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The supportive decision-making model that might have saved Britney Spears from conservatorship

Britney Spears revealed in a court hearing this week some of the horrific realities faced by people living under legal guardianships and conservatorships in the U.S. — but perhaps the most shocking part is the idea that, like Britney, most individuals with guardians don’t realize they have the right to challenge the guardianship they live under. 

Disability advocates have for years been sounding the horn on long overdue changes that they say need to be made within our guardianship programs — and thanks to one of the most iconic voices of the Millennial generation, it appears people are finally listening.

This feels jarring for some. Guardianship or Conservatorship, the legal process to remove rights from individuals that have been deemed incompetent, can take different forms, but all do the same thing: removing the ability to self direct one’s life. These systems vary across states, but what remains constant is the restrictive hold they place over individuals. 

For individuals with disabilities, guardianship has long been the first choice for families looking to protect and support their loved ones. With this idea of protection, comes the reality of guardianship — it has a way of cinching itself around an individual, stripping away any sense of self-determination and choice in both the large and small decisions governing everyday life. 

“Guardianship is a very powerful tool. It’s not always necessary to use it against the person,” said Morgan K. Whitlatch, Legal Director at Quality Trust for Individuals with Disabilities. “We should be trying to make it easier for people’s rights to be restored and give them due process.” 

In 2012 Jenny Hatch, a young woman with Down syndrome in Virginia, was placed under guardianship. She contested it, and, after a year-long litigation, helped to pave the way for others to contest theirs. After the case was resolved and her guardianship terminated, Hatch began to use something called Supported Decision Making.

Hatch didn’t need decisions made for her, she needed support to make her own choices. It felt unique, daring even, despite the fact that most people already use some form of Supported Decision Making.

At its core, SDM is the process most people engage with when making choices. There’s a big purchase you want to make. Perhaps you’re considering a move, a new job, a new relationship. You do research, discuss with trusted friends and family, and then you decide. When filing your taxes, for example, an accountant may explain a complex form in terms you understand. 

This may not sound revolutionary but to those like Hatch, who have been forced to jump through a number of hoops just to experience the basic dignities others are immediately afforded, it was nothing short of a sea change.

Supported Decision Making, at its core, supports independence through a network of support, and working within that network of supporters to make informed choices. 

For parents like Betsy MacMichael, this was the clear move as her daughter, Jane Desmond, transitioned into adulthood. 

“I think that, you know, for us, it’s almost like a philosophical approach that says Jane is a smart young woman. She has the right to make mistakes and learn from mistakes like everybody else does,” said MacMichael, Executive Director of First In Families of North Carolina, a grassroots organization that helps individuals with disabilities and families access and receive support. She joined the disability field after her daughter’s diagnosis of KAND, a rare, non-inherited genetic mutation. 

As she parented one child with a disability and one child without, MacMichael says she didn’t make a differentiation. 

“Once they turn 18 or 21, depending on what you’re talking about, you do have to let go,” MacMichael said. “I think it’s a journey from age zero on. You know, the balancing act of trying to raise a competent person and still protect them.” 

Rather than removing risk — and therefore choice — from Desmond’s life, MacMichael is working with the knowledge that she is investing in her daughter’s ability to manage her own life. MacMichael won’t be around forever, she acknowledges, and with the support and skills her child is now building, she will be better prepared for that reality and can fully experience the joy of creating a life she wants. 

“I’m a people person and like to spend time with people who I want to spend time with,” Desmond said. “I want to eat what I want to eat. That’s it! If I need help, I’ll ask.”

But not every family moves towards Supported Decision Making. This is a layered and nuanced issue, steeped in long embedded ideas about the ability of individuals with disabilities to direct their own lives — and sometimes, the realities of parenting an individual with different needs. 

Advocates call it the school-to-guardianship pipeline, noting that most school personnel are not always aware of guardianship options. Under the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA), decision making responsibilities are shifted to students on their 18th birthday and, suddenly, parents are encouraged to look at guardianship. Rather than discussing the strengths of a particular student and what long-term effects guardianship can have, parents are shuffled towards court.

The realities of navigating disability services on any level — whether it is deciding on housing or seeking support for personal care, amongst other things — is an exhausting process. Guardianship removes a layer of that complexity. But it also can remove the individual’s voice. 

This week, as #FreeBritney trends again, we all have gleaned that despite immense financial privilege, restoring your rights after guardianship takes them away is not at all simple. For the termination of a guardianship to occur, state statues and courts often request expert evidence that the individual is not “incapacitated.” 

Often, this takes the form of extensive assessments by medical or psychological professionals. They focus on diagnoses or IQ scores, rather than what the individual can achieve with or without the support of others. When Britney called for the judge to end her conservatorship without testing, this is precisely what she meant. If she can make her own informed choices, with or without the support of others, she can direct her life — no particular diagnosis can change that. 

Currently, 40 states, as well as the District of Columbia, have introduced legislation or resolutions that refer to SDM. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have passed them. Only 12 of those, including the District of Columbia, have passed laws that require SDM agreements to be considered before placing a person into guardianship. 

Choices in the Cowell household have always more or less followed the Supported Decision Making model, but when James and his mother, Marie, learned more about the theory, formalizing their process into an agreement became important. 

“I don’t ever want to take his voice away,” Marie said. 

As James navigates his life choices, he leans on the support of his team — but knows ultimately, the choices are his. “I’m used to challenges,” James said, like working and competing in sports, and he applies the same perspective to big decisions.

As Britney Spears’ court battle continues, one thing is clear: the disability community is tuning in, and hoping everyone else will stay engaged as well, if only as a reminder that Britney isn’t the only person who has to fight to be heard.

“I know there are famous stars that have to come out, but it’s people that live in the disability community that have to experience this every day,” said Jordan Anderson, Co-Lead and Youth Ambassador for Wisconsin Supported Decision-Making Team. Anderson, an individual with cerebral palsy who uses a power wheelchair, knows all too well the realities of guardianship. After advocating to retain his rights, rather than being pushed through the school-to-guardianship pipeline, Anderson advocates for others to use SDM too. 

“I just really hope that people are more aware of guardianship and do more research and are not put in the same situation.”

Republicans care more about the climate if you speak their language

Conservatives aren’t exactly known for demanding action on climate change. But in one corner of the internet, there’s a seemingly alternate universe where they express their concern for the planet in stirring, freedom-loving terms.

“Climate change threatens our freedom,” the New Climate Voices site states right off the bat. In one video, a former Republican representative from South Carolina, Bob Inglis, argues that taking action doesn’t necessarily mean bigger government, it’s about creating a future “with lots of jobs and lots of wealth creation.” In another, an evangelical climate scientist, Katharine Hayhoe, says that switching to clean energy is about “protecting our way of life.”

Previous research has suggested that messages like these can heighten Republicans’ level of concern about climate change, especially if they’re delivered by conservative messengers. But most of these studies have taken place in a controlled lab setting, where the people being surveyed are paying close attention. It was an open question whether such messages would work in the real world. 

A new study, one of the first to test this out, targeted moderate Republicans in two “purple” congressional districts in Georgia and Missouri, where there’s a solid mix of people from both major political parties. Researchers from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the University of Cincinnati blasted ads from the New Climate Voices campaign on Facebook, YouTube, and across the web over the course of a month in the summer of 2019. The results suggest that some Republicans can be persuaded to care about global warming, and that microtargeting — a marketing strategy of tailoring ads to niche audiences based on a wealth of personal data — might be an effective way to reach them.

In recent years, the American public has increasingly grasped that climate change is here, with serious consequences, from wildfire-induced smokestorms to ferocious floods. And there are signs that the Republican Party is facing a reckoning over its decades-long resistance to taking action. Strategists have reportedly started warning GOP leaders that ignoring the problem is leaving the party out of touch with Americans (especially younger people), and have encouraged them to start framing the issue on their own terms.

For the new experiment, an advertising software provider used models to target conservatives who were “in the middle of the spectrum on climate change beliefs,” showing the ads as frequently as possible in ZIP code test zones in the two congressional districts. Persuasion is more effective on people in the political middle, said Matthew Goldberg, an associate research scientist at the Yale program and a co-author of the study, because trying to sway people solidly on the right or left is “either not of good use or too difficult to do.” Likewise, the researchers chose purple districts because people living near those with different political ideas are generally more open to changing their minds.

Before and after the advertising blitz, researchers quizzed people in these districts about climate change. Republicans who’d been exposed to the videos were 13 percentage points more worried about global warming than they had been before, which is considered one of the strongest signals that people will support policies to address the problem. They were also much more likely to say that climate change was happening, that it was caused by humans, and that it was coming for them personally. 

Goldberg acknowledged that microtargeting could be an ethical quagmire, as it has been associated with attempts to dissuade Black people from voting or otherwise sway elections. “But in our view, we need to use whatever tools we have at our disposal,” he said. “If we use them ethically and appropriately, we could see results like these and see some really positive results in moving people on this really important issue.”

The study has a few limitations. The researchers say that the persuasion effect may not work as well in other places outside the two congressional districts they studied, like in deep-red territory. And it’s worth noting that just because people say they care more about climate change doesn’t mean that they’ll act differently or vote differently — it’s just a first step.

But Goldberg says the study’s results are “very encouraging,” and that future research can dive into the details of what’s working and what isn’t now that there’s proof of concept. “It tells us it’s at least possible to design messaging interventions that are both persuasive and scalable,” he said.

GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy: Infrastructure is “a woman’s problem” because they “do the shopping”

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) on Sunday insisted that infrastructure like roads and bridges is a “women’s problem” because they do the “shopping.”

Cassidy made the remarks on NBC’s Meet the Press, where he was arguing on behalf of a bipartisan infrastructure bill.

“If you go home and talk to constituents who are stuck in traffic for an hour and a half getting to work and an hour and a half getting home — three hours a day that they don’t spend with their family — they want a bridge coming to a town near them,” Cassidy explained.

“My wife says that roads and bridges are a woman’s problem if you will,” the senator added. “Because oftentimes it is the woman — aside from commuting to work — who’s also taking children to schools or doing the shopping. And the more time that she spends on that road, the less time she spends doing things of higher value.”

Watch the video below from NBC:

Your garden might not be as organic as you think — here’s why

When shopping for fruits and vegetables, the green-and-white USDA Organic label tells you that the produce was grown without pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, or biotechnology — at least that is what it’s supposed to because organic farming has had its fair share of scams and scandals. As a committed locavore, I prefer produce from a local farm that I trust practices organic growing methods rather than supermarket produce — even if it has the USDA organic label. Often, small commercial growers simply cannot afford the lengthy process of getting organically certified.

For home gardeners, there are pollinator and wildlife certification programs such as Certified Wildlife Habitat that let you put a sign in your yard for the world to see, but there’s no equivalent certification for organic home gardens. So how do you know the veggies you are growing would pass the organic litmus test? Here’s a checklist to see if you can call yourself an organic gardener.

Soil: Always start clean

If you’re starting a garden in a spot that used to be a manicured lawn — or if you move into a home in a new development that used to be conventionally farmed fields — chances are, the soil is loaded with chemicals from years of fertilizer and pesticide applications. If you don’t want to wait and leave it fallow for three years as commercial farmers do, remove at least eight inches of the topmost soil layer and replace it with clean soil. This can be a huge undertaking and not feasible in one year, so start with a small section and increase its size over time.

If you add manure to your garden soil to enrich it, which is okay to use from an organic or a conventional farm (with the exception of chicken manure, which might contain antibiotics unless it’s organic), only use manure that is well-aged because it doesn’t contain any bacteria that can contaminate your vegetables.

Don’t worry about using tap water 

Does watering your garden with municipal tap water qualify as organic? Unlike well water or rainwater, municipal water is often chlorinated to kill bacteria and make it safe for human consumption. Fortunately, the chlorination is too dilute to kill the microorganisms in the soil. The amount of allowable chlorine in drinking water is 4 parts per million, which is far below the 65 parts per million at which chlorine impacts microorganisms. Additionally, microorganisms in your soil or compost multiply so fast that even if they were killed by chlorinated water, they would regenerate quickly.

The organic seal of approval for pest and disease control: OMRI

For commercial fertilizers, use one that has the seal of the Organic Materials Review Institute (OMRI), which indicates it meets the standards of the USDA National Organic Program for certified organic farming. For your own compost, can you mix organic and non-organic grown food waste? The answer is yes. Most pesticides and herbicides are broken down by heat and microbes during the compositing process and the pesticide residue in the final compost is negligible. You can also use grass clippings from your lawn, but bear in mind that if you have used herbicides (even though most products available to homeowners break down in a few days), some don’t break down, so read the label carefully to determine whether the clippings are suitable for composting.

ID the enemy before you spray

Just as for fertilizer, use only products that have the seal of the OMRI. Before you spray, it’s important that you correctly identify the bug or disease you are up against in order to treat it with the right product — i.e. don’t crack a nut with a sledgehammer. Not every insect that appears in your garden and chews on leaves is evil and needs to be sprayed. To help you identify insects, download a bug identifier such as Picture Insect. Similarly, not every brown leaf on your tomato plants is a deadly disease. There are plenty of beneficial insects as well as minor plant diseases that should be left alone.

Organic seeds are optional; organic seedlings aren’t

Should you be buying only the more expensive certified organic seeds? Not necessarily. Organic vegetable varieties are adapted to be grown with only organic methods. For example, some organic lettuce seeds have an inherent tolerance to downy mildew and resistance to lettuce aphids. But not all vegetable varieties are available as organic. If you get your seeds from a reliable company that has signed the Safe Seed Pledge, which means it does not sell genetically engineered (GMO) seeds, and if you strictly follow organic methods for everything else, you can consider your garden to be organic.

To decide whether to buy organic or non-organic, vegetable seedlings are an entirely different matter than seeds. For non-organic seedlings, you can assume that the growing medium (potting soil) is not organic, and that the nursery has already treated the young plants with non-organic pesticides and fertilizer. As an organic gardener, you should avoid non-organic seedlings.

Latest QAnon conspiracy: Derek Chauvin replaced by imposter at sentencing

According to a report from Newsweek, the conspiracy theorists who make up the QAnon movement believe law enforcement authorities in Minnesota substituted in an imposter for former police officer Derek Chauvin when he was sentenced to over 22 years in prison for the murder of George Floyd.

Tracking responses on Telegram — a popular forum for the QAnon crowd — Newsweek’s Jason Lemon reports film clips of Chauvin at his sentencing — where he appeared heavier than he looked at his trial — set off a spate of accusations that something may have already happened to the former cop.

As Lemon wrote, “Believers of the QAnon conspiracy theory expressed skepticism that former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who murdered George Floyd, was actually the ‘same guy’ after his sentencing hearing on Friday,” before adding, “After Chauvin’s sentencing hearing on Friday, supporters of QAnon posted to a Telegram channel for believers, expressing their skepticism that the former police officer was actually the person that had appeared in court.”

On Telegram, Ray A wrote, “Who the f*ck is that? That’s not the same guy from the trial,” with BeWater chiming in, “How many Chauvins are there?”

Rose Watschke added, “His hair color seems to change everytime you see him. Facial features are significantly different too. Do you think the brainwashed people see it.”

Another QAnon fan speculated Chauvin is dead and ruled out suicide, writing on Instagram, “Derek did not commit suicide. We all know who killed him.”

According to the report, Newsweek reached out to Chauvin’s defense attorney for comment about his client.

You can read more here.

The next wave of COVID is almost here: Another massacre caused by Trump?

J.R.R. Tolkien wrote, “The burned hand teaches best. After that, advice about fire goes to the heart.” It’s a painful truth that people in red states, and red counties in blue and purple states, are about to learn.

Here comes Donald Trump’s final massacre.

While multimillionaire well-vaccinated Fox “News” hosts continue to sow doubt about masks and COVID vaccines to jack up the billions in revenue the channel brings in every year for the Murdoch family, the CEO of a hospital chain in Missouri is begging them to tell the truth.

“The Delta variant is in the Ozarks,” tweeted Steve Edwards, CEO of hospital chain Cox Health in Missouri.  “We have been interviewed by NPR, CBS News, MSNBC, AP, Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN, NYTimes but not @FoxNews.”

This is a crisis now for Missouri because the Delta variant of the COVID virus is not only far more contagious than previous strains, but also more deadly. As Heather Hollingsworth, writing for the AP, notes, vaccination rates are very low in that state, with one county clocking in at 13% and most counties “well short of 40%.”

People in red counties across America are reporting on social media the same thing Louise and I saw when we visited a rural town in Oregon last weekend: Nobody’s wearing masks or practicing social distancing. They believe right-wing media’s lies that COVID is “just like the flu” or “vaccines are experimental” or “it’s all a Democrat hoax.” They’re following Trump’s notion that masks make men look “weak.” 

As a result of this, Eric Frederick, the chief administrative officer of Mercy Hospital in Springfield, Missouri, tells the AP that they have been “inundated with COVID-19 patients as the variant first identified in India rips through the largely non-immunized community.”

And it’s not just hitting the elderly. “These patients are also younger,” Hollingsworth writes, “than earlier in the pandemic — 60% to 65% of those in the ICU over the weekend at Mercy were under 40, according to Frederick, who noted that younger adults are much less likely to be vaccinated — and some are pregnant.”

When the COVID virus first showed up in the United States in January of last year, then-President Donald Trump quietly told reporter Bob Woodward that it was both deadly and airborne. 

“This is deadly stuff,” Trump told Woodward on Feb. 7, 2020. “You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed. And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flu.”

That’s not, of course, what Trump and his lackeys told the American people, as they set up the deaths of over 600,000 Americans with more to come this year. “I wanted to always play it down,” Trump told Woodward a month later. “I still like playing it down…”

It’s a mantra Trump carried on right through his last weeks in office when he got himself and his wife secretly vaccinated in the White House, and, according to research published by the Brookings Institution, killed at least 400,000 Americans (and sickened millions more) who could have avoided infection if they’d listened to doctors instead of Republicans and right-wing media. 

But there was a method to Trump’s homicidal madness. He knew what every politician who’s ever run for president or studied the history of presidential elections knows: when the economy goes into the tank before an election, the incumbent always loses.  

Just ask Herbert Hoover; it was more than 20 years after Hoover’s defeat until Republican Dwight Eisenhower retook the White House, and 60 years after the Republican Great Depression before Republicans regained solid control of the House of Representatives for more than a single congressional cycle. 

