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The definitive version of the Beatles’ “Let It Be” doesn’t exist — but this new deluxe remix sizzles

With the deluxe remixed release of the Beatles’ “Let It Be,” I am convinced that the album will always defy attempts at creating a definitive edition. In the long history of the Beatles’ recorded output, and the various and ongoing efforts to spin the events of January 1969 in one direction or another, it has simply become too beguiling to know what really happened, much less fully encapsulate the band members’ creative intentions with their work. When it comes to “Let It Be,” you just can’t pin it down.

And that goes for the entire “Get Back” saga — the project that the Beatles undertook in that fabled month and that eventually morphed into the “Let It Be” LP release in May 1970. Originally conceived to accompany the documentary directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, the album finally saw the light of day in the hands of Phil Spector, who carried out post-production duties after earlier attempts by Glyn Johns and George Martin to bring the LP to the marketplace had fallen short in the Beatles’ estimation.

The deluxe box set, engineered by Giles Martin and Sam Okell, is a valiant effort indeed. There are a few blemishes, to be sure. Beatles aficionados might understandably yearn for more material from the Twickenham sessions, and a loud contingent has already voiced their displeasure at not having access to a full version of the Rooftop Concert.

Even still, Martin and Okell have scored knockout remixes on several counts. Their remix of “Let It Be” absolutely sizzles. The sheer beauty of Paul McCartney’s vocals — especially during the “I wake up to the sound of music” section — is a wonder to behold. And George Harrison’s guitar solo has never sounded brighter and more passionate.

RELATED: In 1969 the fifth Beatle was heroin

And then there’s “I’ve Got a Feeling,” quite possibly the highlight of the entire set. Bristling with energy, the track benefits from the new remix’s enhanced sonic separation. The electric groove that drives the guitar-oriented “I’ve Got a Feeling” has never seemed more alive than in Martin and Okell’s hands. The same could be said for the album version of “Get Back,” which sounds like it was recorded yesterday, as opposed to nearly 53 years ago.

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

There are a few misfires, albeit minor ones. Once you’ve heard the ethereal beauty of the “Let It Be . . . Naked” version of “Across the Universe,” every other take seems less profound. With its varispeeded vocals, the Spector version feels flat and uninspired by comparison. Try as they might, the Martin and Okell remix notches barely a modest improvement, particularly considering the source. By the same token, I prefer the halting clarity of the Naked version of “Two of Us” in contrast with the remix.

Yet listeners will be buoyed, no doubt, by Martin and Okell’s successful muting of Spector’s cloying post-production work on Harrison’s “I Me Mine” and, in an especially fine instance, McCartney’s “The Long and Winding Road.” The orchestration is still alive and well in both cases, but more effectively balanced with the Beatles’ original instrumentation.

The deluxe set is rife with outtakes, along with Glyn Johns’ original 1969 mix. While superfans will have long held such morsels in their collections, much like the Esher tapes’ reincarnation in Martin and Okell’s White Album mixes, there’s nothing like enjoying them in top-notch stereophonic sound.

The “Let It Be” box set’s bravura release appears contemporaneously with the “Get Back” book, edited by John Harris from the Beatles’ candid conversations at Twickenham and later at Apple Studio, where they completed work on the recordings, including the climactic Rooftop Concert on January 30, 1969. Beatles fans are well aware of these confabs, particularly those who’ve undertaken the Herculean effort to consume the contents of the voluminous Nagra reels, the recordings that Lindsay-Hogg surreptitiously made during his film production.

As for the book, “Get Back” is beautifully adorned with photographs by Ethan Russell and Linda McCartney, several of which have been published here for the very first time. It was Russell, incidentally, who witnessed the lion’s share of the session, later reporting to me on Salon’s “Everything Fab Four” podcast (listen to the episode here) that if the cameras weren’t rolling, the Beatles rarely engaged each other, retreating into their own headspace. 

In his foreword, Hanif Kureishi takes great pains to paint the Get Back sessions as being more convivial than history has previously reported. “In fact this was a productive time for them, when they created some of their best work,” he writes. “And it is here that we have the privilege of witnessing their early drafts, the mistakes, the drift and digressions, the boredom, the excitement, joyous jamming and sudden breakthroughs that led to the work we now know and admire.” 

And while there is indeed much to admire about the Beatles’ work during that time — the sessions produced three chart-topping U.S. hits in “Get Back,” “Let It Be,” and “The Long and Winding Road” — it is vital that we remember their actions and comments to the contrary during that very same period. On January 10, Harrison quite literally quit the band after a heated argument with Lennon, only to be coaxed back into the fold several days later in time for the group’s return to Apple Studio. And by his own admission not long afterwards, Lennon described the album’s production as “the most miserable sessions on earth.” It’s all there in the Nagra reels.

Comments along the lines of Kureishi’s foreword suggest that there is an effort to replace the reality of “Let It Be” with a wide-eyed, nostalgia-ridden myth. But even still, I for one am hopeful that Peter Jackson’s upcoming three-part “Get Back” documentary will tell the unvarnished story of the saga behind the making of the penultimate Beatles studio album. Willfully attempting to gloss over the rancor that characterized aspects of the original sessions robs the band of one of their most magisterial of triumphs: In just a few short weeks, they went to hell and back, only to emerge, in the last possible moments, to perform a concert for the ages, along with the recording of a spate of classic songs. The whole business, with all of the stress and tension, made for a come-from-behind victory of which only the finest musical fusions are capable. And the Beatles are the finest of them all. Full stop.

Which brings us back, full circle, to “Let It Be,” the end result of the so-called Get Back project. The deluxe remixes are worthy additions to the Beatles’ most notoriously convoluted production. But there’s no getting around the fact that the goings on back in January 1969 — the interpersonal machinations and lack of any clear artistic intention, then and now — will never really be untangled in the cold light of the present day. Simply put, Let It Be will always be an enigma, albeit a truly wondrous one. 

More “Everything Fab Four” conversations: 

5 creative recipes that use canned pumpkin and pumpkin pie filling

Compared to last autumn, it seems as though the pace is picking up again, for better or for worse. Kids are back in school, folks are returning to the office and social calendars are filling up in advance of the holidays. That may leave many people, myself included, feeling a little strapped for time when it comes to cooking filling, flavorful meals.

That’s where a duo of secret ingredients comes into play: canned pumpkin pie filling and straight canned pumpkin.

Canned pumpkin is exactly what it sounds like — the canned flesh of a baked and pureed roasting pumpkin with no seasoning, which makes it perfect for savory applications like pasta and hot sauces. Pumpkin pie filling, however, is sweetened and seasoned with warm baking spices, which provides a seasonal lift to baked goods and sweet treats like breakfast bread and cheesecakes.

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Here are five of our favorite recipes that use canned pumpkin and pumpkin pie filling:

Pumpkin Spice Breakfast Bread

If you mastered a banana bread recipe during the pandemic, it’s time to give those skills a seasonal update. Whereas banana bread takes on its signature moistness and almost caramelized sugar flavor from the use of overripe bananas, pumpkin spice breakfast bread uses pumpkin pie filling. Bonus: Pumpkin pie filling, as opposed to straight canned pumpkin, is already seasoned with pumpkin spice — a mixture of cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg — which takes the guesswork out of seasoning. 

Smoky Pumpkin Hot Sauce

This hot sauce — which was featured on our weekly condiment column “Saucy” — takes the best flavors of fall and bottles them up. Start by tossing a small roasting pumpkin in the oven. Once it’s tender, blitz it with apple cider vinegar, apple juice, maple syrup and spices. To save time, you can also use canned pumpkin! 

The combination of fresh peppers (like red cayenne) and dried peppers (like chipotle peppers and chile de arbol) gives the resulting hot sauce an approachable, smoky spice. It’s perfect with breakfast burritos loaded with autumnal vegetables like bitter greens and butternut squash. 

Creamy Pumpkin Sage Pasta Sauce

Canned pumpkin once again saves the day in this cheap and easy weeknight dinner. Use it as the base of a cozy pasta sauce, which thanks to the use of heavy cream or oat milk, is flavorful, creamy and feels like fall in a bowl. The recipe is also easy to modify and veganize; some of my favorite add-ins include hot Italian sausage, crispy pan-fried mushrooms and roasted vegetables. 

Luxurious Pumpkin Cheesecake

As Kelly Fields (author of “The Good Book of Southern Baking“) wrote, this recipe is “yet another result of my dislike of pumpkin pie.” Canned pumpkin whipped with cream cheese, espresso powder (a beloved ingredient here at Salon Food) and brown sugar is folded into a simple gingersnap crust. The resulting pumpkin cheesecake introduces an unexpected flavor combination — pumpkin and espresso — that goes together as beautifully the classic duo of chocolate and peanut butter. 

Decadent PSL Milkshake

Alright, this is one of those recipes where I’m just going to need you to trust me. At least where I live, fall weather can be capricious. We still have plenty of 80-degree days through late October. On days when it’s just too hot for a seasonal coffee drink, pull out the blender and make this PSL milkshake made with vanilla ice cream, pumpkin spice and cream. If you want to go more of a pumpkin pie route, feel free to add in 3 teaspoons of canned pumpkin pie filling, as well. 

Even more recipe inspiration: 

Why apple pie isn’t so American after all

As we gather with loved ones to celebrate Thanksgiving this November, apple pie — perhaps our country’s most iconic dish — will make its annual appearance on many celebratory tables.

But despite being a symbol of patriotism eaten to celebrate everything from the Fourth of July to Turkey Day, apple pie’s origins actually aren’t all that American. A quick look at its history tells us that only through revisionism has this dish come to represent the United States; even more, in the process we may have ignored the historical and cultural influences that have shaped its place in our country’s narrative. Which begs the question: Should we even consider apple pie a national symbol after all?

The history of apple pie 

Rather than the good old US-of-A, apple pie as we know it first originated in England, where it developed from culinary influences from France, the Netherlands, and even the Ottoman Empire. In fact, apple trees weren’t even native to North America until the Europeans arrived. Only crab apples grew on the continent; shrunken and sour, they were barely used for eating, let alone for pastry.

Indeed, many of the other ingredients necessary for apple pie also come from beyond America’s borders. Wheat originated in the Middle East, while pastry fats like lard and butter arrived when Christopher Columbus brought domesticated pigs and cattle to the New World. Crucial spices like cinnamon and nutmeg, meanwhile, came from far-flung countries like Sri Lanka and Indonesia. And of course, the art of pastry stemmed from a melting pot of culinary traditions in mainland Europe, particularly French, Italian, and Arabic.

As for the dish itself, the British and Dutch made their own versions of apple pie long before the Declaration of Independence or even the first Thanksgiving. Though most British pies were savory, apple and other fruit-based pies were common dishes, and one of the first recipes for apple pie appeared in England as early as the 14th century in The Forme of Cury by Samuel Pegge.

So how did apple pie, a dish eaten centuries before America’s first president was even born, become an enduring patriotic symbol?

The first apple pie recipes

Eventually, European settlers brought the dish to the colonies, where they used the domesticated apples they had introduced to the continent to make pies. The dish quickly caught on. Not one but two recipes for apple pie appeared in America’s first cookbook, American Cookery by Amelia Simmons, published in 1796. From the colonial period, the dish endured during the 19th century and through the Civil War. John T. Edge shares in Apple Pie: An American Story that even in wartime “both Union and Confederate troops scavenged for apples and commandeered the hearths — and flour bins — of white farmers and black tenants to bake pies.”

An easy, affordable, and adaptable dish, apple pie went on to become a staple in American cuisine throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. However, it didn’t become part of the cultural lexicon until around the 20th century, when such influential factors as advertising, news, and war created a new, misleading narrative that transformed the dish into a nationalist symbol.

One of the earliest examples of this shift can be traced back to 1902, when a New York Times editorial argued for the dish’s national importance by asserting that pie had become “the American synonym for prosperity.” “Pie is the food of the heroic,” it declared. “No pie-eating people can be permanently vanquished.” The dish was also positioned as unique to the United States when The New York Times published a 1926 article with the headline “The Tourist Apple Pie Hunt Is Ended: American Army Abroad Has Failed Again to Find in Europe ‘the Kind They Make at Home.'”

As American as apple pie

The iconic phrase “as American as apple pie” began to crop up as well, though its exact origin is unclear. One early example appeared in 1924, when a Gettysburg Times advertisement promoted “New Lestz Suits that are as American as apple pie.” Meanwhile, a 1928 New York Times article used the phrase to describe the homemaking abilities of First Lady Lou Henry Hoover: “as American as apple pie or corn pone.” The reference to corn pone or any other similarly American dish was quickly dropped, and “as American as apple pie” began to flourish, even being used to describe lynching by author Frank Shay.

Eventually apple pie became associated with the U.S. government, another powerful force in its myth-making as an American symbol. In 1935, Congress turned to apple pie to settle a squabble between New York and Oregon, who got into a heated debate over who produced the best apples. After Oregon sent free apples to Congress to prove their superiority, New York retaliated by sending 75 apple pies to the Capitol. Representatives on both sides of the divide sampled slices and offered their take, while the Oregon representative sniffed, “The crust was excellent, but there was not enough filling to really find out what New York apples taste like.” Peeved to be left out of the debate, Connecticut later chimed in to assert that “apple pie made by a Connecticut cook from Connecticut apples cannot be surpassed by New York, Oregon, or any other state!”

Later, the dessert became even more patriotic when the President got involved. In 1951, Franklin Roosevelt’s White House head housekeeper Henrietta Nesbitt wrote in her Presidential Cookbook: Feeding the Roosevelt’s and Their Guests that “apple pie was the President’s preference among pies” and added that it was “generally conceded to be the All-American favorite.”

With the outbreak of World War II came another opportunity for apple pie to solidify its status as the definitive national symbol. Most notably, American soldiers began to proclaim they were fighting for “mom and apple pie,” an assertion that firmly established the dessert as a metaphor for the United States. Back home, The Victory Binding of the American Woman’s Cook Book: Wartime Edition, published to provide recipes adapted to wartime rations, included a recipe for “Victory Apple Pie.” Meanwhile, journalist Charles Hurd described one World War II veteran as “as American as apple pie,” while The New York Times dubbed an actor the perfect choice to depict American ambassador Joseph E. Davies in a film because, in part, “his manners are as indigenously American as apple pie.” The inclusion of “indigenous” is particularly notable because, of course, it wasn’t remotely true.

At the same time, apple pie’s association with mothers conjured a wholesome, hearty image for the dessert that hammered home idealistic American purity. In a November 1945 issue of The Louisville Times, for example, food editor Marguerite T. Finnegan gave advice on how “to fulfill the family dream of apple pie” amidst wartime shortages. In addition, the emergence of the phrase “as American as motherhood and apple pie” led the dish to emerge as a symbol of feminine love. As cookbook author Jessie DeBoth wrote in her 1951 book It’s Easy to Be a Good Cook, “[Pie] symbolizes so many things: the energy and effort of the woman [a man] married; her wish to give him the utmost in eating enjoyment; her competence in fitting a pie into her never-ending day of homemaking.” And beyond just motherly love, the dish represented a rustic, agrarian past that evoked nostalgia for the mythic America of a simpler time, before the widespread urbanization of the country.

With these kinds of associations, apple pie became emblematic of a very specific American ideal: wholesome, hearty, pure, and noble. Because of its association with powerful factors like the U.S. government and military, it was rewritten as a symbolic dish that represented traditional American ideals, and by extension, traditional American families. This symbolism also carried the implication that the dish itself is native to the United States, a mindset that echoes a tradition of willful ignorance of white colonialism.

Of course, this framing ignores the actual history of apple pie and its origins overseas, and represents a falsely constructed narrative of our culture and history. But should all of this mean, ultimately, that apple pie can’t be a symbol for our nation?

Despite its manufactured symbolism, apple pie actually does embody American values — just not for the reasons we may think. Apple pie is not American because it is wholesome and hearty, and certainly not because it is indigenous. It’s American because it embodies the way cultures and traditions from all over the world have blended, reshaped, and ingrained themselves into the fabric of this country to define the reality of our national narrative.

As John Lehndorff of the American Pie Council explains, “When you say that something is ‘as American as apple pie,’ what you’re really saying is that the item came to this country from elsewhere and was transformed into a distinctly American experience.” Indeed, as Libby O’Connell writes in The American Plate, “The phrase ‘as American as apple pie’ is only misleading to those who forget that, except for American Indians, we are all transplants on this continent, just like apple trees.”

In many ways, apple pie embodies the immigrant experience — which, in the end, is the most distinctly American experience of all. A fruit that originated in Kazakhstan starring in a British pastry and beloved by people across the United States transcends national and cultural boundaries in much the same way as a Greek immigrant operating a burger joint or a Chilean refugee founding a fashion label or a Puerto Rican woman serving in Congress. The United States was woven from the cultural influences, histories, and traditions of countless populations who have made this country their home, creating a richly vibrant culture that is distinct all on its own.

Apple pie recipes

Epic Single Crust Apple Pie

Thin slices of apples are formed into the shape of a blooming rose bud inside a buttery pie crust for this modern twist on a timeless dessert. Recipe developer Erin Jeanne McDowell makes a classic apple pie magically more delicious by adding more spices — ground cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves, plus dark brown sugar to boot.

Apple Pie

You can’t go wrong with a classic apple pie with a double-crust, and this one is about as good as it gets. Just don’t forget to serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream! Wondering how to achieve a beautiful golden brown crust? Use a pastry brush to apply a beaten egg to the crust before baking it in the oven.

Cider Caramel Apple Pie

“This filling is tart, but with a rich creaminess to it, because it’s finished with butter. It’s sweet, but not overly so. I used Honeycrisp apples, which hold up very well in baking, resulting in a filling that’s tender, but still has a little bite,” writes Erin Jeanne McDowell, the brilliant baker who developed this pie recipe.

Vegan Apple Pie

There’s no dairy in this completely vegan apple pie. Instead, coconut oil and oat milk are added to the pie crust, making it as rich and flaky as if it was made with real butter.

Brown Butter Apple Pie Cookies

These nutty cookies are your favorite pie, but in a more portable form. Apple slices are sautéed in brown butter for a rich filling that evokes all the flavors and feels of the perfect fall dessert. While a few dashes of bitters are normally reserved for cocktails like the Old-Fashioned or Manhattan, but they also add spicy flavor with hints of clove and cinnamon. In our book, that’s the perfect complement to tart apples.

The confrontation over Jan. 6: Conservatives seek martyrdom

It appears that the January 6th commission is getting ready to rumble. The bipartisan probe in the House of Representatives has been taking the testimony of various participants and observers of the events leading up to the insurrection and has issued 19 subpoenas for some who have so far refused invitations to appear.

The most recent recipient is Jeffrey Clark, the former acting assistant attorney general for the Civil Division of the Justice Department who reportedly broke agency rules by working directly with the president and outside lawyers on a plot to overturn the election. Often portrayed as a lowly background player with no profile, according to the New Republic, Clark is actually a high-level conservative movement legal activist with an Ivy League pedigree, a clerkship with a very right-wing judge, a long association with The Federalist Society as well as Kirkland and Ellis, the law firm known for housing right-wing attorneys in between service in GOP administrations. Clark served on the Romney campaign in 2012 as an “energy adviser” and along with his duties in the civil division, he worked as the assistant attorney general for the Environment and Natural Resources Division, where Bloomberg reports he diligently worked to slash and burn existing environmental policy. In other words, he is a full-fledged creature of the Republican establishment. Attempts to portray him as some sort of eccentric gadfly are wrong. Clark is a member of the club.

It will be interesting to see if he responds to the subpoena or tries to claim attorney-client privilege. The Department of Justice told employees that it would not invoke executive privilege some time back and Trump himself has declared that he would not sue to stop them. Clark will have to do some fancy footwork to get out of it.

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Meanwhile, four of Trump’s closest accomplices were due to appear this week and failed to do so.

Dan Scavino Trump’s Deputy Chief of staff and social media director eluded the process for some time but was finally served and has been given more time to respond. Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Trump loyalist/jack of all trades Kash Patel are both said to be working with the committee to come up with some agreement and have also been given a temporary reprieve. That leaves Steve Bannon, former Trump adviser and current podcaster extraordinaire.

Having escaped accountability for the fraud he was alleged to have perpetrated against Trump’s followers by obtaining a pardon from the leader they revere, just 10 months later, Bannon is once again committing crimes. He has decided to defy the subpoena, setting up a criminal contempt charge which could land him in jail for one year and cost him $100,000. The January 6th Committee has said it will refer the charge to the DOJ.

Bannon is apparently claiming executive privilege based upon the fact that Trump says he doesn’t want him to talk. There is no privilege for former presidents and even if he were still in office, a podcaster would not be able to claim it. Bannon has not been a member of the executive branch since 2017 when Trump fired him for shooting off his mouth to author Michael Wolff for his book “Fire and Fury” and taking too much credit for Trump’s election success. Bannon has no claim to any kind of privilege but he’s more than willing to push the envelope with the committee and the Department of Justice in order to foment revolutionary anger among the Trump faithful. That is his raison d’etre and has been for quite some time.

As Washington Post authors Bob Woodward and Bob Costa detail in their book “Peril,” and as Bannon has since confirmed, in the days before the insurrection, Bannon told Trump “People are going to go, ‘What the fuck is going on here? We’re going to bury Biden on January 6th, fucking bury him. We’re going to kill it in the crib, kill the Biden presidency in the crib.” On January 5, Bannon told his listeners, “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow. Tomorrow is game day. I’ve met so many people through my life who said, ‘Man if I was at the revolution, I would be, I would be with Washington at Trenton.’ Well, this is for your time in history.” On the morning of January 6th, he told his Facebook followers, “TAKE ACTION. THEY ARE TRYING TO STEAL THE ELECTION.” His parting words during his podcast that day were, “Today is not just a rally. The president is going to give you his opening argument. I think Eastman’s up there actually throwing down. .. at 1:00 there’s going to be some pretty controversial, controversial things going on.”

Apparently, Bannon was very much in the loop. One can understand why the Committee would like to talk to him.

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But what’s in it for him — or Trump, for that matter — to defy the subpoena? Why not just go in there and admit everything and dare them to bring charges against him. There’s very little chance they would. What would they be for? Sedition?

As I wrote earlier, Bannon is planning Insurrection 2.0 and people are listening. He’s talking about preparing “shock troops” to take over the executive branch when Trump is restored to the presidency and his “precinct strategy” to get Trump followers to take over local administration of elections and storm school boards has been taken up by thousands of MAGA true believers. As he told his listeners last May, “It’s going to be a fight, but this is a fight that must be won, we don’t have an option. We’re going to take this back village by village … precinct by precinct.”

Trump, meanwhile, has turned Ashli Babbit (the woman who was shot crawling through a broken window trying to get to members of Congress on January 6th) into a martyr.

At a fundraiser for Virginia gubernatorial candidate Glenn Younkin this week, followers pledged allegiance to a flag that was supposedly present on January 6th. (No word on whether it had any policemen’s bloodstains on it.) Bannon was the featured speaker.

It’s impossible to know whether Trump and Bannon are strategizing together, but it’s clear that they have the same goal. They are turning January 6th into a rallying cry for more insurrection. Both Bannon and Trump have spoken of the people indicted for their crimes in the insurrection as “political prisoners” and I suspect Bannon would like nothing more than to turn his criminal contempt citation into a revolutionary cause for the MAGA faithful.

I don’t know if they allow prisoners to podcast from their jail cells but Bannon wouldn’t be the first to spend his time behind bars working on a manifesto. And Trump can wave the bloody shirt of January 6th to keep the Big Lie alive for his run in 2024. It’s going to be quite a show.  

Organ centers to transplant patients: get a COVID shot or move down on waitlist

A Colorado kidney transplant candidate who was bumped to inactive status for failing to get a covid-19 vaccine has become the most public example of an argument roiling the nation’s more than 250 organ transplant centers.

Across the country, growing numbers of transplant programs have chosen to either bar patients who refuse to take the widely available covid vaccines from receiving transplants, or give them lower priority on crowded organ waitlists. Other programs, however, say they plan no such restrictions — for now.

At issue is whether transplant patients who refuse the shots are not only putting themselves at greater risk for serious illness and death from a covid infection, but also squandering scarce organs that could benefit others. The argument echoes the demands that smokers quit cigarettes for six months before receiving lung transplants or that addicts refrain from alcohol and drugs before receiving new livers.

“It is a matter of active debate,” said Dr. Deepali Kumar, an expert in transplant infectious diseases at the University of Toronto and president-elect of the American Society of Transplantation. “It’s really an individual program decision. In many programs, it’s in flux.”

Leilani Lutali, 56, a late-stage kidney disease patient from Colorado Springs, Colorado, learned in a Sept. 28 letter from UCHealth in Denver that if she didn’t begin a covid vaccine series within 30 days, she would lose her spot on the transplant waiting list. Both she and her living donor, Jaimee Fougner, 45, of Peyton, Colorado, refused to get vaccinated, citing religious objections and uncertainty about the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines.

“I have too many questions that remain unanswered at this point. I feel like I’m being coerced into not being able to wait and see and that I have to take the shot if I want this lifesaving transplant,” Lutali said.

She said she offered to be tested for covid before the surgery or to sign a waiver absolving the hospital of legal risk for her refusal of the vaccine. “At what point do you no longer become a partner in your own care regardless of your own concerns?” she said.

Lutali now hopes to take her transplant quest to Texas, where several hospitals, including Houston Methodist and Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, said they don’t require covid vaccinations to approve active candidates for the national waiting list.

The difference between policies in Denver and Dallas — and elsewhere — underscore a tense national divide. As of late April, fewer than 7% of transplant programs nationwide reported inactivating patients who were unvaccinated or partially vaccinated against covid, according to research by Dr. Krista Lentine, a nephrologist at the Saint Louis University School of Medicine.

But that was just a snapshot in late spring, and like all covid-related practices, it’s “rapidly changing,” Lentine said.

UCHealth in Denver began requiring covid vaccinations for transplant patients in late August, citing the American Society of Transplantation’s August recommendation that “all solid organ transplant recipients should be vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2.”

Patients who undergo transplant surgery have their immune systems artificially suppressed during recovery, to keep their bodies from rejecting the new organ. That leaves unvaccinated transplant patients at “extreme risk” of severe illness if they are infected by covid, with mortality rates estimated at 20% to 30%, depending on the study, Dan Weaver, a spokesperson for UCHealth said. For the same reason, transplant patients who receive covid vaccines after surgery may fail to mount a strong immune response, research shows.

UW Medicine in Seattle began mandating covid vaccines this summer, said Dr. Ajit Limaye, director of the solid organ transplant infectious diseases program. Patients were already required to meet other stringent criteria to be considered for transplantation, including receiving inoculations against several illnesses, such as hepatitis B and influenza.

“For anyone who does not have a medical contraindication, basically, we’re requiring it,” he said. “There’s a very strong sense to make it a requirement, like all the other hoops, straight up.”

By contrast, Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, where doctors performed the first double-lung transplant on a covid patient in June 2020, is encouraging — but not requiring — vaccination against the pandemic disease.

“We don’t decline care of transplant based on vaccine status,” said Jenny Nowatzke, Northwestern’s manager of national media relations. “The patient also doesn’t get any lower scores.”

The lack of consistent practice across programs sends a mixed message to the public, said Dr. Kapilkumar Patel, director of the lung transplant program at Tampa General Hospital in Florida, where covid vaccines are not required.

“We mandate hepatitis and influenza vaccines, and nobody has an issue with that,” he said. “And now we have this one vaccination that can save lives and make an impact on the post-transplant recovery phase. And we have this huge uproar from the public.”

Nearly 107,000 candidates are waiting for organs in the U.S.; dozens die each day still waiting. Transplant centers evaluate which patients are allowed to be placed on the national list, taking into account medical criteria and other factors like financial means and social support to ensure that donor organs won’t fail.

“We really make all kinds of selective value judgments,” said Dr. David Weill, former director of Stanford University Medical Center’s lung and heart-lung transplant program who now works as a consultant. “When we’re selecting in the committee room, I hear the most subjective, value-based judgments about people’s lives. This is just another thing.”

The centers can choose to place candidates on inactive status for a variety of reasons, including medical noncompliance, according to data from the United Network for Organ Sharing, which oversees transplants. As of Sept. 30, that category accounted for 738 of more than 47,000 registrants waiting in inactive status, though it’s not clear how many are tied to vaccination status.

A particularly thorny question involves unvaccinated people who need transplants specifically because covid infections destroyed their organs. As of late September, more than 200 lungs, as well as at least six hearts and two heart-lung combinations, had been transplanted for covid-related reasons in the U.S., according to UNOS data.

Many of those organs were transplanted earlier in the pandemic, before any covid vaccine was widely available. That’s no longer the case, Weill said. “If you’re just now getting vaccinated, you’ve done it at gunpoint, actually,” he said. “It’s not just a personal choice; they’re making some kind of a statement.”

Such patients are usually younger and healthier than other transplant candidates, aside from the covid-related damage, and they’re often acutely ill enough to go to the top of any transplant list. “The sick covid patient might go ahead of the stable cystic fibrosis patient,” Weill said.

Tampa General’s Patel said he performed a lung transplant on a patient who was transferred to Florida after being delisted at another center because he wasn’t vaccinated for covid. “I mandated with him basically on a handshake that he will get his vaccine post-transplant,” Patel said. “But his family? They haven’t agreed.”

Eventually, Patel said, he thinks nearly all transplant programs will mandate covid vaccination, largely because transplant centers are evaluated on the longer-term survival of their patients.

“I think it’s going to spread like wildfire across the country,” he said. “If you start losing patients in a year due to covid, it will be mandated sooner rather than later.

Opinion: The subtle virtues of routine doctor’s visits

For decades, the annual physical and its attendant blood tests, or routine labs, have been mainstays of American medicine. However, in recent years, the message from some in medicine has effectively been: Don’t bother. In 2015, Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist and professor of medicine and bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, pointedly told Americans: “Skip your annual physical.” Since 2013, the Society of General Internal Medicine has recommended against annual general health checks for patients who have no active symptoms or concerns. Disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic have only further discouraged people from making regular doctor’s visits.

And yet every year, tens of millions of Americans still schedule and attend a checkup, with insurers usually covering the cost. Are they wasting their time?

Before we get to that, it’s important to draw a distinction between a physical and a checkup. A checkup can generally be described as a health care visit that includes multiple screenings and risk factor checks, in order to identify problems early and prevent future illness. Physical exams, on the other hand, are sometimes performed during a checkup visit and often include screenings involving the “laying of hands” on a patient. For example, a physical exam may involve measuring blood pressure with a cuff or monitor, feeling a patient’s abdomen for signs of swelling or cancer, and tapping their knee with a reflex hammer.

Beyond Pap smears and height, weight, and blood pressure measurements, no part of the physical exam has been clearly shown to increase disease detection, improve health, or decrease mortality. Similarly, no medical organization recommends getting routine labs, beyond a few screening tests for conditions like high cholesterol, hepatitis C, and HIV. For people with no symptoms, blood tests are much less likely to uncover unknown disease than they are to produce a false positive, which can in turn can cause anxiety, waste patients’ money and time, and lead to unnecessary, risky, and sometimes invasive follow-up testing.

But what of checkups? Along with colleagues at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, we recently conducted a review of 32 randomized trials and observational studies to gauge the value of checkups in adults. Our conclusion? Well, it’s complicated.

First, the bad news. There is no clear proof that regular checkups help adults live longer or prevent cardiovascular events like heart attacks or strokes. That’s largely because it’s difficult to disentangle the effects of regular checkups from outside factors in experimental studies. Many of the studies we reviewed, for instance, were conducted in Western European countries where health care systems are organized around universally affordable, accessible primary care. So even in the control groups consisting of people who skipped checkups, there were usually patients who received other forms of primary care. Also, most of the studies examined the impact of only one or two checkups; it is probably not realistic to expect that such a small number of doctor’s visits could lead to measurable reductions in mortality.

But there was some good news. Checkups were consistently associated with increased use of preventive services, like vaccinations and cancer screenings. Such preventive care has been shown to decrease risks of certain illnesses and improve survival rates for certain cancers. Checkups also sometimes lead to earlier detection and treatment of chronic conditions like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and depression. Getting some chronic conditions under control, especially high blood pressure, can increase both the length and quality of patients’ lives.

And more good news: Patients report feeling better after a checkup. In randomized trials, checkups led to increased quality of life, better self-rated health, less worry, and other positive outcomes. Beyond the fact that patients may be getting needed care, it’s not clear why checkups have this effect. However, it might be that patients feel better simply because they are taking charge of their health. Another potential factor has to do with a relatively unstudied aspect of checkups: the importance of meeting with and forming relationships with trusted health care professionals. Studies suggest that just talking to someone about health concerns can make patients feel better. It can be reassuring for people to know they have a place to go with health questions or if a problem arises. And if checkups help people feel better, they’re probably more likely to want to return in the future.

So, who stands to benefit most from a checkup? Our review found that a checkup visit probably has limited value for people who are up to date on recommended preventive care and for patients who regularly visit their primary care physician for other reasons, such as previously diagnosed chronic conditions.

But groups with many preventive care needs and those at highest risk may have the most to gain. For example, several preventive services are recommended for people age 50 to 59; for patients in that age group, a checkup visit can be a convenient opportunity to discuss, schedule, or even receive those services. Checkups are also clearly valuable for people who have overdue preventive screenings, who have not had a primary care visit in two or more years, or who describe their overall health as fair or poor. In recent European studies, checkups led to higher rates of diagnosis and treatment of chronic diseases in racial and ethnic minority patients, and in patients with low education levels. Checkups may also be an ideal setting for physicians to discuss COVID-19 vaccines (and booster shots) with vaccine-hesitant patients, who could then be vaccinated immediately afterward.

In all, the annual physical and routine labs are unnecessary and fine for most adults to skip. But a regular checkup might help you stay up to date on recommended preventive care, better manage chronic disease, and generally leave you feeling better. Perhaps most importantly, it can foster healthy primary care relationships for the present and the future. In other words, we should all have a checkup from time to time.

David T. Liss is a Research Associate Professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Geriatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. He is the first author of a recent review article on checkups, published in the June 8, 2021 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Jeffrey A. Linder is the Michael A. Gertz Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine and Geriatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. He is the senior author of the recent review article on checkups in JAMA.

Peter Thiel bets on the far right: Tech tycoon spending millions to bankroll “Trump wing” of GOP

Billionaire Republican donor Peter Thiel is bankrolling election conspiracists and primary challengers against Republicans who backed Donald Trump’s impeachment after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, including an Arizona Senate candidate who is literally on his payroll.

Thiel, the Facebook board member who co-founded PayPal and later the controversial data-mining company Palantir, has long been a top Republican benefactor, donating millions to GOP candidates and political action committees. But in the wake of Trump’s 2020 defeat, Thiel has grown more aggressive in his political investments, dropping more than $20 million to support two far-right Senate candidates and helping to fund primary challengers against Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., and other Republicans who called for Trump’s removal after the deadly riot.

“He wants to be the patron of the Trump wing of the Republican Party,” said Max Chafkin, a Bloomberg reporter and author of “The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power.” Thiel is focused on building out “Trumpism after Trump,” Chafkin said in an interview with Salon, describing the tech billionaire as “in many ways further to the right than Trump.”

Thiel, who donated $1.25 million to back Trump in 2016, has made an even bigger splash this election cycle with a $10 million donation to back his protégé Blake Masters, who plans to run for the Republican nomination in next year’s Arizona Senate election. Masters is uniquely connected to Thiel, serving as the chief operating officer of Thiel Capital, the billionaire’s venture capital fund, and co-writing Thiel’s book “Zero to One.”

While candidates like Virginia’s Glenn Youngkin have stepped away from their corporate careers to run for office, Masters appears to still be on Thiel’s payroll. He earned $775,000 from Thiel Capital last year and received more than $340,000 in royalty payments from the sales of “Zero to One,” according to a personal finance disclosure that was first reported by Insider. Masters did not respond to questions from Salon about whether he still collects a salary from Thiel’s company, but still lists himself as the firm’s COO on his LinkedIn page.

Thiel last month hosted a fundraiser for Masters’ campaign at his Los Angeles home that cost up to $5,800 to attend.

Saving Arizona PAC, the Thiel-funded effort that has already spent nearly $1.7 million in Arizona, has launched ads attacking state Attorney General Mark Brnovich, Masters’ principal GOP opponent, for rejecting Trump’s lie that voter fraud cost him the election.

“Mark Brnovich says President Trump is wrong on voter fraud. Really? Brnovich failed to convene a grand jury, certified Biden as president. Now he’s nowhere to be found, making excuses … instead of standing with our president,” the ad says.

Brnovich was one of multiple state officials, including Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, who certified the election results. The ad does not explain why Brnovich should have convened a grand jury. There has been no evidence of widespread fraud in Arizona or any other state, and courts have repeatedly rejected challenges by Trump allies seeking to overturn Biden’s win.

The PAC also blasted Brnovich on Twitter, arguing that he is “nowhere to be found in the fight against voter fraud.”

Masters is the “only candidate who will demand fair and transparent elections,” the PAC said.

The Saving Arizona PAC recently made yet another six-figure ad buy attacking Brnovich for not being Trumpy enough.

Masters, who was endorsed by Trump’s former national security adviser Robert O’Brien this week, has walked a fine line when discussing the presidential election. He has stopped short of claiming that the election was stolen outright, but has boosted conspiracy theories on Twitter about “dead people voting,” Dominion voting machines and fears about election “integrity,” echoing a trope employed by numerous other Republicans who have tried to distance themselves from the voter fraud lie while still trying to appease Trump loyalists.

After the dubious so-called audit in Arizona’s Maricopa County actually showed Biden gaining a handful of votes compared to the official total, Trump and other Republicans began to claim that the audit had turned up serious questions about the election administration. In fact, Republican audit officials testified to Congress last week that the county held a “free, fair and accurate election.” Masters, however, sided with TrumpWorld throughout the process, teasing the release of the audit report, echoing Trump’s claims about “fake” polls and “anti-Trump disinformation,” and making the evidence-proof argument that “no matter what the audit finds, we know this election wasn’t fair.”

Masters later demanded action from Brnovich in response to the audit, though he did not say exactly what he wanted the state attorney general to do. 

“The AZ audit findings have been referred to the Attorney General,” Masters tweeted. “The ball is now in Brnovich’s court. He has a track record of doing the bare minimum, so let’s pay attention, and we’ll see if the Republican establishment is serious about election integrity.”

Masters also demanded that Ducey immediately “call a special session” to impose new voting restrictions, even though Ducey had already signed a bill to restrict mail ballots and purge the state’s popular early voting list in the spring.

“Get the legislature back to work so they can tighten up our election laws,” Masters tweeted. “Starting with universal voter ID for every kind of ballot — nothing less is acceptable.”

Masters did not respond to questions from Salon about whether he believes Biden legitimately won Arizona, or what he would like Brnovich to do in response to the “audit” results.

The attacks on Brnovich come as Masters seeks to close a massive early polling deficit against the attorney general. A Republican poll conducted last month showed Brnovich leading Masters, by 41% to 6%. Another September poll from OH Predictive Insights also showed Masters polling at just 6% and performing the worst of any candidate against incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly, a Democrat.

“It’s clear Blake Masters is threatened by AG Brnovich,” Joanna Duka, a spokeswoman for Brnovich, said in a statement to Salon.

Thiel has also dropped another $10 million to back J.D. Vance, another longtime business associate and the author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” in Ohio’s Senate race. As with Masters, Thiel has a long business relationship with Vance, who got his start in venture capital working at Thiel’s Mithril Capital Management, which is named after a fictional metal in “The Lord of the Rings.” Vance later got an investment from Thiel to help start his own venture fund, Narya Capital, which is named after one of the Elven rings in J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy classic. Both men recently invested in the right-wing video platform Rumble.

Masters and Vance are “kind of extensions of Peter Thiel,” Chafkin said, describing them as “hardcore ideologues” who are more disciplined and coherent than Trump, but largely focused on the same issues.

Vance has tried to stay away from election conspiracies but defended rioters at the Jan. 6 Capitol attack as mostly “super peaceful.” Thiel’s allies have generally avoided directly claiming that the 2020 was rigged, but have continued to raise irrelevant or baseless questions about the result.

“They’re trying to walk a line and come up with some kind of intellectually respectable version of The Big Lie,” Chafkin said, adding that the Thiel-backed candidates have tried to “cozy up” to hardcore Trump backers and “be perceived as friendly to them.”

Thiel himself has also cultivated relationships in TrumpWorld. He developed close ties to former Trump campaign chief and White House strategist Steve Bannon, whom Chafkin described as Thiel’s “ideological” ally who shares his views on the “deep state.” Thiel routed his big 2016 donation to back Trump through the super PAC controlled by Rebekah Mercer, also a major donor to far-right Republicans. Mercer was a longtime patron of Bannon and his projects and has joined Thiel in funding Vance’s Ohio campaign. Mercer has spent millions to support some of the leading proponents of Trump’s election lies, as well as election objectors who fueled the Capitol riot.

More recently, Thiel met with Trump at the ex-president’s Bedminster, New Jersey, resort and began funding candidates in support of the former president’s revenge tour against pro-impeachment Republicans, according to Politico.

Thiel donated the maximum $5,800 to Harriet Hageman, the Trump-backed primary challenger to Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo. Hageman has continued to claim that there are “legitimate questions about what happened during the 2020 election” and supported the Arizona “audit.”

Thiel has also donated to Joe Kent, the Trump-backed primary challenger to Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Wash., who also voted to impeach Trump after the riot. Kent spoke at the recent “Justice for J6” rally in Washington in support of the Capitol rioters charged in the attack. He vowed to lead a “full congressional inquiry” into the 2020 election if elected. Kent was among a group of Trump supporters who filed lawsuits last month in Washington state accusing multiple counties of “flipping votes” and calling for a “full forensic audit” of the election.

Thiel’s funding for candidates pushing election lies is “totally consistent” with his embrace of Trumpism, Chafkin said. Though Thiel ultimately decided not to donate to Trump in 2020 out of frustration about the former president’s “perceived competence,” the billionaire has sought candidates who will pursue Trump’s hardline policies on immigration, relations with China, regulation of tech companies, “political correctness” and globalization.

On all those issues, Thiel “basically agrees” with Trump, Chafkin said. “He wants to be involved in this movement and what you’re seeing now is he’s making that play. He’s trying to be the main patron to his part of the Republican Party.”

Steve Bannon’s second act: He’s back, and he wants to bring down the curtain on democracy

In the trailer for the new season of the horror-thriller series that is American politics, the screen goes black and ominous music begins to play. In bright white letters the first words appear on screen: “They thought he was gone. They thought he was defeated. They said he would never be back — but he was here all along.” Then, after a pause: “Steve Bannon is back for revenge!” 

For several years, beginning with the 2016 campaign, the American and global news media was obsessed with Steve Bannon. This was at least somewhat justified: Bannon was considered to be Donald Trump’s “brain” and the mastermind behind his unlikely victory over Hillary Clinton. Bannon accomplished this through what many viewed as a “shocking” and “brilliant,” if nihilistic, political strategy that leveraged right-wing populism, racism and the subterranean longing for an authoritarian leader. 

Before that, Bannon was also executive chairman of Breitbart News, an influential propaganda outlet for right-wing authoritarians, white supremacists and the so-called alt-right. He rode that success to a role steering Trump’s presidential campaign to victory and then to the White House, where he served as Trump’s senior strategist — for all of seven months. Bannon was purged from the Trump regime after serving as a source for Michael Wolff’s book “Fire and Fury,” and appeared to be persona non grata with the famously touchy president. 

But in the years since then, Bannon has repeatedly demonstrated his loyalty, and has been rewarded for it. Last year, he was charged with wire fraud and money laundering for stealing money from a charity whose proceeds were supposed to be used to build Trump’s misbegotten wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump pardoned him, and apparently all is well between them.

Bannon has been in the news this week: He may be charged with criminal contempt by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol assault, and he hosted an event in Virginia on Wednesday night where attendees reportedly recited the Pledge of Allegiance before a flag used in that insurrection. 

It does indeed seem likely that Bannon appears to have played a key role in the events of Jan. 6 and perhaps also in Trump’s overarching coup attempt. On a recent episode of his podcast, Bannon admitted to telling Trump, prior to that date,  “You need to kill this [Biden] administration in its crib.”

Bannon has also made repeated use of the technique known as stochastic terrorism to encourage right-wing violence, while disclaiming personal responsibility. As HuffPost reports, he recently told his listeners of his “War Room” podcast: “We need to get ready now. We control the country. We’ve got to start acting like it. And one way we’re going to act like it, we’re not going to have 4,000 [shock troops] ready to go, we’re going to have 20,000 ready to go.”

Bannon has said these “shock troops” would be used to destroy the federal government from within in a second Trump administration, as a way of tearing down what he calls “the administrative state,” an anti-government euphemism that also includes multiracial democracy.

Political scientists, historians and others have shown that such rhetoric is used by Republicans and their allies (and by too many “moderate” or corporate-sponsored Democrats) to justify attacks on the very idea of government itself, in large part because they perceive it as serving the interests of Black and brown people and others deemed to be “undeserving.”

Bannon’s use of violent language about “shock troops” — in a military context, this means heavily armed, fast-moving elite soldiers used to break through enemy defenses — is not necessarily hyperbole or metaphor. Rather, it should be seen as part of a larger embrace of political violence and other terrorism by the Republican fascist movement. 

Bannon has reportedly described himself as a “Leninist,” and makes no apologies for his belief that the existing social and political order must be destroyed before it can be rebuilt according to his reactionary, revanchist, neofascist and racist authoritarian vision.

Bannon has said that in a second Trump term he wants to see Trump’s “enemies,” such as Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Chris Wray, decapitated, with their heads mounted on stakes. Again, it’s a mistake to consider this a joke. Business Insider reports:

“Second term kicks off with firing Wray, firing Fauci,” Bannon responded, in comments which were reported on Thursday by Media Matters.

“I’d actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England, I’d put the heads on pikes, right, I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats. You either get with the program or you’re gone — time to stop playing games. Blow it all up, put [Trump aide] Ric Grenell today as the interim head of the FBI, that’ll light them up, right.”

Bannon has also praised the white supremacist fantasy novel “The Camp of the Saints,” which imagines a violent crusade against Muslims and nonwhite people who are supposedly “invading” Western Europe and other “white” countries. As public opinion polls have shown, these “white genocide” fantasies are increasingly credible to Republicans and Trump supporters, and play a key role in why Republicans are willing to support right-wing terrorism and other political violence as seen on Jan. 6.

Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Errol Morris spent many hours with Steve Bannon while making his 2018 film “American Dharma.” Morris told me at the time that what he felt in Bannon, at “the deep center of it all,” was “the desire to destroy stuff, the desire to wipe everything out without any kind of constructive program.”  

If Donald Trump manages to rig the 2024 presidential election — or even wins it legitimately, unlikely as that seems — he will indulge in many forms of vengeance and destruction. Whether or not Bannon rejoins Trump in an official capacity, he will be at his side, urging him onward. 

Who else might return in a second Trump regime? Perhaps criminal and traitor Michael Flynn, in charge of the CIA, the Department of Defense, the NSA or some other key element of the country’s national security state. Perhaps Sidney Powell, Jeffrey Clark or Rudy Giuliani, in control of the Department of Justice. The Supreme Court and the larger federal judiciary has largely been captured already by right-wing Christian theocrats.

Most or all of the U.S. government would become an appendage of Trump’s malignant narcissism and other pathologies, shaped to his ultimate goal of being America’s first dictator for life.

In a new interview with Politico, former National Security Council member Fiona Hill, who testified during Trump’s first impeachment proceedings, offers this warning.

I feel like we’re at a really critical and very dangerous inflection point in our society, and if Trump — this is not on an ideological basis, this is just purely on an observational basis based on the larger international historical context — if he makes a successful return to the presidency in 2024, democracy’s done.

The American people have been warned, again and again. They need to vote, organize, mobilize, engage in corporeal politics — including strikes and direct action — and raise up civil society and other pro-democracy groups and organizations. They must force Joe Biden and the Democratic Party to act with the “urgency of now” in the battle against the Republican-fascist movement. They must act as though their lives, and the future of their country and democracy, depend on the choices they make now – because they do.

What Western feminists can do to support Afghan women living under the Taliban

Since the Taliban took control of Kabul and the central government on Aug. 15, efforts to support Afghan women have become extremely challenging. According to some prominent U.S. feminists with strong ties to Afghan women, the Taliban “has no legitimacy beyond the brutal force it commands,” and governments, the UN and regional actors should not recognize or work with it. For some, this means isolating the Taliban by continuing to freeze Afghan funds held overseas and suspending any assistance that is coordinated with a government agency. But does that position really help Afghan women? 

There’s little question that gains made by Afghan women over the past 20 years, particularly urban women, have been rolled back — at least temporarily. Since coming to power, the Taliban have said girls would be allowed to go to school, but in some parts of the country, girls are being kept out of grades 7 through 12. And while female students have continued to attend private universities, most women enrolled in public universities have not been attending classes due to fear, canceled classes or Taliban restrictions. Even though Taliban spokesmen insist that women can continue to work, there are also frequent reports of Taliban militants ordering women to leave their workplaces. 

While we should all be outraged about the abuses and deterioration of rights that Afghan women are experiencing, the Taliban aren’t the only cause of women’s distress right now. The economy and public services are screeching to a halt because the international community has pulled the plug on funding. Afghanistan is a country that has relied on outside donors to fund its vital services for most of its modern existence. When the U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan, it froze $9.5 billion of the Afghan Central Bank’s assets and pushed the International Monetary Fund to block Afghanistan’s access to more than $450 million earmarked for COVID-19 relief. Adding fuel to the fire, the World Bank suspended financing to the Afghan health care system through its Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund. Given that foreign aid to Afghanistan had previously been about $8.5 billion a year — nearly half the country’s gross domestic product — the impact of freezing these funds is catastrophic for women and their families.

There are about 220,000 teachers in Afghanistan, and UNICEF estimates that about a third of them are women. Since June, most teachers haven’t been paid their salaries. On Oct. 6, the 45,000-member Afghan Teachers Association put out an urgent appeal calling attention to their dire situation. “The Ministry of Education has very few resources, and it is hard to ask our teachers to keep working without salaries. Many of them are the sole breadwinners in their families, and they are really struggling. It will be difficult to keep the schools open if we have no funds.” 

And it isn’t just Afghan teachers. Most of the nation’s health care workers have also been working without salaries. Right now, the country’s health care system is on the brink of collapse. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has stated that due to the suspension of funding, Afghan medical facilities have been unable to buy supplies and pay salaries. According to UNDP’s Asia-Pacific Director Kanni Wignaraja, only about 17 percent of some 2,200 health facilities in Afghanistan are fully functional and the personnel who are working are doing so on a voluntary basis. “There is a risk that the Afghan people will have virtually no access to primary health services,” she said.

Prior to the U.S. military withdrawal, the World Bank funded the Sehatmandi project — a project administered by NGOs that in 2020 provided health care services to 30 million people. To avert a total collapse in health care, the UN Development Fund recently announced that it will temporarily take over management of the Sehatmandi project from the World Bank, but this is just a stopgap measure. 

The European Union’s announcement on Oct. 12 of a $1.2 billion aid package is certainly welcome news. So is the announcement by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken that the U.S. would help fund humanitarian aid. But it will be nearly impossible to effectively distribute aid while Afghan banks remain under U.S. and UN sanctions, unable to access physical dollars. And humanitarian aid will not provide salaries for the nation’s civil services. 

For that, Afghan’s frozen funds must be released. We understand the opposition to payment mechanisms that flow through Taliban hands. For salaries, the option of direct payments through UN agencies and NGOs is indeed the preferred option, as already existed in the case of many health care workers. But can this really be accomplished for the nation’s over 350,000 public workers? And how can the banking system be saved without lifting sanctions? These are issues that the Biden administration and world leaders must solve. The intricacies will be discussed at the World Bank and IMF meetings now underway in Washington and at the G20 summit in Rome at the end of the month. 

Feminists must also discuss the complexities. They should not take the simplistic view that a policy of non-cooperation with the Taliban is the way to support women. As John Sifton of Human Rights Watch has said, “Afghanistan’s underlying economic and humanitarian problems, which disproportionately affect women and girls, cannot simply be ignored because of the Taliban’s record.” We in the West who call ourselves feminists must grapple with the complexities and emerge as strong advocates for releasing funds that can stop an entire nation of 40 million people from facing a future of starvation and misery. 

Texas school official tells teachers to offer “opposing view” to the Holocaust

A top administrator with the Carroll Independent School District in Southlakem, Texas, is under fire for advising teachers to present “opposing” viewpoints if they’re going to provide books to their students about the Holocaust, NBC News reports.

Gina Peddy, who is the Carroll school district’s executive director of curriculum and instruction, made the remarks during a training session this Friday that was called in response to a parent’s complaint about a fourth grade teacher who had an anti-racism book in her classroom.

“Just try to remember the concepts of [House Bill] 3979,” Peddy said in a recording taken secretly by a Carrol staff member, referring to a new Texas law that requires teachers to present multiple perspectives when discussing “widely debated and currently controversial” issues.

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“And make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust, that you have one that has an opposing, that has other perspectives,” Peddy continued.

“How do you oppose the Holocaust?” one teacher said in response.

“Believe me,” Peddy said. “That’s come up.”

In a statement to NBC News, Carroll spokeswoman Karen Fitzgerald said the district “recognizes that all Texas teachers are in a precarious position with the latest legal requirements” in regards to the new state law and an updated version that will go into effect in December, Texas Senate Bill 3.

“Our purpose is to support our teachers in ensuring they have all of the professional development, resources and materials needed. Our district has not and will not mandate books be removed nor will we mandate that classroom libraries be unavailable,” Fitzgerald said, adding that “teachers who are unsure about a specific book “should visit with their campus principal, campus team and curriculum coordinators about appropriate next steps.”

Read the full report over at NBC News.

New poll shows dismal chances for Kyrsten Sinema in next primary: ‘A clear warning sign’

Frustrated by some of her more conservative positions, progressive activists have been threatening to primary Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona in 2024 — when the centrist Democrat will be up for reelection. And according to a new poll from Data for Progress, Democrats in Arizona would favor some of Sinema’s possible primary opponents.

The poll was conducted October 8-10 and surveyed 467 “likely Democratic primary voters,” according to Data for Progress. But there is a caveat: Arizona has an open primary system. So non-Democratic voters would have the option to vote in that Democratic primary in 2024, which is important because even though many progressive Democrats have been highly critical of Sinema, the senator has her share of defenders among independents and Never Trump conservatives. In fact, the Senate seat that she took over in January 2019 formerly belonged to Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, a right-wing Trump critic who endorsed Joe Biden in 2020.

Reporting on the poll, Ryan O’Donnell, Gustavo Sanchez and Brian Burton of Data for Progress explain, “For Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, her next hurdle is going to be her 2024 primary election, where she is going to have to convince Democratic primary voters in Arizona that she deserves to keep her job. Activists who are disappointed with her obstructionism and reluctance to support President Biden’s popular agenda are already organizing to draft other high-profile Arizona politicians, like Rep. Ruben Gallego, to run against her in 2024…. We find that Sen. Sinema faces a steep uphill battle to defend her record and convince voters she should stay — as negative sentiment towards her continues to grow.”

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Data for Progress found that Sinema enjoys only 25% approval among Democratic primary voters compared to 85% for Mark Kelly, Arizona’s other Democratic U.S. senator, and President Joe Biden.

In addition to Rep. Ruben Gallego, Democrats who are being mentioned as possible primary challengers for Sinema in 2024 include Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego (who Rep. Gallego was once married to), Tucson Mayor Regina Romero and Rep. Greg Stanton. Data for Progress found that in a 2024 Democratic primary, Rep. Gallego could defeat Sinema.

The report explained: 

There are many qualified Democrats in Arizona who would represent the state more effectively than Sinema, and the visual between their support of these lesser-known potential candidates and their support for Sen. Sinema is striking. There’s a caveat to this, however: while most potential candidates we tested against Sen. Sinema did well, in a hypothetical primary election challenge it would be key for progressives to consolidate behind a single challenger in order to have the best chance of defeating Sinema. At present, the only path Sinema has to win this primary appears to be by too many candidates running and splitting the vote, thus allowing her to sneak by with her clear ceiling of Democratic primary voters.

That being said, even if multiple progressive primary challengers ran, Data for Progress finds in a hypothetical that Sinema still polls behind Rep. Ruben Gallego — a clear warning sign for the Sinema campaign.

If Rep. Gallego did defeat Sinema in a primary, the question would become: How electable would he be against a Republican candidate in a statewide race in Arizona — which was once a deep red state but has evolved into a swing state? For many years, Arizona was synonymous with the right-wing politics of Sen. Barry Goldwater and Sen. John McCain (who was a self-described “Goldwater Republican”). But Arizona now has two Democratic U.S. senators, and Biden won the state in 2020.

Sinema has been on friendly terms with the late Sen. McCain’s daughter, conservative activist Meghan McCain, who has praised her relatively conservative voting record. Another Sinema defender on the right is Marcus Dell’Artino, an Arizona-based political strategist who worked for Sen. McCain and has jokingly called Sinema the biggest threat to the Arizona GOP. Dell’Artino, recently interviewed by Politico, argued that Sinema is being smart politically by playing to the center — an assertion that many Democrats would disagree with.

The strategist told Politico, “Is she her own boss? Yeah, because she does her homework, and has a long-term vision. She’s seen the inner workings of the state Democratic Party, and she sees, for her, she probably has a better way or a smarter strategy — which, clearly, has worked.”

Ron Watkins, who many speculate might be QAnon, eyes congressional run in Arizona

It appears that former 8chan administrator and QAnon mega-celebrity Ron Watkins is considering a run for Congress in Arizona. 

Watkins, who many believe may be the source of the conspiracy theory after he appeared to out himself as Q to the documentary filmmaker Cullen Hoback earlier this year, apparently filed a “statement of interest” form Wednesday with the Arizona Secretary of State to run as a Republican in the state’s first Congressional District, which would pit him against Democratic Rep. Tom O’Halleran.

The paperwork, first reported by VICE News, marks the first public step toward mounting a campaign — the next is collecting enough signatures to qualify for a spot on next year’s ballot. 

Tony Teora, a volunteer helping Watkins prep his campaign (and whose number was listed on the state interest form), confirmed to Salon that Watkins is indeed laying the groundwork for a Congressional run — and said that Watkins chose Arizona because he spent a portion of his childhood there while his father, who was in the Army at the time, was stationed in the state.

Also high on the list of reasons Watkins chose Arizona? His recent involvement with an election “audit” in Maricopa County, championed by GOP officials in the state who have spent months repeating Trump’s baseless claims of widespread election fraud.

“Ron’s main issue is election integrity, he’s real big on election integrity,” Teora said.

When the audit was all said and done, Republican leaders actually found that President Joe Biden had won by 99 votes more than had originally been counted — and that there were no systemic errors or election fraud to speak of.

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The decision for one of QAnon’s biggest stars to explore a run for federal office showcases just how deep the conspiracy theory has embedded itself in Republican politics, and should the campaign continue it will prove an important litmus test for the future of the party.

Watkins already appears to be putting in some shoe leather in the state, and was seen mingling this week with other MAGA candidates and right-wing celebrities. This includes a now-viral photo with Trump-endorsed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, a former TV anchor who has embraced a wide swath of right-wing conspiracies, including Trump’s Big Lie. 

Before developing an interest in Arizona politics, Watkins served for several years as the administrator of 8kun — previously known as 8chan — where the original QAnon began posting cryptic missives after migrating over from 4chan. Q, of course, claimed to be an anonymous, high-ranking member of the Trump Administration with access to highly classified intelligence.

After several security breaches in which Q’s account was apparently hacked, many speculate Watson may have taken over the account — a theory that was bolstered by Watkins’ apparent slip-up during an interview for a documentary made by Hoback for HBO called “Q Into the Storm.”

In speaking about his newfound fame and fortune as a champion of Donald Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud, Watkins said: “It was basically three years of intelligence training, teaching normies how to do intelligence work. It was basically what I was doing anonymously before.”

He quickly tried to correct himself, but it appeared the damage had already been done: “…but never as Q. Never as Q, I promise.”

For his part, Teora tells Salon that Watkins doesn’t even believe that QAnon is a real phenomenon — instead saying that it is a media exaggeration meant to diminish Donald Trump and his movement.

“[Watkins] has said emphatically numerous times that he isn’t Q,” Teora said. “He doesn’t consider himself a part of QAnon, in fact he’s told me he doesn’t even believe there is a QAnon.”

“To whatever extent it does exist, he would say that it’s largely a construct of the fake news media.”

Watkins recently moved to Arizona in preparation for his campaign, he told Salon in a late-night email Thursday. He previously lived with his father, 8kun owner Jim Watkins, in the Philippines, and then briefly moved to Japan, according to VICE News. 

CORRECTION: This story has been updated to reflect that Watkins recently moved to Arizona and currently resides there. He no longer lives abroad.

The race gap in vaccinations is closing; the politics gap is not

The Kaiser Family Foundation recently reported that roughly 78 percent of American adults said they had been at least partially vaccinated as of Oct. 5. At face value, this is welcome news; scientists generally believe that 70 percent or so of a population needs to be fully immune to achieve herd immunity. Even better, some of the initial vaccine disparities among racial groups have gradually closed.

“Though as of October 5, 2021, White people accounted for the largest share (60%) of people who are unvaccinated, Black and Hispanic people remain less likely than their White counterparts to have received a vaccine, leaving them at increased risk, particularly as the variant spreads,” the foundation wrote. “However, the data show that these disparities are narrowing over time, particularly for Hispanic people.”

Yet the report also revealed some troubling news — namely, that the vaccination gap has tightened between racial groups, but not among differing political factions. The observation speaks to a trend that Dr. Alfred Sommer, epidemiologist and dean emeritus at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told Salon he has noticed based strictly on his personal observations: that those who refuse to get vaccinated seem to fall into one of two broad categories. The first are people from marginalized groups, such as African Americans, who (as Salon columnist D. Watkins has written) “for lots of reasons (past experimentation, poor access to equal facilities, etc) are suspicious of it all but are educable, if one really takes the time and effort to work with their communities.”

The second group of vaccine-resistant are those that politically motivated, and tend to be white and to support former president Donald Trump, who himself is vaccinated.

 “The former are genuinely concerned about what is best for their health,” Sommer said by email. “The latter consider it a political issue.”

Sommer also acknowledged the existence of an anti-vaccine movement that preceded COVID-19, which was much smaller and, despite sexist stereotypes, predominantly male.

Much has been written about how fringe elements in the Republican Party resemble a death cult, risking their lives in defiance of public health to help an imagined cause of freedom. Yet there has also been pushback among conservatives against characterizing as reactionary everyone who refuses to get vaccinated, wear a mask and follow other public health guidelines.

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The observed political divide aligns with polls. Indeed, a previous survey conducted by Kaiser Family Foundation in September found that vaccination rates among adults were similar across racial and ethnic lines, with roughly 73 percent of Hispanic adults, 71 percent of White adults and 70 percent of Black adults vaccinated, suggesting comparable vaccination rates. Yet there was a significant disparity when it comes to political self-identification. While 90 percent of Democrats have received at least one dose of a vaccine, the same is true for only 58 percent of Republicans.

This spills over into some stark differences when it comes to policy preferences. While 83 percent of Democrats believed all staff and students in schools should have to wear masks (and 11 percent believe this should at least apply to unvaccinated students), only 29 percent of Republicans support those mask mandates, only 7 percent are willing to compromise by applying them strictly to the unvaccinated and 60 percent outright oppose them. Similarly, although 79 percent of Democrats support state and local government requirements for indoor businesses to require proof of vaccination, 78 percent of Republicans oppose such measures.

Dr. Russell Medford, Chairman of the Center for Global Health Innovation and Global Health Crisis Coordination Center, referred to some of the statistics offered by the Kaiser Family Foundation when speaking with Salon by email.

“The danger of this political sentiment is that it seeks to sow mistrust and confusion amongst the US population regarding what should be basic, apolitical and scientifically accurate facts regarding COVID-19 case rates, hospitalization, deaths, vaccine effectiveness and safety, and public health measures,” Medford explained. “A valid and necessary policy debate regarding vaccines, mandates and masks must be based on a commonly accepted set of facts, not misinformation and conspiracy theories.”

The real world consequences of the misinformation and conspiracy theories is right there in the data, as University of California–San Francisco medicine professor Dr. Monica Gandhi wrote to Salon.

“Although cases rose throughout the country, the hospitalization to case ratio was much lower in states with high versus low levels of vaccination, a function of the vaccines’ ongoing protection against severe disease,” Gandhi explained. A recent New York Times article noted that, although blue states generally had a higher number of COVID-19 cases than red ones during the early stages of the pandemic, that changed once vaccinations became readily available.

“The states with low percentages of those vaccinated definitely fared worse,” Gandhi told Salon. “And, indeed, as of mid-September, 52.8% of people in counties that voted for Biden were fully vaccinated compared to 39.9% of Trump counties, an almost 13 point difference that has not abated over time. So, yes, I think there is a political divide to vaccine uptake at this point in the US.”

Dr. Saad B. Omer, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health, said it was regrettable that many Americans had a personal investment in taking an anti-vaccine or otherwise anti-science position. 

“Unfortunately, due to the political dynamics in this country, pushing back against vaccines or vaccine mandates, etc. has become important to a lot of people’s sense of themselves,” Omer told Salon. “It’s become part of their identity.” Omer observed that before the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-vaccination beliefs could be widely found on both the left and the right. Now that this has changed, the dynamics of the conversation about vaccines more broadly has become politically polarized.

“There are more voices of the rights that are skeptical, especially of this vaccine,” Omer pointed out. “And that unfortunately has led to more polarization and sort of this thing becoming part of people’s identity.”

This brings us back to Sommer’s anecdotal experiences. As he put it, he does not doubt that there are Americans who have sincere concerns about the vaccine’s potential to harm them. They are in a different category than those who refuse to listen to science as a form of political warfare.

“As a public health person, I understand and want to work with the former – who mostly wish to listen (if not act),” Sommer explained. “The latter do not want to even discuss it, because for them it is a political issue.”

There is one statistic that underscores the steep cost of the Trumpers who have chosen to politicize COVID-19: It is believed that more than 90,000 deaths from COVID-19 since June could have been prevented with vaccines.

Missouri governor threatens criminal prosecution of reporter who found security flaw in state site

Earlier this week, a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch notified Missouri’s state government that a website maintained by the Missouri Department of Education had a security flaw — one that made the private information of teachers and education administrators, including their Social Security numbers, vulnerable. And the Post-Dispatch agreed to hold off on publishing information about that site’s vulnerability while the problem was being addressed. But Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, according to Missouri Independent reporter Jason Hancock, is now railing against the Post-Dispatch, calling the reporter a “hacker” and threatening criminal prosecution.

At a press conference, Parson told reporters, “The state does not take this matter lightly…. This administration is standing up against any and all perpetrators who attempt to steal personal information and harm Missourians.”

The Missouri Department of Education, according to Hancock, removed the web pages that were problematic after being informed of the problem by the Post-Dispatch.

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Hancock reports, “The Post-Dispatch discovered the vulnerability in a web application that allowed the public to search teacher certifications and credentials. The Department removed the affected pages from its website Tuesday after being notified of the problem by the Post-Dispatch. Based on state pay records and other data, more than 100,000 Social Security numbers were vulnerable. The newspaper delayed publishing this report to give the Department time to take steps to protect teachers’ private information, and to allow the state to ensure no other agencies’ web applications contained similar vulnerabilities.”

Hancock notes that although “no private information was clearly visible nor searchable on any of the web pages,” the Post-Dispatch “found that teachers’ Social Security numbers were contained in the HTML source code of the pages involved.”

According to Hancock, “The newspaper asked Shaji Khan, a cybersecurity professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, to confirm the findings. He called the vulnerability ‘a serious flaw.'”

Apple TV+’s new Velvet Underground film is an irresistible portrait of extraordinary provocateurs

Todd Haynes‘ extraordinary and reverential documentary, “The Velvet Underground,” opening in theaters and on Apple TV Oct. 15, recounts the lasting impact of this groundbreaking band. Haynes employs the music, film and news clips, and other images from the 1960s — including the split-screen approach of Andy Warhol films to the psychedelia of the times — to create a vivid, authentic, and atmospheric portrait. When the band releases “White Light/White Heat,” which they dub “their speediest album,” Haynes emphasizes this with speeded-up footage. It is breathtaking. 

The film offers only a few gossipy moments; this is not a “Behind the Music” style exposé. Instead Haynes gets thoughtful observations from folks who were there. Lou Reed‘s sister, Merrill Reed Weiner, is captivating talking about her brother and their childhood on Long Island. There are poignant discussions about Reed’s depression and insecurity. Warhol Superstar Mary Woronov provides terrific anecdotes about the artists as outsiders, and how the band was received on their trip to Los Angeles. And there is a telling story by Richard Mishkin about what Reed did when he refused to play a gig on boat. Filmmakers Jonas Mekas and John Waters, film critic Amy Taubin, and musician Jackson Brown also recount interesting memories. 

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Haynes slowly assembles the band in the first half of the documentary, and this allows viewers to learn about Reed going to and playing in gay clubs, because, he acknowledged, they were more interesting crowds. Reed learned the guitar by playing along with records and wrote poetry with gay themes that disturbed folks. But Reed was, as one interviewee explains, “Setting up scenarios to write [songs] about.” One of those tunes was, of course, “Heroin.” 

John Cale, in contrast, focused more on the music and claims he came to appreciate sounds from listening to the radio. When he started composing, which he describes as “carving the arc of a piece,” he talks eloquently about the “birth of improvisation” and the tension of not knowing where the sound will go. It astutely encapsulates his approach to music. Paired with Reed’s lyrics, it becomes the perfect combination. Guitarist Sterling Morrison and drummer Maureen (Moe) Tucker soon joined; the singer, Nico, was added later. Nico’s mystique, along with her distinctive look and louche voice, were assets to the band, and, as the film shows, a bit controversial. 

“The Velvet Underground” notably provides some historical context of the 1960s, when there was an explosion of art, film and music. Reed and Cale had a minor hit dance song, “The Ostrich,” when they played as The Primitives, but it wasn’t until they appeared as The Velvet Underground that the songs “really came to life.” And while their radically different music captured the zeitgeist of the times, it was for outsiders, not everyone. When Tucker acknowledges that if only half the crowd walks out — it was a good show.

Of course, it was an invitation to Warhol’s factory and the pop artist’s support and influence that helped bring about the classic “banana” album. “The Velvet Underground” discusses Warhol’s management, and his multimedia show, “The Exploding Plastic Inevitable.” Haynes deftly incorporates clips from these performances, where the band played as films were projected behind them. They are fascinating pieces from a time capsule. 

While the documentary is extremely well constructed, one minor complaint is a lack of how much time passed between some of the critical events discussed — from the band leaving Warhol and Nico leaving, to forcing Cale out and replacing him with Doug Yule. The three albums the band recorded after “White Light/White Heat” are mentioned only in passing, if at all. It is probably for the best that Haynes concentrates on the band’s heyday — because that is the most interesting period — but stories about Yule singing “Candy Says,” and Tucker performing vocals on the charming song, “After Hours,” are great. They flesh out the contributions of these band members. 

Some of the best observations in the film come from musician Jonathan Richman, a fan of the Velvet Underground, who bonded with them and came to perform his own music having learned from them. The band’s power and influence are seen through Richman’s eyes and one can easily surmise Haynes had a not dissimilar response to their music.

“The Velvet Underground” is an impassioned, irresistible portrait. Haynes slightly avant-garde approach is wholly appropriate and why this documentary is so exceptional.

“Velvet Underground” is in theaters and on Apple TV+ Friday, Oct. 15.

MAGA faithful pledge allegiance to supposed Jan. 6 flag; Glenn Youngkin forced to back away

RICHMOND, Virginia —  Former President Donald Trump called into the “Take Back Virginia” rally here on Wednesday night headlined by Steve Bannon, the onetime White House strategist turned right-wing radio host and podcaster. But the twice-impeached ex-president wasn’t even the headline: That came when assembled MAGA faithful from across the Old Dominion recited the Pledge of Allegiance before a U.S. flag that emcee Martha Boneta said had been flown “at the peaceful rally with Donald J. Trump on Jan. 6.”

This event, organized by fellow radio host John Fredericks, served as a not-quite-official campaign rally on behalf of Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin, who has been repeatedly endorsed by Trump. But Youngkin wasn’t present, and after the flag episode began to trend heavily on Thursday was forced to disavow the entire spectacle. “I wasn’t involved and so I don’t know” whether people saluted a Jan. 6 flag, Youngkin told The Hill. “But if that is the case, then we shouldn’t pledge allegiance to that flag.” 

Still, the point of this gathering of around 250 hardcore Trump supporters was obviously to focus on the hotly contested Virginia gubernatorial race between Youngkin and former governor Terry McAuliffe, a veteran Democratic operative and close ally of Bill and Hillary Clinton. 

Youngkin has attempted a complicated two-step, maintaining some distance from the MAGAverse to appear “moderate” in a purple state that has trended toward Democrats, but without losing support from Trump loyalists. It may be working, in that the race with McAuliffe appears neck-and-neck and Trump called in personally on Wednesday night to offer Youngkin his full-throated endorsement. Yet again.

“Glenn Youngkin is a great gentleman,” Trump told the energetic crowd via speakerphone. “We won in 2016. We won in 2020. The most corrupt election in the history of our country, probably one of the most corrupt anywhere. But we’re gonna win it again.”

“I believe that Virginia is very, very winnable, but we have to get everyone to get out and vote,” Trump added. 

Wrinkled sheets of a petition calling for a “full forensic audit” of Virginia’s 2020 results were circulated throughout the event, under the direction of a woman who did not identify herself when asked by Salon. She said she had gathered a “great” number of signatures and expressed hope that the 2020 election in Virginia would be overturned. 

“Please take further notice that when government is functioning in a way that goes against the People’s will and authority, the People are to correct their behavior and lead them in ways consistent with the constitution and that redress grievances,” the single-paged petition read, which is set to be delivered to current Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat. 

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Casey Flores, president of the Log Cabin Republicans (an LGBTQ conservative group), told Salon that he listens to “War Room,” Bannon’s podcast, every day. “I wanted to come out to see Steve Bannon,” he said, adding that many of the attendees weren’t so much Republicans as hardcore Bannon fans and “people who lost their jobs to globalism … the forgotten American people.”

Tom Oakes, another attendee who traveled an hour to attend the gathering, told Salon that he came out to support Bannon and “to learn how to be more activist in politics.” Business owner Roy Bordner said he came to the event out of concern that “people are afraid to speak out because of wokeness,” although he wasn’t pleased that the free Trump hats being given out had been made in China. 

Bannon repeatedly assured people over the course of the event that you “don’t have to be a donor” to participate in his movement, but most of the 250 or so people there (the organizers claimed it was 450) were charged about $45 per ticket. At that price, Bannon and company collected between $11,000 and $20,000 for the night.

In recent weeks, Bannon has spoken frequently on his daily podcast about the need for as many as 20,000 “shock troops” to stand ready to serve a second Trump administration, presumably after the 2024 election, although he sometimes hints it might happen sooner than that. 

​​”Shock troops? What?” one diehard MAGA attendee told Salon, unsure what the term meant. Three other individuals who would not give their full names also did not understand the reference, and said they did not identify as “shock troops.” Very few of the attendees present fit the vigorous and youthful “shock troop” template Bannon and his guests have characterized on his program, prepared to leave their previous lives behind and step into key roles in a future Trump administration.

“I love Mike Lindell,” Katty, a fervent Bannon supporter, told Salon, when asked what she likes most about Bannon’s daily program. She went in to explain the hottest deals offered by Lindell’s MyPillow company. A resident of rural Prince George’s County east of Richmond, Katty also said she supported the petition for a full forensic audit in the state.

As the night came to a close, Virginia state Sen. Amanda Chase, a former Youngkin opponent famous for describing herself as “Trump in heels,” said that in an effort to crack down on “voter fraud,” Republicans are “watching the clouds, because we know that cyberattacks are going on.”

“The Youngkin campaign knows what’s going on,” she assured her audience. “We are watching like we’ve never watched before.” 

‘Striketober’ in full swing as nearly 100,000 workers authorize work stoppages across U.S.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich observed Wednesday that with employees in industries across the spectrum set to strike in the coming days following corporate leaders’ failure to meet their demands for fair pay and working conditions, the U.S. is closer than it has been in decades to experiencing a general strike.

“You might say workers have declared a national general strike until they get better pay and improved working conditions,” wrote Reich in The Guardian. “No one calls it a general strike. But in its own disorganized way it’s related to the organized strikes breaking out across the land — Hollywood TV and film crews, John Deere workers, Alabama coal miners, Nabisco workers, Kellogg workers, nurses in California, healthcare workers in Buffalo.”

Labor advocates are calling the nationwide show of union power and worker solidarity “Striketober,” as work stoppages across numerous industries are expected in the coming hours and days if unions’ demands aren’t met.

About 10,000 workers at farm equipment manufacturer John Deere are set to walk out Thursday if the company fails to negotiate a contract that satisfies the demands of the United Auto Workers (UAW) members by 11:59pm on Wednesday.

With 90% of members voting on Sunday, 90% voted down a tentative agreement over pension plan changes and what they viewed as inadequate pay raises — boosting compensation by 5 to 6% — considering the company’s skyrocketing profits this year, with a net income between $5.7 and 5.9 billion.

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“We aren’t asking to be millionaires, we are asking for fair wages, a pension, and post-retirement healthcare,” one employee told WQAD, an ABC affiliate in Moline, Illinois. “After 30 years or more of giving your body to a company moving 1,000 pound castings around or assembling tractors, it rips your body apart. It’s not unreasonable to not want to have that worry in life of ‘what if?'”

More than 24,000 nurses and other healthcare workers in California and Oregon also voted on Monday to authorize a strike after contract negotiations with their employer, Kaiser Permanente, stalled. The workers are demanding relief from pandemic-related burnout, 4% annual raises, and increased hiring.

After voting to authorize a strike earlier this month, 60,000 film and TV crew workers could go on strike on Monday if the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which represents hundreds of production companies, fails to offer a contract that allows employees sufficient time off.

Workers frequently work 12-hour days — often without meal breaks — and get only 10 hours off in between workdays, while the lowest-paid crew members earn less than a living wage, according to the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE).

“Striketober is a function of greedy bosses trying to recoup the un-recoupable,” tweeted Jonas Loeb, communications director for IATSE.

The recent strike authorizations and impending possible work stoppages come as thousands of people are already striking for fair working conditions and pay, including 1,400 Kellogg plant workers in several states; 1,100 miners at Warrior Met Coal, who have been fighting for a fair contract since April; and 2,000 hospital workers in New York.

The nationwide wave of worker solidarity involves “the kind of numbers you don’t see anymore,” tweeted HuffPost labor reporter Dave Jamieson.

Reich wrote that with frontline workers across the country putting their health at risk over the last 18 months by going to work at companies that have raked in historic profits, “workers are reluctant to return to or remain in their old jobs mostly because they’re burned out”:

Years ago, when I was secretary of labor, I kept meeting working people all over the country who had full-time work but complained that their jobs paid too little and had few benefits, or were unsafe, or required lengthy or unpredictable hours. Many said their employers treated them badly, harassed them, and did not respect them.

Since then, these complaints have only grown louder, according to polls. For many, the pandemic was the last straw. Workers are fed up, wiped out, done-in, and run down. In the wake of so much hardship, illness and death during the past year, they’re not going to take it anymore.

“Corporate America wants to frame this as a ‘labor shortage,'” wrote Reich. “Wrong. What’s really going on is more accurately described as a living-wage shortage, a hazard pay shortage, a childcare shortage, a paid sick leave shortage, and a healthcare shortage. Unless these shortages are rectified, many Americans won’t return to work anytime soon.”

As IATSE members’ potential strike drew near, the union pointed out that some of its members — stagehands and theater tech workers at North Shore Music Theater (NSMT) in Beverly, Massachusetts — secured livable wages after striking for just one day this month.

“NSMT crew were previously paid 60% less than the industry area average but will now be receiving wages starting at $18 per hour,” said the union last week.

AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler told The Hill that the Striketober movement shows that with economic inequality “getting worse and worse… unions are the solution.”

“This is the capitalist system that has driven us to the brink,” Shuler said.

Unite Here, which represents 300,000 hospitality employees, expressed solidarity with the workers taking part in Striketober and urged them to see themselves as in a position of power.

“It is clear that we are in a significant moment for union organizing,” said the union. “What we cannot do is lose this moment. The so-called ‘labor shortage’ — which we know is really just a shortage of jobs that pay us enough to live on — is a powerful bit of leverage workers have over employers right now.”

“You know what scares bosses?” added Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants. “Worker solidarity. Striketober is terrifying the bosses.”

Steve Bannon could face criminal charges: Jan. 6 committee moves to hold ex-Trump aide in contempt

Steve Bannon is one step closer to being held in criminal contempt.

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot said on Thursday that it plans to vote next week on whether to hold former Trump adviser Steve Bannon in criminal contempt for his refusal to cooperate with the panel’s subpoena.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the committee’s chairperson, told CNN a meeting on the matter was scheduled for next Tuesday, per House rules — and that the members were “completely of one mind” that Bannon should be referred for charges. 

It’s a sharp escalation of the cat-and-mouse game the committee has been playing with the longtime right-wing operative, who said he will refuse to testify in front of the panel until the committee comes to an agreement with the former president on his assertion of executive privilege — or a court rules that Bannon must comply. 

Thompson said of the decision, “we reject his position entirely.”

“Mr. Bannon has declined to cooperate with the Select Committee and is instead hiding behind the former President’s insufficient, blanket, and vague statements regarding privileges he has purported to invoke,” he wrote in a statement Thursday. “The Select Committee will not tolerate defiance of our subpoenas, so we must move forward with proceedings to refer Mr. Bannon for criminal contempt.”

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This isn’t the first time Bannon has defied a congressional investigation, either. He similarly stonewalled representatives during the House’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s Russia ties — seemingly with the knowledge that the Department of Justice at the time would never decide to hold him in contempt for the obstruction.

“He would never be prosecuted by the Trump Justice Department,” Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said of Bannon during an appearance on MSNBC this week. “But those days are over. And I view that not only as essential to our investigation but I also view this, the enforcement of the rule of law, as an early test of whether our democracy is recovering.”

Thompson did note in his statement that two other Trump Administration officials, former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Kash Patel, a Trump loyalist and ex-chief of staff to then-acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, both “are, so far, engaging” with the committee’s investigation. But Patel reportedly ditched a scheduled appearance in front of the panel Thursday.

“He didn’t show up. He’s continuing to engage,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., told CQ Roll Call after the snub. “We have a limited threshold of patience for that.”

Patel continues to bash the Jan. 6 investigation efforts in public statements and is using the subpoena as fodder for a fundraising pitch, calling the committee’s efforts “corrupt.”

The committee was also having trouble serving former White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino his subpoena, according to CNN, which cited anonymous sources familiar with the matter. This may delay his deposition, the network reported.

This flurry of headlines capped off a busy week for the panel, which reportedly heard testimony from former acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen about his alleged role in fighting off Trump’s ultimately failed bid to overturn the 2020 election. 

A brain implant that zaps away negative thoughts raises thorny ethical questions

A woman with severe depression has been nearly symptom-free for a year after a team of scientists at the University California–San Francisco implanted a device in her brain to interrupt depressive thoughts with a burst of electrical stimulation. The case is the first to demonstrate that highly targeted stimulation in a specific brain circuit involving depressive brain patterns can be an effective form of treatment for severe depression, which affects an estimated 5% of adults around the world. 

The study on this treatment’s success was published in the Oct. 4, 2021, issue of Nature Medicine, and has been hailed as a landmark moment. The intersection of neuroscience and a psychiatric disorder could pave the way for such a treatment to become more common in the future, especially for those who haven’t had success with pharmaceutical treatments. 

“This study points the way to a new paradigm that is desperately needed in psychiatry,” said Andrew Krystal, PhD, professor of psychiatry and member of the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, in a news release. “We’ve developed a precision-medicine approach that has successfully managed our patient’s treatment-resistant depression by identifying and modulating the circuit in her brain that’s uniquely associated with her symptoms.”

Previously, researchers have been unsuccessful using traditional deep brain stimulation (DBS) in similar treatments. That’s because most devices only deliver constant electrical stimulation in one area of the brain. Historically, it has been a major challenge for scientists to target different areas of the brain in different people. This specific pacemaker for the brain proved to be a success with Sarah, who asked to be identified only by her first name, due to the discovery of a neural biomarker — a pattern of brain activity that senses the onset of symptoms — and the research team’s ability to customize a new DBS device to respond to that specific pattern. 

​​”What we believe is happening in this first patient is that something in the environment triggers a process that would elicit a negative feeling, the beginnings of what makes her depression worse. We pick it up before it becomes a significant depression and basically eliminate it,” said Dr. Andrew Krystal, a UCSF psychiatrist and an author of the paper. “Our goal was not to make this patient happy. Our goal was to eliminate her depression.”

The device alleviated her depressive symptoms almost immediately. 

“We were able to deliver this customized treatment to a patient with depression, and it alleviated her symptoms,” said lead author Katherine Scangos, MD, PhD. “We haven’t been able to do this the kind of personalized therapy previously in psychiatry.”

Sarah said before the treatment, she was “at the end of the line.”

“I was severely depressed,” she said. “I could not see myself continuing if this was all I’d be able to do, if I could never move beyond this. It was not a life worth living.”

While the treatment was personalized for Sarah’s brain, scientists are hopeful that it is a treatment that could be scaled and replicated. 

“There’s still a lot of work to do,” said Scangos. “We need to look at how these circuits vary across patients and repeat this work multiple times. And we need to see whether an individual’s biomarker or brain circuit changes over time as the treatment continues.”

Two more patients have been in the trial; Scangos hopes to eventually add nine more.

The idea of altering one’s mood with electrical brain stimulation might sound like the premise for a science fiction plot, but the practice is nothing new. Electroconvulsive therapy was introduced in the 1930s, and has evolved into DBS, which seeks to correct a specific dysfunction in the brain by introducing precisely timed electric pulses. FDA approval for this specific treatment is still likely far off, but it sheds light on the possibility of it in the future. 

Still, the prospect of clinicians manipulating and redirecting one’s thoughts, using electricity, raises potential ethical conundrums for researchers — and philosophical conundrums for patients. 

“A person implanted with a closed-loop system to target their depressive episodes could find themselves unable to experience some depressive phenomenology when it is perfectly normal to experience this outcome, such as a funeral,” said Frederic Gilbert Ph.D. Senior Lecturer in Ethics at the University of Tasmania, in an email to Salon. “A system program to administer a therapeutic response when detecting a specific biomarker will not capture faithfully the appropriateness of some context; automated invasive systems implanted in the brain might constantly step up in your decision-making . . . as a result, it might compromise you as a freely thinking agent.”

Gilbert added there is the potential for misuse — and that raises novel moral questions. 

“There are potential degrees of misuse of some of the neuro-data pumping out of the brain (some believe these neuro-data may be our hidden and secretive thoughts),” Gilbert said. “The possibility of biomarking neuronal activities with AI introduces the plausibility to identify a large range of future applications (e.g. predicting aggressive outburst, addictive impulse, etc). It raises questions about the moral, legal and medical obligations to prevent foreseeable and harmful behaviour.”

For these reasons, Gilbert added, it’s important “at all costs” to “keep human control in the loop,” in both activation and control of one’s own neuro-data. 

Other philosophers have a different take. Laura Specker Sullivan, an assistant professor of philosophy at Fordham University, told Salon that it is instructive to think of DBS devices akin to selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), a common class of antidepressants that includes drugs like Prozac.

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“Most uses of deep brain stimulation for mood disorders like severe depression are going to be working just like SSRIs or any other depression treatment — where it’s not making patients think a certain thing, but it’s removing often the lethargy and depressed mood, and anhedonia that accompanies depression,” Specker Sullivan said. 

Specker Sullivan said that deep brain stimulation was often a last resort treatment. 

“In order to qualify for Deep Brain Stimulation, because it’s invasive, you have to be someone who is treatment-resistant to all other more conservative or non-invasive forms of treatment,” she noted. “So there are a lot of safeguards that go into figuring out whether or not a patient would be a good candidate for deep brain stimulation.”

Specker Sullivan, who works with researchers who are doing DBS research, said it is done with a lot of responsibility. 

“There’s a lot of attention to appropriate consent, weighing the benefits and risks, and making sure that the patients and the research subjects are aware of the benefits and risks,” Specker Sullivan said, adding that one of the concerns with DBS is that a person might not feel authentically themselves. Specker Sullivan said that has been a concern with SSRIs, too.

“There’s this worry of kind of changing a patient’s sense of self or kind of feelings of authenticity, feeling like themselves, but that’s not unique to DBS. But it is something that people have said, perhaps due to the speed with which DBS changes someone’s mood, there might be a qualitative difference there.”

Specker Sullivan added that she doesn’t anticipate DBS becoming a common treatment for mood disorders, meaning that its ethical implications will not be of widespread concern. 

“I have trouble seeing that as something that is going to be widespread in society,” Specker Sullivan said. “I do think for conditions that are treatment-resistant, there is a good chance that we might see more use of deep brain stimulation — it’s a tool that can kind of step in where pharmaceutical solutions don’t work. But it’s not going to be something that replaces pharmaceutical solutions, because those are inherently lower risk than something that’s implanted surgically.”

House Republican followed Trump’s self-dealing model, spent thousands on her own companies: report

Republican Rep. Claudia Tenney, who represents a conservative but swing district in central New York, reportedly enriched her personal business ventures with thousands in campaign cash, potentially violating Federal Election Commission laws. 

FEC records reviewed by The Daily Beast indicate the New York conservative “shelled out $15,634.85 for a medley of rent, telephone service, and office supplies to OMP Park, Inc.,” apparently a New York-based company registered and helmed by Tenney. According to a routine House disclosure from 2016, Tenney serves as the president of the OMP Park. In 2016, she also reportedly directed $28,676.86 in campaign funds to bankroll various administrative expenditures for both OMP and Mid-York Press, another New York-based business she apparently runs as “co-owner and legal counsel.” In reviewing both state and federal campaign fund spending, The Daily Beast found that Tenney has earned her businesses at least $100,000 total. 

As it stands, federal election law does not strictly prohibit the spending of campaign funds on personal business ventures “as long as the transaction is made at the fair market value,” according to FEC’s website. This stipulation apparently exists to ensure such transactions do not unfairly benefit candidates or their campaigns. 

But advocates of campaign finance transparency say that, ideally, the transfer of campaign funds should be eschewed altogether to preclude any conflicts of interest from arising.

“It is generally best practice, if you can avoid it, not to engage in business with a company that you or your family owns,” Adam Rappaport, senior counsel of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told The Daily Beast. “If you are going to do it, it is best practice to make sure you’re dealing at fair market values and to keep good records, because that’s what the law calls for.”

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It remains unclear whether Tenney paid for her business expenses at a market rate, given the timing of the disbursements. 

‘”The payment records in this matter do not provide sufficient facts to know if the lawmaker is in compliance,” Kedric Payne, senior director of ethics at Campaign Legal Center, explained. “Voters should expect an explanation from their elected official or an ethics investigation to verify that the payments comply with the law.”

Before her tenure as a U.S. representative, Tenney spent six years in the New York State Assembly, advancing a number of conservative agendas on issues like gun control and LBGTQ+ rights. During her post, she missed a total of 480 votes – more than any member sof the body, according to the New York Public Interest Research Group. 

Tenney was later elected to the U.S. House in 2016, lost her re-election in 2018, and won again in 2020. In recent years, the New York conservative has said that she embraced Trump’s “confrontational style.” The former president funneled taxpayer funds to his personal profit by frequently visiting his own properties.

Tenney objected to Trump’s second impeached trial and has backed his baseless claims of election fraud. Most recently, the Republican called Pope Francis a “communist” for meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

Kyrsten Sinema ditches Senate negotiations for fundraising trip to Europe

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., who has emerged as the biggest single roadblock to President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan, left Washington this week for a fundraising trip to Europe.

Sinema, who has drawn criticism from Biden and fellow Senate Democrats for being vague about her demands and refusing to budge on her opposition to increased spending and higher taxes, participated in a fundraiser for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, her spokesman told The New York Times.

A source told the outlet that the fundraiser was in Paris, but it’s unclear whether the senator was actually urged to go by party officials. Sinema’s office did not say how long she will be away, which countries she is visiting, who is paying for the trip or whether she is also fundraising for her own campaign, though sources told the Times that her team planned to set up meetings in Paris and London. Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., the chairman of the DSCC — and like nearly all Democrats, a supporter of Biden’s proposal — also traveled to a London fundraiser that charged up to $36,500 per ticket, but Sinema’s name did not appear on the invitation for that event.

Lawmakers are barred from raising money from foreign sources, but members of Congress occasionally travel overseas to solicit donations from Americans living abroad, who tend to be affluent and well-connected

Sinema’s trip came amid ongoing negotiations over Biden’s plan. Sinema and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., are the lone Senate holdouts blocking the proposal, which the other 48 Democrats support. (That includes two independents who caucus with Democrats, Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont.) Sinema spokesman John LaBombard told the Times that she has continued to negotiate.

“So far this week, Senator Sinema has held several calls — including with President Biden, the White House team, Senator Schumer’s team, and other Senate and House colleagues — to continue discussions on the proposed budget reconciliation package,” he said. “Those conversations are ongoing.”

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But Biden and Sinema’s Senate colleagues have complained that the first-term senator has not done much actual negotiating.

Bernie Sanders, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, recently criticized Sinema for not telling her colleagues what she would support in the bill.

“Sen. Sinema’s position is that she doesn’t quote-unquote negotiate publicly,” he said last week. “I don’t know what that means. We don’t know where she’s coming from. Tell us what you want.”

Other senators have similarly accused Sinema of stonewalling her own party. One unnamed Democratic senator told Politico that Sinema recently said, “I’m not going to share with you or with Schumer or with Pelosi. I have already told the White House what I am willing to do and what I’m not willing to do. I’m not mysterious. It’s not that I can’t make up my mind. I communicated it to them in detail. They just don’t like what they’re hearing.”

Biden has also been “exasperated” after hours of talks with Sinema and has complained to lawmakers that Sinema doesn’t “move” from her position in negotiations and doesn’t always “return calls from the White House,” according to CNN.

Meanwhile the Arizona senator, who has been a leading recipient of donations from the pharmaceutical industry and corporate groups trying to kill key parts of the bill, has continued to make time to meet with donors.

Last month, Sinema held a fundraiser with five business groups that oppose the bill, charging attendees up to $5,800 to attend a 45-minute event. Earlier this month, Sinema left Washington to go to Arizona, where she attended a ritzy donor “retreat” at a high-end resort and spa, according to the New York Times.

Sinema’s refusal to engage members of her own party has extended to her constituents, who have complained that Sinema will not meet with them in her office and has not held a single town hall since her election. Multiple groups have already launched efforts to raise money in support of a Democratic primary challenger in 2024. Tensions have continued to rise after Arizona protesters repeatedly confronted the senator this month, even heckling her during her class at Arizona State University and following her into a campus restroom. The Intercept reported that Sinema teaches an ASU class on fundraising, including topics like how to cultivate “large individual donors,” “opportunistic fundraising” and “corporate giving.”

Sinema’s position has especially perplexed Democrats because her demands are at odds with Manchin’s. The West Virginia senator, whose conservative positions are well understood and reasonably consistent, has expressed support for allowing Medicare to negotiate lower prescription drug costs and rolling back at least some of the Trump tax cuts on corporations and the wealthy. Sinema appears to oppose both of those proposals, as do her corporate backers. Democrats view those as crucial elements in funding their key proposals.

“Manchin and Sinema want very different things, both in terms of revenue and programs,” a source close to Biden told Politico. “If you just took their currently presented red lines you wouldn’t have enough left to get this past progressives in the House and Senate. It wouldn’t raise enough money and it wouldn’t do enough big programs.”

Sinema’s poll numbers in Arizona have cratered among Democrats and independents. Although she is still three years away from a possible re-election race, a new poll from Data for Progress on Thursday showed that 70% of prospective primary voters have a negative opinion of Sinema, compared to 85% who have a positive opinion of fellow Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., who is up for re-election next year. The poll found Sinema trailing all four potential progressive primary challengers included in the survey.

But her position has won over some support among Republican lawmakers, who have praised her for blocking Biden’s agenda. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, this week praised Sinema by name for “standing up to the radical left” by opposing a proposal supported by nearly all congressional Democrats and a strong majority of voters. And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell coordinated his strategy on last week’s debt ceiling standoff with Sinema and Manchin, reportedly backing away from his opposition to raising the debt limit in order to take pressure off the two Democrats to vote for filibuster reform.

A group closely tied to McConnell is launching a $10 million ad campaign this week, paid for by undisclosed donors, that attacks Democrats over the $3.5 trillion proposal, according to The Washington Post. The group’s Arizona ad targets Kelly, who supports the proposal, and “takes the unusual route of praising … Sinema, a moderate and the favorite Democrat of McConnell.”

The QAnon playbook: Republicans make school board meetings the new battleground

In the Donald Trump era, GOP politics are mainly about trolling. So it’s no surprise that Ohio Senate candidate Josh Mandel manifested this week as an in-flesh version of an egg avatar tweeting memes about DEMON-crats and the glories of horse paste. The unlucky recipients of Mandel’s trolling were members of a school board in a suburb of Cincinnati, where Mandel showed up to grandstand despite not having children in the district. His complaints were incoherent — a muddled mix of whining about mask mandates, screeching that “children should not be forced to learn about to pick a gender,” and something about the district’s book-keeping practices — but of course, actually making sense was not the point. The point was to get attention by being a jerk. 

So Mandel walked himself through the standard troll protocol: Escalate obnoxious behavior until the target is forced to block you, or in this case, kick you out. Then sanctimoniously declare yourself a victim to your own followers, martyred by the censorious liberals who can’t handle the truth bombs you were supposedly dropping. 

Mandel followed this script faithfully. He declared on Twitter — freely and without a hint of self-awareness — that his “free speech” was being suppressed. He was just there to “defend moms and dads,” he sanctimoniously insisted, before accusing the school board of “using kids as pawns in a political game.”

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As with most accusations leveled by right-wingers, this was really a confession.

The Ohio school board — like every other school board affected by the coordinated assault by unhinged right-wingers screaming about mask mandates and “critical race theory” — is just trying to navigate the difficult problem of educating children during a pandemic. It’s Republicans who are using kids as political pawns, staging these increasingly ridiculous confrontations at school boards. It’s nothing more than political theater to motivate the GOP base for the 2022 midterms. 

They learned these tactics from the QAnon cult.

QAnon is, at its heart, a fascist movement dedicated to ending American democracy and, like many fascist movements, regards their leader, Donald Trump, as a god-like figure. But coming at people straight with that pitch is a tough sell. So, instead, the QAnon pitch is about “the children.” They lure people in with lurid conspiracy theories about a worldwide pedophile cult, the sort of thing that, if it were true, really would be a cause to take action. Once in, the lies about “saving the children” serve as a justification, both to outsiders and to silence doubts in the followers. How can you call them fascists when all they want to do is “save the children?”

The beauty of using “the children” as a cover story is that it is blanket permission to be a monster. Any level of harassment or even violence can be justified, as long as protecting the innocence of children is invoked. (See: The attempted overthrow of American democracy by QAnon fanatics.) No wonder Republican operators have been inspired to take a page directly out of the QAnon playbook to manufacture this nationwide assault on school boards. Using imaginary threats to children as a recruitment-and-rationalization strategy works.  

Republicans’ cleaned up the conspiracy theory a little, as accusing Tom Hanks of pedophilia is a tough one to trick mainstream journalists into repeating. So the mainstream GOP version of the conspiracy theory is now “critical race theory” and something about how mask mandates are a sinister effort to wrest away parental authority, instead of a common sense health regulation. But the basic gist is the same: Pretend to believe that evil liberals want to hurt children, and use that as a permission slip to act on every antisocial impulse. 

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To be certain, Republican organizers have long understood that their base is composed of wannabe trolls just aching for an excuse to freak out in public. This understanding was harnessed in the early years of Barack Obama’s presidency to protest his economic stimulus and in the GOP effort to prevent the Affordable Care Act from passing. The “Tea Party” started off as a total Astroturf affair, funded by the Koch brothers and organized by GOP operatives, built to look like a “grassroots” uprising of conservatives supposedly irate at social spending programs. But it tapped into a very real longing among everyday Republican voters to have racist temper tantrums in public. They just needed a cover story, and the Koch brothers gave it to them. Pop on a tricorner hat, drop the “without representation” part of the American revolutionary complaint about taxation, and now it’s “patriotic” to scream barely coded racist vitriol at the local town hall meeting. The current assault on school boards follows the same formula. 

“The sudden interest in school boards is not an organic grassroots movement of angry parents,” but “an effort orchestrated by seasoned right-wing political operatives,” Judd Legum at Popular Info writes, in a piece that identifies both the organizers, drawn heavily from the GOP consultant class and their GOP-linked funders. These people are then laundered into “concerned parents” — with no mention of their political affiliations — on Fox News. The organizing is deliberately constructed to look amateurish, as if this were just local parents having authentic reactions to local politics, instead of a well-financed national movement to construct a mass hysteria, aimed solely at the goal of electing Republicans. 

The strategy works very well, because, as GOP operatives understand the scream-at-waiters-and-flight-attendant energy of America’s Kens and Karens. Add to the mix the QAnon-esque fake concern for “the children,” and that anti-social energy becomes explosive, as school board members across the country are finding out to their dismay. 

No one should be fooled. Neither the organizers behind this Astroturf effort nor the ordinary Republican voters caught up in the excitement care one whit about American children. If they did, they sure wouldn’t want them spreading COVID-19 in schools. In a broader sense, people who actually care about children want to fight climate change, want families to have access to affordable and quality child care, and want children born into homes where they are wanted and welcome — all values Democrats stand for (well, mostly) and Republicans universally oppose. Children are not harmed by learning racism is bad or by being protected from the novel coronavirus. But if these QAnon-style tactics work to elect Republicans in 2022, American children’s futures are in very real peril indeed. 

How this baker turned her guest room into a bakery

If you walk down Lafayette Avenue between Grand and Classon in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, you might catch a glimpse of a blonde woman popping her head out of a second-floor window as she lowers a pulley basket containing a paper-wrapped parcel down to a neighbor. Her name is Carla Finley, and the package is a sourdough boule (or a sheet of grape-and-za’atar focaccia, or maybe three toasted pecan cinnamon rolls). Look closer, and you’ll see a rack stacked with warm bread in the window. Shout hello and Finley’ll drop you a card for Apt. 2 Bread, the bakery she runs out of her apartment.

Finely launched Apt. 2 Bread in March 2020, an anxious month for us all. She had been furloughed from her baking job at the Italian-Mediterranean restaurant Il Buco, which she had recently started after a year spent working at the Brooklyn sourdough mecca She Wolf. Apt. 2 Bread was a way for her to stay sane by continuing to use her hands, while also feeding those locked down in her neighborhood, the best way she knew how — with freshly baked bread.

It’s a similar story to many of the restaurant workers who found themselves suddenly unemployed at the onset of the pandemic. Personal pop-ups became an outlet for chefs to exercise their creativity and skills while simultaneously giving back to their communities — and putting some cash in their pockets. With a simple scroll through Instagram, you could find Korean dosirak, Caribbean roti, pints of ice cream, and more, all made from scratch by a talented cast of cooks. It was a dark period, but a glorious time to eat, so long as you were plugged in to the pop-up scene.

Today, many of those pandemic-born pop-ups have ceased to exist. Some transformed into brick-and-mortar businesses. Other chefs simply returned to work in restaurant kitchens. “The thought of going back to a restaurant did cross my mind last fall, when COVID had let up in a small way,” Finely remembers. “And then pretty much right away, I realized I just didn’t have an interest in the idea of relying on another person for my livelihood during a time of panic. It didn’t sit right.” But in order to make Apt. 2 Bread work financially, she had to grow. Demand continued to rise for weekly subscriptions of her sourdough boules and especially for slabs of her fluffy focaccia studded with Castelvetrano olives. “I love the subscriptions, because it typically means that they are people who live nearby, and I really just want to be the neighborhood bread lady,” Finley says.

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She was on the waitlist for a Rofco stone oven from Belgium, which is known for its compact size and ability to produce professional-quality bread — perfect for expanding a home bakery — but the arrival date kept getting pushed due to pandemic-induced demand. Finley considered canceling the order and moving her production to a commissary kitchen, or to a neighborhood restaurant that offered up their pizza oven, but nothing panned out. So she doubled down.

“I was like, ‘I’m not going to cancel it, I’m not going to cancel it,'” Finley recounts, “‘I’m just gonna give it a go.’ I knew I had the support from neighbors and beyond, from people who’ve followed my journey.” She also, luckily, had an extra room in her apartment. Her roommate had moved out, and since then, she and her partner had been using it for storage or as a crashing pad for friends. The idea to expand Apt. 2 Bread into a fully functioning bakery at home, in the same apartment it has always operated from, was cemented after a fortunate call with her landlord. “I just laid it all out, told her I’d have to get electrical work done, and explained that this was how I was making money during the pandemic. And she approved,” Finley says. (She’s also certified as a home processor under the Department of Agriculture and Markets.)

As she waited for her oven to finally arrive, she had that electrical work done. She raised some funds from her community to buy an industrial mixer. And she designed her miniature home bakery, mapping out dimensions with tape on the floor before deciding which baker’s bench to buy, installing cooling racks overhead, and stacking shelves with 10-pound bags of King Arthur bread flour and 22-quart Cambro tubs of locally grown and milled spelt and rye.

When the Rofco arrived in mid-July, it was off to the races with recipe testing. With her new oven, Finley could quadruple her output. She added another focaccia flavor (the grape-za’atar) and a whole-grain sourdough batard, tweaked her cinnamon buns to include earthy black walnuts (which she’s since swapped for pecans, as a nod to her Texas roots), and developed her sourdough shokupan and potato pan loaves, baking them off in the big rectangular oven while peeking out at her bird’s-eye view of Lafayette Avenue. Unlike her apartment’s kitchen, where she used to do all of her baking, Finley’s new bakery — which she officially reopened for business in August — is street-facing.

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Finley is the first to admit that lowering freshly baked goods from her window down to customers on the sidewalk is “just cool.” And yet the main reason that she installed a pulley system was to eliminate all of the trips she had to take up and down her building’s stairs to hand-deliver loaves. That’s not to say she won’t still stop and have a chat. “I think the reason people come is, yes, they like the bread. But also, it’s the experience. It’s nice to say hello and ask about the weather,” she says.

Apt. 2 Bread functions through pre-orders, as it’s nearly impossible for Finley to take orders in real-time as a one-woman show operating out of a two-bedroom apartment. Still, one of her signature blistered focaccias, slicked in grassy olive oil and sprinkled with flaky sea salt, could be yours with a week’s notice. She hopes to figure out a way to sell bread to walk-up customers in the future, but for now, it all somehow, miraculously, works. It’s a particular magic marriage: homemade goods baked professionally. “I think for my products specifically, just because they’re made by me in my home, they’re a little nicer,” she says. As you rip into your warm treat and take that first chewy bite walking down Lafayette, you’ll see what she means.

Trump threatens to withhold future support for GOP: “Republicans will not be voting in ’22 or ’24”

Donald Trump, who has insistently pushed the baseless notion that the 2020 election was marred by sweeping election fraud, appears to be dissuading his supporters from voting in the 2022 and 2024 elections if the GOP fails to “solve” the apparent fraud. 

“If we don’t solve the Presidential Election Fraud of 2020 (which we have thoroughly and conclusively documented), Republicans will not be voting in ’22 or ’24,” Trump said in a Wednesday statement. “It is the single most important thing for Republicans to do.”

Last year, Trump’s allies echoed a similar message to the former president’s voters, urging them to sit out of the Georgia runoffs until the party’s Senate incumbents – former U.S. Sens. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., and David Perdue, R-Ga. – backed demands to hold a legislative session to probe Trump’s defeat in the Peach State. 

“They have not earned your vote,” pro-Trump attorney L. Lin Wood told voters. “Don’t you give it to them. Why would you go back and vote in another rigged election, for god’s sake! Fix it! You gotta fix it!”

Ultimately, Loeffler and Purdue were narrowly ousted by their Democratic opponents, former pastor Raphael Warnock and former investigative journalist Jon Osofff.  

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As it stands, no evidence of widespread or systematic fraud in the 2020 presidential election has emerged, despite the host of Republican-backed efforts to unearth foul play.

Chief among these efforts was Arizona’s election audit of Maricopa County, which was run by Cyber Ninjas, a company that had no apparent experience in conducting recounts. In October, after months of circus-like operational dysfunction, Cyber Ninjas produced results indicating that President Biden had in fact beaten Trump by a greater margin than was originally reported. Outside election experts strongly doubted whether all the ballots were even counted in the recount, The New York Times reported. 

Other audit efforts have taken place in states like Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

This week, Michigan Trump supporters launched a ballot drive calling for a “full forensic audit” of the 2020 election, according to The Detroit Free Press. GOP congressional candidate Jon Rocha said that the state will need to procure 340,000 signatures in order to prompt a “veto-proof” investigation from the state’s legislature. The ballot drive demand’s fly in the face of strong evidence indicating that Biden, who saw 150,000 more votes than Trump in Michigan, won fairly. Back in March, the Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson announced that 250 separate audits throughout the state confirmed the “accuracy and integrity” of the state’s election. 

This week in Georgia, one of the last remaining Trump-backed lawsuits alleging fraud was dismissed by a state superior court, ruling that the case’s plaintiffs did not have proper standing. The decision likely spells failure for any attempted Arizona-style audits in the Peach State, Forbes noted. 

In Pennsylvania, Trump’s election crusade appears running smoother. Last week, NPR reported, state Republicans had issued a “wide-ranging subpoena for the personal information of millions of voters.” The information will reportedly encompass voter addresses, driver’s license numbers, and partial Social Security numbers in order for the state GOP to verify voters’ identities. Past court rulings and previous audits have indicated that there is no need for an official audit. 

Wisconsin, meanwhile, is conducting three separate reviews of 2020 election results. They are respectively being led by conservative former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, state Rep. Janel Brandtjen, and Wisconsin’s nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau, according to NPR. Like every other state under review, Wisconsin has in the past conducted multiple routine audits of the 2020 election, and found no indication of outcome-altering fraud.