — already understands that to whom much is given, much is expected. And although some experts disagree on the extent to which celebrity endorsements influence people’s health behaviors, including COVID-19 vaccination, there’s evidence that star power can make a real difference.

When Angelina Jolie announced in a 2013 New York Times essay that she’d undergone a preventive double mastectomy after screening positive for a BRCA1 mutation — a genetic condition that predisposes its female carriers to breast and ovarian cancer — she urged other women to get screened as well. A subsequent research study found that rates of screening for BRCA among women rose sharply during the weeks following the essay’s publication. Beyond screening rates, rates of risk-reduction mastectomies also increased in the months that followed. Some call it the “Angelina Jolie effect.” Likewise, in the wake of Tom Hanks’ March 2020 announcement that he had contracted the novel coronavirus, an online survey conducted by social scientists found that fans of the actor who learned of the news became more likely to take COVID-19 safety precautions. 

We can’t predict yet how much of an effect James would have on vaccine uptake in the general population, should he leverage his platform to promote it. But he has a massive, loyal fanbase of more than 50 million followers on Twitter, and almost twice as many followers on Instagram. According to one poll, he is the NBA player that fans most want to hang out with. And research tells us that people who feel the most affinity to a celebrity are most likely to modify their behavior following a health announcement from that celebrity. It is not hard to envision the ripple effects that an emphatic vaccine endorsement from James would have on social media.

The choice to get vaccinated may feel like a purely personal decision. In reality, it is as much, if not more, a communal one. I think LeBron James partially recognizes this, hence his acknowledgement that he got vaccinated in part to protect his family and friends. He has shown outstanding leadership in speaking up against and investing in addressing social issues related to racial inequality. Publicly confronting low vaccine uptake would be no different. COVID-19 has taken a devastating toll on communities of color, and LeBron James has the power to help curb this horror. But only if he chooses to.

Max Jordan Nguemeni, M.D., M.S., is a resident physician in internal medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA. He writes and hosts a podcast about health equity titled “Flip the Script” and conducts environmental health and health services research.

Why the coronavirus is unlikely to mutate into something deadlier

The idea of a once-mild virus might mutate into a deadly pathogen is a staple of science fiction, and a common fear since the dawn of the pandemic. Many of the SARS-CoV-2 virus’ relatives, genetically similar viruses like SARS and MERS, have far higher mortality rates compared to the novel coronavirus, which hovers around 2 percent. Though higher than other seasonal viruses like the flu, COVID-19’s mortality rate is just low enough to avoid the serious, civilization-threatening social disruptions that a more deadly pandemic might cause.

Now, as widespread vaccine adoption is slowly winding down the pandemic, fears of further mutation threaten our return to normal. Yet are such fears founded? And just how likely is it for SARS-CoV-2 to mutate into something deadlier?

The answer hinges on a deeper understanding of how viruses mutate. RNA viruses like SARS-CoV-2 are, of course, always mutating; every replication in a hosts’ cells create a moment for a chance mutation to emerge. While viruses are technically not alive, it is their nature to mutate and evolve as they infect hosts’ cells and replicate; this is how they survive.

“Viruses replicate and survive and pass their genes to the next generation just by making more copies of themselves,” Sasan Amini, founder and CEO of Clear Labs, a private genomics company, previously told Salon. “This replication process is not a perfect process, meaning that while you’re going through the replication process errors will be introduced.”

These errors, Amini said, are often self-correcting — which results in creating copies that are almost identical to each other. Hence, mutations aren’t always a bad thing; in most cases, mutations are harmful to the virus’ ability to reproduce, and thus often eliminated in the process of natural selection. However, if a mutation has a competitive advantage — like increased transmissibility — that mutation can outcompete a previous variant.

A virus’ evolutionary strategy can be likened to animals with specific environmental niches: owls, for instance, evolved to be able to survive in one environment all year long, rather than having to migrate like other species of birds. In general, the process of evolution favors those who reproduce faster and better than their siblings. For viruses, this happens when they become more transmissible.

If this story sounds familiar, it’s because this is what happened with the highly transmissible delta variant, which has spread 50% faster than the alpha variant and is 50% more contagious than previous variants. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, this increase in contagiousness means that the delta variant can cause two times as many infections compared to previous variants, which is how it became the predominant variant in the United States. In other words, the delta variant thrived because of its transmissibility.

However, there is no conclusive evidence that suggests delta is more deadly. According to the CDC, some data suggests that it might cause more severe illness. For example, in two separate studies from Canada and Scotland, those who were infected with the delta variant were more likely to be hospitalized than those who were infected with alpha or the original variant that caused the pandemic. Yet a majority of these deaths were in unvaccinated people.

Indeed, scientists tell Salon that from an evolutionary perspective, mutating to become more deadly is not a successful evolutionary strategy for viruses in general. If a virus kills its hosts, how can it spread?

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This is why Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease doctor and professor of medicine at the University of California–San Francisco, told Salon viruses usually evolve to become more transmissible — not more lethal. 

“They want more baby virus copies of themselves; they don’t usually evolve to kill their host more readily because that’s actually not very smart,” Gandhi said. 

That doesn’t mean that deadlier mutations can’t emerge — rather, that it is uncommon. Indeed, there are other viruses that exhibited this adaptation.

Curiously, this tendency for viruses not to mutate into more deadly strains has been exploited by COVID conspiracy theorists and anti-vaccination advocates in a deceptive way. According to AP News, a post on Facebook circulated widely which stated: “In the history of virology, there has never, EVER, been a viral mutation that resulted in a virus that was MORE lethal. As viruses mutate, they become more contagious/transmissible and LESS lethal.” The central thesis of this claim is false, as deadly viruses like Ebola illustrate. Ebola is a norovirus that evolved to cause such severe symptoms in its hosts for the sake of transmissibility, though these same symptoms end up killing its host, too. 

Still, Ebola is an unusual case.

“The virus, speaking anthropomorphically, just wants to spread and have its genes replicated,” Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Health Security, told AP News. “If the best way for it is to spread by causing severe symptoms it will continue to do that.”

For this reason, Gandhi said Ebola is “not a very smart virus.”

Meanwhile, some scientists have wondered if the delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 has reached “peak fitness,” meaning that its genes are optimized in such a way that it is as transmissible as it can get. A virus that has achieved peak fitness will have minimal future mutations. 

“More-fit variants can be expected to emerge over time (the occurrence of which will need to be monitored meticulously, as these pose a potential public health threat), but we believe that these will not continue to emerge indefinitely: nothing is infinite in nature, and eventually the virus will reach its form of ‘maximum transmission,'” scientists wrote in a letter to the editor in Nature. “After then, new variants will provide no further advantage in infectivity. The virus will thus stabilize and this ‘final’ variant will prevail and become the dominant strain, experiencing only occasional, minimal variations.”

Yet delta recently mutated further into a more worrying variant. As I previously reported, AY.4.2, also known as the “delta plus” variant, has two mutations to the spike protein, which can better assist it in invading its host’s cells. Data from the United Kingdom suggests that this delta plus mutation might be more transmissible, but research is still being conducted.

Experts told Salon they weren’t worried about AY.4.2, but it was something to monitor.

“This is the only one that we’re watching, just because it could be more transmissible,” Gandhi said. “None of the other ones were more transmissible.” Gandhi emphasized that there was “simply no evidence that it beats the vaccines, which is, of course, the scariest thing that could ever happen from a variant.”

Salon asked Gandhi about the idea that a future mutation might be more vaccine-resistant. Viruses are relatively simple structures; Gandhi said that there was a limit to the number of mutations that the virus could have before it was no longer functional.

“It’s hard to imagine that could happen,” Gandhi said. “If you develop so many mutations across the spike protein to evade T cell immunity, you’ve probably ruined the virus.”

In any case, if a more transmissible and vaccine-resistant variant does somehow emerge, the good news is that mRNA vaccine makers Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca are working on “dress rehearsals” to modify existing vaccines to combat the hypothetical variant.

“At some point, inevitably, we’re going to have to make variant vaccines — if vaccines are the way population immunity will be maintained — but we’re not at the point where we can confidently predict the evolution of the virus,” Paul Bieniasz, a virologist at the Rockefeller University in New York City, told Nature.

GOP may punish members for backing infrastructure — but Gosar, MTG are no problem

House Republicans are pushing to punish 13 members who voted in favor of President Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill, which passed the House passed week.

That bill provided more than $1 trillion for infrastructure projects like roads, bridges and broadband expansion — and might not have passed the chamber without Republican votes. (Six progressive Democrats voted against it, unhappy with a deal to delay Biden’s Build Back Better social spending bill.) Former President Donald Trump and his allies have assailed GOP members for helping Biden score a political win, and House Republican leaders are now bracing for Trump allies to attempt to strip the rogue members’ committee assignments over the vote, according to Punchbowl News.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., pressed Republicans to wait until Democrats had enough votes to pass the bill themselves before voting for the bill. The House Republican Conference tweeted, and quickly deleted, a warning that a vote for the infrastructure bill is a vote for the Democrats’ “socialist wish list,” adding, “American’s [sic] won’t forget.”

Republican members are particularly upset at Rep. John Katko of New York, top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, who voted in favor of the bill before it was clear that it would pass without Republican votes. When Katko and others ignored McCarthy’s wishes, it left a “lingering feeling of betrayal,” according to the report. Katko previously negotiated the terms of a bipartisan Jan. 6 commission that Republicans later rejected, and also voted to impeach Trump after the Capitol riot.

Other GOP members under attack include Rep. Don Young of Alaska, the longest-serving member of the House, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Rep. David McKinley of West Virginia, who all hold top Republican spots on various subcommittees.

Republicans previously staged a similar effort to strip Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., of her House leadership position over her criticism of Trump, and unsuccessfully pushed to punish her and Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., for agreeing to join the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.

RELATED: Kevin McCarthy under mounting pressure to punish Republicans who join Jan. 6 commission

Trump, whose administration kept promising an “infrastructure week” but never passed or proposed any legislation on the subject, lashed out at Republicans who supported the bill for “helping the Democrats.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., tweeted the phone numbers of the 13 Republicans, calling them “traitors” who supported a “socialist” bill.

Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., one of the Republicans in question, received a barrage of angry phone calls after the tweet, including one he shared Monday with CNN.

“I hope you die. I hope everybody in your f**king family dies,” the caller said, calling Upton a “f**king piece of sh*t traitor.”

Upton told CNN that the message was “very disturbing” and “frightening.”

“We have seen civility really downslide here,” he said.

But while House Republicans are infuriated about members of their caucus who defected to vote for a bill that was negotiated by Senate Republicans in the first place, the party has said virtually nothing about Greene’s vituperative attacks on members of her own party.

Republicans pushed to punish Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., after accusing her of antisemitism, and spent months criticizing Democrats over their support for the 2017 Women’s March because its organizer once attended an event with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, the party has not said anything about Greene seeking to find “common ground” with Farrakhan’s group on opposition to COVID vaccines this week. Greene posted photos of a Nation of Islam newspaper pushing anti-vaccine and antisemitic conspiracy theories.

“Louis Farrakhan says that forcing the vaccine is a ‘declaration of war,'” Greene wrote on Twitter. “That is how strongly the Nation of Islam opposes Biden’s vaccine mandates that force unvaccinated people to lose their jobs.”

