Toxic waste is leaking into our groundwater

Chevron has long dominated oil production in Lost Hills, a massive fossil fuel reserve in Central California that was accidentally discovered by water drillers more than a century ago. The company routinely pumps hundreds of thousands of gallons of water mixed with a special concoction of chemicals into the ground at high pressure to shake up shale deposits and release oil and gas. The process — called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking — produces thousands of barrels of oil every day. But it also leaves the company saddled with millions of gallons of wastewater laced with toxic chemicals, salts, and heavy metals.

Between the late 1950s and 2008, Chevron disposed much of the slurry produced in Lost Hills in eight cavernous impoundments at its Section 29 facility. Euphemistically called “ponds,” the impoundments have a combined surface area of 26 acres and do not have synthetic liners to prevent leaking. That meant that over time, salts and chemicals in the wastewater could leak into the ground and nearby water sources like the California Aqueduct, a network of canals that delivers water to farms in the Central Valley and cities like Los Angeles.

And that’s exactly what happened, according to new research published in the academic journal Environmental Science & Technology this month. Carcinogenic chemicals like benzene and toluene as well as other hydrocarbons have been detected within a half a kilometer of the facility. About 1.7 kilometers northwest of the facility, chloride and salt levels are more than six times and four times greater than background levels, respectively. The research leaves little doubt: The contaminants are migrating toward the aqueduct.

“Clearly, there’s impact to groundwater resources there,” said Dominic DiGiulio, lead author of the paper and a researcher at the nonprofit Physicians, Scientists, and Engineers for Healthy Energy. “At the section 29 facility, you have to go 1.8 kilometers away from the facility to find background water quality. That’s pretty far.”

The facility shuttered in 2008, and it no longer accepts wastewater. Chevron has continued to monitor the contaminant plume and submits yearly water quality reports to the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board, a local groundwater quality regulator. In a 2019 report, the company claimed it would cost more $800,000 to monitor the plume and report to the regulator for the next 30 years.

Jonathan Harshman, a spokesperson for Chevron, said the company was reviewing the study and that it “has complied and will continue to comply with” the Central Valley Water Board’s requirements for maintaining and monitoring leaks at the Section 29 facility.

The Section 29 facility isn’t an isolated case. Between 1977 and 2017, over 16 billion barrels of oilfield wastewater was disposed in unlined ponds in California. The vast majority of these are located outside of Bakersfield in the state’s Central Valley: According to DiGiulio’s research, there are at least 1,850 wastewater ponds in the San Joaquin Valley’s Tulare Basin. Of those, 85 percent are unlined and about one-fourth are active, like the Section 29 facility. However, despite not being operational, many of them may be leaking into the ground. Wells that monitor groundwater quality are few and far between, so it’s difficult to know the exact scope of the pollution. But DiGiulio warns that the ponds constitute “a potential wide-scale legacy groundwater contamination issue.”

This month’s study is the first to quantify the number of unlined pits in California and analyze their effects on groundwater. The findings bolster 2015 research by California Council on Science & Technology and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which concluded that unlined wastewater pits posed a threat to groundwater sources and called for investigations into whether contaminants have leaked from disposal ponds. Research conducted by the United States Geological Survey for the Central Valley Water Board has also found evidence of oil and gas wastewater contaminating groundwater.

Disposal of oil and gas wastewater is a national problem. Companies use anywhere between 1.5 million and 16 million gallons of water to frack a single well, and they have struggled to find economical and environmentally safe ways to dispose of the toxic fluid. The vast majority of the wastewater — both in California and nationally — is injected underground into porous rock formations, but companies also recycle and reuse the water to grow crops, de-ice roads, and suppress dust. California appears to be the only state that permits operators to store the waste in unlined pits, according to DiGiulio.

Patrick Pulupa, an executive officer with the Central Valley water board, defended the practice and noted that the wastewater ponds are only allowed in areas where the groundwater has been deemed too salty for irrigation or household use. In cases where the contamination has threatened usable water, he said, the Board has cracked down with cease-and-desist and investigative orders. “Board staff continue to look in detail at whether additional produced water discharges are a threat to usable groundwater and will continue to issue enforcement orders where appropriate,” he added.

The definition of groundwater that is “too salty” for use varies across California. Federal regulations consider water with less than 10,000 milligrams of dissolved solids per liter of water as protected for potential irrigation, industrial, and household use. As a result, companies are typically not allowed to dispose of wastewater in underground formations if it threatens groundwater that is below the 10,000 mg/L threshold — unless they secure an exemption from the state.

For unlined wastewater pits, however, that threshold has been set at 3,000 mg/L. The inconsistency allows oil and gas companies to pollute potential sources of groundwater, according to DiGiulio, and “appears to be the major driver for this continued disposal practice.”

“The fundamental problem is that the condition under which California groundwater is to be protected is not sufficiently stringent,” he said, adding that the state water board has the authority to increase the threshold to better protect groundwater near wastewater pits and should do so.

From Pulupa’s perspective, the 3,000 mg/L threshold is not dissimilar to the standard for disposal into underground formations in practice. Though federal regulations set the limit at 10,000 mg/L, companies are routinely granted exemptions if they can demonstrate that the groundwater is not expected to be used as a source of drinking water. The exemptions apply if the water has a dissolved solids concentration between 3,000 and 10,000 mg/L, and the controversial practice has allowed oil and gas companies to pump wastewater into hundreds of aquifers across the country. As a result, the “protective standards are relatively similar,” and the Central Valley Water Board is “unaware of any effort” to modify the definition of protected groundwater near wastewater pits, he said.

Joe Manchin kills Democrats’ paid family and medical leave proposal in Biden’s spending bill

Democrats are expected to drop their paid family and medical leave proposal from President Joe Biden’s spending bill, in the face of unrelenting opposition from Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.

Biden has pushed for months to include a 12-week paid leave provision in the bill but Manchin repeatedly balked at the plan. Democrats in recent days tried to cut the proposal to just four weeks but Manchin shot the compromise offer down as well. Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Patty Muray, D-Wash., confronted Manchin on the Senate floor on Wednesday to press him to agree to some sort of compromise but Manchin told reporters that he can’t support the legislation.

“I just can’t do it,” Manchin said Wednesday, raising concerns about deficits and debt even though Democrats aim to pay for everything in the bill with revenue increases.

“To expand social programs when you have trust funds that aren’t solvent, they’re going insolvent. I can’t explain that. It doesn’t make sense to me,” Manchin said. “I want to work with everyone as long as we can start paying for things. That’s all. I can’t put this burden on my grandchildren. I’ve got 10 grandchildren … I just can’t do it.”

Manchin’s opposition has frustrated Democrats in negotiations.

“People are pissed he wants to take out paid family leave,” one unnamed senator told CNN.

Molly Day, executive director for Paid Leave for the US, called the defeat of the proposal “outrageous and shameful.”

“A budget deal that does not include paid leave fails working families and will not allow us to build back better,” Day said in a statement.

Gillibrand insisted to CNN on Wednesday that reports that the proposal is completely out are “definitely premature” and stressed that she is still pushing Manchin to compromise.

“He hasn’t signed off on my recent proposal, and so it’s not yet agreed to,” she said, “but I’m not giving up and I’m not going to give up until the deal is signed.”

But Manchin suggested that Democrats should instead take the proposal out of the reconciliation bill and put it to a regular vote, where it would no doubt be filibustered by Republicans.

Democrats should be “examining all this stuff,” but “to put this in a reconciliation bill major policy … is not the place to do it,” he said. “I am just saying we have to be careful what we are doing, if we are going to do it, do it right.”

Opposition from Manchin has also led Democrats to cut proposals like free community college and the creation of new clean electricity standards, which was the cornerstone of Biden’s climate policy.

Biden is expected to announce a revised plan on Thursday which the White House said it expects all Democrats to support. But it’s now unclear whether progressive lawmakers will back a package that guts many of the Democrats’ top priorities.

“The president is working with everybody now,” Manchin said. “There is not a whole lot to say. Everybody is working really hard.”

The bill is still expected to include a one-year extension of the expanded Child Tax Credit, free universal pre-K, expanded child care, expanded Obamacare premiums, and housing subsidies, as well as more than $500 billion in tax incentives and grants to encourage certain industries to reduce carbon emissions.

But opposition from fellow holdout Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., has also wrecked Democrats’ plans to raise revenues to pay for much of the bill and lower drug costs. Sinema and a group of pharma-aligned House Democrats appear to have sunk a proposal to allow Medicare to negotiate lower drug costs, which would have saved up to $450 billion. Sinema also torpedoed the Biden administration’s plans to roll back some of the Trump tax cuts on corporations and top earners, even though she voted against the tax cuts in 2017.

Progressives have pushed to include a proposal to expand Medicare coverage to dental, hearing, and vision but that proposal has drawn opposition from Manchin as well. Manchin has also pushed back on Democrats’ plans to expand Medicaid to states that did not expand it under Obamacare.

Democrats hoped to replace the revenue gap caused by Sinema’s opposition to tax increases with a tax that specifically targeted unrealized gains by about 700 billionaires and those who earn over $100 million per year. Manchin initially expressed openness to the program, but that provision now seems likely to be replaced with a surtax on top earners. Democrats also plan to include a 15% minimum corporate tax in the bill.

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With Biden jetting off to Europe for a UN climate summit, the administration has pushed lawmakers to reach a deal this week.

Democratic leaders are pushing progressives to support the Senate’s bipartisan infrastructure plan, which they initially vowed would be voted on at the same time as the budget reconciliation bill. But it’s not clear whether progressives will accept a deal on a framework without specific legislation in play, much less a framework that guts many of their key priorities, simply to forge a compromise with Sinema, Manchin and other so-called moderates.

“If there isn’t a deal, which is what I am still hearing … then I am not sure what the president is going to present to us,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., the chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told CNN on Wednesday.

“The problem is with members here who, although they are very few in number, they are a significant minority, think that they have a right to determine what the rest of the Congress should be doing,” Senate Budget Chairman Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., told reporters. “The minority should not be dictating to the majority.”

Read more on the tortuous Build Back Better negotiations:

Dumbass nation: Our biggest national security problem is America’s “vast and militant ignorance”

With apologies to Paul Simon, and despite all of the information available to the mortal man, there are still millions of Americans who currently believe they’re gliding down the highway when in fact they’re slip slidin’ away.

As President Biden prepares to travel to Europe to meet with the Pope and our NATO allies next week, there remains a huge national security problem for him to grapple with, one that hasn’t been addressed in any meaningful fashion for many years.

It is the root cause of our problems with China. It’s why some people don’t want to get vaccinated. It’s why some people still gleefully follow Donald Trump. It explains why Congress can’t get together in a bipartisan fashion to deal with infrastructure, health care and gun control. It’s why we have problems understanding climate change. It explains voter suppression. It’s why “critical race theory” has become controversial, why elements of our population on the left and right are at war with each other and why some believe the earth is flat and the Holocaust didn’t occur. It’s why some of us believe we’re still the “No. 1” nation in the world when — other than having the largest military — we clearly lag behind other major nations in many critical factors. More than anything else it explains why we fail.

The United States is a nation of militantly ignorant people, arrogant in their beliefs, unable to change their minds and unwilling to try. We lack education.

And the lack of education in this country is such a problem that national security adviser Jake Sullivan described it this week as a critical issue for our national security. “I do consider it a national security problem,” he told me during a White House briefing on Tuesday. “In fact, it’s Dr. [Jill] Biden who has repeatedly said — and the president frequently quotes her — that any country that out-educates the United States will outcompete the United States, and that is a fundamental national security issue.”

NPR reported Tuesday that, in part because of COVID-19, we have 500,000 fewer students enrolled in colleges this year. Does anyone really think we can compete in the modern workplace with just a high school education?

I coached high school football for many years. I can tell you firsthand that the quality of education of the “average” student today would have been below the level of a remedial education when I was in high school. There are scores of students who are functionally illiterate as well as scientifically and mathematically illiterate, and have no idea how government works or what their responsibilities in a democracy are. Many scream about “rights.” Fewer understand responsibility.

Many are hoping and praying to find a menial job where they can “survive,” and rarely do they dare to dream they might thrive. Many cry out for universal health care, but don’t believe we’ll get it. Some don’t even understand how to get a decent salary, paid medical leave and other benefits, let alone how joining a union could help them accomplish those tasks. They don’t know what socialism or capitalism are — other than thinking that one is bad and the other is American. They don’t know our history, have no view of the future and are moribund in a present they fear, hate and don’t understand.

We have to do better. The reasons are clear. Biden is correct: Without a competitive education, we sentence our progeny to industrial servitude while those who are educated amass power and wealth. Look around. We’re in a new space race with China. We’re behind in hypersonic technology. Our scientists say we must have a nuclear rocket to beat the Chinese to Mars, but millions of people believe that Clorox might treat the coronavirus. Some even tried it.

Biden wants to provide free or affordable post-secondary education, and has pointedly reminded us how useless a mere high school diploma is today — and that frightens some of us. George Carlin warned us that the overlords of society want you smart enough to operate the machinery, but no smarter than that. Some believe that to be true. Others in Congress tell us that such educational outlays in the budget are cost-prohibitive — while at the same time nodding reflexively each time we increase our bloated military budget.

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This is not a recent development. Our dedication to education has fallen steadily during the last 40 years — and like most of the rot that has occurred in this country, I place the blame at the feet of Ronald Reagan and the ultra-conservatives he used to get elected and that he helped bring into the mainstream.

If you don’t want to accept that Reagan was a feckless fool who destroyed unions, education, the free press and health care, and took us down the road to ruin, then look at the stench stirred up by George W. Bush and his infamous “No Child Left Behind” education policy.