Trump’s strategy to keep the economy on track was straightforward: Keep people shopping, working and playing so our production and consumption would keep the economy going throughout the election year.  No matter how many people died, especially if they were Black.

After giving in to his science advisers for a few weeks in March and early April, he went right back to downplaying the virus and discouraging people from even wearing masks. 

That turnaround came literally the week after the day, April 7, 2020, when the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and Fox all led their news with the news that Black people were disproportionately dying from Covid relative to white people. 

Suddenly right-wing media was all over the idea we must spread the virus far and wide to achieve “herd immunity,” a move Trump and his people thought would largely spare red-state white people but decimate the Black community and Blue states, as I documented here.

The virus beat Trump, of course; Joe Biden is now president and Democrats took control of the House and Senate, but the echo of that murderous political strategy is still killing Americans. 

And with the Delta variant, which kills unvaccinated people of all ages but only rarely causes illness in people who are fully vaccinated, COVID is about to plunge Trump’s devotees into a world of hurt. 

As Cox Health CEO Edwards pleaded in his tweet: “Fox is the most popular cable news in our area — you can help educate on Delta, vaccines and can save lives @TuckerCarlson.” 

While red states generally ignore the threat, blue states are doing everything they can to get ready for the onslaught of the Delta variant: New York and California are rolling out digital vaccination certificates people can show on their smartphones to get into restaurants and sports or entertainment events. 

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, knowing which way the political winds are blown by my colleagues on right-wing talk radio and Fox, went out of his way to say they’re not passports.  

“I want to make this crystal clear before folks run with it,” Newsom told the press.  “It’s become so politicized — almost everything in the state, nation — that there’s no mandates, no requirement, no passports in that respect.” 

But vaccine passports are what will save us, particularly since the Delta variant has already spawned a new variant of its own, Delta Plus, that’s “more transmissible, more easily binds to human cells, and is potentially more resistant to antibody therapy” than even the deadly Delta variant itself. 

This is why more than half of Americans surveyed want vaccine passports now, as do many business owners. When it’s impossible to know if the person sitting next to you on a plane or in a restaurant is vaccinated or a Trump-humper who’s trusting in Jesus or hydroxychloroquine, many people are still reluctant to dine out, vacation or go shopping the way we did before the pandemic. 

Which hurts what is now Joe Biden’s economy — which is exactly what Republicans want. But they are playing with fire.

Particularly given how deadly the Delta variant is, and how often it can even create “breakthrough infections” in fully vaccinated people when they’re heavily exposed to the virus. As Boston’s NBC affiliate Channel 10 TV noted in a recent headline, because of the Delta variant “Nearly 4,000 Breakthrough COVID Infections Have Now Been Reported in Mass.” (That’s a drop in the bucket, and most don’t get very sick, but still.)

The original and early variants of the COVID virus required repeated or sustained exposure to become infected; the new Delta Plus variant can apparently be caught by simply walking past an infected person. A single case in an airport limo driver in Australia shows how it works, reports the Washington Post:

Video footage shows the limo driver infecting strangers at a shopping mall and in a cafe through only fleeting contact, which scientists say proves it is possible to catch the virus simply from sharing the same airspace as an infected person.

The Post article adds that the cluster began with that single driver and has since “grown to 36 cases.” 

The BBC reported this week:

India’s health ministry says studies showed that the so-called Delta Plus variant — also known as AY.1 — spreads more easily, binds more easily to lung cells and is potentially resistant to monoclonal antibody therapy, a potent intravenous infusion of antibodies to neutralise the virus.

And Delta and Delta Plus are just the June varieties; there are almost certainly more contagious and deadly varieties to come as evolution continues to work its magic on the virus. 

The next few months will hopefully become a “Great Awakening” in America relative to the politicized lies that Trump, Fox and right-wing media have been spewing for over a year about the dangers of COVID.  And that will lead to a new wave of mask-wearing and vaccinations.

If not, it’ll be the “Great Dying” for Trump followers and Fox viewers.

Bill Barr opens up on 2020 election battle with Trump: “It was all bulls**t”

In early December 2020, Trumpworld was bitterly disappointed when someone who had been one of then-President Donald Trump’s most aggressive loyalists and defenders — then-U.S. Attorney General William Barr — said that he saw no evidence of the type of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election that Trump was alleging. Barr’s position was clear: He viewed Joe Biden as the United States’ legitimate president-elect and believed that Biden had defeated Trump fair and square. Barr has kept a low profile during Biden’s five months as president, but an article published by The Atlantic on June 27 offers major insights on what the former U.S. attorney general has been thinking about the 2020 election in 2021.

The article, written by journalist Jonathan D. Karl, focuses on a series of interviews that Karl conducted with Barr during the spring of 2021.

When Barr resigned as attorney general in December 2020, Trump was falsely claiming that he won Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, Arizona and Michigan when in fact, Biden flipped all of those states. Trump won those states in 2016; Biden won them in 2020. And Barr saw nothing to back up Trump’s claims that Biden didn’t.

Karl reveals, “Barr told me he had already concluded it was highly unlikely that evidence existed that would tip the scales in the election. He had expected Trump to lose and therefore, was not surprised by the outcome. He also knew that at some point, Trump was going to confront him about the allegations, and he wanted to be able to say that he had looked into them and that they were unfounded. So, in addition to giving prosecutors approval to open investigations into clear and credible allegations of substantial fraud, Barr began his own, unofficial inquiry into the major claims that the president and his allies were making.”

In one of the interviews, Barr told Karl, “My attitude was: It was put-up or shut-up time,” Barr told me. “If there was evidence of fraud, I had no motive to suppress it. But my suspicion all the way along was that there was nothing there. It was all bullshit.”

According to Karl, Barr “looked into allegations that voting machines across the country were rigged to switch Trump votes to Biden votes” and “received two briefings from cyber-security experts at the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI.”

Barr told Karl, “We realized from the beginning it was just bullshit…. It’s a counting machine, and they save everything that was counted. So, you just reconcile the two. There had been no discrepancy reported anywhere, and I’m still not aware of any discrepancy.”

During one of the interviews, Barr told Karl that in early December 2020, Trump was furious with him because of an Associated Press interview in which Barr said that he saw no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. That AP article was published on December 1, 2020.

During a meeting after AP’s article came out, Trump told Barr, “How the fuck could you do this to me? Why did you say it?” — to which Barr responded, “Because it’s true.” And Trump then told Barr, “You must hate Trump. You must hate Trump.”

Karl explains, “Barr thought that the president was trying to control himself, but he seemed angrier than he had ever seen him. His face was red. Barr’s AP interview was dominating every cable news channel except the one Trump was watching. The television in the room was tuned to the right-wing, pro-Trump network One America News.”

Barr announced his resignation as attorney general on December 14, 2020.

“Sex/Life” and the exhausting, male entitlement of the “nice guy” trope

There’s something about men who identify themselves and are identified by others as “nice guys” — as if that in itself is a defining personality — that’s always set off my fight or flight instinct. I wasn’t sure why until one day, the discourse around “incels,” incel culture, and all the men on the internet who believe they’re entitled to women’s bodies as payment for being “nice guys,” made it click. 

The onscreen trope and societal archetype of the “nice guy” is so frustrating because of the common plot points and social expectations that go hand-in-hand with this particular character. In Netflix’s latest comedy-drama “Sex/Life,” which follows the lives of justifiably dissatisfied housewife Billie (Sarah Shahi) and her perfect, “nice guy” husband Cooper (Mike Vogel), Cooper is the quintessential “nice guy.”

As Billie becomes addicted to fantasizing and journaling about her steamy, passionate and turbulent relationship with her ex, Brad (Adam Demos), Cooper becomes privy to her thoughts when he reads these words. As a result, he becomes increasingly insecure about their marriage, and his inability to live up to the wild sex and crazy chemistry Billie and Brad once shared — and still share, to this day.

Cooper exemplifies pretty much everything wrong with the trope of the “nice guy” — starting with the reality that most “nice guys” aren’t actually all that nice. Instead, they’re pretty much just perceived as “nice guys” because they thrive off of the laughably low standards society assigns to men to be considered “nice,” which women are socialized to accept. The bar is so low, and the minimum so bare, that Cooper is repeatedly called the “perfect husband” throughout “Sex/Life” for the grand act of . . . *checks notes* . . .  being a man with a pulse, and wanting to marry and have kids.

There is also plenty of evidence that speaks to the contrary of Cooper’s much-exaggerated niceness, starting with the whole premise of the show. All of the chaos that somehow winds up culminating in a violent fight at a sex party is set in motion by Cooper’s very violating act of reading Billie’s diary, invading her privacy and violating a crucial boundary.

The laundry list of his misdeeds is long, including his treatment of Billie like an entirely different person (“I don’t even know who you are!”) when he learns about her wild sexual past and her present-day fantasies — not to mention neglecting her wants and needs for months after the birth of their second child, only to judge her for having sexual desires. Cooper later pressures Billie to have sex in front of strangers at said sex party, and when she insists she isn’t comfortable with this exhibitionism, he engages in a sexual act with another woman, right in front of her. This is all somehow justified by Billie’s rejection of him. So let’s get this straight; he shames his wife for her sexual past, but when he violates her boundaries of sexual comfort . . .  she’s still at fault? That doesn’t sound that “nice.”

Arguably one of the biggest red flags is Cooper’s career in finance, which leads him and those around him to see Cooper as a Messiah-like figure for investing in a biotech company, through which his firm could make millions. (“Now I’m not saying we’re curing cancer, except we kind of are,” he says at one point). In a particularly cringe flashback of Cooper pitching his venture capital firm to a group of undergraduates, he tells them, “Henry Ford, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk — their dream wasn’t to make money, their dream was to change the future for the better. Money’s just what they got for being right.” 

Ford’s famous factory line and approach to the modern workplace are used as the capitalist model for exploiting and dehumanizing workers to this day (in addition to his known antisemitism). Meanwhile, Musk endangered his factory workers throughout the pandemic while increasing his own net worth by $143 billion, but sure, Coop.

Billie seems to embody women everywhere who are socialized to see mediocre but non-abusive men as saviors, because previous male partners or male figures, as well as patriarchy in general, have set the bar so low. Right before Cooper, Billie dated Brad, who is somehow even worse than Cooper. The last of Billie and Brad’s many breakups is notably caused by her miscarriage. Pregnancy loss can be devastating and traumatic for those who experience it, but citing his unresolved father issues, Brad manages to make the miscarriage all about himself, cheats on Billie days later, then throws her out of their shared apartment shortly after. 

Arguably the key difference between Brad and Cooper is that one of them pretends to be the “nice guy,” and that, of course, is Cooper. Even after the sex party fiasco that ends with Cooper beating his ex-best friend, requiring his friend to get stitches, the following day, Cooper’s boss expresses sympathy for him and blames Billie for “changing” him into something he’s not. Billie even thinks this too, apologizing to Cooper, as if he isn’t the one who violated her boundaries, cheated on her, and subsequently sent a man to the hospital. 

In other words, just as Cooper embodies the quintessential television “nice guy,” he also presents the quintessential problem with so-called “nice guys” — “nice guys” often view their niceness as transactional, a means to an end that entitles them to whatever they want from women. Fictional “nice guys” like Cooper are often treated as sympathetic when they don’t get everything they want from women solely for being nice, while the women who don’t give them what they want are demonized.

“Nice guys” aren’t the same beast as incels, but the fictional trope of the “nice guy” similarly extends from a culture of deep male entitlement. And male entitlement can be more dangerous than annoying fictional characters — it can and does lead to thousands of women around the world being killed each year for telling their abusive partner “no.” It can lead to bizarre cultural sympathy for mass shooters and killers, when we’re told these men probably wouldn’t have killed a bunch of people if only a woman had just endangered herself and dated or paid attention to him.

Sure, “Sex/Life” has its redeeming qualities, and it presents an intriguing take on the age-old patriarchal question of whether women and mothers can “have it all.” Yet, enjoying it requires you to somehow get past its toxic men, which is pretty difficult. The steamy new Netflix series is curiously all about the “female gaze,” brimming with oral sex scenes, a male full-frontal nudity shot, and an overall celebration of badass women, while still tolerating and even sympathizing with trash men. Of course, tolerating and sympathizing with trash men is arguably an extension of the female gaze, too, offering bleak commentary on how patriarchy and a lifetime of sexist disrespect condition many women to see only the best in the absolute worst men.

Trump runs down his long list of grievances during Ohio MAGA rally

Donald Trump had a public therapy session disguised as a campaign rally on Saturday night.

The former leader of the free world listed his numerous grievances, pushed ridiculous conspiracy theories, lied about his record in office, and complained about his perceived enemies during a long-winded speech in Ohio.

Trump painted a dystopian picture of Joe Biden’s administration, which he argued is destroying America.

“We will take back the House and we will take back the Senate and we will take back America and we will do it soon,” Trump promised.

Trump’s speech was loaded with red meat for his base, but short on facts.

“Didn’t they send out 38 million ballots in California?” Trump asked, even though the actual number was 21 million, but he suggested a true counting of the blue state might show that he won.

Trump repeated his debunked delusions about the 2020 election, which he complained that he had been winning before all the votes were counted.

The former reality TV star even accused President Biden of violating his oath of office.

Trump whined about “woke generals” in the armed forces, saying he prefers “real generals.” In fact, he even complained about his own staff.

“We had great people working for me, and we had some real losers too,” Trump admitted.

Trump supporters chanted “CNN sucks” as he complained about the press.

And Trump said China owes America “trillions and trillions” of dollars in “reparations” and he falsely claimed that Lafayette Square was not cleared for his photo-op.

Trump also went on a bizarre rant imaging what Hillary Clinton might be thinking if she were ignorant enough to believe his “Big Lie” about election fraud.

The former commander-in-chief also lashed out at the Pentagon.

“The military brass have become weak and ineffective leaders and our enemies are watching and they’re laughing,” he charged.

Many of Trump’s comments were indecipherable for those who are deeply plugged into right-wing media, but Trump assumed his supporters were up-to-date on Fox News conspiracy theories.

More than one-hour into his speech, Trump praised disgraced MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and the crowd gave Lindell a standing ovation.

Through it all, Trump kept returning to his lies about the 2020 election, which was decisively won by Joe Biden. But Trump just keep pushing the “Big Lie”

“I am ashamed of our Supreme Court,” Trump said. “I am ashamed.”

“If you win Ohio and if you Florida, you win,” Trump argued, despite the two states only having 47 Electoral Votes combined, while 270 are needed to win.

“This was the crime of the century and this was the scam of the century,” Trump lied to his supporters. “They used COVID in order to cheat. They used COVID in order to rig the election and in order to steal the election — they used COVID. That’s as simple as it gets.”

Here is some of what people were saying about Trump’s speech, which lasted more than 90 minutes:

Scientists hope mRNA vaccine technology could be used to cure cancer and HIV

One of the unexpected ripple effects of the global pandemic is how it catalyzed medical breakthroughs. Most prominently, the same technology used in SARS-CoV-2 vaccines has the potential to improve treatments for diseases like cancer and HIV.

Earlier this June, President Biden’s medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci noted that the extraordinary success of the messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) COVID-19 vaccines had given new hope to HIV vaccinologists. In fact, researchers across multiple disciplines have renewed enthusiasm based on the techniques advanced during the pandemic. Such a vaccine would be an astonishing achievement in vaccinating against a retrovirus, HIV, that has eluded scientists for decades.

Although COVID-19 vaccines are the first mRNA vaccines approved for human use, RNA-based vaccination goes back twenty-five years. In the 1990s, researchers in France used RNA to encode an influenza antigen — meaning a substance that provokes an immune response — in mice. Unfortunately, hurdles such as lack of funding and attention, obstructed the advancement of this innovation — until now.

Over the past year, thanks to funding from the government and private sector — and the global cooperation of the scientific community — multiple mRNA COVID vaccines were created in under a year. The previous record for vaccine development was four years, (for the mumps), meaning the rapidity of this vaccine’s creation is a remarkable achievement.

mRNA vaccines differ from their predecessors in a few key ways. Traditional vaccines typically inject patients with either weakened or dead viruses, which then generate antibodies in the immune system, and thus train the immune system to recognize viruses the next time they invade the body. However, the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine injects a snippet of messenger RNA, which enters the patient and causes their cells to manufacture a small piece of the coronavirus called the spike protein. In artistic depictions of coronaviruses, the spike protein is the little points on the exterior of the virus that stick out like spines on a sea urchin. Once the body begins manufacturing these spikes, the immune system makes antibodies that recognize it. Later, if or when the actual virus enters the body, the antibodies will recognize the exterior spikes and set about destroying the intruding virus.

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Scientists regard mRNA vaccines as a breakthrough that will usher in a new era of medicine — a potential weapon against numerous other diseases, as Dr. Jeffrey B. Ulmer, the former head of preclinical research and development at GlaxoSmithKline’s vaccine division, explained to Salon.

“In principle, mRNA vaccines could address any infectious disease or cancer target that would require an immune response against a protein antigen,” Ulmer says. “So in principle everything is on the table in terms of the ability to use mRNA.” (There is one caveat, Ulmer noted: certain bacterial pathogens would not be effective against the vaccine.)

However, “everything on the table” does includes cancer. Indeed, mRNA vaccines could theoretically be programmed specifically for a patient’s cancer cells, meaning the creation of personalized therapies for any individual with cancer. Since cancer mutations are unique and specific to every human being’s specific cancer, the mRNA vaccine would be tailored to a given patient. This is possible because cancer cells have unique proteins on their surface, and the mRNA vaccines can be programmed for those exact proteins to generate antibodies. This way, doctors hope to prepare the patient’s immune system to recognize the cancer and kill it.

Pharmaceutical and biotech companies already see the potential in these new treatments. For example, BioNTech is testing mRNA vaccines aimed at overexpressed but unmutated proteins, and also signed a strategic collaboration deal with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals for the treatment of melanoma. Moderna is similarly building mRNA therapies that instruct the immune system to recognize mutations made by cancerous proteins in a gene called KRAS.

Another area that has seen significant advancement is the research field is HIV treatments. Researchers at Scripps University in California have developed a preliminary vaccine that shows promise for preventing HIV infections. The vaccine’s goal is to stimulate the immune system to produce “broadly neutralizing antibodies,” which are meant to attach to the HIV spike protein that enters the cells and neutralize them.

The companies ConserV Bioscience and eTheRNA announced a collaboration in March to deliver such a mRNA HIV vaccine. Additionally, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), a global not-for-profit working to accelerate vaccine development for HIV and AIDS, recently revealed that its HIV vaccine was able to induce the correct immune response in 97 percent of participants in early clinical trials. They are now partnering with Moderna to develop mRNA vaccines that produce the same beneficial immune cells. 

Yet HIV and cancer aren’t the only disease treatments that could be improved by this new protocol.

Since mRNA technology is able to exploit the body’s own genetics, it can also improve the vaccines that we already have. For example, every flu season, manufacturers decide which strains of influenza to target months before the annual season begins. Due to this, vaccine efficacy is only around 50 to 70 percent. But mRNA-based vaccines can be manufactured very quickly, and so far often have higher efficacies. BioNTech and Pfizer have separately been working on a “universal” mRNA-based flu vaccine that they hope will eliminate the need for seasonal influenza shots and only require a shot every five years. Similar approaches have also been proposed to build defenses against other diseases, including Dengue, Zika, Hepatitis C, and Malaria.

However, these exciting new developments don’t come without their own challenges. The raw materials needed for mRNA vaccine development and storage are very costly. For example, the Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine must be stored at −70 °C, and requires special refrigeration for transport and storage. Though this tech has great potential, it is entirely possible that the prohibitive cost of its development may force companies to abandon the research once the current crisis subsides.

Furthermore, some mRNA vaccines have required two doses to be effective — and it’s conceivable that many will simply not bother to get the second shot. In fact, we have seen that millions of Americans are not getting the second doses of their COVID-19 vaccines.

Another hindrance may be side effects. 80% of those who received the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine in clinical trials had some type of reaction to the shot. Symptoms were temporary for the vast majority of the population, but included fatigue, muscle pain, and headaches.

Even though expectations are high, researchers have a long road ahead of them as any future mRNA vaccines beyond the coronavirus are still in the early phases of development.

Still, Dr. Ulmer is “absolutely” bullish on the potential for mRNA vaccine technology to treat diseases such as cancer and HIV. “I think that there are obviously difficult challenges that we faced for a long time, but the success that we’ve seen in the RNA vaccine for COVID gives us some hope that maybe this is a technology that is more effective,” he said. “I think the next several years will see a lot of activity with this technology at hand and its application to other infectious disease targets and cancer — and that’s already ongoing.”

“Only time will tell,” he added.

This story was updated on June 28 at 11:13AM PST to add additional details about the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative’s HIV candidate vaccine. 

Heat waves can be life-threatening — for more reasons than one

One of the most extreme heat waves ever recorded baked the American West last week, with 40 million Americans affected by temperatures soaring above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Deemed a “mega-heat wave,” it broke temperature records over a century old. And it’s not over yet — this weekend is projected to bring another historic heat wave to the Pacific Northwest, with temperatures forecasted at about 30 degrees F above average, breaking 100 degrees F in Seattle, Portland, and Spokane. 

A mega-heat wave in the middle of a decades-long megadrought is the reality of climate change in the American West. These boiling temperatures come with major public health risks; heat waves are the deadliest weather phenomenon in the United States, even when compared to hurricanes and floods, causing an average of 138 deaths per year since 1991. Climate change is increasing that statistic; on average, more than a third of heat-related deaths globally are due to climate change. These effects are not equally distributed in the U.S. — due to the racist history of redlining and inequitable access to green space and trees, people of color are disproportionately affected by heat.

The most obvious public health risk of heat waves is the risk of heat exhaustion or heat stroke, especially for those who work outside, including agricultural and construction workers, people experiencing homelessness, and those living with poor ventilation or without air conditioning. But that’s not the only public health risk of heat waves. Along with heat also comes bad air quality, which poses its own dangers. 

As temperatures climbed across the West last week, so did pollution readings, including in Southern California, Texas, Phoenix, and Denver. In Phoenix, the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality advised that people limit their time outside as ozone pollution (commonly known as smog) reached levels dangerous for public health. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality issued ozone warnings for six consecutive days in Dallas–Fort Worth.

Ground-level ozone pollution forms when heat and sunlight trigger a reaction between two other pollutants, nitrogen oxide and volatile organic compounds — which come from cars, industrial facilities, and oil and gas extraction. High temperatures therefore make ozone pollution more likely to form and harder to clean up. Drought and heat also increase the risk of wildfire, which can make air quality worse as smoke drives up levels of fine particulate matter — also known as PM2.5, or soot. 

During heat waves, the air also becomes stagnant, trapping pollutants like ozone. “Everything – the pollution, the smoke, the ozone – gets trapped right here where we live, and it gets sealed in. It’s like a pot you put on a stove. It’s like putting a lid on that pot, and everything down here gets trapped,” meteorologist Chris Tomer said on local Denver news show FOX31 News. “The 100 degrees just keeps things kind of swirling down here, and we breathe it in. We’ll rebreathe it, days and days out.”  

Both ozone and PM2.5 carry major health risks. Ozone can cause acute symptoms, including coughing and inflamed airways, and chronic effects, including asthma and increased diabetes risk. PM2.5 exposure can lead to an increased risk of asthma, heart attack, and strokes. Globally, long-term exposure to PM2.5 caused one in five deaths in 2018, including 350,000 deaths in the United States.

If you’re affected by heat and air pollution, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, recommends drinking plenty of water, wearing wide-brimmed hats with light clothing, avoiding the outdoors and strenuous outdoor activity, learning the symptoms of acute heat-related illnesses, and checking on those at risk — including children, pregnant people, those who live alone, and the elderly. (The CDC’s guides are also available in Spanish.)

Tracing the evolution of “The Fast and the Furious” franchise, movie by movie

Who knew that 20 years ago, a little movie about street racing and stealing VCRs would beget a globetrotting super-spy franchise attracting the biggest action stars and Oscar winners into its fold? 

Not Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel), hero of the “The Fast and the Furious” films, who claimed to live his life “a quarter-mile at a time” when we first hear his signature growl in 2001. He was just a humble man with no need for anything fancy like craft beer (only Coronas for him) or sleeves on his shirts. 

Yet somehow, Dom and charismatic actor Vin Diesel who portrays him both possess an undeniable gravitational force that pulled new cast and audience members into their orbit, never to break free, glutting the franchise with each new installment. Characters began to pair up and create a new generation of toddling adrenaline junkies. Enemies that came on for one movie teamed up with Toretto’s crime crew in the next. Some even brought their mothers along. Not even death – onscreen or off – would release someone from being invited to or honored at the traditional BBQ that closed each film.

Perhaps it’s this in-your-face concept of an adopted family that has appealed to billions of viewers worldwide. The franchise certainly started off with one of the most racially diverse – if uniformly fit, attractive and heteronormative – core group of characters that only expanded from there, to the delight of international audiences.

Well, the appeal is family . . . in addition to the base level onscreen antics that includes plenty of scantily clad women, biceps for days and feats defying the laws of physics and narrative. One does not watch a “Fast and Furious” film for its logic or grounded storytelling. Nay, in this cinematic universe – including 10 films, short films, video games and a Netflix animated series – Dom’s crime crew heard that the sky’s the limit and in reply said, “Hold my Corona.”

If you’re like me, you bought a ticket for “Furious 7” in 2015 to pay your respects to the late Paul Walker for his “one last ride” onscreen, a performance made possible from previous filming, his real-life brothers acting as body doubles and clever CGI. Just as Dominic Toretto embraced Brian O’Connor as a brother, so did now-executive producer Vin Diesel with Paul Walker, and it showed onscreen then and has continued with tributes in each subsequent installment.

If you’re also like me, you realized you had missed a few films along the way, and were therefore completely unprepared for what the franchise had become – an incoherent parade of cars literally flying through the air and multiple MacGuffin-stuffed plot lines. 

And yet, it didn’t matter. I still bawled when Brian and Dom parted ways for the last time, their cars taking branching roads in different directions. 

Since then, I’ve done a comprehensive “Fast & Furious” rewatch – now known with the streamlined name The Fast Saga – and view the films with a mixture of bewilderment, affection and un-ironic admiration. Over the course of two decades, the film series that almost sputtered out by its third installment had come roaring back to life with the power of a thousand NOS-fueled engines. 

With my renewed and now fully developed appreciation for the franchise, I present to you a chronological look at each of the films, including “F9,” and how they’ve evolved.

“The Fast and the Furious” (2001)
Title: Classic!
Director: Rob Cohen, who also directed another Vin Diesel project, “XXX.” Recently, Cohen has been accused of sexual assault and rape.
Writers: Gary Scott Thompson (“Hollow Man,” “Las Vegas”) and David Ayer (“Suicide Squad”)
The cast: Vin Diesel, Jordana Brewster, Michelle Rodriguez, Paul Walker, Ja Rule
The crime: Way too good-looking undercover cop Brian O’Connor (Walker) takes part in some illegal street races to determine if racers in Dominic Toretto’s (Diesel) crew are behind a series automobile heists using three modified Honda Civics to steal a bunch of VCRs. It’s really all quite quaint. Over the course of the movie, Brian finds his sympathies lie with Toretto (and his hot sister Mia, played by Brewster), and he’s invited to drink any beer as long as it’s Corona and to eat barbecue. It’s this warm welcome that prompts his last-minute decision to help Dom escape in the end.
The tech: Audiences are introduced to nitrous oxide, aka NOS, as a means of injecting a burst of speed into vehicles at opportune moments. While a nitrous oxide engine is indeed a real thing, the creative uses of it in the franchise have extended beyond reality and legality.
The set pieces: Action scenes are relegated to fun street races, a heist scene (with risky driving under a big rig) and a police chase scene. 
Verdict: It’s an unremarkable yet solid and normal action film that gives no hints of where the series will go, but there’s charm to its hyper-specific Los Angeles setting. Brian is really bad at going undercover, so it’s a good thing he’s a turncoat and now sides with Dom’s crime crew.

“2 Fast 2 Furious”
Title: An elegant use of the sequel’s number, wordplay and eliminating the use of any fussy articles or conjunctions
Director: Acclaimed “Boyz n the Hood” helmet John Singleton, bringing along his “Baby Boy” star 
Writers: “3:10 to Yuma” and “Wanted” collaborators Michael Brandt and Derek Haas, co-written by the first film’s Gary Scott Thompson 
The cast: This is the only OG “Fast & Furious” film without Vin Diesel. Paul Walker is joined by Tyrese Gibson, Eva Mendes, Cole Hauser, James Remar and Chris “Ludacris” Bridges – continuing the tradition in which the franchise allies itself with a rapper
The crime: After letting Dominic Toretto go in LA, Brian O’Connor is “hiding out” in Miami by taking part in illegal street races run by his mechanic pal Tej Parker (Ludacris). Knowing his record, the local FBI ropes him into bringing down an Argentinian drug lord. But Brian needs a partner, preferably a bald one in the absence of Dom, so he brings in childhood friend and current parolee Roman Pierce (Gibson). In the middle of all the action, there’s also a gnarly torture scene involving a rat reminiscent of “1984” or “Game of Thrones” that’s certainly criminal.
The tech: Creative use of NOS to make an ejector seat!
The set pieces: Even before the full crime goes down, there are three car races, one that acts as an initiation into the drug lord’s crew. The climax involves an extended chase through Miami’s streets and a huge scramble of other decoy cars with the help of Tej – a foreshadowing of the bigger crime crew shenanigans to come. Also, Brian drives his Camaro off of a ramp and lands on a yacht.
Verdict: Less angsty and far more glib than the first film, “2 Fast 2 Furious” has embraced more  of the banter and humor that will later become a trademark of the franchise. It’s dumb fun that feels a little off because Brian is “cheating” on both of the Torettos.

“The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift” (2006)
Title: It’s evident from the title that this has little connection to the “F&F” world as we know it other than a slapped label . . . and a surprise cameo at the end.
Director: Justin Lin, flush from his critical success with “Better Luck Tomorrow,” comes on since he’s Asian and this is set in Japan. Although this was intended to be a standalone sequel to the series, it’s now become canon with creative time-hopping involved. He also brought Sung Kang, who was also called Han, from “Better Luck Tomorrow” as a bit of a bonus crossover, although they’re not technically the same character.
Writer: Chris Morgan, the beginning of a beautiful friendship with the franchise
The cast: Lucas Black, Sung Kang, Bow Wow, Brian Tee
The crime: Race enthusiast Sean gets in trouble in high school and is sent to live with his father in Tokyo as punishment(?). There, he learns the addictive yet dangerous art of drift racing from his often snacking guru Han (Kang), who turns out has been stealing from the yakuza. When the smoke clears, Han ends up dead in a car accident but Sean is crowned the new drift king. 
The tech: Besides nice cars, hmm, there’s some GPS involved
The set pieces: A few races at the top with lots of burned rubber, a major chase scene in the middle resulting in Han’s death, and a nail-biting drift race down a mountain at night.
Verdict: Despite engrossing race scenes and some clever dialogue, this is the lowest-earning film in the series, no doubt because at the time audiences wanted a familiar face in the lead. Early screenings tested poorly as well, which prompted the studio to make a deal for Vin Diesel to make a cameo at the end, with Dom claiming the departed Han as “family.” Without this retconning the film into the Toretto-verse, the franchise would not have gone on its bizarre path in the next few films.

“Fast & Furious” (2009)
Title: What a missed opportunity. “Fast & 4-ious” was right there. Unfortunately, the confusing title the studio landed on comes from wanting to soft reset the franchise with Vin Diesel back in the driver’s seat as producer and lead, and to indicate to audiences that no really, “Tokyo Drift” was just an aberration.
Director: Justin Lin is back . . .
Writer: . . . and so is Chris Morgan! With their powers combined, this film is the first of three prequels to “Tokyo Drift,” the better to resurrect Han and put him on Toretto’s crime crew.
The cast: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, plus the introduction of Gal Gadot as Gisele
The crime: Taking place several years after Dom escaped the U.S., he learns that Letty (Rodriguez) has been murdered. Returning to Los Angeles, he and Brian (who’s undercover again because these cops have low standards) learn that a Mexican drug lord killed her after she did a border run for him (but she was undercover, so joke’s on him). Of course, then Dom and Brian must go undercover for the drug lord.
The tech: NOS makes a comeback, this time for Dom to use to blow up some cars. Also, GPS is in heavy use as the drug runners are told to follow the voice instructions on these devices.
The set pieces: Many of the drug runs are rather boring because they take place in dark and claustrophobic tunnels under a mountain. The best action scene by far takes place in the Dominican Republic, where Han joins Toretto’s crew to hijack fuel tankers along the freeway.
Verdict: With the exception of the revival of a smiling Han in the cold open, this was perhaps the grimmest of the franchise. With the specter of Letty’s death, and Dom and Brian still at odds with each other for most of the film, this backslid and lost some of the joy the series had found in the second film.

“Fast Five” (2011)
Title: We’ve come to the point when brand recognition is strong enough to not need both “fast” and “furious” in the title
Director: Justin Lin
Writer: Chris Morgan
The cast: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Sung Kang, Gal Gadot and introducing new bald guy into the FFU, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson
The crime: Taking place in Rio, “Fast & Furious” has shifted from street racing to full-time heist mode, where the crime crew concocts a plan to steal $100 million from a local crime lord. Besides greed, they’re further inspired because Mia and Brian are going to have a baby. But they have to get by the Diplomatic Security Service agent Luke Hobbs (The Rock) and his team first, before he arrests Brian and the rest for freeing Dom from the prison bus.
The tech: Dom uses the old standby NOS to give him an extra boost to help drag the vault of money through the streets of Rio. A computer chip acts as a MacGuffin. Plus, they’re not part of the film per se, but some of the subtitles are nifty in that they speed on and off the screen like cars peeling out. A bit of meta playfulness for the fans.
The set pieces: Brian and the crew busting Dom from his prison bus is lots of fun (especially since no one was hurt when it overturned). But the literal train heist at the beginning and the vault heist through the streets foreshadow the level of crime crew cooperation and mid-action ridiculousness that will take place in the films to come.
Verdict: As the first film to take the franchise into heist and spy mode, this is the best of the bunch, especially because it features the scenes that make every heist film sing: the montages of bringing everybody together, Avengers-style, and the training required to pull off the heist. This film also serves to build the supporting characters more. Mia gets to speak Portuguese (Jordana is half-Brazilian). Roman (Gibson) and Tej (Ludacris) begin their particular brand of camaraderie. And as they start their romance, we get backstories for Gisele and Han that cheekily reference Gadot’s real-life military service and Han’s “Better Luck Tomorrow” smoking habit. The Rock’s love of colorful dialogue comes into play as well, including the use of the word “funderwear.”

“Fast & Furious 6” (2013)
Title: Meh
Director: Justin Lin
Writer: Chris Morgan
The cast: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Sung Kang, Gal Gadot, Gina Carano and Luke Evans as the new antagonist seeing as how Hobbs is now working with Toretto
The crime: A skilled mercenary organization led by former British special ops soldier One Shaw (Evans) needs to make some deadly MacGuffin called the Nightshade, and is pulling off a series of heists and attacks to obtain the parts. With a very alive Letty (Rodriguez) who is suffering from amnesia as part of Shaw’s crew, it doesn’t take Hobbs much to pull in Toretto’s crew, who are now upgraded from thieves to special agents, in exchange for pardons.
The tech: Some use of NOS and military stuff
The set pieces: While Shaw flipping a tank (from which Dom saves Letty with an impossible catch) and Dom taking down a plane gets much of the attention, frankly, it’s an all-out brawl in the London Underground that feels the most exciting. 
Verdict: Now that the Dom’s crew is being hired for special spy gigs, the Fast Saga has officially entered “extra” territory. Don’t bother following plots or expecting gravity to work correctly. No one gets hurt unless it’s planned, and that means Gisele had to die in order to get Han to Tokyo and get killed himself, finally catching us back up with the “Tokyo Drift” timeline. All that said, bringing on “The Raid” and “Warrior” martial artist Joe Taslim gives the films an extra dimension of excitement because it elevates the hand-to-hand combat that we’ve seen previously and requires no elaborate sets or special effects.

“Furious 7” (2015)
Title: Ditching the “fast” this time!
Director: James Wan, known primarily for co-creating the “Saw” and creating the “Conjuring” horror franchises
Writer: Chris Morgan
The cast: The remaining crew, plus The Rock, Nathalie Emmanuel, Djimon Hounsou, Kurt Russell as new special ops leader called Mr. Nobody, and new bald enemy Jason Statham as Deckard Shaw. Tony Jaa of “Ong Bak” fame and Rhonda Rousey also come on to kick some butt.
The crime: A Nigerian terrorist named Jakande (Hounsou) wants to put together a device that hacker Ramsey (Emmanuel) has developed called the God’s Eye that can locate anyone in the world. Mr. Nobody hires Dom’s crew to help him get the God’s Eye, and in turn they can use it to find Deckard Shaw, who had killed Han out of revenge for his brother Owen from the previous film
The tech: Too many to name, including the big MacGuffin, but Jakande uses a drone at one point, and then of course Dom uses NOS to give his car a boost to reach a helicopter.
The set pieces: Nothing beats the first quarter of the movie when the crew’s cars literally parachute out of a plane over Azerbaijan and then proceed in a high-speed heist of a truck to save Ramsey, ending with Brian’s hair-raising escape from a vehicle about to go over a cliff. But wait, there’s more! In Abu Dhabi, Dom and Brian jump a car from the penthouse in one skyscraper to the next building, and then repeat the stunt to a third skyscraper. A final standoff in Los Angeles involving a drone, a helicopter, an ambulance and bag full of grenades is just excessive. We also see that handing off a woman between two moving vehicles is now a trope in the franchise.
Verdict: The movie frankly could’ve just been the beginning section in Azerbaijan and then cut straight to the end with the tearful farewell to Paul Walker. While messy and overstuffed, this is the Fast Saga now, and you either say grace and be thankful, or you leave the barbecue. This action flick pulled off an authentically heartfelt ending, and that’s pretty remarkable.

“The Fate of the Furious” (2017)
Title: Nice wordplay, and it also offered the shorthand option “F8”
Director: F. Gary Gray of “Friday,” “The Italian Job” (reuniting him here with Jason Statham) and “Straight Outta Compton”
Writer: Chris Morgan
The cast: The Fast crew plus Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Jason Statham – it’s his turn to team up with the crew this time – Kurt Russell, Scott Eastwood as his new lackey, and Charlize Theron as a new cyberterrorist named . . . Cipher. Also, Kristoffer Hivju, aka “Game of Thrones” wildling Tormund Giantsbane, and Dame Helen Mirren join in on the fun.
The crime:  Hobbs hires Dom’s team to obtain an EMP device, but at the last minute, Dom turns traitor, having been blackmailed into helping Cipher after she revealed she has his son . . . the child of the DSS agent he had hooked up with when he thought Letty was dead. What follows is a lot of hurt feelings from Dom’s crew while Dom glumly follows Cipher’s instructions until the very end when his son is saved thanks to help from Deckard Shaw and his mom, played by Helen Mirren.
The tech: Would you believe there are a few MacGuffins this time around? This film involves a lady named Cipher after all. This time, she wants the EMP device, a nuclear football and utilizes the God’s Eye to keep Dom in line. But the coolest thing she does is hack into all the cars in New York.
The set pieces: Hobbs and Shaw’s prison escape brawl is fantastic, previewing what we’ll get in their spinoff, but there’s also a hilarious scene in which Cipher controls the cars in New York and uses them against Dom’s crew – either to create traffic jams or to have them rain down from parking garages overhead in a zombie carmageddon – so that Dom can steal what she needs. The final set piece involves a nuclear submarine, a plane and an infrared missile.
Verdict: If “Furious 7” was four movies, this feels like five or six. We can’t keep up, but we can’t quit either. The main betrayal storyline felt about as manipulative as the Letty amnesia storyline, which is to say we’ll begrudgingly allow it. That said, much of it feels icky, especially since it involves fridging a character (the child’s mother). But then Dom goes and names his kid after Brian, who is still alive offscreen in that world. In real life, Diesel named his third child Pauline, after Paul Walker, and is the godfather of Walker’s daughter. So yeah, this movie got us in the end. 

“Hobbs & Shaw” (2019)
Title: Wait, there’s no “F” in the title? Oh right, the actual full title is “The Fast and the Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw.” Whew.
Director: David Leitch, who directed “John Wick,” “Atomic Blonde,” “Deadpool 2” and the recent Bob Odenkirk flick “Nobody”
Writers: Chris Morgan and “Iron Man 3” writer Drew Pearce
The cast: Bald heroes The Rock and Jason Statham reprise their Fast Saga roles, plus “The Crown” actress Vanessa Kirby as Deckard’s sister Hattie, along with Helen Mirren as their mom and Idris Elba as a cybernetic terrorist named Brixton.
The crime: Hattie is an MI6 agent who tries to keep a deadly programmable virus known as Snowflake out of the wrong hands – a tech terrorist organization called Eteon of which Brixton is part – by injecting it into herself. Hobbs and Shaw obtain an extraction device and successfully fight off Brixton, even though Eteon still remains.
The tech: Guns that need to be activated first! A virus extraction device? 
The set pieces: In split screen, we see Hobbs and Shaw in Los Angeles and London respectively fight off a bunch of people to extract information. A descent from the side of a skyscraper and breaking into a clandestine facility are also exciting, while a final helicopter stunt – are we tired of them yet? – feels just overdone when it tumbles off a cliff, and suddenly it’s raining.
Verdict: While the stunts feel very familiar in the “Fast & Furious” vein, down to handing off Vanessa Kirby between moving vehicles, you don’t need to know the plots from those films to follow this one. What makes this work is that both The Rock and Statham have unique fighting styles: Hobbs’ brute strength versus Statham’s more nimble martial arts. Similarly, their contrasting personalities offer a delightful chemistry and onscreen banter that feels natural. Leaving the identity of Eteon’s director a mystery leaves a tantalizing door open for future stories.

“F9” (2021)
Title: Just two characters! F yeah!
Director: Justin Lin is back, baby!
Writer: Daniel Casey, replacing Chris Morgan. Why?!?
The cast: Everybody, yes, everybody even the people from “Tokyo Drift” and Sung Kang because it turns out Han isn’t dead, and the #Justice4Han hashtag did its work. Plus, John Cena.
The crime: It turns out that Dom has an estranged brother Jakob (Cena) who is also a super agent, having turned on Mr. Nobody a while back. His crew searches for a multi-part device called Ares that can hack into any weapons system. It’s also revealed that Han is in fact alive, having worked with Mr. Nobody all of these years to fake his death but to also protect one part of Ares, a girl named Elle whose DNA is needed to complete the device. 
The tech: The Ares device is even more nonsensical than the usual MacGuffin because its many parts just creates a MacGuffin turducken and who needs that? But also, with all the advancements made, the best one used in the film is rather low-tech: magnets!
The set pieces: Sure, two of the Fast crew literally go into outer space, but that’s one of the least exciting parts of the film. A chase scene in Central America involving a bridge and cliffs, and then a car chase using electromagnets to trap or slingshot other vehicles in Tbilisi are the types of ridiculous scenes we signed up for. Letty, Mia and Elle’s fight in Tokyo is also worthy of mention.
Verdict: After a year of quarantine, this was my first film in a real theater, and I’ve gotta say it was a lot of fun to hear the audience react to all the same nonsense as I did. But did I wish it had less plotlines and less characters? Did Roman’s meta rants about how they never come to harm wear a little? Did Dom pulling down a silo with his bare hands in a Christ-like pose make me roll my eyes? Yes, yes to all of it. As if to show just how chaotic and overplotted it could be, even Jakob got his redemption within the same movie. He didn’t have to wait until the next to reconcile with Dom. But hey, we also got Han back, and that post-credits scene where he shows up at Shaw’s door looks promising. We’re tired, but we’re committed.

With “F9” looking to break post-quarantine box office records and two more Justin Lin-directed  final installments in this Toretto-led leg of the race, “Fast” fans including myself are buckled up to go the distance.

“F9” is currently available on digital.

Biden’s foreign policy dithering helped elect a hard-liner in Iran. What happens now?

It was common knowledge that a U.S. failure to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal (known as the JCPOA) before Iran’s June presidential election would help conservative hard-liners win the election. And indeed, last weekend the conservative Ebrahim Raisi was elected as the new president of Iran.  

Raisi has a record of brutal crackdowns on government opponents and his victory, although expected, comes as a severe blow to Iranians struggling for a more liberal, open society. He also has a history of anti-Western sentiment and says he would refuse to meet with President Biden. And while current President Hassan Rouhani, considered a moderate, held out the possibility of broader talks after the U.S. returned to the nuclear deal, Raisi will almost certainly reject broader negotiations with the United States.

Could Raisi’s victory have been averted if President Biden had rejoined the Iran deal right after entering the White House, enabling Rouhani and the moderates in Iran to take credit for the removal of U.S. sanctions before the election? We will never know. 

Trump’s withdrawal from the agreement drew near-universal condemnation from Democrats and arguably violated international law. But Biden’s failure to quickly rejoin the deal has left Trump’s policy in place, including the cruel “maximum pressure” sanctions that are destroying Iran’s middle class, throwing millions of people into poverty,and preventing imports of medicine and other essentials, even during a pandemic. 

U.S. sanctions have provoked retaliatory measures from Iran, including suspending limits on its uranium enrichment and reducing cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Trump’s, and now Biden’s, policy has simply reconstructed the problems that preceded the JCPOA in 2015, displaying the widely recognized madness of repeating something that didn’t work and expecting a different result.

If actions speak louder than words, the U.S. seizure of 27 Iranian and Yemeni international news websites on June 22, based on the illegal, unilateral U.S. sanctions that are among the most contentious topics of the Vienna negotiations, suggests that the same madness still holds sway over U.S. policy.

Since Biden took office, the critical underlying question is whether he and his administration are really committed to the JCPOA or not. As a presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders promised to rejoin the JCPOA on his first day as president — and Iran always said it was ready to comply with the agreement as soon as the United States rejoined it. 

Biden has been in office for five months, but the negotiations in Vienna did not begin until April 6th. His failure to rejoin the agreement on taking office reflected a desire to appease hawkish advisers and politicians who claimed he could use Trump’s withdrawal and the threat of continued sanctions as “leverage” to extract more concessions from Iran over its ballistic missiles, regional activities and other questions. 

Far from extracting more concessions, Biden’s foot-dragging only provoked further retaliatory action by Iran, especially after the assassination of an Iranian scientist and sabotage at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility, both probably committed by Israel. 

Without a great deal of help, and some pressure, from America’s European allies, it is unclear how long it would have taken Biden to get around to opening negotiations with Iran. The shuttle diplomacy taking place in Vienna is the result of painstaking negotiations with both sides by former European Parliament President Josep Borrell, who is now the European Union’s foreign policy chief.

The sixth round of shuttle diplomacy has now concluded in Vienna without an agreement. President-elect Raisi says he supports the negotiations in Vienna, but will not allow the United States to drag them out for a long time. 

An unnamed U.S. official raised hopes for an agreement before Raisi takes office on Aug. 3, noting that it would be more difficult to reach an agreement after that. But a State Department spokesman said talks would continue when the new government takes office, implying that an agreement was unlikely before then. 

Even if Biden had rejoined the JCPOA, Iran’s moderates might still have lost this tightly managed election. But a restored JCPOA and the end of U.S. sanctions would have left the moderates in a stronger position, and set Iran’s relations with the United States and its allies on a path of normalization that would have helped to weather more difficult relations with Raisi and his government in the coming years.

If Biden fails to rejoin the JCPOA, and if the United States or Israel ends up at war with Iran, this lost opportunity to rejoin the JCPOA during his first months in office will loom large over future events and Biden’s legacy as president.

If the United States does not rejoin the JCPOA before Raisi takes office, Iran’s hard-liners will point to Rouhani’s diplomacy with the West as a failed pipe dream, and their own policies as pragmatic and realistic by contrast. In the United States and Israel, the hawks who have lured Biden into this slow-motion train-wreck will be popping champagne corks to celebrate Raisi’s inauguration, as they move in to kill the JCPOA for good, smearing it as a deal with a mass murderer.

If Biden rejoins the JCPOA after Raisi’s inauguration, Iran’s hard-liners will claim that they succeeded where Rouhani and the moderates failed, and take credit for the economic recovery that will follow the removal of U.S. sanctions. 

On the other hand, if Biden follows hawkish advice and tries to play it tough, and Raisi then pulls the plug on the negotiations, both leaders will score points with their own hard-liners at the expense of the majorities of their people who want peace — and the United States will be back on a path of confrontation with Iran.

While that would be the worst outcome of all, it would allow Biden to have it both ways domestically, appeasing the hawks while telling liberals that he was committed to the nuclear deal until Iran rejected it. Such a cynical path of least resistance would very likely be a path to war.

On all these counts, it is vital that Biden and the Democrats conclude an agreement with the Rouhani government and rejoin the JCPOA. Rejoining it after Raisi takes office would be better than letting the negotiations fail altogether, but this entire slow-motion train-wreck has been characterized by diminishing returns with every delay, from the day Biden took office. 

Neither the people of Iran nor the people of the United States have been well served by Biden’s willingness to accept Trump’s Iran policy as an acceptable alternative to Obama’s, even as a temporary political expedient. To allow Trump’s abandonment of Obama’s agreement to stand as long-term U.S. policy would be an even greater betrayal of the goodwill and good faith of people on all sides, Americans, allies and enemies alike.

Biden and his advisers must now confront the consequences of the position their wishful thinking and dithering has landed them in, and must make a genuine and serious political decision to rejoin the JCPOA within days or weeks.

Text messages show Trump aides knew Jan. 6 would likely get out of hand

On Dec. 19, President Donald Trump blasted out a tweet to his 88 million followers, inviting supporters to Washington for a “wild” protest.

Earlier that week, one of his senior advisers had released a 36-page report alleging significant evidence of election fraud that could reverse Joe Biden’s victory. “A great report,” Trump wrote. “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”

The tweet worked like a starter’s pistol, with two pro-Trump factions competing to take control of the “big protest.”

On one side stood Women for America First, led by Amy Kremer, a Republican operative who helped found the tea party movement. The group initially wanted to hold a kind of extended oral argument, with multiple speakers making their case for how the election had been stolen.

On the other was Stop the Steal, a new, more radical group that had recruited avowed racists to swell its ranks and wanted the President to share the podium with Alex Jones, the radio host banned from the world’s major social media platforms for hate speech, misinformation and glorifying violence. Stop the Steal organizers say their plan was to march on the Capitol and demand that lawmakers give Trump a second term.

ProPublica has obtained new details about the Trump White House’s knowledge of the gathering storm, after interviewing more than 50 people involved in the events of Jan. 6 and reviewing months of private correspondence. Taken together, these accounts suggest that senior Trump aides had been warned the Jan. 6 events could turn chaotic, with tens of thousands of people potentially overwhelming ill-prepared law enforcement officials.

Rather than trying to halt the march, Trump and his allies accommodated its leaders, according to text messages and interviews with Republican operatives and officials.

Katrina Pierson, a former Trump campaign official assigned by the White House to take charge of the rally planning, helped arrange a deal where those organizers deemed too extreme to speak at the Ellipse could do so on the night of Jan. 5. That event ended up including incendiary speeches from Jones and Ali Alexander, the leader of Stop the Steal, who fired up his followers with a chant of “Victory or death!”

The record of what White House officials knew about Jan. 6 and when they knew it remains incomplete. Key officials, including White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, declined to be interviewed for this story.

The second impeachment of President Trump focused mostly on his public statements, including his Jan. 6 exhortation that the crowd march on the Capitol and “fight like hell.” Trump was acquitted by the Senate, and his lawyers insisted that the attack on the Capitol was both regrettable and unforeseeable.

Rally organizers interviewed by ProPublica said they did not expect Jan. 6 to culminate with the violent sacking of the Capitol. But they acknowledged they were worried about plans by the Stop the Steal movement to organize an unpermitted march that would reach the steps of the building as Congress gathered to certify the election results.

One of the Women for America First organizers told ProPublica he and his group felt they needed to urgently warn the White House of the possible danger.

“A last-minute march, without a permit, without all the metro police that’d usually be there to fortify the perimeter, felt unsafe,” Dustin Stockton said in a recent interview.

“And these people aren’t there for a fucking flower contest,” added Jennifer Lynn Lawrence, Stockton’s fiancee and co-organizer. “They’re there because they’re angry.”

Stockton said he and Kremer initially took their concerns to Pierson. Feeling that they weren’t gaining enough traction, Stockton said, he and Kremer agreed to call Meadows directly.

Kremer, who has a personal relationship with Meadows dating back to his early days in Congress, said she would handle the matter herself. Soon after, Kremer told Stockton “the White House would take care of it,” which he interpreted to mean she had contacted top officials about the march.

Kremer denied that she ever spoke with Meadows or any other White House official about her Jan. 6 concerns. “Also, no one on my team was talking to them that I was aware of,” she said in an email to ProPublica. Meadows declined to comment on whether he’d been contacted.

A Dec. 27 text from Kremer obtained by ProPublica casts doubt on her assertion. Written at a time when her group was pressing to control the upcoming Jan. 6 rally, it refers to Alexander and Cindy Chafian, an activist who worked closely with Alex Jones. “The WH and team Trump are aware of the situation with Ali and Cindy,” Kremer wrote. “I need to be the one to handle both.” Kremer did not answer questions from ProPublica about the text.

So far, congressional and law enforcement reconstructions of Jan. 6 have established failures of preparedness and intelligence sharing by the U.S. Capitol Police, the FBI and the Pentagon, which is responsible for deploying the D.C. National Guard.

But those reports have not addressed the role of White House officials in the unfolding events and whether officials took appropriate action before or during the rally. Legislation that would have authorized an independent commission to investigate further was quashed by Senate Republicans.

Yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced she would create a select committee to investigate Jan. 6 that would not require Republican support. It’s not certain whether Meadows and other aides would be willing to testify. Internal White House dealings have historically been subject to claims of “executive privilege” by both Democratic and Republican administrations.

Our reporting raises new questions that will not be answered unless Trump insiders tell the story of that day. It remains unclear, for example, precisely what Meadows and other White House officials learned of safety concerns about the march and whether they took those reports seriously.

The former president has a well-established pattern of bolstering far-right groups while he and his aides attempt to maintain some distance. Following the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump at first appeared to tacitly support torch-bearing white supremacists, later backing off. And in one presidential debate, he appeared to offer encouragement to the Proud Boys, a group of street brawlers who claim to protect Trump supporters, his statement triggering a dramatic spike in their recruitment. Trump later disavowed his support.

ProPublica has learned that White House officials worked behind the scenes to prevent the leaders of the march from appearing on stage and embarrassing the president. But Trump then undid those efforts with his speech, urging the crowd to join the march on the Capitol organized by the very people who had been blocked from speaking.

“And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” he said.

One Nation Under God

On Nov. 5, as Joe Biden began to emerge as the likely winner of the 2020 presidential election, a far-right provocateur named Ali Alexander assembled a loose collection of right-wing activists to help Trump maintain the presidency.

Alexander approached the cause of overturning the election with an almost messianic fervor. In private text messages, he obsessed over gaining attention from Trump and strategized about how to draw large, angry crowds in support of him.

On Nov. 7, the group held simultaneous protests in all 50 states.

Seven days later, its members traveled to Washington for the Million MAGA March, which drew tens of thousands. The event is now considered by many to be a precursor of Jan. 6.

Alexander united them under the battle cry “Stop the Steal,” a phrase originally coined by former Trump adviser Roger Stone, whom Alexander has called a friend. (Stone launched a short-lived organization of the same name in 2016.) To draw such crowds, Alexander made clear Stop the Steal would collaborate with anyone who supported its cause, no matter how extreme their views.

“We’re willing to work with racists,” he said on one livestream in December. Alexander did not return requests for comment made by email, by voicemail, to his recent attorney or to Stop the Steal PAC’s designated agent.

As he worked to expand his influence, Alexander found a valuable ally in Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist at the helm of the popular far-right website InfoWars. Jones, who first gained notoriety for spreading a lie that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax, had once counted more than 2 million YouTube subscribers and 800,000 Twitter followers before being banned from both platforms.

Alexander also collaborated with Nick Fuentes, the 22-year-old leader of the white nationalist “Groyper” movement.

“Thirty percent of that crowd was Alex Jones’ crowd,” Alexander said on another livestream, referring to the Million MAGA March on Nov. 14. “And there were thousands and thousands of Groypers — America First young white men. … Even if you thought these were bad people, why can’t bad people do good tasks? Why can’t bad people fight for their country?”

Alexander’s willingness to work with such people sparked conflict even within his inner circle.

“Is Nick Fuentes now a prominent figure in Stop the Steal?” asked Brandon Straka, an openly gay conservative activist, in a November text message, obtained exclusively by ProPublica. “I find him disgusting,” Straka said, pointing to Fuentes’ vehemently anti-LGBT views.

Alexander saw more people and more power. He wrote that Fuentes was “very valuable” at “putting bodies in places,” and that both Jones and Fuentes were “willing to push bodies … where we point.”

Straka, Fuentes and Jones did not respond to requests for comment.

Right-wing leaders who had once known each other only peripherally were now feeling a deeper sense of camaraderie. In an interview, Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio described how he felt as he walked alongside Jones through the crowds assembled in Washington on Nov. 14, after Jones had asked the Proud Boys to act as his informal bodyguards.

“That was the moment we really united everybody under one banner,” he said. “That everyone thought, ‘Fuck you, this is what we can do.'” According to Tarrio, the Proud Boys nearly tripled in numbers around this time, bringing in over 20,000 new members. “November was the seed that sparked that flower on Jan. 6,” he said.

The crowds impressed people like Tom Van Flein, chief of staff for Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz. Van Flein told ProPublica he kept in regular contact with Alexander while Gosar led the effort in Congress to shoot down the election certification. “Ali was very talented and put on some very good rallies on short notice,” Van Flein said. “Great turnout.”

But as Jan. 6 drew nearer, the Capitol Police became increasingly concerned by the disparate elements that formed the rank and file of the organization.

“Stop the Steal’s propensity to attract white supremacists, militia members, and others who actively promote violence, may lead to a significantly dangerous situation for law enforcement and the general public alike,” the Capitol Police wrote in a Jan. 3 intelligence assessment.

Yet the police force, for all its concern, wound up effectively blindsided by what happened on Jan. 6.

An intelligence report from that day obtained by ProPublica shows that the Capitol Police expected a handful of rallies on Capitol grounds, the largest of which would be hosted by a group called One Nation Under God.

Law enforcement anticipated between 50 and 500 people at the gathering, assigning it the lowest possible threat score and predicting a 1% to 5% chance of arrests. The police gave much higher threat scores to two small anti-Trump demonstrations planned elsewhere in the city.

However, One Nation Under God was a fake name used to trick the Capitol Police into giving Stop the Steal a permit, according to Stop the Steal organizer Kimberly Fletcher. Fletcher is president of Moms for America, a grassroots organization founded to combat “radical feminism.”

“Everybody was using different names because they didn’t want us to be there,” Fletcher said, adding that Alexander and his allies experimented with a variety of aliases to secure permits for the east front of the Capitol. Laughing, Fletcher recalled how the police repeatedly called her “trying to find out who was who.”

A Senate report on security failures during the Capitol riot released earlier this month suggests that at least one Capitol Police intelligence officer had suspicions about this deceptive strategy, but that leadership failed to appreciate it — yet another example of an intelligence breakdown.

On Dec. 31, the officer sent an email expressing her concerns that the permit requests were “being used as proxies for Stop the Steal” and that those requesting permits “may also be involved with organizations that may be planning trouble” on Jan. 6.

A Capitol Police spokesperson told ProPublica on April 2, “Our intelligence suggested one or more groups were affiliated with Stop the Steal,” after we asked for a copy of the One Nation Under God permit, which they declined to provide.

Yet 18 days later, Capitol Police Acting Chief Yogananda Pittman told congressional investigators that she believed the permit requests had been properly vetted and that they were not granted to anyone affiliated with Stop the Steal. Pittman did not respond to ProPublica requests for comment.

Last week, a Capitol Police spokesperson told ProPublica, “The Department knew that Stop the Steal and One Nation Under God organizers were likely associated,” but added that the police believed denying a permit based on “assumed associations” would be a First Amendment violation. “The Department did, however, take the likely association into account when making decisions to enhance its security posture.”

Kenneth Harrelson, an Oath Keeper who allegedly ran the far-right group’s “ground team” in D.C. on Jan. 6, went to Washington to provide security for Alexander, according to Harrelson’s wife. Harrelson has pleaded not guilty to felony charges in connection with the riot and is one of the Oath Keepers at the center of a major Department of Justice conspiracy case.

Harrelson’s wife, Angel Harrelson, said in an interview with ProPublica that her husband was excited to visit Washington for the first time, especially to provide security for an important person, but that he lost Alexander in the chaos that consumed the Capitol and decided to join the crowd inside.

“Historic Day!”

As the movement hurtled toward Jan. 6, what started as a loosely united coalition quickly splintered, dividing into two competing groups that vied for power and credit.

On one side, Alexander and Jones had emerged as a new, more extreme element within the Republican grassroots ecosystem.

Their chief opposition was the organization Women for America First, helmed by Kremer and other veterans of the tea party movement, itself once viewed as the Republican fringe. Kremer was an early backer of Trump, and her tea party work helped get Mark Meadows elected to the House of Representatives in 2012.

The schism was rooted in an ideological dispute. Kremer felt Alexander’s agenda and tactics were too extreme; Alexander wanted to distinguish Stop the Steal by being more directly confrontational than Kremer’s group and the tea party. “Our movement is masculine in nature,” he said in a livestream.

Trump promoted both groups’ events online at various times.

Stop the Steal, through its alias One Nation Under God, obtained a Capitol Police permit to rally on Capitol grounds, while Kremer and Women for America First controlled the National Park Service permit for a large gathering on the White House Ellipse.

Alexander and Jones wanted to speak at the Ellipse rally, but Kremer was opposed. The provocateurs found a powerful ally in Caroline Wren, an elite Republican fundraiser with connections to the Trump family, particularly Donald Trump Jr. and his partner, Kimberly Guilfoyle. Wren had raised money for the Ellipse rally and pushed to get Alexander and Jones on stage, according to six people involved in the Jan. 6 rally and emails reviewed by ProPublica.

Pierson, the Trump campaign official, had initially been asked by Wren to help mediate the conflict. But Pierson shared Kremer’s concern that Jones and Alexander were too unpredictable. Pierson and Wren declined to comment.

On Jan. 2, the fighting became so intense that Pierson asked senior White House officials how she should handle the situation, according to a person familiar with White House communications. The officials agreed that Alexander and Jones should not be on the stage and told Pierson to take charge of the event.

The next morning, Trump announced to the world that he would attend the rally at the Ellipse. “I will be there. Historic day!” he tweeted. This came as a surprise to both rally organizers and White House staff, each of whom told ProPublica they hadn’t been informed he intended to speak at the rally.

That same day, a website went live promoting a march on Jan. 6. It instructed demonstrators to meet at the Ellipse, then march to the Capitol at 1 p.m. to “let the establishment know we will fight back against this fraudulent election. … The fate of our nation depends on it.”

Alexander and his allies fired off these instructions across social media.

While Kremer and her group had held legally permitted marches at previous D.C. rallies and promoted all their events with the hashtag #marchfortrump, this time their permit specifically barred them from holding an “organized march.” Rally organizers were concerned that violating their permit could create a legal liability for themselves and pose significant danger to the public, said Stockton, a political consultant with tea party roots who spent weeks with Kremer as they held rallies across the country in support of the president.

Lawrence and Stockton’s fellow organizers contacted Pierson to inform her that the march was unpermitted, according to Stockton and three other people familiar with the situation.

While ProPublica has independently confirmed that senior White House officials, including Meadows, were involved in the broader effort to limit Alexander’s role on Jan. 6, it remains unclear just how far the rally organizers went to warn officials of their specific fears about the march.

Another source present for communications between Amy Kremer and her daughter and fellow organizer, Kylie Kremer, told ProPublica that on Jan. 3, Kylie Kremer called her mother in desperation about the march.

Kylie Kremer asked her mom to escalate the situation to higher levels of the White House, and her mother said she would work on it, according to the source, who could hear the conversation on speakerphone. “You need to call right now,” the source remembered the younger Kremer saying.

The source said that Kylie Kremer suggested Meadows as a person to contact around that time.

The source said that in a subsequent conversation, Amy Kremer told her daughter she would take the matter to Eric Trump’s wife, Lara Trump. The source said that Kremer was in frequent contact with Lara Trump at the time.

Stockton said that he was not aware of Kremer talking to the family about Jan. 6, but added that Kremer regularly communicates with the Trump family, including Lara Trump. He also said that Kremer gave him the distinct impression that she had contacted Meadows about the march.

Through his adviser Ben Williamson, Meadows declined to comment on whether the organizers contacted him regarding the march.

Lara Trump, who spoke at the Ellipse on Jan. 6, did not immediately respond to a voicemail and text message asking for comment or to an inquiry left on her website. Eric Trump did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

Kremer did not answer questions from ProPublica about communications with Lara Trump. Donald Trump’s press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The White House, at the time, was scrambling from one crisis to the next. On Jan. 2, Trump and Meadows called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Trump pressed Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes” that would swing the state tally his way. On Jan. 3, the president met with Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller and urged him to do what he could to protect Trump’s supporters on the 6th.

Meanwhile, Wren, the Republican fundraiser, was continuing to advocate for Jones and Alexander to play a prominent role at the Ellipse rally, according to emails and multiple sources.

A senior White House official suggested to Pierson that she resolve the dispute by going to the president himself, according to a source familiar with the matter.

On Jan. 4, Pierson met with Trump in the Oval Office. Trump expressed surprise that other people wanted to speak at the Ellipse at all. His request for the day was simple: He wanted lots of music and to limit the speakers to himself, some family members and a few others, according to the source and emails reviewed by ProPublica. The president asked if there was another venue where people like Alexander and Roger Stone could speak.

Pierson assured him there was. She informed the president that there was another rally scheduled the night before the election certification where those who lost their opportunity to speak at the Ellipse could still do so. It was meant as an olive branch extended between the competing factions, according to Stockton and two other sources.

Chafian, a reiki practitioner who’d been working closely with Alex Jones, was put in charge of the evening portion of the Jan. 5 event.

The speakers included Jones, Alexander, Stone, Michael Flynn and Three Percenter militia member Jeremy Liggett, who wore a flak jacket and led a “Fuck antifa!” chant. (Liggett is now running for Congress.) Chafian had invited Proud Boy leader Tarrio to speak as well, but Tarrio was arrested the day before on charges that he had brought prohibited gun magazines to Washington and burned a Black Lives Matter banner stolen from a church.

Tarrio told ProPublica that he did not know the flag was taken from a church and that the gun magazines were a custom-engraved gift for a friend. He has pleaded not guilty to a misdemeanor charge of property destruction; the gun magazine charge is still pending indictment before a grand jury.

“Thank you, Proud Boys!” Chafian shouted at the end of her speech. “The Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters — all of those guys keep you safe.”

Wren, however, would not back down. On the morning of Jan. 6, she arrived at the Ellipse before dawn and began arranging the seats. Jones and Alexander moved toward the front. Organizers were so worried that Jones and Alexander might try to rush the stage that Pierson contacted a senior White House official to see how aggressive she could get in her effort to contain Wren.

After discussing several options, the official suggested she call the United States Park Police and have Wren escorted off the premises.

Pierson relayed this to Kylie Kremer, who contacted the police. Officers arrived, but ultimately took no action.

By 9 a.m.,Trump supporters had arrived in droves: nuns and bikers, men in American flag suits, a line of Oath Keepers. Signs welcomed the crowd with the words “Save America March.”

Kylie Kremer greeted them gleefully. “What’s up, deplorables!” she said from the stage.

Wren escorted Jones and Alexander out of the event early, as they prepared to lead their march on the Capitol.

At 11:57 a.m, Trump got on stage and, after a rambling speech, gave his now infamous directive. “You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong,” he said. “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

Lawrence, Dustin Stockton’s fiancee and co-organizer, remembers her shock.

“What the fuck is this motherfucker talking about?” Lawrence, an ardent Trump supporter, said of the former president.

In the coming hours, an angry mob would force its way into the building. Protesters smashed windows with riot shields stolen from cops, ransacked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s chambers, and inflicted an estimated $1.5 million of damage. Roughly 140 police officers were injured. One was stabbed with a metal fence stake and another had spinal discs smashed, according to union officials.

The Stop the Steal group chat shows a reckoning with these events in real time.

“They stormed the capital,” wrote Stop the Steal national coordinator Michael Coudrey in a text message at 2:33 p.m. “Our event is on delay.”

“I’m at the Capitol and just joined the breach!!!” texted Straka, who months earlier had raised concerns about allying with white nationalists. “I just got gassed! Never felt so fucking alive in my life!!!”

Alexander and Coudrey advised the group to leave.

“Everyone get out of there,” Alexander wrote. “The FBI is coming hunting.”

In the months since, the Department of Justice has charged more than 400 people for their actions at the Capitol, including more than 20 alleged Proud Boys, over a dozen alleged Oath Keepers, and Straka. It’s unclear from court records whether Straka has yet entered a plea.

In emails to ProPublica, Coudrey declined to answer questions about Stop the Steal. “I just really don’t care about politics anymore,” he said. “It’s boring.”

Meadows, now a senior partner at the Conservative Partnership Institute, a think tank in Washington, appeared on Fox News on Jan. 27, delivering one of the first public remarks on the riot from a former Trump White House official. He encouraged the GOP to “get on” from Jan. 6 and focus on “what’s important to the American people.” Neither Meadows nor anyone else who worked in the Trump White House at the time has had to answer questions as part of the various inquiries currently proceeding in Congress.

Alexander has kept a low profile since Jan. 6. But in private, texts show, he has encouraged his allies to prepare for “civil war.”

“Don’t denounce anything,” he messaged his inner circle in January regarding the Capitol riot. “You don’t want to be on the opposite side of freedom fighters in the coming conflict. Veterans will be looking for civilian political leaders.”

Kirsten Berg and Lynn Dombek contributed additional reporting.

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Texas Democrats sue Greg Abbott for defunding state Legislature

A group that includes Texas House Democrats and legislative staffers is asking the Texas Supreme Court to override Gov. Greg Abbott‘s recent veto of a portion of the state budget that funds the Legislature, staffers there and legislative agencies.

More than 60 Democratic members of the House signed a petition for a writ of mandamus, which was filed Friday morning, as did the House Democratic Caucus and the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, four state employees and the Texas AFL-CIO.

“The state is in a constitutional crisis at this moment,” said Chad Dunn, an attorney involved with the petition, during a briefing with reporters Thursday.

The governor had vowed to veto the Legislature’s funding in the final hours of the regular legislative session in May after House Democrats broke quorum and left the chamber to prevent passage of a controversial elections bill. That legislation, an Abbott priority, would have created new limitations to early voting hours, increased voting-by-mail restrictions and curbed local voting options.

The petition argues that Abbott exceeded his executive authority and violated the state’s separation of powers doctrine. The parties involved with the petition are asking the all-Republican court to find Abbott’s veto unconstitutional, which would allow Article X of the state budget, the section at issue, to become law later this year.

“Governor Abbott’s veto is an attempt to coerce, and thereby direct, how the Legislature discharges its functions — far exceeding the usual mechanism of the veto as a check on legislative excess,” the petition says. “If accepted, it would allow the governor to indirectly commandeer the Legislature by making its very existence contingent on its willingness to enact the governor’s preferred agenda. And it would set the precedent for the governor to do the same to the judiciary.”

In a statement later Friday, a spokesperson for Abbott called the Democrats’ argument “misleading and misguided.”

“The Constitution protects the legislative branch, and as the Democrats well know, their positions, their powers and their salaries are protected by the Constitution,” Renae Eze said. “They can continue to legislate despite the veto.”

State Rep. Chris Turner, a Grand Prairie Democrat who chairs his party’s caucus in the lower chamber, told reporters Thursday there are roughly 2,000 employees in the state’s legislative branch that would be affected by Abbott’s veto if it stands.

Lawmakers receive $600 a month in addition to a per diem of $221 every day the Legislature is in session for both regular and special sessions.

“This isn’t about [lawmakers’] paychecks,” Turner said during the briefing. “What he’s doing is hurting our staff and hurting our constituents.”

Abbott’s veto pertains to the upcoming two-year state budget that takes effect Sept. 1. The issue could get resolved next month when state lawmakers return to Austin for a special legislative session starting July 8. If Abbott includes legislative funding on the agenda, lawmakers could pass a supplemental budget to restore funding and prevent employees potentially going without a paycheck. That document, if the Legislature passed it, would also need a sign off from Abbott before it could go into effect.

In the meantime, the petition asks the court to proceed on an expedited schedule to help resolve the issue by Sept. 1.

“That’s what happens when one branch gets in a conflict with another — the third leg of the stool steps in and resolves it,” Dunn, the plaintiffs’ attorney, said. “That’s what we’re doing here.”

Thousands of young children lost parents to COVID. Where’s help for them?

Five months after her husband died of covid-19, Valerie Villegas can see how grief has wounded her children.

Nicholas, the baby, who was 1 and almost weaned when his father died, now wants to nurse at all hours and calls every tall, dark-haired man “Dada,” the only word he knows. Robert, 3, regularly collapses into furious tantrums, stopped using the big-boy potty and frets about sick people giving him germs. Ayden, 5, recently announced it’s his job to “be strong” and protect his mom and brothers.

Her older kids — Kai Flores, 13, Andrew Vaiz, 16, and Alexis Vaiz, 18 — are often quiet and sad or angry and sad, depending on the day. The two eldest, gripped by anxiety that makes it difficult to concentrate or sleep, were prescribed antidepressants soon after losing their stepfather.

“I spend half the nights crying,” said Villegas, 41, a hospice nurse from Portland, Texas. She became a widow on Jan. 25, just three weeks after Robert Villegas, 45, a strong, healthy truck driver and jiujitsu expert, tested positive for the virus.

“My kids, they’re my primary concern,” she said. “And there’s help that we need.”

But in a nation where researchers calculate that more than 46,000 children have lost one or both parents to covid since February 2020, Villegas and other survivors say finding basic services for their bereaved kids — counseling, peer support groups, financial assistance — has been difficult, if not impossible.

“They say it’s out there,” Villegas said. “But trying to get it has been a nightmare.”

Interviews with nearly two dozen researchers, therapists and other experts on loss and grief, as well as families whose loved ones died of covid, reveal the extent to which access to grief groups and therapists grew scarce during the pandemic. Providers scrambled to switch from in-person to virtual visits and waiting lists swelled, often leaving bereft children and their surviving parents to cope on their own.

“Losing a parent is devastating to a child,” said Alyssa Label, a San Diego therapist and program manager with SmartCare Behavioral Health Consultation Services. “Losing a parent during a pandemic is a special form of torture.”

Children can receive survivor benefits when a parent dies if that parent worked long enough in a job that required payment of Social Security taxes. During the pandemic, the number of minor children of deceased workers who received new benefits has surged, reaching nearly 200,000 in 2020, up from an average of 180,000 in the previous three years. Social Security Administration officials don’t track cause of death, but the latest figures marked the most awards granted since 1994. Covid deaths “undoubtedly” fueled that spike, according to the SSA’s Office of the Chief Actuary.

And the number of children eligible for those benefits is surely higher. Only about half of the 2 million children in the U.S. who have lost a parent as of 2014 received the Social Security benefits to which they were entitled, according to a 2019 analysis by David Weaver of the Congressional Budget Office.

Counselors said they find many families have no idea that children qualify for benefits when a working parent dies, or don’t know how to sign up.

In a country that showered philanthropic and government aid on the 3,000 children who lost parents to the 9/11 terror attacks, there’s been no organized effort to identify, track or support the tens of thousands of kids left bereaved by covid.

“I’m not aware of any group working on this,” said Joyal Mulheron, the founder of Evermore, a nonprofit foundation that focuses on public policy related to bereavement. “Because the scale of the problem is so huge, the scale of the solution needs to match it.”

Covid has claimed more than 600,000 lives in the U.S., and researchers writing in the journal JAMA Pediatrics calculated that for every 13 deaths caused by the virus, one child under 18 has lost a parent. As of June 15, that would translate into more than 46,000 kids, researchers estimated. Three-quarters of the children are adolescents; the others are under age 10. About 20% of the children who’ve lost parents are Black, though they make up 14% of the population.

“There’s this shadow pandemic,” said Rachel Kidman, an associate professor at Stony Brook University in New York, who was part of the team that found a way to calculate the impact of covid deaths. “There’s a huge amount of children who have been bereaved.”

The Biden administration, which launched a program to help pay funeral costs for covid victims, did not respond to questions about offering targeted services for families with children.

Failing to address the growing cohort of bereaved children, whether in a single family or in the U.S. at large, could have long-lasting effects, researchers said. The loss of a parent in childhood has been linked to higher risks of substance use, mental health problems, poor performance in school, lower college attendance, lower employment and early death.

“Bereavement is the most common stress and the most stressful thing people go through in their lives,” said clinical psychologist Christopher Layne of the UCLA/Duke University National Center for Child Traumatic Stress. “It merits our care and concern.”

Perhaps 10% to 15% of children and others bereaved by covid might meet the criteria of a new diagnosis, prolonged grief disorder, which can occur when people have specific, long-lasting responses to the death of a loved one. That could mean thousands of children with symptoms that warrant clinical care. “This is literally a national, very public health emergency,” Layne said.

Still, Villegas and others say they have been left largely on their own to navigate a confusing patchwork of community services for their children even as they struggle with their own grief.

“I called the counselor at school. She gave me a few little resources on books and stuff,” Villegas said. “I called some crisis hotline. I called counseling places, but they couldn’t help because they had waiting lists and needed insurance. My kids lost their insurance when their dad died.”

The social disruption and isolation caused by the pandemic overwhelmed grief care providers, too. Across the U.S., nonprofit agencies that specialize in childhood grief said they have scrambled to meet the need and to switch from in-person to virtual engagement.

“It was a huge challenge; it was very foreign to the way we work,” said Vicki Jay, CEO of the National Alliance for Grieving Children. “Grief work is based on relationships, and it’s very hard to get a relationship with a piece of machinery.”

At Experience Camps, which each year offers free weeklong camps to about 1,000 bereaved kids across the country, the waiting list has grown more than 100% since 2020, said Talya Bosch, an Experience Camps associate. “It is something that we are concerned about — a lot of kids are not getting the support they need,” she said.

Private counselors, too, have been swamped. Jill Johnson-Young, co-owner of Central Counseling Services in Riverside, California, said her nearly three dozen therapists have been booked solid for months. “I don’t know a therapist in the area who isn’t full right now,” she said.

Dr. Sandra McGowan-Watts, 47, a family practice doctor in Chicago, lost her husband, Steven, to covid in May 2020. She feels fortunate to have found an online therapist for her daughter, Justise, who helped explain why the 12-year-old was suddenly so sad in the mornings: “My husband was the one who woke her up for school. He helped her get ready for school.”

Justise was also able to get a spot at an Experience Camps session this summer. “I am nervous about going to camp, but I am excited about meeting new kids who have also lost someone close in their life,” she said.

Jamie Stacy, 42, of San Jose, California, was connected with an online counselor for her daughter, Grace, 8, and twin sons, Liam and Colm, 6, after their father, Ed Stacy, died of covid in March 2020 at age 52. Only then did she learn that children can grieve differently than adults. They tend to focus on concrete concerns, such as where they’ll live and whether their favorite toys or pets will be there. They often alternate periods of play with sadness, cycling rapidly between confronting and avoiding their feelings of loss.

“The boys will be playing Legos, having a great time, and all of a sudden drop a bomb on you: ‘I know how I can see Daddy again. I just have to die, and I’ll see Daddy again,'” she said. “And then they’re back to playing Legos.”

Stacy said counseling has been crucial in helping her family navigate a world where many people are marking the end of the pandemic. “We can’t escape the topic of covid-19 even for one day,” she said. “It’s always in our face, wherever we go, a reminder of our painful loss.”

Villegas, in Texas, has returned to her work in hospice care and is starting to reassemble her life. But she thinks there should be formal aid and grief support for families like hers whose lives have been indelibly scarred by the deadly virus.

“Now everybody’s lives are going back to normal,” she said. “They can get back to their lives. And I’m thinking my life will never be normal again.”

I grew up in an off-the-grid Christian commune. Here’s what I know about America’s religious beliefs

The only time I saw Brother Sam in person, he was marching like a soldier as he preached, with sweat running like tears from his temples and the Bible a heavy brick in his right hand. 

It was 1978, I was five, and my family had traveled to Lubbock, Texas, for a Body Convention, which was what we called the semi-annual gatherings of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of members of The Body, or Body of Christ, an expansive network of charismatic communities created almost singlehandedly by Brother Sam. 

My family lived on a Body Farm, a mostly off-grid outpost on the northern shore of Lake Superior, where I grew up singing, clapping, hollering and dancing in the Tabernacle aisles as shamelessly as King David. In our insular community, Holy Spirit-led practices like speaking in tongues, visions, prophecies, laying on hands and faith healing, altar calls, mass conversions, river baptisms and even demon deliverance were as commonplace as eating or sleeping or, for us children, playing with smooth stones in the frigid stream at the edge of the woods. Back then, if you had asked me if church scared me, I would have been confused by the question, and I would have said no. In retrospect, I was scared all the time. 

If this were a face-to-face conversation, you might stop me here, as many have. “So, you grew up in a cult,” you might say, hoping to preface any further conversation with a caveat that my religious experience had to have been uniquely harrowing, an aberration of wholesome, mainstream American Christianity. After all, unlike The Body, most denominations and church networks don’t ask parishioners to sell their possessions and tithe half, or even all of their savings. Most pastors don’t nudge their congregations as Brother Sam did into the wilderness, and demand that they pare their lives down to the most ascetic essentials — plain clothes, plain food, no TV, no holidays, no toys. Perhaps most importantly, most people in 2021 don’t believe in spiritual warfare reminiscent of the Dark Ages; they are not warned by their spiritual leaders that they are under assault by demons and the Devil at every turn. If you’re a Christian, you’d probably want to put as much distance as possible between The Body and whatever church you belong to. If not, you’d need reassurance that my experiences with religion are extraordinary — the stuff memoirs are made of. 

But, only a couple years ago, Franklin Graham, son of “America’s Pastor,” Billy Graham, declared any criticism of former president Donald Trump to be the work of demonic powers. The following year, one of the president’s closest evangelical advisors, Paula White, publicly commanded “all satanic pregnancies to miscarry.” Polling in recent decades indicates that around half of all Americans continue to believe that the Devil and demonic possession are very real, and though some recent numbers suggest that figure may be lower among Democrats, the percentage of Americans who believe in the Devil rose from 55 percent in 1990 to 70 percent in 2007 — as of 2018, even Catholic exorcisms appear to be on the rise. Around half of all Americans believe the Bible should influence U.S. laws, and 68 percent of white evangelical Protestants believe the Bible should take precedence over the will of the people. In other words, if you find yourself talking to an American Christian, chances are they have been reared in the fear of making a wrong move, of choosing the wrong side, and believe that doing so could have nightmarish results in this life and the next. Chances are that fear is so deeply ingrained that it no longer registers as fear. Fear is simply the lens through which they view the world.

I had a friend in college who liked to call me Jonestown after she heard my story. But she’d grown up in Kentucky like I did after my family left communal life, and the longer I knew her, the more I came to understand that the preachers of her childhood were virtually interchangeable with Brother Sam, that the only difference between her church and mine was devotion, the degree of commitment to doctrine. In my church, we were instructed to live out our beliefs one step at a time, then another, then another, but they were the same beliefs my friend had. Long after my family “left” The Body, whether we were holding home church, attending Body Conventions, or going to regular services in Pentecostal, Baptist and Methodist churches, I was 19 and in college before I encountered a single person who challenged the doctrine I was raised in, and I’ve since had similar experiences in urban Virginia, rural New Hampshire, and suburban Indiana where I now live. Classifying American Christians into the imaginary phyla of cults and not-cults, of dangerous, fringy, irregular churches and a safe, mainstream, religious majority is a terrible mistake and just as dangerous as extremism itself.    

In fact, religious extremism has been if not the then a national norm for the duration of my lifetime. In my experience, you only need press most Christians for a few minutes before you encounter many of the “strange and sinister” beliefs that are supposed to be a marker of cults. This is why unlearning religious extremism in America is so difficult, and often takes a lifetime — akin, I imagine, trying to be sober in a brewery. If more than three quarters of all American evangelicals believe we are living in the End Times described in the Bible, then it is not only probable but inevitable that some of those believers will take action and remove themselves and their families from the corrupt, materialistic, Babylonian world. Likewise, if the Bible was written by the finger of God, as I was taught, then questioning it — in fact, questioning anything about the church and church leaders, from the authenticity of teachings by men like Brother Sam to the sincerity of whichever right-leaning politicians are being praised in the pulpit, might render a believer vulnerable to unseen “powers and principalities” that circle above us like vultures, eager for our destruction.

Samuel Drew Fife III was an ordinary man who wielded extraordinary power over his followers. His parents were blue collar Floridians, and like many veterans of the Second World War, he returned home to them from battle emotionally and spiritually cored, nursing an existential void that must have made the task of assembling an ordinary life for himself feel impossibly daunting. Understandably, only something as grand and incomprehensible as God could have matched the breadth of that void, shoring up the shaken world in fervent black-and-white certainty. Such was the experience of millions in the wake of the wars of the 20th century — this is the rock upon which Latter Rain and subsequent Charismatic churches were built.

In 1957, in a Baptist seminary in New Orleans, Sam would learn how to weaponize his own fear and cast himself as a savior of souls in the spiritual battle he imagined raging around him, and demons were an important part of this education. In 1960, he submitted a graduate thesis to Tulane University that described his personal anointing with the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, the “rain” of the Later Rain, and detailed his successful deliverance, as he saw it, of Jane Miller, a mentally ill mother of six, from her demons. Many people with mental illness, after hearing tapes of Jane’s deliverance sessions, would flock to Brother Sam for healing. I grew up listening to those and other similar tapes, and eventually, more than a decade after Brother Sam’s death, when Jane Miller tried to deliver me from my own demons at a Body Convention in Chicago, it felt like he was present throughout the ordeal. After all, he had delivered Jane, and she was delivering me. 

In 1971, just as my father was returning from Vietnam, Billy Graham delivered a message in Dallas, Texas, called “The Devil and Demons,” and in the same year, Brother Sam began preaching the End Times that were already a staple of Billy’s Crusades. Both men, and many, many other preachers like Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson, and Jim Bakker, all technically outside the Body, and Buddy Cobb, John Henson, and Doug McClain, all inside The Body, saw the polluted, diseased, war-torn world as proof that a Great Tribulation was fast approaching. All taught the very biblical duality-laden concepts of demonology, of believer/nonbeliever, of us/them. And nearly all would fall from grace, charged with numerous crimes from fraud to solicitation to sexual misconduct to kidnapping, though believe me when I say that those falls never mean an end but a beginning, a new flush of pastors, rebranded, contemporized, fortified now by social media, and every bit as eager to wield fear as a weapon in the endless crusade for power. 

Maybe I grew up with the Jane Tapes, but millions of Americans cut their teeth on similar messages from countless other pastors, mainstream or not. Not every extreme form of Christianity ends with cyanide Kool-Aid in Guyana. The rapid growth and clout of QAnon is another potential outcome, proof that a legion of pastors have spent decades nudging faithful Americans in the direction of paranoia, conspiracy theories and ultimately the dismantling of a government they insist is on the wrong side. If between 15 to 20 percent of Americans believe the government is controlled by a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles, and that an apocalyptic storm will soon sweep away the evil elites and restore “rightful leaders” to power, America’s pastors are why. The Body became The Move became the IMA, or International Ministerial Association: corporate, benign and dull as toast to the untrained eye, but still holding conventions in Lubbock and elsewhere, still raising up a generation, at this very moment, to believe what I believed for so long, to understand the world beyond the shelter of the church as hostile, malevolent and scary — a worldview I still wrestle with from time to time.

Even decades after my last Body Convention, when I began working as an ER nurse, every time I was assigned a patient with hallucinations of demons or The Devil, I had to exorcise myself of the belief in them. I often passed the hours of those shifts in a kind of extended adrenaline surge. I remember one patient in particular who had attacked her husband with a chainsaw and saw demons in the corners of the locked hospital room where I was caring for her. “There he is!” she kept whispering, pointing behind me, her eyes registering a presence there, her expression shifting dynamically from glare to terror and back to glare. I had to concentrate not to feel the presence, too, to slow my breathing and repeat to myself, “She’s just sick, that’s all. Just sick, like any other patient.”  

Inspired by New England clambakes, these grill packs replace lobster with quick-cooking shrimp

Inspired by the iconic New England clambake, these grill packs replace lobster with quick-cooking shrimp, along with spicy sausage, corn, and potatoes. Smoked mussels are optional but add a wood-fired flavor.

***

Recipe: Shrimp and Corn “Clambake” Grill Packs

Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients:

  • 1 pound (26–30 count) tail-on shrimp
  • 4 ounces linguiça, chouriço, or other spicy sausage, cut into  1/4-inch- thick disks
  • 2 ears of corn, each shucked and cut crosswise into 8 pieces
  • 2 medium red potatoes, thinly sliced
  • 1 tin (4 ounces) smoked mussels (optional)
  • 4 tablespoons salted butter, divided
  • 4 large cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 teaspoon Old Bay seasoning, divided
  • Minced fresh parsley, for garnish

Instructions:

Prepare your grill for direct, medium-high heat (about 400°).

Lay four sheets of aluminum foil, each about 15 inches long, on your counter. Top each sheet of foil with an equal-size sheet of parchment paper.

Divide the shrimp, sausage, corn, potatoes, mussels, butter, garlic, and Old Bay seasoning equally among the packets, piling the seafood, sausage, and vegetables in the center and topping them with the butter, garlic, and seasoning. Fold the foil and parchment paper up over the ingredients, pinching securely at the top to seal.

Set the packets on the grill grate, cover, and cook until the shrimp is fully cooked and the corn is tender, 15 to 20 minutes.

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Netflix’s “Samurai Gourmet” has the pleasure-seeking, main character energy I want for the summer

A lot is being made, understandably, of who we are going to be as we emerge from the pandemic. Are we all Hot Folks plunging feet-first into the crystal-blue pool of summer? Will we all be, as Kylie Chaka wrote for The New Yorker, main characters in our own stories? Personally, I’m hoping to embrace and exert at least some of the energy of the protagonist of the Netflix series “Samurai Gourmet.”

The series, which was originally released in 2017, came up in my queue as “recommended,” likely due to my fondness for Japanese scripted food TV programs. There’s not quite an American analog for these shows, which feature a fictional character for whom eating a particular meal is a narrative climax (though there is typically some very flimsy resistance standing in the way).

Take, for instance, “Kantaro the Sweet Tooth Salaryman,” which follows the titular Kantaro, a publishing sales rep, who efficiently speeds through client meetings so he can secretly stop at dessert cafés like the very real Kanmidokoro Hatsune to try traditional sweets like shiratama ogura anmitsu — made by layering agar jelly cubes, fresh fruit, stewed red beans and chewy mochi balls — and kakigōri shaved iced.

“What’s standing in his way?” you might ask. It’s simply the fear that his coworkers will find out he is slacking off, very briefly, midday to eat desserts that he then blogs about under a pseudonym. There’s just enough narrative pretense to differentiate it from the innumerable unscripted food tourism TV shows.

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“Samurai Gourmet” is similar in form. It centers on the 60-year-old Takeshi Kasumi (Naoto Takenaka) who, after spending his life as a dutiful salaryman, is embarking on a new life as a retiree. However, he isn’t sure how to process this reality; much like us eying lifting pandemic restrictions and our imminent emergence, Takeshi isn’t sure who he wants to be in this new chapter of his life. Will he be the kind of man who dons both a straw pork pie hat and sunglasses (a combination his wife, lovingly, says makes him look like a “friendly mobster)? Will he travel by himself, something that he hasn’t done in decades? 

First and foremost, Takeshi realizes that he wants to be the kind of man who can have a midday beer at a restaurant, which is, fittingly, the title of the first episode. 

The series opens on Takeshi, who is unsure of what to do with his newfound freedom. After sticking a bookmark in his book about the history of samurai, he decides to take a walk along his old commute. He finds himself stopping at a neighborhood cafe that was previously below his notice. 

After surveying the menu, he decides on the eggplant, bell pepper and pork with spicy miso, the preparation of which is filmed with such an eye for sensuality — the angles, the heat, the textures — that it borders on eroticism. That’s another hallmark of this brand of scripted food TV; take the “Chef’s Table” slow-motion shots, but make them sexy. 

Takeshi is pleased with his order, but it’s sweltering outside, and the humidity has left him both drenched and parched. What would really round out his first lunch as a retiree is an ice-cold beer, poured straight from a chilled bottle into a pint glass. 

He would never dream of drinking on a weekday while working, but as he thinks to himself, “it doesn’t matter if it’s a weekday or the weekend. I’m not a corporate man anymore.” However, the café is packed with workers, and he’s self-conscious.

“If I were a samurai, I would drink in the middle of the day.” At that moment, Takeshi’s inner-samurai (played with gusto by Tetsuji Tamayama) bursts through the restaurant door and swaggers to a table, politely demanding both sake and pickles. 

“Looks like he’s really kicking back. Don’t end up a failure like him.” In this fantasy, some nearby men begin to heckle the samurai for his decision to drink midday.

Predictably, this doesn’t end well for them, which, in turn, leaves Takeshi with enough confidence to order not one but two crisp midday beers — and he absolutely savors them. The metaphor isn’t a complicated one — we all have fantasy versions of ourselves who are subjectively “better” than what we envision our real selves to be. They’re brighter, more beautiful, more assertive. 

The samurai tends to emerge in the face of situations where Takeshi wishes he was more vocal or adventurous — in the face of rude restaurant patrons, snide managers and unfamiliar dishes. The stakes are never life or death, but watching someone successfully become more like the person they want to be is invigorating, especially when the subject is well past the typical “coming of age” years. 

It’s all the more poignant to watch now as many of us, myself included, are grappling with how we want to reintroduce ourselves to the world. These contemplations can sound superficial, vapid even, but the pandemic was unequivocally life-altering. It made many question their relationship with work, commerce, social obligations and their inner and outer circles.

To that point, food is a beautiful way to exercise some of the changes we want to see in our lives, which is a thread that runs through “Samurai Gourmet.” Meals can become a stand-in for virtues or characteristics. For example, Takeshi’s simple breakfast of broiled mackerel, steamed rice and miso soup — which is typical of old-school seaside inns — is an emblem of the traveling he wants to do. When he orders a dish totally unfamiliar to him while dining out on his anniversary, he’s signaling to his wife of several decades that he can still be spontaneous.

Takeshi’s euphoria when he experiences simple pleasures, like good yakitori or an ice-cold beer, is aspirational, as well. Everyday routines have been imbued with a new resonance as the world reopens. Coming out of the pandemic, I hope to be the kind of person who recognizes both the opportunity for and allure of enjoyment. 

Hungry for great food writing? Sign up for our weekly newsletter — whether you’re looking for delicious new recipes, seasonal wine pairings or meaty reporting, we’ve got every appetite covered.
 

Our great big list of the best canned wines

Canned wine is a huge growth category that has gone mainstream, and the quality can be excellent. That it’s caught on makes sense because it’s easily portable for parties and picnics, doesn’t require the commitment of opening a whole bottle, and the packaging, which is lighter than bottles, is better for the environment. These businesses are also different for the wine industry, and offer new kinds of distribution, community, and social features. Think: direct shipping, wine clubs, and community parties and Zooms, for those who want not just a drink but new friends to drink with.

The following are our picks for the best cans that are pretty widely available at wine retailers, including some supermarkets. Many are from independent producers using smaller-batch grapes and more environmentally friendly production methods. When thinking about the price, know that the 250-ml size cans are a third of bottle in volume; a four pack of them is a bottle plus one heavy pour, which is often a good deal. Here are 21 brands to choose from — try them all and you’ll have a great summer.

A quick note: All of these are great makers whose wines are good across the board; that is why it’s the name of the brand in the headline, but not a specific can. We’ll leave you to make your pick based on what’s available in your local store and the wine you like to drink.

1. Spanish: Ah-So

$4.99 for a 250ml can

Colorado-based Ah-So’s grapes come from a single family-owned estate in the becoming-trendy wine region of Navarra, Spain, allowing for the haute-wine experience of terroir (tasting the land and climate of a particular place), and in a can, no less. Production is all organic and uses traditional methods and native yeast, and the results are bright, clean flavors — citrus, sliced fruit, French oak. Fancy and fun.

2. One Way Rosé: Amble + Chase

$15.96 for a 4-pack of 250ml cans (equivalent to 1 1/3 bottles)

You don’t need to read the fine print while filling up the cart for the summer house. Amble + Chase makes rosé and only rosé, and from what many consider to be pink wine’s best appellation: Cotes de Provence. It’s the house canned wine of one of the elite wholesalers, and tastes just right for its genre, like sun-washed limestone and summer fruit.

3. Good Celebrity: Archer Roose

$49 for a half case (3 (4-packs) of 250 ml cans; equivalent to four bottles)

The smart and funny Elizabeth Banks has just become the CCO and tongue-in-cheek spokesperson for this luxury-hip canned wine brand. Archer Roose offers rosé, Sauvignon Blanc, Malbec, and a sparkling white blend, and incorporates neat touches like skin-contact fermentation, low interventions, and atypical grapes from niche regions in France, Greece, Argentina, and Chile.

4. Sangria: Begonia Sangria Tinta

Staring at $12 for a 4-pack of 330ml cans (equivalent to 1¾ bottles)

Begonia is an affordable, organic canned sangria produced in Spain, that’s not too sweet and has notes of florals, orange, fresh red berries, and lime. The winemaker uses a family recipe that goes back two generations.

5. New California: Brick & Mortar; $6 For A 375ml Can

Behind the brick wall on this label are better-made wines, mostly blends, all sustainably farmed and minimally intervened, from some of the best California grape-growing regions. The wine’s made by a Napa couple whose innovative bottled wines are highly regarded. A “California Rosé Bubbles” has tasting notes of white raspberry and wild watermelon. A “California Blanc Bubbles” claims green apple, grapefruit and jasmine.

6. I (Heart) NY: Bridge Lane

$34 four a 4-pack of 375ml cans (equivalent to 2 bottles)

Bridge Lane is the second label of esteemed North Fork producer Lieb Cellars. Their canned wines, which all use New York State grapes from some of the best vineyard sites, are the same as what’s in their bottles — and boxes, and kegs (there’s a size for any gathering). The Sauvignon Blanc goes nicely with a Hamptons seafood cookout, but we also like the medium-bodied red blend made from traditional Bordeaux grapes, which tastes of red fruit, cedar, and spice.

7. Easily Available: House Wine

$32 for a 6-pack of 375ml cans (equivalent to 3 bottles)

Chances are you’ve noticed the striking label on see-it-everywhere House Wine, the creation of Charles Smith, the visionary behind Kung Fu Girl Riesling. House Wine is now owned by a large winemaking group, and for a wine produced at this high volume, the quality is good. The Chardonnay evokes creamy apple backed by citrus; the red blend boasts red currant aroma, juicy red fruit, and a velvet finish. It’s also the only wine we know that has a collaboration with Cheez-Its.

8. Genuine Napa: Larkan

$12.99 for a 375ml can

Lar-kan, get it? Maker Sean Larkin is the kind of iconoclast to make some highly rated Napa Valley wine, and then decide to can a version of it. His three offerings, the only canned wines to use only grapes from prestigious Napa, are “white wine” (Sauvignon Blanc), “pink wine” (rosé of Pinot Noir) and “red wine” (mostly Merlot). This is premium wine at amazing prices, and arguably the highest-quality canned wine on the market. Larkan even made a special can for the French Laundry’s 25th anniversary party.

9. Fashion Classic: Lorenza Spritz

$24 for a 4-pack of 250ml cans (equivalent to 1 1/3 bottles)

Twelve years ago, a California wine industry professional and her fashion-model daughter decided to make true Provence-style rosés using grapes from some of the most storied California vineyards. The always-in-style results are now also available in a lower-alcohol, softly fizzy canned version, using chic old-vine Carignan and Grenache grapes.

10. Socially Conscious: Lubanzi

$20 for a 4-pack of 250ml cans (equivalent to 1 1/3 bottles); $30 for a 4-pack of 375ml cans (equivalent to 2 bottles)

Two American students traveling in South Africa hit upon Lubanzi, a line of bottle- and-canned wines with a strong ethical component: In addition to being fair trade, carbon neutral, and a B-corp, the company sends 50% of its profits back for the healthcare and education of vineyard workers. What’s in the cans is the same luminous, vibrant wine that’s in the bottles, including some less-usual offerings like a Chenin Blanc that tastes of clean minerality, pear, white peach and lemon peel, and a Rhone blend with notes of blueberry, plum and black pepper.

11. Cool People: Maker

$8 for a 250ml can and starting at $42 for a 6-pack of 250ml cans (equivalent to 2 bottles)

Two female Stanford Business School grads pulled in a third alum, cult winemaker Chris Christensen, to create this line of personality-driven cans: Each one has a different industry-insider “maker,” whose names are on the labels. There’s a compelling line-up of red wines, but we jump at the opportunity to get the canned version of Christensen’s highly regarded sparkling Sauvignon Blanc — it’s what hard lemonade should really taste like. Maker also prioritizes customer connection with a can club, virtual gatherings and one-on-one community building via SMS.

12. Environmental Leader: Chateau Maris

$5.99 for a 250ml can

Chateau Maris makes some of the best wine in the Languedoc in southern France, wines which “taste like they are supposed to” as wine-professionals say. The company was the first European winery to get B-corp certification for being at the forefront of sustainable environmental and business practices. The design on the currently available canned rosé is as beautiful as Maris’s vision, and the contents are certified organic, direct-press (a more thoughtful and intentional method of making rosés), and 100% Grenache. Look for bright, fresh citrus and melon flavors, and more body than is usual in a canned wine.

13. Black-, Female-, Family-Owned: McBride Sisters

$91.08 for a 12-pack of 375ml cans (equivalent to 6 bottles)

Sisters Robin and Andréa McBride have the largest Black-owned wine company in the United States. Their well-made lines of wine include “Black Girl Magic,” their personal ode to Black culture and history, and “She Can” which funds professional development for other women to do as the sisters did and become leaders in male-dominant industries. Black Girl Magic has a “Bubbly Rosé” and a “Bubbly Red.” The latter, intended to be served chilled, tastes of pomegranate juice and blackberries with a sprinkling of black pepper. She Can offers a dry California rosé and two dry fruit-kissed spritzers — Island Citrus and Coastal Berry.

14. Best Design: Nomadica

Starting at $50 for an 8-pack of 250ml cans (equivalent to 2.6 bottles)

The moody, organic, transcendental look of this hip, sommelier-founded line fits the taste-profile of the hazy, sensual and complex wines within. Nomadica is sustainably farmed, low intervention, vegan, has minimal sulfur, and is dry (with no sugar). The popular “Pink River Rosé” evokes taste comparisons such as “peak-of-season strawberry flavor” and “an ocean breeze running through a field of sage.”

15. Kanpai!: Nomikai

$47.88 for a 12-pack of 187ml cans (equivalent to 3 bottles)

This California brand nods to the Pacific Rim with the name Nomikai, which means “drinking party” in Japanese. Its wines are notable because they’re made by low-intervention winery Ryme Cellars, one of a new wave of California producers with fresh ideas. The Nomikai red is a blend of Merlot, Mourvedre, and other grapes, leading to a medium-bodied, black fruit flavor, with tannic structure and an acidic twang.

16. Natural & Local: Old Westminster

Starting at $10 for a 355ml can

A lot of local wineries like Old Westminster in Maryland have developed canned programs as a means of attracting new customers. These wines often employ natural winemaking methods and are experimental and inventive, using lesser-known grapes sourced locally (Old Westminster only uses grapes grown in state). We love their Seeds & Skins orange wine in a can, which has a hazy, soft-orange color and nose and flavor of apricot, hay and sage.

17. A Cooler Cooler: Ramona Wine Spritzes

Starting at $20 for a 4-pack of 250ml cans (equivalent to 1 1/3 bottles)

Flavored wines and blends are up and coming, thus it’s no surprise that the former beverage director from NYC dining juggernaut Momofuku was ahead of the curve with these organic, sustainable Italian spritz-inspired fizzy drinks. There’s a Sicilian white blended with a hint of Meyer lemon, one with a hint of blood orange, and a sparkling rosé from Abruzzo on the Adriatic.

18. Innovative: Sans Wine

$24 for a 2-pack of 375ml cans (equivalent to 1 bottle)

“Carbonic Carignan in a can” is catnip to the natty-wine crowd: Carignan is a trendy, lesser-known, older grape that’s been lately rediscovered; carbonic maceration is an old-is-new method that coaxes out wild flavor; cans are better for the environment. California-based Sans Wine hits this and many other natural wine benchmarks, such as being dry farmed, foot-tread, unrefined and unfiltered, and having great packaging design.

19. Classy Italian: Scarpetta Frico Frizzante

$3 for a 250ml can

Look for the pig’s hind-quarters on the visually striking label for Scarpetta, a respected Italian maker of bottled wines that offers just two chic cans: a red Lambrusco with tiny little bubbles meant to be served chilled, and a white from Northern Italy, made in the Prosecco style. Lambrusco is a personal favorite of ours with charcuterie or pizza.

20. Can Pioneer: Underwood

$28 for a 4-pack of 375ml cans (equivalent to 2 bottles)

Oregon producer Union Wine Company was one of the first to make high-quality canned wines, and has great distribution nationally. Underwood is its line of cans, with a core of five regulars and a series of special offerings, currently including “Riesling Radler” made with hops and grapefruit. The regulars are a Pinot Noir, a Pinot Gris, a rosé of Pinot Noir, some bubbles, and a pink bubbles, all striking a great balance of sophistication and easy drinking.

21. Historical Wine/Current Mood: Vina Maitia “Aupa” Pipeno

Average $6 for a 250ml can, $22 for a 4-pack of 250ml cans (equivalent to 1 1/3 bottles)

Pipeno is a low intervention, lighter style of red wine made for centuries in Chile, primarily using the Pais grape (brought to the Americas by Spanish missionaries, and also known as the Mission grape). Today, it might be called natural wine. As chillable reds, like canned wine, are becoming more of a “thing,” this is the one in both camps you need to know about. Flavors of raspberry and cranberry combine with a hint of dried herbs to give a savory edge to this refreshing wine.

Over 90% of Western U.S. gripped by drought during unprecedented heat wave

Over 90% of the U.S. West is currently experiencing drought, federal authorities said Thursday, amid warnings of “unprecedented and dangerous heat” heading to the Pacific Northwest and fresh declarations that  humanity is in the midst of a climate emergency.

According to the latest U.S. Drought Monitor, nearly 91% of the western region is in some level of drought, affecting over 58 million people. That includes nearly 56% of the region being in “extreme” or “exceptional” drought, the monitor’s most severe classifications.

“The West has never seen a drought like this, especially so early in the dry season,” tweeted meteorologist and author Eric Holthaus, sharing a post from climate journalist Brian Kahn. “We are in a climate emergency.”

The monitor described a worsening crisis:

The drought situation in the western United States continued to worsen after another mostly hot and dry week. A few areas of drought in south-central and southeast New Mexico saw some slight improvement due to effects from several rain and thunderstorm events in the last month. Unfortunately, widespread severe or worse drought continued in New Mexico, and conditions remained the same or worsened elsewhere. Increases in moderate, severe, extreme (and in a few cases, exceptional) drought coverage occurred in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and Montana. Severe drought also expanded in western Idaho. Wildfires and increasing wildfire danger, water restrictions, and damage to agriculture are very common across the West region.

“As far as drought goes, this is the big one, especially if we are talking about the broader drought across the whole Southwest,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California Los Angeles, told Bloomberg. “By a lot of metrics, it is the most severe drought on record.”

The parched conditions come alongside the National Weather Service’s Friday warning of “a dangerous heatwave with record breaking temperatures” projected for the Pacific Northwest and into southern California this weekend and into next week.

Temperatures could “soar well into record-breaking territory,” the agency said, with Washington and Oregon expected to see temperatures in the 90s and triple digits—20 to 30 degrees above average. Human health will be at risk, the service said:

Starting on Saturday, several high temperature records should fall throughout the Northwest, with monthly and even all-time records in jeopardy by Sunday and Monday. Excessive Heat Warnings have been issued for nearly all of Washington and Oregon, as well as much of Idaho and northern California. Heat of this magnitude can be extremely dangerous if proper precautions aren’t taken. Residents are urged to stay hydrated, avoid extended amounts of time outdoors, and stay in air-conditioned rooms. Nighttime temperatures are only expected to briefly cool into the 70s throughout the lower elevations, which can significantly increase the threat for heat related illnesses.

The National Interagency Fire Center says there are 54 large fires currently burning, and has moved the fire preparedness level to 4 out of 5, the second earliest the level has increased to 4 since 1990.

It was Conan O’Brien’s choice to leave late night this time – and we’ve never identified more

Conan O’Brien never got the chance to legitimately compete for the King of Late Night title on an even playing field. But when it comes to signing off, few performers can compare.

At the end of the “Conan” series finale this past week O’Brien described what drives him quite simply: “I have devoted all of my adult life, all of it, to pursuing this strange phantom intersection between smart and stupid.

“There’s a lot of people that believe the two cannot coexist, but God, I will tell you, it is something that I believe religiously,” he continued. “I think when smart and stupid come together – it’s very difficult – but if you can make it happen, I think it’s the most beautiful thing in the world.”

Thursday marked the end of  “Conan,” O’Brien’s little late-night perch that could, after an 11-year run on TBS. It also closes the book on his 28-year run as a late-night talk show host, making him the longest tenured one on TV at the time he left. This time his departure is entirely his choice, shaped by him, welcomed by his supporters. O’Brien lived it up in the final week of his modestly rated show, smoking a blunt with Seth Rogen, messing around with Jack Black and being congratulated by a slew of celebrities wishing him well.

Many tributes written about O’Brien include the obligatory career timeline: He was a writer on “The Simpsons” whom Lorne Michaels elevated out of that supposed nowhere to take over “Late Night” in 1993 after David Letterman left to launch “The Late Show” on CBS.

Then comes the reminder of his brief reign at “The Tonight Show,” where he took over for Jay Leno in 2009 and wasn’t even given a year to find his rhythm or his audience.

Not helping matters was the fact that Leno refused to leave despite NBC having established its transition play a full five years before it happened. First Leno negotiated another talk show that tanked. Then he straight-up swiped “The Tonight Show” from under O’Brien, yielding bushels of acrimony in doing so. 

Many still can’t forgive Leno all these year later. Less remarked upon were the protests staged in O’Brien’s name which, at the time, were as diversionary as they were puzzling. One of them included a wrestling match between impersonators of the comedians, with O’Brien emerging victorious. Another show of support came by way of a stellar “Downfall” meme.

All of this ridiculousness represented smart and stupid coming together beautifully and for entirely nonsensical reasons.

Certainly NBC’s treatment of O’Brien was terrible, and Leno was and remains lousy. But so goes the TV business, an industry that errs on the side of elevating mediocrity at the expense of creativity.

O’Brien’s defenestration happened in the midst of one of the worst recessions in modern history, one that hit Generation X workers the hardest.

That cohort graduated into an unstable economy and watched the nine-to-five workday be erased in front of their eyes. After working longer hours and paying their dues, the promotions they were taught to strive for either never materialized or weren’t there because said positions were still being occupied by Boomers working beyond the prescribed retirement age.

The O’Brien-Leno brouhaha therefore came to symbolize that generation’s rage, hence the demonstrations on behalf of a man who received a reported $45 million payout and a six-month non-compete for his trouble.

Over the years I’ve marveled at the average person’s propensity to organize their anger around famous, wealthy people who were wronged.

Some current version of this is the #FreeBritney movement surrounding Britney Spears’ demand to be released from an oppressive, exploitative conservatorship that denies Spears autonomy over her career, earnings, even her own body.

Until the New York Times Britney Spears documentary “Framing Britney Spears” aired on FX and Hulu in February, most Americans hadn’t a clue of the extent to which Spears’ life was not her own. The fans who have been screaming on her behalf long before that probably looked crazy.

They still might – because, again, if Spears is released from her conservatorship she should have access to the millions her father Jamie Spears is keeping from her, not to mention a higher earning potential than the vast majority of her stans.

But those of us who remember the smart-stupid Great Coco Uprising of 2010 should minimally understand that the furor isn’t entirely about Spears. Indeed, as Elie Mystal explains in The Nation, her situation may and should lead to needed reformation of a flawed section of U.S. law that has needlessly ensnared a lot of everyday people.

O’Brien’s bumpy road to TBS never approached that level of national import. Emotionally, however, he and Spears represent the public face of their respective generation’s completely understandable private seething.

For millennials, as Tabitha Blankenbiller’s explains in her Salon piece, the requests Spears made before the judge are the same as the ones they want and that have been imperiled:

…to be paid a living wage without working ourselves to death. To fall in love. To decide whether we want kids, and not worry that our livelihoods will suffer because of that choice.

These are universally accessible desires supposedly enshrined in the part of the Declaration of Independence that talks about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Not listed in that document is any advice about being ready to pivot, relaunch and define your own version success.

Then again, for the majority of working people this is a risky, indulgent attitude; and for performers who aren’t white these are other people’s problems. It’s fair to ask whether a Black, brown, Asian or Indigenous person would have received the famous grace that Turner afforded to O’Brien after NBC pulled the plug on him.

But it’s also worth pointing out that in the space between his last “Tonight Show” episode and the launch of “Conan” O’Brien personified the concept of hustling, leaping directly into the multi-city “Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour,” which was immortalized in the manic warts-and-all documentary “Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop.”

“Conan,” in comparison, was a calm landing and a mostly apolitical refuge, which in these hyper-partisan times did it no favors. It also existed during a transitional period that saw the rest of the late-night landscape expand and be taken over – and made better – by alumni of the Jon Stewart era of “The Daily Show”  and Trevor Noah‘s rising generation along with former “Saturday Night Live” stars Jimmy Fallon, the current “Tonight Show” host, and Seth Meyers.

O’Brien was never in the “SNL” troupe or part of the Comedy Central club, and in the end I think that makes his transition from the linear TV grind to the next chapter of his career smoother. His post-“Conan” career currently includes continuing his podcast, “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend,” and plans to make more “Conan Without Borders” specials for TBS, thereby expanding on what may be the most successful product of his late-night show.

In a much smaller way maybe this, too, provides a small beacon for those same folks suddenly, maliciously diverted from their pathway to achieving the American dream more than a decade back.

O’Brien’s departure from TV was his choice this time around, and that it’s happening during another time of massive economic upheaval when millions of workers are quitting dead-end, draining jobs to seek more fulfilling work is a coincidence.

That makes him less of an avatar for a dominant sentiment than perhaps a participant in a burgeoning societal movement dubbed The Great Resignation, albeit one retiring joyfully and with a large platform. We understand he’s not really like us, and yet his faithful fans would say he’s with us.

In his final moments of “Conan” he speaks to our shared 2021 notion of finding meaning in what we do one more time. “My advice to anyone watching right now – and it’s not easy to do . . .  but try, try and do what you love, with people you love. And if you can manage that it’s the definition of heaven on Earth. I swear to God, it really is.”

So good night for now, Mr. O’Brien. Thank you very much and see you soon. Because if he can’t stop, then neither should we.

12 unsettling facts about “The Metamorphosis”

It is one of the most enigmatic stories of all time, with an opening sentence that’s unparalleled in all of literature. Gregor Samsa, a traveling salesman living in Prague, wakes one morning from troubled dreams to find himself transformed into—what, exactly, isn’t clear, just as any clear interpretation of “The Metamorphosis” has eluded readers for decades. Let’s take a look at a few things we do know about Franz Kafka’s mysterious novella.

1. A tortured, long-distance relationship inspired “The Metamorphosis“

In 1912, Kafka met Felice Bauer, an acquaintance of his friend Max Brod, at a dinner party in Prague. He began writing to Bauer, who lived in Berlin, shortly after, eventually penning two and three letters per day. The correspondence was desperate — and pretty much one-sided. Kafka demanded detailed accounts of Bauer’s days, expressed his love for her and visions of their future together, and demanded that Bauer, who would eventually become his fiancée, respond to him in kind. Lying in bed one morning, Kafka told himself he wouldn’t get up until he’d received Bauer’s next letter. A story, he later wrote her, began to take shape.

2. Franz Kafka wrote “The Metamorphosis“ while working on another novel

Kafka was having a hard time turning out his first novel (which he never finished, and which was published after his death under the title “Amerika“). Once the inspiration for “The Metamorphosis” came, he seized on it and resolved to write it quickly, in two or three sittings. There were delays — Kafka was, after all, working full time at an insurance company — but he still was able to finish the first draft in three weeks, from mid-November to early December 1912.

3. It took three years for “The Metamorphosis“ to be published

Kafka read a section from his “bug piece,” as he called it, aloud to friends on November 24, 1912. They began talking about the work, and soon publishers were expressing interest. Due to his preoccupations with writing Bauer and with “Amerika,” though, it took Kafka months to write a new manuscript. Then World War I broke out, causing further delays. Finally, in October 1915, the story appeared in the literary journal “Die weissen Blätter,” with a book printing two months later by publisher Kurt Wolff Verlag in Leipzig.

4. There are numerous translations of “The Metamorphosis’“s famous opening line 

Over the years, translators have had Gregor Samsa transform into “a monstrous cockroach,” “an enormous bedbug,” and “a large verminous insect,” among other things. While scholars agree Gregor changes into a bug of some sort, the exact entomology remains a mystery. And that seems to be Kafka’s intention, as the German word he uses for Gregor’s new form, “Ungeziefer,” suggests a bug, a vermin and, in Old High German, an unclean animal unfit for sacrifice.

5. Franz Kafka prohibited his publisher from portraying “the insect” on “The Metamorphosis“‘s cover

Given the ambiguity over Gregor’s new form, Kafka argued that its picture should not appear on the cover, as his publisher suggested. Kafka wrote, “The insect itself is not to be drawn. It is not even to be seen from a distance.” He got his wish, with the first edition featuring a drawing of a tormented man wearing a robe. Subsequent editions, however, have interpreted Gregor in all sorts of creepy, crawly forms.

6. “The Metamorphosis“ is a pretty funny story when you think about it

Viewed one way, a story about a man who wakes up to find he’s a bug is horrifying. Viewed another way, it’s hilarious [PDF]. Indeed, scholars and readers alike have delighted in Kafka’s gallows humor and matter-of-fact handling of the absurd and the terrifying. The first pages of “The Metamorphosis,” where Gregor tries to communicate through the bedroom door with his family, who think he’s merely being lazy, is vintage screwball comedy. As translator Susan Bernofsky wrote, “I imagine Kafka laughing uproariously when reading the story to his friends.”

7. The language in “The Metamorphosis“ is full of double meanings and contradictions

Dream logic and contradictions abound in Kafka’s work. A man is summoned to a trial for an unnamed offense; a country doctor is instantly transported to the home of a sick patient, who tells him he only wants to be left to die. These contortions happen even at the language level, leaving translators to puzzle over the double meanings in Kafka’s German. In “The Metamorphosis,” he describes Gregor crawling along the walls of his room using the verb kriechen, which means “to creep” as well as “to cower.” Thus Gregor’s meekness as a man is reinforced even as he tries to assert his new insect identity.

8. “The Metamorphosis“‘s many interpretations include a Freudian one

It’s an interpretation of the human condition, an allegory for aging, and a cry of desperation in a rapidly industrializing society. There are many interpretations of “The Metamorphosis,” from the oddly specific (it’s all about the dangers of insomnia) to something resembling Lost (it was all just a dream!). There’s also a Freudian theory that states, in essence, the book was Kafka’s way of getting back at his overbearing father.

9. Vladimir Nabokov was a big fan — and critic — of “The Metamorphosis“

The Lolita author, in a famous lecture he gave about “The Metamorphosis,” called Kafka “the greatest German writer of our time.” Nabokov was also a first-rate scientist and lepidopterist, and he concluded that Gregor Samsa had been transformed into a winged beetle. Despite his reverence, Nabokov the wordsmith couldn’t resist line editing Kafka’s story — or the English version of it, anyway.

10. Stage productions of “The Metamorphosis“ have gotten pretty creative

How do you portray a man who turns into a giant insect on stage? Plays, operas, and even ballet productions have done it using everything from distorted sets to animation to buckets and buckets of brown slime. A Japanese theater company did away with the bug motif altogether and made Gregor a robot.

11. “The Metamorphosis“ was on David Cronenberg’s mind when he filmed “The Fly“

When writing his script for the 1986 sci-fi/horror classic, Cronenberg couldn’t help but see the parallels between his story, in which a brilliant scientist accidentally transforms himself into a grotesque human/fly hybrid, and Kafka’s. In an introduction to a recent translation of “The Metamorphosis,” Cronenberg wrote that he thought of Kafka specifically when he wrote this line for the unlucky Seth Brundle (played by Jeff Goldblum): “I’m an insect who dreamt he was a man and loved it. But now the dream is over, and the insect is awake.”

12. Benedict Cumberbatch read “The Metamorphosis“ on BBC Radio

Can you imagine a more ideal voice for such a surreal story? The Sherlockactor read the novella in its entirety to celebrate its 100th anniversary. You can find it here.

For brand-new facts about “The Metamorphosis,“ plus stories about your favorite authors and their works, check out Mental Floss’s new book, The Curious Reader: A Literary Miscellany of Novels and Novelists, out May 25!

Modern-day segregation in hospitals is killing Black patients

“No physician is racist, so how can there be structural racism in health care?” wrote the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in a tweet promoting its podcast in early March 2021. In the podcast, Dr. Ed. Livingston, a white male surgeon and JAMA Deputy Editor, dismissed the concept of structural racism, protesting, “many of us (physicians) are offended by the concept that we are racist.” Backlash to the since-deleted tweet and the podcast was so swift that Livingston subsequently resigned from his post.

Livingston’s sentiments naively suggest that a medical degree inoculates physicians from racism. It clings to the mistaken notion that racism only harms Black patients when actively schemed. This view flies in the face of countless studies, many appearing in JAMA itself, demonstrating widespread barriers to health care for Black patients from basic preventive services to cutting-edge treatments. Worst of all, it obscures how stubborn racist legacies reinvent themselves.

Indeed, even today, modern-day segregation within hospitals kills Black patients, as statistics have shown.

Take surgery for instance, commonly performed on older adults. Earlier analyses reveal that the mortality rate for common surgical procedures can be 35% or more higher among Black patients as opposed to white patients. These disparities are commonly linked to a history of redlining that has left Black communities disproportionately served by poorer hospitals. Even when elite hospitals are in Black communities, their patients tend to be disproportionally white.

But what if those inequalities are removed by examining Black and white patients treated within the same hospital? To investigate this, we analyzed national Medicare claims from older beneficiaries who underwent heart bypass surgery, a complex and technical procedure. Our worrying results, published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, identified two issues.

First, we found physician teams treating Black patients did not often overlap with those of white patients undergoing heart bypass surgery — even within the same hospital. Hospital segregation was vastly higher than observed in care settings such as nursing homes or neonatal care units. Indeed, care by cardiac surgery teams may be more racially segregated than a high school lunchroom. In some hospitals, some providers cared exclusively for Black patients, while others treated none.

Second, after controlling for other health variables, we found Black patients had significantly higher mortality rates when treated at hospitals with higher levels of segregation. And, encouragingly, when segregation was lower and provider teams treated both Black and white patients, the mortality difference went away.

It is hard to know why such segregation continues. Hospital segregation may seem a specter from a long-past Jim Crow era. When Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibited the Federal government from making Medicare payments to facilities practicing racial discrimination, de jure segregation ended nearly overnight. But de facto segregation has proven harder to banish.

Of course, Black patients may prefer racially familiar doctors; yet sadly, there are too few Black surgeons to explain the mortality difference. Further, racially concordant interactions generally lead to enhanced satisfaction and better clinical outcomes. Taken together, the contemptuous view that underqualified Black doctors are the problem is unlikely.

The assignment of patients to provider teams is an opaque and complex process, largely insulated from public scrutiny and political control. It is possible that providers make profit-minded decisions, choosing patients through payment criteria like insurers, which might skew racial differences. Racial divisions in referrals among providers may also exist through informal relationships.

Even with the best of intentions, a provider team that becomes “the one for Blacks” may begin to view Black patients with a jaundiced eye, expecting poorer clinical outcomes or missing fresh insights from working across teams. One important aspect of this problem is evidence showing that physicians treat patients of different races differently; for example, falsely believing Black patients can withstand more pain than white patients and thus undertreating their pain. Most troubling, Black patients may simply be assigned to weaker provider teams.

In short, hospitals are not immune to the segregation and structural racism that infects so much of American life, from education to housing to employment. But the good news is that our research also shows the immense benefits of meeting the challenge head on.

Hospitals could start to measure how they distribute patients across provider teams and actively institute measures to desegregate patient care where needed. They could also develop activities around implicit bias and cultural humility, while advancing strategies to achieve greater workforce diversity.

Turning a blind eye because doctors do not consider themselves racist lessens our dedication to rooting out institutional harms. Surgeons do not have to set out to hurt people in order for the color of a patient’s skin to determine their fate. Our findings make clear that hardly seen structural racism in health care can be a matter of life and death.

Ekow N. Yankah is a professor of law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo Law School of Yeshiva University. Dr. Brahmajee K. Nallamothu is Professor in the Division of Cardiovascular Diseases and the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan. Dr. John M. Hollingsworth is a Professor of Urology at the Center for Healthcare Outcomes & Policy at the University of Michigan.