Kevin McCarthy now says he stayed in Frank Luntz’s penthouse to care for stricken GOP pollster

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has said he moved into longtime Republican pollster Frank Luntz’s lavish Washington penthouse apartment in January to care for Luntz after the pollster suffered a stroke while doing a focus group for the Los Angeles Times a full year earlier, in January of 2020. This peculiar claim about the Luntz-McCarthy roommate situation appears to leave many questions unanswered, however.

McCarthy told former Fox News host turned right-wing podcaster Megyn Kelly that Luntz “took a turn on his health like a year or so ago. … Frank has an apartment inside D.C., and I rented a room from him, and one of the reasons I did it is Frank had a stroke. You know Frank doesn’t have family … I wanted to make sure that he’d go on his walks, and he’d make sure to take care of his health.”

McCarthy told Kelly that he lived with Luntz for “a number of months,” adding, “I wanted to make sure he took his medication right. Did I rent a room? I rented a room.”

There’s no clear evidence that Luntz was in poor health in the period before McCarthy says he moved in to care for him. As Salon previously reported, Luntz did four focus groups for the Los Angeles Times in the fall of 2020, and his firm did two projects for McCarthy’s leadership PAC in September and December of 2020. Luntz also embarked on an ambitious Netflix series called “Fridays With Frank,” interviewing politicians like McCarthy and Sen. Tim Scott, professional sports figures, disgraced junk bond trader Michael Milken, ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway and many others.

Luntz recalled in a recent interview wanting to tackle McCarthy and not let him go as the latter walked into a fateful interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, in which McCarthy admitted that the Benghazi hearings were politically motivated to hurt Hillary Clinton.

“I should have stopped Kevin McCarthy from doing an interview with Sean Hannity about his temporary run for speaker,” Luntz said. “I told him not to do it, and he insisted on doing it. And at the moment he was walking into the interview, I actually thought of tripping him, tackling him and not letting him go.” Luntz said that not shutting down that interview was one of the worst mistakes of his life. That gaffe is widely believed to have cost McCarthy the House speakership in 2015.

As Salon recently reported, McCarthy’s polling numbers continue to trend downward, even among fellow Republicans.

Michael Cohen says Trump’s time is up: “There’s no way anybody’s getting out of it”

Michael Cohen said Thursday that all roads lead to former President Donald Trump, at least as far as the indictments handed down against his family business are concerned.

Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney, reacted on CNN to Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg being placed in cuffs and charged with grand larceny, among an assortment of other crimes on Thursday, marking it as a signal the walls are closing in on the former commander-in-chief.

Both Weisselberg and the Trump Organization were charged in New York State Supreme Court for their role in a 15-year-long tax avoidance scheme, which allegedly used off-the-books benefits for top executives in order to evade payroll taxes.

Cohen began the interview by claiming the documents prosecutors have obtained link Trump to nearly every business decision made with the organization that bears his name.

“There are a multitude of documents that are in the possession of prosecutors that tie Donald Trump to everything because everything went through Donald,” Cohen told CNN host Alisyn Camerota. “I don’t know how many more times I could possibly say the same thing, you know, every single thing, whether it was the acquisition of paperclips, light bulbs, furniture, mattresses, you name it, Allen Weisselberg’s kids’ payments, rents, everything would have a Donald [Trump] signature on it or his initial.”

Cohen also corroborated that it was a widespread occurrence at the Trump Organization for employees to receive off-the-books benefits to dodge federal taxes.

“There are other people at the Trump Organization who additionally received these same sort of perk-benefits that Allen Weisselberg did, including the chief foreign operating officer Matthew Calamari. There are so many people that received these types of benefits,” he said. “The question is, how did they treat it on their taxes? And why and how is it that it was done and booked by the Trump Organization?”

The former Trump lawyer continued to blast the former president, saying that Trump will toss others under the bus and claim it was “everyone else’s fault” before ever admitting to any wrongdoing.

“Do you think there is not going to be other people to step up to the plate and provide all of the additional testimony that corroborates the documentary evidence that they already have?” Cohen asked.

“Well, you know the expression, the cat has nine lives. I think [Trump’s] nine lives have expired because the documentary evidence that’s in the hands of the prosecutors is so significant and so spot-on that there’s no way anybody’s getting out of it.”

“Again, neither Allen Weisselberg or Calamari or anybody are the keystones here, because the documents speak for themselves, and there are more than enough people that are capable in testifying to what went on,” the former Trump lawyer concluded.

Not everyone is convinced “Dragon Man” is a new species of archaic human

Eighty-five years ago, a man working at a construction site discovered the skull in northeast China, which was occupied by Japan at the time. Instead of handing it over to Japanese scientists, he hid it in a well for decades and never mentioned it to anyone. Before his death in 2018, the man —whose name has been withheld by his family — alerted his family about the fossil. They immediately donated it to the Geoscience Museum of Hebei GEO University for study.

The man had no idea that his discovery of what is now known as the Harbin cranium would change history. Scientists involved in analyses of the Harbin cranium believe it to belong to a new species of ancient human, dubbed Homo longi. The news, which broke on June 25, followed multiple analyses of the skull belonging to so-called “Dragon Man,” the nickname given to the man in honor of the Dragon River region in northeast China where his skull was discovered.

In a series of three research papers published in the journal The Innovation, researchers explain that the skull is likely to be of a new ancient human species because it possesses anatomical features not previously found in other species of hominin.

“While it shows typical archaic human features, the Harbin cranium presents a mosaic combination of primitive and derived characters setting itself apart from all the other previously-named Homo species,” Qiang Ji, a professor of paleontology of Hebei GEO University, said in a news release. “The Harbin fossil is one of the most complete human cranial fossils in the world.”

Analysis of the skull suggests that it belonged to a 50-year-old man who lived in a floodplain during the Middle Pleistocene, a time of great ancient human migration. The Middle Pleistocene spanned from 126,000 to 770,000 years ago. A chemical composition analysis of Dragon Man’s skull puts his age at between 146,000 and 309,000 years old.

The Dragon Man had flat cheeks, square eye sockets, thick eyebrows, oversized teeth, and a brain about 7 percent larger than the average human today. His jaw was missing. At the time at which Dragon Man lived, a number of different hominids lived on Earth, including Neanderthals and Denisovans. Yet due to the lack of fossils found in East Asia from the Middle Pleistocene, researchers don’t know who inhabited the region then.

That suggests that Dragon Man belongs to a new species of hominid entirely. One of the study’s co-authors likened the relationship between Homo longi and humans to that of humans and Neanderthals.

“It is widely believed that the Neanderthal belongs to an extinct lineage that is the closest relative of our own species,” Xijun Ni, a co-author of the studies and a paleoanthropologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Hebei GEO University said in a news release. “However, our discovery suggests that the new lineage we identified that includes Homo longi is the actual sister group of H. sapiens.”

Dissenting humans

Not all who study human evolution agree. Indeed, many are skeptical that “Dragon Man” belongs to a new ancient human species.

Terrence Deacon, a professor of biology anthropology at the University of California–Berkeley, told Salon he thinks the fossilized skull might be an early Denisovan. That’s partly because scientists don’t precisely know what Denisovans, a subspecies of archaic human that ranged across Asia during the Lower and Middle Paleolithic, looked like.

“The bottom line is that nobody knows what the anatomical features of Denisovans are,” Deacon said. “We have a few very small bones. We have a jaw, we have fingers and toes, but this is not enough to tell us what the skull is like.”

Thus, Deacon emphasized that because researchers don’t know what early Denisovans looked like during that place and time, researchers currently have little to compare with the new skull.

Deacon also pointed out that Neaderthals had great genetic variability as they interbred with modern humans before going extinct 40,000 years ago.

“So there isn’t any reason to believe that they [Denisovans] have a lot of variability,” Deacon said. “We’re talking about Central Asia, we’re talking about a large landmass where people have been moving for a long period of time; we even know now that there’s Neanderthal-Denisovan mix going on in Central Asia.”

Brian Stewart, a professor of archeology at the University of Michigan, agrees that it is possible that the Harbin cranium could have belonged to an early Denisovan.

“I think the most exciting thing about this skull is that it could be Denisovan — I mean that’s the real promise of this skull,” Stewart said. “We need more data really to verify, and I’m not saying we have to have paleogenetic data, I’m just saying that you really need some other independent lines of evidence before we can say, ‘oh, this can somehow rewrite the entire trajectory of out of Africa movements and later human evolution that led to these different species in different parts of the Old World.'”

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William Kimbel, a professor at Arizona State University and a research associate at the Institute of Human Origins, told Salon he’s equally “skeptical” that Dragon Man belongs to a new ancient human species.

“The skull is very similar to other Asian skulls that have been found over the years from roughly the same time period that have historically been seen by many people as Asian representatives of the species called homo heidelbergensis,” Kimbel said. ” Now having said that, evidence is beginning to accumulate in Asia to suggest that maybe the Asian form of Homo heidelbergensis doesn’t have the same evolutionary trajectory as European versions of Homo heidelbergensis.”

Kimbel added: “We know that some populations in Europe that have been attributed to Homo heidelbergensis over the years are now known based on DNA as well as the fossil anatomy to be ancestral to later Neanderthals.”

Indeed, it is this “complexity,” Kimbel said, and the gap of knowledge and available fossils to study from the Middle Pleistocene, that hasn’t been “fully worked out yet.”

Despite some skepticism over what species Dragon Man was, experts in this field are excited about all the new lines of scientific inquiry that the the skull could yield.

“Every time you have a big gap in the fossil record, every new discovery is just so earth-shattering in terms of the questions that it raises,” Stewart said. “And that’s the case here.”

Over 100 fire scientists urge the U.S. West: Skip the fireworks this record-dry 4th of July

The heat wave hitting the northwestern U.S. and Canada has been shattering records, with temperatures 30 degrees Fahrenheit or more above normal. With drought already gripping the West, the intense heat has helped suck even more moisture from millions of acres of forests and grasslands, bringing dead vegetation in many regions to record-dry levels and elevating the fire danger to its highest categories.

With this combination of extreme drought, heat and dry vegetation, all it takes is a spark to ignite a wildfire.

That’s why over 100 fire scientists, including us, along with fire officials across the West, are urging people to skip the fireworks this Fourth of July and to avoid other activities that could start a blaze.

Humans start the most wildfires on July Fourth

For decades, one of the most striking and predictable patterns of human behavior in the western U.S. has been people accidentally starting fires on the Fourth of July. From 1992 to 2015, more than 7,000 wildfires started in the U.S. on July 4 – the most wildfires ignited on any day during the year. And most of these are near homes.

With this year’s tinder-dry grasslands and parched forests, sparks from anything – a cigarette, a campfire, a power line, even a mower blade hitting a rock – could ignite a wildfire, with deadly consequences.

Year-round, humans extend the fire season by igniting fires when and where lightning is rare. And it is these very fires that pose the greatest threat to lives and homes: Over 95% of the wildfires that threatened homes in recent decades were started by people. Farther from human development – beyond the “wildland-urban interface” – the majority of area burned by wildfires in the West is still due to lightning.

Whether ignited by people or lightning, human-caused climate change is making fires easier to start and grow larger due to increasingly warm, dry conditions. The western U.S. saw these consequences during 2020’s record fire season – and the 2021 fire season has the ingredients to be just as devastating.

Here’s how to stay safe

We’ve spent years studying the causes and impacts of wildfires across North America and around the globe, and working with managers and citizens to envision how best to adapt to our increasingly flammable world. We’ve outlined strategies to manage flammable landscapes and thought carefully about how communities can become more resilient to wildfires.

When asked “What can we do?” many of our suggestions require long-term investments and political will. But there are things you can do right now to make a difference and potentially save lives.

Around your home, move flammable materials like dried leaves and needles, gas and propane containers and firewood away from all structures. Clean out your gutters. If you tow a trailer, make sure the chains don’t hang so low that they could hit the pavement and cause a spark. If you have to mow a lawn, do it in the cooler, wetter morning hours to prevent accidental sparks from igniting fires in dry grass. Don’t drop cigarette butts on the ground.

This Fourth of July, skip the fireworks and campfires – instead, catch a laser light show, make s’mores in the microwave and celebrate by keeping summer skies smoke-free for as long as possible.

Many communities are banning personal and public fireworks and voluntarily canceling fireworks displays because of wildfire concerns.

Adapting to increasingly uncharted territory

The fingerprints of human-caused climate change are all over the current drought, the recent heat waves, and what could become another record-setting fire season. Research highlights how human-caused climate change increases the frequency and magnitude of extreme events, including drought, wildfire activity and even individual extreme fire seasons.

Adapting to longer, more intense fire seasons will require reconsidering some traditions and activities. As you celebrate this Fourth of July, stay safe and help out the firefighters, your neighbors and yourself by preventing accidental wildfires.

Philip Higuera, Professor of Fire Ecology and Paleoecology, The University of Montana; Alexander L. Metcalf, Associate Professor of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources, The University of Montana; Dave McWethy, Associate professor of Earth Sciences, Montana State University, and Jennifer Balch, Associate Professor of Geography and Director, Earth Lab, University of Colorado Boulder

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

Despite male hysteria, #MeToo didn’t “go too far” – it hasn’t gone far enough

On the same day the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned Bill Cosby’s conviction, almost three years after he had been found guilty of several counts of sexual assault, the news cycle offered further glimpses into a greater culture of gendered violence and oppression. Variety reported a judge denied Britney Spears’ request for her father to be removed from her conservatorship, and according to NBC News, actor and writer James Franco settled a lawsuit alleging he had coerced students to perform sexual scenes and acts on camera.

According to Vanity Fair, Franco’s legal team had previously called his accusers “attention-hungry,” and eager to “jump on the #MeToo bandwagon.” While these attacks were made a year ago, they’re especially raw today, following the reversal of what survivor justice advocates had long seen as a validation of their pain, in the conviction of Cosby. In particular, the characterization of #MeToo as a “bandwagon” extends from a disturbing well of male hysteria asserting the movement to highlight prevalent sexual violence and support survivors has “gone too far.”

In the weeks and frankly even the years that have passed since the mainstream nascence of #MeToo, we’ve encountered op ed after op ed penned by men warning of the perils of a world where hugs are now supposedly banned, where men now have to — gasp! — pause and think about how their actions might cause women around them to feel. We’ve faced frustrating research about male hiring managers and mentors turning away women workers, for fear of “temptation” and ruin. But through all this centering of male experiences, hysteria and self-victimhood, the overturning of Cosby’s conviction shatters this narrative. Women and survivors have long-known that not only has #MeToo actually not “gone too far” — it’s never gone far enough.

Despite the overturning of Cosby’s conviction on a peculiar technicality, and a deal made by the man who would later become former President Trump’s (second) impeachment lawyer, Cosby remains accused of sexual assault by 60 women. He has testified about using a common date rape drug in encounters with women. What’s changed in this case is recognition from the legal system — a legal system that’s consistently failed to protect and has often punished survivors of sexual violence. One or two high-profile convictions, namely of Cosby and disgraced Hollywood executive Harvey Weinstein — both necessitated by dozens of female accusers — were never going to wholly disrupt or fundamentally change an entire system.

#MeToo requires sweeping systemic change. It requires a reckoning with the ways credibility is assigned based on gender, race, and class, and an overhaul of the carceral legal system that’s more likely to imprison rape survivors than their abusers. In plenty of cases, their abusers are notably law enforcement officers who are a part of this system.

The #MeToo movement also calls into question how much change can be achieved for survivors in a capitalist, patriarchal society, to begin with. In such a society, most decision-making about who is believed and what is acceptable will ultimately be decided by wealthy white men, who are more often than not unmoved by even massive public shaming campaigns.

This is not a movement that can “win” off a few brave celebrity stories, or a legal victory here and there, which can clearly be overturned at the drop of a hat. Contrary to male panic, individual, positive outcomes when it comes to survivor justice aren’t “going too far” — they’re not even close to enough.

According to some estimates, one in five American women has experienced attempted or completed rape and one in three women around the world has experienced gender-based violence. The overwhelming majority of rapes remain unreported, for a number of reasons including the obvious one of fear of disbelief.

Recent legal outcomes should prompt many people to question why they even expect survivors to come forward, at all — for what, exactly? To be doxed, threatened, violated, retraumatized, and then ultimately cast aside and forgotten? To stare in the face of a man who ruined your life, as he now very publicly claims you’re ruining his? To be called a liar by millions of people who will never even know you? Or to watch nothing happen at all?

Survivors of sexual assault, victims of sexual harassment, victims of abusive relationships — they exist all around us, whether they choose to disclose this to you or not. Do we really need them to risk it all, just to believe they are real, just to believe we need change? As Cosby and Franco’s cases alone demonstrate, men’s lives are not, in fact, being ruined by accusations. On the other hand, many women and survivors’ lives are being ruined by a greater culture of gendered violence and gaslighting — and by being pressured to publicly share their stories and be retraumatized.

One crucial way to create safe, supportive spaces for survivors to come forward, is to support them unconditionally whether they do or don’t, and create a culture that eliminates the social pressures that push survivors to come forward unwillingly. Such is the #MeToo Tarana Burke envisioned and organized, that was in some ways devastatingly co-opted by bad actors and the toxic nosiness, entitlement and peer pressure of social media.

One reality that cannot be denied despite the legal outcome of Cosby’s case, and the settlement of Franco’s, is that false accusations are exceedingly rare. Research has shown men are more likely to experience sexual abuse than be falsely accused of it. The choice to focus on an awful but narrow subset of male experiences to erase a greater culture of violence that has touched the lives of nearly every single woman and girl in some way, is a tool of patriarchal violence.

The developments in these men’s aforementioned cases on Wednesday overshadowed the ruling in Spears’, which upheld her father, who she alleges is abusive, as her conservator. Spears’ case is inseparable from rape culture — it is inseparable from the patriarchal notion that women cannot be trusted, that we do not deserve to be believed, that we do not deserve agency and autonomy. Yet, discouraging as these recent legal outcomes may be, the fight will not end here, or at the next disappointing outcome, or the next. #MeToo is not about one person or one case; it’s about creating a future without violence. And nor has #MeToo “gone too far” — and if we want anything to change, we’re going to have to take it a lot further.

Fox News backs away from defending Tucker Carlson after NSA spying claims

Fox News host Tucker Carlson claims that his emails have been read by the NSA and that they will use those emails to humiliate him and get his show canceled. The NSA released a statement saying that Carlson isn’t the target of an investigation and that they only look into international crimes and are prohibited from spying on Americans.

NPR media Correspondent David Folkenflik noted that Carlson’s antics are typically supported and promoted by Fox and other hosts on the network. This one, however, is different.

“Fox News has notably not reported on Carlson’s allegations within its news programs, according to a review of transcripts. Not on Fox News political anchor Bret Baier’s show. Not on Fox anchor John Roberts’ afternoon news program. Not even on the often conspiracy theory-friendly morning show, Fox & Friends,” wrote Folkenflik.

Carlson was probed about the evidence he has, only revealing that it came from a “whistleblower” and that people will just have to trust him. It’s a difficult ask given Carlson has spent the last several months “reporting” conspiracy theories like the COVID-19 vaccine don’t work, people are dying as a result of the COVID-19 vaccine, and the FBI orchestrated the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S Capitol. There are only so many times someone can cry wolf before they’re laughed off the air, critics tweeted.

Even Fox lawyers argued in court that no “reasonable” person could believe anything Carlson says.

“Online, Fox News has published two brief posts — one without a byline — simply rounding up what Carlson said but offering no new reporting,” Folkenflik observed. He explained on the air Thursday that often “Fox & Friends” will promote whatever Carlson said the night before. That hasn’t happened in this case either.

He sent Carlson a text asking for proof or any kind of verification.

“My word. Why would I make something like that up? Doesn’t help me. I’ve got enough drama,” said Carlson, revealing he has no proof.

“But it’s true,” he added. “They haven’t denied it, including tonight. The NSA was reading my email. That’s absolutely confirmed.”

Given that the NSA has said that Carlson isn’t the target of an international investigation, it’s clear that if the NSA read his emails then he was emailing someone who is part of an international investigation. It could be anyone from Rudy Giuliani to the Trump family members, Michael Flynn, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) or anyone known for potentially illegal behavior.

“Carlson did not answer NPR’s questions of whether he was in contact with people in Russia or Ukraine over the 2016 elections, the president’s son Hunter Biden or any related matter,” Folkenflik said.

One assumption from some online is that Carlson knows he has a scandal coming and is trying to give himself cover before the news drops.

Already, House Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has assigned Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) to investigate the claims by Carlson using taxpayer dollars.

Listen to the full report at NPR.org.

The Lillet Blanc spritz is the easy, perfectly light cocktail to make this summer

Summer brings continuous reminders that contentment is forever a moving target. It’s an ongoing mission to adjust to the needs of the season, and the degree of difference between perfect and unbearable can be so slight. An uptick in humidity, a scarcity of shade, a blocked breeze, a too-heavy meal — any one of these could flip the switch on a summertime gathering, from perfection to disaster.

Picking the wrong drink can also ruin a day. Give us not the single-malt sipped neat but tall glasses of ice and sunny citrus to throw back — but at the same time, nothing too sweet, too reminiscent of childhood popsicle pouches left out in the sun. We want to cool down in the oppressive heat, raise glass after clinking glass in celebration of being alive together with the sun on our skin as the song of the year plays on a loop. And yet too many of our go-to cocktails pack a heavy punch, and a hangover will only make the next hot day exponentially worse.

Luckily, there are options beyond light beer and artificially flavored hard seltzer. The bar menu trend of embracing thoughtful cocktails that are lower in alcohol can be replicated at home. Try an apéritif base like Lillet instead of vodka or gin to mix refreshing summer drinks that are lighter on booze without sacrificing complexity.

Hailing from Bordeaux and dating back to 1872, today Lillet comes in three varieties. The oldest is the Blanc (there’s also Rosé and Rouge), an aromatic white apéritif with notes of candied orange and honey balanced by a twinge of bitter quinine, with a floral nose. As apéritifs go, Lillet Blanc is a guaranteed crowdpleaser — not too bitter, or too herbal or too sweet. Just right.

The Lillet Blanc spritz is topped with seltzer to make it last twice as long. The brand-official Lillet Spritz is just Lillet, plus sparkling or tonic water with fruit garnish, but the basic drink is infinitely adaptable, from infusions to fanciful bitters and garnishes. Here’s a simple citrus version that’s perfect for a holiday picnic.

Ingredients:

Serving size: one beverage

2 oz. Lillet Blanc
1 1/2 oz. fresh pink grapefruit juice
1/2 oz. fresh lemon juice
Orange bitters
Seltzer, chilled
Ice

Gear:

You don’t need any specialty equipment to mix or serve a simple cocktail. Improvise with what you have. But here’s what I keep at hand:

Collins or other tall thin glass
Jigger or measuring device (a standard shot glass holds 1.5 oz, if you’re eyeballing it)
Cocktail shaker
Strainer
Handheld citrus press

Instructions:

Add ice, Lillet Blanc, juices and a few dashes of bitters to the cocktail shaker and shake until frosty. Strain into a tall glass over fresh ice, then top with seltzer.

A tip if you’re on the go: Pre-mix by combining the first four ingredients, scaled up for a round, in a quart-sized Mason jar. Throw the jar and your seltzer in your picnic basket and go. When you arrive, add ice to the jar and shake, then pour and top with the sparkling water.

Variations:

In her book “Apéritif,” Rebekah Peppler’s Mai cocktail pairs Angostura bitters and a bay leaf garnish with Lillet, sparkling water and the citrus of your choice. You can also swap out the Lillet for French vermouth for a dry variation.

More Oracle Pour:

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Documentary “Audible” lets a Maryland School for the Deaf football player truly be seen and heard

The engaging and poignant documentary short, “Audible,” directed by Matthew Ogens, and executive produced by Nyle DiMarco, chronicles the experiences of Amaree McKenstry, a senior and star player on the Maryland School for the Deaf’s football team. Amaree is facing multiple pressures. He is angry about losing the team’s first game in several years and saddened by the suicide of Teddy, a former classmate. He has been reconnecting with his father — who walked out on him as a child — while also bracing himself to meet the challenges of life after graduation.

“Audible” also features interviews with Amaree’s family members, his head coach, Ryan Bonyeho, as well as classmates, such as Jalen, a cheerleader. The film shows how Amaree and others experience deafness — as well as discrimination. His story of finding strength is, thankfully, never condescending or patronizing.

Ogens’ film features very little spoken dialogue, but the images of youths dancing, or playing football, eating in the cafeteria, or going out for an ice cream, captures the joy and everyday lives of these teens. “Audible” shows how these students have created a strong support system as they face adversity head on. (One student reports that the hearing world teams do not want to play against the Maryland School for the Deaf because they fear being beaten).

In a recent Zoom interview, Ogens and DiMarco (with the help of an interpreter) talked about their documentary, which screened last week at AFI DOCS and is now available on Netflix.

Why did you decide to make a film about Amaree in particular and the Maryland School for the Deaf football program in general?

Matthew Ogens: I’m from Maryland, and Nyle went to the Maryland School for the Deaf. His brother Neal is one of the football coaches in the film. We had this connection, but also, my best friend since I was a kid is deaf and went to the school. I directed a commercial campaign about high school football teams around America, and the Maryland School for the Deaf was one of them. It brought me back to where I grew up and to a subject matter that I was close to through my best friend. I stayed in touch with the school for 10 years trying to get this made. I am glad it took that long because I stumbled on Amaree’s story. His relationship with his father, his friend Jalen, and Teddy — who is a cautionary tale when people are not tolerant and empathetic. Showing an underrepresented group and culture was important to me.

There are multiple narrative threads with Amaree’s life. Why was this story best suited for a short documentary, rather than a feature?

Ogens: It’s a film. I don’t really separate feature from short. When we got to talking and collaborating, you could tell [Amaree’s story] in a variety of ways — as a feature doc, or a doc series — but when we honed in on Amaree, we thought why not try a focused story through the point of view of one character. So, while we meet Amaree’s parents, and his friends, and the team, and the school, it is through Amaree’s lens. It opens the door. It’s a personal, intimate story. The story doesn’t have to end here. We’re talking about expanding it further.

Nyle, can you discuss how you got involved in this project?

Nyle DiMarco: It was an incredible honor. I am grateful for Matt bringing me in to be an executive producer and consultant on this project. I joined after filming had wrapped. As a graduate, I was able to bring a strong, personal background, but also the LGBTQ lens. What is most important about this story is showing that while we do have representation in front of the camera, it’s so critical to have that representation behind the camera as well. So much of Matt’s work was incredible, so bringing me in for some of the final touches and tweaks and cultural sensitivities — insuring that the ASL is clean on screen, and that the captions really fit and represent us in the smartest and most effective way possible, down to interpreting how those play out in English versus American Sign Language — really allowed us to capture the essence. Insuring that what audiences at home were seeing was not a stylized version of what these characters were bringing to the screen, but instead their authentic experiences.

It provided a new level and a new way to take a deep dive into this community. Of course, we want to show there are so many stories out there within our culture and within our community. But as Matt said, focusing on Amaree, and his family and friends and sports mates at school was such an incredible lens into the experience of what it is like to grow up within the deaf community and what he is going to be facing when he enters the hearing world — those anxieties — and what does that look like? People, specifically hearing people, ask me about my own growing up and I think “Audible” answers a lot of those questions.

Ogens: I just want to add, Nyle came to this organically. He was one of these kids specifically at this school. That brought a lot to the tables. You gotta get the subtitles and captions right, and he fixed things and made things smoother. The captions are one way the kids in this film are expressing themselves. It’s got to be authentic and express who they are.

You deliberately use sound and silence in the film, feature minimal spoken dialogue, and create vibrations to give viewers the hearing experience that the deaf teens have. What decisions did you make in your sound design?

DiMarco: In watching it, my first question was if there were any voiceovers. I was curious what the sound design was looking like. Throughout history, we have typically seen any signers on screen being paired with a voiceover, in repetition of what they are trying to express. What makes this experience so different and so groundbreaking is by not including that, and allowing people watching this film fall into this world and into this culture and really experience what it is like to see deaf people communicate. I think Matt got it right with the decision. It was the perfect angle to play in the sound design.

Ogens: For me, it made me more present and aware of sounds, like in the cafeteria, hearing forks and plates, or on the football field, during a practice, hearing the insects at night. It made me more present and more focused on the kids I was filming. But the superintendent, who just retired, said, “Hey, we’re not silent, we’re noisy!” So, showing that range of sounds that they hear or feel or express themselves with is not totally silent. Using that sound design and music as a character. The hearing audience will never know what it’s like to be deaf, but maybe feel something. But also getting it right for the deaf audience is more important.

I like that you focused on related topics from the controversial cochlear implant to the discrimination the deaf community faces from the hearing world. Can you discuss your agenda in raising these issues?

Ogens: I tried not to politicize it, and just let the kids talk about it through their lens. If Amaree didn’t get political or controversial about it, I didn’t get that deep. But I also did not want to go too far off the narrative arc. I think Nyle can speak to this from experience, if you’re comfortable.

DiMarco: As you mentioned, cochlear implants can be quite a controversial topic to this day, and it is a source of contention for many in our community. Amaree was very vulnerable in opening up about his cochlear and also in mentioning that it was for one purpose — music. And that for everything else, he didn’t need to hear, or need to speak, or use a piece of technology that he can use as a tool for everything in his life, which I think, is emblematic of other people in our community and their choices, based on their own experiences. It just goes to show that there is no one right way to be deaf. One thing that that I love about Amaree, is that he throws out the misconception of deaf people that we’re all monochromatic or live a specific existence.

The film also shows the discrimination towards and impact of bullying on the deaf and queer kids.

DiMarco: We see this in mainstream schools, and in public schools, all throughout the U.S. Through Amaree’s explanation, and of course, Jalen’s input as well, speaking about Teddy’s experience, it was an incredibly tragic incident in their lives that they are dealing with and they are still figuring out how to express themselves on the topic, and how to heal in ways that they can. It raises awareness of what deaf kids and deaf students go through in public schools every day. I myself, did a year and I couldn’t quit fast enough and go back to a deaf school. I was labelled a deaf boy, I wasn’t Nyle with the breadth and depths of experience and personality that I have, I was just the deaf boy. As compared to what we experience in deaf schools, where we are allowed to be whole people, like Amaree and Jalen. They can be themselves, be who they are, and communicate in a language that is comfortable for them and play sports and have fun and do all the things that they could do at any high school.

I appreciate that “Audible’ is not a patronizing, inspirational story of uplift. These teens have dignity and are seen making their own decisions. Can you talk about that approach to the subjects?

Ogens: I wanted to capture nuance and make the characters three dimensional. What is specific to their life. Maybe it would be different if I followed a different kid. This was just following Amaree’s story and springboarding into the other relationships he has. Subconsciously, when I was casting this, I asked the kids everything and spent time with them, and probably, without realizing it, I wanted to include details. This is who they are. It wasn’t hard to give them dignity.

DiMarco: It helps that the cast is incredible vulnerable and open to sharing their story. They had Maryland School of the Deaf’s approval, and, of course, they knew it was important for them to tell their story and frame things around them from an authentic point of view. Instead of Amaree having to figure out specific storylines, he just spoke his truth, and in the end, we figured out that was the best way to do it.

Nyle, what advocacy can be done to change minds and improve things for the deaf and/or queer community?

DiMarco: Truly, the advocacy that we are able to really tackle comes down to sign language awareness. Putting more sign language classes out there in all schools and making them accessible for mainstream and in deaf programs. For deaf kids interested in going to public schools, making their campus and their peers more accessible to them, so they are arriving at a place where people know sign language and can communicate with them and have some understanding and experience with deaf culture. It provides a sense of belonging, so deaf kids don’t feel like complete foreigners.

In regard to the queer community, I think inclusion and representation of deaf people who are on our spectrum, and have pride, and belong to this incredibly beautifully intersectional community are so important. Disability representation is often left out of pride and left out of that LGBTQ+ rainbow, and it is so key for us to amplify to amplify both deaf, disabled and queer voices. It certainly feels like if you consider the most marginalized person, the most forgotten person in the room, you are working from the ground up. You obviously want to make things accessible to everybody, but if you take away intersectionality, you limit so much in what you are able to provide in accessibility.

What observations do you have about Amaree and his classmates and teammates? They are seen as being very close-knit, and yet, may be unprepared for life after high school. The film raises some real questions about the future for these students, and I want to know what happens to them next.

Ogens: I think the school prepares them well. Coach Ryan helps prepare them for life, through football in his case. They are playing hearing schools and dealing with discrimination on the field, and he deals with discrimination as a coach. It is how you deal with it — how are you going to respond to that? Certainly, there is a major challenge, integrating to the hearing world, but I think that they are prepared for that. I have a best friend who did it, and Nyle did it. Different, harder, sure, but the kids are doing great. They are in college.

DiMarco: I came from the same experience, and while we may all share deafness, many of us have a different journey. So many of these kids have hearing parents, 75% of which chose not to sign with them. I come from a completely deaf family. I had neighbors growing up who are hearing, and I was able to interact with them, and in middle and high school, I had internship opportunities where I was able to work in hearing world. We are very much hoping to see this expanded as much as we would, to see more and find out what these kids are doing after high school and where they are.

“Audible” is now streaming on Netflix.

Goodbye to Trump-era classic “The Bold Type”: “Happily ever after” looks different for all women

The Trump presidency is now behind us, but the period of invigorated social activism and deeper appreciation for journalism inspired a wave of plucky, new political storytelling. Freeform’s “The Bold Type” was just one such show that rose to the occasion, but it managed to stand out from the pack as an unmistakable, unapologetic ode to female friendship.

The dramedy, which ended its five-season run with its series finale Wednesday night, tells the story of three young, millennial women working their ways up their own professional ladders at the fictional “Scarlet” magazine. Jane (Katie Stevens) is a Type A, serial monogamist, and natural-born-writer; Sutton (Meghan Fahy) is the plucky and adventurous fashionista who grinds as a fashion assistant for years before clinching her dream stylist position; and Kat (Aisha Dee) is the fierce social media wizard, perennial activist, and, since the middle of the first season, a proudly out queer woman. The best friends navigate a number of wild personal and work-related shenanigans, often tackling critical social issues along the way, and they do it all together. The show has often been a blast, owing to their chemistry alone.

The show has tackled everything from queer Muslim and queer Black identity, to cultural assumptions about how vaginas should smell, to the manipulations of anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy centers.” Much like its protagonists who stumble and fall on their feminist journeys, “The Bold Type” itself has had and acknowledged its own bumps along the way — namely, a controversial romance between Kat and a lesbian conservative woman. Writers shut that ship down at the last minute, in response to criticisms that it was unrealistic for Kat to be with someone who supported policies that undermine her existence as a queer Black woman.

One particularly interesting and pivotal storyline came to a surprising and optimistic ending in Wednesday’s series finale. Sutton and her older husband Richard (Sam Page) separated in the final episodes of the penultimate season, when they were unable to compromise on Richard’s need to have kids, and Sutton’s firm aversion to kids. Sutton was 26 at the time of this conflict, and where other shows probably wouldn’t have let a second go by without reminding audiences of her relatively young age, and that she “could change her mind,” “The Bold Type” took a vastly different approach. Not once is Sutton’s decision, or her knowledge of her own self and her own plans and desires for her life, disrespected.

The series ultimately ends with the two reuniting, and Richard choosing Sutton over kids. There are several important lessons here, showrunner Wendy Straker Hauser tells Salon. “To look at the world as if ‘happily ever after’ means the same thing for everyone, is not accurate,” she said. “Being able to morph and change what that means to you is essential, because everyone’s looks different — it’s not always how you thought it would be. But it’s still pretty awesome.”

Compromise isn’t always a loss, and our wants and needs can be fluid — a woman who doesn’t want kids can someday change her mind, sure, but so can a man who once thought he needed kids. Any number of outcomes can happen, at any time. But how often do we see the latter, and not the former? How often do we see a woman not have to compromise, and still have the career and love and dream family situation she’s always wanted? In Sutton and Richard’s unique happy ending, we finally see this.

“The Bold Type” is a celebration of the infinite range of what “happily ever after” can look like for different women, of all ages and backgrounds, and how our notions of what makes us happy can change all the time. Straker Hauser talked to Salon about saying goodbye, the importance of work friends and mentors to catch you when you fall, that memorable “vagacial” episode, and more.

What do you think “The Bold Type” shows about the importance of having some good work friends, and good mentors, like Jacqueline and Oliver?

I think it shows when you have that, anything is possible. It was just the most inspiring show to be able to write and be a part of. Watching these girls fail but then ultimately triumph because they had those supportive mentors and friendships was really satisfying, and true to how our real lives are. We all need cheerleaders!

One of Kat’s most memorable storylines is her time running for office, and from there, we continue to see her grow as a leader and, in her own way, a storyteller, throughout the series. How does this culminate in that final twist of her becoming editor-in-chief?

She’s always been a baller, she’s always been somebody who fights for change and actually succeeds. We saw her change policy at “Scarlet” and Safford a few times, and we’ve never really seen that from Jane or Sutton. When we were reminded of that, it just felt like she belonged in Jacqueline’s position in a way that felt like we should have come up with it a long, long time ago. I think she used to come at it from sort of a hotheaded impulsive place, but now as she’s grown, she comes at it from a very mature, strategic place.

“Kadena” — Kat and Adena’s (Nikohl Boosheri) relationship — is one of the most beloved ships on TV, as a modern, dynamic love story. How have both of these characters grown in the years and seasons since they got together, to bridge the differences that first broke them up?

A lot of their breakup was immaturity and timing. I think Kat was afraid, she was experiencing all of these new emotions and discoveries and it was confusing and exciting. But Kat did have a fear of commitment and settling down, and labeling herself or being labeled. So, when things got really good and close, she would run. And in the beginning, Adena felt like somebody who was all-knowing and somebody Kat put on a pedestal. Throughout the series, we’ve seen Adena in times of vulnerability, and Kat rise up and be the rock for Adena. That was really important for us.

They kind of found themselves on an even playing field, and Adena really needed to see that strength in Kat. She needed to see [Kat] was no longer afraid of commitment and happily ever after, and Kat very much knew Adena was the person she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. You know, you just spend enough time knowing each other and living in the world to know you’re supposed to be with each other in the end.

Journalism played an especially vital role during the Trump era, which was the backdrop of most of this show. What do you think audiences learned from watching Jane work? Are there any favorite stories of yours that Jane worked on?

She always knew she wanted to be a writer, but she kind of vacillated between what kind she wanted to be. At times she wrote some first-person stories, and I loved when we did those — she felt really vulnerable in a fun way. She wanted to branch out and try investigative journalism, and she realized that wasn’t really the right place and space for her. Going back to that concept of mentorship, she really missed Jacqueline. And ultimately at the end, she found a middle ground, where she loved chasing the story, and righting the wrongs. She always seemed to be write stories that had personal resonance for her.

In terms of my favorite stories — gosh, I had fun with Season 4, Episode 6, when Jane had a “vagacial” and she ended up having some issues down under. That was a fun sort of story, when she ended up on a panel, and inspired other women not to be embarrassed by their own bodies. I always love the stories of hers that incorporate that humor, where she’s able to make fun of herself in the process.

A lot of shows today are exploring the age-old patriarchal question of whether women can “have it all” — the career, the love, the family. I felt like I saw answers to this question in the finale of “The Bold Type.” What was the internal decision-making and conversation around Sutton and Richard’s reunion like? Was there talk about any compromises that could be possible?

We actually had a lot of conversations, and we wanted to be sensitive to the fact that these were two characters that had very different visions of what their happily ever after would look like. Both of them truly believed that for themselves, so we didn’t want to flip-flop very quickly. But at the same time, we believe that when Richard and Sutton saw each other, and after living in their bubble and spending time together — especially in the world we’re living in right now, where life doesn’t always end up as you imagine it to be — they realize you have to make choices about what the new version of your life is going to be.

It felt really satisfying that Richard, after spending time with Sutton again, would choose Sutton over having children, because that ultimately was more important to him to have her by his side. I think everyone’s version of having it all is very different. Sutton does have it all, without kids — that’s her version of having it all.

Jane, you could say, had it all when she had this job that she thought she wanted, but then she looked at it and it wasn’t right for her. Now, she’s going to figure out what her version of having it all looks like. Same thing for Kat — I don’t know if Kat, in a different lifetime, would think being at “Scarlet” was “having it all.” But her ability to make that job her own and still have it, and make her relationship with Adena her own, and still be committed, is her version of having it all.

I have a lot of friends who are also young women, and know they don’t want kids, and are tired of hearing they’ll change their mind. How did you approach representing the reality that yes, Sutton is very young, but this can still be a decision she knows for herself?

We just had a lot of conversations, and that’s something we did across the board, always, with all these topics and storylines. We had a lot of conversations with everyone in our writers’ room, and we talked about what our fears were in telling certain stories, and why we needed to tell them a certain way. And so, in terms of their ending with Richard and Sutton, what really became apparent to me was they needed to be together, and this was the right ending. If we’d had an ending where Sutton decided she didn’t want to have kids, and she let Richard go because she wanted him to fulfill his dreams, then she was losing the love of her life by deciding she didn’t want to have kids. And that just didn’t seem right to any of us.

We really wanted to tell a story where Sutton chooses to not have kids — a woman makes a choice to not have kids — and she still gets the love of her life, she still gets her version of happily ever after. That was very important to us, not just in representing people out there who feel the same way, but also in the character that we built. We wanted her character to reach a place where she was enough and she knew she was more than enough.

Finally, Kat and Jane have surprise endings of their own! We see Jane, a serial monogamist, have a one-night stand and make plans to travel the world, and Kat makes serious commitments to both “Scarlet” and Adena. How do Kat, Jane and Sutton show the full range of what happiness can look like for women?

Just in being open to the unexpected, and being flexible to make something your own, in a way that feels good to you! They all had a hand in crafting their happily ever after, instead of just taking at face value what happily ever after is supposed to look like.

How does it feel to be letting “The Bold Type” go?

It feels really sad! It feels hard, I not only love writing the show, and physically sitting in front of my computer and having these girls bust on each other, joke with each other, lift each other up — I loved the actors and the cast, the crew, the makeup people in Canada, the press. It’s a huge, bittersweet ending, and it’s a loss because I don’t get to do it anymore. But what a gain we had by being part of a show that’s not only fun to make and write, but also helped so many people.

The full five seasons of “The Bold Type” is available to stream on Hulu.

Trump Organization indictment unsealed: Here’s what to know

Former President Donald Trump’s family business, the Trump Organization, was officially charged in a New York state criminal court Thursday afternoon for a 15-year-long tax avoidance scheme, which allegedly used off-the-books benefits for top executives in order to evade payroll taxes.

Also charged in New York State Supreme Court was Allen Weisselberg, the company’s longtime chief financial officer. He is accused of second-degree grand larceny, as well as 14 other charges, for avoiding taxes on more than $1.7 million in personal income. If convicted, he faces a sentence of up to 15 years in prison.

Weisselberg surrendered to authorities early Thursday morning and later pled “not guilty.”

The Washington Post reported earlier this week that Trump himself is not expected to be charged anytime soon, nor is anyone else in the Trump family or organization — though the escalation is sure to raise the pressure on Weisselberg, who prosecutors have long hoped will offer testimony against Trump in exchange for leniency in his own case. He has worked with Trump for nearly 40 years, and is widely considered to be the most important person within the Trump organization who is not related to the ex-president.

A reference within the filing to an “unindicted co-conspirator #1” set off a flurry of speculation Thursday — with many insinuating that the line may refer to Trump himself. Experts have called the likelihood of this doubtful, pointing to a variety of signs that the co-conspirator may be another longtime employee.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week on the increasing scrutiny investigators have given Trump’s former bodyguard and Trump Organization COO, Matthew Calamari — who appears to fit the bill of another employee mentioned later in the indictment.

The indictment appears to reference Trump Org COO Matthew Calamari and his son, who prosecutors said received lodging and car leases that weren’t reported as income. Prosecutors have been seeking Calamari’s cooperation. https://t.co/wwQAT7Q5iK pic.twitter.com/8dceb7PiFB

— Rebecca Ballhaus (@rebeccaballhaus) July 1, 2021

The charges are the result of a nearly year-long investigation into the former president’s business dealings, spearheaded by Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Investigators with both departments are relying on the testimony of several close associates of Weisselberg and the Trump family, including the longtime CFO’s former daughter-in-law.

Past reports have outlined how Jennifer Weisselberg alerted authorities to a number of lavish, allegedly tax-free benefits he and his family received while working for the Trump Organization. The unsealed indictment alleges the company paid for Weisselberg’s apartment in New York City’s swanky Lincoln Square neighborhood, purchased several Mercedes-Benz cars and even covered private-school tuition for several immediate family members.

Read the full indictment below:

Trump Organization Indictment by Brett Bachman on Scribd

Howard University stands by Phylicia Rashad after controversial Bill Cosby tweet

Shortly after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled to overturn Bill Cosby’s conviction on Wednesday, Cosby’s former “Cosby Show” costar Phylicia Rashad tweeted out in celebration of the ruling. “FINALLY!!!! A terrible wrong is being righted – a miscarriage of justice is corrected!” she wrote.

Rashad is notably the dean of Howard University’s College of Fine Arts. Howard is one of many universities across the country that has been accused of mishandling sexual assault cases, and failing campus sexual assault survivors. Rashad’s Twitter remarks have predictably inspired a wave of outrage and backlash, and Howard has since addressed her remarks in a statement released Thursday.

“Survivors of sexual assault will always be our priority. While Dean Rashad has acknowledged in her follow-up tweet that victims must be heard and believed, her initial tweet lacked sensitivity towards survivors of sexual assault,” the statement reads. It continues:

“Personal positions of University leadership do not reflect Howard University’s policies. We will continue to advocate for survivors fully and support their right to be heard. Howard will stand with survivors and challenge systems that would deny them justice. We have full confidence that our faculty and school leadership will live up to this sacred commitment.”

I fully support survivors of sexual assault coming forward. My post was in no way intended to be insensitive to their truth. Personally, I know from friends and family that such abuse has lifelong residual effects. My heartfelt wish is for healing.

— Phylicia Rashad (@PhyliciaRashad) June 30, 2021

In Rashad’s follow-up tweet, which Howard University refers to in its statement, Rashad wrote, “I fully support survivors of sexual assault coming forward. My post was in no way intended to be insensitive to their truth. Personally, I know from friends and family that such abuse has lifelong residual effects. My heartfelt wish is for healing.”

Yet, Rashad’s second tweet and Howard University’s statement, have done little to quiet the ensuing controversy, and women and survivors’ frustrations. Just a few years ago in 2017, five women sued Howard alleging the university had inadequately responded to Title IX complaints. Howard also faced lawsuits in 2011 and 2013, the former alleging a university employee had assaulted students, and the latter alleging the university had prevented one student from receiving a medical exam after being raped. Across the country, it’s estimated one in four female university students is a survivor of sexual assault, and just 12% of survivors report their assaults to police.

Though Cosby’s conviction was overturned on a bizarre technicality, he remains accused of sexual assault by 60 women, and he has testified about his use of a common date rape drug in encounters with women. Only one woman’s allegations against Cosby led to his since overturned conviction, but his sentencing was widely seen as symbolic cultural victory for women and survivors, in a society in which sexual violence is often not taken seriously. Advocates say the overturning of Cosby’s conviction presents a blow to the movement for survivor justice, and could be retraumatizing for some survivors.

Rashad’s Wednesday tweet seemed to fly in the face of those experiencing pain from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling, and her more apologetic tweet, like Howard University’s statement, hasn’t been reassuring. Rashad is hardly the first celebrity to vocally support a peer and friend accused of sexual misconduct — and nor is she the first celebrity to clarify that they do, in fact, believe and support women and survivors, but just not these particular women who are accusing someone they like.

Howard University’s statement, alluding to how Rashad’s “personal positions” will not impact the university’s policies, also raises questions about how an authority figure’s views about sexual assault can’t be expected to shape how they perceive sexual misconduct cases, or treat potential victims. Sexual assault is inherently personal, and consequently, so is policymaking around it.

The overturning of Cosby’s conviction on three counts of aggravated indecent assault comes after the former “Cosby Show” star served almost three years in prison. Since the shock ruling, survivors and advocates across the country have been reflecting on what the future may hold for the once-invigorated #MeToo movement, which had once regarded Cosby’s conviction as a mark of crucial cultural progress.

Liz Cheney signs up to be lone Republican on Jan. 6 commission despite warning from Kevin McCarthy

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., appeared to suggest to members of his caucus on Thursday that he will not assign them committee assignments if they join the select commission set up by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to investigate the Capitol riot.

Despite McCarthy’s threat, broken by both CNN and Punchbowl News, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., one of just two Republicans along with Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois to have voted with Democrats on Wednesday to establish the committee, announced that she will serve on the commission.

I'm honored to serve on the January 6th select committee. Our oath to the Constitution must be above partisan politics. pic.twitter.com/LpPoWhBHPx

— Rep. Liz Cheney (@RepLizCheney) July 1, 2021

Pelosi’s select panel follows her previous effort to put together a bipartisan commission to probe the riot, an effort that was ultimately dismantled by the Senate GOP, many of whose members claimed that panel amounted to a political stunt.

On Wednesday, McCarthy apparently held a closed-door meeting where he claimed that he – not Pelosi – has authority over Republicans’ committee assignments. If any Republicans join Pelosi’s commission, he said, “they better be ready to get all their committee assignments from her.”

Pelosi has made clear that the House minority leader can help fill five of the panel’s slots “in consultation” with her, meaning that she could shoot down his nominations. Despite Pelosi’s seeming appeal to bipartisanship, McCarthy told CNN that Pelosi’s latest effort seems “pretty political to me.”

“Who gives a shit?” Kinzinger said of McCarthy’s threat to Politico on Thursday.

Back in May, McCarthy led a successful charge to remove Cheney from her leadership role as GOP conference chair over her lack of fealty to Donald Trump. Rep. Cheney was swiftly replaced by Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., who has quickly fallen into Trump’s good graces. In February, Kinzinger was similarly censured by his party for speaking negatively of Trump’s crusade to overturn the 2020 election results.

“I do think the threat of removing committees is ironic, because you won’t go after the space lasers and white supremacist people but those who tell the truth,” Kinzinger said on Thursday, blasting McCarthy.

He added: “When you’ve got people that say crazy stuff and you’re not gonna make that threat, to make the threat the truth tellers, you’ve lost, you know any credibility and then so that’s all I’m gonna say on it.”

Asked whether he’d serve on Pelosi’s panel, Kinzinger told a local TV station: “It’s not necessarily anything I look forward to doing, but if I thought my voice was needed to get to the bottom of it, it would be something I would be open to.”

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, was charged with leading the Jan. 6 panel. Other appointments include Reps. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., Adam Schiff, D-Calif., Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and Elaine Luria, D-Va.

Another Trump henchman takes a fall: Why Trump fans still won’t admit that loyalty to him is foolish

Once again, we are reminded of eternal truth this morning: Loyalty to Donald Trump is a fool’s game.

On Thursday, Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg surrendered to authorities after a grand jury indicted him personally and the Trump Organization generally for alleged financial crimes. As has been exhaustively demonstrated by journalists at the New York Times, the Trump family and their company engaged in extensive tax fraud for literally decades, so much so that it would be safe to call their business a tax evasion scheme more than the real estate firm Trump portrays it as. The former president expects his henchmen to take serious risks and even commit crimes, but he himself will always keep his hands clean and leave others to take the fall. That’s why it was Weisselberg, not Trump, who had to show up in court under federal charges. Trump himself is barely literate and believes bleach injections are sound medical care, yet he’s somehow clever enough to slip the noose, again, leaving another lackey to take the fall.

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Weisselberg is just the latest in a long line of people who found that loyalty is a one-way street with Trump. His longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen: convicted for campaign finance fraud for which Trump avoided legal consequences. His replacement lawyer, Rudy Giuliani: his law license was recently suspended and he is now under federal investigation. Former campaign manager, Paul Manafort: imprisoned for years, until Trump gave him a last-minute pardon.

As Trump’s three wives discovered, the man has no gratitude and no loyalty. He repays such things by screwing you over. He only issued some pardons of cronies at the last minute because he thought it would serve his own personal interests. For instance, Roger Stone got convicted of doing crimes for Trump, got his sentence commuted, and went straight back to the business of doing Trump’s dirty work, as evidenced by the way his name keeps cropping up in court filings about the January 6 insurrection. But, as a general rule, the reward for sticking your neck out for Trump is that he will leave you out to hang while he runs off to play some more golf, secure in his belief that someone else will always pay the price for his crimes.

And according to Politico, that’s what’s happening yet again.

Trump’s reaction to watching his long-time CFO Weisselberg do the perp walk on his behalf was not regret nor sorrow nor guilt. Nah, he was reportedly “thrilled by what he saw as light charges,” according to a source still close to Trump who says he “was emboldened by the news,” believing he can spin it “as a political witch hunt that would backfire on Democrats.” Trump’s apparently shared not a single shred of concern for a loyalist who is in serious legal trouble — only glee at his own ability to make others suffer consequences that should be coming down on him.

Trump doesn’t limit his tendency to screw over loyalists to those in his immediate circle, either. He expects all his followers, down to the most anonymous voter, to take serious personal risks to prove their loyalty. And when they get in trouble, he inevitably abandons them. We saw this with the people who stormed the Capitol on January 6. Trump openly tricked them into believing he would be joining them, declaring from the podium that “I’ll be there with you” as they rampaged through the building. However, as soon as he left the stage, Trump reportedly told his staff that he wasn’t speaking “literally” and then he returned to the safety of the White House while his pawns staged an attack that left four of them dead. Now hundreds of them have been arrested, some on very serious charges, while Trump himself gets to spend his days freely wandering Mar-A-Lago. He’s down there just soaking up attention by crashing weddings, memorial services, and other events.

An even larger scale of sacrifice is what Trump asked of his supporters in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trump decided early on to frame the pandemic as a “hoax” perpetrated by the mainstream media to ruin his presidency. His supporters got the message and proceeded to act as if any acknowledgment of the dangers of COVID-19 was an act of disloyalty to Trump. They rebelled against masks and social distancing as Trump egging them on every step of the way. Now Trump supporters across the country are even rejecting the vaccinations to a degree that vaccination rates map closely to partisan loyalties across the country. Trump never explicitly asked them to avoid the shot, but that doesn’t matter. He made it clear that loyalty to him means pretending the virus is no big deal, so they refuse to take even this precaution against the disease.

The result is that Trumpers are paying for their loyalty to their orange messiah with their lives.

Of the people hospitalized for COVID-19 in May, 99.9% were unvaccinated. Of those who died of the virus that month, 99.2% were unvaccinated. Trump himself got a severe case of COVID-19 in October, but unlike his followers, he had a team of doctors working tirelessly and bending every rule to get him care, allowing him to survive the kind of case that the less fortunate simply die from.

Trump supporters have eyes and ears. They know that their leader uses people and then throws them away. So how is he able to get people — literally millions of people! — to keep blindly following him anyway?

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Like all good grifters, Trump’s talent is not in convincing people that he’s an honest dealer, which is impossible. It’s in convincing them that they’re in on the con. It’s about using people’s egos against them, convincing them that they’re special, unlike all those other morons Trump has cheated in the past.

We see this most clearly in the case of Giuliani, who clearly thought of himself as some kind of criminal mastermind, making it especially delicious when he discovered that nope, he’s just another Trump patsy! And we see it with all the Capitol rioters who cheerfully posted pictures of their insurrection on social media, so confident that they’d pull this off that they never paused to consider that their own images would only end up being evidence of their guilt in criminal court.

Trump is hardly the first person to figure out that the right is full of people with outsized egos who falsely think they’re smarter than everyone else, leaving them vulnerable to fraud. Conservative media has long been funded by fools who can’t wait to be parted from their money. Engaging right-wing media, whether it’s mailing lists or cable news or Infowars, means being constantly bombarded by ads for useless supplements, survivalist “kits,” and gold investment schemes, all various levels of scam that prey on typical conservative’s foolish desire to believe he has an edge over the “sheeple.”

But there’s no doubt that Trump has a particular talent for tricking stupid people into thinking they’re smart, and then picking their pocket while they toot their own horn. Maybe it’s his combination of narcissism, ignorance, and sociopathy that gives him a deep understanding of the worst impulses of others. Whatever it is, it’s something that his former lawyer/fixer, Michael Cohen, openly warned Republicans about in 2019, during House testimony offered after he pled guilty to crimes committed for Trump.

“I did the same thing that you’re doing now for 10 years,” Cohen warned, saying, “I can only warn people. The more people that follow Mr. Trump as I did blindly are going to suffer the same consequences that I’m suffering.”

Trump followers don’t listen. They all think they’re the ones who will be by his side, skipping away while some other idiot is stuck with the consequences. Their egos will never let them see that the only person that Trump protects is Trump, and time and time again, they pay the price for their delusions.

The absolute best way to make chicken nuggets, according to so many tests

In Absolute Best Tests, our writer Ella Quittner destroys the sanctity of her home kitchen in the name of the truth. She’s mashed dozens of potatoes, seared more porterhouse steaks than she cares to recall, and tasted enough types of bacon to concern a cardiologist. Today, she tackles chicken nuggets.

* * *

On November 17, 2020 — some nine months into the global coronavirus shutdowns — Leah Shutkever, 31, awoke with a single goal in mind. She donned a Jobsian turtleneck, tied back her hair, and took a seat at her counter in Redditch, England, with only a bottle of water and a large container of processed meat by her side.

For the next 180 seconds, Shutkever used a specially developed double-decker pinch-and-cram technique to jam 60 chicken nuggets into her mouth and down her throat in rapid succession.

“During lockdown, no [Guinness World Record eating] title was safe,” she told me recently. “I would scour the internet, weigh up the likelihood [that a given record] could be beaten, and if there was a slight chance to beat it, game on.”

She describes Nugget Day in particular as “exhilarating, nerve-racking, fast-paced, and daunting,” and says she was hit with “flavor fatigue” around the 20-nugget mark. Still, she persevered, and to this day holds the Guinness World Record for “Most Chicken Nuggets Eaten in Three Minutes.”

I got in touch with Shutkever after spending many more minutes cramming significantly fewer nuggets into my own mouth for Absolute Best Tests. I’d been trying for days to determine the perfect combination of chicken blend, breading, and cook method to produce maximally crushable nugs.

Shutkever’s take: The ideal chicken nugget should contain both breast and thigh for texture, and no matter how it’s breaded or battered, the seasoning should be ample. But despite those preferences, she’s not picky. “Nuggets are iconic!” she said. “I will take them in any form.”

Not everyone is quite so open-minded, but it’s true that a good nugget can be a tiny, golden treat to behold. It elicits the specific pleasure offered only by foods that can be popped into the mouth whole (cocktail meatballs, those little mozz balls) without sacrificing the gratification presented by the sort of properly crispy shell that’s more commonly found on larger foods (fried drumsticks, arancini). The ideal chicken nugget meets three criteria: thorough and harmonious seasoning, breading that won’t wilt or yield to a gentle poke, and innards as tender as any Jack White lyric.

On the seasoning front, Shutkever is with me. “It would have helped if the McDonald’s nuggets I used for the World Record were more flavored, to avoid hitting that flavor wall so quickly,” she lamented.

Before I let Shutkever off the hook, I had one more question. Did she puke? “No throwing up,” she said. “It was a pretty easy three minutes!”

* * *

Controls

After a few initial rounds of testing, I settled on a 50-50 mix of chicken thigh and chicken breast, pulsed together in a food processor with seasonings until mostly minced. (Specific proportions of seasonings are noted below.)

* * *

Findings

The Best Ways To Cook Chicken Nuggets

Shallow fry your nuggets! The deep fry method worked well, too, though the nuggets in the shallow fry batches were markedly juicier across all breading and battering trials.

Unless you’re actively trying to avoid fry oil, you might benefit from benching your air fryer in pursuit of the perfect nugget. Air fryer nuggets were perfectly edible and had a decent level of crispiness and tenderness, but the shells were unevenly cooked, and their interiors a bit dry.

The baked nuggets were much juicier than the air fryer nuggets. That said, the air fryer specimens had crunchier jackets, so, pick your battle.

The Best Breadings & Batters For Chicken Nuggets

Panko produced a cartoonishly appealing tone when tested across most cook methods (except bake), and unlike some of the other breadings and batters, it didn’t call for extra cook time to properly darken, which meant the resulting nuggets didn’t dry out at the expense of color. The panko-coated nuggets were, as one tester pointed out, “like little pucks of chicken Parm” and would have paired well with marinara.

Italian-style bread crumbs also created golden nuggets, but I can’t recommend them over panko in good faith, since the resulting shells were about half as crispy, more like crusty throw blankets than glassy swaddles.

Rice flour batter produced the most enticing exteriors by far. Biting into these nuggets was like driving a Mack Truck over a Zalto glass, and yet each shell still managed to retain the faintest bounce, distantly reminiscent of the texture of tahdig. (All-purpose flour batter did not disappoint — especially with its delightfully golden color and crunch boost from cornstarch — but it offered none of the textural nuance of rice flour.)

* * *

Breading & Battering Recipes

All breading and battering tests shown in the photographs were cooked using the deep fry method, though feel free to mix and match with the cook methods below.

All-Purpose Flour

Loosely adapted from Serious Eats. Note: If the nuggets don’t achieve a golden brown shell by the time they’re cooked through, remove from the oil and pan sear for just a minute or so in a hot cast-iron skillet.

In the bowl of a food processor, combine 1/2 pound of boneless, skinless chicken breasts and 1/2 pound of boneless skinless, chicken thighs, both sliced into chunks, with 3/4 teaspoon of kosher salt and a pinch each of onion powder, garlic powder, and cayenne. Pulse until the chicken is finely minced and can be pressed into patties.
In a large bowl, combine ¾ cup of all-purpose flour with 2 tablespoons of cornstarch and a big pinch of kosher salt.
Roll 1 heaping tablespoon of the ground chicken mixture into a sphere, then gently flatten into a nugget. Press in the flour mixture until evenly coated on all sides, then set aside. Repeat with the remaining ground chicken until all the nuggets are formed. Reserve the flour mixture.
Set a heavy pot over medium-high heat and add enough vegetable oil until it’s about 3 inches deep. Bring the oil to 350°F. (If you don’t own a fry thermometer, you can check the temp by dipping the handle of a wooden spoon into the oil. If the oil begins to bubble steadily, it’s ready to go. If it begins to bubble vigorously and crackle, it’s too hot — turn down the heat and let it cool a bit before trying again.)
Add ¾ cup of water to the reserved flour mixture and whisk until smooth. It should be roughly the consistency of pancake batter — adjust with a little more water or flour if needed.
Once the oil is ready, dip each flour-coated chicken nugget into the batter to coat, letting any excess batter drip away, then transfer to the hot oil. Cook each nugget about 4 minutes, flipping every 30 seconds, until golden and cooked through. Repeat with the remaining nuggets. Drain on a paper-towel-lined plate before serving.

Rice Flour

Loosely adapted from Bon Appétit and Serious Eats. Note: If the nuggets don’t achieve a golden brown shell by the time they’re cooked through, remove from the oil and pan sear for just a minute or so in a hot cast-iron skillet.

In the bowl of a food processor, combine 1/2 pound of boneless, skinless chicken breasts and ½ pound of boneless skinless, chicken thighs, both sliced into chunks, with 3/4 teaspoon of kosher salt and a pinch each of onion powder, garlic powder, and cayenne. Pulse until the chicken is finely minced and can be pressed into patties.
In a large bowl, combine 1 cup of white rice flour (not glutinous rice flour!) and a big pinch of kosher salt.
Roll 1 heaping tablespoon of the ground chicken mixture into a sphere, then gently flatten into a nugget. Press in the flour mixture until evenly coated on all sides, then set aside. Repeat with the remaining ground chicken until all the nuggets are formed. Reserve the flour mixture.
Set a heavy pot over medium-high heat and add enough vegetable oil until it’s about 3 inches deep. Bring the oil to 350°F. (If you don’t own a fry thermometer, you can check the temp by dipping the handle of a wooden spoon into the oil. If the oil begins to bubble steadily, it’s ready to go. If it begins to bubble vigorously and crackle, it’s too hot — turn down the heat and let it cool a bit before trying again.)
Add 3/4 cup of water to the reserved flour mixture and whisk until smooth. It should be roughly the consistency of pancake batter — you can adjust with a little more water or flour as needed.
Once the oil is ready, dip each flour-coated chicken nugget into the batter to coat, letting any excess batter drip away, and transfer to the hot oil. Cook each nugget about 4 minutes, flipping every 30 seconds, until golden and cooked through. Repeat with the remaining nuggets. Drain on a paper-towel-lined plate before serving.

Panko

Loosely adapted from Epicurious and Serious Eats. Note: If the nuggets don’t achieve a golden brown shell by the time they’re cooked through, remove from the oil and pan sear for just a minute or so in a hot cast-iron skillet.

In the bowl of a food processor, combine 1/2 pound of boneless, skinless chicken breasts and 1/2 pound of boneless skinless, chicken thighs, both sliced into chunks, with 3/4 teaspoon of kosher salt and a pinch each of onion powder, garlic powder, and cayenne. Pulse until the chicken is finely minced and can be pressed into patties.
On a large plate, combine about 1 cup of panko with a big pinch of kosher salt.
Roll about 1 heaping tablespoon of seasoned ground chicken mixture into a sphere, then gently flatten into a nugget. Press into the panko until evenly coated on all sides, then set aside. Repeat with the remaining ground chicken until all the nuggets are formed.
Set a heavy pot over medium-high heat and add enough vegetable oil until it’s about 3 inches deep. Bring the oil to 350°F. (If you don’t own a fry thermometer, you can check the temp by dipping the handle of a wooden spoon into the oil. If the oil begins to bubble steadily, it’s ready to go. If it begins to bubble vigorously and crackle, it’s too hot — turn down the heat and let it cool a bit before trying again.)
Once the oil is ready, add the chicken nuggets. Cook each nugget about 4 minutes, flipping every 30 seconds, until deeply golden and cooked through. Repeat with the remaining nuggets. Drain on a paper-towel-lined plate before serving.

Bread Crumbs

In the bowl of a food processor, combine 1/2 pound of boneless, skinless chicken breasts and ½ pound of boneless skinless, chicken thighs, both sliced into chunks, with 3/4 teaspoon of kosher salt and a pinch each of onion powder, garlic powder, and cayenne. Pulse until the chicken is finely minced and can be pressed into patties.
On a large plate, combine about 1 cup of Italian-style bread crumbs with a big pinch of kosher salt.
Roll 1 heaping tablespoon of the ground chicken mixture into a sphere, then gently flatten into a nugget. Press into the bread crumbs until evenly coated on all sides, then set aside. Repeat with the remaining ground chicken until all the nuggets are formed.
Set a heavy pot over medium-high heat and add enough vegetable oil until it’s about 3 inches deep. Bring the oil to 350°F. (If you don’t own a fry thermometer, you can check the temp by dipping the handle of a wooden spoon into the oil. If the oil begins to bubble steadily, it’s ready to go. If it begins to bubble vigorously and crackle, it’s too hot — turn down the heat and let it cool a bit before trying again.)
Once the oil is ready, add the chicken nuggets. Cook each nugget about 4 minutes, flipping every 30 seconds, until deeply golden and cooked through. Repeat with the remaining nuggets. Drain on a paper-towel-lined plate before serving.

* * *

Cook Method Recipes

All cook method tests shown in the photographs were battered with rice flour (see above), with the exception of the bake trial, for which we used panko, to avoid carbonizing batter to the bottom of a sheet pan. (Though, again, you can swap in a breading or batter of your choice here.)

Deep Fry

In the bowl of a food processor, combine 1/2 pound of boneless, skinless chicken breasts and 1/2 pound of boneless skinless, chicken thighs, both sliced into chunks, with 3/4 teaspoon of kosher salt and a pinch each of onion powder, garlic powder, and cayenne. Pulse until the chicken is finely minced and can be pressed into patties.
In a large bowl, combine 1 cup of white rice flour (not glutinous rice flour!) and a big pinch of kosher salt.
Roll 1 heaping tablespoon of the ground chicken mixture into a sphere, then gently flatten into a nugget. Press in the flour until evenly coated on all sides, then set aside. Repeat with the remaining ground chicken until all the nuggets are formed. Reserve the flour mixture.
Set a heavy pot over medium-high heat and add enough vegetable oil until it’s about 3 inches deep. Bring the oil to 350°F. (If you don’t own a fry thermometer, you can check the temp by dipping the handle of a wooden spoon into the oil. If the oil begins to bubble steadily, it’s ready to go. If it begins to bubble vigorously and crackle, it’s too hot — turn down the heat and let it cool a bit before trying again.)
Add 3/4 cup of water to the reserved flour mixture and whisk until smooth. It should be roughly the consistency of pancake batter — you can adjust with a little more water or flour as needed.
Once the oil is ready, dip each flour-coated chicken nugget into the batter to coat, letting any excess batter drip away, and transfer to the hot oil. Cook each nugget about 4 minutes, flipping every 30 seconds, until golden and cooked through. Repeat with the remaining nuggets. Drain on a paper-towel-lined plate before serving.

Shallow Fry

Very loosely adapted from Bon Appétit. Note: If the nuggets don’t achieve a golden brown shell by the time they’re cooked through, remove from the oil and pan sear for just a minute or so in a hot cast-iron skillet.

In the bowl of a food processor, combine 1/2 pound of boneless, skinless chicken breasts and 1/2 pound of boneless skinless, chicken thighs, both sliced into chunks, with 3/4 teaspoon of kosher salt and a pinch each of onion powder, garlic powder, and cayenne. Pulse until the chicken is finely minced and can be pressed into patties.
In a large bowl, combine 1 cup of white rice flour (not glutinous rice flour!) and a big pinch of kosher salt.
Roll 1 heaping tablespoon of the ground chicken mixture into a sphere, then gently flatten into a nugget. Press in the flour until evenly coated on all sides, then set aside. Repeat with the remaining ground chicken until all the nuggets are formed. Reserve the flour mixture.
Set a skillet over medium-high heat and add enough vegetable oil until it’s about 1 1/2 inches deep. Bring the oil to 350°F. (If you don’t own a fry thermometer, you can check the temp by dipping the handle of a wooden spoon into the oil. If the oil begins to bubble steadily, it’s ready to go. If it begins to bubble vigorously and crackle, it’s too hot — turn down the heat and let it cool a bit before trying again.)
Add 3/4 cup of water to the reserved flour mixture and whisk until smooth. It should be roughly the consistency of pancake batter — you can adjust with a little more water or flour as needed.
Once the oil is ready, dip each flour-coated chicken nugget into the batter to coat, letting any excess batter drip away, and transfer to the hot oil. Cook each nugget about 2 minutes per side, flipping halfway through, until golden and cooked through. Repeat with the remaining nuggets. Drain on a paper-towel-lined plate before serving.

Bake

Very loosely adapted from Epicurious.

Heat the oven to 375°F.
In the bowl of a food processor, combine ½ pound of boneless, skinless chicken breasts and 1/2 pound of boneless, skinless chicken thighs, sliced into chunks, with 3/4 teaspoon of kosher salt and a pinch each of onion powder, garlic powder, and cayenne. Pulse until the chicken is finely minced and can be pressed into patties.
On a large plate, combine about 1 cup of panko with a big pinch of kosher salt.
Roll 1 heaping tablespoon of seasoned ground chicken mixture into a sphere, then gently flatten into a nugget. Press into the panko until evenly coated on all sides, then set aside. Repeat with the remaining ground chicken until all the nuggets are formed.
Bake the nuggets on a lightly greased sheet pan for 15 minutes total, flipping halfway through, until golden brown on both sides. (If the nuggets become cooked through but not golden to your liking, you can throw them under the broiler for the last minute or so.)

Air Fry

In the bowl of a food processor, combine 1/2 pound of boneless, skinless chicken breasts and 1/2 pound of boneless, skinless chicken thighs, sliced into chunks, with ¾ teaspoon of kosher salt and a pinch each of onion powder, garlic powder, and cayenne. Pulse until the chicken is finely minced and can be pressed into patties.
In a large bowl, combine 1 cup of white rice flour (not glutinous rice flour!) and a big pinch of kosher salt.
Lightly grease the basket of your air fryer with vegetable oil. Heat the air fryer to 400°F.
Roll 1 heaping tablespoon of the ground chicken mixture into a sphere, then gently flatten into a nugget. Press in the flour until evenly coated on all sides, then set aside. Repeat with the remaining ground chicken until all the nuggets are formed. Reserve the flour.
Add 3/4 cup of water to the reserved flour mixture and whisk until smooth. It should be roughly the consistency of pancake batter — you can adjust with a little more water or flour as needed. Once the oil is ready, dip each flour-coated chicken nugget into the batter to coat, letting any excess batter drip away, ideally over a wire rack.
When the air fryer has heated, add a single layer of nuggets and cook for about 6 minutes total, flipping and spraying with a light coat of vegetable oil halfway through, until golden and cooked through.
Repeat with the remaining nuggets.

Meghan McCain announces she is leaving “The View” to raise her daughter at home

Meghan McCain announced today that she’ll be resigning from her position as the resident conservative co-host of ABC’s The View.

“This was not an easy decision,” McCain said on Thursday. “It took a lot of thought and counsel and prayer.”

The 36-year-old, who spent four seasons on the show, built up a reputation of defending less popular political opinions among her otherwise liberal co-hosts. She joined the show back in 2017 and has since become a leading voice on the right. “I try to just remind myself that I’m representing 50 percent of the country,” she once said of her role on the panel. Now, she says she is leaving the New York City-based show to stay in Washington, D.C. and raise her child with conservative Fox News pundit Ben Domenech.

“This show is one of the hands-down most wonderful, exhilarating privileges of my life,” she said. “You are the most talented women on all of television.”

McCain’s fellow co-hosts, despite her on-air praise for them, were reportedly not privy to her resignation. “We have tried to keep her,” a Disney source told the Daily Mail, which first broke the news early on Thursday. “But she is adamant that now is the right time for her to leave. She will finish at the end of July 2021.”

McCain is the daughter of the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz,, and Cindy McCain, who last month was nominated by President Biden as the Ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture. Cindy McCain recently joined Jill Biden and Doug Emhoff, respectively the First Lady and Second Gentleman, in a vaccine promotion tour on Wednesday, as Mail reported.

For many, news of Meghan McCain’s leave comes as something of a surprise. Earlier in the year, McCain signaled that she had no plans to leave the show. “Whether we like it or not, I’m not going anywhere on the show, Joy’s not going anywhere on the show, we all have to live and co-exist together just like Americans right now,” she said back in mid-January on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen, adding: “We’re all going to try and co-exist and I really want to have us all move forward.”

In recent months, tensions between McCain and her fellow co-hosts had run so high to the point where viewers began to question whether the show would endure.

One example of such tension emerged recently when McCain returned to the segment after maternity leave. Joy Behar, a liberal, told McCain point-blank: “I did not miss you.”

“That’s so rude,” McCain replied.

In another instance last month, McCain and Whoopi Goldberg got into an especially bad tiff, which resulted in both co-hosts apologizing after a commercial break.

Prior to her stint at The View, McCain worked as a columnist at the Daily Beast, a Fox News host, and an MSNBC contributor. Watch her resignation announcement below, via ABC:

.@MeghanMcCain announces her departure from @TheView at the end of the show’s season, saying “this was not an easy decision.”

“I’m just eternally grateful to have had this opportunity here so, seriously, thank you from the absolute bottom of my heart.” https://t.co/ZiP1UTs2xu pic.twitter.com/eLuEAJ4KLT

— The View (@TheView) July 1, 2021

Supreme Court grants Trump’s Big Lie a major boost in one of its last decisions of the term

The Supreme Court upheld two Republican-backed Arizona voting restrictions on Thursday that Democrats argue will make it significantly harder for minorities voters to cast a ballot.

The case, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, serves as an important legal benchmark for how the Voting Rights Act can be applied in instances of potential voter discrimination. In a 6-3 ruling, with justices appointed by Republican presidents all aligned in the majority, the Supreme Court found that the two restrictions do not impose an undue burden on minority voters, opening the floodgates for substantial voter suppression in the Grand Canyon state, progressives argue. By essentially striking down Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, voting rights activists argue, the conservative-majority on the Supreme Court effectively doomed the Department of Justices’ planned lawsuits against voter suppression efforts by Republican lawmakers in Georgia following Donald Trump’s promotion of the Big Lie.

The first Arizona restriction upheld by the Supreme Court by was enacted ahead of Trump’s election in 2016 when the state’s GOP-controlled legislature outlawed a practice known as “ballot harvesting,” which effectively allows community organizations and other third parties the legal authority to deliver ballots collected on behalf of consenting voters. The Arizona law, however, made ballot harvesting by civic and political groups a felony punishable by up to one year in prison with a $150,000 fine.

Of this rule, Justice Alito, a conservative, wrote on Thursday in a majority opinion: “Having to identify one’s own polling place and then travel there to vote does not exceed the ‘usual burdens of voting,’ adding that the overall impact of the measure on minority voters was “small in absolute terms.”

The second restriction concerns ballots that are cast in the incorrect precinct, known as “provisional ballots.” Back in 2016, the Arizona legislature prohibited provisional ballots from being either partially or fully counted in any election.

Writing for the majority, Justice Alito argued that Democrats failed to demonstrate how a prohibition on provisional ballots has a disparate effect on voters of color.

“Limiting the classes of persons who may handle early ballots to those less likely to have ulterior motives deters potential fraud and improves voter confidence,” he contended.

Shortly after the passage of these restrictions back in 2016, the Democratic National Committee sued the state of Arizona, alleging that the rules violated the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits the enforcement of discriminatory voting regulations at the state level. Section 2 of the act specifically bans “any voting standard, practice, or procedure that results in the denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group.”

At first, a U.S. district court ruled in favor of Arizona’s side. However, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overturned the district court’s ruling. The appellate court decided that the laws “imposed a significant disparate burden” on Black, Latino, and Native American Arizonans looking to cast a ballot. This prompted both Arizona and the Republican National Committee (RNC) to appeal the Ninth Circuit’s ruling to the Supreme Court.

The Court held oral arguments back in early March, where justices discussed how Section 2 could be applied to Arizona’s case. The court’s conservative wing appeared to side in large part with the state, while liberal justices expressed far more opposition to the bills.

“What if the provision results in a 1 percent decline in participation by minority voters? Is that substantial enough?” conservative Chief Justice Roberts asked Democratic lawyers, suggesting that a 1% reduction in turnout might be negligible.

“There’s a difficulty that the statutory language and its lack of clarity presents in trying to figure out when something crosses from an inconvenience to a burden,” echoed Justice Barrett.

In one rather bizarre line of questioning, GOP lawyer Michael Carvin just about admitted that rescinding the restrictions would hamper the GOP’s electoral position. Lifting the rules, Carvin explicitly argued, would put Republicans “at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats. Politics is a zero-sum game. And every extra vote they get through unlawful interpretations of Section 2 hurts us. It’s the difference between winning an election 50-49 and losing an election.”

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the ruling is “tragic” because “the Court has (yet again) rewritten – in order to weaken – a statute that stands as a monument to America’s greatness, and protects against its basest impulses.” She continued: “What is tragic is that the Court has damaged a statute designed to bring about ‘the end of discrimination in voting.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling is especially consequential because it comes amid a broader Republican-led push to legislate a wave of voting restrictions in various states throughout the nation – all of which appear to be motivated by the baseless allegation that Trump lost the 2020 election as a result of system fraud. If other Democratic challenges are to be made against a prohibition on ballot harvesting and the use of provisional ballots, lowers courts may defer to today’s Supreme Court ruling.

Bo Burnham is not joking about the climate apocalypse

A few minutes into Bo Burnham’s Netflix special, Inside, filmed in a single room in his house over the course of the pandemic, the comedian launches into his second number, concerning the purpose of comedy itself. “The world is changing,” Burnham croons at his keyboard. “The planet’s heating up. What the f*** is going on?” The song turns into a retrospective of the last year — the protests, the drought. “The more I look, the more I see nothing to joke about,” he goes on.

Then an angelic chorus from above sends Burnham on an ironic mission: “healing the world with comedy” because “the world needs direction.” “From a white guy like me,” Burnham juts in. “Bingo!” the ethereal voice says.

Burnham’s genre-defying special is much more than a comedy, however. It’s a social commentary on the precarity of life in the 2020s, especially online life. It begins with (sort of) lighthearted music videos in Burnham’s style, formed in YouTube videos shot in his childhood bedroom in the mid-aughts. But the songs in Inside, parodying the classic photos you see on white women’s Instagram accounts and chronicling the perils of sexting with emojis, coexist with explorations of serious topics. In one song, Burnham’s sock puppet says, “Don’t you know? The world is built with blood! And genocide and exploitation!” Near the beginning of Inside, Burnham says that he embarked on the project “to distract me from wanting to put a bullet into my head.” Over the course of the show, months in isolation and the weight of the world’s problems begin to wear on Burnham, who ends up sobbing on camera.

Critics and regular people alike love Inside, according to Rotten Tomatoes. Slate called it “one of the most sincere artistic responses to the 21st century so far.” That might seem like unexpectedly high praise for an eccentric, disturbingly self-aware one-man production where the one man spends a good chunk of 80 minutes dancing in his underwear. (You have to see it to get it.)

Inside isn’t really about the climate crisis. It’s an exploration of how to be a decent person in an indecent world, while facing up to your own role in it. Burnham, for example, skewers the performative nature of social media and points out how the internet is breaking everyone’s brains, while at the same time performing for the internet. But the overheating planet is a recurring theme for a reason. For Burnham, it serves as a touchpoint for doom — it’s there, haunting you in the background, even when your mind is bouncing between a million other things. There’s hardly time to comprehend the enormity of it, let alone do much about it, especially if you’re anywhere as depressed as Burnham.

In one jaunty tune, “Welcome to the Internet,” performed as if it were a movie villain theme, Burnham explains how the internet overstimulates you and inflames your inner demons, offering “a little bit of everything all of the time.” Later in the show, the lyrics of “That Funny Feeling,” with Burnham playing acoustic guitar, appear to be a jumble of disjointed subjects — until you consider that he might be describing the emotionally numbing rollercoaster of scrolling through social media. Seeing news about civil wars next to tweets from Kentucky Fried Chicken and Bugles? The juxtaposition of catastrophes and fluff feels so “funny,” perhaps, because all of these things are packaged as “content,” flattened into our newsfeeds, and presented with equal weight.

In his offbeat way, Burnham manages to capture a growing disaffection with online life — and how these new patterns present a threat to well-being. A scientific paper out this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences sums up how the internet has radically restructured how we communicate in a couple decades, with the chief goal of maximizing “engagement” to sell ads … instead of, you know, trying to help people or improve the world. The algorithms that determine what people see online, according to these collective behavior experts, “are typically designed to maximize profitability, with often insufficient incentive to promote an informed, just, healthy, and sustainable society.”

Burnham contrasts digital reality, where you can find and believe anything you want, with physical reality — including the unrelenting progress of global warming. “The whole world at your fingertips, the ocean at your door,” Burnham sings in “That Funny Feeling.” “The live-action Lion King, the Pepsi Halftime Show / Twenty-thousand years of this, seven more to go.”

That “seven years” line appears to reference the Climate Clock, a sort of ticking-time bomb counting down the years until the planetary apocalypse. The project gives humanity a deadline of 2028 “to enact bold, transformational changes in our global economy” to prevent global warming from reaching “a point of no return that science tells us will make the worst climate impacts likely inevitable.”

Burnham’s doom-and-gloom serves a dual purpose, speaking to both the climate crisis and his own depression. “All Eyes on Me” is the climax of the show, an auto-tuned banger about coping with anxiety — in the middle of it, he takes a break from singing to explain that he quit live comedy because he kept having panic attacks on stage. But it’s also a song about coming to terms with where the world is heading (“We’re going to go where everybody knows, everybody knows”). The third verse:

You say the ocean’s rising like I give a shit
You say the whole world’s ending, honey, it already did
You’re not gonna slow it, Heaven knows you tried
Got it? Good, now get inside

There is a moment of clarity in the song where Burnham turns off the autotune and starts yelling at the viewer, “Get up. Get up. I’m talking to you! Get the f*** up!”

It’s a jarring wake-up call, and a reminder: This might be a comedy special, but Burnham is not joking about the climate apocalypse.

Covid’s lingering effects can put the brakes on elective surgeries

The week before Brian Colvin was scheduled for shoulder surgery in November, he tested positive for covid-19. What he thought at first was a head cold had morphed into shortness of breath and chest congestion coupled with profound fatigue and loss of balance.

Now, seven months have passed and Colvin, 44, is still waiting to feel well enough for surgery. His surgeon is concerned about risking anesthesia with his ongoing respiratory problems, while Colvin worries he’ll lose his balance and fall on his shoulder before it heals.

“When I last spoke with the surgeon, he said to let him know when I’m ready,” Colvin said. “But with all the symptoms, I’ve never felt ready for surgery.”

As the number of people who have had covid grows, medical experts are trying to determine when it’s safe for them to have elective surgery. In addition to concerns about respiratory complications from anesthesia, covid may affect multiple organs and systems, and clinicians are still learning the implications for surgery. A recent study compared the mortality rate in the 30 days following surgery in patients who had a covid infection and in those who did not. It found that waiting to undergo surgery for at least seven weeks after a covid infection reduced the risk of death to that of people who hadn’t been infected in the first place. Patients with lingering covid symptoms should wait even longer, the study suggested.

But, as Colvin’s experience illustrates, such guideposts may be of limited use with a virus whose effect on individual patients is so unpredictable.

“We know that covid has lingering effects even in people who had relatively mild disease,” said Dr. Don Goldmann, a professor at Harvard Medical School who is a senior fellow and chief scientific officer emeritus at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. “We don’t know why that is. But it’s reasonable to assume, when we decide how long we should wait before performing elective surgery, that someone’s respiratory or other systems may still be affected.”

The study, published in the journal Anaesthesia in March, examined the 30-day postoperative mortality rate of more than 140,000 patients in 116 countries who had elective or emergency surgery in October. Researchers found that patients who had surgery within two weeks of their covid diagnosis had a 4.1% adjusted mortality rate at 30 days; the rate decreased to 3.9% in those diagnosed three to four weeks before surgery, and dropped again, to 3.6%, in those who had surgery five to six weeks after their diagnosis. Patients whose surgery occurred at least seven weeks after their covid diagnosis had a mortality rate of 1.5% 30 days after surgery, the same as for patients who were never diagnosed with the virus.

Even after seven weeks, however, patients who still had covid symptoms were more than twice as likely to die after surgery than people whose symptoms had resolved or who never had symptoms.

Some experts said seven weeks is too arbitrary a threshold for scheduling surgery for patients who have had covid. In addition to patients’ recovery status from the virus, the calculus will be different for an older patient with chronic conditions who needs major heart surgery, for example, than for a generally healthy person in their 20s who needs a straightforward hernia repair.

“Covid is just one of the things to be taken into account,” said Dr. Kenneth Sharp, a member of the Board of Regents of the American College of Surgeons and vice chair of the Department of Surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

In December, the American Society of Anesthesiologists and the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation issued these guidelines for timing surgery for former covid patients:

Four weeks if a patient was asymptomatic or had mild, non-respiratory symptoms.
Six weeks for a symptomatic patient who wasn’t hospitalized.
Eight to 10 weeks for a symptomatic patient who has diabetes, is immunocompromised or was hospitalized.
Twelve weeks for a patient who spent time in an intensive care unit.

Those guidelines are not definitive, according to the groups. The operation to be performed, patients’ medical conditions and the risk of delaying surgery should all be factored in.

“Long covid” patients like Colvin who continue to have debilitating symptoms months after 12 weeks have passed require a more thorough evaluation before surgery, said Dr. Beverly Philip, president of the society.

Now that covid has been brought to heel in many areas and vaccines are widely available, hospital operating rooms are bustling again.

“In talking to surgical colleagues, hospitals are really busy now,” said Dr. Avital O’Glasser, medical director of the outpatient preoperative clinic at Oregon Health and Sciences University in Portland. “I’ve seen patients with delayed knee replacements, bariatric surgery, more advanced cancer.”

At the beginning of the pandemic, surgical volumes dropped dramatically as many hospitals canceled nonessential procedures and patients avoided facilities packed with covid patients.

From March to June 2020, the number of inpatient and outpatient surgeries at U.S. hospitals was 30% lower than in the same period the year before, according to McKinsey & Company’s quarterly Health System Volumes Survey. By May 2021, surgical volumes had mostly rebounded, and were just 2% lower than their May 2019 totals, according to the May survey.

Oregon Health and Sciences University clinicians developed a protocol a year ago for clearing any patient who had covid for elective surgery. When obtaining patients’ medical history and conducting physical exams, clinicians look for signs of covid complications that aren’t readily identifiable and determine whether patients have returned to their pre-covid level of health.

The pre-op exam also includes lab and other tests that evaluate cardiopulmonary function, coagulation status, inflammation markers and nutrition, all of which can be disrupted by covid.

If the assessment raises no red flags, patients can be cleared for surgery once they have waited the minimum seven weeks since their covid diagnosis.

Originally, the minimum wait for surgery was four weeks, but clinicians pushed it back to seven after the international study was published, O’Glasser said.

“We are still learning about covid, and uncertainty in medicine is one of the biggest challenges we face,” said O’Glasser. “Right now, our team is erring on the side of caution.”

At Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, doctors don’t follow a specific protocol. “We’re taking every patient one at a time. There are no hard-and-fast rules at this institution,” said Dr. Jeffrey Drebin, chair of surgery.

Clinicians work to find a balance between the urgency of the cancer surgery and the need to allow enough time to ensure covid recovery, he said.

For Brian Colvin, whose right rotator cuff is torn, delaying surgery is painful and may worsen the tear. But the rest of his life is on hold, too. A sales representative for an auto parts company, he hasn’t been able to work since he got sick. His balance problems make him reluctant to stray far from his home in Crest Hill, Illinois, the Chicago suburb where he lives with his wife and 15-year-old son.

Some days he has more energy and isn’t as short of breath as others. Colvin hopes it’s a sign he’s slowly improving. But at this point, it’s hard to be optimistic about the virus.

“It’s always something,” he said.

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.

The connection between soil microbiomes and gut microbiomes

“No man is an island entire of itself,” wrote English poet John Donne, referring to the interconnectedness of the human species, and our societal dependence on each other. Almost 400 years later, ongoing research into microbiomes shows that interconnectedness is bigger and also much, much smaller than we once imagined. And it indicates that the health of all life on this planet — including our own — is predicated on communities of minuscule microorganisms, working in tandem, that proliferate everywhere around and in us.

As quickly as we’re learning about the essentialness of these systems, though, we’re also actively destroying them with a variety of unsustainable practices. These have grave implications for climate change and the ways it affects disease, ecosystem function and food security.

What Is a Microbiome?

Simply put, a microbiome is a community of microbes — eukaryotes, archaea, fungi, viruses, bacteria — that act together both with and within a specific environment. They are directly responsible for the health of that environment and the way it functions, collaborating to confer benefits that can help an organism thwart stressors and invaders, and making it overall more resilient; conversely, when their composition is altered, their environment is altered, too, and the organisms in it can suffer as a result.

Scientists have known of the existence of microbes for centuries but it’s only relatively recently that there’s been a massive global effort across multiple disciplines to map and characterize various microbiomes and the microbes that populate them, and to analyze their individual and communal roles in keeping their environments working well. We’re now beginning to understand that microbiomes basically run the whole planetary show: broadly, absorbing and releasing carbon, breaking down dead matter and turning various elements into nutrients that then act as food for plants and animals (including people).

No matter what or where the microbiome —air , ocean, our bodies or beyond — its microbes “are a translator of food into health or, if they’re corrupted, into disease,” says Emeran Mayer, a gastroenterologist at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA whose new book, The Gut Immune Connection, delves into some of the finer points concerning human microbial communities. “If you compromise the translator, you get the wrong results at the other end.”

There’s an atmospheric microbiome, in which “single-celled organisms float…through the air,” writes Caleb Scharf for Scientific American. For more than 40 years we’ve been studying the ocean microbiome, which contains mostly bacteria, archaea, and protists like algae and accounts for about 90% of all life under the sea; it also produces half the earth’s oxygen and influences our weather. Alteration to the ocean microbiome is causing warming waters and overgrowths of harmful algal blooms that choke out other life.

Here, though, we take a closer look at two other elementary and essential biomes: the one that exists in soil, which is inextricably linked to the one that exists in the human gut.

The Soil Gut Microbiome Connection

Researchers involved in the Earth Microbiome Project have been concertedly studying the soil microbiome since 2010, and have made all kinds of revolutionary strides in piecing its mechanisms together. For example, we now know that a spoonful of agricultural soil contains 30,000 taxonomic varieties of microbes. Among them are several yards of fungal filaments that convert dead matter to biomass, or attach to plant roots to boost their nutrient uptake; up to a billion bacteria that convert nitrogen gas into compounds that “feed” those plants and other organisms; a few dozen nematodes and a few thousand protozoa that keep bacterial populations in check, mineralize nutrients and protect plants from pathogens.

When the soil microbiome is healthy and in balance, it directly, positively, affects the health of the plants that grow in it and protects them from drought or pests, for example. It can shove out pathogens trying to attack plants, produce toxins to kill them off and also trigger the plants to defend themselves. It also has other critical ecosystem functions; most notably, it acts as a carbon sink, helping keep atmospheric carbon in check for a critical climate benefit.

The Human Microbiome Project, another enormous and cross-disciplinary area of study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from 2007 to 2016, was instrumental in beginning to tease out the connection between the soil microbiome and our gut microbiome, which both contain approximately the same number of active microorganisms. (There’s also a connection between the human gut microbiome and the ocean microbiome; they share about 73% of their microbes in common.) The soil microbiome likely evolved in tandem with the human microbiome and its estimated 39 trillion microbes that occupy our noses and mouths, our armpits and the palms of our hands, and most of all, our guts — particularly our large intestines. Our health is not only predicated on the activity of the microbes in our guts, but on the microbes we ingest both directly (from purposeful geophagy, or accidental dirt ingestion) and indirectly (in the form of plant crops) from the soil.

“It’s an absolutely amazing story, how the same molecules are used for the health of a plant in soil and our own gut; it must be a very ancient system that’s been preserved,” says Mayer. Gut microbes produce enzymes that help us digest food and break it down into essential nutrients, producing vitamins our own bodies don’t possess the ability to make on their own; protect us from disease-causing bacteria by regulating our immune system and teaching it how to fight off invaders; as well as produce anti-inflammatory compounds. A microbiome is unique to a person, passed on from a mother when we’re born. Likewise, microbiomes in soil differ in composition depending on region, type of soil, plant matter, and a variety of other factors.

Despite all the powerful benefits they can confer, microbiomes are hardly invincible, and human activity has done much to disrupt them. Industrial agricultural practices have an outsize role to play in the destruction of the soil microbiome. Tilling soil releases carbon and disrupts and damages bacteria, fungi, and arthropods. Monocropping saps nutrients from soil and decreases the beneficial microbes that live in it, leading to poorer plant growth and increased susceptibility to plant infections and diseases. Additionally, monocropping is heavily dependent on chemical inputs; these “negatively affect the biological functionaries of microbes, their diversity, composition, and biochemical processes,” according to multidisciplinary research from 2020 published in Land, causing “serious hazards to soil environment and human health.”

This finding is supported by a new study conducted by the Center for Biological Diversity and other partners, which shows that pesticides are poisoning soil and all the life supported by it. “The prevalence of negative effects in our results underscores the need for soil organisms to be represented in any risk analysis of a pesticide that has the potential to contaminate soil,” the research concluded, “and for any significant risk to be mitigated in a way that will specifically reduce harm to the soil organisms that sustain important ecosystem services.

As these microbes disappear, the soil and its plants suffer; and so does our health, as we take in significantly fewer, and fewer types, of tiny organisms into our gut microbiomes; some of these microbes may actually be in danger of extinction, says Mayer, with the effects on human health not fully understood. Additionally, our diets have become reliant on monocultures of processed and fatty foods that do not properly “feed” our tenant microbes and keep them in balance, leaving us susceptible to diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and colon cancer.

In the same way that microbial diversity in soil is decreased by agricultural chemicals, our microbial gut diversity is reduced by antibiotics. Both antibiotics and synthetic pesticides have been critically important societal interventions, says Mayer, but the collateral damage to human and soil microbiomes has been “tremendous.” Figuring out how to restore and protect microbiomes — in soil, in people, in oceans, and air — will be the work of researchers for many years to come, and essential to supporting all life on our planet. “Nurture your ecosystem,” says Mayer, “and it will take care of everything else.”

Brace yourself for the Bill Cosby media redemption tour

Get ready, because the kickoff of Bill Cosby’s Media Redemption Tour is coming ’round the bend in the wake of his overturned conviction and abrupt release from prison. Who knows which outlet will be the opening venue or which interviewer will serve as the emcee? Not I. But trust me when I say broadcast and cable TV newsrooms are probably falling all over themselves to book him as I type this.

As for whomever lands the assignment of sitting across from the disgraced comedian and earnestly trying to get him to answer for the allegations of sexual assault made by any of his 60 accusers, that’s going to be a tough gig. Part of that person’s job will be getting him explain how he can maintain his innocence, as he did after his release on Wednesday, despite admitting to incriminating acts in the deposition at the heart of Andrea Constand’s 2005 civil case.

Will the task fall to CBS’s “60 Minutes” and Anderson Cooper? Maybe NBC’s “Today” will assign Savannah Guthrie to take it on. ABC may throw it to Robin Roberts, Diane Sawyer or Deborah Roberts. All of these are wild guesses. I truly have no clue who will do this.

Truth is, it doesn’t really matter. The only party that will benefit in any lasting way will be Cosby himself.

This is how America works, right? You know, being the land of second chances and next acts, yadda yadda yadda. When famous men fall from grace, we lambaste them for a short (but, respectable!) amount of time before someone, usually other men, begin musing about when it will be OK for them to return to the business of being huge stars.

Louis C.K. was accused of sexual misconduct by five women in November 2017. By April 2018 The Hollywood Reporter engaged a group of comics and club owners to discuss how he could stage his comeback. Guess what? Later that year, he did.

Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose were each accused of sexual misconduct in 2017 and pushed out of their jobs as well. Like clockwork, by 2018 people were expressing curiosity as to what they would do next. Moreover, concerned citizens wondered aloud how long these poor unfortunate souls should have to suffer for their sins.

Ask Kevin Spacey, who was also accused of multiple sexual assaults and other misconduct in 2018 and recently landed a role in an Italian film.

Aside from Spacey, none of those aforementioned celebrities were alleged to have raped or sexually assaulted dozens of people, which makes Cosby’s situation closer in resemblance to that of Harvey Weinstein. The fallen film producer recently filed an appeal in New York State’s Supreme court, challenging his 2020 conviction for two felony sex crimes. But the public never loved Weinstein, merely the movies he produced. Whereas to this day, far too many people still picture Cosby as America’s dad.

Bottom line, somebody must be furiously angling for that one-on-one.

Let me be clear: Nothing would make me happier than to be wrong about any of this.

Maybe the 83-year-old performer will announce he’s retreating from public life, never to be heard from again.

Perhaps network news divisions will make the collective decision that they refuse to be used as a launchpad for an image-restoration campaign of a man who has been multiply and credibly accused of rape and sexual assault, and . . . OK I need to stop, I’m laughing. Nope. Never gonna happen.

However, news divisions might choose instead to continue elevating the voices of Cosby’s accusers in the wake of all this and have them strive to verbalize how they feel right now, something Joy Reid did immediately by speaking with accuser Heidi Thomas for Wednesday’s edition of “The ReidOut” on MSNBC.

This will be the route many will choose initially because these survivors are still bravely speaking up. They have already been through hell for coming forward in the first place. Now that this shred of delayed justice has been ripped from them, what else do they have to lose?

In a split decision, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned Cosby’s 2018 conviction for sexual assault — but not because there’s any evidence he is innocent. It happened because the once-beloved Jell-O Pudding Pop spokesman had previously cut a morally reprehensible deal with former Montgomery County prosecutor Bruce Castor.

Castor, who went on to become Donald Trump’s famously inept lawyer in his second impeachment trial, agreed in 2005 not to criminally prosecute Cosby in exchange for the performer giving a deposition in the civil case brought by Constand, a Temple University sports administrator.

In that deposition, Cosby admitted to drugging women with Quaaludes, knowing it was illegal to do so, and then having sex with them. He maintained that all these encounters were consensual. Sixty women insist that what happened between Cosby and them was anything but.

Having experts explain what message the highest court in the Keystone State is sending to other sexual assault survivors, and returning to those experts regularly to remind us of the rolling trauma this turn of events is likely to create, is the responsible thing to do.

But in what version of the sacred timeline do you see any of them resisting putting Cosby on the air? Not this one.

Expecting TV newscasters to adhere to what they should do doesn’t take into account the business side of matters. It’s not that simple, the non-cynical, unemotional explainer of How Things Work might say. And that’s true. A Cosby interview would draw huge ratings and bring in healthy ad revenue.

Besides, network and cable news interviews feature reprehensible people regularly as part of their mission to serve the public’s interest. That last part is key. Barbara Walter‘s 1989 interview with Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi is a defining example of a sit-down that revealed much about a man who was unfamiliar to most of us. The 1998 interview ABC News reporter John Miller scored with Osama bin Laden, a full three years before 9/11, was a warning. We didn’t realize that, of course, until the unthinkable happened.

Interviewing celebrities caught up in criminal cases is more fraught because of the fandom factor. No amount of documentation or testimony will lessen the support of R. Kelly’s diehards, despite everything revealed in Lifetime’s “Surviving R. Kelly.” Same goes for Michael Jackson.

Cosby may have been convicted of drugging and assaulting Constand in 2004 and spent nearly three years in prison for it, but to millions he’s a symbol of decency even now. At no point during his time behind bars did he entirely lose his loyal audience.

Unlike the case of another performer whose image is somewhat synonymous with 1980s, Twitter didn’t de-platform Cosby. All this time he’s been communicating regularly in some fashion with his 3.2 million followers, including on Wednesday, when he declared, “I have never changed my stance nor my story. I have always maintained my innocence.”

Rewarding their loyalty has paid off. Simply mentioning the rape accusations made against the late Kobe Bryant in a 2020 interview with Lisa Leslie earned Gayle King death threats and inspired Cosby to praise Snoop Dogg for dragging King — calling her a “funky dog-head b***h” among other invectives.

“It’s so sad and disappointing that successful Black Women are being used to tarnish the image and legacy of successful Black Men even in death,” Cosby offered, because Bill Cosby cares about successful Black women.

The academic question — again, it doesn’t matter — is whether getting Cosby’s side of the situation serves anybody’s interests, beyond the network in question and Cosby himself. Even if producers check all the boxes — flanking whatever he says with quotes from the deposition and input from a well-meaning expert who can talk about the deleterious impact his conviction’s reversal will have on women coming forward, along with including victims willing to rebut his spin with their personal accounts — Cosby wins all the same.

And Cosby’s side of the story will be the part that gets quoted and repeated throughout the mediasphere. Soundbites will echo through and be discussed on radio talk shows and podcasts. His quotes will recur in an assortment of follow-up reports and think pieces.

That is what will serve to exonerate Cosby’s legacy among the folks who already believed he had been railroaded — including and certainly not limited to his “Cosby Show” co-star Phylicia Rashad. Anything this man declares in a legitimizing TV news platform will be accepted by millions of people as the truth. That’s already the case, but TV will amplify it, no matter how much any trustworthy and ethics-minded journalist tries to convey that a vacated sentence is not the same as absolution.

Such efforts will register on the broader public’s consciousness with the same unremarkable impact as those muted trombone riffs representing the adult voices on every Charlie Brown cartoon. It’s awful to think about. But it seems likeliest.

Again, I hope I’m wrong. I really do. I hope that those with the power to decide whose story gets a megaphone will put the survivors first, along with all rape survivors who haven’t received justice and whose hearts sank as they processed this development.

I hope that entertainment divisions refrain from granting this tainted comedy legend the same pass they’ve afforded other celebrities convicted of terrible wrongdoing. Because every time that happens, women — Black women in particular — are reminded of the higher value society and their own communities assign to those men over their accusers.

But this is the season, nay, the era of corrupt public personas washing away the stains of their past in the river of media exposure. Look at Trump’s cronies: Sean Spicer, the former president’s feckless, ludicrously dishonest press secretary in 2017, has a political talk show on Newsmax . . . and people actually watch Newsmax.

Another former Trump press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, returned to her natural habitat on Fox News, where she is a commentator. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are trying to convince naïfs that they are “distancing themselves” from daddy. Former Attorney General Bill Barr is doing everything he can to downplay his powerful role in perpetuating Trump’s election fraud lie.

If Cosby is able and willing to go down his fork of Image Rehab Road — and when you consider that his last stand-up performance was just three months before his 2018 conviction, he probably is — the decision as to how bright a spotlight he gets will be up to the people holding them.

Brace yourselves.

Trumpers go spy-crazy: Now Seb Gorka claims NSA spied on him and Steve Bannon in White House

Right-wing radio host and former Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka has now claimed that he was spied on by the National Security Agency, joining a parade of evidence-free claims that began with Tucker Carlson Monday night on Fox News and continued with former Trump White House strategist Steve Bannon.

Gorka, a colorful if unpredictable figure of the early Trump administration, who was often seen on Fox News at the time railing against the “era of the pajama boy,” made the accusation in a Newsmax broadcast on Tuesday evening.

“There is a part of the NSA, it is the most aggressive cyber arm of the NSA called the ‘Tailored Access Operations,'” Gorka said, then claiming “there was a small unit of contractors in the TAO who had been tasked to actually surveil members of the Trump administration, me, Steve Bannon and others included.”

Asked by Newsmax host Grant Stinchfield why he waited so long to bring forth this allegation now, the tough-talking right-wing radio host — infamous in D.C. for an inability to park his Mustang convertible correctly — appeared to duck the question.

Later in the interview, Gorka told Stinchfield that a “very highly respected journalist” has the evidence to back his claims, and that this unnamed person would come forward at a time yet to be determined.

Gorka went on to claim that his communications were being routed through Malaysia and treated as foreign communications — and therefore subject to NSA surveillance — in an elaborate scheme targeting Trump allies. He did not explain this strange accusation further.

Asked by Salon about Gorka’s claims, an NSA spokesperson said they had “no further comment to offer” beyond the previous statement sent out regarding Carlson Tuesday night.

Gorka didn’t return Salon’s requests for comment on the matter. Steve Bannon couldn’t be reached by Salon for comment on these allegations.

In fact, on Wednesday morning’s “WarRoom: Pandemic” podcast, Bannon expressed skepticism about Carlson’s claims, wondering aloud why Fox News’ reporters hadn’t pursued a story on the accusations.

Since leaving the Trump administration to become a right-wing radio firebrand, Gorka has made various improbable claims, including that he was infected with the coronavirus before it was prevalent in the United States and once had a near-death experience at a 7-Eleven convenience store because he wasn’t wearing a mask.

This wave of accusations that the NSA was spying on prominent conservatives began with Carlson’s on-air claims on Monday night.

The prime-time Fox News host told his audience that an NSA whistleblower had reached out “to warn us that the NSA, the National Security Agency, is monitoring our electronic communications and is planning to leak them in an attempt to take this show off the air.”

On Tuesday night, Carlson refused to retract his claims even though the NSA, a highly secretive agency that rarely engages with media or the public, released a statement saying that “Tucker Carlson has never been an intelligence target of the Agency and the NSA has never had any plans to try to take his program off the air.”

NYC mayoral primary descends into chaos — but don’t blame ranked-choice voting

New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary — which was already unlikely to be resolved for weeks —moved from chaotic to disastrous on Tuesday when the city’s Board of Elections released early results that mistakenly included 135,000 test ballots in the ranked-choice tally. But while some conservatives used the incident to malign the new ranked-choice system, it’s the notoriously inept partisan BOE that shoulders the blame for the fiasco.

Tuesday marked the first time the city counted its ranked-choice selections, which allow voters to rank up to five candidates in order of preference. The preliminary results released by the BOE showed Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams’ lead shrink from double digits on election night to just a two-point lead over former sanitation chief Kathryn Garcia as lower-place finishers were eliminated and the next choices were reallocated. Progressive lawyer and activist Maya Wiley is just behind Garcia, and still has a chance if she does well among outstanding absentee votes. The winner will certainly be one of those three; former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, City Comptroller Scott Stringer and activist Dianne Morales have been eliminated.

But after those results were released, Adams’ campaign cried foul over some 135,000 votes that had been inexplicably added to the election night total. The BOE was soon forced to admit it had screwed up.

In an explanation posted on Twitter, the board explained that it failed to remove sample ballot images used to test the ranked-choice voting software and the program counted “both test and election night results, producing approximately 135,000 additional records.” Updated results with the test ballots removed were posted Wednesday night, which to election officials’ immense relief showed no significant changes from Tuesday’s data. Still, the PR damage had clearly been done.

“Let us be clear: RCV was not the problem, rather a human error that could have been avoided,” the BOE said in a statement. “We have implemented another layer of review and quality control before publishing information going forward. We can say with certainty that the election night vote counts were and are accurate and the RCV data put out today is correct as well.”

Some conservatives who have long opposed ranked-choice voting seized on the debacle to blame the new voting system, rather than the famously dysfunctional BOE, to score points against congressional Democrats who hope to expand ranked-choice voting in their voting rights push.

“Ranked-choice voting is a corrupt scam,” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said on Twitter, baselessly claiming that it is “ripe for fraud.”

Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., claimed, also without evidence, that “ranked choice voting disenfranchises voters.” (Arguably it does exactly the opposite.) Right-wing pundit Erick Erickson said he hopes the New York election “kills off national demand for ranked choice voting.” Conservative author Rich Lowry said the “ridiculously complex, drawn-out system of vote-counting is a terrible way to determine a major election and should be scrapped as soon as possible.”

It wasn’t just conservatives sounding a death knell for RCV. Rachel Bitecofer, the political scientist who runs the anti-GOP Strike PAC, said that the “RCV fiasco in NYC” should indicate to voting reformers that it is “not the end-all, be-all reform option.”

But New York’s delays in ballot counting are the result of extended absentee ballot deadlines, and have nothing to do with the ranked-choice system itself. And the system is hardly complex, Rob Richie, the CEO of Fair Vote, which advocates for ranked-choice voting, told Salon. When human error doesn’t intervene, as it did in New York, RCV software can tabulate the results with just the press of a button. And the error that caused the issue is in no way unique to ranked-choice systems.

“This particular problem of not clearing the cache effectively could happen and actually does happen with plurality contests too,” he said. Concerns about voter disenfranchisement, turnout or ballot exhaustion, documented previously by Salon, certainly played a role. “The biggest sort of challenge is correctable,” Richie said. “They can be more transparent in their planning and more consultative.”

In fact, ranked-choice software veterans who offered to help with New York’s election count say they were ignored by the BOE. The “most troubling” aspect, Richie said, is that they specifically offered to address running voting tallies and to create redundancy, in order to make sure that exactly what happened would not happen.

There were certainly doubts about introducing a complex and unfamiliar voting system in a large city, but voters passed an ordinance to implement ranked-choice in the first place, and overwhelmingly seem to favor it. More than 75% of the city’s voters said they want to use ranked-choice voting in future elections, according to a poll released this week.

“RCV is already paying immediate dividends,” argued New York Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, because “we’re now immediately spared several low-turnout runoff elections and long recounts in too-close-to-call races saving millions of dollars.”

Other New York lawmakers pointed to the makeup of the BOE as the real cause for outrage. The board’s “failures stem from corrupt political party leaders who make their incompetent pals election officials,” tweeted state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi, criticizing officials for “gaslighting” New Yorkers by blaming ranked-choice voting for the BOE’s failures.

Last year the city’s BOE failed to mail out many absentee ballots until the day before the 2020 primary, threw out about 20% of absentee primary ballots, and sent nearly 100,000 defective absentee ballots in the general election.

The main issue is likely the basic structure of New York’s election system. It is the only state with local election boards whose workers are entirely selected by Democratic and Republican Party bosses in the district. As a result, many appointees are inexperienced and have few qualifications beyond their ties to party leaders. The official who oversees voter registration in the city is the 80-year-old mother of a former congressman, The New York Times reported in an investigation last year. The director of Election Day operations is a close friend of the chairwoman of the Manhattan Republican Party. Other top officials include the children and spouses of current and former lawmakers.

“The agency has a culture where ineptitude is common and accountability is rare,” the Times reported. “Some staffers read or watch Netflix at the office, the employees said. Others regularly fail to show up for work, with no fear of discipline. Several employees said some staffers punch in and then leave to go shopping or to the gym.”

After Tuesday’s blunder, The Times’ editorial board said the ballot mess should be the “last straw” for the “incompetence” at the BOE.

“Some have jumped to blame the new voting method for Tuesday’s mess, but the real culprit is the same old one: a decrepit, self-dealing political machine that refuses to release its stranglehold on the city’s elections,” the board said, adding that a “functioning board would have eased voters’ concerns about the new system; this one exacerbated them, and the damage could take years to repair.”

Richie told Salon he also hopes that the screw-up will inspire “institutional changes,” which New York lawmakers and activists have demanded for decades.

Richie added that he isn’t worried that criticism of the city’s botched entry into ranked-choice voting will undermine efforts to expand RCV to other parts of the country. San Francisco also experienced growing pains when it rolled out RCV in 2004, but it has been a core component of the city’s elections ever since. Maine adopted ranked-choice voting statewide in 2018 and more than 50 cities across the country will use the system in their next elections. Even some conservatives have come around, Richie said, noting that the Virginia Republican Party used ranked-choice voting for its gubernatorial primary this year and “are quite pleased with how it went.”

The backlash over this week’s blunder error will soon fade once the BOE releases the correct results, Richie predicted, adding that the new system has already helped women and candidates of color significantly expand the number of seats they hold on the City Council.

If voters are “accepting of a reality where elections never have more than two candidates, then they should be happy to keep our single-choice system,” Richie said. “But if they ever want to participate in an election with more than two choices, ranked-choice voting is an excellent way to do it. … What we’re seeing in a positive way in New York is having more candidates, having more choice, ultimately is more engaging to voters and brings some people in to participate who otherwise wouldn’t.”

Donald Rumsfeld’s death leaves behind a legacy of arrogance and violence

Donald Rumsfeld’s upbringing isn’t really very interesting: upper-middle class German-American family from Illinois, Boy Scouts, Princeton, ROTC, marriage at 22, kids, bit of time in the Navy. He started in politics in a pretty normal way, as a congressional aide to David Dennison of Ohio and then Robert Griffin of Michigan.

He then worked at a banking firm for a couple of years in the early 1960s, but then ran for Congress in 1962. He won that race and served four terms. He was a generally moderate Republican at this time and supported civil-rights legislation. He also co-sponsored the Freedom of Information Act, an ironic move given his later career.

But during these years, he was exposed to a vile force that has done tremendous damage to the world—the Economics Department at the University of Chicago. This transformed his views, as these ideas placed the seeds of evil in so many people over the decades and all the way to the present. How much did Milton Friedman come to love Don Rumsfeld? He later bemoaned Reagan selecting George Bush as his vice president as the greatest mistake of his presidency (how dare he use the term “voodoo economics!”) and claimed that if Reagan had listened and selected Rumsfeld instead, “I believe he would have succeeded Reagan as president and the sorry Bush-Clinton period would never have occurred.” What a world that would have been.

In 1969, Rumsfeld resigned from Congress to go work for a nice man named Richard Nixon. The new president wanted to reform the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), which administered most of the War on Poverty. Rumsfeld, who had voted against its creation and who still believed it should be eliminated, did not want to take the job of director. After all, by this time he was pretty committed to his Randian economics. But Nixon, who believed that it should exist in some way but under conservative leadership, convinced him to take the job. But hey, at least he got to hire some really lovely people like Frank Carlucci and Dick Cheney to work under him.

Pleased with Rummy’s administration, Nixon named him Counselor to the President in 1970 and allowed him to retain the Cabinet rank he had gotten at OEO. Rumsfeld became one of Richard Nixon’s top White House advisors, with his own office in the West Wing. Why did Nixon like him so much? One quote demonstrates his Nixonian values: “He’s a ruthless little bastard. You can be sure of that.” The Iraqis are sure of that anyway. Finally, in 1973, Nixon named Rumsfeld the NATO ambassador.

When Nixon resigned, Rumsfeld returned to Washington to head up Gerald Ford’s transition team. Ford and Rumsfeld were close from their time in the House together. Then, Rumsfeld became Ford’s Secretary of Defense. Here he was a pretty open bureaucratic enemy of Henry Kissinger, as Rumsfeld was committed to building up America’s traditional military forces, unlike the secretary of the state.

Rumsfeld argued the classic old strategy of the Cold War: that a reduction in military armaments and forces would open a gap with the Soviets. So he pushed for significantly expanded missile systems and a big shipbuilding program. Overall, his first run as Secretary of Defense was ultimately relatively uncontroversial compared to others during the Cold War. Kissinger was the more powerful player on foreign policy, even if Rumsfeld was very good at playing the inside Washington game.

Like any rich Republican with connections throughout the defense industry and every other government-related business, Rumsfeld found his talents in high demand after the Ford administration. He became president and CEO of the pharmaceutical company GD Searle. He won a bunch of big awards for being such a great CEO, which I have little doubt was about currying favor from this powerful Washington insider. He was CEO of General Instrument, a semiconductor company, from 1990 to 1993 and then chairman of Gilead Sciences, another Big Pharma firm, from 1997 to 2001.

At the same time, Rumsfeld was a useful guy for Republican presidents to have around. In 1983, for instance, Reagan named him his Special Envoy for the Middle East, which allowed him to meet with a good buddy: Saddam Hussein. They had lots in common actually, such as opposing Syria and Iran. Of course, Iraq was in the middle of its war with Iran, which the US supported with significant investment on the Iraqi side. Sure, Rumsfeld expressed some mild disapproval of Saddam’s frequent use of chemical weapons, but that wasn’t going to get in the way of the alliance and doing some business. This was just the most prominent of Rumsfeld’s many forays into representing Reagan and then George Bush internationally and on domestic issues.

That included everything from Reagan’s Special Envoy on the Law of the Sea Treaty and a member of the Joint Committee on US-Japan Relations to his time on the National Economic Commission and being a member of the FCC’s High Definition Television Advisory Committee. Maybe he just got to watch a lot of cool new TVs in that last one, I don’t know. Anyway, more significant was Bill Clinton naming him to the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States in 1998, which produced a report claiming Iraq, Iran and North Korea would have intercontinental ballistic missile systems that could strike the US in five to 10 years. I wonder if we will run into those three supposed threats later in this obituary?

Rumsfeld was also an active member of the Project for a New American Century, that vile group of neoconservatives who saw the fall of the Soviet Union as an unvarnished victory that opened the door for the US to dominate the world through an aggressive free-market capitalism backed with robust military force. Just what the world was asking for. Rumsfeld, working with Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney and other lovely people, basically believed the US should not be restrained by international law and they did the intellectual work to create the American response to 9/11 before it even occurred, ready to go with turning Iraq into the personal experiment in American awesomeness and badassery. Their 2000 document “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” was such an aggressive statement of American power that it received both national and international condemnation for seeking to overthrow world order, especially after all the people involved with it ended up working for President George W. Bush.

It is, of course, due to Rumsfeld’s return to the position of Secretary of Defense under Bush that this obituary exists. He holds more responsibility than arguably any single person for the disaster of US foreign policy after 9/11 and the huge numbers of dead, American and Iraqi. Unlike when he served under Ford, there was no great rival to Rumsfeld implementing policy. The entire administration was staffed with Rumsfeld allies, most notably Dick Cheney, the most powerful vice-president in US history. Rumsfeld and his cronies sought to apply PNAC ideals into the administration. This first came through their plans to modernize the military by significantly reducing its size. While earlier in his career Rumsfeld had argued for a larger military, now he saw a fast and effective fighting force as the way to go. This would soon be a major area of controversy when his ideas proved less than effective in his preferred war.

When the attacks of September 11, 2001 took place, Rumsfeld had little real interest in exploring the real roots of the problem of terrorism, especially in regards to Saudi Arabia. Rather, he applied the event to his preconceived notion of the world’s problems. Bush’s Axis of Evil speech simply reflected Rumsfeld’s and PNAC’s obsessions that Bush was happy to share. Rumsfeld was already obsessed with Iraq, Iran and North Korea, as we saw in the Clinton years. In particular, Rumsfeld wanted to use 9/11 as an excuse to take out Saddam Hussein. In his memoir, Known and Unknown, he later dissembled about all this: “Commentators have suggested that it was strange or obsessive for the President and his advisers to have raised questions about whether Saddam Hussein was somehow behind the attack. I have never understood the controversy. I had no idea if Iraq was or was not involved, but it would have been irresponsible for any administration not to have asked the question.” This is bullshit.

There’s a huge difference between an administration asking a question and telling lies to start a war with a nation that had nothing at all to do with the attacks, pushing uncorroborated or false claims about weapons of mass destruction and engaging in a year-long full-frontal assault to justify an invasion, followed by not having a clue about what to do after the war ended except to apply PNAC’s vision of fundamentalist free-market capitalism and assume everyone would see that America was awesome. Rumsfeld has prevaricated throughout this history. Another known known.

Even so, as the nation planned his war against Iraq, Rumsfeld kept complaining that the US was going to use too many troops! You don’t need a big military to take out and rebuild Iraq! Not surprisingly, thanks in no small part to his ideology, the war and its aftermath was a disaster. It was easy enough to overthrow Saddam. No one loved him. His military had been seriously hamstrung by the decade of sanctions after 1991.

But who or what would replace him? Rumsfeld and his cronies seemingly never really considered this, placing faith in ex-pat hucksters such as Ahmed Chalabi instead of engaging in real studies of Iraqi culture. Hell, Rumsfeld and his people didn’t even have a functional knowledge of the difference between Sunni and Shi’a Islam, simply the most important point in the history of the religion and the societies build upon it, an issue that it so happens defines much about Iraqi politics and those of the nations around it. Chalabi told Rumseld what he wanted to hear, was rewarded with plum posts in the new Iraqi government, and, welp. When Germany and France questioned the morality of this invasion, Rumsfeld dismissed them as “Old Europe,” by which he meant effeminate weak nations, as opposed to Bush’s Coalition of the Willing, which was super manly and buff and well-oiled with flaunting muscles. Poland will not be forgotten! Meanwhile, there was this slight war going on in Afghanistan all through this period. Given that’s where Al Qaeda actually was and where Osama Bin Laden was hiding, you’d think Rumsfeld would have cared about this, but he didn’t. He thought of it is as a sideshow to the real show. Given that he didn’t care about nation-building one bit, even as he was embracing wars that required it, his disinterest in Afghanistan undoubtedly made the situation there even worse than it had to be.

The disaster began in Iraq almost immediately. Cultural institutions and Iraq’s amazing cultural patrimony were looted to sell on the black market. Rumsfeld’s reply: “Stuff happens … and it’s untidy and freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They’re also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that’s what’s going to happen here.” Freedom baby!

He also responded, “The images you are seeing on television you are seeing over, and over, and over, and it’s the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it 20 times, and you think, ‘My goodness, were there that many vases?'” In conclusion, Donald Rumsfeld was a monster of a human being.

It’s not as if this was unknown. George H.W. Bush wrote (or ghost-wrote, no doubt), “I’ve never been that close to him anyway. There’s a lack of humility, a lack of seeing what the other guy thinks. He’s more kick ass and take names, take numbers. I think he paid a price for that. Rumsfeld was an arrogant fellow.” Well, Bush can go to hell himself for hiring him and letting him do whatever he wanted, but he was correct.

Rumsfeld’s war was pure ideology. It couldn’t just be fought to eliminate Saddam or fight terrorism. It had to be fought his way, with his military, his preferred weapons, his idealized free-market capitalism replacing Hussein. Of course, there were no weapons of mass destruction, no support of Al-Qaeda, no nothing. The entire war was based upon the lies of Donald Rumsfeld and his friends. Rumsfeld was sure they were there. In March 2003, he said on ABC’s This Week, “We know where they [Iraq’s WMD] are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat … I would also add, we saw from the air that there were dozens of trucks that went into that facility after the existence of it became public in the press and they moved things out. They dispersed them and took them away. So there may be nothing left. I don’t know that. But it’s way too soon to know. The exploitation is just starting.” The exploitation was indeed just starting, but Donald Rumsfeld was the exploiter.

Rumsfeld was central in the torture and “extraordinary rendition” that marked the treatment of Iraqis and Afghanis during these wars. As Rumsfeld supported the use of black site detention, the American use of Abu Ghraib prison and the endless (and still continuing) detaining of supposed terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, itself a colonial possession stolen from Cuba, he was responsible for the abuses at all of these places.

He accepted this responsibility, in no small part because he didn’t care about such minor things as torturing possibly guilty but quite possibly not guilty prisoners. In one memo about forcing prisoners to stand in one position for four hours to break them, Rumsfeld smarmily responded, “I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing [by prisoners] limited to 4 hours?” Human rights organizations such as the ACLU attempted to sue him for his responsibility in these atrocities, but there was no way the US “justice” system was going to hold him accountable for torturing Muslims.

Rumsfeld consistently believed that the right messaging would salvage the popularity of the war for Americans. Talking about “sacrifice” was big for Rummy, but he could never articulate what we were sacrificing for, except to play 9/11 footage over and over again, which had squat to do with Iraq and everyone knew it by 2004, even if they should have known it before. But Rumsfeld could not be moved off this messaging obsession, developing then-secret Pentagon PR plans. He couldn’t even be bothered to sign letters of condolences for dead American soldiers, using a signing machine instead. He had more important things to deal with, like killing brown people.

And of course, there was the greatest bit of messaging in American history: “Now what is the message there? The message is that there are no ‘knowns.’ There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don’t know. So when we do the best we can and we pull all this information together, and we then say, ‘well, that’s basically what we see as the situation,’ that is really only the known knowns and the known unknowns. And each year, we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns.” It’s a wonder Rumsfeld couldn’t sell this war to the parents whose children were dying for no good reason.

For all of this, Rumsfeld received the Ronald Reagan Freedom Award from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation in 2003. That award is supposed to go to “those who have made monumental and lasting contributions to the cause of freedom worldwide.” And if you consider “freedom” to mean breaking the law to sell arms to Iran and sending the money to commit human rights violations in Nicaragua, then giving it to Rumsfeld makes perfect sense. Moreover, in 2011, CPAC gave Rummy their “Defender of the Constitution Award.” Only the best people.

Finally, Rumsfeld was forced out, the worst secretary of defense in American history. Eight retired generals and admirals publicly called for his resignation for his utter lack of competence. Although George W. Bush continued to back him, Rumsfeld retired on election day in 2006. Some Republicans claimed his delay in resigning cost them at the ballot box, but his work was done and it wouldn’t have made any difference.

Rumsfeld retired to the life of a slightly disgraced public official whose standing in official circles never really suffered. He wrote a memoir, for which he at least had the minor grace to give all the profits to veterans’ organizations. He sat on many foundations and corporate boards. He also started his own foundation, The Rumsfeld Foundation, which brings people in from central Asia to school them in Rumsfeld’s preferred free-market fundamentalism. He also complained about paying his taxes.

Because the world likes to remind us of link between human rights crimes of the past and present, Rumsfeld purchased the plantation where Frederick Douglass was taken as a young slave to be broken by a slavebreaker. In Douglass’ first Autobiography, the physical beating he placed on the slavebreaker and the inability of the man to tell anyone lest it destroy his business is the moment where his manhood is formed. This land was owned, until today, by Donald Rumsfeld. Evil is attracted to evil.

In a just world, Rumsfeld would have been tried for war crimes, or at least became Washington’s latest persona non grata. Instead, he got a huge advance for his memoirs, established The Rumsfeld Foundation to push his ridiculous ideas and was honored by the 2011 CPAC conference. Finally, the beast is dead, a man who represented the very worst of American arrogance and violence toward the rest of the world.

Alas, there are so many beasts to replace him.

Liz Cheney blasts GOP cowardice on Jan. 6 commission: “The courage of my party’s leaders has faded”

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) is going all in on the Jan. 6 commission. She is one of just two Republicans who are supporting the commission, but she released a statement that made it clear she has strong opinions about it.

“The attack on January 6th was an unprecedented assault on Congress and the functioning of our democratic process,” she began, noting that most of the officials understood the gravity and seriousness of what happened. Since then, she said that “the courage of my party’s leaders has faded.”

She noted that former President Donald Trump has provoked violence before and his attacks on the Constitution “are accelerating.”

She went on to call out the 34 House Republicans who voted to establish the bipartisan independent commission on Jan. 6 but now that the GOP has decided to oppose it, the support of those 34 Republicans has vanished.

“Our nation, and the families of the brave law enforcement officers who were injured defending us or died follow the attack, deserve answers,” Cheney said. “I believe this select committee is our only remaining option. I will vote to support it.”

“This investigation can only succeed if it is sober, professional and non-partisan. The threat to our democracy is far too grave for grandstanding or political maneuvering. The Committee should issue and enforce subpoenas promptly, hire skilled counsel and do its job thoroughly and expeditiously,” she closed.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that she may appoint her own Republicans given House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is thinking of putting people like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) or Jim Jordan (R-OH) on the committee.

See her statement below:

I've said before that a bipartisan independent commission would've been the best way to investigate the Jan. 6th attack.

⁰That effort was unfortunately blocked. A select committee is now the only remaining option. I will vote to support it. See my full stmt: pic.twitter.com/C073yKWRWH

— Rep. Liz Cheney (@RepLizCheney) June 30, 2021