That moronic mantra became every child left behind, creating an entire generation of Americans who were taught how to pass tests — but never how to think critically.

Many of those children who grew up being trained to pass tests are adults now and beginning to populate mid-level management positions in the American workforce. They have become part of what H.L. Mencken described as a “vast and militant ignorance” a century ago, which reminds us that arrogant ignorance isn’t a new phenomenon — only that No Child Left Behind exacerbated the problem. “Team America World Police” and “Idiocracy” look more like documentary films than satire these days.

What’s the most striking example of the lack of education? Two words: Donald Trump.

And I have one real question I’d like answered: Will someone please stop sending me emails from Donald Trump and his children, relatives, underlings and minions, begging me for money and guaranteeing me private time with the Donald?

Don Jr. even sent me an email telling me he was going to tell his daddy if I didn’t give some amount of money NOW! I also got promised a football if I contributed to Donald Trump — who isn’t even officially running for office yet, but certainly has honed the art of conning people out of their hard-earned cash to a laser-like precision.

I know dozens of other White House reporters who are apparently on the Donald’s email list, and none of us signed up for his systematic harassment and panhandling. He’s an internet stalker and homeless vagrant rolled into one. Apparently the former president took the White House correspondents’ email list with him when he fled D.C. Since I’m also getting email from the Sarah Sanders campaign and a few other close Trump associates who hold office, I can only assume they are sending me their scatological musings because Trump has shared the email list with his itinerant, angry, brain-dead acolytes.

They all send me content designed to make the uneducated howl at the moon and scratch themselves like a junkyard dog with fleas. These “press releases” from Trump’s moronic disciples are met with yelps of pleasure from their fans. Poor grammar and spelling aside, these fecal releases usually make no sense and appear to be the mutterings of simpletons who’ve ingested tainted hallucinogens.

The idea that the most qualified candidate in the Republican Party for the highest office in the land could once again be a guy who was impeached twice and encouraged us to ingest Clorox and shine ultraviolet light inside our bodies — that’s something even an overabundance of psilocybin in your bloodstream can’t explain.

But a lack of education explains all of it, including but not limited to Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.

Our lack of education is the single greatest threat to the existence of our nation. Jake Sullivan is right: It’s a national security issue.

“And though my lack of education hasn’t hurt me none/ I can read the writing on the wall,” Paul Simon also told us.

Today, I’m not sure how many people can even read that.

More from Brian Karem on the weirdness of the Biden White House:

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

Last week, Senate Republicans filibustered the Freedom to Vote Act, refusing to allow it to reach the floor for debate, let alone an actual vote. Their goal was to prevent Black and brown people, as well as other Americans who support the Democratic Party, from participating in the polity as full citizens.

Moreover, the Republican filibuster of the Freedom to Vote Act — itself a compromise bill hatched by Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, in the delusional belief it would attract bipartisan support — was effectively an endorsement of the ongoing coup against American democracy.

For all intents and purposes, today’s Republican Party, encouraged by Trumpism, has dug up the putrid corpse of Jim Crow and married it. Refusing to allow a vote on the Freedom to Vote Act is, in a sense, a perfect metaphor or synecdoche, since Republicans are also engaged in a nationwide campaign of voter exclusion, voter suppression, partisan and racial gerrymandering and other means designed to shrink the electorate with the goal of ensuring one-party rule.

It’s no mystery why this is happening: Republican policies are overwhelmingly unpopular with the American people. In a healthy majoritarian democracy, Republicans would be decisively voted out of power. The Republican Party’s solution? Select their own voters and exclude all others from the franchise.

Moreover, today’s Republican Party cannot consistently win free and fair national elections in a country that is rapidly becoming more “racially” and ethnically diverse. As seen on Jan. 6 and other moments, Republicans are now willing to condone or even encourage right-wing political violence as a means of obtaining and keeping political power. To wit: Public opinion polls and other research indicate that tens of millions of (white) Republicans and Trumpists would support terrorism in order to return Donald Trump to power and protect their “traditional” version of America.

As historian Nancy MacLean and other experts have exhaustively documented, today’s Republican Party and the larger right-wing movement are contemptuous towards democracy. To that end, they have worked for decades to replace American democracy with a right-wing authoritarian corporate state — a mixture of oligarchy and theocracy — in which profits and property reign supreme over civil and human rights.

Too many public voices still claim to be “shocked” and “surprised” by the Republican Party’s campaign to overturn American democracy. In reality, it is a dangerous error to treat the Jim Crow Republicans as some type of aberration or exception. In many ways, the white right’s large-scale war against multiracial democracy is the status quo ante reasserting itself, amplified and empowered by the Age of Trump and ascendant fascism.

The United States is existentially stained by its founding as a racial-settler colonial state where genocide against indigenous peoples and the enslavement of Black people were central to the formation and expansion of the country.

American democracy, at its inception, was inherently racial — a Herrenvolk democracy in which chattel slavery and the oppression of other nonwhite groups created exclusionary boundaries that helped to create political and social cohesion for “white society.”

As philosopher Charles Mills and other scholars have demonstrated, white elites as a group — including the founders — saw little contradiction between the continued existence of slavery and other forms of racial exploitation and their claims about “liberty,” “democracy” and “freedom.” On the contrary, those conceptions were predicated upon the violent exploitation and exclusion of Black people and other nonwhites people from the polity.

Today’s Republican Party represents the traitorous and treasonous ideology of the Southern Confederacy reborn.

Like the Confederates, today’s Republican Party believes that white men with property should dominate society, that women should be confined to the domestic sphere as de facto property, that the country should be ruled by “Christian” values, that white privilege and white power are the “natural order of things” and that capital should dominate all areas of social and political life. Today’s Republican Party also believes that “real Americans” should have a monopoly on violence and be freely empowered to use it against the Other, and that attempts to create social democracy are antithetical to capitalism and the “American way”.

As revealed by public opinion polls and other evidence, white Republicans and Trump supporters (along with too many nonwhite people who yearn to gain access to honorary whiteness) increasingly believe that “white America” is under siege from black and brown people. Such beliefs serve to normalize and encourage preemptive violence as “necessary” acts of “self-defense.” These “white genocide” fantasies go back centuries in America. During the era of slavery and then Reconstruction and then the Black codes and Jim Crow, white leaders repeatedly issued warnings about the threat of “Negro domination,” which would somehow occur if the right to vote, along with other human and civil rights, were expanded across the color line.

The Senate filibuster itself is a carryover from the 19th century, frequently used to protect the institution of chattel slavery and then, after the Civil War, to ensure that Black people were stripped of virtually all their supposed rights of citizenship. The language and logic being deployed by Republicans and their propagandists today, to defend their attempts to keep Black and brown people from voting, echo almost verbatim those used during the century-long Jim and Jane Crow reign of terror.

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In this moment of crisis, it is critically important to understand that America’s multiracial democracy is still very new and highly contingent and vulnerable to being overthrown by the Republican fascists and their allies. Black Americans have only had the right to vote, as a matter of law, since 1965. If Black people’s voting rights were a human being, that person would only be 56 years old — not yet ready to collect Social Security.

Nothing about America’s multiracial democracy is guaranteed, least of all its continued survival.

Like many people of my generation, I grew up enamored with the “Schoolhouse Rock!” cartoons. I have seen every episode many times. I knew the words to the songs by heart, and could sing along when snippets of “Schoolhouse Rock!” appeared between episodes of “G.I. Joe,” “The Transformers,” “Voltron” or “Thundarr the Barbarian.”

In these dark days of America’s democracy crisis, I have often thought about the beloved episode of “Schoolhouse Rock!” that explains how a bill becomes a law. I see “Bill” walking up the stairs of the Capitol, so happy to visit the U.S. Senate. But in this alternate version of the original episode, Bill is attacked by a mob of enraged white people in MAGA gear, carrying Confederate flags and other fascist emblems. The Trump hooligans beat Bill mercilessly. He is then dragged down the Capitol steps, spat upon and left crumpled and lifeless, while the MAGA horde celebrates their victory.

To the Jim Crow Republicans, the legislative process that Bill once represented is irrelevant now — democracy is a hollow farce, and their leader’s word is the only law.

More Salon coverage of the Republican Party’s war on democracy:

To save their majority, Democrats must awaken the “sleeping giant”: Poor people who don’t vote

As the stores shift displays from Halloween to Thanksgiving and then Christmas, it will be tempting to let the turn of the seasons and the hope of a post-pandemic life lull us into a false sense of well-being.

The noise generated by the 2021 gubernatorial campaigns in New Jersey and Virginia — and down-ballot legislative races about who is responsible for property taxes — offers no hint of the real stakes in the election. It’s dangerously disconnected from the reality that Donald Trump’s insurrection, which tried to use force to install the loser of the 2020 election, is still simmering across the land.

We may be briefly comforted by the primordial procession of the turning of the leaves, the cooler temperatures and shorter days. This is the cycle that has always moved us through time, long before the turbulent past few years. We are all weary, all still dealing with the collective trauma of a once-in-a-century mass death event that has left millions of us worried about the long-term consequences of a deadly virus we still don’t fully understand.

It would be wonderful if the deaths of more than 700,000 Americans and the Jan. 6 attack on our nation’s capital, and our democracy, amid a pandemic were all just vivid nightmares.

They were ample evidence of a nation and a planet facing existential challenges that are interconnected and loom larger as the calendar pages turn. It’s clearer with each passing day that climate change is already upon us in the form of increasingly more lethal storms like Sandy and Ida that occur with greater frequency, as epic wildfires continue to burn for weeks at a time.

For three years before COVID hit, the U.S. national average life expectancy was in decline. That was the first time that had happened since the Spanish flu pandemic that started in 1918. For years the powers that be had ignored the deteriorating health of the American people and the gaping holes in the public health safety net.

We’ve now exceeded the death toll from the 1918-19 pandemic by tens of thousands, and in the process have exposed how the growing wealth concentration and resulting inequality in our nation leaves tens of millions of poor and low-wage households vulnerable. We also know that it’s precisely these families, most often (though not exclusively) people of color, who are the backbone of the essential workforce that served the entire society while so many middle-class people had the luxury to work from home.

At the same time, in states across the nation, the authoritarian cadre loyal to Trump has been successful in rolling back voting rights protections at an unprecedented pace, building on their electoral successes locally in 2020. Trump is the anti-immigrant demagogue who denies that climate change is real. He lied to the nation about the severity of COVID and then attempted to use the virus for tactical advantage by pitting red states against blue, a self-serving strategy that helped spread the disease and pushed the death toll ever higher.

Sen. Angus King, the mild-mannered independent from Maine, recently warned on MSNBC that our national politics were at a “fragile” and “very dangerous moment,” perhaps the “most dangerous since 1860 in terms of the future of the country,” because of Congress’ inability to stave off the attack on voting rights that particularly targets communities of color.

King warned that the only way to “protect democracy” was by successfully beating back “this wave of voter suppression and the changing of the rules,” which is now well underway in key swing states that rejected Trump and all he stood for.

King correctly calculated that thanks to the existence of the undemocratic Senate filibuster, just 41 U.S. senators, collectively representing only 24% of the American people, “have an effective veto over anything that 76 percent of the American people think is important public policy.”

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So this is the backdrop against which the tightening races for governor, both in my state of New Jersey and in Virginia, are playing out. Coming as they always do one year after the national presidential contest, these “off-off-year” elections are often seen as a bellwether for the congressional midterms that come the following year — and in 2022 will be of truly historic consequence.

Republicans can roll out this second wave of Jim Crow-style race-based voter suppression because they have the leverage from years of disciplined party building from the bottom up, accomplished in successive elections at the local, county and state levels. It’s given them control not only in places like Florida and Texas but in previously Democratic or “purple” states like Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, Democrats, who officially control the White House, the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, were unable to pass even a watered-down version of a desperately needed voting rights bill championed by Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who mistakenly believed it would attract Republican votes.

Efforts to hold those responsible for the Jan. 6 violent attack on the U.S. Capitol — which was meant to derail the peaceful transition of power and install minority rule by force — continue to meet serious resistance. A significant number of sitting members of Congress continue to give voice to Trump’s racist Big Lie that the election was stolen in urban centers where voters of color are concentrated.

While the Biden-Harris ticket won a solid national victory in 2020, the Trump white supremacist tractor beam energized down-ballot Republicans, and Democrats lost ground both in the House and in the nation’s statehouses, where voting rights and reproductive rights are defined.

Biden and Harris won more votes than any ticket in U.S. history, but Donald Trump also got the second-highest vote total ever, adding several million votes to his 2016 count.

In the 2020 election in New Jersey, Trump once again carried Ocean, Cape May, Salem, Hunterdon, Warren and Sussex counties, and added to his vote totals from 2016 in Atlantic, Bergen, Burlington, Gloucester and Mercer counties.

As they seem to do in almost every campaign, polls appear to be tightening between New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and his Republican rival, former Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli. Last month, a Monmouth University poll gave Murphy a 13-point advantage. A recent WPIX/Emerson College poll found that Ciattarelli had closed that gap to just six points, with 7% of those polled still undecided.

According to that same poll, Murphy’s time leading the state through the pandemic was reflected in declining poll numbers, with just 49% viewing him favorably and 47% unfavorably.

In Virginia, 2021’s other bellwether race, a Monmouth University Poll has Democratic former governor Terry McAuliffe dead even in his race with Republican billionaire Glenn Youngkin.

Meanwhile, Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., the Trump acolyte who replaced Rep. Liz Cheney as chair of the House Republican Conference, sent out a fundraising appeal on Oct. 23 for “Young Gun” Tom Kean, who faces a rematch with “Pelosi Puppet Tom Malinowski,” who represents New Jersey’s 7th congressional district.