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Republicans have also stayed silent about Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., who has spent months vigorously defending the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, posted an edited anime video this week that depicted him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and attacking Biden. Twitter flagged the post for violating its rules on “hateful conduct.” A spokesperson for Gosar, who attended a white nationalist conference earlier this year, downplayed the video as “meme culture.” Democrats felt otherwise.

“This is sick behavior from Rep. Paul Gosar. He tweeted out the video showing him killing Rep. Ocasio-Cortez from both his official account and personal account,” tweeted Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif. “In any workplace in America, if a coworker made an anime video killing another coworker, that person would be fired.”

Three of Gosar’s siblings earlier this year told Salon that they believe their brother is a “white supremacist.” Organizers of the Jan. 6 rally that preceded the Capitol attack have alleged that Gosar, along with Greene and other House Republicans, participated in planning meetings ahead of the protest and that Gosar even offered “blanket pardons” to convince them to stage the event.

Ocasio-Cortez described Gosar in a tweet as a “creepy member I work with who fundraises for Neo-Nazi groups.”

“He’ll face no consequences bc @GOPLeader cheers him on with excuses. Fun Monday! Well, back to work bc institutions don’t protect [women of color],” she tweeted, adding that “White supremacy is for extremely fragile people & sad men like him, whose self concept relies on the myth that he was born superior because deep down he knows he couldn’t open a pickle jar or read a whole book by himself.”

More from Salon on the insurrection caucus:

Insurrection by other means: Republicans are ready to die of COVID to spite Biden, Democrats

COVID-19 is increasingly a red-state phenomenon. Among the many statistical analyses that demonstrate the remarkable effectiveness of the vaccines, perhaps the starkest are those that reveal a dramatic divergence in pandemic severity between red and blue states. As David Leonhardt of the New York Times pointed out on Monday, before we had vaccines, there “simply was not a strong partisan pattern” to the spread of disease. But after vaccines became widely available — and especially as Republican voters refused to vaccinate in large numbers — “a gap in Covid’s death toll quickly emerged.” Now that difference “between red and blue America has grown faster over the past month,” Leonhardt wrote, to the point where counties where a large majority voted for Donald Trump have a death rate “more than three times higher than the rate in heavily Biden counties.”

Leonhardt tweeted out these statistics in chart form, as well. 

Late last month, Duke sociologist Kieran Healy broke down the county-level data even further, showing that the death rate is proportional to the strength of Republican partisanship.

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It’s tempting, both on the left and in mainstream media circles, to write off these differences as a matter of ignorance versus information. Leonhardt gently phrased this narrative in his piece as a matter of “irrational fears about vaccine” caused by disinformation “promoted by right-wing media.” Social media takes are a little more blunt, about how dumb yokels in red areas are stupidly falling for vaccine misinformation while the big brains of blue America believe in science. 

RELATED: Conservative radio host who called himself “Mr. Anti-Vax” dies of COVID-19

But the truth is much darker than that. As one person who replied to Leonhardt on Twitter noted, it’s less about irrational fears of the shot and more that it “became a badge of honor to remain unvaccinated” and was even seen, among many Republicans, as “[t]raitorous to cave” and get the jab. Yes, there are some morons who really believe that the disease is a hoax or that vaccines contain sinister ingredients. But it’s unlikely that most conservatives are that dense. After all, they tend to live in communities where hospitals are overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients and Facebook memorials to the dead are popping up on a daily basis. Millions of them can see the toll that vaccine resistance is taking on their communities, but they’re digging their heels in anyway. 

No, the darker and harder truth is that this isn’t really about intelligence or ignorance. It’s about ideology, and specifically, about how far a good chunk of the GOP base has become radicalized toward the politics of insurrection. More than half of Trump voters claim they want to secede from the union, and nearly a third say violence is a legitimate means to impose their will on the rest of the country. Endorsement of violence rises to nearly half of Republicans if the question is abstracted to the idea that “a time will come” for such tactics. 

In light of this, the willingness to roll the dice with COVID-19 makes more sense. Vaccine refusal is being presented in right-wing media as a noble act of resistance against Democratic “tyranny.” Any effort to prevent the disease — even among children — is increasingly viewed as an attack on red-state America. After the Jan. 6 insurrection failed, the radicalized members of the GOP have had few options to exercise their militaristic fantasies against Joe Biden’s administration. Refusing the vaccine isn’t as sexy as taking up arms against the government, but it still plays with the glamorous notion of putting your body on the line for your political views — until the threat stops being abstract and you end up in the hospital, that is. War is always more romantic in fantasies than in reality. 

RELATED: Biden didn’t “fall short” of July 4 vaccination goal — he was sabotaged by Republican trolls

Notably, Republican leaders aren’t much interested in risking their own lives through vaccine refusal. Fox News even has a corporate vaccine mandate. But that’s even more evidence that vaccine refusal is structured along the metaphor of wars and armies. The base voters are the foot soldiers, risking it all on the front lines, while the leaders give orders from the safety of their vaccinated bubble. 

This whole thing may sound ridiculous, but, in truth, the strategy is a smashing success — at least so far. This was evidenced by the results of last week’s off-year election, when Democrats — demoralized by many things, but especially the ongoing pandemic — failed to turn out in numbers to compete with the fired-up GOP base. If this continues into the midterms, the already dim prospects for Democrats will get much worse.

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This is what Republicans need to happen if Trump’s next round of election-theft scheming is to be successful. The Jan. 6 insurrection was always doomed to failure because Republicans simply didn’t have the votes to give Trump what he wanted, which was the overthrow of the 2020 election results. Being able to steal the White House for Trump in 2024 depends on Republicans seizing enough power electorally between now and then to invalidate Democratic votes on both the state and federal level. Refusing vaccines and prolonging the pandemic is one small way that the average GOP voter can do their part to help make the next coup stick. 

That said, the situation is not hopeless. For one thing, evidence shows that GOP vaccine refusal can mostly be overcome with vaccine mandates. The resistance fantasies of vaccine refusers tend to crumple pretty quickly once real consequences come into play, as the relentless drumbeat of deathbed-regret stories demonstrates. Moreover, as Leonhardt writes, “red America has probably built up more natural immunity to Covid — from prior infections — than blue America.” Immunity from infection is less effective than immunity from vaccination, but both are contributing to the rapid decline in case rates since the summer peak. There’s a real chance that the army of vaccine refusers falls apart like so many armies do — by attrition. By this time next year, the story may very well be about how Republicans bet big on this vaccine-refusal strategy, and the only thing they accomplished was killing off their own people by the thousands. 

More from Salon on the vaccine conflict:

Ted Cruz says Texas should secede and “take the military” if Democrats “destroy the country”

Sen. Ted Cruz has called on his home state to secede from the U.S. if Democrats “fundamentally destroy the country,” adding that Texas should “take” NASA, the military and the country’s oil supply along with it. 

“If they pack the Supreme Court, if they make D.C. a state, if they federalize elections and massively expand voter fraud, there may come a point where it’s hopeless,” Cruz said during a speaking event at Texas A&M last month.

“We’re not there yet, and if there comes a point where it’s hopeless, then I think we take NASA, we take the military, we take the oil,” the Republican added. “I think Texas has a responsibility to the country, and I’m not ready to give up on America.”

Cruz’s remarks came in response to an audience member who asked for the senator’s thoughts on the modern Texas secessionist movement. In recent years, the Texas Nationalist Movement, a group claiming 300,000 members that advocates withdrawing the state from the Union, has launched a campaign known as “Texit.” Its professed aim is a statewide referendum on secession, potentially alongside the 2022 midterms. According to the campaign’s website, roughly 422,000 people have signed onto a petition calling for a secession vote next year.

“Our mission is to secure and protect the political, cultural and economic independence of the nation of Texas and to restore and protect a constitutional Republic and the inherent rights of the people of Texas,” the Texas Nationalist Movement’s website states. 

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Whether Texas or any other state has a constitutional right to secede from the United States is dubious at best — and as a historical matter, that question was settled at the end of the Civil War. According to The Texas Tribune, the 1845 Joint Resolution for Annexing Texas contains a peculiar proviso under which the Lone Star State may disaggregate itself into five separate states. It’s unlikely that could ever happen in practice, and the resolution says nothing about secession. 

RELATED: Psycho secession: Texas’ lost-cause lawsuit was the first shot in a new Civil War

In 2006, the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia formally affirmed that Texas has no constitutional right to secede, writing that “the answer is clear.” 

“If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede. (Hence, in the Pledge of Allegiance, ‘one Nation, indivisible.’),” Scalia wrote. 

Nevertheless, the Texas Republican Party endorsed legislation in February that would allow the state’s voters to express their views on secession. State party chair Allen West, said in an interview at the time that “Texans have a right to voice their opinions on [this] critical issue.” The bill reportedly drew intense backlash from both sides of the aisle, according to the Guardian. 

Public sentiment does not appear to be on the secessionists’ side. In a 2016 survey from Public Policy Polling, just 26% of Texans supported secession, although a different poll put that number at 40% — in the event that Hilary Clinton won the 2016 presidential election. On a national level, about 37% of Americans indicated a “willingness to secede,” according to a more recent poll from YouGov from this year, with 50% of Republicans in favor. 

Could the United States really break up with itself? Read more:

Historian Nancy MacLean: We’re seeing a right-wing plan built on “decades of disinformation”

On Friday, the House finally passed Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan. While the president’s larger Build Back Better agenda remains in doubt, this is a landmark achievement, representing the largest investment in America’s infrastructure since the Great Society programs of the 1960s. Since the bill has already passed the Senate, Biden will sign it into law later this month.

A vast majority of Americans — including a large percentage of Republicans — support the specific policies contained in the infrastructure plan. (And for that matter, many or most of the social policies included in the Build Back Better package as well.) Logically, the infrastructure plan should now become part of the Democratic brand, and simultaneously an anchor around the Republican Party’s feet for decades to come.

That outcome would be almost guaranteed in a healthy democracy that was not locked in an existential struggle against fascism. I scarcely need to clarify that these are not normal times and this is not a healthy democracy. 

RELATED: The Republicans have dug up Jim Crow’s corpse — and now they’ve married it

The Democrats’ success with the infrastructure plan came on the heels of their defeat in last week’s Virginia gubernatorial election, where Terry McAuliffe crumbled under an attack by Republican Glenn Youngkin and a right-wing machine that deftly deployed its moral panic bogeyman of “critical race theory.”

In Virginia and elsewhere, Republican voters and Trump supporters appear energized and mobilized by the Big Lie, racism and white supremacy, pandemic-related public health issues and other aspects of the “culture war.” In comparison, too many Democratic voters seem unenthusiastic and listless, exhausted by the escalating assaults on democracy and uninspired by the party’s leadership.

Pollsters and other political experts are now predicting that Democratic losses in Virginia and elsewhere are a signal that Republicans will likely regain control of both the Senate and House in the 2022 midterms. Such an outcome could well be a precursor to Donald Trump’s attempted comeback in the 2024 presidential election.

Ultimately, what good are Joe Biden and the Democratic Party’s legislative successes if the Republican-fascist movement stands on the verge of taking control of Congress and then the White House?

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Democrats will be left claiming the historic success of an infrastructure bill that would likely be gutted by a Republican majority, except for whatever provisions the fascist regime wishes to claim as its own. 

To this point, Democrats have been unable to mount an effective defense against the Republican fascists and their forces because they refuse to grapple with the enormity of the challenge. In that way, the party and too many of its liberal and progressive supporters remain trapped in short-term crisis mod, focusing on the immediate problem rather than the long-term threat and big picture.

By comparison, Republicans and “movement” conservatives have been thinking strategically, and in many respects have prepared for their impending victory for decades. Understood this way, American’s democracy crisis is neither surprising nor new. The roots of our current disaster go back at least to the 1960s, with the  backlash to the civil rights movement and other struggles to expand and improve the country’s social democracy.  

To discuss these issues and more, I recently spoke with Nancy MacLean, who is the William H. Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University. She is the author of several important books, including “Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan” and “Freedom is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace.”

Her most recent book, “Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America,” a National Book Award nominee, was published four years ago but now appears prophetic. In this conversation, MacLean explains her view that the events of Jan. 6 and the larger ongoing coup against democracy are just one aspect of a long-term plan by right-wing libertarians and other well-funded and powerful ideologues to undermine or overthrow American democracy.

MacLean also discusses how and why these right-wing billionaire funders continue to support the treasonous and seditious behavior of Republican congresspeople who support the Big Lie and voted against democracy on Jan. 6. She warns that the goals of these right-wing libertarians are more extreme than many people imagine, and may include restricting the vote to (white) property owners to vote and fully defunding the country’s already threadbare social safety net.

Toward the end of this conversation, MacLean discusses the Republican Party and white right’s attempt to use “critical race theory” to mobilize angry white parents at the local level, and how that connects to Jim Crow-era battles over school desegregation and racial democracy.

How are you feeling? For some time, you have warned the American people about the anti-democracy campaign being waged by the libertarian right-wing. That’s all coming together right now. 

It’s dispiriting. I believe that more people are understanding what’s going on in this country with the democracy crisis, but I do not think it is happening on a scale and in a timely enough way to stop what’s unfolding before us. It’s just gut-wrenching, to be frank. People who should know better are not behaving as they should. The Biden administration is running into exactly the same roadblocks the Obama administration did.

So the Republican Party won’t compromise? What did they think was going to happen when the Republican Party was taken over by libertarian donors and a base that’s been fed red meat by Fox News for 25 years?

America’s political class continues to behave as though it is shocked and stunned by the Republican attempts to nullify democracy, as seen on Jan. 6 and in the ongoing coup attempt. Are they in denial? Is this willful ignorance? Are they so invested in a broken political system that they refuse to admit the obvious and respond appropriately? How do you make sense of this lack of urgency?

First, I do not believe that they are a monolith. It is important to emphasize that fact because there are people who do know better. This includes Pramila Jayapal of the Progressive Caucus, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Sherrod Brown, Sheldon Whitehouse and others. There have been some bold and outspoken and truth-delivering voices who we should applaud. But it is a real challenge to persuade their colleagues to speak to these truths about the country’s democracy crises.

I’m not denying that it’s a complicated operation. If the Democrats need 60 senators to get anything substantive done and you’re dealing with the likes of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, it’s a challenge and it’s frustrating. But I do believe that the leading Democrats could do more with the bully pulpit to help the American people understand the origins of the democracy crisis — and what is at stake for their day-to-day lives if this right-wing libertarian and larger anti-democracy cause is allowed to advance, as it has been doing for years.

What and who are the elements in this anti-democracy movement?

There is an elite element and the voters they count on to advance the goals. The elite elements are parts of the corporate libertarian Koch network. The large number of donors and institutions they fund include the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, Americans for Prosperity, the State Policy Network and many others.

This network also includes supposed scholars, faculty, and students at over 300 institutions at present. The corporate-libertarian cause knows that the world they want to create is unpopular. Therefore, they have to get the votes to advance their agenda by relying on the religious right.

The religious right has now been boiled down to a base consisting of white nationalist Christian evangelicals in various forms, who are anti-science for example. In my opinion, it was fairly easy to persuade them to reject climate science and to embrace the Big Lie about the 2020 election and all the other lies and untruths being pandered by the right-wing movement and its media.

We are now also seeing the religious right overlapping in significant ways with white supremacists and the larger white power movement. In this country we are in real trouble in that regard because of how these white nationalist identities are being used to promote vigilante actions.

What did you see on Jan. 6?

To my eyes, it was a fulfillment of these decades of disinformation and agitation of the worst impulses held by some Americans. For example, these very self-interested right-wing forces who oppose taking action to stop the global climate crisis are willing to leverage racism, homophobia, sexism and other antisocial behavior and values to achieve that goal.

There is plenty of evidence showing that the Koch donor network has funded and continues to back the politicians who spurred on the events of Jan. 6 and the Big Lie, and refused to certify Biden’s election.

The mainstream news media are complicit in so much of this because of their “both sides” script. The mainstream news media needs to recognize that there is an imminent threat of autocracy in the United States.

Where do these talking points, lies, disinformation and propaganda come from, meaning the things that Trump insurrectionists and others in the right-wing echo chamber believe? Who is developing and weaponizing these ideas?

There are perverse and ridiculous theories or interpretations of the Constitution coming from the Federalist Society and other groups that are part of the donor-funded radical right-wing libertarian legal movement. That includes prominent right-wing attorney John Eastman, who came up with this claim that state legislatures have the capacity to overthrow a national election. People like Eastman are making the kinds of arguments and claims that fueled the rabid and crazy behavior we saw at the Capitol on Jan. 6. That’s what the insurrectionists have been imbibing — and it has been their steady diet for years.

At its core, we can understand what we saw on Jan. 6 as also being a rejection of the core principle that all Americans are equally entitled to citizenship and voting, and to having a say in our government.

For the right-wing anti-democracy movement, the phrase “real Americans” is a potent rallying cry. They love to use that language about “real Americans.” But what do they really mean? Who are the real Americans, to them?

For the elites at least, “real Americans” are the white, property-holding, right-wing voters who agree with their right-wing extremist libertarian ideology. We saw that language of “real Americans” from Sarah Palin and others directed against Barack Obama. Presumably, Obama was not a real American and, by comparison, Palin was. We used to talk about dog-whistle racism, but it is not even coded anymore.

Certainly, anyone who benefits from the earned income tax credit is not a “real American.” According to these right-wing thinkers such people shouldn’t have the right to vote. In total, what is being advocated for is really a type of economic eugenics. They really would rather have people die than get health care provided by government — and some of these right-wing elite thinkers are absolutely explicit about that. They argue that if you do not have the money to support yourself in a commercial, unregulated capitalist society, then too bad for you.  

Your suffering, and even your death, will be a lesson to others that they need to save and work harder and then they will be able to become one of the “real Americans.” That reality is very hard for many people to understand. That is why so many people are in denial about it.

It has been a standing assumption by many, including myself, that the Koch network and other members of the right-wing elite extremist class wanted to operate in the shadows as a way of growing their power and influence over American society. But with Jan. 6 and the ongoing coup, it seems that those forces are now working in a much more public way. How are they balancing this? And what about the role of right-wing paramilitaries and other agitators and their relationship to the right-wing elites?

To me, that is what I find scariest about this moment. The corporate element is beginning to rely on the street thugs. This is not a new thing for the arch pro-corporate libertarian right. This happened with the Southern schools crisis after Brown v. Board of Education [the Supreme Court decision that ended school segregation], with libertarians such as Milton Friedman and others of that era. They were perfectly happy, if not eager, to harness the white supremacist response to Brown v. Board of Education in order to advance their goal of school privatization.

Koch political donors have funded the Jan. 6 politicians, and shown no sign of backing down. They have also funded the organizations that are promoting this “critical race theory” hysteria, which is directed at inciting panic among white parents as a strategy to mobilize them for the 2022 midterm elections. The ultimate goal is to undermine public education. Koch-funded organizations are also encouraging the current attacks on school boards, both over masks and vaccines and the alleged teaching of critical race theory.

You are a historian who has written extensively about democracy, Jim and Jane Crow, the civil rights and Black freedom movements, and racist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan. How do you make sense of these school board meetings where white parents show up en masse to oppose “critical race theory,” and sometimes threaten violence and mayhem? How are you connecting the past to the present?

These are people who have been whipped up into a frenzy by a steady diet of disinformation orchestrated by individuals and organization who are working strategically to make them feel like they are under attack. Part of this is making them feel like they are embattled, and their children are being turned against them. This all triggers some of the most potent emotional buttons that one can push. This is what the right-wing is doing, and it’s all based on a willful lie.

Critical race theory is not taught in K-12 public schools. It’s an elective at some law schools, but what they’re doing — if you look at the actual text of the laws in places like Texas, what they’re claiming falls under the rubric of “critical race theory” includes anything that mentions anti-racism, equity, diversity and inclusion. Basically, they’re saying you cannot in any way address past or present racism in the schools and continue to teach and hold your job and not be subject to criminal prosecution.

The images I see of these protests very much remind me of what we saw by whites in the South and elsewhere against school desegregation in the 1950s and 1960s. But at present, I would put more of the emphasis on the strategic right-wing actors behind this activity, who are funding the operations that mobilize people to these school board meetings, fill them with disinformation and ultimately seek to turn them into vigilantes.

That stinky armpit smell? It’s not you, it’s your microbiome

Your skin is crawling with microbes, and your armpits are no exception. The warm, moist pit environment is a haven for bacteria. However, pit-dwelling microbes can be quite rude; they make themselves at home then stink up the place, leaving us to deal with the smelly, sometimes embarrassing, consequences.

Since the 1950s, scientists have known that bacteria are the culprits behind armpit stank. While the armpit microbiome consists of various types of bacteria, it is dominated in part by Corynebacterium and Staphylococcus species, which are also key contributors to body odor, or BO. These microbes break down odorless molecules secreted from armpit sweat glands to release malodorous byproducts.

There is now experimental evidence to explain something our noses have always known: Not everyone’s funk is the same. Factors including genetics, sex, and age are associated with individual differences in armpit microbiome composition and odor formation. As scientists gain greater insight into the microbial underpinnings of BO, they are coming up with new strategies that manage pit stink by targeting the bacteria that cause it.

Pit stink chemistry divides into two major classes: volatile fatty acids (VFAs) and thioalcohols. VFAs are responsible for the acidic twang of BO. Thioalcohols are sulfur-containing compounds that come in various shades of reek; some can have a meaty-oniony aroma while others are fruitier and less offensive. To make VFAs and thioalcohols, bacteria use special enzymes that hack off the stinky parts of sweat molecules, which evaporate from the skin to create the nose-wrinkling funk that is BO.

The presence and mix of VFAs and thioalcohols that make up people’s pit scent profiles can depend on their genes. For example, scientists have found that one single gene is essential for development of underarm stench. The gene, called ABCC11, encodes a protein that pumps odor precursors to the armpit’s surface, which are then metabolized by bacteria. A mutation in ABCC11 cuts the stink. Interestingly, this ABCC11 mutation is more prevalent in East Asian populations compared to those of European and African origin. These findings may point to geographical differences in the type and severity of armpit odor in people across the world, and raise questions about the evolutionary basis for BO.

Sex matters too. One study of 24 Caucasian participants illustrated that, compared to female study participants, male participants had higher bacterial abundances and a more intense armpit odor characterized by a “fatty and acid-spicy” odor profile. Generally, the women stunk less and their odor profiles had some “sulfury cat urine” notes. These sex differences are likely tied to variations in armpit microbiome composition. For example, men had more types of Corneyobacterium, which are prominent VFA and thiolacohol producers, than women. The researchers only observed sex variations in armpit odor in participants who did not use antiperspirants. Male and female participants who used antiperspirants had similar amounts of bacteria in their pits to each other, and comparable odor profiles and intensities.

Age is also an important factor. A recent study examining the armpit microbiome of individuals across different age groups found that people 55 years and older have more armpit bacteria than those between 18-30 and 35-50 years old. They also also had greater diversity of Corynebacterium bacteria. The authors speculate this may have something to do with development of the musty “old people smell” commonly associated with elderly people, though more research is required to determine whether this is the case.

Thanks to deodorants and anti-perspirants, we are not entirely at the mercy of our armpit bacteria. Still, these products are not entirely effective. Although deodorants and anti-perspirants decrease the total number of armpit bacteria, they can make it easier for odor-producing Actinobacteria to grow, which may be hardier than their non-odor producing counterparts. This is a problem with psychological consequences — unmanageable smelliness is hard to deal with. In some cases people take pills that prevent stimulation of sweat glands to deal with excessive sweating. Others undergo more invasive means of managing sweat, and thus their pit microbiome, by permanently destroying sweat glands with laser treatment.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Backed by years of research about pit microbes and their malodorous byproducts, scientists are creating novel means of managing underarm odor by targeting the microbes responsible for the stench.

Armpit microbiome transplants, championed by Christopher Callewaert, a scientist appropriately known as “Dr. Armpit,” are one such method. The procedure is simple: Someone with troubling BO depletes their pit microbiome with antibiotics. A scientist then swabs the armpit of a less stinky donor and smears those microbes onto the recipient, who then skips washing their pits for a week to let the new bacteria settle in. Eighteen people have undergone transplants, with improvements in their BO that lasted for at least a month. However, there are risks associated with the procedure, including the transfer of potentially pathogenic bacteria from donors to recipients. All in all, Callewaert doesn’t think armpit microbiome transplants are a mainstream solution to underarm stink, but may be best reserved for severe cases of BO.

Another tactic involves applying specific bacteria or compounds to the armpit that outcompete or eliminate odor-producing species, respectively. This method is used by several products currently on the market. Some of these newer deodorants contain “good” bacteria that outcompete odor-causing species. To this end, scientists recently showed that an armpit cream containing live Lactobacillus bacteria reduced the abundance of odor-forming Corynebacteria in study participants’ armpits. Other products incorporate compounds, like acids, into deodorant formulations, to lower armpit pH, making the environment more hostile to bacteria.

Ultimately, a deeper understanding of the armpit microbiome, and the stink it emanates, has practical implications for pits everywhere. It also provides a little peace of mind: It’s not you, it’s your pit microbes.

Teacher fired for claiming Trump is still president

The Ventura County Star reported Friday that a California teacher who reached out to President Donald Trump to help deport one of her students has officially been fired.

The story blew up earlier this week when CBS Channel 2 in Los Angeles revealed audio of a teacher telling students that Hunter Biden had “child pornography on his laptop” and “was having sexual intercourse with his own niece,” among other things.

The 7-minute recording addressed vaccines and claimed that Donald Trump was still the president of the United States. The mother of an eighth-grade student who recorded the rant told the station that her son was “very upset” and told her he would never get vaccinated or get a shot ever again.

Her son then told his mother, “Did you know Trump is still president?” It caused a problem in the family as their son maintained, “Dad, teachers know everything.”

Administrators from Anacapa Middle School reviewed the recording and an investigation was launched. By this week, she was fired.

Read the full report here.

Keeping the Big Lie alive after Virginia: Maybe Glenn Youngkin was a fake?

Republican Glenn Youngkin won the hotly contested bellwether race for governor of Virginia last week, even after many on the right had issued dark warnings about the supposed possibility of election fraud in the Old Dominion. Yet the GOP victory has done nothing to squelch the “Big Lie,” otherwise known as the belief that the 2020 election was “stolen” from Donald Trump through voting machines somehow compromised by China and the Democrats. 

Many observers assumed that Youngkin’s win over Democratic former governor Terry McAuliffe would leave right-wing media and online characters alike mute, at least temporarily, on the topic of election fraud. Except that wasn’t how things played out. Instead, conspiracy theories seemed to build on each other, Jenga Tower-style, creating an unstable and even indecipherable mess. 

Last Wednesday, far-right Gateway Pundit founder Jim Hoft floated the imaginative notion that Youngkin’s win could have been the result of a sinister “larger psyop” carried out by Democrats in order to distract from the really big election fraud being committed. In other words, maybe Glenn Youngkin was a false flag. 

RELATED: After defeat in Virginia, Democrats — and America — face a dangerous inflection point

“On Tuesday, Glenn Youngkin won the governor’s race in Virginia. He was an impressive candidate, and it was a stunning win,” Hoft wrote, then continuing by citing the work of his twin brother, Joe Hoft, to reiterate the baseless claim that “one year ago 300,000 votes magically appeared for Joe Biden in the middle of the night to give him the win in Virginia.” 

What this added up to, in the Hoft brothers’ universe, was that Youngkin’s victory was a kind of fake-out, with the hapless McAuliffe serving as “a sacrificial lamb.” 

“So where were the magical votes this year? Was this omission on purpose?” Hoft demanded rhetorically. “Was this part of a larger psyop on the American public? Was this part of their game? Throw in McAuliffe as a sacrificial lamb knowing they can steal any future election at will?” 

The question marks did not conceal the intended message delivered to Hoft’s massive right-wing audience: The Big Lie goalposts were being moved to accommodate the story of Youngkin’s victory. “So, was the 2021 Virginia race a head-fake by Democrats on the American public?” Hoft added, summarizing his grand claim.

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Hoft did not respond to Salon’s request for comment.

Fellow 2020 conspiracy theorists have also had to refine their messaging in the days following Youngkin’s victory, with the similar goal of somehow bolstering their claims of continuing massive voting-machine fraud in elections across the nation. 

“You guys, there was so much corruption and fraud through them machines,” MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell said on his live stream last week, responding to the Virginia result. “You can’t even believe it. And we do have spots where they didn’t do anything in the algorithm. They didn’t do anything. Now we have proof.” Lindell appeared to mean, but did not exactly say, that the Virginia election was one of those “spots where they didn’t do anything.”

Lindell didn’t respond to Salon’s request for clarification. He declared on Friday night, however, that “rotten” Salon had a chance to beat out Fox News as “worst outlet of the year.” 

As for the Hoft brothers, whose Gateway Pundit site attracted 30 million page-views last month, their mix of half-baked conspiracy theories and blatantly one-sided reporting recently earned the ultimate award: praise from Donald Trump.

“You guys are great,” the twice-impeached ex-president told the brothers last Saturday night during their visit to Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Palm Beach. “Really good!” he added, shaking their hands and beaming. 

More from Salon’s coverage of the Big Lie and its leading proponents:

Capitol rioter tells Jan. 6 committee about contacts between state Republicans, Trump allies

An apparent participant in the Jan. 6 Capitol assault reported contacts between state-level Republican officials and associates of former President Donald Trump to the House committee investigating the January insurrection, according to Politico.

The rioter, who was not named due to fears of retaliation, was reportedly interviewed twice by the committee over the past week or so and “described knowledge of contacts between GOP officials in a key state Trump lost” and Trump’s allies, according to the outlet.

This individual, who is apparently among the more than 650 people charged in the attack, told the House committee about these purported contacts in a voluntary interview. The committee asked the rioter to return for a second interview after discussing the contacts. The panel questioned this individual about organizers of the Jan. 6 events and details about legal affidavits backing Trump’s election lies, according to the report.

The person was also grilled on why they had attended the Jan. 6 rally and marched to the Capitol. Their “answers made clear that the defendant and others traveled in response to Trump and marched to the Capitol at his direction,” Politico reported.

At least 57 state and local officials from 27 different states traveled to the “Stop the Steal” rally on the morning of Jan. 6, HuffPost reported in February. The list included at least 20 Republican state legislators, a state attorney general, six county commissioners, seven city council members, two mayors, three school board members and two state Republican chairs. Four of the GOP officials have been charged with participating in the riot.

Two organizers of the Jan. 6 rally also vowed to provide information about White House officials and House Republicans who participated in rally planning meetings. One organizer told Rolling Stone last month that “Marjorie Taylor Greene specifically,” along with “close to a dozen other members,” were involved in the planning. Other lawmakers named by the organizers included Reps. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., Mo Brooks, R-Ala., Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C., and Louie Gohmert, R-Texas. Gosar, one of the organizers said, even floated “blanket pardons” in a separate investigation to urge them to organize the rallies. The organizers also said that White House chief of staff Mark Meadows played a “major role” in the discussions.

RELATED: Jan. 6 organizers say they held “dozens” of planning meetings with House Republicans: report

The committee began requesting testimony from more than 100 rioters who have pleaded guilty last month and at least three have been cooperative. D.C. District Judge Beryl Howell last week rejected prosecutors’ recommended 30-day prison sentence and praised Leonard Gruppo, a military veteran who pleaded guilty to participating in the riot, for “talking to members of Congress on the select committee.”

Gruppo’s attorney, Daniel Lindsey, told Politico that he gave the committee “specifics about why he went to Washington, what he did and all the events of that day.”

“Former President Trump has left chaos, damage and heartache in his wake and he has shown no responsibility for all the lies,” Lindsey added.

The Jan. 6 panel has quietly made a lot of progress in its probe. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the top Republican on the committee, told Politico on Thursday that investigators have already interviewed more than 150 people.

“We’ve had, actually, over 150 interviews with a whole range of people connected to the events, connected to understanding what happens, so that just gives you a sense,” she told the outlet. “It is a range of engagements — some formal interviews, some depositions … There really is a huge amount of work underway that is leading to real progress for us.”

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The committee is keeping the list of interviews under wraps but along with the three rioters the committee is known to have interviewed former acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, Steve Bannon ally Dustin Stockton and former White House communications chief Alyssa Farrah. At least five former Trump administration staffers have voluntarily spoken with the committee, according to CNN.

Last Friday, the committee also interviewed former Justice Department attorney Jeffrey Clark, who aided Trump’s efforts to pressure the DOJ to push false claims about the election and urge states to delay the certification of their election results. Clark was subpoenaed by the committee after refusing to appear voluntarily, and multiple reports over the weekend suggested he was uncooperative in his Friday appearance.

The committee has also issued subpoenas to rally organizers and others involved in the event. Additionally, the panel has requested Trump administration records from the National Archives and has asked 35 tech and telecom companies for records related to about a dozen House Republicans and numerous other people. Trump has filed a lawsuit aimed at blocking the release of hundreds of White House records but a judge last week seemed to reject the former president’s executive privilege claim, noting that there is only one current executive. The White House has said that President Biden will not block the release of the documents.

The committee also issued subpoenas to Bannon, Meadows, former Trump aide Dan Scavino and former Pentagon official Kash Patel. Bannon is the only one of the people subpoenaed who has refused to cooperate with the investigation. The House voted last month to hold Bannon in criminal contempt of Congress, referring the matter to the Justice Department.

Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., told CNN that the panel may issue about 20 more subpoenas in the coming days, but declined to say who they will target.

“Some of the people have been written about,” he said. “Some of the people haven’t been written about.”

Read more on the attempts to uncover the truth about Jan. 6: