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Florida Surgeon General leaving Ron DeSantis’ administration amid massive COVID surge

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will be battling the coronavirus pandemic without the aid of his current surgeon general.

“Surgeon General Scott Rivkees, the state’s top medical official, is exiting Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration in September,” Florida Politics reported and WFLA-TV confirmed. “Rivkees, whose time in government has been marked by his absence from public view throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, will exit the administration when his contract expires Sept. 20. The news comes as Florida continues trudging through the pandemic with peak cases and hospitalizations on account of the delta variant,.”

Following the news breaking, DeSantis Press Secretary Christina Pushaw issued a statement.

“We thank Dr. Rivkees for his meaningful work during the most challenging pandemic of our lifetime. We appreciate his service to the people of Florida and wish him the best in his future endeavors,” the administration said.

Ana Ceballos, a state government reporter for the Miami Herald, remembered one of the last times Dr. Rivkees was seen with DeSantis.

“Floridians will be keeping their distance and wearing face masks for up to a year until a COVID-19 vaccine exists, Florida Surgeon General Scott Rivkees said Monday before being whisked away by the governor’s spokeswoman,” the Tampa Bay Times reported in April of 2020. “The surgeon general’s comments appear to conflict with what Gov. Ron DeSantis and his political ally, President Donald Trump, have said about returning to pre-coronavirus life.”

How Rolling Stones’ Charlie Watts infused one of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll bands with a little jazz

In an era when rock drummers were larger-than-life showmen with big kits and egos to match, Charlie Watts remained the quiet man behind a modest drum set. But Watts wasn’t your typical rock drummer.

Part of the Rolling Stones setup from 1963 until his death on August 24, 2021, Watts provided the back-beat to their greatest hits by injecting jazz sensibilities – and swing – into the Stones’ sound.

As a musicologist and co-editor of the Cambridge Companion to the Rolling Stones – as well as a fan who has seen the Stones live more than 20 times over the past five decades – I see Watts as being integral to the band’s success.

Like Ringo Starr and other drummers who emerged during the 1960s British pop explosion, Watts was influenced by the swing and big band sound that was hugely popular in the U.K. in the 1940s and 1950s.

Modest with the sticks

Watts wasn’t formally trained as a jazz drummer, but jazz musicians like Jelly Roll Morton, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk were early influences.

In a 2012 interview with the New Yorker, he recalled how their records informed his playing style.

“I bought a banjo, and I didn’t like the dots on the neck,” Watts said. “So I took the neck off, and at the same time I heard a drummer called Chico Hamilton, who played with Gerry Mulligan, and I wanted to play like that, with brushes. I didn’t have a snare drum, so I put the banjo head on a stand.”

Watts’ first group, the Jo Jones All Stars, were a jazz band. And elements of jazz remained throughout his Stones career, providing Watts with a wide stylistic versatility that was critical to the Stones’ forays beyond blues and rock to country, reggae, disco, funk and even punk.

There was a modesty in his playing that came from his jazz learning. There are no big rock drum solos. He made sure the attention was never on him or his drumming – his role was keeping the songs going forward, giving them movement.

He also didn’t use a big kit – no gongs, no scaffolding. He kept a modest one more typically found in jazz quartets and quintets.

Likewise, Watts’ occasional use of brushes over sticks – such as in “Melody” from 1976’s “Black and Blue” – more explicitly shows his debt to jazz drummers.

But he didn’t come in with one style. Watts was trained to adapt, while keeping elements of jazz. You can hear it in the R’n’ B of “(I can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” to the infernal samba-like rhythm of “Sympathy For The Devil” – two songs in which Watts’ contribution is central.

And a song like “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” from 1971’s “Sticky Fingers” develops from one of Keith Richards’ highest caliber riffs into a long concluding instrumental section, unique in the Stones’ song catalog, of Santana-esque Latin jazz, containing some great syncopated rhythmic shots and tasteful hi-hat playing through which Watts drives the different musical sections.

You hear similar elements in “Gimme Shelter” and other classic Rolling Stones songs – it is perfectly placed drum fills and gestures that make the song and surprise you, always in the background and never dominating.

Powering the “engine room”

So central was Watts to the Stones that when bassist Bill Wyman retired from the band after the 1989 “Steel Wheels” tour, it was Watts who was tasked with picking his replacement.

He needed a bass player that would fit his style. But his choice of Darryl Jones as Wyman’s replacement was not the only key partnership for Watts. He played off the beat, complementing Richards’ very syncopated, riff-driven guitar style. Watts and Richards set the groove for so many Stones songs, such as “Honky Tonk Women” or “Start Me Up.” If you watched them live, you’d notice Richards looking at Watts at all times – his eyes fixated on the drummer, searching for where the musical accents are, and matching their rhythmic “shots” and off-beats.

Watts did not aspire to be a virtuoso like John Bonham of Led Zeppelin or The Who’s Keith Moon – there was no drumming excess. From that initial jazz training, he kept his distance from outward gestures.

But for nearly six decades, he was the main occupant, as Richards put it, of the Rolling Stones’ legendary “engine room.”

Victor Coelho, Professor of Music, Boston University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

“Good Morning America” boss and ABC embroiled in sexual assault lawsuit

ABC is currently in the throes of a scandal that’s left workers “angry and confused,” following a lawsuit that went public Wednesday morning and alleges former “Good Morning America” boss Michael Corn sexually assaulted two women, CNN reports.

The lawsuit filed by former “GMA” producer Kirstyn Crawford accuses Corn of sexually assaulting her in 2015 and sexually assaulting another ABC News producer, Jill McClain, in 2010 and 2011. Crawford also accuses ABC of ignoring the assaults, “[looking] the other way” and “[elevating] Corn through the ranks due to his commercial success as a producer,” according to NBC, which obtained access to the lawsuit. Corn abruptly left his position earlier this year.

While Crawford says “GMA” host George Stephanopoulos urged her to report the alleged assault, she claims that Heather Riley, who was senior director of publicity for “GMA” at the time, “cautioned Crawford that reporting the assault and harassment might get ‘messy.'” Riley currently serves as vice president of crisis management at ABC.

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ABC has since put out a brief statement that says the network is “committed to upholding a safe and supportive work environment,” and “disputes the claims made and will address this matter in court.” 

While the disturbing details of the lawsuit are enough to cause upset, some of the anger and confusion stems from ABC workers learning about the lawsuit through reporting from the Wall Street Journal rather than management, they told CNN reporter Oliver Darcy.

Outrage from being kept in the dark prompted a “tense” all-staff phone call on Wednesday afternoon, in which ABC President Kim Godwin addressed workers’ many questions and concerns. Questions Godwin fielded included why ABC said it “disputed” the allegations, why workers did not learn about the lawsuit from management first, and whether “GMA” would publicly address the allegations on air. Godwin’s answers to these and other questions were unclear and ambiguous, per CNN’s reporting on the internal call.

Like ABC, Corn, who now works as head of news at Nexstar’s “NewsNation,” also disputes the allegations against him. His legal team has since provided emails that appear to show Crawford and Corn engaging in friendly conversation shortly after Crawford claims she was assaulted and were “not the words and actions of a woman who had been assaulted hours before.”  Similarly, in response to McClain’s claims, Corn noted that she invited him to her wedding and “repeatedly communicated to me and my wife that she missed me after leaving her position at ABC.”

Meanwhile, a Nexstar spokesperson told CNN that the company has “no comment on anything that may or may not have happened prior to Mr. Corn’s employment with Nexstar.” 

The reported frustrations of ABC workers over lack of transparency are warranted at a time of increased light being shed on allegations of abuse and misconduct at media companies. Earlier this summer, Washington Post reporter Felicia Sonmez filed a lawsuit against her employer over a policy that had barred her from reporting on sexual misconduct issues after she came forward as a survivor of sexual assault. Before that, CNN faced backlash for bringing on legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin after an incident in which Toobin had masturbated on a Zoom call last year. A few years earlier, Matt Lauer was ousted from NBC after he was accused of assaulting several women in his office.

This pattern of allegations of sexual abuse at media companies is particularly concerning, because in many cases, men who may be accused of abuse could be ones in power who make decisions about how sexual abuse is covered and reported on. 

In and out of the media industry, sexual assault is endemic to our society, with one in five women experiencing rape or attempted rape in their lifetime. It stands to reason many women journalists, who already face endemic gendered harassment from their audiences as part of the job, are also survivors, often forced to walk on eggshells to not be seen as a liability by their “objective” employers, or intimidated into silence lest they report their assault and things get “messy.”

As Crawford’s lawsuit moves forward, ABC owes its employees transparency and communication. And Nexstar, where Corn is currently employed, can choose to be silent about the allegations, but at least owes its workers some communication about how it will keep them safe in the workplace, and how the company handles allegations of misconduct. 

A guide to “The Other Two” before jumping into the zany HBO Max comedy’s new season

More than two years have passed since “The Other Two” hilariously — and sometimes brutally — skewered the entertainment industry for our amusement. And now thanks to the advent of HBO Max, it’s getting a bigger platform to continue its shenanigans.

Co-created by former “Saturday Night Live” head writers Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider, the series follows Brooke (Heléne Yorke) and Cary Dubek (Drew Tarver), two millennials forced to confront their life and career failings after their 13-year-old brother, known as Chase Dreams (Case Walker), becomes an overnight singing sensation in the wake of a viral music video.

The series, which debuted on Comedy Central in early 2019, is a sharp and deeply funny satire, but in between the siblings’ ruthless snark and pop culture references is a sweet comedy about a family attempting to move past the death of its patriarch. 

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“The Other Two” moves to HBO Max for its second season. And while its 10-episode first season will take you less than five hours to binge, here’s a quick recap if you’d like to jump right in. Or if you’ve forgotten what happened because it’s been so long since the show aired, here is everything you need to know about “The Other Two,” its characters, and where they left off. Spoilers!

After a meteoric rise to the top, Chase decides to retire and go to college

“The Other Two” picks up shortly after Chase’s music video for the inane “Marry U At Recess” goes viral. It’s a pitch-perfect parody of pop music with very little substance, as evidenced by its opening lyrics:

Girl, since the age of 10
I knew that I would spend
My whole life with you 
‘Cause, girl, you’re the cutest girl
In the entire world
And I would die for you 

Chase’s popularity continues to rise throughout the first season. As easygoing as they come, this Bieber wannabe appears on various talk shows, signs record deals, embarks on PR-created relationships with other teen celebrities, stars in oversexualized music videos and partakes in obnoxious album release parties. But after a disastrous performance at the VMAs in the Season 1 finale, Chase worries he’s upset his family and decides to retire at 14 to attend college on the advice of Michael Che (yes, that Michael Che). He is accepted to NYU after tweeting at the university’s main Twitter account.

Brooke is a former professional dancer who’s finally found direction

The eldest child of Pat Dubek (Molly Shannon), Brooke is a former dancer whose career ended after she broke her ankle (on the plus side, her toes are finally back to normal). At the start of Season 1, Brooke is aimlessly stumbling around New York, working (and getting fired from) various jobs while sleeping around after breaking up with her boyfriend, Lance (Josh Segarra), who wants to be a shoe designer. With dreams of being famous without any real talent or means of getting there — and with no job and nowhere to live — Brooke decides to hitch her wagon to Chase, becoming his personal assistant. By the end of the season, however, she has discovered she wants to be a manager and could potentially be very good at it . . . if she actually knew anything about being a manager.

Heléne Yorke and Drew Tarver in “The Other Two” (Jon Pack/TBS/WarnerMedia)

Cary is an aspiring actor left with no opportunities once Chase quits

Cary, the middle Dubek sibling, is an aspiring actor who totally got into NYU but couldn’t go (this is definitely what happened). He spends his days waiting tables while auditioning for roles in commercials that require him to act like he just smelled a fart and performing in black box theaters as a man who’s asleep. He finally experiences a small amount of fame when Chase releases a song about him being gay, which declares “that’s OK.” But Cary is desperate for his own big break, so he attempts to ride Chase’s coattails as well. Unfortunately, just when he has the opportunity to star in a movie in which Debra Messing plays his and Chase’s grandmother, the younger Dubek quits showbiz and Cary is right back where he started. Despite his career failures, though, Cary does manage to make miniscule headway in his personal life after realizing hooking up with his confusing roommate only makes him feel worse about himself. 

Pat rides Chase’s wave all the way to her own daytime talk show

As Pat, Molly Shannon is having a moment playing comedic moms after her judgmental turn in “The White Lotus.” When Chase’s music career begins to take off, Pat and Chase move out of their home in Ohio and into actor Justin Theroux‘s New York City apartment, which comes equipped with an indoor pool and a toilet that looks like a motorcycle. She writes books about sea creatures that are based on her life as Chase’s mother and appears on “Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen” but beneath her “year of yes!” aspirations is a woman grieving the loss of her alcoholic husband after he froze to death on the roof of their home the year prior. Despite her pain and sorrow, she’s extremely supportive of her children and would rather celebrate their successes than her own. This is why no one but Streeter (Ken Marino), Chase’s one-time manager and Pat’s new boyfriend, is aware that she has landed her own daytime talk show, which will be a major plot point in Season 2.

Lance designs shoes (and is the secret star of the show)

Brooke’s ex-boyfriend Lance, portrayed by scene-stealer Josh Segarra, started at the Foot Locker and now he’s . . . well, it’s not entirely clear where Lance ends up at the end of Season 1. What we do know is that his dreams of being a shoe designer are beginning to take shape — Chase even wears one of his designs during his VMAs performance! — and that he is not with Brooke, who attempts to rekindle their relationship in the finale after spending the summer hooking up with relative strangers and remaining unhappy. Lance, having realized he is better off without Brooke and has been doing better on his own, turns her down. 

With all that under your belt, you’re now ready to wade into Season 2.

“The Other Two” premieres with two episodes on Thursday, Aug. 26 on HBO Max and releases subsequent episodes weekly.

“Jeopardy!” is bending over backwards to keep Mike Richards on board – but will it do any good?

In what feels like a callback to last summer’s wave of corporate white guilt and flashy, short-lived symbols of solidarity, ousted “Jeopardy!” host Mike Richards — who remains an executive producer on the show — is reportedly attending sensitivity training, according to the New York Times. The Times also reports Richards will have a “minder,” a veteran business and legal affairs executive at the studio named Suzanne Prete who will essentially “oversee” Richards to curb inappropriate behaviors.

The baffling news follows Richards’ stepping down from his brief tenure as a new co-host of the game show after numerous pieces of his controversial past were unearthed by reporters and diligent, sleuthing fans. After lawsuits alleging Richards had mistreated workers and discriminated against a pregnant employee resurfaced, The Ringer dedicated countless hours to exposing the former “Price is Right” producer for his history of sexist, racist and other offensive comments on a 2013-2014 podcast he hosted.

Shortly after Richards’ “Randumb Show” comments came to light, he resigned as host — but to the confusion and chagrin of many “Jeopardy!” fans, he remains on as executive producer and will still play a significant role in choosing the next individual who will co-host with Mayim Bialik. Many have since been asking how a man deemed too inappropriate and possibly biased toward marginalized people to host a game show can somehow be an appropriate and unbiased hiring manager and producer for the show.

If “sensitivity training” and what amounts to corporate babysitting for Richards are supposed to assuage viewers’ concerns, it’s really only raising more questions. Like, why keeping the “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel of Fortune” producer on seems to be worth any cost to Sony, for one thing. Because it is costing the show plenty to keep him on payroll – not to mention costing the show its good name – and for all of these extras to bring him up to snuff as a minimally inoffensive employee.

Sensitivity training has been a fixture in corporate workplaces for years now, though it’s really been having a moment since 2020 following a national uprising for racial justice and an onslaught of important exposés on racism and anti-Blackness in many if not most workplaces. But there are also doubts by researchers, advocates, and of course, those on the receiving end of discrimination, about the actual effectiveness of these trainings.

According to one study, nearly two-thirds of human resources specialists reported no positive effects from workplace diversity trainings. Another report found that diversity training as a requirement or punishment for misbehavior can actually instead lead to resentment toward marginalized people and employees or coworkers of color.

Rather than support or meaningfully improve workplace conditions for employees of color, sensitivity trainings often function instead as a public relations stunt for corporations like, say, Sony, that are under fire for their mistreatment of workers of color. But that’s not to say that the answer is for employers to simply do nothing when faced with accusations of racism or maintaining toxic work environments. 

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There are plenty of tangible actions, policies and programs that can be implemented to improve marginalized people’s experience in the workplace: closing race and gender pay gaps, improving flexibility and benefits, establishing mentorship programs for marginalized workers, supporting with child care needs, prioritizing diversity in hiring practices, or even just listening to workers on how their managers can heal a toxic workplace. 

One such way to heal a toxic workplace might be to root out sources of toxicity, perhaps, for example, by not making a man accused of pregnancy discrimination and a history of racism and misogyny a decision-maker in who will soon become the face of a nationally beloved game show. But Sony appears committed to taking a different approach and spending the time and money to do so.

Per the same Times report, ​​Sony executive Ravi Ahuja spoke with “Jeopardy!” staffers on a phone call on Monday, asking staff to move forward now that Richards will no longer be host. 

Richards was also on the call, and he reportedly apologized and asked for a chance to show the “Jeopardy!” staff “who he really is.” His spokesperson told the Times that “Mike is committed to continuing as the executive producer of ‘Jeopardy!’ and ‘Wheel of Fortune,'” and won’t be negotiating an exit from Sony.

As Sony now resumes its seemingly endless search for the next “Jeopardy!” host who will share hosting duties with Bialik — who also isn’t without her controversies — Bialik will take over hosting episodes as filming for the trivia show’s 38th season remains underway.

So to recap: After Richards tarnished the “Jeopardy!” reputation and legacy, Sony is: a) letting him keep his incredibly high-paying job in a position of power, b) giving him “training” to be a decent human being, c) and giving him a buffer in the form of a “minder.” In the meantime while he gets all of that coddling, the show is in triage as it seeks a new host who has the challenge and burden of recouping the show’s glory.

What sort of hold does he have over the show anyway?! It sure looks like all of this effort is going into helping Richards – not the show itself and certainly not the employees who’ve had to work with him.

Suffice it to say, none of us, not even diehard “Jeopardy!” fans, ever wanted to have to pay this much attention to the show, or know this much about the not-so-secret life of an aggressively mediocre white man like Mike Richards. Before Richards became a household name synonymous with corrupt hiring and slut-shaming models, or, hey, at least a staple of daily Twitter rage discourse, few knew he existed. Instead, today, we’re all stuck knowing he thinks women who don one-piece swimwear are “frumpy,” and sympathizing with the poor souls who are now stuck teaching him that racist comments are bad.

Trump likely made illegal donation to Florida attorney general, new “smoking gun” evidence shows

Newly revealed records show Donald Trump likely broke the law by issuing a campaign donation to the Florida attorney general investigating his fraudulent university.

The Trump Foundation issued a $25,000 check in 2013 personally signed by the real estate mogul and reality TV star to a political action committee associated with Pam Bondi’s re-election campaign, and The Daily Beast obtained new records that dispute Trump Organization denials made when the donation became an issue during the 2016 campaign.

“It kind of blows up their whole story,” said Jordan Libowitz, communications director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “The Trump Organization staffers knew they were making this political donation. There are no questions about it. There is no ambiguity.”

Libowitiz, whose watchdog group filed the complaint that exposed the scandal, called the evidence “a smoking gun,” and the records show Trump Organization employees were explicitly told the donation was made to a political group — which goes against claims made by chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, campaign officials and Trump Foundation executives.

“I probably didn’t know at that time that we probably shouldn’t be using foundation funds for this type of thing,” said Trump Organization accountant Jeff McConney during a 2017 interview with investigators from the New York attorney general’s office. “We made a mistake.”

But an email from Aug. 28, 2013, shows Bondi’s campaign finance director Deborah Ramsey Aleksander provided the name and federal tax identification number for the “And Justice for All” PAC, which she described as an ECO, or “electioneering communications organization, to Trump’s longtime executive assistant Rhona Graff.

“Again, it was a pleasure meeting you today!!! Thanks again for always being so responsive and wonderful to work with.” Aleksander wrote to Graff. “Let Mr. Trump know that we are SO VERY thankful for his commitment of 25k and If he wants to make it 50k, that’s perfectly acceptable. 🙂 Seriously, thanks again for everything!!!”

Aleksander provided Graff with a copy of the PAC’s W-9 form, which lists the group’s “federal tax classification” as a “political organization,” in a follow-up email on Sept. 11, 2013, and two days later Trump himself sent Bondi a check with a signed letter that misspelled her name and told her “you are the greatest!”

The signed check was issued from The Donald J. Trump Foundation, Inc., in likely violation of Section 501(c)(3) of U.S. tax code, which prohibits political donations by tax-exempt charities.

The Trump Foundation was eventually dissolved after the New York attorney general’s office found a “shocking pattern of illegality” and the Trump Organization and Weisselberg were indicted this summer for criminal tax fraud, while Bondi, who reportedly tried to return the donation after it was revealed, never did investigate Trump University, which settled three fraud lawsuits for $25 million in November 2016.

Bondi joined Trump’s impeachment defense team shortly after leaving office in 2019.

Capitol cop who shot Ashli Babbitt defends his decision — and says he saved lives

Lt. Michael Byrd, the Capitol Police officer who fatally shot MAGA rioter Ashli Babbitt, defended his actions on Thursday and said that he believed he saved lives.

In an interview with NBC News, Byrd argued that when he discharged his weapon during the January 6th Capitol riots, he was trying to protect members of Congress from people who were trying to break into the congressional chamber.

“If they get through that door, they’re into the House chamber and upon the members of Congress,” he told NBC News’ Lester Holt.

He then said that he believed that many more people would have been killed had he not acted.

“I know that day I saved countless lives,” Byrd said. “I know members of Congress, as well as my fellow officers and staff, were in jeopardy and in serious danger. And that’s my job.”

Nonetheless, Byrd said that he wishes that he didn’t have to use lethal force at all.

“I tried to wait as long as I could,” he told Holt. “I hoped and prayed no one tried to enter through those doors. But their failure to comply required me to take the appropriate action to save the lives of members of Congress and myself and my fellow officers.”

Read the whole interview here.

“The Good Fight” bosses on that inevitable violent finale, optimism and delivering us to “Evil”

Everything was going so well, until people decided to mess things up. Then, suddenly, it wasn’t.

We could be talking about the great experiment that is America, or the micro-experiment that was the 9 ¾ Judicial Circuit Court that features centrally in the fifth season of “The Good Fight.” The unofficial court, which ran out of the back of a copy shop and was presided over by Mandy Patinkin’s Judge Wackner, presents itself as an idealistic, fairer alternative to the conventional justice system. At first.

Where established courts are thoroughly manipulated by politicians to favor the wealthy over the common man – a hard truth explored in the show’s shortened fourth season – this one ran on a much purer principle.

Wackner, a self-styled arbiter with no formal legal training, decided that since the law doesn’t work for the people on the ground, he would create a justice system that does. Enough people agreed with him that soon, his alternative court attracted financial backing from self-interested billionaire David Cord (Stephen Lang). Cord brought cameras and streamed its proceedings on the Internet, transforming Wackner into a star.

But the show also inspired other community-based courts, each with their own set of laws – and attracted extremists, which was Cord’s intent all along. The 9 ¾ Judicial Circuit Court matters, he posits, as long as we agree it matters. And if we don’t agree? Well, somebody will simply find a new way. That may have sounded lovely coming out of an idealist’s mouth. From a corrupt power broker who exists to sow dissent, it’s downright frightening.

This was always the point “The Good Fight” co-creators and showrunners Robert and Michelle King sought to make through Wackner. His heart may have been in the right place. It certainly was in his final ruling, which he preceded by pointing out that “so much of our country has been built on people finding their own way. But if we only follow individualism, that way lies chaos.”

And that’s precisely what he reaps by ruling against secessionists who come to his court arguing to allow southern Illinois to pull away from the more liberal northern half of the state. From his moment the gavel falls, Wackner’s courtroom devolves into violence, and he and Marissa Gold (Sarah Steele), his assistant and the court’s voice for the defense, hide in a supply closet fearing for their lives. Cord, meanwhile, quietly exits the place unbothered and unscathed.

Season 5 makes up for lost time after the shortened fourth season, saying farewell to longtime characters Lucca Quinn (Cush Jumbo) and the main firm’s name partner Adrian Boseman (Delroy Lindo). It began with a reckoning by way of the Jan. 6 insurrection and ended with one, and the Kings and their writers also shifted the game in other ways. Christine Baranski’s Diane Lockhart at first turns against her partner and friend Liz Reddick (Audra McDonald) after their firm’s mostly Black associates demand Diane, a white woman, relinquish her name partner status. But in the finale, titled “And the Violence Spread.,” Diane relents, agreeing to step down as name partner and work in the trenches with the associates.

All along, though, the Kings designed Patinkin’s Wackner to be the element that would mess with our minds the most. Salon spoke with them this week about what they wanted to say about the justice system through that character, and how “The Good Fight” in some ways relates to their other Paramount + series “Evil.”

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

One of the things that I really enjoyed about this season was the Judge Wackner storyline and what it said about our view of justice which, as you know, has changed significantly in recent years.

The show always connects its overarching themes to politics and culture, as you did with the Trump season. Then of course, there was the ending with Jeffrey Epstein’s secret island last year, which I thought was dark. But this new season finds an even darker ending that seemed a little pessimistic about the future of our justice system. Was that your intention?

Robert King: Uh, yeah.

Michelle King: Maybe, yeah.

Robert King: I think the bottom line is that this year is about January 6, and where it’s headed. But I do think the more pessimistic the show is, the more it has a smile on its face. You know, there’s the sweetness that comes from some of the shows now, “Ted Lasso” and things like that. But you’ve got to try to at least look at the way things are going wrong with eyes open, you know?

There seems to be this breaking up of justice, the idea that justice means one thing in one state and one other thing in another. So the more we our country becomes bifurcated, the more worrisome I think it all is. But we’re not pessimistic people! I mean, I don’t think we are.

Michelle King: One thing that was important to the story was getting an actor like Mandy Patinkin, who brings such warmth and likability to [Judge Wackner].  The audience is meant to like him in the same way that the folks in Wackner’s courtroom like him so much, and kind of get brought along to this idea of, “Yeah, maybe this is good. Maybe he’s really cutting through it.” And then suddenly, you realize, “Oh, dear, I’ve walked into vigilante justice, where laws no longer matter. And it’s one person making choices that are outside the law.” So hopefully, people recognize that because he is a likable character, it’s easily done.

. . . This is really just a continuation of some of the themes of the season before where you saw that subpoenas were no longer demands that you show up in court. They’re just more like, invitations to a dinner party that maybe you accept, and maybe you don’t. This was just stepping that out a little further.

Right. Last season was about the failure of the justice system in terms of how it can be at odds with what we have on the books, with our laws. Another continuation from last season is the show’s examination of the fact that if you have money, you can buy the justice you need. And if you don’t, you’re just at the mercy of the court or whatever person decides that they’re going to use you for their own purposes.

You just said you’re very optimistic, but it seems like we’re coming to a sort of valley in this series, where we’re used to the characters fighting against a decline before meeting a new kind of fight. And so it goes.  But as a nation, and in the show, we’re really hitting a new low.

So what kind of future do you think there is for both the lawyers at STR Laurie [and Reddick and Associates, where the show is set] and the justice system that we’re dealing with?

Michelle King: In terms of the lawyers of STR Laurie, I have faith in our characters that they are fundamentally smart and caring individuals that make mistakes. And that’s something you got to see a lot of this episode, especially between Diane and Liz – that Diane wasn’t right. And yet, you could also see what she was thinking in terms of their fight for power within the firm. Those struggles will remain and those struggles will be real. And yet I anticipate they will get through them.

Robert King:  The difficulty for us is we want to entertain and we want to be honest about what’s happening now. But I do think there were episodes, which are about attempts to solve this kind of ditch we’ve run into. I think we’re going to return to that next year. What are the ways that you could try to get us a little back on track? To return the guardrails to the law, which was always [Adrian Boseman’s] interest.

This year started a bit like Frank Capra’s “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town” with Mandy Patinkin’s character, and then moves towards the movie “Network,” where it’s more like Paddy Chayefsky in the end showing the absurdity of how the country can take things and abuse them. But I do think there’s a way in next season, that things can be brought back on track. I hope that we were not crushing your spirit.

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Not quite. In fact, I’m glad that you brought up Adrian Boseman because after watching the season, I thought back about that conversation that he had with Diane and Liz in the room where they’re all having scotch. [He asked: “Doesn’t justice define the law?” ]  Everything since then has been picking that argument apart. If you perceive any pessimism, that’s where it may come from. And yet, I am curious to know if there’s ever a point where you thought that maybe Wackner’s solution was viable.

Michelle King: Speaking for myself, no. We did not think at the beginning that this was a potential solution. I mean, we saw the trajectory of where this was going and saw that there’s no good can come from an individual, even if they are a thoughtful, well-meaning individual, who takes justice and tries to put their stamp on it.

Robert King: What we wanted was Wackner to kind of say things that made sense to the common man, common woman about the way justice should be brought about. And I think that felt like a more entertaining way to get at this issue of everybody having their own justice system, to show that there are some things that you would agree with, because they do seem to make sense.

Obviously, a lot about this season season was written or significantly shifted after the insurrection. But did the Wackner character exist before the January 6 ?

Robert King: No, he came out after January 6. I remember – it was one of the writers in our room, Aurin Squire, who’s this great writer who just came up with him, the whole cloth. And it was partly, it was this idea of a law unto itself. And it was after January 6.

I’ve been watching “The Good Fight” while watching “Evil” –

Michelle King: We’re so sorry.

Believe me, it’s a good thing. But it seems to me that there’s a connection between the two in that on “The Good Fight,” there are all these on-the-book solutions for operating in morally gray areas to achieve an end, whether that’s considered to be for the greater good, or the opposite of that, in terms of the interests that the lawyers are serving. Whereas “Evil” warns about staying in those areas too long, that they can lead to a bad place. I’m wondering whether what you’re doing on this show bleeds over into what you’re doing with “Evil,” philosophically speaking.

Robert King: First of all, that’s a very good analysis, I do think “Evil” is working with absolutes. And “The Good Fight” is dealing with the gray between the absolutes. Probably, that means “The Good Fight” is the more complex, morally. Science deals with absolutes, you know. There are mathematical certainties. And spirituality deals with absolutes – there’s absolute evil, absolute good. I think as time goes on, “Evil” is going to move more towards a “Good Fight” universe, where even though they continue to talk in absolutes, people are going to act in versions of gray, and approve of actions that are versions of gray. There’s a little bit of a conversation about the moral justification, the Christian or Catholic idea of, is there a moral war? Is there God? Can God approve of war? And it raises this gray area of, are there violent acts that are Christian or supernaturally good in character? That, I think, is the gray area that is more what “The Good Fight” deals with. (To Michelle) What would you say?

Michelle King:  What’s interesting is that in both shows, the characters are adhering to their professions. That in “The Good Fight,” they’re not allowed to be considering absolutes; to do so would be to work against their clients. And in “Evil,” they’re really meant to – they’re there on the team, really, because of their beliefs in absolutes. What the two groups of characters share is a commitment to do their jobs well.

Let’s end on a note about “The Good Fight.” Like I said, I know that this season was a very much a product of, and inspired by, January 6 in a lot of ways and of course, everything that went on in 2020. Are you remaining a little bit open as you look toward the next season? Or do you have a general plan of what you want to cover?

Both: No.

Michelle King: The room has not started yet. And more than any other show we’ve ever done, “The Good Fight” is really influenced by what’s happening in the world. And what happens in the world seems to change hourly. So you really can’t get too far ahead.

Robert King: I would say this: the only plans we seem to have now are for the first episode, like the episode that started Season 4, with Diane thinking she woke up and Hillary was president. That was a plan before we knew what the current events would be. And then this season, because 2020 was like being tumbled around in a dryer for a whole year, we just thought the whole episode would be taking care of characters through the chaos what 2020 had been. So that was decided before. Otherwise, we wait to see. Who knows what’s going to happen with the craziness?

So when you talk about possibly having a more optimistic season next time, we just don’t know, do we?

Robert King: Right. We don’t.

Michelle King: But let’s hope!

All episodes of “The Good Fight” and the latest episodes of “Evil” are streaming on Paramount+. New episodes of “Evil” premiere on Sundays.

Mars’ weird geology is making Perseverance’s job more complicated

Earlier this month, the Perseverance rover set out to collect some rock samples on Mars. It was supposed to be a key moment in the rover’s historic sample-return mission, one in which Perseverance was to collect, store and return Martian rock and soil samples to Earth. (The rocket that will pick up the samples hasn’t launched yet, and may not for almost a decade; currently, Perseverance is doing the grunt work of collection.) To date, Perseverance had been highly successful: its risky landing worked perfectly, and Ingenuity, the 4-pound helicopter that hitched a ride to Mars on Perseverance‘s back, overcame massive barriers to become the first powered-controlled flight on another planet. Compared to those feats, Perseverance’s next task — drilling out a finger-sized hole in a rock — seemed simple. But after the drilling, the collection tube came back empty. Mission control was in disbelief.

As Salon previously reported, scientists rushed to figure out why the sample went missing. Did the drill somehow miss? It didn’t seem so — images from the Red Planet revealed there was a hole in the rock.

So what happened once the drill came out of the rock?

After some sleuthing, NASA’s Perseverance team determined that the rock most likely crumbled into “small fragments” — essentially, a powder. While the pulverization of the rock sample was disappointing to the team, it was also a lesson in Martian geology.

“It’s certainly not the first time Mars has surprised us,” said Kiersten Siebach, an assistant professor of planetary biology at Rice University and participating scientist on the science and operations team for Perseverance. “A big part of exploration is figuring out what tools to use and how to approach the rocks on Mars.”

Siebach explained that something similar sometimes happens to geologists here on Earth. Certain rocks look solid, their appearance having been retained by their chemistry. But weathering events and erosion can weaken that chemistry.

“If you’ve hiked in California, sometimes it looks like you’re hiking next to a rock. But if you kick it, it falls apart into dust,” Siebach said. “It’s probably something like that, where there’s been more weather than anticipated.”

Mars is a curious place, geologically speaking. The surface of the planet is rocky, dusty; and thanks to previous missions like the Sojourner rover, Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity, we know that the soil is toxic. High concentrations of perchlorate compounds, meaning containing chlorine, have been detected and confirmed on multiple occasions. In some spots, there are volcanic basaltic rocks like the kind that we have on Earth in Iceland, Hawaii or Idaho.

Raymond Arvidson, professor of earth and planetary sciences at Washington University in St. Louis and a Curiosity science team member, explained that one big difference between Earth and Mars though is that Earth has active plate tectonics — meaning that Earth’s surface is comprised of vast, continent-spanning “plates” that move and shift and abut against each other, creating valleys and mountains. Such geology has given Earth places like Sierra Nevada mountain range. Mars, however, never had plate tectonics.

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“So those very primitive rocks that are called the basaltic, like we have in the oceans — that’s the dominant mineralogy and composition of rocks on Mars,” Arvidson said. “It’s basically a basalted planet — not as complicated as here, not as many rocks.” Jezero Crater, a 28 mile-wide impact crater and former lake located north of the Martian equator, is where Perseverance touched town. Arvidson noted that the crater has diverse geology: “It has clays, it has faults and carbonate, many of them produced [around] three and a half billion years ago.”

For that reason, scientists believe Jezero may be an ideal spot to search for ancient signs of microbial life on Mars. Perseverance is now headed to the next sampling location in South Seitah, which is within Jezero Crater.

Notably, the tubes and instruments on Perseverance were built to collect more solid samples, and that’s because the aim of this mission is to see if these rocks contain evidence of microbes, or any ancient fossilized life.

“Do these rocks contain evidence for life?” Arvidson asked. “To answer those questions, you need to get the rock back to Earth.”

Arvidson said that these soft sedimentary rocks that turn into powder when you drill are “everywhere” on Mars. Previous rovers encountered them too. 

“For example with Curiosity, which landed in Gale Crater in 2012 — and we’d been driving up the side of the mountain called Mount Sharp — we encountered soft sedimentary rocks that were easy to drill, and we’d get powders back,” Arvidson said. “Then we found really hard rock that we couldn’t drill into, so we gave up. Jezero is going to have hard rocks and soft rocks.”

As Siebach previously mentioned, what happened with Perseverance is a learning experience. Scientists, Siebach said, rely on a basaltic signal from orbit to determine the mineralogy and composition of Jezero Crater’s floor.

“It’s a little bit ambiguous. . .  we don’t see a strong signal of hydration or something in these rocks in particular, instead, they look like most rocks on Mars which means they have a lot of these volcanic minerals and some dust on top,” Siebach noted. However, orbital surveillance is not foolproof. “We don’t know whether this crater floor was actually volcanic,” Siebach added.

Hence, scientists won’t always be certain about the consistency of the sample areas they choose to drill. But once on Mars, it’s a mix of science, educated guessing, and luck to really find what they’re looking for to bring back home.

“Some of these rocks could have a composition that makes it look igneous, when they could be sedimentary or igneous rocks,” Siebach said. “That’s the kinds of compositions we’re seeing that makes it challenging and fun.”

Siebach emphasized she has confidence that Perseverance will have success in sampling some of the other rocks.

“Those surprises and those unexpected events are what drives our curiosity and asking more questions, and learning more about this history of Mars that is written in these rocks,” Siebach said. “If the sampling doesn’t go as we expect, those surprises are inherent to discovery, and will drive us to learn more.”

But the truly exciting science will happen when the samples get back to Earth eventually.

“We will be able to learn so much about Mars from those samples,” Siebach said.

These governors push experimental antibody therapy — but shun vaccine and mask mandates

For months, Joelle Ruppert was among the millions of Americans who are covid vaccine holdouts. Her reluctance, she said, was not so much that she opposed the new vaccines but that she never felt “compelled” by the evidence supporting their experimental use.

Nonetheless, after she fell ill with covid last month, Ruppert, a Florida preschool teacher, found herself desperate to try an experimental product that promised to ease her symptoms: infusion with a potent laboratory-produced treatment known as monoclonal antibody therapy.

“I was in bed; I was feeling so badly, like the longest flu I ever had in my life,” said Ruppert, 54, of Gainesville. “I was, like, whatever, give me whatever.”

Ruppert and her husband, Michael, 61, who also contracted covid-19, are among thousands of people in the U.S. who in recent weeks have rushed to receive infusions of the powerful antibody cocktails shown to reduce hospitalizations by 70% when given promptly to high-risk patients.

The rush has been fueled in no small part by governors in Southern states, where vaccinations lag and hospitalizations are soaring with delta-variant infections. Republican Govs. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Greg Abbott of Texas are among leaders touting the antibody treatments even as they downplay vaccination and other measures that health officials say can prevent illness in the first place.

Together, they have opened dozens of state-sponsored sites where monoclonal antibody therapy is offered, holding regular news conferences to endorse the potentially lifesaving benefits, while continuing to resist wider public health measures such as mask mandates and vaccine passports.

“Anyone that has a better-than-average risk with covid, if you do get infected, this is something you can do early and potentially really make a difference,” DeSantis said Saturday at the opening of a monoclonal antibody infusion site in Manatee County.

Since mid-July, delivery of the antibody cocktail made by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals has soared from 25,000 doses to 125,000 doses per week, with about half shipped to four states: Florida, Texas, Mississippi and Alabama, said Alexandra Bowie, a company spokesperson. The treatments use laboratory-produced molecules to replace, enhance or mimic the body’s natural antibodies that fight infection.

The sudden spotlight on the antibody treatments has whipsawed some public health experts, who have struggled for months to create and sustain sites capable of offering the therapy. The treatment is delivered primarily through a one-dose intravenous infusion that takes about 25 minutes, followed by an hour of observation for reactions.

Antibody cocktails, which must be given within 10 days of covid infection or exposure, are effective for many patients, but “this is not a substitute for vaccine, by any means,” said Dr. Christian Ramers, chief of population health and an infectious disease specialist at Family Health Centers of San Diego.

“It’s a backwards strategy,” said Ramers. “It’s so much better to prevent a disease than to use an expensive, cumbersome and difficult-to-use therapy. It does not make any medical sense to lean into monoclonals to the detriment of vaccines. It’s like playing defense with no offense.”

The cost of Regeneron infusions: about $1,250 a dose. For now, the federal government is covering the cost.

The federal government is also covering the costs of covid vaccination, at about $20 a dose.

Hospitals and infusion centers also charge for the time- and resource-intensive administration of monoclonal antibody treatment. Medicare has agreed to pay providers between $310 and $450 for performing it in health care settings — and $750 for treatment in a patient’s home.

Some patients who receive the treatment may be charged similar amounts for copays and administration fees, depending on what a hospital charges and what their insurance covers. DeSantis has emphasized that the treatment is provided at no cost to patients at Florida’s state-run sites.

The Food and Drug Administration authorized two monoclonal antibody treatments for emergency use for covid in November, weeks after President Donald Trump credited Regeneron’s product for curing his infection. Since then, use of a cocktail made by Eli Lilly has been halted because it wasn’t effective against some covid variants. In May, sotrovimab, a monoclonal antibody made by the pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline, also received emergency authorization.

The treatment is authorized for people newly infected with covid at high risk of hospitalization and for high-risk patients who have been exposed to the virus. Those eligible include a wide swath of the American public: people who are overweight or obese; those who have diabetes, heart disease or other illnesses; and those with compromised immune systems.

The covid vaccines also were authorized under emergency-use protocol. This week, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was granted full approval for use in people 16 and older.

Christina Pushaw, a DeSantis spokesperson, said criticism of efforts to promote monoclonal antibody therapy amounts to “a false choice.”

“Prevention and treatment are not mutually exclusive,” she said in an email. “Both monoclonals and vaccines save lives. The difference is that vaccines are preventative and cannot help someone who is already infected with covid-19.”

Some health officials welcomed the attention to monoclonal antibody therapy generated by DeSantis and others, saying the treatment has been undervalued and underused. The federal government has shipped more than 1.3 million doses of monoclonal products to nearly 6,300 sites, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. So, far, about 637,000 doses — or fewer than half — have been used.

“It’s not about vaccination. It’s about a treatment for covid that can keep patients out of the hospital,” said Connie Sullivan, president and chief executive of the trade group National Home Infusion Association. “This isn’t about politics. This is about patients at risk.”

Still, some unvaccinated people appear to view the antibody treatments as a backup plan if they get sick, several health officials said.

At Memorial Hospital Pembroke in South Florida, Chief Nursing Officer David Starnes has overseen treatment of more than 2,000 patients with antibody cocktails since December. At least 90% of the patients have been unvaccinated — and the numbers keep climbing.

“What’s amazing to me is that a vaccine we’ve been working on for 10 years, they are deathly afraid of,” Starnes said. “But this highly experimental cocktail? They’re willing to run in there the minute that they’re sick to get this infused into their bodies.”

Even those confounded by the emphasis on monoclonals over vaccination in some states say this new attention to the treatment has helped counter a basic public relations problem: Until recently, awareness of monoclonal treatments, often called mAbs, was low, leaving patients in danger of missing the 10-day window for treatment.

Utah, where fewer than half of residents are vaccinated, is among the states hosting an intensive, coordinated effort to reach people in time. Officials at the Intermountain Healthcare system, based in Utah, pulled together a team of volunteer medical professionals, dubbed “the mAb squad,” who scan lists of newly positive covid patients and call those who meet eligibility criteria to connect them with the treatment.

Dr. Curt Andersen, a family medicine physician and an associate medical director with Intermountain Healthcare, said he’s seeing lists of 70 to 80 patients every day because of the delta surge. “I talked to this one gentleman who got treated. Then his wife got treated. Then his mother, who was at very high risk,” Andersen said. “On the phone, he broke down in tears because we had this resource and he was so grateful.”

Ruppert, the Gainesville preschool teacher, said she, too, was grateful. She and her husband both felt better within days of being treated at UF Health Shands Hospital. The experience has caused her to rethink how to protect herself and her family from covid.

“Now that I’ve been there, I have a completely different perspective on this,” said Ruppert, who will be eligible for vaccination in mid-October, 90 days after the antibody infusion. “I most likely will be vaccinated.”

How “The Chair” needs to do better by Sandra Oh

By now Sandra Oh’s hive of devoted fans have likely binged all six episodes of her new Netflix dramedy, “The Chair.” As Dr. Ji-Yoon Kim, the newly appointed chair of the English department of a small liberal arts school called Pembroke, Oh’s meteoric rise comes at a time of scandal and uncertainty for her department, and it doesn’t help that she’s a woman of color subject to the racism and misogyny inherent to academia.

“The Chair” has a lot going for it — namely, Oh’s presence, but also smart commentary and realism on the pressing issues facing American universities today. Still, there’s one pretty big problem that makes the show difficult to enjoy for audiences who wanted to see a story about a woman like Dr. Kim overcome barriers and rise to the occasion. That problem is Pembroke English professor ​​Bill Dobson (Jay Duplass). 

Duplass is charming as ever in “The Chair,” but there’s nothing more frustrating than seeking out a show for fresh storytelling that centers the experience of a marginalized person and instead being hit with a storyline focused on a bumbling, white male doofus. There’s many a pressing issue Dr. Kim faces as chair of an under-enrolled English department, but she’s instead forced to clean up mess after mess created by a drunken, reckless and politically insensitive Dobson.

Audiences of “The Chair” can certainly sympathize with Dobson, who recently lost his wife and seems to have a strained relationship with his young adult daughter. The problem, however, isn’t that he’s sympathetic — it’s that too much energy and airtime are given to make us sympathize with yet another white man who can’t seem to get his act together, and makes this everyone else’s problem. 

Sprawled across the show’s six, roughly 20 minute episodes are scenes of Dobson showing up late to classes, performing a Nazi salute as part of a tasteless joke, and refusing to apologize to students who confront him, interspersed with charming sequences of him being a wonderful babysitter to Dr. Kim’s young daughter JuJu (Everly Carganilla).

“The Chair” unfortunately isn’t the first case of an interesting female character, character of color, or otherwise marginalized character being pushed to the side for a white man’s redemption arc, or some long-winded, flashback storytelling into why an awful white guy is awful (spoiler alert: it’s never actually his fault). The unsolicited white male rehabilitation storyline is a fixture in nearly every genre of story, and frustrating as it may be, it’s not always a pain to watch. 

In “Game of Thrones,” aside from some woefully disappointing writing choices for resident bad boy Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), Jaime’s growth into a semi-reformed anti-hero after being cut down from his hubris is interesting and enjoyable — and it would have been impossible without the companionship of an even more interesting character like Brienne of Tarth (Gwendoline Christie). One has to wonder what more we could have seen or learned about Brienne, had her character received the same care and focus as Jamie’s. 

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In a similar vein, HBO Max’s subversive hit “The White Lotus” has been widely celebrated for its astute criticism of white economic privilege and the problematic nature of the tourism industry in regions that have been subject to white western colonization. But it’s also been criticized for its focus on the perspectives and experiences of rich white people and the cruel fates of its characters of color and exploited workers, who all but disappear by the end of the series. The substantial screentime of the show’s privileged characters hardly glorifies them, but it’s also screentime, focus and perspective that are taken away from the vastly more interesting characters of color.

“The Chair” is obviously a very different show from the likes of “Game of Thrones” or “The White Lotus,” but it emulates this same energy in making Professor Dobson’s flaws, struggles and redeeming qualities central to its story. This artistic decision-making is just bizarre, since the show seems much better suited as a story of a woman of color taking on the whiteness, maleness and elitism of the university. 

“The Chair” is at its most interesting when Dr. Kim is pushing back on microaggressions and micromanagement, and confronting an elitist system that refuses to change. Insights into her character through interactions with her blunt relatives are also highlights. In contrast, the show is at its most tired and predictable when it shifts to focus on Dobson’s magical babysitting abilities or his generic speeches about his free speech rights as a white, male professor, which feel stripped from a baby boomer’s letter to the editor in a local paper. Just as cringe is how Dobson launches into his self-righteous critique of cancel culture as if this is the problem with campus free speech in America, and not the routine, targeted harassment and doxing of politically active students of color, or censorship of critical race theory in the classroom.

This first season of “The Chair” is frustrating to watch because of its undeniable potential, squandered on its overkill efforts to make yet another disgruntled white man likable, or at least tolerable and sympathetic. Some may argue that this is the point, that the show reflects the depressing and frustrating reality we face: white and privileged people are awful but inevitably end up winning – as we’ve seen in “The White Lotus” and “Succession.” But other than observing the state of the world, what then? What is the value that this series provides as thoughtful commentary or entertainment? 

On the bright side, the solution to fix “The Chair” is relatively simple, if Netflix sees fit to continue Dr. Kim’s story after it effectively set her back to her pre-Chair status, a little bruised but not broken. That is, the show should simply focus less on the laborious task of trying to rehabilitate another boring, problematic white man, and dig deeper into the exponentially more interesting experience of characters like Dr. Kim.

What’s life like for her, now that she’s stepped down as chair? What challenges does she face in returning to her focus on teaching? How is her relationship with her precocious daughter JuJu going? Who are some of her young, passionate students fighting for change on campus? Could her aborted relationship with her ex – played by the decidedly un-crumpled Daniel Dae Kim – be revived? All of these questions seem like infinitely more interesting avenues of exploration for “The Chair” than a moment more of Dobson trying to explain away his offensive Nazi joke. 

Hopefully, “The Chair” will be renewed for a second season, and have the chance to course correct and devote more focus to deserving characters and storylines. The Netflix dramedy has the potential to contribute something new to storytelling about university life, and possibly even be great. After all, there’s no sinking ship Sandra Oh can’t save.

GOP intern quits in protest of Republican congressman’s comparison of vaccines to the Holocaust

Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie was criticized for tweeting a meme showing an image of a person’s wrist tattooed with a concentration camp identification number as a way to oppose coronavirus vaccine mandates. 

The tweet was later removed by Twitter or deleted by Massie himself, but screenshots were widely shared by users on Twitter.

An intern in Massie’s office later quit, stating on Twitter that the offensive tweet was a red line. 

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The tweet seems to follow comments made by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a conspiracy theorist and fierce QAnon supporter, who has previously equated COVID-19 safety measures, like mask mandates, to the treatment of Jews during the Holocaust.

Although Greene later apologized, her remarks led to condemnation across the political spectrum, which included members of her own party. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy openly rejected the Georgia Republican’s “appalling” rhetoric in May.

Many further condemned Massie on Twitter:

U.S service members, dozens of civilians killed in Kabul airport bombings

Two suicide bombings — one at the “Abbey” gate of Hamid Karzai International Airport, and the other at the Baron Hotel — were carried out by an ISIS-affiliated terrorist organization, reportedly killing 13 U.S marines and 50 Afghan’s, this morning in Kabul, Afghanistan. 

The “complex” attack — which reportedly injured 140 civilians  — comes hours after Pentagon officials warned American’s to avoid the gates of Kabul’s airport following several “credible” security threats, saying that an attack was imminent. 

Abbey gate is described as a “meeting point” and has been one of the busiest points of entry during the evacuations these past few weeks, according to France 24 news. The Baron hotel — located a few blocks from the airport — is popular amongst Westerners. According to CNN and the Daily Mail, several Americans reportedly had rooms reserved at the Baron Hotel at the time of the bombing. 

Islamic State Khorasan —  a splinter group of ISIS originating in the Khorasan region in eastern Afghanistan —  has claimed responsibility for the attack. The Pentagon has yet to confirm these reports. 

ISIS-K was established in 2014 by Pakistani national Hafiz Saeed Khan. As the Islamic State lost territory in Iraq and Syria, the ISIS affiliate expanded operations in Afghanistan – growing in numbers and orchestrating dozens of terrorist attacks in the country —  including 77 in the first four months of 2021 alone, according to a UN report.

Although terrorist organizations, ISIS-K and the Taliban, are sworn enemies —  both fighting for control of the war-torn nation. ISIS-K denounced the Taliban’s take over of Afghanistan, criticizing the group’s hardline form of Islam. 

The Taliban, who’d claimed to have the security situation outside of the airport “under control,” condemned the “bombing of civilians,” saying that this “evil cycle must stop.”

President Biden was briefed in the Situation Room and is currently working on contingency plans from the Oval Office, according to CNN. 

 

Trump sued by Capitol police for Jan. 6 violence

Seven Capitol police officers are suing Donald Trump, a number of his allies, and various members of far-right extremist groups, alleging that they collectively coordinated a violent plot to overthrow the U.S. government on January 6. 

The suit, filed on Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, names several high-profile Trump associates, including political consultant Roger Stone, as well high-ranking members of the Proud Boys and Oathkeepers. The officers are represented by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a civil rights organization that has backed a number of progressive causes since its founding in 1963. 

“Plaintiffs and their fellow law enforcement officers risked their lives to defend the Capitol from a violent, mass attack — an attack provoked, aided, and joined by Defendants in an unlawful effort to use force, intimidation, and threats to prevent Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 Presidential election,” the suit states. “Because of Defendants’ unlawful actions, Plaintiffs were violently assaulted, spat upon, tear-gassed, bear-sprayed, subjected to racial slurs and epithets, and put in fear for their lives. Plaintiffs’ injuries, which Defendants caused, persist to this day.”

At least three other lawsuits have been filed by Capitol police officers in the wake of January 6, according to The New York Times. But Thursday’s legal offensive is the first to spell out Trump’s alleged connection to various political organizers and extremists, who worked in concert to overrun the Capitol building. 

The suit takes on a broad view of the riot, casting January 6 as the culmination of problematic rhetoric and activities dating back to May of last year, when Trump first trotted out his baseless claims of election fraud. It also mentions the takeover of the Michigan Capitol earlier, in April of last year, as well as various news appearances by Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes.

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The officers contend that there are a number of laws and statutes that the defendants violated, including the 1871 Klu Klux Klan Act, which protects the U.S. government from violent conspiracies. The suit also alleges that the defendants carried out “bias-motivated acts of terrorism,” which goes against District of Columbia law, according to the times Times. 

“This is probably the most comprehensive account of Jan. 6 in terms of civil cases,” Edward Caspar, one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, told the Times. “It spans from the former president to militants around him to his campaign supporters.”

The plaintiffs appear to lay most of the blame at Trump’s feet. The president, it says, “encouraged and supported acts of violence, knowing full well that among his supporters were such groups and individuals as the Proud Boys, who had demonstrated their propensity to use violence.”

The officers further claimed that when the former president was apprised of the riot, he “refused to call off the attackers, whom he had personally directed to the Capitol just moments before.” 

Trump’s lawyers have repeatedly argued that the former president is shielded by absolute immunity over official actions taken as president, The Washington Post notes. Trump has also vehemently denied inciting any violence on January 6 and attempted to distance himself from the chaos that unfolded that day.

Afghanistan is not going to sink Biden’s presidency — but the pandemic could

Let’s be clear about one thing up front: The resurgence of COVID-19 — there are now over 100,000 hospitalizations for the first time since January — is not President Joe Biden’s fault. He is the victim of Republican sabotage. The blame primarily belongs to Fox News and other right-wing media outlets for encouraging their audiences to eschew vaccination. It belongs to Republican politicians like Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who keep getting in the way of serious efforts to get people vaccinated. The blame lays with Facebook, for choosing profits over aggressively fighting COVID-19 disinformation on their platform. The blame lays with everyday Republicans, who are so consumed by bitterness that they are willing to draw out this pandemic, using their own bodies, just to stick it to Biden and take away the freedoms of the vaccinated Americans who voted for him. But above all else, the blame should be pinned on Donald Trump, who made it a station of the right-wing cross to deny that COVID-19 is a serious threat and now can’t even get his own people to listen to his pleas to vaccinate. 

Polling up until now has shown that most Americans do, in fact, blame these saboteurs instead of Biden. However, there are some troubling indicators that Biden’s grace period is starting to wind down.

The president’s average approval rating, according to FiveThirtyEight, started to slip below 50% for the first time in his presidency halfway through August and has now dropped to 47.5%. To be sure, that’s higher than what Trump enjoyed but it is low enough that Democrats should really start worrying about depressed voter turnout in the 2022 midterms. 

The hawkish Beltway press desperately wants to blame these declining numbers on the Afghanistan withdrawal. The problem with that analysis is that most Americans support the withdrawal and continue to do so even when poll questions are heavily weighted to get a “stay” answer. Plus, it misses that Biden’s numbers started to fall before Kabul dramatically fell to the Taliban. 

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No, as Russell Berman of the Atlantic argued Wednesday, “the setback causing the most damage to Joe Biden’s political standing likely isn’t the U.S. military defeat in Afghanistan—it’s the frustrating home-front struggle against the resurgent coronavirus pandemic.”

Just months ago, vaccinated people were happily shedding masks. Now they’re being told to put them back on, mostly to protect the unvaccinated. Parents are terrified of what school reopenings will mean, especially with kids under 12 still ineligible for the vaccine. People are worried about the return of lockdowns. They’re also worried what will happen to them if they have an accident or heart attack, but can’t get care because the hospital is all full up with unvaccinated COVID-19 patients. As president, it’s inevitable that Biden is going to start getting blamed for not doing more to get the stubbornly unvaccinated to just get the shot already. 

Now Biden’s top health advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, predicts that the pandemic will drag on into at least the spring of 2022, which does not bode well for Democrats in the midterms. Two years of pandemic, and vaccinated people will be even more fed up. They may not be interested in voting for Republicans, but a lot of Biden voters may very well be too demoralized to vote. 

The grim truth is that Biden does deserve some of this blame. While he’s been getting more vocal in support of vaccine mandates, he spent way too many months dawdling, afraid of picking a fight with anti-vaccination Republicans and hoping there was a way to gently persuade people who would rather listen to Tucker Carlson than to reason. Despite some early talk about a national “vaccine passport,” Biden backed off at the first sign of resistance from the Fox News crowd, which did absolutely nothing to tone down the 24/7 fake outrage on the network on behalf of the supposedly oppressed unvaccinated. And even now, the Biden administration is not using every tool in the toolbox to get shots in arms at a faster pace. 

Biden has started to do more in recent weeks.

He issued test-or-vaccine mandates for every federal worker and used the threat of funding withdrawal to force nursing homes to mandate vaccinations for workers. Pentagon leaders have thankfully, after far too long, mandated vaccines for anyone currently serving in the military. Biden has also encouraged state and local governments, as well as private sector businesses, to require vaccination to enter public places or to work. 

This sort of thing helps, but more must be done.

As Eric Reinhart and Amanda Klonsky at the Atlantic point out, Biden can use funding withdrawal threats to secure vaccination mandates for “employees of jails, prisons, Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers, and police departments.” Hospitals and other medical settings that, like nursing homes, depend on Medicaid and Medicare, could also get a vaccinate-or-lose-money order. And what is especially ridiculous is that the TSA mandates masks for anyone traveling on an airplane, but won’t mandate vaccinations, even though the latter offer far superior protection for both airline staff and passengers. A “get the shot or stay grounded” rule could have a seismic effect, both in forcing people to get vaccinated if they want to travel, and sending a signal to other hesitant institutions to start issuing their own mandates. 

While unfortunate, it’s not surprising that Biden is slow-walking these needed moves.

Fox News and Republicans have made it clear from the beginning that they will scream bloody murder at even the barest hint of an effort from the White House to interfere with their objectively pro-COVID efforts. Biden has been hesitant to pick a fight that will result in more yelling and screaming from right-wingers about their supposed “freedom” being taken away. 

But this is backwards thinking, starting with the fact that it’s the vaccinated who have lost freedoms, due to the unvaccinated, and the vaccinated are starting to get really salty about it. Moreover, the right-wing media and Republicans are going to scream and yell no matter what. Indeed, they are currently screaming and yelling over mask mandates — even though many masks mandates are mostly there to protect the unvaccinated from their own foolish behavior. By reducing the need for mask mandates, vaccine mandates could help bring an end to the mask wars. 

Most importantly, Biden should be eager to escalate the fight with Republicans over COVID-19 because it’s looking to be an effective wedge issue. While the rabid right-wing base loves politicians who love spreading COVID-19, most other Americans do not. Recent polling in Florida shows, for instance, that DeSantis’s anti-anti-COVID policies are deeply unpopular with voters in his swing state. As Greg Sargent of the Washington Post argues, “Democrats should be making a much more concerted effort to speak directly to this silent and neglected majority,” instead of tip-toeing around the loud, whiny anti-vaccination minority. 

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The best way to pick this fight is to push vaccine mandates at every turn. They are popular with the public, especially with the already-vaccinated. The more Republicans resist the mandates, the more Democrats can remind voters that the reason the pandemic is still a problem is because of Republican refusal to do their part. 

More importantly, vaccine mandates work.

Unlike the masks, vaccines are invisible and so discourage the kind of visible resistance we’re seeing with mask mandates. And while a lot of anti-vaxxers like to talk a big game, most will suck it up and get their shot if the alternative is losing a job or being banned from airplanes. We see this in the NFL, which reached a 90% vaccination rate after imposing steep penalties for vaccine refusal on players. Right-wing media tried to hype 153 employees who quit their jobs at Houston Methodist, which was the first hospital system to require vaccines. The larger reality, however, is that was a tiny number of their 26,000 employees — 100% of whom are now vaccinated. Indeed, the reason that right-wingers make such a fuss out of vaccine mandates is precisely because they know they work. They’re afraid that mandates will interfere with the scheme to tank Biden’s presidency by drawing out the pandemic. 

So Biden should want to tank their efforts to tank him.

It’s time to dramatically escalate the vaccination mandates — starting with air travel — and welcome the fight with Republicans. It’s one Biden will win, especially if he and his supporters frame vaccine mandates in pro-freedom terms: the only way to end the pandemic and give us all our freedoms back. It will show voters that he’s actively doing everything he can to fight the pandemic and keep the blame for rising case numbers where it belongs, on Republicans. 

Plus, it will save lives. Every shot in an arm means a person who is far less likely to transmit the virus and exponentially less likely to die from it. Every day the mandates are delayed, people are therefore dying unnecessarily. Biden can save Democrats in the midterms and save himself. All he needs to do is stop worrying about backlash and start pulling out all stops to mandate as many vaccinations as possible. 

A wallet-friendly way to stretch any salad

I try not to be the kind of person who tells you a dish you’ve made is missing something. But also, that big salad you’re about to dive into definitely needs pita chips. Let’s back up: When it comes to summer dinners — whether I’m having people over or it’s just me — come dinnertime, I gravitate towards simple meals that show off summer produce. I’m talking toasts, cold noodles, dips, salads. And when I go salad, there’s only one non-negotiable part: adding chips. Pita chips, specifically.

I understand there might be skeptics about this addition, but hear me out. Obviously, you know about croutons in salad. And perhaps you’re familiar with Tuscan panzanella, stale torn bread and tomatoes soaked in oil and vinegar; or fattoush, the Levantine salad of greens, vegetables, and toasted or fried flatbread — this crispy-carb-tossed-in-tangy-dressing is the vibe we’re going for. Like croutons, pita chips add a welcome crunch to salad, but their flat shape also makes them something of a scooping device, excellent for making sure every last bite of cucumber or feta gets into your mouth, not left clinging to the side of the bowl.

I’d be remiss not to mention that while produce is an important part of any salad, pita chips add heft to your meal in a way a bowl of vegetables simply cannot — if you’ve ever gone to bed hungry after eating salad for dinner, this is probably why. Since my goal with recipes is to spend less, legumes are a natural solution for bulking it up, and while I do include chickpeas in my Pita Chip Dinner Salad, a tender bean offers no exciting crunch. Toasted nuts then come to mind, but it remains a fact that nuts are wildly pricey. Case in point: chips.

Now, you can head to the store, buy a bag of pita chips, and go hog wild, but here’s a secret: Not only is making your own pita chips incredibly simple, they arguably taste better and are significantly cheaper than the packaged version. All you have to do is rip up a pita (or three, as is the case with this recipe) into bite-sized pieces, douse them in olive oil, salt, and pepper, and bake at 350ºF for about 15 minutes. Presto! (I must note that you can — and should — do the same thing with torn bread for make-your-own croutons, if you aren’t already.)

Of course, once you’ve actually done the deed, the countdown to sogginess officially begins. There is a sweet spot that bread salads occupy, where the carb has just started to absorb the dressing, but hasn’t become so leaden with liquid that it turns to mush, and that’s between 10 and 20 minutes after dressing. So be sure to wait before tossing the chips into your salad until it’s just dinnertime.

Feel free to get busy with pita chips in any salad you like (Caesar! Wedge! Niçoise!) but allow me to suggest starting with this peach and plum-based number, because no one knows how to show off like a piece of stone fruit in late August.

***

Recipe: Pita Chip Dinner Salad with Stone Fruit and Chickpeas

Prep time: 1 hour 25 minutes
Cook time: 1 hour 35 minutes
Serves: 4

Ingredients

  • 1 cup (heaping) dry chickpeas (or two 15-ounce can chickpeas, drained and rinsed)
  • Kosher salt
  • 1/4 cup plus 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided, plus more to taste
  • 3 (7- or 8-inch) pitas, split in half and torn into 1-inch pieces
  • Freshly ground black pepper
  • 1 large shallot
  • 1 large lemon
  • 1 small garlic clove, grated
  • 1/2 to 1 teaspoons ground sumac
  • 1 to 2 teaspoons honey
  • 1/2 bunch flat-leaf parsley, leaves and all stems, chopped (about 1 cup, packed)
  • 1 cup (packed) mint leaves
  • 2 ripe yellow peaches, sliced into wedges
  • 2 ripe red or black plums, sliced into wedges
  • 1/2 green cucumber, halved and sliced on the bias; or ½ bunch of red radishes, thinly sliced (or half the amount of each)
  • Flaky sea salt, for serving

Directions

  1. If using dry chickpeas, pick through and rinse the beans. Soak in water for 1 hour at room temperature (or up to 12 hours in the refrigerator). Drain, then place the beans in a medium saucepan filled an inch from the brim with very well-salted water and a hefty glug of olive oil. Bring to a boil over medium-high, then reduce the heat to medium-low and partially cover the pot. Cook, checking every 40 minutes or so to replace water that evaporates, until the chickpeas are creamy all the way through, 1 1/2 to 3 hours depending on the beans and soaking time. Let cool, then drain (save the stock in the freezer and use anywhere you’d use vegetable broth). If making in advance, store the chickpeas in their broth in an airtight container, in the refrigerator, for up to 1 week.
  2. Heat the oven to 350°F. Spread the torn pita on a sheet pan, drizzle with 1/4 cup olive oil, season with salt and pepper, and toss. Bake, tossing halfway through, until deeply golden brown and crispy, 10 to 15 minutes. 
  3. Halve the shallot through the root end and peel; mince one of the halves and add it to a large bowl. Slice half of the lemon into rounds, remove the seeds, then very finely chop (yes, pith, peel and all!) and add to the bowl with the minced shallot. Slice the remaining lemon half into wedges and transfer to a little plate. Add the grated garlic, 1/2 teaspoon sumac, and 1 teaspoon honey. Whisk to combine, then whisk in 3 tablespoons of olive oil. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
  4. Thinly slice the other half of the shallot. Finely chop the parsley stems and very roughly chop the leaves. Add the sliced shallot, all of the chopped parsley stems, all but a handful of the chopped parsley leaves, and all but a handful of the mint to the bowl with the dressing. 
  5. Add the sliced peaches, plums, chickpeas, cucumbers and/or radishes, and all but a big handful of the pita chips to the bowl. Toss and season with more salt and pepper to taste. If you’d prefer it a tad sweeter, add the remaining teaspoon of honey; if you’d prefer it a tad more tart, add the remaining 1/2 teaspoon sumac.
  6. Transfer the salad to a large serving platter. Top with reserved pita chips, mint leaves, and parsley leaves. Sprinkle with flaky salt, more pepper, and olive oil. Serve immediately, with lemon wedges for juicing over the salad.

Congressmen defend clandestine trip to Afghanistan: “We needed to see for ourselves”

Reps. Seth Moulton, D-Mass, and Peter Meijer, R-Mich., aren’t apologizing for their unauthorized trip to Kabul on Tuesday and departure less than 24 hours later on an evacuation flight.

The two congressmen said in a joint statement that they traveled to Afghanistan “in secret” to “minimize the risk and disruption to the people on the ground, and because we were there to gather information, not to grandstand.”

But the trip was not approved as an official congressional fact-finding trip, according to the Washington Post, which first reported the trip. And the trip “infuriated” officials at the Pentagon and State Department after their presence “served as a distraction” to personnel rushing to evacuate as many people as possible before President Joe Biden’s self-imposed August 31 withdrawal deadline. Administration officials have also warned that the threat of terrorist attacks targeting the Kabul airport is “real” and “acute.”

“It CANNOT be overstated how angry” Pentagon and State Department officials are at the two congressmen, tweeted John Hudson, one of the Post reporters who broke the story.

“It’s one of the most irresponsible things I’ve heard a lawmaker do,” an unnamed diplomat told the Post. “It absolutely deserves admonishment.”

“It’s as moronic as it is selfish,” a senior administration official told the outlet. “They’re taking seats away from Americans and at-risk Afghans — while putting our diplomats and service members at greater risk — so they can have a moment in front of the cameras.”

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The congressmen, however, dispute that they took seats away from vulnerable evacuees.

“We left on a plane with empty seats, seated in crew-only seats to ensure that nobody who needed a seat would lose one because of our presence,” they said.

The pair also denie that they created a distraction.

“We have been on the other side of this argument while we were serving and it just isn’t accurate,” they said in a statement to the Post. “Trust us: the professionals on the ground are focused on the mission. Many thanked us for coming.”

A spokesman for Moulton told the Post that the two lawmakers paid their way to the United Arab Emirates and then “figured out a way onto an empty military flight going into Kabul.” It’s unclear who authorized their trip on the military flight nor how they planned to get out of the country. US military officials did not learn of the visit until their aircraft was inbound to Kabul, according to the Associated Press.

The two lawmakers, both of whom are Iraq War veterans and vocal critics of Biden’s withdrawal, said the purpose of the visit was to push Biden to extend the August 31 deadline.

“After talking with commanders on the ground and seeing the situation here, it is obvious that because we started the evacuation so late, that no matter what we do, we won’t get everyone out on time, even by September 11,” they said.

“I got several not just families but groups through the gates,” Moulton told The Boston Globe. “It’s amazing that people think this is about politics when it’s about innocent lives and saving people who have given everything to us from torture and death. Every single person that we can get through the gates who is one of our allies, that is the difference between freedom and death,”

The Biden administration and allies have evacuated more than 83,000 people from Kabul since August 14, including about 19,000 on Tuesday. Biden said Tuesday that the administration is “on pace to finish” the evacuation by the deadline, which the administration is expected to keep due to security risks after the Taliban vowed retaliation if the US remains in the country longer. But Biden has also asked the Pentagon to draft contingency plans in case the mission is not completed by the deadline.

Biden has vowed to get every American and Afghan ally out of the country but it’s unclear whether there is enough time. It’s also unclear how many people need to be evacuated. US officials believe there are thousands of Americans still in Afghanistan, including some that have no way of getting to the Kabul airport safely, according to the New York Times. There are also tens of thousands of Afghans who worked for the US government during the war who are eligible for special visas but refugee experts estimate that at least 300,000 Afghans are in “imminent danger” of being targeted by the Taliban for associating with the US. The Taliban said they will allow Americans and foreigners to leave but have barred Afghans from going to the airport.

Moulton, who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, and Meijer, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, arranged to vote by proxy during their trip but the excursion prompted a warning from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

“Member travel to Afghanistan and the surrounding countries would unnecessarily divert needed resources from the priority mission of safely and expeditiously evacuating America and Afghans at risk from Afghanistan,” Pelosi said in a letter to colleagues on Tuesday that was obtained by Politico.

Pelosi, who said she learned of the trip shortly before it was reported, said at a news conference on Wednesday that the trip was not a “good idea.”

“There’s a real concern about members being in the region,” Pelosi said, citing the potential risk to lawmakers and the resources necessary to facilitate their visit. “This is deadly serious. We do not want members to go.”

Other fellow lawmakers also criticized Moulton and Meijer’s trip.

“There’s a lot of work there to be done by the men and women in the military. I think that puts an extra burden on them,” House Foreign Affairs Chairman Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., told reporters.

“Whether it is Haiti or Afghanistan,” tweeted Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., “taking up space in a disaster zone for your own ego helps no one.”

But Moulton remains unfazed by the criticism from his collegagues. 

“The scoldings mean nothing when we’re saving a few lives.” 

3 brand-new tomato varieties you need to know about

There are just a few short weeks when tomatoes are really, really good. They’re abundant at farmers’ markets and co-ops, actually flavorful, and offer the perfect balance of juiciness and crispness. And every year, it seems, there’s an escalating battle for the most interesting and flavorful new varieties. This year, there are three new contenders: Baldor Specialty Foods, a restaurant supplier that pivoted to retail groceries during the pandemic, announced the launch of three new varieties of tomatoes — Canestrino, Brad’s Atomic Grape, and Row 7 Midnight Roma tomatoes.

This isn’t the first time consumers have gotten excited about a new breed of produce — in the past, you’ve gotten a taste of cotton candy-flavored grapes, pink pineapple, and a notably juicy, crisp red apple like the Cosmic Crisp. But there’s something about getting extra-special tomatoes during peak tomato season. So what’s the deal with these new varieties? After years (and I mean years!) of development, I’m sharing what you need to know about three tomatoes. They’re simply begging to be layered with a schmear of mayo on sourdough bread, blistered with olive oil and garlic, or cooked down for house into a rich sauce that rivals your grandmother’s.

Brad’s Atomic Grape Tomatoes

Brad’s Atomic Grape are organic tomatoes grown at Norwich Meadows Farm in Chenango County, New York. “Coming in an elongated “footprint” and a variety of internal colors, these are pop-in-your-mouth good snacking tomatoes, which also do a nice job chopped into a salsa,” says Ben Walker, produce expert and SVP Sales, Marketing & Merchandising at Baldor Specialty Foods. Expect their flavor to taste a little acidic, elegantly earthy, and a touch savory. So how did they get their out-of-this-world name? Walker tells us that they were invented by Brad Gates, a California-based scientist, and thus the aptly-named tomato was born.

Row 7 Midnight Roma

In addition to growing at Norwich Meadows Farms alongside Brad’s Atomic Grape, this variety of deep purple-red Roma tomatoes was also grown and harvested at Alewife Farm in New York. “These are the tomatoes you want for sauce-making, canning, roasting, and grazing,” Walker says. Plus, they boast a quick cook time and memorable flavor, which makes them an all-around all-star in the kitchen. And their name is an homage to science — Row 7 Midnight Roma comes from the Row 7 seed company, which was co-founded by chef and produce innovator Dan Barber of Blue Hill. The company got its name from the seventh row of the periodic table which scientists left blank for future discoveries, explains Walker.

Canestrino

Unlike the other two new tomato varieties, meaty Canestrino tomatoes don’t hail from New York State, but rather Italy. So it only makes sense that farmers and food scientists are calling it the perfect sauce tomato (or, the perfect tomato sauce tomato?). “It’s an interesting pear-shaped fruit that has deep rich red skin, but it’s okay to use if it’s slightly green,” says Walker. Canestrino translates to “little basket,” which is appropriate since these tomatoes can be stood up on their ends just like baskets.

These one-of-a-kind tomato varieties are harvested in small quantities, so the chances that you’ll find them in your local grocery store are slim. If you do, you should of course stock up. But do keep an eye out for them as a special menu item at restaurants, since chefs are chomping at the bit to get their hands on them, too. Summer might be almost over but the tomato wars are eternal.

Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater, is charging $6,500 to evacuate people from Afghanistan: rpt

For only $6500, those trapped in Afghanistan — desperate to flee and hoping to catch a flight from Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport following the Taliban’s swift take over of the country earlier this month — can now reserve a seat on a charter flight operated by military contractor Blackwater. The scheme is the brainchild of Blackwater founder and alleged war criminal, Erik Prince, whose company made billions from government military contracts during the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Even If one can afford the initial $6500 — a steep price in a country where the average worker earns less than $600 a year — it’s nearly impossible to gain access to the airport. The Taliban slammed airport entry points shut after spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid, said the new government is “unhappy” about the continuing evacuations of Afghan’s, and that the government will “not allow that” during a press conference yesterday. So even if one could ensure safe passage into the airport, it’s dangerous for most to be seen in public. First reported by the Wall Street Journal, Blackwater’s offer includes  an armored vehicle to ensure safe passage to the airport for an additional unspecified hidden fee. 

This is not the first time Prince has faced public outcry.

In 2012 the Blackwater founder was implicated in a UN report alleging that Prince violated an arms embargo imposed on Somalia during the country’s civil war in 1992 — an allegation that came to light after journalist Robert Young Pelton sued Prince for allegedly swindling him out of $1 million as part of a separate lawsuit.

Prince was again accused of violating a different set of UN arms embargo — this time in Libya — in 2019. Blackwater allegedly supplied a warlord conspiring to overthrow Lybia’s democratically elected government with weapons — and soldiers of fortune — in exchange for $80 million, reported the New York Times. During a meeting with Trump administration advisors in 2017 — possibly emboldened by his sister’s, Betsy Devos, appointment as secretary of education — Prince suggested that the entire American war effort in Afghanistan be outsourced exclusively to Blackwater.

Apparently threatened with a hiatus from constant warfare as time marches towards the deadline for U.S troops to leave Afghanistan on Aug. 31, a date agreed upon by the Taliban and Trump Administration, Prince has decided to squeeze every last cent from this effort.

The U.S, along with coalition partners and NGOs, has so far evacuated 82,300 people — including 4,500 Americans — since the Taliban took control on Aug. 14. Another 19,000 people — most being Afghan refugees — were evacuated on Tuesday, with planes leaving Kabul every 39 minutes, White House Press Secretary, Jen Paki, said during a press conference on Wednesday. Still, an estimated 1,500 Americans remain in limbo, and although the state department is actively communicating with 500 U.S passport holders, 1,000 remain unaccounted for, according to Secretary of State Antony Blinken. 

Experts are wary that evacuating all U.S citizens and Afghan allies is possible by the end of August — especially now that efforts face threats the terror group ISIS-K  — who some security experts fear could carry out an attack on the airport. 

Is the FBI telling us the truth about the Jan. 6 coup attempt? Because it doesn’t feel that way

The Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by Donald Trump’s followers is the most documented crime scene in history.

On that day, Trump and his agents attempted to overthrow American democracy. We now know his conspiracy to nullify the results of the 2020 election was well underway. 

The world watched as Trump’s attack force, possessed by white rage and Christian nationalist fervor, and fueled by a willingness to kill and die for Trump in the name of “patriotism,” viciously attacked police who were protecting the Capitol and the people inside. A core group of Trump’s attack force acted with military precision as they breached the Capitol building’s defenses.  

Once inside, Trump’s attack force continued to battle with police while running amok and chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” Some of Trump’s followers hunted for Nancy Pelosi, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other Democrats and Republicans deemed to be “traitors,” with the apparent goal of capturing and then executing them.

A potentially functional gallows was assembled in a park across the street from the Capitol. Homemade bombs and a cache of firearms were also found in a vehicle parked nearby outside. Trump’s attack force was armed with an assortment of lethal weapons.

During the battle, a Capitol police officer was forced to shoot and kill one of Trump’s political cultists. An internal investigation has exonerated the officer for his actions, noting that he

potentially saved Members [of Congress] and staff from serious injury and possible death from a large crowd of rioters who forced their way into the U.S. Capitol and to the House Chamber where Members and staff were steps away. USCP Officers had barricaded the Speaker’s Lobby with furniture before a rioter shattered the glass door. If the doors were breached, the rioters would have immediate access to the House Chambers. The officer’s actions were consistent with the officer’s training and USCP policies and procedures.

A total disaster and mass casualty event was averted largely thanks to luck and the quick thinking and courage of the Capitol Police and other law enforcement agents. Otherwise, it’s entirely possible that members of Congress would have been killed or seriously injured by Trump’s attackers, potentially making a quorum impossible for the vote to certify Joe Biden’s electoral victory. Trump could then have declared a national emergency, imposed martial law and remained in power for an indefinite period.

Hundreds of people who were part of Trump’s attack force have been arrested by the FBI. Most will not face serious charges such as criminal conspiracy or sedition. Most important, Trump and his high-level confederates have not been arrested or charged with any crime. The Trump-controlled Republican Party and larger neofascist movement are instigating even more political violence and acts of right-wing terrorism. The coup attempt continues.

Yet, despite all of the public and other evidence about the events of Jan. 6, the FBI is now suggesting it was all something “spontaneous,” not coordinated as part of a larger plot to overthrow American democracy. It almost seems the FBI is now following Donald Trump’s Orwellian command not to believe your lying eyes. As Reuters reports:

The FBI has found scant evidence that the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was the result of an organized plot to overturn the presidential election result, according to four current and former law enforcement officials.

Though federal officials have arrested more than 570 alleged participants, the FBI at this point believes the violence was not centrally coordinated by far-right groups or prominent supporters of then-President Donald Trump, according to the sources, who have been either directly involved in or briefed regularly on the wide-ranging investigations.

“Ninety to ninety-five percent of these are one-off cases,” said a former senior law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation. “Then you have five percent, maybe, of these militia groups that were more closely organized. But there was no grand scheme with Roger Stone and Alex Jones and all of these people to storm the Capitol and take hostages.”

FBI investigators have reportedly found that “cells of protesters, including followers of the far-right Oath Keepers and Proud Boys groups, had aimed to break into the Capitol,” the report continues, but have found no evidence “that the groups had serious plans about what to do if they made it inside.”

These findings strain credulity and must be viewed with suspicion. Who are these four “unnamed sources?” Are they Trump loyalists? Who was involved in completing this new FBI report?

And why would these “unnamed sources” specifically mention Trump’s “prominent supporters,” who by definition are allies and agents of the Big Lie and the campaign to overthrow democracy? In that sense, this report provides some degree of cover for the Trump movement’s claims that his followers are “patriots” and “victims” of “unfair” persecution.

What about those members of Trump’s inner circle who reportedly knew that the rallies and other pro-sedition events of Jan. 6 would become violent? What about the role of Trump’s Republican allies in Congress who have expressed sympathy and support for Trump’s attack force and the overall goal of nullifying the 2020 election? Were they in communication with the organizers of the Jan. 6 attack?

What role did the Trump regime’s systematic placement of key allies in critical positions at the Department of Justice, the Pentagon and in other parts of the federal government play in the coup attempt?

When FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before the Senate in March, he said there was evidence of coordination among die-hard members of the Trump attack force. Has his assessment changed? As CNN reported two weeks after the Capitol attack, the details of conspiracy charges filed against members of the Oath Keepers are highly disturbing: 

Jessica Watkins, the alleged founder of an Ohio militia, had instructions to make explosives out of bleach printed out at her home, according to the court document.

Chilling messages sent between the militants during the siege that are quoted in the complaint appear to indicate they were searching for lawmakers inside the building as they sought to stop Congress from certifying the presidential election.

While at the Capitol, one alleged member of the conspiracy, Thomas Edward Caldwell, allegedly received a Facebook message reading “All members are in the tunnels under capital seal them in. Turn on gas.”

What about the wealthy right-wing funders who transported Trump’s attack force to Washington and paid for rallies and other events in support of the Big Lie, which then led to the Capitol attack? If their goal was not a coup meant to overturn the results of the 2020 election, what were they hoping to achieve?

In plain English, something in this new FBI report stinks. On the same day that details about the FBI report became publicly known, the Daily Beast reported on a similar investigation conducted by the Department of Homeland Security, which describes “advanced preparations” by Capitol rioters, “and appears to go further than recent descriptions of the FBI’s characterization of the Capitol riot”:

“The tactics used by domestic violent extremists (DVEs) to assault law enforcement and security personnel and ultimately breach the US Capitol suggests that some of the participants engaged in pre-operational coordination and planning activities,” reads the April 8 DHS document, entitled “Tactics Used to Breach the US Capitol Building on 6 January 2021 Highlight Advanced Preparations.” …

The document’s focus on alleged pre-planning adopts stronger language than recent descriptions of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s characterization of pre-planned violence. …

The DHS document … does not allege a specific plot to unseat the government. It also does not name [Roger] Stone or [Alex] Jones, and neither man is facing criminal charges for his involvement in the events of Jan. 6. Instead, the DHS document emphasizes alleged actions of organized groups that helped accelerate the day’s violence.

The report highlights the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, two organized groups involved in the attack. The Oath Keepers, the report notes, allegedly planned armed “quick response forces” based in off-site locations…. “Flex cuffs and other restraints were observed during the event, suggesting preparation for detaining government personnel or perceived enemies,” the report continues, also pointing to guns and tasers observed before or during the attack.

These dueling reports suggest something very dangerous for American democracy and the battle against Trumpism and neofascism: There is no consensus among law enforcement agencies about an obvious attempted coup and terrorist attack against the United States government.

As we have seen with President Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland, there appears to be no urgent effort (and perhaps none at all) to investigate the Trump regime and its allies for their apparent crimes against democracy and the American people. “Bipartisanship” and “healing” are somehow deemed to be more important than justice.

Richard Painter, former White House chief ethics counsel under George W. Bush, spoke about this in a recent interview with Salon:

If I were Joe Biden, …  I would have said, “We’re going to bring in an independent counsel who will make this decision. It’s not a political decision.” If Donald Trump committed crimes, he should be prosecuted. That should not be a political decision. I do not believe that Joe Biden or any appointee of Joe Biden should be making that decision.

Again, if someone commits a crime they should be prosecuted. They should go to jail if they committed a felony. The second part of the Mueller report shows that there was obstruction of justice by Trump and his inner circle. Part two of the Mueller report is an outline of an indictment. But the Department of Justice does not want to do it.

If Donald Trump committed crimes, he should be indicted. It is pretty clear to me that is in fact the case.

Another troubling possibility is that the Biden administration and senior Democrats, along with Garland and the leaders of other law enforcement agencies, fear that a proper investigation of the Trump regime and its many apparent crimes could lead to a backlash and produce even more right-wing terrorism and acts of violence. 

In a new essay for the Boston Globe, Laurence Tribe, the eminent constitutional law expert and professor emeritus at Harvard Law, issued this warning about America’s democracy crisis, the events of Jan. 6 and Biden’s miscalculations about “healing” and “moving forward”:

Any president or attorney general who failed to pursue with unrelenting zeal the mission of uncovering and holding perpetrators accountable for crimes fitting within that category, perhaps guided by a tradition of giving past presidents in particular an implicit pass, would not only be derelict in their duty to defend the rule of law, but would be lethally endangering the very survival of the American experiment in self-government.

We cannot know for sure, given the way federal criminal investigations are typically shrouded in secrecy, but it could well be that Attorney General Merrick Garland is approaching the possible prosecution of the former president in this hesitant way, especially in light of how much else — from legal issues spawned by the coronavirus pandemic to immigration controversies arising from the tragedy in Afghanistan — bedevils him and the entire administration today. My conclusion: Despite all this, the attorney general should not treat the task of holding those who tried to engineer a coup as anything less than Job One. …

Trump’s apparent crimes, which he and his supporters openly insist were patriotic acts that they would gladly repeat, have the potential to leave him in power indefinitely. The only antidote is vigorous investigation and prosecution, not for purposes of retribution but for purposes of deterrence. …

Trump’s relentlessness has laid bare the defects in many of those accountability mechanisms. Now Garland stands as the final line of defense for our constitutional democracy. No prior attorney general has confronted so daunting a challenge. For what might be the first time in his life and what will surely be the last, Garland could hold the future of the last best hope on earth in his hands.

Historians, political scientists and other democracy experts have warned about the consequences of not punishing the Jan. 6 coup plotters and those who followed their commands to the maximum extent of the law. To do that is almost to ensure that another coup attempt occurs in the near future. In conjunction with a neofascist insurgency, which terrorism and security experts predict will last for years, American democracy faces an existential crisis.

Biden and Garland can choose to exercise the proper leadership, or can instead pretend that America’s “better angels” will somehow prevail. The former choice could lead to saving American democracy and improving it for future generations. The latter leads to surrender and a “managed democracy” modeled on Russia or Hungary — or even apartheid South Africa. The moment for that decision is now.

Gefilte fish isn’t just for Jews: The Passover staple is a great daily snack

Writing in 1984, the powerful conservative commentator William F. Buckley, Jr. defended President Ronald Reagan after New York Gov. Mario Cuomo accused him of “pandering” to the Italian American vote by delivering a speech at a spaghetti dinner. After noting that Reagan would not be pandering if he actually enjoyed spaghetti, Buckley added that “it is simply good manners to pretend to enjoy what you are served, though an exception might here be made of gefilte fish, the consumption of which, reasonable epicureans might conclude, is not worth going through to gain admission to the White House.”

Am I allowed to counter this by saying that I not only think gefilte fish isn’t bad, but I actually believe it is so good it ought to be a common snack food?

Gefilte fish has long suffered from an undeserved reputation for grossness. In 2014 a Brooklyn fish store owner told The New York Times that it reminded him of cat food, with the article itself describing the meal as “a product many modern Jews love to hate.” There are plenty of jokes and apocryphal funny stories about the spongy patties, which are usually gray or beige and served in a broth of flavored “gel.” There are a number of fish that can go into gefilte fish including pike, carp, whitefish and mullet. Today gefilte fish is most commonly associated with Passover, where they are traditionally served with a side of raw or bottled horseradish.

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I am not a particularly devout Jew, so I do not eat gefilte fish for religious reasons. My enjoyment stems from the fact that it is almost ideal for casual noshing. You can eat it Passover-style by dipping it in grated horseradish, create perfect fork bites with horseradish and sliced carrots, or slice it into strips and put it on crackers. If you are the kind of person who enjoys pickles or pickled eggs, gefilte fish can easily scratch the same gustatory itch. Unlike pickles or pickled eggs, however, gefilte fish can easily serve as a meal unto itself.

Gefilte fish is also a great comfort food. When you parse your lips and pucker your tongue after it enters your mouth, all other emotions get washed away. If you chase it with the hottest horseradish you can find, it clears your head (and your sinuses) up just magnificently. In addition, because it is so often consumed during Passover, gefilte fish can be so easily linked to warm memories of family interactions and friendships… even if you aren’t invested in the religion itself.

Despite its indelible association with Jewish culture, gefilte (or “stuffed”) fish actually has its origins in Catholic culinary needs. Medieval Germans who didn’t want to eat meat during Lent would mash and poach their fish, add flavor with seeds and herbs, and then stuff them back into their fish skins before roasting them. Ashkenazi Jews (those from Germany and Eastern Europe) eventually caught wind of this dish and found that it suited their Shabbat and holiday meals, given that freshwater fish was plentiful in the area and Judaism associates fish with both fertility and the Messiah. Over time gefilte fish evolved from being stuffed into a skin to being ground up and reformed as patties.

That said, not all gefilte fish is made the same. For this article, I asked my parents to help me with a blind taste test of four gefilte fish brands — Mrs. Adler’s Gefilte Fish, Yehuda Original Gefilte Fish, Manischewitz Sweet Gefilte Fish and Rokeach Gefilte Fish (Sweet). Manischewitz and Yehuda were without question the best of the bunch: They had a strong flavor, seamlessly blending the different types of fish; a nice smooth texture, neither excessively grainy nor too flaky; and gel that enhanced the overall experience rather than distracting from it by seeming slimy or slippery. Mrs. Adler’s Gefilte Fish, though not as good, remained passable; Rokeach, by contrast, is to gefilte fish what packing peanuts are to real peanuts.

On all occasions, however, raw grated horseradish beat out the bottled stuff (my parents and I used Gold’s Prepared Horseradish Fresh Grated).

If I have any concern about eating gefilte fish, it is the fact that fish companies themselves have proven to be unreliable. Because fish fraud is prevalent, it is now extraordinarily difficult to trust businesses when they assure us that the fish identified on their labels are the actual ones being sold. Manischewitz claims to have Cisco and carp in its gefilte fish, Yehuda supposedly has carp and silver carp while both Mrs. Adler’s and Rokeach say they have carp and whitefish. (All but Yehuda are distributed by The Manischewitz Company in Newark.) I have no reason to believe that those aren’t the fish that I ate, except for the fact that fish fraud is an industry-wide problem. Since the average consumer does not have access to DNA tests (and, for the purposes of this article, neither did I), it shouldn’t fall on us to figure out whether we can trust a given company. If a label says that a certain type of gefilte fish has X and Y in it, we have a right as customers to only be served X and Y.

Assuming that the companies are trustworthy, however, there is no reason why you can’t enjoy a plate of gefilte fish as casually as you might chow down on pita bread and hummus, or pickles and cheese.

Mission and money clash in nonprofit hospitals’ venture capital ambitions

Cone Health, a small not-for-profit health care network in North Carolina, spent several years developing a smartphone-based system called Wellsmith to help people manage their diabetes. But after investing $12 million, the network disclosed last year it was shutting down the company even though initial results were promising, with users losing weight and recording lower blood sugar levels.

The reason did not have to do with the program’s potential benefit to Cone’s patients, but rather the harm to its bottom line. Although Cone executives had banked on selling or licensing Wellsmith, Cone concluded that too many competing products had crowded the digital health marketplace to make a dent.

“They did us a tremendous favor in funding us, but the one thing we needed them to be was a customer and they couldn’t figure out how to do it,” said Jeanne Teshler, an Austin, Texas-based entrepreneur who developed Wellsmith and was its CEO.

Eager to find new sources of revenue, hospital systems of all sizes have been experimenting as venture capitalists for health care startups, a role that until recent years only a dozen or so giant hospital systems engaged in. Health system officials assert many of these investments are dually beneficial to their nonprofit missions, providing extra income and better care through new medical devices, software and other innovations, including ones their hospitals use.

But the gamble at times has been harder to pull off than expected. Health systems have gotten rattled by long-term investments when their hospitals hit a budgetary bump or underwent a corporate reorganization. Some health system executives have belatedly discovered a project they underwrote was not as distinctive as they had thought. Certain devices or apps sponsored by hospital systems have failed to be embraced by their own clinicians, out of either skepticism or habit.

“Even the best health care investors can’t reliably get their health systems to adopt technologies or new innovations,” said James Stanford, managing director and co-founder of Fitzroy Health, a health care investment company.

Some systems have found the business case for using their own innovations is weaker than anticipated. Wellsmith, for instance, was premised on a shift in insurance payments from a fee for each service to reimbursements that would reward Cone for keeping patients healthy. That change did not come as fast as hoped.

“The financial models are so much based on how many patients you see, how many procedures you do,” said Dr. Jim Weinstein, who championed a health initiative similar to Cone’s when he was CEO of the Dartmouth-Hitchcock health system in New Hampshire. “It makes it hard to run a business that is financially successful if you’re altruistic.”

Though their tax-exempt status is predicated on charitable efforts, nonprofit health systems rarely put humanitarian goals first when selecting investments, even when sitting on portfolios worth hundreds of millions of dollars or more, according to a KHN analysis of IRS filings. Together, nonprofit hospital systems held more than $283 billion in stocks, hedge funds, private equity, venture funds and other investment assets in 2019, the analysis found. Of that, nonprofit hospitals classified only $19 billion, or 7%, of their total investments as principally devoted to their nonprofit missions rather than producing income, the KHN analysis found.

Venture capital funds are a potentially lucrative but risky form of investment most associated with funding Silicon Valley startup companies. Because investors seek out companies in their early stages of development, a long-term horizon and tolerance for failure are critical to success. Venture capitalists often bank on a runaway success that ends up on a stock exchange or in a sale to a larger company to counterbalance their losses. As an asset class, venture capital funds assets annually return between 10% and 15% depending on the time frame, according to PitchBook.

While they lack the experience of longtime venture capitalists, health systems posit that they have advantages because they can invent, incubate, test and fine-tune a startup’s creations. Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, for instance, parlayed a $50 million investment into a return of more than $514 million after it spun off its gene therapy startup Spark Therapeutics.

Many hospital-system venture capital funds, both established and new entrants, have grown rapidly. The largest, run by the Catholic hospital chain Ascension, has been in business for two decades and this year topped $1 billion, including contributions from 13 other nonprofit health systems eager to capture a piece of the returns.

Providence, a Catholic health system with hospitals in seven Western states, launched its venture capital fund in 2014 with $150 million and now has $300 million.

Cleveland-based University Hospitals launched its own fund, UH Ventures, in 2018. “We were candidly late to the game,” said David Sylvan, president of UH Ventures.

UH Ventures yielded $64 million in profits in 2020, Sylvan said, which pushed University Hospitals’ net operating revenue from the red to $31 million. Sylvan said the largest income contributor from UH Ventures was its specialty pharmacy, UH Meds, which provides medications to people with complex chronic conditions and helps them manage their ailments.

Another UH-supported startup, RiskLD, uses algorithms to monitor women and their babies during delivery to alert clinicians of sudden changes in conditions. It is used in UH’s labor and delivery units. Sylvan said it is being marketed to other systems. UH Ventures’ webpage touts the financial advantages for avoiding lawsuits, calling RiskLD “the first and only labor and delivery risk management tool designed to address birth malpractice losses.”

But sustained commitment is harder when the return on investment is not clear or immediate. In 2016, Dartmouth-Hitchcock, which operates New Hampshire’s only academic medical center, tested its remote monitoring technology, ImagineCare, on 2,894 employee volunteers. ImagineCare linked a mobile app and Bluetooth-enabled devices to a health system support center staffed by nurses and other Dartmouth-Hitchcock workers. The app tracked about two dozen measurements, including activity, sleep and, for those with chronic conditions, key indicators like weight and blood sugar levels. Worrisome results triggered contact and behavioral coaching from the Dartmouth-Hitchcock staff.

Dartmouth-Hitchcock found health care expenditures for the people with chronic conditions dropped by 15% more than matched controls. Nonetheless, in 2017, with the product facing unexpected technology challenges and the health system saddled with a short-term deficit, Dartmouth-Hitchcock scrapped the experiment and sold the technology to a Swedish company in return for potential royalties.

“We didn’t have the capital as a small health system,” said Weinstein, now senior vice president of innovation and health equity for Microsoft. “It wasn’t a venture investment to make money; in fact, we probably would have lost revenues on admissions. But it was the right thing to do.”

ImagineCare has found a more receptive home in Sweden. Two regions of the public health care system as well as a private health care organization have decided to deploy it as their remote monitoring service, according to ImagineCare’s CEO, Annette Brodin Rampe. The company expects to have 10,000 patients enrolled by year’s end.

Wellsmith, Cone Heath’s diabetes platform, suffered an even rockier trajectory. The concepts were similar, but Wellsmith was initially tailored to people with Type 2 diabetes. Data on weight, activity, blood sugar and patients’ compliance on taking medication was uploaded manually or through Bluetooth-enabled devices and sent to a small team of nurses and health coaches at Cone, who would contact those with disquieting signs.

Cone tested Wellsmith on 350 employees with Type 2 diabetes and reported encouraging results in 2018. Users’ physical exercise had increased on average by 24% and their A1c levels, which measure the percentage of red blood cells with sugar-coated hemoglobin, had dropped by 1 point on average. “We believe that the future will be carried by those who can invest in and create models of care like Wellsmith,” said Terry Akin, Cone’s CEO at the time.

But Cone grew apprehensive about Wellsmith’s commercial prospects, especially when other companies started pitching similar products. In its 2018 financial statement, Cone wrote that “management has determined that the existing technology will not be marketed for sale and licensing.” In October 2020, Cone decided to end its relationship with Wellsmith and shut it down this year, according to its financial statement.

Cone declined requests for interviews. In an email, Cone spokesperson Doug Allred wrote: “Unfortunately, a number of well-funded competitors established similar platforms. This has made it difficult to scale our platform to more customers and develop more partnerships. Due to these factors we made the difficult decision to sunset the Wellsmith platform.”

In interviews, Teshler said Cone had originally viewed the product as complementary to its efforts to move away from a traditional fee-for-service payment system. But she said alternative models — such as those in which insurers pay a set fee for each patient, providing doctors and hospitals with an incentive to keep spending low — remained the arrangement for a minority of Cone’s patients: those enrolled in Cone’s Medicare Advantage plans and accountable care organizations.

“The problem with these kinds of solutions — not just us — is it requires people to have digital devices that aren’t normally covered by health insurance,” she said.

Wellsmith’s business plan was to charge a per-member monthly fee to organizations using it. Teshler said Cone did not want to pay Wellsmith a fee when it had already lent it millions, since it couldn’t bill insurers for the service.

Other obstacles arose as well, according to Teshler. She said Wellsmith’s development was delayed when the second version of the software was a “dismal failure” and needed to be revamped. To further complicate matters, Cone began entertaining a merger with another health system, making the long-term financial commitment to Wellsmith uncertain. “And then we hit covid and it was game over,” Teshler said.

Teshler said she is still developing her concept, though, under her contract with Cone, Wellsmith’s software had to be destroyed when they split ways. She wants to market Wellsmith’s successor to primary care medical practices that contract directly with employers — groups that benefit when medical claims are reduced. She does not see other hospital systems as viable customers.

“It’s very simple for their attention to be diverted by the fact that their job is to keep people alive,” she said. Also, unless an innovation is unique, she said, “everybody’s got a fund, and nobody is going to buy anyone else’s product.”

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

Mary Trump wants to heal the trauma caused by her uncle — problem is, it’s still happening

If you were emotionally invested in battling Donald Trump while he was in the White House, then you have suffered from trauma. There may be no one better equipped to help us cope with that trauma than Mary Trump, who is both a psychologist and a niece of the man who caused that pain. 

I spoke to Mary Trump for Salon Talks  about her new book, “The Reckoning: Our Nation’s Trauma and Finding a Way to Heal.” Arguably, Mary played a key role in defeating her uncle last year, from her TV appearances and to her runaway bestseller about Donald and the entire Trump family, “Too Much and Never Enough.”

In her new book, Mary looks back at our nation’s collective trauma caused by her uncle’s presidency, his mishandling of COVID-19 and his attempted coup on Jan. 6 aimed at overturning the 2020 election. She also takes a broader look at the historical trauma that Black people and Native Americans have suffered and how the effort by some on the right today to whitewash that with laws attacking academic freedom and “critical race theory,” seeking to enforce a particular version of history, makes it more difficult for these communities to heal from generational trauma.

Our conversation, which you can watch in full or read as an edited transcript below, focused much on the present and the threat that Donald, as Mary Trump refers to her uncle, poses to our nation. Mary explained why she thinks Democrats have so far failed to call out the danger presented by Donald and the GOP as they continue to misread the character of the contemporary Republican Party. She said that her uncle is still hungry to wield power, and that if he were somehow returned to the White House, she doesn’t believe he would leave peacefully. Before the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, you could dismiss that idea as over the top. If you dismiss Mary’s warning now, you do so at the peril of our nation.

We talked about your bestseller “Too Much and Never Enough” the last time you were on Salon Talks. Now you’ve got a new book, “The Reckoning: Our Nation’s Trauma and Finding a Way to Heal.” Let the healing begin, Mary, because I could use some.

Yes, let the healing begin. Man, we’ve been through the wringer.

Your last book was about your family, about the trauma your late father was put through by his father, who was also Donald Trump’s father. On some level, Donald Trump is slightly sympathetic as a human being who went through trauma. I have no sympathy for him now, but as a human being reading your book, you can’t help but feel that. Now we look at our trauma, and your new book looks at the collective trauma of African Americans and Native Americans on different levels at different times. Let’s talk about what we’ve been through the last four years. You note candidly that you went for treatment at a place that deals with PTSD in mid-2017. First, as a psychologist, what is the working definition of trauma?

Trauma can be many things, and it can lead to many different outcomes. It could be a car accident, it could be being in war, it could be being denied medical treatment. It can be a very quiet thing as well. People think of trauma and they think explosions and plane crashes, but as we’ve seen in the last year and a half, it could also be being isolated, living in fear of a silent enemy, living with the kinds of division that my uncle has gifted us over the last four or five years. It’s really anything that makes you feel like you are not in control of your safety. As we’ve seen, it can really have an impact on people’s mental health. We’re seeing it already, but going forward, we still haven’t emerged. We’re still being traumatized. It’s going to manifest itself in many different ways.

I’m sure the incidents of PTSD will rise, but we’re also talking about anxiety and depression and substance abuse and domestic abuse situations worsening. The one thing that would’ve helped mitigate the effects of the stress of COVID and the fear and the sense of constant danger we couldn’t have, because of the fact that we were not allowed to unite as a country. The us versus them should have been us against COVID. Instead, Donald and Republican leadership made it Donald supporters against everybody else. That’s also going to take its toll.

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I know every person is different, but how do you address trauma in a way that’s productive and can actually help people?

The thing that makes it difficult to deal with trauma, in terms of recovering from it, is that you have to be very honest about what happened to you. That includes feeling the feelings that maybe got split off at the moment of traumatization. Disassociation is a very common symptom for people with PTSD because the attended feelings are unbearable. That also distances you from your ability to heal from it. We see the same thing, and this was the similarity I saw with what this country is going through. We continue to be re-traumatized because we’ve never dealt with our foundational traumas in a way that is honest, straightforward and healing.

What do you say to people who feel like they’ve been put through an emotional trauma by your uncle’s presidency, which continues to this day because he’s not gone. We just had a man in D.C. who claimed to have bombs and who wanted to eliminate Joe Biden to put Donald Trump back in office. That’s not an outlier — we’re going to see more of that. What do you tell people about how to heal?

First, I would just validate that feeling: You have been traumatized. That’s one of the most egregious things about the last few years. It’s people with empathy and compassion, who really do care about what happens, who have been the most negatively impacted by what’s gone on. The people who are, quite frankly, the worst among us have been empowered and enabled by the horrors that Donald inflicted on us. 

I know we’re talking in generalities here, but people are still going through difficult times, they don’t want to hear his name. People will say to me, “It bothers me so much I change the channel. I don’t want to hear his voice anymore.” That was when he was the president. Now I really find no excuse, no reason, for hearing his voice.

This is the problem, though. We can’t ignore him. We ignore him at our peril, because Republicans are keeping him relevant, keeping him empowered. Who knows what’s going on behind the scenes. I wish I never had to speak his name or think about him ever again, that would be healing. It’s tricky because we’re all so exhausted and demoralized, but things are only going to get worse if we look away. I agree with you, we shouldn’t be playing clips. It’s gratuitous and it feels mean to be subjected to him. 

There are two different ways to look at this. There is the direct mental health aspect and strategy, and to that I would say there should be a Cabinet position dealing exclusively with the mental health fallout from COVID. I’m not kidding, this needs to be a structural innovation that operates at the local, state and federal level. People need access to resources. I am not the only person on the planet who came into this with complex PTSD. A lot of people already had pre-existing conditions that made them more vulnerable. Then there are those of us who were perfectly fine, but now find themselves with stress-related disorders or anxiety, etc. The fact that everybody doesn’t have the same access, it’s ridiculous. Mental health isn’t a luxury. Mental illness isn’t a moral failing. Everybody should have access to trauma therapy, regular therapy, EMDR, etc.

The second thing I would say is that in order to help those of us who’ve suffered so much over the last four years, and particularly the last year and a half, and continue to suffer because we’re being held hostage, again, by the worst among us, the Democrats need to take the gloves off and start acting as if they understand the unbelievably dangerous situation we currently find ourselves in.

I want to touch on one more thing about healing and how it intertwines with today’s GOP. You’ve got the GOP today banning and threatening to defund schools that teach what they call “critical race theory,” which, if you look at the laws, it’s not critical race theory. It’s literally teaching about the history of systemic racism, of slavery, of Jim Crow, of Native American genocide. You note Rick Santorum’s infamous statement, talking to a group of young white people about white Europeans saying, “We birthed a nation from nothing.” With this white fragility in play, how much harder does it make it for people who are African American, Native American and others to heal, if we’re not going to talk about what really happened to them as a people.

It makes it impossible. Just a small data point: So far the few reviews I’ve read of my book have all been by old white guys who take great umbrage with what I have to say. They’re very defensive about it for some reason. It is this knee-jerk need to look away. We saw it with the Capitol police officer’s testimony. Not one Republican admitted to watching that hearing, as if it wasn’t worth their time. Ted Cruz was playing basketball, for God’s sake. 

It’s as if they feel that facing this stuff head-on somehow makes them guilty when the truth of the matter is, by continuing to ignore racism, not just our racist past, but the fact that white supremacy is currently a major platform of one of our two political parties, then we do become guilty of the thing we want to avoid being guilty of. It’s terrible for all of us to fail repeatedly, to grapple with why we are where we are. It’s not an accident; this isn’t because of Donald. Somebody said to me recently, “Donald Trump was 250 years in the making,” and that’s exactly right. This isn’t just something that happened over four years. We’ve been building towards this for centuries. When did taking personal responsibility become a terrible thing? It’s mystifying to me.

We’re seeing that right now in current events with Afghanistan. You’ve got your uncle spinning a new tale, yet you actually have people like H.R. McMaster, who was Trump’s national security adviser, saying that Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, signed a surrender agreement with the Taliban. What’s your reaction — I’m sure it’s not surprise — about how Donald is trying to say this is all Biden’s fault when it was Trump who pulled our troops out. We got nothing in return, zero. He pressured for 5,000 Taliban prisoners to be released over the objections of the Afghan military, and released the co-founder of the Taliban from prison in Pakistan, after Obama put him there in 2010 for killing our troops. What’s your reaction to Trump, again, doing the blame shifting?

First of all, the master deal-maker is at work, as always. I’m not surprised. Listen, I’m not an expert in Afghanistan by any stretch of the imagination, but the revisionist history we’re seeing is just appalling. It’s literally as if Joe Biden started the war seven months ago, and just decided to pull out five minutes ago, and that George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump had nothing to do with it. Simultaneously, they’re basically saying, “Just give us 20 more years, and we’ll get there. Who cares how many other lives are lost, or how many more trillions of dollars we waste.” 

The fact that Donald is evading responsibility makes perfect sense. One, because he never takes responsibility for anything, but also because he’s still on a mission to delegitimize and undermine President Biden. We also see this with what he said about getting a third booster shot, that it’s just a money-making thing for Pfizer to push a third shot onto people, when it’s actually because the efficacy of the first two shots loses power over time. It’s just to keep people safe. Nothing Donald does in that regard should surprise us. Again though, it’s the fact that he’s continuing to be amplified and enabled by the Republican Party.

This deal that Trump made with the Taliban is really like the Trump vodka of peace deals. 

Or the steaks, too.

In your book, you quote President Biden on Jan. 20, being sworn in and saying, “We’ve learned again that democracy is precious, democracy is fragile, and at this hour, my friends, democracy has prevailed.” Why doesn’t it feel like democracy has prevailed? It doesn’t feel like that at all to me.

Because it hasn’t. We’re still on a knife’s edge here. If Democrats fail to hold both houses in 2022, I think the American experiment will have failed. It’s not just 2024 we need to worry about. The other reason it feels like democracy hasn’t prevailed is because there was an armed insurrection against our government, incited by the person in the Oval Office, encouraged and participated in by members of Congress, many of whom were trying to overturn the results of a free and fair election, and yet they all still roam free. All of them, with the exception of Donald, are still running our government. How is it possible that traitors to this country, active seditionists who no longer believe in American democracy, if they ever did, are still allowed to be sitting senators and representatives? It’s appalling.

If Donald Trump is not charged and prosecuted for his crimes in connection with Jan. 6, do you think that will lead to even more violence down the road by his supporters? 

Of course it will. The message that is always sent with Donald is, “I can get away with anything, and if I can get away with it, so can you.” That’s the message that’s being sent by Attorney General Merrick Garland. I don’t know who else could possibly investigate these things, but anybody who has the power to and isn’t, is failing us. This guy in D.C. [Floyd Ray Roseberry] is a direct result of two things, what happened on Jan. 6 and the fact that it was done with impunity, just as so many other things in our history have been done by powerful white men with impunity. Also because of this misinformation echo system that our politicians seem not interested in doing anything about. Why is Fox News allowed to spread propaganda and misinformation and white supremacy, and racism on a daily basis? It’s killing us.

I think more and more people are asking themselves that question. Before, I think we were all defending it by saying, “Freedom of speech and the First Amendment, but there are limits that our Supreme Court has recognized regarding freedom of speech, and I think that knowingly misleading people to their death is crossing one of them. Cheerleading for terrorists who wanted to overthrow our government. These people are literally defending the people who attacked our Capitol, who are terrorists, because the FBI has said that Jan. 6 was an act of domestic terrorism. I think people are saying, “What about the lines?” The FCC, I really believe, should look into Fox News. The FTC should look into violations of the COVID-19 Consumer Protection Act by Fox News. I believe we’re at that point.

I completely agree. I also believe that governors like [Greg] Abbott and [Ron]DeSantis are committing crimes against humanity on a daily basis, yet they continue to be allowed to advocate against the best ways to keep people safe. It’s quite horrifying. The problem is, as you say, there could be adverse long-term effects. On the other hand though, the situation is so dire, it’s such an emergency that I think the Democrats need to govern as if they have the majority, which they do, while they have the majority. They need to understand that playing by rules that no longer exist, because the Republicans burnt the rulebook to a crisp, is going to lose us our democracy. 

People like Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin are pretending that the filibuster is some great mechanism of democracy, which it’s not. By clinging to that, they are literally risking the future of this country. We have to play hardball and we have to think short-term right now, because otherwise there won’t be another free and fair election, and Democrats won’t be able to win states like Arizona, Georgia or Pennsylvania. What good does that do anybody?

You write in your book that Democrats continue to misread the character of the Republican Party and that they fail to realize the rules no longer apply. What would you like to hear Democratic leaders say?

I would like to hear them say that the filibuster is an anti-democratic, racist thing that needs to go, and that we, the Democrats, believe in democracy. We believe that government is a force for good, and we’re going to do everything in our power to make sure that we make the American people’s lives better. Even though the Senate is split 50-50, the 50 Democrats represent 41 million more people, and we should have the power to enact whatever legislation we believe will make the biggest difference during this incredibly fraught period.

Do you think Democrats should be calling for the criminal prosecution of your uncle?

Yeah. Again, this is what’s so mind blowing. They’re more focused on bipartisanship, which legitimizes the people who tried to overturn our election. It legitimizes Donald, in a way. This was the biggest problem, in my view, in his not getting convicted in the Senate both times. There was plenty of evidence to prove that he should have been. He gets away with it. He gets impeached, not convicted, and then the media treat him, in the fall of 2020, like he’s just a normal, legitimate candidate, when in fact, he was trying to steal an election. It’s this need to normalize things, which is so powerful and destructive that it’s all the more important that we stop pulling punches, that we use language that’s accurate. It took the media three years to call Donald’s lies “lies.” I’m not entirely sure they ever called his racism “racism.”

I don’t know that they have it in them to use the fascism word. We’ve got to be really clear about what’s going on. Republicans can call us Marxists, communists, socialists, Leninists, whatever, but they’re never asked to define their terms. You ask any of us who are calling them fascist why they are, we can explain it to you. The Democrats just need to stop pretending that we can all be polite and get along under the current circumstances.

The GOP today is not a political party as Americans understand it. It is a white nationalist movement. Because we only have two parties, I think it’s hard for Democrats to say that. Because they’re like, “We got to work with these people a little bit.” I think they’re doing it at our nation’s peril. Before we wrap up here, I’ve seen you say in other interviews that you think your uncle will run for president in 2024. Things could change, but if he runs and wins, does he ever leave the White House peacefully?

Nobody will be able to make him. By then, the Republican Party would have consolidated power. I think a lot of Republicans would be perfectly happy to turn this country into a theocratic apartheid state. I think that’s what Mitch McConnell has in mind. It will be minority rule. If he were to get in again, first of all, he wouldn’t win, because he would be cheating. I don’t think he could win legitimately, but if the voter suppression laws are enacted in just three states and he feels like he can’t lose, then sure. And then four more years of that. How do we ever regain power? I don’t think we do, which is, again, why I completely empathize with your frustration at the Democratic Party. Can they not see what’s coming our way if we don’t head it off immediately?

Follow the money: Why House Democratic leader Steny Hoyer was so tepid on evictions

When the federal eviction moratorium expired last month, Washington responded. Progressives including Reps. Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y., and Cori Bush, D-Mo., took to the steps of the Capitol in protest, pushing for action.

In stark contrast, moderate and centrist Democrats were quick to shift the blame to other branches of government rather than taking any action of their own.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has drawn criticism for her hands-off approach, especially after a Daily Poster report on her real estate ties. But her second in command, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., has potential conflicts of interest of his own with some of his past campaign donors.

Alongside Pelosi, Democratic leaders including Hoyer and three other Democratic leaders issued a statement calling for action but passed the buck to the White House and blamed the Supreme Court for inaction.

“Action is needed, and it must come from the Administration. That is why House leadership is calling on the Administration to immediately extend the moratorium,” the three leaders said in a release.

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The statement came despite a fairly explicit ruling from the Supreme Court that essentially said the opposite. The court ruled that any changes would need to come from Congress — not from the executive branch.

Ultimately, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention extended the moratorium for most renters until early October. But despite growing concerns about COVID’s delta variant, protections for renters have still been eroded. The previous moratorium covered the entire country; this time it only covers parts of the country with substantial or high rates of community transmission.

Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Hoyer’s response raises questions about why exactly these leaders would be so hands-off about extending the moratorium in practice, while saying something entirely different.

Hoyer’s financial interests stem from his previous campaigns and who donated to them. (He did not respond to TYT’s request for comment.)

In the 2020 election cycle, the Maryland congressman took money from several Wall Street firms that have been buying up single-family homes in the last year, ahead of the looming eviction crisis. The firms include Vanguard, Goldman Sachs, Carlyle Group and Invesco.

Hoyer took $5,000 from Vanguard’s PAC, The Vanguard Group Committee for Responsible Government, in the most recent election cycle.

Vanguard Group has index funds that account for almost 12% of all shares of American Homes 4 Rent. According to data compiled by the Private Equity & Corporate Landlord Tracker, American Homes 4 Rent filed more than 100 evictions this past year.

Despite the moratorium, many eviction cases are still in process. Princeton University’s Eviction Lab found that more than 6,000 evictions were filed last week alone. Despite the moratorium, evictions are continuing for a multitude of reasons, such as inconsistent enforcement, courts interpreting the ban differently and some landlords actively ignoring the rules in the hope their tenants won’t notice.

Carlyle Group has also been directly involved with evictions despite the moratorium. According to the tracker, the investment group opened 250 eviction cases in the past year. Hoyer took $2,000 from Carlyle’s PAC in December 2019.

Goldman Sachs is another institutional investor buying up rental properties. The firm is also investing in smaller funds, including Fundrise, which allows investors to make smaller bets on home prices. In the past, Fundrise primarily has invested in commercial real estate, but it’s now dabbling in the residential market, focusing on new homes. Goldman financed $300 million in credit for the fund.

Goldman Sachs has also invested in companies that help house-flippers, landlords and institutional investors find properties and turn them around quickly — a move that hurts those struggling to make ends meet in the process. (This is because when evictions start, the displaced will need to find new homes but are likely to be outbid by institutional investors who can make cash offers on the spot.)

In June of this year, Goldman Sachs invested $32 million in the software company Entera, which helps real estate developers, flippers and investors make instant decisions on bids for rental properties. According to Bloomberg, the software has been used to acquire more than $1 billion worth of property.

Goldman has helped create a situation that expedites finding a buyer amid a pending eviction and foreclosure. That means Goldman could effectively bar evictees from relocating.

And according to NBC News, that’s exactly what institutional investors are doing. “If you’re a first-time homebuyer and you’re depending on a mortgage that takes two months to close and you’re competing against someone who’s making a cash offer you’re at a disadvantage right off the bat,” Karan Kaul, senior research associate for the Housing Finance Policy Center at the Urban Institute, told NBC.

In April, Fundrise partnered with homebuilder D.R. Horton to buy an entire neighborhood worth of new homes in Conroe, Texas, north of Houston.

Hoyer took $5,000 from Goldman Sachs in 2020 and in every year since 2007, according to FEC receipts, through the Hoyer for Congress PAC. He collected an additional $5,000 through his other PAC, AmeriPAC.

He also took money from Invesco. In June, Bloomberg reported that the firm pledged to invest a staggering $5 billion in Myrd Management to buy 20,000 single-family homes over the next three years.

Hoyer took $2,500 from Invesco’s PAC via Hoyer for Congress in March. He also took a combined $5,000 in August 2020.

Last month, Hoyer said, “[T]here’s great concern about the welfare of both renters and landlords.” He said he expects the House to take up the issue again. “[W]e are going to make sure that: a) the money gets out the door to the landlords and renters … and that, particularly, landlords of small — two or three units — who are using that income to supplement their retirement, or perhaps that is their retirement, are not left at risk.”

Failure to block evictions, combined with Hoyer’s Wall Street money, could present an opportunity for progressive challenger Mckayla Wilkes. Wilkes ran against Hoyer in the last primary and lost. But she performed better than Hoyer’s previous primary rivals and took in $200,000 in donations only weeks before the vote.

According to the nonpartisan political news site Maryland Matters, when Wilkes unofficially announced her 2022 run in January, 400 volunteers signed up to help.

Wilkes says her grassroots campaign was hindered last year because of COVID. She told Maryland Matters, “COVID-19 had a lot to do with the halt in our operations — grassroots candidates depend on those one-on-one conversations with voters.”