Malinowski, who only won by a few thousand votes in 2020 — less than 1% of the votes cast — has become ensnared in allegations he failed to properly disclose personal stock transactions. The Hill reported Oct. 21 that the Office of Congressional Ethics has concluded it found “substantial reason to believe” Malinowski had failed to “disclose stock transactions in accordance with ethics rules and federal law.”

Nancy Pelosi holds the House majority by just three seats after her party lost unexpected ground in the 2020 election, and has continued to lose ground since. Along with the precarious status of Malinowski’s seat, there’s also the 7th district in Virginia, where Democrats prevailed in 2020 by just a 1% margin. Many Republicans think they can win the majority purely based on favorable redistricting in Texas and Florida.

If Democrats are to beat the odds and hold control of Congress in 2022, it’s vital that the party in New Jersey and Virginia sees the Nov. 2 election as a kind of fire drill to engage what the Rev. William J. Barber II has described as the “sleeping giant of poor and low-income voters” in their states.

That under-appreciated voter cohort provided the 2020 margin of victory in key places like Georgia, where they sent Democrats Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff to the U.S. Senate. While some Beltway consultants urge Democrats away from progressive policies that appear overly “left” or “socialist,” the party must energize its base, which means speaking directly to the pressing needs of poor and low-wage voters of all colors.

Out of 168 million voters who cast a ballot in the 2020 general election, 58 million were poor or low-income voters, according to research complied by Barber’s Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. “This means that more than one-third of the voting electorate — 35% — were low-income voters,” according to the PPC report issued earlier this month. “There were another 22 million low-income voters who were registered, but did not vote, meaning that out of the 215 million registered voters in 2020, 80 million — or 37% — were eligible low-income voters.”

The report continues by observing that “low-income voters are not a monolithic group” but that “they represent a significant population of voters that is often overlooked and misunderstood.” The broad population of “eligible low-income voters,” the report concludes,” is “an electoral sleeping giant, holding the potential to shift our political maps and reshape our political priorities.”

But the significance of the low-income electorate, as the report then observes, goes beyond winning or losing elections. “The concerns of these voters are widely popular, yet far from being fully implemented. Instead, 140 million people are poor or living one emergency away from economic ruin, while the wealth and abundance of the country becomes concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. In addition, the democratic rights of the people are under attack with voter suppression laws.”

According to PPC’s state-by-state analysis of the 1.4 million registered low-income voters in New Jersey, just over a million of them voted in 2020, meaning that close to 400,000 sat out that election. While that cohort’s registration rate was close to 80 percent, only 58 percent felt sufficiently engaged to follow through and cast a ballot.

Consider how the 2020 race between Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a Trump Republican, and Democratic challenger Amy Kennedy might have gone if the “sleeping giant” of low-wage workers had been fully awakened in New Jersey’s 2nd congressional district — and especially in Cumberland County, which is one of the poorest in the state.

In Virginia, according to the PPC report, 1.74 million low-income voters were registered and 1.34 million actually voted, meaning that another 400,000 registered voters sat out 2020, when they could have had a significant impact on down-ballot races.

In the final days of the 2021 campaign, Democrats in both the Garden State and the Old Dominion need to get a jump on their 2022 to-do list, zeroing in on low-income voters to give Murphy and McAuliffe convincing victories. If you knock on their door in 2021, they might remember who you are when you come calling in 2022.

It could well be that awakening the “sleeping giant” is all that stands between us and the reimposition of the tyranny of Donald Trump’s minority rule.

More Salon coverage of the “off-off-year” elections in New Jersey and Virginia:

Biden’s worst idea yet: Do we really want a new Cold War with China?

Before it’s too late, we need to ask ourselves a crucial question: Do we really — I mean truly — want a new Cold War with China?

Because that’s just where the Biden administration is clearly taking us. If you need proof, check out last month’s announcement of the “AUKUS” (Australia, U.K., U.S.) military alliance in Asia. Believe me, it’s far scarier (and more racist) than the nuclear-powered submarine deal and the French diplomatic kerfuffle that dominated the media coverage of it. By focusing on the dramatically angry French reaction to losing their own agreement to sell non-nuclear subs to Australia, most of the media missed a much bigger story: that the U.S. government and its allies have all but formally declared a new Cold War by launching a coordinated military buildup in East Asia unmistakably aimed at China.

It’s still not too late to choose a more peaceful path. Unfortunately, this all-Anglo alliance comes perilously close to locking the world into just such a conflict that could all too easily become a hot, even potentially nuclear, war between the two wealthiest, most powerful countries on the planet.

If you’re too young to have lived through the original Cold War as I did, imagine going to sleep fearing that you might not wake up in the morning, thanks to a nuclear war between the world’s two superpowers (in those days, the United States and the Soviet Union). Imagine walking past n uclear fallout shelters, doing “duck and cover” drills under your school desk, and experiencing other regular reminders that, at any moment, a great-power war could end life on Earth.

Do we really want a future of fear? Do we want the United States and its supposed enemy to once again squander untold trillions of dollars on military expenditures while neglecting basic human needs, including universal health care, education, food and housing, not to mention failing to deal adequately with that other looming existential threat, climate change?

A U.S. military buildup in Asia

When President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared their all-too-awkwardly named AUKUS alliance, most of the media focused on a relatively small (though hardly insignificant) part of the deal: the U.S. sale of nuclear-powered submarines to Australia and that country’s simultaneous cancellation of a 2016 contract to buy diesel-powered subs from France. Facing the loss of tens of billions of euros and being shut out of the Anglo Alliance, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian called the deal a “stab in the back.” For the first time in history, France briefly recalled its ambassador from Washington. French officials even canceled a gala meant to celebrate Franco-American partnership dating back to their defeat of Britain in the Revolutionary War.

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Caught surprisingly off guard by the uproar over the alliance (and the secret negotiations that preceded it), the Biden administration promptly took steps to repair relations, and the French ambassador soon returned to Washington. In September at the UN, President Biden declared that the last thing he wants is “a new Cold War or a world divided into rigid blocs.” Sadly, the actions of his administration suggest otherwise.

Imagine how Biden administration officials would feel about the announcement of a “VERUCH” (VEnezuela, RUssia and CHina) alliance. Imagine how they’d react to a buildup of Chinese military bases and thousands of Chinese troops in Venezuela. Imagine their reaction to regular deployments of all types of Chinese military aircraft, submarines and warships in Venezuela, to increased spying, heightened cyber-warfare capabilities, and relevant space “activities,” as well as military exercises involving thousands of Chinese and Russian troops not just in Venezuela but in the waters of the Atlantic within striking distance of the U.S. How would Biden’s team feel about the promised delivery of a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines to that country, involving the transfer of nuclear technology and nuclear-weapons-grade uranium?

None of this has happened, but these would be the Western Hemisphere equivalents of the “major force posture initiatives” U.S., Australian, and British officials have just announced for East Asia. AUKUS officials unsurprisingly portray their alliance as making parts of Asia “safer and more secure,” while building “a future of peace [and] opportunity for all the people of the region.” It’s unlikely U.S. leaders would view a similar Chinese military buildup in Venezuela or anywhere else in the Americas as a similar recipe for safety and peace.

In reaction to VERUCH, calls for a military response and a comparable alliance would be rapid. Shouldn’t we expect Chinese leaders to react to the AUKUS buildup with their own version of the same? For now, a Chinese government spokesperson suggested that the AUKUS allies “should shake off their Cold War mentality” and “not build exclusionary blocs targeting or harming the interests of third parties.” The Chinese military’s recent escalation of provocative exercises near Taiwan may be, in part, an additional response.

Chinese leaders have even more reason to doubt the declared peaceful intent of AUKUS given that the U.S. military already has seven military bases in Australia and nearly 300 more spread across East Asia. By contrast, China doesn’t have a single base in the Western Hemisphere or anywhere near the borders of the United States. Add in one more factor: In the last 20 years, the AUKUS allies have a track record of launching aggressive wars and participating in other conflicts from Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya to Yemen, Somalia and the Philippines, among other places. China’s last war beyond its borders was with Vietnam for one month in 1979. (Brief, deadly clashes occurred with Vietnam in 1988 and India in 2020.)

War trumps diplomacy

By withdrawing U.S. forces from Afghanistan, the Biden administration theoretically started moving the country away from its 21st-century policy of endless wars. The president, however, now appears determined to side with those in Congress, in the mainstream foreign policy “Blob” and in the media who are dangerously inflating the Chinese military threat and calling for a military response to that country’s growing global power. The poor handling of relations with the French government is another sign that, despite prior promises, the Biden administration is paying little attention to diplomacy and reverting to a foreign policy defined by preparations for war, bloated military budgets and macho military bluster.

Given the 20 years of disastrous warfare that followed the George W. Bush administration’s announcement of a “Global War on Terror” and its invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, what business does Washington have building a new military alliance in Asia? Shouldn’t the Biden administration instead be building alliances dedicated to combating global warming, pandemics, hunger and other urgent human needs? What business do three white leaders of three white-majority countries have attempting to dominate that region through military force?

While the leaders of some countries there have welcomed AUKUS, the three allies signaled the racist, retrograde, downright colonial nature of their Anglo Alliance by excluding other Asian countries from their all-white club. Naming China as its obvious target and escalating Cold War-style us-vs.-them tensions risk fueling already rampant anti-Chinese and anti-Asian racism in the U.S. and globally. Belligerent, often warlike rhetoric against China, associated with former President Donald Trump and other far-right Republicans, has increasingly been embraced by the Biden administration and some Democrats. It “has directly contributed to rising anti-Asian violence across the country,” write Asia experts Christine Ahn, Terry Park and Kathleen Richards.

The less formalized “Quad” grouping that Washington has also organized in Asia, again including Australia as well as India and Japan, is little better and is already becoming a more militarily focused anti-Chinese alliance. Other countries in the region have indicated that they are “deeply concerned over the continuing arms race and power projection” there, as the Indonesian government said of the nuclear-powered submarine deal. Nearly silent and so difficult to detect, such vessels are offensive weapons designed to strike another country without warning. Australia’s future acquisition of them risks escalating a regional arms race and raises troubling questions about the intentions of both Australian and U.S. leaders.

Beyond Indonesia, people worldwide should be deeply concerned about the U.S. sale of nuclear-propelled submarines. The deal undermines efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons as it encourages the proliferation of nuclear technology and weapons-grade highly enriched uranium, which the U.S. or British governments will need to provide to Australia to fuel the subs. The deal also offers a precedent allowing other non-nuclear countries like Japan to advance nuclear-weapons development under the guise of building their own nuclear-powered subs. What’s to stop China or Russia from now selling their nuclear-powered submarines and weapons-grade uranium to Iran, Venezuela or any other country?

Who’s militarizing Asia?

Some will claim that the U.S. must counter China’s growing military power, frequently trumpeted by U.S. media outlets. Increasingly, journalists, pundits and politicians here have been irresponsibly parroting misleading depictions of Chinese military power. Such fear-mongering is already ballooning military budgets in this country, while fueling arms races and increasing tensions, just as during the original Cold War. Disturbingly, according to a recent Chicago Council on Global Affairs survey, a majority in the U.S. now appear to believe — however incorrectly — that Chinese military power is equal to or greater than that of the United States. In fact, our military power vastly exceeds China’s, which simply doesn’t compare to the old Soviet Union.

The Chinese government has indeed strengthened its military power in recent years by increasing spending, developing advanced weapons systems and building an estimated 15 to 27 mostly small military bases and radar stations on human-made islands in the South China Sea. Nonetheless, the U.S. military budget remains at least three times the size of its Chinese counterpart (and higher than at the height of the original Cold War). Add in the military budgets of Australia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and other NATO allies like Great Britain, and the discrepancy leaps to six to one. Among the approximately 750 U.S. military bases abroad, almost 300 are scattered across East Asia and the Pacific and dozens more are in other parts of Asia. The Chinese military, on the other hand, has eight bases abroad (seven in the South China Sea’s Spratley Islands and one in Djibouti in Africa), plus bases in Tibet. The U.S. nuclear arsenal contains about 5,800 warheads, compared to about 320 in the Chinese arsenal. The U.S. military has 68 nuclear-powered submarines, the Chinese military 10.

Contrary to what many have been led to believe, China is not a military challenge to the United States. There is no evidence its government has even the remotest thought of threatening, let alone attacking, the U.S. itself. Remember, China last fought a war outside its borders in 1979. “The true challenges from China are political and economic, not military,” Pentagon expert William Hartung has rightly explained.

Since President Obama’s “pivot to Asia,” the U.S. military has engaged in years of new base construction, aggressive military exercises and displays of military force in the region. This has encouraged the Chinese government to build up its own military capabilities. Especially in recent months, the Chinese military has engaged in increasingly provocative exercises near Taiwan, though fear-mongers again are misrepresenting and exaggerating how threatening they truly are. Given Biden’s plans to escalate his predecessors’ military buildup in Asia, no one should be surprised if Beijing announces a military response and pursues an AUKUS-like alliance of its own. If so, the world will once more be locked in a two-sided Cold-War-like struggle that could prove increasingly difficult to unwind.

Unless Washington and Beijing reduce tensions, future historians may see AUKUS as akin not just to various Cold-War-era alliances, but to the 1882 Triple Alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy. That pact spurred France, Britain and Russia to create their own Triple Entente, which, along with rising nationalism and geo-economic competition, helped lead Europe into World War I (which, in turn, begat World War II, which begat the Cold War).

Avoiding a new Cold War?

The Biden administration and the United States must do better than resuscitate the strategies of the 19th century and the Cold War era. Rather than further fueling a regional arms race with yet more bases and weapons development in Australia, U.S. officials could help lower tensions between Taiwan and mainland China, while working to resolve territorial disputes in the South China Sea. In the wake of the Afghan War, President Biden could commit the U.S. to a foreign policy of diplomacy, peace-building and opposition to war rather than one of endless conflict and preparations for more of the same. AUKUS’s initial 18-month consultation period offers a chance to reverse course.

Recent polling suggests such moves would be popular. More than three times as many in the U.S. would like to see an increase, rather than a decrease, in diplomatic engagement in the world, according to the nonprofit Eurasia Group Foundation. Most surveyed would also like to see fewer troop deployments overseas. Twice as many want to decrease the military budget as want to increase it.

The world barely survived the original Cold War, which was anything but cold for the millions of people who lived through or died in the era’s proxy wars in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Can we really risk another version of the same, this time possibly with Russia as well as China? Do we want an arms race and competing military buildups that would divert trillions of dollars more from pressing human needs while filling the coffers of arms manufacturers? Do we really want to risk triggering a military clash between the United States and China, accidental or otherwise, that could easily spin out of control and become a hot, possibly nuclear, war in which the death and destruction of the last 20 years of “forever wars” would look small by comparison?

That thought alone should be chilling. That thought alone should be enough to stop another Cold War before it’s too late.

New president, familiar challenges — more from Salon on Joe Biden’s foreign policy contradictions:

Secretaries of State have seen their lives upended by violent threats and harassment

Secretaries of State and other election officials across the country are speaking out about the alarming increase in harassment and violent threats they’ve faced since former President Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss.

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs detailed her encounter with “armed protesters” that organized outside of her home. Following Trump’s loss, protesters reportedly told Hobbs, “Katie come out and play. We are watching you.”

The Democratic official has also received vicious voice-mail. “You will never be safe in Arizona again,” an unknown caller warned in one of the messages.

Hobbs also discussed the alarming encounter. “As an elected official, I expected that sometimes I would have constituents who were unhappy with me,” Hobbs said. “But I never expected that holding this office would result in far-right trolls threatening my children, threatening my husband’s employment at a children’s hospital or calling my office saying I deserve to die and asking, ‘What is she wearing today, so she’ll be easy to get.'”

As Trump continued to push the “big lie,” election officials on both sides of the political aisle were faced with harassment. Although the numbers, and even audit outcomes, have made it clear that Trump lost the election by a substantial margin, his followers’ blind faith has not waned.

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Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold has also faced similar treatment. Speaking to CNN last week, she revealed whether or not she felt safe doing her job. The state official took nearly 30 seconds to speak.

“I take these threats very seriously,” she said after carefully choosing her words. “It’s absolutely getting worse.”

“When I’m at the center of a national QAnon conspiracy and the very people who have stormed the Capitol are threatening me, it is very concerning,” Griswold said. “When someone says they know where I live and I should be afraid for my life, I take that as a threat and I believe the state of Colorado should, too.”

The latest concerns also come months after Gabriel Sterling, the top-ranking Republican for Georgia’s voting system, also echoed similar sentiments about accountability during a Dec. 1, 2020 news conference last year. At that time, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was being targeted amid pressures to overturn the election results in his state.

“It has to stop,” Sterling said at a December press conference. “Stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence. Someone is going to get hurt, someone is going to get shot, someone is going to get killed. And it’s not right.”

For Michigan Secretary of State Joycelyn Benson, it’s become a way of life to live with looming threats. “It creates an air of apprehension everywhere you go and over everything you do. You’re always looking behind your back and over your shoulder,” she said.

“The lack of accountability means one thing: we have to anticipate that it will continue,” Benson said. “And then as we close in on next year’s election and 2024, I think it will simply continue to escalate, unless there are real consequences.”

More from Salon on Donald Trump’s not-so-slow-motion coup attempt:

MTG likely lost thousands investing in Trump’s new media venture

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) could be out thousands of dollars after she purchased SPAC stock linked to former President Donald Trump’s future social media platform.

According to CNBC, Greene filed a public disclosure revealing she had invested up to $50,000 in Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC), which has said that it will merge with Trump’s social media company.

DWAC saw its shares skyrocket over 800% after announcing the deal with Trump. But CNBC determined that it’s “almost certain” that Greene has lost money on the investment.

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“On Friday, DWAC opened at $118.80 a share and dipped as low as $67.96 a share,” the network pointed out. “It’s now trading around $63 a share. That means, at best, Greene has lost about 7% on her investment.”

In a statement, Greene did not address the losses.

“This transaction was reported in compliance with House rules and provides all required details about the transaction,” her office said.

Read more about TRUTH Social and Trump’s new media venture:

3 recipes to host your own “Great British Bake Off” bread challenge

The current season of “The Great British Bake Off” has introduced us to everything from malt loaves to brandy snaps. We’ve seen bakers sweat off soufflés, crumble under the pressure of crafting wafer-thin cookies, and appear victorious when they’re announced as the winner of a given challenge. Recently, contestants on GBBO were faced with something everyone loves — bread. The remaining bakers were tasked with baking focaccia, oliva and cheese ciabatta breadsticks, and, for the superstar recipe, milk bread. Focaccia and ciabatta both originated in Italy, while fluffy milk bread, which has gone somewhat viral in recent years, hails from Japan. So did they rise to the occasion, or sink under the pressure? While you’ll have to watch the show to find out, we’re sharing three of our own bread recipes so that you can see if you’re up to the task from the comfort of your own home . . . rather than a tent in the middle of the woods.

* * *

The “Great British Bake Off” bread recipes

1. Saltie’s Focaccia

Sheet pan focaccia bread can be simple or it can be studded with olives, cherry tomatoes, and herbs galore. This one is sprinkled with coarse sea salt (use the good stuff!) and receives a generous drizzle of good-quality olive oil. Like most breads, it takes hours and hours to rise into a voluminous dough. So start it in the morning and by dinner time, a fresh, crusty focaccia will be waiting for you and yours.

2. Ciabatta

This hard and crusty bread is just as apt for dipping into a fruity olive oil as it is building a flavorful Italian sandwich with soppressata, prosciutto, mozzarella, sundried tomatoes, basil, and more of that fruity olive oil. It’s a favorite of recipe developer and Food52 baking resident Erin Jeanne McDowell because it can be mixed by hand (no stand mixer or bread machine needed) and requires very little shaping.

3. Kindred’s Milk Bread

This light and super fluffy bread is an upgraded version of an ordinary white loaf, but it’s just as comforting and wholesome. It gets its pillowy texture — plus its signature name — from a combination of nonfat dry milk powder and heavy cream (plus eggs, butter, and honey). If you’re lucky enough to have traveled to Davidson, North Carolina, then you may very well have tried the real deal, which is served as the bread course for diners at Kindred Restaurant.

Everybody is having a blast in the “Cowboy Bebop” trailer

Part of me looks Netflix’s upcoming live-action remake of “Cowboy Bebop,” a beloved sci-fi anime series from the ’90s, and scoff. Who are they kidding, I want to ask. How can they hope to replicate the kinetic, stylized thrills of the original series in a live-action format? Isn’t this just a cash grab?

Well, maybe, but I can’t deny that it looks like a lot of care went into this show. Just watch the trailer below, featuring the talents of John Cho as Spike, Mustafa Shakir as Jet, and Daniella Pineda as Faye. And also Ein the space corgi is there:

The producers have taken a lot of cues from the original series; there’re a lot of bright colors, fanciful angles and stylish editing tricks. And of course there’s that jazzy soundtrack, a hallmark of the original show.

Is this series going to be a success? I don’t know — I suspect it’s either going to overreaching disaster or a delicious pop confection. Either way, it doesn’t look boring, which is a compliment I wish I could give more often.

“Cowboy Bebop” comes out on Netflix on Nov.19. The remake, that is. You can watch the original animated show on Netflix now.

Meghan McCain cuts “uncle” Lindsey Graham out of her “family”

Meghan McCain and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., go way back — but their relationship appears to be waning.

McCain, the daughter of late Sen. John McCain, has long counted Graham as a close family friend, at one point even likening him to an “uncle” thanks to his close relationship with her father.

But that all ended Wednesday with a tweet: “Lindsey Graham may consider himself a member of my family, but he is not and hasn’t been for a very long time,” McCain wrote. “He certainly doesn’t speak for me or my life experiences. Full stop. The media should stop treating him like he is an expert on anything McCain related.”

The Washington Post reports that McCain is nursing a grudge against Graham, thanks to his support for former President Donald Trump and his role in allowing Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner into her father’s funeral.

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In a new book released last week, “Bad Republican,” McCain writes that the pair were “funeral crashers” — though Graham has pushed back on her version of events.

“She was upset they were there — I understand that, and she has hard feelings but I know what happened and nobody showed up uninvited,” Graham told the newspaper. “I love Meghan McCain and I understand how stressful all this has been for her and those who attack her dad will never be forgiven by her.”

McCain has also been critical of Graham’s rapid turn from Trump critic to one of the former president’s staunchest allies, ripping her former family friend repeatedly during her tenure as co-host of ABC’s daytime talk show, “The View.”

“Whatever is happening to Lindsey, this is not the person I used to know,” McCain said at one point.

More stories like this:

Twitter is actually doing a (relatively) good job limiting right-wing misinformation, study finds

Whenever a far right personality is banned from social media — or even considered as a possible target for such a ban — conservatives frequently respond that being deplatformed only makes them stronger.

In some cases, as with Trump, the results of this deplatforming can be mixed. A recent New York Times study found that Trump’s dual bans from both Facebook and Twitter have reduced the spread of his Big Lie on both platforms. At the same time, his allies have still managed to keep his larger political brand alive on those sites by spreading his messages to their millions of followers.

When it comes to other right-wing misinformation peddlers, a new study in the journal Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction found that deplatforming can be quite effective in curtailing both malicious actors and their narratives. The researchers learned this after studying the Twitter fortunes of three influential far right personalities — Owen Benjamin, Alex Jones and Milo Yiannopoulos — after they were kicked off the site.

“Analyzing the bans of 3 extremist influencers with thousands of followers, we found that banning disrupted the discussions about influencers: posts referencing each influencer declined significantly,” Shagun Jhaver, the study’s lead author and an assistant professor in the Department of Library and Information Science at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, told Salon by email. “More importantly, our study showed that deplatforming helped reduce the spread of many anti-social ideas and conspiracy theories popularized by influencers. Further, we found that banning significantly reduced the overall posting activity and toxicity levels of thousands of supporters for each influencer.”

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The researchers looked at more than 49 million tweets for their study. In the process, they found that not only did removing the bad actors reduce the overall activity of their supporters, it also reduced their toxicity. Posts that referenced the accounts in question declined by more than 91 percent as a result of their deplatforming, while the number of users tweeting about them fell by roughly 90 percent. This is welcome news that speaks to the effectiveness of some of Twitter’s anti-misinformation and anti-hate strategies.

“Some features introduced by Twitter, such as tagging tweets containing misinformation and providing users the ability to block tweets containing offensive keywords have been helpful in keeping off inappropriate content,” Jhaver explained. At the same time, this is not automatically transferrable to other platforms, given that Twitter’s moderation has a more centralized structure “especially when compared to multi-community platforms like Reddit and Facebook Groups that support localized rule-creation and moderation.”

Jhaver also addressed the Facebook Papers, a trove of leaked documents which, among other things, confirm previous reports that Facebook has deliberately taken a lax approach to right-wing influencers on their site.

“We are still processing all that’s coming out of the Facebook Papers,” Jhaver told Salon. “What’s clear is that Facebook has treated influencers, especially political figures, differently than its regular users, e.g., it has avoided sanctioning influencers even when they violate platform policies. To maintain procedural consistency and transparency, Facebook should dismantle such biases while making its moderation decisions.”

A similar lesson applies to the role of social media platforms in avoiding a repeat of the Jan. 6 insurrection.

“When toxic influencers or communities are allowed to remain on the platform, they can gain a critical mass of followers that can be mobilized to inflict severe offline harms,” Jhaver pointed out. “Therefore, platforms like Twitter should be more proactive in identifying and sanctioning toxic influencers.”

Despite its progress, Twitter and other social media companies still have a long road ahead. An Anti-Defamation League report earlier this month revealed that pro-QAnon, anti-vaccine, anti-Semitic and other radical far right content from sites like Gab continue to make their way to Twitter — and don’t appear to be stopping anytime soon.

How did Chemex, the coffee-making darling of the 60s, earn a recurring spot on “Friends”?

On the very first episode of “Friends,” Rachel pours Joey and Chandler coffee from a coffee brewer known as a Chemex. Throughout the series’ ten seasons, when the characters are in Monica and Rachel’s shared apartment, you might catch the Chemex in the background or spot a character using it to pour coffee or orange juice.

“Friends” has been off the air since 2004, but it’s never really left us. Streaming giant Netflix acquired the rights to stream all 236 episodes of “Friends” in 2014, and before the show migrated to HBOMax, where it’s currently available to stream now, it was the second most popular non-original show in their catalog after “The Office.”

Watching Rachel pour coffee from a Chemex in 2021 might not seem like a big deal. A Chemex is a pourover brewer that looks a bit like an hourglass. The brewers are striking — in 1943, the Chemex was displayed at the Museum of Modern Art as one of its best-designed products, and Chemex brewers show up in dozens of movies and television shows that were either shot in the 1950s and 60s or take place during that time. It’s a brewer good enough for James Bond, making its first appearance in the novel version of “From Russia, With Love;” Don Draper’s post-divorce California apartment has one on the television show “Mad Men;” and it shows up in the iconic horror movie “Rosemary’s Baby.”

However, besides a quick appearance on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” in the early 70s, the Chemex sort of fell out of favor — and the public eye.

“I can’t think of any eighties movies or television shows that the Chemex would have been in,” says Eric Grimm, a longtime barista, event coordinator, and movie buff who spent 13 years making coffee in New York City before moving to Los Angeles. “It’s so weird that there was a Chemex in a show premiering in 1994. So weird.”

Why does Grimm think it’s weird? In 1994, coffee was still in its second wave. Coffee has often been defined by “waves,” or movements where there’s been a distinct cultural shift in the way we consume the drink. The first wave came in the form of ground coffee in cans during the 1950s, the second during the rise of chains like Peet’s and Starbucks, and the third arrived around the turn of the century when things like roast levels and brewing techniques began to dominate the way we talked about coffee.

During the run of “Friends” — between 1994 and 2004 — coffee was just moving from its second to its third wave, and pourover setups were not as ubiquitous as they are now. “I don’t think you could roll up to any coffee shop in the 1990s and get a coffee made by Chemex,” Grimm says. While many of the characters do interact with the Chemex, and despite the show’s secondary location being a coffee shop, none of the characters are actually spotted making coffee.

So how did the Chemex end up on the set of “Friends?” Rachel Groat is a production designer, stylist, and fabricator who has worked on projects such as “Sorry To Bother You” and “The Last Black Man in San Francisco” and she says it depends on which department put the item into the fictional universe the characters are inhabiting.

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“Props is a little more rigid and has a more well-defined list of what you need. Set decorating is a little more fluid and free flowing,” she says. “I think in set decorating you work off making sure the items on set go well together. Props are usually picked based on the character.”

None of the characters on “Friends” interact with the Chemex beyond picking it up and pouring from it—no one comments on it, no one is even shown making coffee, and no one even acknowledges its existence, which means it was likely a set design choice rather than a props choice. But does the Chemex help build the world that the “Friends” inhabit?

Monica makes reference to the fact that she’s illegally subletting her apartment from her grandmother, a person who would have very likely grown up with a Chemex or at least seen one in movies. Perhaps the placement of the Chemex is to remind the viewer that the group of twenty-somethings are living in an apartment that the viewer knows the characters could never afford. However, that would mean we’d see other items in the apartment that feel “older” or reference Monica’s grandmother. “If you can find more stuff from her grandmother then it feels like a really purposeful decision that someone made that she would have had this and would have kept it from her grandmother,” Groat says.

The choice of the Chemex might have nothing to do with the characters or the world of “Friends” at all, but is simply an aesthetic choice.

“Maybe a set dresser was like, ‘I love the shape of this,’ or ‘This is how I brew my coffee at home,’ or ‘I remember this from my childhood.'” says Groat. “It probably got placed on set and I wonder if maybe just one of the characters said, ‘I need something to do in the scene. I’ll just grab the Chemex off the counter and then put something in it.'”

Regardless of how it got there or what the Chemex says about the characters on “Friends,” its continued presence throughout the series communicated an entire subplot for the baristas who recognized it. “In the past, I’ve felt like we’re such a niche industry,” Grimm says.

Coffee is such an important part of the “Friends” universe, and although we never see anyone make coffee (despite the fact that Rachel works at Central Perk for two full seasons), it’s always there, and the appearance of the Chemex feels like a special recognition of the folks who love coffee just as much as the group of six. “The collision of mainstream and niche is right there with that Chemex on ‘Friends,'” Grimm says. “Knowing that it’s gotten out of our own little world is super cool.”

More stories about what we watch and eat:

Is the earth hanging by cosmic ropes inside a magnetic tunnel? Some scientists think so

It sounds like the premise of an early science fiction novel: What if Earth actually exists inside a giant magnetic tunnel?

According to a preprint study published in the scientific magazine Astrophysical Journal, that fanciful concept may be less absurd than it seems. Indeed, the researchers’ idea is one that could literally redraw the map of our universe.

Scientists have known since the 1960s that there are two seemingly separate radio structures — which are defined in astronomy as any object that emits strong radio waves — that can be definitively detected by Earth’s technology. Known as the North Polar Spur and the Fan Region, the new study posits that these radio structures resemble long ropes and are approximately 1,000 light-years long, as well as roughly 350 light-years from our planet.

The research by scientists at Penn State University also suggests that, in addition to being near Earth (relatively speaking), the two structures are connected to each other and, as a result, essentially surround us.

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Imagine a giant tube composed of massive, magnetized tendrils that may look a bit like long and slender ropes. These tendrils include a magnetic field and charged particles which manage to link the two radio structures, effectively creating a tunnel-like structure that includes Earth as well as a small section of the Milky Way — that’s the idea, at least.

The scientists’ findings could help future researchers as they try to create a holistic model of magnetic fields in other galaxies, and understand similar structures uncovered through astronomical observations. They also predict that when scholars are able to observe these radio structures in higher resolution, they will discover additional features, including “a much more complex filamentary structure,” among other things. As one of the scientists told Salon, these structures would be quite awe-inspiring if we could detect them with our own eyes. (The North Polar Spur, for instance, appears in one X-ray map as a sort of massive yellowish bubble.)

“If we could see radio light, then we (in the Northern hemisphere) would see several bright patches extending across a very large distance on the sky,” Dr. Jennifer L. West, co-author of the paper and astronomer at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, told Salon by email. “These patches are fixed on the sky and they would change their position and orientation over a night and over the seasons, just like the stars and constellations.” West added that people who ventured outside shortly after sunset in the autumn, as well as in cities at mid-Northern latitudes, would see the Fan Region apparent in one part of the sky.

“The Fan Region would extend from the Northern horizon right up to the point overhead,” West explained. “It would pass through the constellations of Cameloparladis, Cassiopeia, and Cepheus. The North Polar Spur would extend up from the Western horizon and also reach nearly overhead. It would pass through the constellations of Bootes, Corona Borealis, and Hercules. Another, somewhat fainter patch would extend up from the South-East.”

This new scientific research about the magnificent structures, West explained, “tried to take into account all of the different kinds of observations” from astronomers over the years. It also offers more than aesthetic gratification. As West told Salon, she is fascinated by magnetism in both the universe and our galaxy. Scientists are only beginning to learn more about these magnetic fields, and West is determined to understand as much as possible about why they exist and how they influence star and planet formation.

“One theory of magnetism in galaxies is called Dynamo theory – it’s the theory that explains the magnetic field in the Earth and in our Sun, and that they are generated from rotating, charged particles,” West said. “We think it is also responsible for generating the magnetic fields in galaxies, but we need more evidence to support this hypothesis.”

She added, “In this study we are trying to map the local environment so that when we build models of the whole Galactic magnetic field we can take the local contribution into account. The saying that we can’t see the forest for the trees really applies here. We need to understand what we’re looking at close-up in order to get a sense of the bigger picture. I hope this is a step towards understanding the magnetic field of our whole Galaxy, and of the Universe.”

This might even, West noted hopefully, someday include our own solar system.

Theranos’ Elizabeth Holmes accused of bilking Betsy DeVos’ family out of $100 million

The billionaire family investment firm of Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos, was misled by former Theranos executive Elizabeth Holmes when it made a more than $100 million investment in the failed startup, a representative for the family said during testimony in Holmes’ fraud trial on Tuesday, reports said.

Holmes, the charismatic founder of Silicon Valley’s onetime biotech darling, is currently on trial in San Jose, California, for wire fraud. Lisa Peterson, the DeVos family’s private equity investment manager, said during her testimony that the family even doubled its investment, from $50 million to nearly $100 million, after Holmes dazzled them during a pitch meeting.

Peterson also said that Holmes was “handpicking” super-wealthy families to invest in the company, despite the fact that she knew the blood testing equipment that Theranos manufactured didn’t work, according to the Washington Post. When prosecutors asked if Peterson believed that Holmes singled out the DeVos family, Peterson answered, “very much so.”

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Last week in court, one former project manager for Theranos testified that international media mogul Rupert Murdoch had also been targeted by Holmes. He, in turn, invested $125 million into Theranos.

In 2014 the DeVos family toured the company’s facility in Palo Alto, an event that culminated with DeVos’ sister getting “tested” by one of the company’s machines. Peterson testified that she did receive results from that test, but whether or not it was actually completed with a Theranos machine is unclear.

Peterson also acknowledged that the DeVos family investment firm never hired regulatory experts, counsel, or medical experts in the due diligence process, explaining that “we didn’t think we needed it.”

This is the eighth week of trial proceedings for Holmes — with the case expected to last at least three to four months. Her former business and romantic partner, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, is also slated for a trial in 2022.

More like this:

10 shatteringly flaky leftover puff pastry recipes

As an avid baker, I’m a firm believer in the power of making things from scratch at least once. Even if it fails, you gain an appreciation for the professionals! But there’s one thing I will never make myself: puff pastry. Until the day comes when I am cast on “The Great British Baking Show” and faced with a technical challenge, I will be raiding the freezer aisle for this stuff. Puff pastry is a constant in my freezer, a shortcut to beautiful, sophisticated, stress-free food. That’s why, to me, there is no such thing as leftover puff pastry. But if you bought it for a recipe during the holidays and ended up using only one of two sheets in the package, I’m here to show you a world of possibilities. From appetizers and one-bite wonders to centerpiece-worthy main dishes and impressive desserts, puff pastry is one of the most versatile items you can stock in your kitchen. My hope is that by the time you’re done reading this list of all the ways to cook with it, puff pastry will have graduated beyond the land of holiday leftovers and earned a permanent spot on your shopping list.

Puff Pieces

1. “Everything” Pigs in a Blanket

Meet the easiest people-pleasing app of all time. In my opinion, it’s not a party without pigs in a blanket, and with just a few store-bought ingredients, you can make any night feel like an occasion. Just think of the “everything” seasoning as confetti.

2. Grandma’s Mushroom Puffs

Big Little Recipes columnist Emma Laperruque was gracious enough to share her grandmother’s recipe for these super simple, tasty little bites. Laperruque writes, “This bite-size appetizer slash snack has been the star of my family holidays and get-togethers for decades.” With just six ingredients and an easy-to-make-ahead filling, I think they deserve a place on your holiday table, too.

3. 10-Minute Parmesan and Mustard Pinwheels

The title does not lie. Here’s a super-fast recipe that’s equally as perfect for last-minute guests as it is for a frantic weeknight. Three ingredients, 10 minutes in the oven, and you’re well on your way to a party (at the very least, a party in your mouth!).

4. Baked Brie in Puff Pastry with Cranberries, Pistachios and Sumac

Baked Brie is like a little black dress: not revolutionary by any means, but always welcome at the party. This particular recipe doubles down on autumnal charm with cranberries, honey, and sumac, plus some toasted pistachios for crunch. Serve this and I can almost guarantee you’ll be getting requests for the recipe — it’s that good.

The main idea

5. Turkey Pot Pie for Another Day

I love this idea for post-Thanksgiving eats because it kills two leftover birds (ahem, one literal, one figurative) with one stone by stuffing them all into a comforting pot pie. Puff pastry is ideal for a pot pie with its buttery, flaky layers — and it is far superior to pie crust, in my opinion.

6. Fig and Blue Cheese Tart with Honey, Balsamic and Rosemary

This recipe is a perfect illustration of why I love puff pastry: Bake a slab of it until flaky brown and crispy, topped with a few choice ingredients, and you’ve got an incredibly sophisticated-looking (and tasting) tart. Figs and blue cheese are a no-brainer pairing, making this tart taste like the cheese board of your dreams.

7. Onion Tarte Tatin

Thought tarte Tatin was only for apples? Think again. Here, halved onions cook slowly, their natural sugars caramelizing until dark brown and burnished. This savory tart is a showstopper for the holidays, but also easy enough to make on any given weeknight.

Sweeten The Deal

8. Pear-Maple Tarte Tatin

Another tarte Tatin sans pommes. (That’s apples, in French!) Baker and cookbook author Joanne Chang’s maple-tinged pear riff still delivers the perfectly caramelized bottom you’d expect from the classic French tart, albeit with a more amped-up fall flavor.

9. Dorie Greenspan’s Pailles (Puff Pastry Sandwiches)

While you can certainly use puff pastry to make palmiers, the flaky French cookies that resemble elephant ears, why not go the extra mile and turn them into little cookie sandwiches, like Dorie Greenspan does? Taking the store-bought shortcut with puff pastry just means more time to experiment and get creative with how you put it to use.

10. Pastel De Nata

To know pastel de nata is to love pastel de nata. Rich egg custard surrounded by a thin, flaky crust, this treat originates from Portugal, but is also widely associated with Hong Kong.

Alan Cumming: “Life’s just the same show with different costumes”

There aren’t too many people who could follow up doing a Stanley Kubrick film with a Spice Girls one. Who have done “Hamlet” and the movie “Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion.”

In fact, there’s just one. A Tony winner for his now legendary performance in “Cabaret,” an Emmy nominee for “The Good Wife” and a bestselling author for his previous memoir, Alan Cumming has had an enviably diverse career, ranging from “Spy Kids” to “Schmigadoon.”

Cumming joined us recently for an episode of “Salon Talks” to discuss his new book, “Baggage: Tales from a Fully Packed Life,” finding his voice and the role that made him cry.

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

I want to ask you about how you came to write this because when you wrote “Not My Father’s Son,” you said that you’d been thinking about doing a book about your career and the roles you’ve played, but wanted to tell the story of your family instead. What made you decide, “Now I’m ready to tell this other part of my life”?

Well, it was a reaction to the reaction to “Not My Father’s Son.” “Not My Father’s Son” is very much about my dad and my grandfather and my dad being very abusive. And so it was an amazing experience. I mean, it went very well. Everyone seemed to like it and still to this day I get contacted on social media and things by people saying, “Because you talked about your childhood abuse and trauma, that has helped me be able to deal with mine or to talk to someone.” It’s been this very great, unexpected experience that I have. By being my true self, I’m actually helping other people.

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The “but” is that there was this rhetoric of “Alan has triumphed, Alan has conquered his past trauma.” In a funny way, this book, although it’s about my life and my career and all that stuff, it’s really about saying, “I haven’t conquered.” Everyone has trauma, everyone has baggage. We all do. You don’t have to have had a childhood like mine, but we all have something that we’re coping with. It’s about managing it, not thinking that it’s done and finished. I think that’s a dangerous thing to do. This book was really a reaction, that I want to write a book that’s showing that I still make lots of mistakes and I flap around in life a bit, or I did.

You talk about closure and coping, and how those are different things. This idea of closure, of triumph, can be really tricky because when someone has that label put on them, that can be really damaging as well.

I think so. I think it’s a very American thing actually to want everything to be tied up and, “Oh, it’s done, we’re finished, we’re fixed,” instead of, “This is just something that happened to you and you can’t deny that it’s happened, so let’s try and just move forward in a positive way and incorporate it into how you live.” I actually think the other thing I wanted to write about in this book is that all the bad things that have happened to me in work experiences as well as relationships and whatever. I think you have to try and think, what did I learn from them? How will I go into my life not making those mistakes again or not working with those people again? I try and think about it as a positive thing, because now I know, I don’t want to do that, or I realize that wasn’t good for me.

Maybe it’s scuba diving, not again.

Oh, no.

Maybe being in “X-Men,” not again.

No, yeah.

You say something later in the book, that if you can get through things and live a life of contentment, then no regret.

Exactly. It’s that same thing of trying to find a positive. I think of it like Jenga. If your life’s like Jenga, you have to take one chunk out, then you would fall over. Even though that’s a bad chunk, potentially in the past, it has built you where you are now. If you are content in the present, then I think it’s pointless also to worry or to sit and wish things didn’t happen that have happened. It’s just a waste of time. I have this thing I always say, “Cancel, continue.” Something happened, okay it happened. But we can’t change that. Let’s just move on. Let’s learn from it, but let’s not dwell on it. Let’s not make the bad thing in the past not only spoil your future, but also dominate your present. It’s done and we’re going to move on.

This is a story of so many experiences like that, so many creative risks and going in different directions. It’s such an eclectic, diverse career that you still seem to gravitate towards. You say, you’re the only person who’s been in “Eyes Wide Shut” and then followed that with “Spice World.”

I loved that.

How do you know then when something is a thing that you want to do? You talk about being on brand. What does that mean for you?

It’s going with my gut. I think it’s being idiosyncratic, which means eclectic, which means, I guess it’s kind of eccentric. It’s the idea that I don’t judge something in the normal career judgment way as, “How good is this looking for me? What are the optics on this? Is it now time for me to move out of this type of part into this thing? Should I try and do this?” All that careery stuff I don’t do, I haven’t really done. I just do what I want to do and things that take my fancy and I go with my gut. But it’s going OK. I think that’s what makes me different, is the lack of adherence to the rules of how you do a career.

And then of course, eclecticism breeds to eclecticism and I think the more diverse things you do, the more people are going to ask you to do diverse things. Next year, I’m doing a dance piece, a solo dance piece.

I’ll be like 75,000 years old. I’ll be 57. I went to see a piece of dance and I was chatting to some dancers afterwards. I was telling them about that. I thought, you poor things. You’re 27, your career’s over. And I’m 57, and it’s about to start.

That’s the freedom of it, right?

Quite an ego, I know. And they’re also not just coming to look at my legs.

There are very few actors who have what you have, which is a truly iconic, defining stage role. When you took on the Emcee in “Cabaret” on Broadway, you had people saying this was going to change your life. And it did.

It did, yes.

That can be scary though.

It was scary. Actually, when you said that I got a little flash of panic because it was a crazy thing. Also, where I was in my life at the time, I was quite happy for the first time in a while. I hadn’t been to New York. My first time in New York is to star in a Broadway musical. It’s like a movie. And my first time in America at all was to star in a Hollywood picture. It was nuts. That’s all great and very privileged of course, but also you don’t really have the tools to deal with it. I didn’t know how things worked. It was like, you’re kind of busking it at the same time as this huge thing happening to you.

So people would say that to me, that you’re life’s going to change. I was like, “Oh, how? What’s going to happen? I quite like my life. Why does it have to change?” Then they don’t tell you what the change is going to be. They meant it as a nice thing. They meant, your life’s going to change in a positive way. You’re going to be more well-known and you’ll be more celebrated. Oh, that’s what they meant. But to me, it just scared me.

You talk about how that comes from your childhood and this expectation that change is something that is scary. That makes perfect sense.

I think change is difficult for everyone. It’s interesting right now. We’re all coming back to real life again, and I’ve found that my life, I thought it would be a bit more gradual, I’d slide back into pre-pandemic. No, it’s gone straight line, have a book out, and I think right on the wheel again. I’ve noticed, I’ve been talking to various people. I went for a fitting and my assistant, we’re talking about how it’s a shock to our systems because it’s change and it’s we’re just not used to it. It’s OK. We’ll manage, but it’s just another example of how change is hard and it can be discombobulating and make you anxious. When it was a change that I didn’t know and hadn’t experienced before and didn’t know what the outcome was, it was really weird. I was just a bit lost at that time in my life. Even though I was having this great success, I went to cry in the shower every night as a way to release things.

You mentioned that in the book, and yet you returned to the role, what, five or six years later?

Sixteen.

No. You look at the pictures of you and it does not look like a 16-year passage of time.

Are you flirting with me?

Maybe. Who wouldn’t? Who doesn’t? I watched a clip of you doing the opening number and the first comment on YouTube is, “Anyone who says they’re not attracted to Alan Cumming is a liar.”

That’s nice.

Tell me why you came back to it after that length of time.

They’d asked me quite a lot of times because when I left it the first time it went on for years and years, and then it was closed. I think every time the box office went down a bit they would ask me to come back. “Will you go in it for a month?” Or even, “Will you got to Tokyo and do it?” And I was like, no. I just didn’t want to. It was such a huge thing and I didn’t want to keep repeating. I think that’s another American thing, that if something is a success, you want to keep it going. Do another one. I’m not really like that. What happened was Sam Mendes, the director, suggested it to me and I was like, you know what, it has been such long time. Then I realized that I would turn 50 during the run. I thought, that’s a good reason to do it. That’s partly why I’m doing this dance thing now is because I was 50 years old. I was the lead dancer in a Broadway show. I was dancing in a kick line with girls half my age. I’ll never be that fit again. I thought nobody will ask me to do that again.

So I thought, I want to do this. I wanted to see if I can still do it. I’m really glad I did. Also, I think the second time I did it, the sensation of the sex stuff, the sexuality and all that side of it, 16 years later it wasn’t as shocking to an audience as it was in 1998. The world was different and America certainly has a different attitude towards sex and sexuality than it did in 1998 with all the Clinton impeachment thing. This time round, I felt that I didn’t overshadow the thing with all that sort of sensational stuff. The play was able to speak better, the darkness of the play. It still fun, but the balance was better. I think I enjoyed it better because of that. I think it was a better show because of that.

And yet, you haven’t done a lot of stage musicals. Why is that?

Well, I’ve only ever done “Cabaret,” but I have done it four times. I played Cliff in “Cabaret” in rep in Scotland, like 1,000 years ago. Then I did the Emcee in London and New York and New York. The revival of the revival of the revival. Then I did “The Threepenny Opera” on Broadway. Those are the only two things I’ve ever done on stage.

You have a type.

I have a type. I have a niche. I have a musical niche and I’m sticking to it. I’ve done other musicals on film, but just not in the theater.

You know what, if there’s another Weimar musical we’ll expect you.

Call me.

I want to talk a little about your film career as well. You talk in the book about a lot of your co-stars, but there’s one story about one co-star in particular that really got me.

Who’s that?

Tonka. Talk to me about Tonka, because that is a really intense story.

Tonka is a chimp, and I did this film called “Buddy” with Rene Russo, one of the first films I did in America. There was a gorilla in it. That was an animatronic gorilla, but the chimps were real. There were four chimps, and my character in the film was the chimp-looker-after man. I would play with these chimps all day and I’d go and train with them and everything. It was such fun.

There was one of them called Tonka who loved me. I did a lot of scenes with him and he let me share his food, which the trainers were freaked out about because chimps don’t share their food. He just loved me. He thought of me like I was another chimp, which I just thought was the biggest compliment. He would try and play with me like he would play with a chimp, quite aggressive play. He wanted to groom me. They wouldn’t let him because they said that was crossing a boundary. Except on the last day of filming, they let him groom me. It was so intense.

So then what happened was the next year I came back to do press for “Buddy” and I thought, “Where’s Tonka?” I thought I’d be doing pictures, and I thought they were going to surprise me with him. Then there was this other little chimp I had to do a photo shoot with. Then they said, “He’s gone to live in Palm Springs. He’s retired.” But then I went on a talk show they said, “Oh, isn’t it a shame about Tonka?” I was like, “Did he die, and they’re just not telling me?” They went, “No, he’s six now and he’s sexually aggressive, so they were worried if he saw you.” So they couldn’t have him near me because I was too arousing for this chimp. I took that as a huge compliment as well. But I also thought I would not like to be on live television, being sexually molested by an amorous chimp.

Many years later they said he’s in this place in Missouri, a so-called sanctuary. But it was awful. Someone went in undercover and they found there were terrible conditions. He was in a cage inside and not able to socialize, just awful. There’s been this big, long lawsuit to get these chimps out. What is so awful is that since I wrote the book, they’ve got 10 chimps out and they’re now going to this place in Florida. They’ll able to socialize and live on these little islands and it’s great. Tonka died and well, they don’t believe the lady actually. They think that he might still be alive and she’s sheltering him somewhere, so they’re trying to get a subpoena. But she said he died.

If he’s dead or if he’s on his own being hidden, it’s just awful. It’s such a sad thing for me that I had no idea that there weren’t the conditions and regulations in place for animals. Once they’ve done their thing in showbiz and they become too sexually aggressive, anyone could buy them, and all these awful roadside zoos and things like that that you see, they’re just deregulated and these animals are treated appallingly.

It’s a really important part of the book as well, that you’re raising awareness of this. It really speaks to a chapter in the book that you call authenticity, and to the way that you really have stayed true to yourself, both in your career, in your advocacy, but also down to your voice. That is an important part of your identity as an actor. You talk about how in drama school you’re supposed to do the posh voice, and how you got criticism for your Hamlet.

I think it’s a thing that is more understandable and people are more aware of it in Britain because of the Scottish-English divide, which it’s based on class and historical persecution. I’d been slightly derided in London for my voice, my accent. Certain assumptions would be made about my background, my intelligence, my worth, because of how I sounded. When I came to America, people loved my voice. They loved that I was Scottish. They loved my values. They loved that I was different. All those things that were slightly seen as negatives were very positive.

It made me think about, gosh, how interesting. There was an overriding thing that I had to temper myself or my authenticity in a way because of that to get on in London. I spoke to a lot of people about it. Then in drama school, I trained in a very traditional way that I never spoke in my own voice. We never did contemporary Scottish plays. I left drama school and I was very ill-prepared to play the array of young Scottish boys on the run from the cops as I did. I think as a country, Scotland is changing and has been changing for the last couple of decades, since it got devolution, has its own parliament.

That’s been a huge change, and it is finding its own voice in a way. I think I am an example of that, that I’ve realized all these things. Sometimes you have to go away from where you are to look back at it, to understand what it is and how it’s affected you and made you the person you are. I definitely feel that about Scotland. It’s when I started singing, doing concerts, this is the international language of concerts.

When I started doing concerts, I sing in my own voice. I sing with my Scottish accent. That reminded me. I love doing that. I think it’s great to be able to let people know it’s really you singing. You connect with people much more, but it reminded me of how, when I played Hamlet, it was a sensation that I was daring to play Hamlet in London, not using an English accent, even though he’s Danish. It’s like Jesus. If you see Jesus on telly, he’s got an American accent. He was American and white.

Doing this book, you as you did more preparation to understand Alan Cumming than you have for any character you’ve played. Doing all that research, delving into Alan Cumming, what did it teach you about who Alan Cumming is?

He contains multitudes. I felt very compassionate. I think I’ve been through a lot. I obviously went through a lot in my childhood, but I think even as an adult. As a young adult, looking back at my life then and some of the things that happened to me, I felt sad for myself or worried, even though obviously it turned out right. I feel now that I feel much more balanced. I think it’s a great thing. I’m also concurrently doing this show and called “Alan Cumming’s Not Acting His Age.” I talk about aging. I think that’s definitely a product of having written this book, because you see these patterns in your life, especially when you write a book about it. I’s about how the patterns keep repeating. Life’s just the same show with different costumes. You know what I mean?

It’s about what decisions you make when the show comes around again. I think that’s what I’ve realized that I’m quite wise, I think. I know that sounds a weird thing to say, but I think I have wisdom because I’ve really listened and explored what happened to me and tried to think how I’m going to make a different decision next time.

Wisdom, but make it fun.

Always, yes. Wisdom with gags.

More “Salon Talks”:

Steve Bannon has enough of Mike Lindell’s election “fantasy,” pleads with him to “be realistic”

Steve Bannon isn’t too bullish on MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s chances of re-installing former President Donald Trump anytime soon, calling the bedding magnate’s plans to overturn the 2020 election by Thanksgiving a “fantasy.”

He made the comments during an interview with Lindell on “Real America’s Voice” Wednesday, at one point pleading with Lindell to “be realistic.”

Lindell has repeatedly pledged that a number of state attorneys general are going to file an election lawsuit with the Supreme Court by Oct. 23, and that the justices will vote 9-0 in favor of reinstalling Trump.

Bannon, however, doesn’t seem so sure.

“What specifically are you asking for, and what law are you using and these attorney generals [sic] using to get standing before the Supreme Court? … Nobody has got standing.” Bannon asked. “So tell me how, Mike Lindell, on the 23rd of November at 9 a.m., how this is anything more than a fantasy?”

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“I’m not an attorney,” Lindell admitted, though he did claim to be in contact with plaintiffs who do have legal standing to file a lawsuit directly to the Supreme Court.

“I hope to get a minimum of 20 [attorneys general].” He added. “I’d like to get all 50 attorneys generals [sic] because every one of them should be worried.”

“But you’re not going to get 50, let’s be realistic.” Bannon replied.

This isn’t the first time that the two right-wing media fixtures have clashed over Lindell’s bombastic statements. In March of this year, they argued over Lindell previous prediction that Trump would be re-installed as president come August — a prediction that failed to materialize.

Likewise, throughout this week’s interview Lindell refused to name the 20 attorneys general who would be willing to support the lawsuit — a tall task given the MyPillow CEO’s track record of presenting bogus evidence of election fraud.

“I really believe, like I’ve said all along, that [the Supreme Court] will accept it and it will be a 9-0 vote for them to accept it,” Lindell stated.

It remains unclear what legal justification Lindell plans to cite in order to overturn last November’s election, though he said “It has something to do with our Fourth and 12th Amendment.”

More from the frontlines in Mike Lindell’s war on democracy:

Anti-government group shuts down Portland school board meeting with anti-mask protest

A throng of unmasked protesters affiliated with a far-right anti-government group shut down a Portland school board meeting on Tuesday after the group refused to wear masks at the request of school administrators.

The development, closely documented by journalist Sergio Olmos, comes on the heels of the Portland Public School’s recently announced vaccine mandate for students twelve and older – a proposal the board is slated to vote on in mid-November. According to Olmos, the room on Tuesday was reportedly filled to the brim with roughly 150 people

“Some people have been turned away from entering for refusing to wear a mask. Inside, security has already been asking people to keep their masks on inside the building,” Omos wrote as the meeting started. Eder Campuzano of The Oregonian reported that “many of the protestors admitted to coming from other counties in Oregon and Vancouver, Washington.”

At one point, board chair Michelle DePass announced that the meeting would be suspended if the demonstrators refused to put on masks, according to KGW8. “I need to see 100% compliance with the mask mandate, please, or I will adjourn,” she said.

But the group refused to comply.

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“I will not sit down,” shouted one maskless demonstrator, who wore a hat that read, “Shoot your local pedophile.” He later called the board members “cowards.”

Administrators reportedly attempted to de-escalate but were eventually ushered out by security and forced to conduct the rest of the meeting virtually. The group of anti-vaxxers then “rearranged chairs in the lobby,” formed a circle around a speaker, and effectively held “their own meeting.”

“Recall the board,” they chanted. “Stop the vote!”

Anti-vaccine demonstrators have taken over a Portland Public School board meeting.

Officials have left the building to conduct the meeting virtually after some protestors refused to wear masks.

Far-right demonstrators are now conducting their own meeting in the building. pic.twitter.com/lbIDaMY6VX

— Sergio Olmos (@MrOlmos) October 27, 2021

“It’s about freedom of choice,” PPS parent Sonja Feintech, who said she’d pulled her children out of public school and helped organize the interruption, told the local Fox affiliate, KPTV. “In Oregon we have exemptions. We have philosophical, religious, medical exemptions. That should be the end of it. There’s no reason why a school board should be mandating anything.”

Many of the protesters, a cavalcade of parents and concerned locals, are apparently affiliated with the People’s Rights network, an anti-government group founded in 2020 by far-right militant Ammon Bundy. In recent years, Bundy has been arrested on many occasions for protesting Idaho state’s mask mandates and stay-at-home orders. His charges have included trespassing, resisting arrest, and disrupting legislative hearings. In June of this year, Bundy announced his bid for Idaho governor, claiming that he wants to protect the state from “Joe Biden and those in the Deep State that control him.”

For their part, several students who spoke at the meeting supported the vaccine mandate.

“I haven’t talked to a single student who doesn’t want the mandate. It’s exciting to see students want it and discouraging parents don’t want it but I think what matters is student voice and students at the end of the day, so I hope the board votes yes on a mandate,” Xavier Levine, a senior at Lincoln High School, said.

“This vaccine is safe, free and effective and getting it would protect other students,” student Lily Stewart said.

As we unpack yesterday's school board meeting we need to remember that there were people who were aligned with the proud boys that showed up. As a PPS student and DSC Rep I want to be clear white nationalism has no place in our schools or this city nor should it ever be tolerated https://t.co/izpvHE6CMQ

— Danny Cage (@DannyACage) October 27, 2021

Over the past several months, school board meetings have emerged as one of the chief cultural battlegrounds on which conservatives have waged a crusade against common sense public health precautions across the country.

Back in August, a mob of angry anti-maskers in Franklin, Tennessee accosted health care workers leaving a Williamson County School District Board after the workers briefed attendees on COVID-19 safety measures. And earlier this month, Ohio Senate candidate Josh Mandel was booted from a Cincinnati school board meeting after barging into the event to “defend the moms and dads” against board members who were “using kids as pawns in a political game.”

How worried should we be about the “delta plus” variant?

The delta subvariant known as AY.4.2 – ominously dubbed “delta plus” – is TKing headlines as cases of it are increasing in the United Kingdom.

Earlier this month, the U.K.’s Health Security Agency published a report stating “a delta sublineage newly designated as AY.4.2 is noted to be expanding in England.” The descendant of the highly transmissible delta variant has two mutations to the spike protein, and it appears to be on “an increasing trajectory” as most recent data suggests it made up approximately 6% of all sequenced cases in the U.K.

So what does this mean for the United States?

First of all, the delta subtype variant has already been detected on our shores. However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recently stated delta plus is not a cause for concern . . . yet, but the agency is monitoring the situation closely.

READ MORE: Delta variant twice as likely to hospitalize victims, new study finds

“We’re watching it very carefully,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensk Walensky said on NBC’s Meet the Press last week. “We have had a handful of cases here in the United States, but it has not taken off as it has in the U.K.”

As some may recall, before the delta variant exploded in the U.S., it was the dominant strain in the United Kingdom. In many ways countries in the U.K. have become blueprints for the United States, which is why news about the “delta plus” variant increasing abroad can be unnerving for Americans. Does this mean a delta-plus wave is imminent?

Experts who have been following the pandemic tell Salon it’s likely not going to be worse than the original delta surge, but it is a variant to keep track of since it’s possible that AY.4.2 is more transmissible than the current dominant delta variant.

“Any variant is potentially a cause for concern, and given what happened with delta I’d be really hesitant to say something absolutely isn’t a problem, particularly given how little we know,” Justin Lessler, a professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of North Carolina’s Gillings School of Global Public Health, told Salon. “But that being said, what we do know about the delta plus variant doesn’t indicate to me that it’s a major problem, at least for the United States.

“It looks to be about 10% more transmissible than delta,” he continued, “and in our work on the scenario modeling hub, when we looked at a hypothetical variant that was 50% more transmissible than delta, we did see resurgences in that case, but we didn’t see big ones that put us back to the size of the delta wave or last winter’s winter wave.”

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Indeed, Lessler is part of the COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub Coordination Team which has modeled a series of projections based on different scenarios; one being a more transmissible delta variant emerging. But as Lessler noted, the “delta plus” variant in question is estimated to be only 10% more transmissible, which many believe isn’t enough to cause another major wave.

Monica Gandhi, infectious disease doctor and professor of medicine at the University of California–San Francisco, told Salon the delta variant will mutate. That’s to be expected, but the only reason all eyes are on AY.4.2 is because it does appear to be slightly more transmissible.

“The thing about the delta variant is we’ve seen other variants come and go, like mu and lambda, and this is the only one that we’re watching just because it could be more transmissible, none of the other ones were more transmissible,” Gandhi said. “So I think it’s the right thing to do, to watch, but I will tell you that there’s simply no evidence that it beats the vaccines, which is, of course, the scariest thing that could ever happen from a variant.”

Gandhi said, delta plus can hypothetically still infect people who had the delta variant or have been vaccinated, but there’s no evidence that the symptoms it causes will be more severe.

“It can definitely go into your nose, but that doesn’t mean you get more sick from it,” Gandhi said. “If it’s more visible, like 10%, it can go in your nose, you can detect it, you can have an asymptomatic infection, but if we haven’t seen that people get more sick from it.”

Gandhi added the U.S. is better positioned to deal with a delta surge today than it was in early July when the delta variant took off here because now more people are vaccinated. Gandhi pointed to a modeling study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine estimating that the population immunity in the U.S. was estimated to be at 62% in early July prior to the delta surge. Today, that percentage is higher.

“With 34 million new shots and likely more than 30 million new infections, we could be up to over 85% seroprevalence now,” Gandhi said in a follow-up email to Salon. “With over 80% or even 90% to achieve control against delta, we may be approaching this level now.”

Since the delta variant seeks out unvaccinated individuals, there will be fewer people for a subtype variant like delta plus to infect.

What scientists do know about this variant is that it has two mutations to the spike protein, which can better assist it in invading its host’s cells. Still, many uncertainties about delta plus remain.

“These are the mutations that have been flagged by the researchers as potentially interesting mutations to observe, but what role they do play in terms of the kind of how AY.4.2 behaves remains to be seen,” said Sasan Amini, founder and CEO of Clear Labs, a private genomics company. “It remains to be seen what these mutations actually do.”

Amini added that it’s notable that AY.4.2 was first identified in the United Kingdom in April 2020, as confirmed by data from outbreak.info.

“And it isn’t a dominant variant yet, compared to the delta one, but it has been growing,” Amini said. “Part of that more rapid growth could be attributed to some of the mutations that AY.4.2 has actually accumulated over time, and so we should always factor those specific evolutionary times into the configuration, so certainly the track record of the variant in the U.K. makes it interesting for us to to observe, but it’s too early to say that this is going to turn into a key variant of concern for us.”

Other stories you may like:

VIDEO: Former Trump lawyer says his coup plan would have worked if it wasn’t for Mike Pence

John Eastman, the former Trump lawyer who authored the infamous “coup memo” on how to overturn the 2020 election, was caught on camera saying his coup plan would have worked if it wasn’t for former Vice President Mike Pence.

Lauren Windsor, a progressive activist who is known for posing incognito to draw out revealing statements from Republicans and conservatives, spoke to Eastman at an event hosted by The Claremont Institute, Eastman’s employer.

Pretending to be an outspoken Trump supporter, Windsor tells Eastman, “I read your memo and I thought it was solid in all of its legal arguments. And I was floored that Mike Pence didn’t do anything. Why didn’t he act on it? You gave him the legal reasoning to do that.”

“I know, I know,” replied Eastman.

Last week, Eastman told “The National Review” that the memo “doesn’t reflect his own views.” The memo said that the Vice President had the ultimate power to reject or accept Electoral College votes. The plan was for Pence to reject Biden’s electors and leave neither candidate with the required 270 electoral votes. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives would then vote for President Trump to keep him in office, effectively overturning the election.

Eastman said to “The National Review” that the plan was not “viable” and “crazy” to pursue. In a statement, The Claremont Institute said that the memo was “maliciously misrepresented and distorted by major media outlets,” and that Eastman “did not ask the Vice president . . . to ‘overturn’ the election.”

But when Windsor told Eastman, “All your legal reasoning is totally solid,” Eastman replied, “Yeah, there’s no question.”

Windsor also asked Eastman why Pence didn’t go through with the plan and Eastman responded, “Well, cause Mike Pence is an establishment guy at the end of the day,” suggesting the memo was legally sound.

Referring to Eastman’s interview with “The National Review”, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow said while laughing, “I was wrong to see that as some kind of good sign that at least the insurrection guys felt bad and knew it was wrong.”

Watch below, via MSNBC:

Texas Republicans to investigate school districts’ books that mention race and sexuality

A Republican state lawmaker has launched an investigation into Texas school districts over the type of books they have, particularly if they pertain to race or sexuality or “make students feel discomfort.”

State Rep. Matt Krause, in his role as chair of the House Committee on General Investigating, notified the Texas Education Agency that he is “initiating an inquiry into Texas school district content,” according to an Oct. 25 letter obtained by The Texas Tribune.

Krause’s letter provides a 16-page list of about 850 book titles and asks the districts if they have these books, how many copies they have and how much money they spent on the books.

His list of titles includes bestsellers and award winners alike, from the 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Confessions of Nat Turner” by William Styron and “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates to last year’s book club favorites: “Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women that a Movement Forgot” by Mikki Kendall and Isabel Wilkerson’s “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.”

But race is not the only thing on the committee chair’s list. Other listed books Krause wants school districts to account for are about teen pregnancy, abortion and homosexuality, including “LGBT Families” by Leanne K. Currie-McGhee, “The Letter Q: Queer Writers’ Notes to their Younger Selves” edited by Sarah Moon, and Michael J. Basso’s “The Underground Guide to Teenage Sexuality: An Essential Handbook for Today’s Teens and Parents.”

Krause, a Fort Worth lawmaker and founding member of the House Freedom Caucus, is running for state attorney general against Ken Paxton. Krause declined to comment and no explanation was given as to how these books were chosen.

Krause sent notice of the investigation to Lily Laux, the Texas Education Agency deputy commissioner of school programs, as well as some Texas school superintendents. His letter did not specify which school districts Krause was investigating.

Krause informs districts they must provide the committee with the number of copies they have of each book, on what part of campus those books are located and how much money schools spent on the books, as well as information on any other book that violates House Bill 3979, the so-called “critical race theory law”designed to limit how race-related subjects are taught in public schools. Critical race theory, the idea that racism is embedded in legal systems and not limited to individuals is an academic discipline taught at the university level. But it has become a common phrase used by conservatives to include anything about race taught or discussed in public secondary schools.

The law states a teacher cannot “require or make part of a course” a series of race-related concepts, including the ideas that “one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex” or that someone is “inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive” based on their race or sex.

School officials have until Nov. 12 to respond. It is unclear what will happen to the districts that have such books.

The letter did not give a specific reason that Krause was launching the investigation, only that “the committee may initiate inquiries concerning any ‘matter the committee considers necessary for the information of the legislature or for the welfare and protection of state citizens.'”

Lake Travis Independent School District officials received the letter and are trying to figure out what the next steps are, a spokesperson said. Officials in that Austin-area school district are speaking with other school districts to figure out what this means for them. In nearby Round Rock Independent School District, the district spokesperson, Jenny Caputo, texted that it will “take significant staff time to gather the information to reply to this request.” The district’s legal team is still reviewing the request.

State Rep. Victoria Neave, D-Dallas, who is vice chair of the committee, said she had no idea Krause was launching the investigation but believes it’s a campaign tactic. She found out about the letter after a school in her district notified her.

“His letter is reflective of the Republican Party’s attempt to dilute the voice of people of color,” she said.

Neave said she doesn’t know what Krause is trying to do but will investigate the motive and next steps.

The TEA and the rest of the Committee on General Investigating members did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston, said it doesn’t surprise him that Krause has taken initiative on a conservative item, especially since there is crowded field in the Texas attorney general race.

“He’s not well known statewide, and so he needs to put down a pretty tall conservative flag to get notice,” Rottinghaus said. “As a political statement, it certainly conveys the clear message that the Republicans are watching.”

Rottinghaus said he doesn’t recall a time in recent memory when legislatures have taken the role of investigating school districts.

“The monitoring of this definitely is a political statement and so the fact that the legislature is attentive to it definitely implies that they’re not going to drop the issue,” he said.

Jim Walsh, an attorney who often represents school districts, pointed out there is nothing in the law that says books must be removed and Krause’s investigation also doesn’t call for books to be removed. For now, it’s up to school districts to decide how they will respond, but what’s certain is that it will add more workload to Texas schools that are already struggling from the effects of the pandemic.

Texas State Teachers Association President Ovidia Molina said in a statement that the investigation is a “witch hunt” and that nothing in state law gives lawmakers the right to go after educators.

“This is an obvious attack on diversity and an attempt to score political points at the expense of our children’s education,” she said.

Krause’s investigation comes after several school districts across the state removed books from libraries because of parental outcry.

Earlier this month, the Carroll Independent School District board in Southlake reprimanded a fourth grade teacher who had an anti-racist book in her classroom after a parent complained about it last year.

Then, in a separate incident this month, a Carroll ISD administrator asked teachers to provide materials that presented an “opposing” perspective of the Holocaust in an effort to comply with HB 3979. The law, which comes with little to no guidance, has caused confusion and fear among teachers and administrators, who have seemingly misinterpreted the law.

In the Katy Independent School District, a school removed a book after parents claimed it promoted “critical race theory,” which the district later found to be untrue and reinstated the book.

Disclosure: Texas State Teachers Association and University of Houston have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

Conservatives conjure up a 21st-century Satanic panic. Will it work?

Republicans thought they had a live one in Loudoun County, Virginia. But, as happens with most right-wing panics, things were not as they were made to seem.

Ever since same-sex marriage was legalized, the right has been casting for a new villain in their endless culture wars. They swiftly landed on an even smaller, and therefore less understood, minority than gay people to demonize: Trans people. Their main weapon for driving up fear and hate was a myth that trans women — or cis men pretending to be trans women — lurk in women’s restrooms to rape unsuspecting cis women who enter these newly tolerant spaces.

The problem was that it was nonsense.

Research repeatedly shows that trans-inclusive bathroom policies have no link to sexual assault. It’s trans people who are at higher risk of being assaulted if denied access to the facilities that match their gender identity. But after two girls in Loudoun County schools — which, in a remarkable coincidence, also happens to be ground zero for other astroturfed right-wing freakouts over “woke” school policies — were sexually assaulted, the right pounced. Rumors spread that this was a real, live example of a man pretending to be a woman in order to rape strangers in the bathroom.

This was also not true.

The sexual assaults absolutely did occur, and the school district appears to have mishandled the situation, but the assaults themselves don’t resemble the trans panic urban legend. One assault happened in a classroom. The other did happen in a bathroom, but the school did not have a gender-inclusive policy at the time. Instead, the victim testified that she and the rapist had repeatedly snuck off to meet in the bathroom, as kids often do. Like the majority of rapes, this was a case where the victim knew her attacker, who was identified in court as a boy.

So the story is not, in any way, evidence that gender-inclusive bathrooms are a threat to women and girls. This is the kind of acquaintance rape that the right usually finds themselves minimizing, as happened after accusations against Justice Brett Kavanaugh were made public and the release of a taped sexual assault confession from Donald Trump. Instead, the case is reminiscent of the “Satanic panic” that swept the country in the 80s and 90s, which was driven by similar reactionary fears and wildly misguided ideas about the realities of sexual violence.

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Back then, the urban legends accused imaginary Satanists of raping and killing children, which led all too often to actual miscarriages of justice. In some cases, crimes were made up entirely whole cloth, as happened in the infamous McMartin preschool case. In other cases, the crime was real, but the public’s understanding of it was completely false. That’s what happened in the West Memphis three case, where a very real murder of three young boys was spun as “Satanic ritual,” resulting in the conviction of three innocent teenagers and the actual killer walking free.

As Sarah Marshall of the “You’re Wrong About” podcast explained to Vox earlier this year, the Satanic panic first arose because “women and mothers were entering the workplace” in record numbers. Stories about daycares being dangerous places where Satanists rape children were a handy weapon to shame women who rejected the housewife role.

Now, it’s easy to see the parallels to the panic over trans people in bathrooms. In both cases, the right is wielding lurid but misleading stories of sexual violence to provoke anger and panic over changing gender norms and expanding human rights. And unfortunately, innocent people are getting attacked.

Thankfully, in the Loudoun case, it appears the correct person was convicted of the actual crime. But the situation is still being weaponized against innocent people, specifically trans people whose safety depends on having access to bathrooms that align with their gender identity. And, as happened with the Satanic panic, the titillating but misleading stories completely flip reality on its head. In the real world, patriarchy is the cause of sexual violence. In the world of reactionary fantasies, it’s people who reject patriarchal norms — working women, trans people — who are the problem.

In an essay that recently went viral, Marshall’s podcast cohost, Michael Hobbes, identified one of the telltale signs that what you’re dealing with is a moral panic and not a real problem: Irrelevant examples, which often turn out to be cases where “these anecdotes actually demonstrated the opposite of the panic’s core thesis.”

The Loudoun case is a crystal clear example of this. The rape definitely occurred, but it had nothing to do with gender-inclusive bathroom policies. On the contrary, it’s yet another story in the long litany of #MeToo stories, where sexual violence is downplayed and ignored by sexist institutions. Which is the exact opposite of the pro-patriarchy story that the conservatives stoking trans panic want to tell.

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The trans panic resembles the Satanic panic in another way, reigniting the unfortunate tendency of a minority of feminists to play the useful idiots to reactionary forces, giving cover to what is ultimately an anti-feminist movement.

In the 80s, a lot of feminists were understandably glad that the public was finally starting to pay attention to the problem of sex abuse, after decades of feminists raising the alarm. This gratitude, however, all too often manifested as an unwillingness to be skeptical of the wild stories of Satanists and rape being pushed by the reactionary right. To be clear, plenty of feminists pushed back at the time, but a handful of feminists, fearful of returning to a time when victims were routinely disbelieved, were overly credulous to these impossible stories of Satantic ritual abuse.

The same thing goes on today with the trans panic.

The majority of feminists support trans rights, but a small and outspoken minority — the most famous being J.K. Rowling of “Harry Potter” fame — have sided with the reactionary right in seeing trans people as a threat to cis women. The BBC recently ran an article headlined, “We’re being pressured into sex by some trans women” that passed talking points from an anti-trans organization off as “research.” As happened when feminists gave credence to the Satanic panic in the 80s, these anti-trans feminists give moral cover to reactionaries bashing trans rights.

The moral of the Satanic panic should, after all this time, be clear: Be skeptical of reactionaries masquerading as the “protectors” of women and children. Unfortunately, however, moral panics over gender, sexuality, and young people tend to cloud the judgment of all sorts of people, including some — like feminists — who really should know better. The reality of sexual violence is as it always has been. It’s not caused by letting women and sexual minorities have rights. It’s caused by eons of patriarchy and the male entitlement that it has engendered. And we should all be very wary of hysterics peddling urban legends who want to distract us from that reality.

“Tough guy” Dan Bongino feuding with fellow right-wing radio host over company vaccine mandate

Right-wing radio star Dan Bongino is now embroiled in a surprising public feud with a fellow Cumulus Media host over the fraught subject of vaccine mandates — and may be at risk of losing his job.

Bongino declared two weeks ago that he planned to defy a company-wide coronavirus vaccine mandate, and was willing to lose his gig on that principle. Now he faces pushback from an unlikely opponent: Alabama-based Cumulus host Dale Jackson, whose views are at least as conservative as Bongino’s.

Jackson has called Bongino’s position “virtue signaling,” saying that the thrice-failed congressional candidate had deliberately avoided an opportunity to speak out against Cumulus before the company began letting employees go over the vaccine mandate.

Jackson is a less well-known figure nationally, but has a reputation as a fire-breathing right-winger with a longtime following in the Birmingham, Alabama, area. He has said that Bongino should have quit his job if he was actually serious about confronting the Cumulus corporate mandate, suggesting that Bongino’s tough talk was merely bluster.

A Cumulus employee told Salon that the company has directed employees not to comment publicly on the internal feud between Bongino and Jackson. Numerous Salon requests for comment to Cumulus went unreturned.

Last Wednesday on NewsTalk 770AM/92.5FM, Bongino, who has a known propensity for overheated phone conversations, called into Jackson’s Alabama-based show to offer a piece of his mind. “You sound delirious,” said Bongino. “I don’t know what was in your oatmeal this morning.”

Jackson responded by observing that the Cumulus vaccine mandate had been in place for weeks, and Bongino has yet to quit his radio gig. “This would have been a better conversation publicly before that vaccine mandate went into place,” Jackson said.

The on-air back-and-forth continued for more than 10 minutes, with Bongino resorting to a tirade of insults. When Jackson suggested that Bongino was being abusive, the former agreed. “And you’re right; I can be a prick to you because you don’t seem to know what you are talking about,” Bongino said. “You seem to have a really big mouth.”

Jackson remained cool for the most part, calling out Bongino’s “tough guy routine” and saying, “I love it. It’s what got you where you are. I’m impressed all the way around.” Toward the end of their exchange, Jackson suggested it was all theater, saying, “I understand you got a bit, and you are playing it.”

Bongino wasn’t having any. “Don’t play victim,” he responded. “I’m not sure if you’re a leftist or not. Don’t be a snowflake!”

Earlier this month, Bongino pledged to his audience that he would fight the vaccine mandate at all costs — even if it left him without a job.

“I’m not really happy with the company I work with right here,” Bongino said on the air in mid-October. “I believe these vaccine mandates are unethical. I believe they’re immoral. I believe they don’t take into account the science of natural immunity due to a prior infection.”

Bongino said that he has been vaccinated due to a pre-existing health condition, but was fighting mandates on principle, saying, “I believe they’re broad-based and don’t take into account an individual circumstances of why they may or may not want to take a vaccine. And they’re antithetical to everything I believe in.”

.@dbongino publicly calls out Cumulus, who carries his radio show on hundreds of stations, for issuing its own vaccine mandate.

"I'm not letting this go."

Find your local station to listen LIVE: https://t.co/IK6DZpbTzJ

Or watch here: https://t.co/NaTE4NeVLy pic.twitter.com/7fAfJY9FoH

— Bongino Report (@BonginoReport) October 18, 2021

“So I’ll say again, I’m not going to let this go. Cumulus is going to have to make a decision with me,” Bongino continued, issuing his employer an apparent ultimatum. “If they want to continue this partnership or they don’t. But I’m talking to you on their airwaves. They don’t have to let that happen. And I wouldn’t mind if they didn’t. Because it’s really unfortunate that people with a lower profile than me, who don’t have 300-plus stations, have been summarily either shown the door or been put in really untenable circumstances because they simply want to make a medical decision by themselves.”

On Tuesday’s broadcast, Bongino sounded far from optimistic about his future. “The fight with them, candidly, is having a real effect,” adding that the situation was “a little ugly here.”

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Reached for comment about the ongoing war of words, Jackson declined further comment, saying, “Dan Bongino and I have talked on the air and off, and I have nothing to say about either conversation.”

Bongino did not return Salon’s requests for comment on the matter. A source at Cumulus said that Bongino was on “vacation — wink, wink.”

According to a report in the trade publication Radio Insight, Cumulus Media informed all employees in August that they were required to be vaccinated by Sept. 27 in order to return to work in the company’s offices two weeks after that, on Oct. 11.

More Salon coverage of the right-wing media wars: