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7 vegetables that you should absolutely grill this summer

Grilling season has officially kicked off, but don’t restrict outdoor cooking to steaks, hotdogs and burgers.

“I think there’s a lot of ways to get creative with vegetables on the grill in ways that really enhance their flavor,” Elliot Prag, the lead instructor of the health-supportive culinary arts program at the Institute of Culinary Education, says.

Thankfully, Prag is here to share his list of seven must-grill vegetables this season with Salon Food readers. 

RELATED: You’re grilling it wrong: Top chefs share the worst mistakes they see at every cookout

Bell Peppers

“Red, green, yellow — it doesn’t matter,” Prag says. The most important thing is simply to cut your peppers so they have enough surface area to actually get some good grill marks. Try cutting them down the center, removing the seeds, then cutting the halves down the middle again. 

“Peppers are certainly one of the most satisfying vegetables on the grill,” Prag says. “They stay juicy. They can still have a little crunch to them, and I feel like it brings out their sweetness when you do that.” 

Zucchini and Yellow Squash 

Prag confesses that he finds zucchini and yellow squash to be some of the “most boring vegetables in the world to eat” — that is, until he tosses either on the grill. Like peppers, once they get some grill marks, these veggies take on a really appealing smoky flavor. 

The key to making them really shine? Also like peppers, it’s slicing them correctly. Prag recommends cutting them on the diagonal (instead of in rounds), so there’s more opportunity for grill marks. “You don’t want to slice them to paper-thin because they’ll just shrivel up on the grill,” he says. “But try about a half-inch thick.” 

Use this opportunity to make a cross-hatch pattern — called quadrillage — of grill marks on the squash by flipping halfway through cooking. This technique infuses the vegetable with more flavor (and, if we’re being honest, makes it look so much cooler!). 

Potatoes and Eggplant 

While most people default to indoor preparations for potatoes and eggplant, Prag encourages home cooks to finish them outside on the grill for some added depth of flavor. 

“It’s funny how many things that go onto the grill don’t taste good just thrown on the grill,” Prag says. “For potatoes, boil them until they are virtually done — they’re tender — and then cut them in half and put the flat side on the grill.” 

The same goes for eggplant. Prag recommends roasting sliced eggplant until it’s tender and some of the moisture releases before finishing it on the grill to get some of those deep, dark grill marks. 

Corn 

While corn won’t necessarily get uniform grill marks, Prag likes cooking it on the grill to infuse it with some smokiness. 

“What you can do is peel back the husk, rub the corn with some olive oil and a squeeze of lime, and then close the husk back up and put it on the grill,” Prag says. “While I actually like raw corn, having the husk on will ensure that it gets the corn completely cooked.” 

Cauliflower 

Cauliflower steaks have seen a surge in popularity on restaurant menus over the last few years, but most recipes call for them to be made in the oven or on the stove. Prag recommends marinating the cauliflower before placing it on the grill where, as it blackens, it takes on a little bit of a caramelized flavor.

For more summer recipes, check out our favorite desserts from Salon Food: 

“So much for bipartisanship”: McConnell ignites backlash after bragging about rigging Supreme Court

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., again boasted that he blocked former President Barack Obama from fulfilling his constitutional obligation to fill the late Antonin Scalia’s seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Kentucky Republican has previously crowed about refusing to hear the nomination of Merrick Garland and holding the seat open for nearly a year, until Donald Trump could nominate a conservative after his 2016 election.

“[It’s] the single most consequential thing I’ve done in my time as majority leader of the Senate,” McConnell told conservative broadcaster Hugh Hewitt on Monday.

The comment drew a strong reaction.

 

Revisiting the case of Julian Assange and the reality of the “rule of law”

A society that prohibits the capacity to speak in truth extinguishes the capacity to live in justice.

This why we are here tonight. Yes, all of us who know and admire Julian decry his prolonged suffering and the suffering of his family. Yes, we demand that the many wrongs and injustices that have been visited upon him be ended. Yes, we honor him for his courage and his integrity. But the battle for Julian’s liberty has always been much more than the persecution of a publisher. It is the most important battle for press freedom of our era. And if we lose this battle, it will be devastating, not only for Julian and his family, but for us.

Tyrannies invert the rule of law. They turn the law into an instrument of injustice. They cloak their crimes in a faux legality.  They use the decorum of the courts and trials, to mask their criminality. Those such as Julian who expose that criminality to the public are dangerous, for without the pretext of legitimacy the tyranny loses credibility and has nothing left in its arsenal but fear, coercion and violence. 

The long campaign against Julian and WikiLeaks is a window into the collapse of the rule of law, the rise of what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls our system of “inverted totalitarianism,” a form of totalitarianism that maintains the fictions of the old capitalist democracy, including its institutions, iconography, patriotic symbols and rhetoric, but internally has surrendered total control to the dictates of global corporations.

I was in the London courtroom when Julian was being tried by Judge Vanessa Baraitser, an updated version of the Queen of Hearts in “Alice in Wonderland” demanding the sentence before pronouncing the verdict. It was judicial farce. There was no legal basis to hold Julian in prison. There was no legal basis to try him, an Australian citizen, under the U.S. Espionage Act. The CIA spied on Julian in the embassy through a Spanish company, UC Global, contracted to provide embassy security. This spying included recording the privileged conversations between Julian and his lawyers as they discussed his defense. This fact alone invalidated the trial. Julian is being held in a high security prison so the state can, as Nils Melzer, the UN special rapporteur on torture, has testified, continue the degrading abuse and torture it hopes will lead to his psychological if not physical disintegration.  

The U.S. government directed, as Craig Murray so eloquently documented, the London prosecutor James Lewis. Lewis presented these directives to Baraitser. Baraitser adopted them as her legal decision. It was judicial pantomime. Lewis and the judge insisted they were not attempting to criminalize journalists and muzzle the press while they busily set up the legal framework to criminalize journalists and muzzle the press. And that is why the court worked so hard to mask the proceedings from the public, limiting access to the courtroom to a handful of observers and making it hard and at times impossible to access the trial online. It was a tawdry show trial, not an example of the best of English jurisprudence but the Lubyanka.  

Now, I know many of us here tonight would like to think of ourselves as radicals, maybe even revolutionaries. But what we are demanding on the political spectrum is in fact conservative: It is the restoration of the rule of law. It is simple and basic. It should not, in a functioning democracy, be incendiary. But living in truth in a despotic system is the supreme act of defiance. This truth terrifies those in power.  

The architects of imperialism, the masters of war, the corporate-controlled legislative, judicial and executive branches of government and their obsequious courtiers in the media, are illegitimate. Say this simple truth and you are banished, as many of us have been, to the margins of the media landscape. Prove this truth, as Julian, Chelsea Manning, Jeremy Hammond and Edward Snowden have by allowing us to peer into the inner workings of power, and you are hunted down and persecuted.

Shortly after WikiLeaks released the Iraq War Logs in October 2010, which documented numerous U.S. war crimes — including video images of the gunning down of two Reuters journalists and 10 other unarmed civilians in the “Collateral Murder” video, the routine torture of Iraqi prisoners, the covering up of thousands of civilian deaths and the killing of nearly 700 civilians that had approached too closely to U.S. checkpoints — the towering civil rights attorneys Len Weinglass and my good friend Michael Ratner, who I would later accompany to meet Julian in the Ecuadoran embassy, met with Julian in a studio apartment in Central London. Julian’s personal bank cards had been blocked. Three encrypted laptops with documents detailing U.S. war crimes had disappeared from his luggage in route to London. Swedish police were fabricating a case against him in a move, Ratner warned, that was about extraditing Julian to the United States.

“WikiLeaks and you personally are facing a battle that is both legal and political,” Weinglass told Assange. “As we learned in the Pentagon Papers case, the U.S. government doesn’t like the truth coming out. And it doesn’t like to be humiliated. No matter if it’s Nixon or Bush or Obama, Republican or Democrat in the White House. The U.S. government will try to stop you from publishing its ugly secrets. And if they have to destroy you and the First Amendment and the rights of publishers with you, they are willing to do it. We believe they are going to come after WikiLeaks and you, Julian, as the publisher.”

“Come after me for what?” asked Julian.

“Espionage,” Weinglass continued. “They’re going to charge Bradley Manning [as Chelsea was then known] with treason under the Espionage Act of 1917. We don’t think it applies because Manning is a whistleblower, not a spy. And we don’t think it applies to you either because you are a publisher. But they are going to try to force Manning into implicating you as a collaborator.”

“Come after me for what?”

That is the question.

They came after Julian not for his vices, but his virtues.

They came after Julian because he exposed the more than 15,000 unreported deaths of Iraqi civilians; because he exposed the torture and abuse of some 800 men and boys, aged between 14 and 89, at Guantánamo; because he exposed that Hillary Clinton in 2009 ordered U.S. diplomats to spy on UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and other UN representatives from China, France, Russia and the U.K., spying that included obtaining DNA, iris scans, fingerprints and personal passwords, part of the long pattern of illegal surveillance that included the eavesdropping on UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in the weeks before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003; because he exposed that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the CIA orchestrated the June 2009 military coup in Honduras that overthrew the democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya, replacing it with a murderous and corrupt military regime; because he exposed that George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Gen. David Petraeus prosecuted a war in Iraq that under post-Nuremberg laws is defined as a criminal war of aggression, a war crime, that they authorized hundreds of targeted assassinations, including those of U.S. citizens in Yemen, and that they secretly launched missile, bomb and drone attacks on Yemen, killing scores of civilians; because he exposed that Goldman Sachs paid Hillary Clinton $657,000 to give talks, a sum so large it can only be considered a bribe, and that she privately assured corporate leaders she would do their bidding while promising the public financial regulation and reform; because he exposed the internal campaign to discredit and destroy British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn by members of his own party; because he exposed how the hacking tools used by the CIA and the NSA permits the wholesale government surveillance of our televisions, computers, smartphones and anti-virus software, allowing the government to record and store our conversations, images and private text messages, even from encrypted apps. 

Julian exposed the truth.  He exposed it over and over and over until there was no question of the endemic illegality, corruption and mendacity that defines the global ruling elite.  And for these truths they came after Julian, as they have come after all who dared rip back the veil on power.  “Red Rosa now has vanished too. …” Bertolt Brecht wrote after the German socialist Rosa Luxemburg was murdered. “She told the poor what life is about, And so the rich have rubbed her out.”

We have undergone a corporate coup, where the poor and working men and women are reduced to joblessness and hunger, where war, financial speculation and internal surveillance are the only real business of the state, where even habeas corpus no longer exists, where we, as citizens, are nothing more than commodities to corporate systems of power, ones to be used, fleeced and discarded. To refuse to fight back, to reach out and help the weak, the oppressed and the suffering, to save the planet from ecocide, to decry the domestic and international crimes of the ruling class, to demand justice, to live in truth, is to bear the mark of Cain. Those in power must feel our wrath, and this means constant acts of mass civil disobedience, it means constant acts of social and political disruption, for this organized power from below is the only power that will save us and the only power that will free Julian.  Politics is a game of fear.  It is our moral and civic duty to make those in power very, very afraid.

The criminal ruling class has all of us locked in its death grip.  It cannot be reformed.  It has abolished the rule of law.  It obscures and falsifies the truth. It seeks the consolidation of its obscene wealth and power. And so, to quote the Queen of Hearts, metaphorically of course, I say, “Off with their heads.”

The Biden-Putin summit and the high cost of Democrats’ new cold war

Under the new light of atomic weaponry, Albert Einstein warned against “the outmoded concept of narrow nationalisms.” However, the concept is now flourishing as the Democratic and Republican parties strive to outdo each other in vilifying Russia as a locus of evil. 

No matter what happens at Wednesday’s summit between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin in Geneva, a grim reality is that Democratic Party leaders have already hobbled any potential to move the world away from the worsening dangers of nuclear war. After nearly five years of straining to depict Donald Trump as some kind of Russian agent, most Democrats in Congress are now locked in a modern Cold War mentality that endangers human survival. Rather than come to terms with the imperative for détente between two countries that brandish more than 90 percent of the world’s nuclear warheads, Democratic leadership at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue are actually heightening the bilateral tensions that increase the chances of a thermonuclear holocaust.

President Biden, for example, has excelled at gratuitous and dangerous rhetoric about Russia and Putin.

As this spring began, the president declared on national television that Putin is “a killer” and boasted that he told the Russian leader that he has “no soul” while visiting the Kremlin in 2011. It was a repeat of a boast that Biden could not resist publicly making while he was vice president in 2014 and again while out of office in 2017. He then called Putin a “worthy adversary” on Monday. Such bombast conveys a distinct lack of interest in genuine diplomacy needed to avert nuclear war.

Meanwhile, what about self-described progressives who see themselves as a counterweight to the Democratic Party establishment? For the most part, they’ve remained silent if not actively portrayed Russia as a mortal enemy of the United States. Even renowned antiwar voices in Congress are not immune to party-driven jingoism. Nevermind that the structurally malign forces of corporate America — and the numerous right-wing billionaires heavily invested in ongoing assaults on democracy — appreciated the focus on Russia instead of on their own oligarchic power. And never mind that, throughout the Trump years, the protracted anti-Russia frenzy was often a diversion away from attention to the numerous specific threats to electoral democracy in the United States. Two years ago, when the Voting Rights Alliance drew up a list of “61 Forms of Voter Suppression,” not one of those forms had anything to do with Russia.

Capacities to educate, agitate and organize against the profuse forms of voter suppression were hampered by the likes of MSNBC star Rachel Maddow, whose extreme fixation on Russian evils would have been merely farcical if not so damaging. Year after year, she virtually ignored catastrophic U.S. government policies in Yemen while largely devoting her widely watched program to stoking hostility toward Russia. Maddow became a favorite of many progressives who viewed her show as a fount of wisdom. Progressives — who are supposed to oppose the kind of “narrow nationalisms” that Einstein warned against at the dawn of the nuclear age — mostly steered clear of challenging the anti-Russia orthodoxy that emerged as an ostensible way of resisting the horrific Trump presidency. Routinely, many accepted and internalized the scapegoating of Russia that was standard fare of mainstream media outlets — which did little to shed light on how threats to democracy in the United States are overwhelmingly homegrown and rooted in corporate power.

Now, on the verge of the Biden-Putin summit, U.S. media outlets are overflowing with calls to confront Russia as well as China, pounding on themes sure to delight investors in Pentagon contracting firms. Leading Democrats and Republicans are in step with reporters and pundits beating Cold War drums. How much closer do they want the Doomsday Clock to get to midnight before they call off their zeal to excite narrow nationalisms?

It scarcely seems to matter to anti-Russia zealots, whether “progressive” or not, that the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists began this year with an ominous warning: “By our estimation, the potential for the world to stumble into nuclear war — an ever-present danger over the last 75 years — increased in 2020. An extremely dangerous global failure to address existential threats — what we called ‘the new abnormal’ in 2019 — tightened its grip in the nuclear realm in the past year, increasing the likelihood of catastrophe.”

Far from the maddening crowd of reckless cold warriors, the American Committee for U.S.-Russia Accord released an open letter last week that made basic sense for the future of humanity: “The dangerous and in many ways unprecedented deterioration in relations between the United States and the Russian Federation must come to an end if we are to leave a safer world for future generations. . . . We believe that the time has come to resurrect diplomacy, restore and maintain a dialogue on nuclear risks that’s insulated from our political differences like we did during the Cold War. Without communication, this increases the likelihood of escalation to nuclear use in a moment of crisis.”

It’s a sad irony that such clarity and wisdom can scarcely be found among prominent Democrats in Congress, or among many of the groups that do great progressive work when focused on domestic issues. The recent fear-mongering over Russia has been a factor in refusals to embrace the anti-militarist message of Martin Luther King’s final year.

In the United States, the political context of the Biden-Putin summit should have included widespread progressive support for genuine diplomacy with Russia. Instead, overall, progressives are going along with Democratic Party leaders and corporate liberal media as they fuel the momentum toward a nuclear doomsday. 

Why our “wandering brains” are wired to love art and nature

Have you ever looked at the side of a cliff and seen a face in the rock, like the Old Man on the Mountain famously minted on the New Hampshire quarter? Or perhaps you have seen clouds in the shape of dragons, or the face of Jesus on a piece of burnt toast? If so, you have experienced what psychologists call “pareidolia” — finding meaningful images in visual patterns.

And while the experience of pareidolia is universal, few know that pareidolia is also an indication of creativity and a fundamental feature of aesthetic appreciation. Recent scientific research into the neuroscience of “spontaneous thought” suggests that the source of pareidolia may be one of the reasons we love art and nature so much.

Cognitive fluctuations are unpredictable changes in neural activity in the brain.  Their causes are presently unknown. Neuroscientists have been aware of these fluctuations since the 1930s, but typically averaged them out as “background noise” from other brain activity correlated to conscious thought.

Recently, scientists have come to believe that so-called background noise in the brain may be more crucial to consciousness than previously thought. Recent research found that these fluctuations make up 95% of brain activity; conscious thoughts account for merely 5%. Cognitive fluctuations are like the dark matter or “junk” DNA of the brain, in that they make up the most significant part of what’s happening but remain mysterious.  

Neuroscientists such as Georg Northoff, Robin Carhart-Harris, and Stanislas Dehaene have been focusing their research on these fluctuations in the last fifteen years. They have concluded that neural fluctuations are not secondary, but fundamental for consciousness. Using technologies that measure the frequency and strength of large groups of neural fluctuations in the brain, scientists have discovered that brain waves tend to nest into one another, like syncopation in music. At the lowest frequencies, the drums lay down a beat, and the bass plays a rhythm. In between the notes of that rhythm, the guitar plays a melody. The song of consciousness builds up from spontaneous neural fluctuations. 

There are similar spontaneous fluctuations in the world, our bodies, and our brains. When sensory information from the world interacts with the brain, it creates unique “diffractive” patterns, similar to the colliding waves made by stones dropped into a pool of water. The world pulses with frequencies of sound and light like a drumbeat within which our bodies digest food, beat hearts, and pump lungs.

Our brains do not represent the world, but rather respond to this stimuli with their own spontaneous fluctuations. They play between the waves with melodies that make up our thoughts and feelings. Like a jazz trio, the world, body, and brain have their own spontaneous fluctuations that are the basis of the creative improvisation we call reality. 

These fluctuations are also the source of our experience of pareidolia. When we let our minds wander and daydream, they become increasingly open to these divergent “bottom-up” diffractions and weak associations. Pareidolia occurs when our brains involuntarily experiment with seeing various “top-down” images such as animal shapes or faces in these fluctuations. In this improvisational state of mind, spontaneous thoughts and creative images rise like waves from the ocean of the unconscious and disappear again. This back-and-forth is an improvisational process that increases cognitive fluctuations in the brain and has therapeutic effects similar to other activities that increase cognitive flux.  

But why do we enjoy this state of being so much? Why do we prefer some plants, or some works of art, over others? Some sights and sounds tend to amplify these spontaneous fluctuations and others do not. For instance, scientists have shown that taking a walk outdoors tends to increase mind-wandering due to certain patterns in nature called fractals. The same thing happens when we view these patterns and proportions in art. A fractal is a particular repeating coarse-grained to fine-grain pattern, such as a tree whose forking patterns repeat in its branches, twigs, and leaf veins. 

When we look at the world, our unconscious eye movements or “eye saccades” also have a fractal pattern as they move over images. When we view fractal patterns with our fractal eye movements, our bodies become less stressed, and we mind-wander more as images emerge and disappear from conscious awareness. Even our brainwaves become more fractal and more interconnected when our minds wander. And this experience of reverie tends to feel good.

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For instance, several recent studies have shown that people prefer to look at fractal patterns and artworks more than non-fractal ones and find them more aesthetically beautiful. Fractal images and sounds invite our eyes, bodies, and brains to play, wander, and make new associations at a mainly unconscious and involuntary level. We enjoy it even if when we do not consciously know why. 

As you might guess, fractals also increase pareidolia. Studies show that people tend to see more images in Rorschach ink-blot tests with a particular fractal dimension.

But why is the play between body, brain, and world so widely experienced as pleasurable and beautiful? The physicist, Richard Taylor at the University of Oregon, speculates that humans are “wired” with a “fractal fluency” because we evolved surrounded by the natural fractal patterns of plants, clouds, and rocks. Studies confirm that fractals increase attention, pattern recognition, navigation, reduce stress, and have aesthetic appeal. Taylor argues fractals are also the source of our “biophilia,” or love of nature. 

What I find fascinating about the interrelation between cognitive fluctuations, mind wandering, and fractal patterns in art and nature is that they tend to be good for us in a uniquely playful way. Nature does not dictate a single universal form of right action, healthy living, or beautiful art. Instead, some patterns let us play and experiment more or less. And it seems that our bodies prefer to play.  

But play can also be dangerous. Not all our experiments work, and some go wrong. Mind-wandering can lead to negative rumination, and not everyone prefers the same fractal aesthetics. 

But here is the takeaway: we are not biologically programmed to like or this or that object, but rather inclined to enjoy the process of play, improvisation, trial, and error in all things. In other words, recent research into mind wandering and fractals suggests that the process of creativity and unconscious play involved in making and experiencing art is a crucial source of aesthetic beauty and our love of nature.  

Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert claims $5,500 donation to Holocaust-denying preacher was a mix-up

On Monday, The Daily Beast reported that Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, donated $5,500 to virulently anti-gay and anti-Semitic pastor Steve Anderson — and when caught, claimed the whole thing was an unfortunate mix-up.

According to William Bredderman, “Team Gohmert claims it hired a Christian singer named Steve Amerson from Granada HIlls, Calif., but accidentally reported to the Federal Election Commission that the cash went to the Tempe, Ariz., address of the Faithful Word Baptist Church, led by the infamous Pastor Steve Anderson.”

Anderson, whose church is part of the New Independent Fundamentalist Baptist movement, is known for several abhorrent views, the report noted.

“Faithful Word Church calls for punishing homosexuality with the death penalty in the doctrinal statement published on its webpage,” said the report. “But that demand seems mild compared to the seething rhetoric Anderson has unleashed against the LGBTQ community: in a 2014 video posted to his now-deplatformed YouTube account, he declared “‘if you executed the homos, like God recommends, you wouldn’t have all this AIDS running around.’ In 2016, he applauded the the mass shooting at the gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando, asserting ‘there’s 50 less pedophiles in this world.'”

But Anderson’s views go much further — he is also virulently anti-Semitic and denies the Holocaust happened.

“Anderson . . . has demonstrated a particular animosity toward Jewish people, as evidenced in titles of the sermons listed on his IMDB page, which include ‘The Jews Are Our Enemies,’ ‘The Jews Killed Jesus,’ ‘Unbelieving Jews Are Under God’s Wrath,’ ‘Jews Worship a Female God Named ‘Shekinah,” and ‘Jewish Synagogue = Synagogue of Satan,'” said the report. “He has also, as the Anti-Defamation League noted in a 2015 report, propagated false claims that millions of Jews were not gassed and cremated in Nazi concentration camps during World War II.” He also published a video calling Dr. Martin Luther King, “Marxist Lucifer King,” a “false prophet,” a “sexual pervert,” and a “Communist tool.”

This comes shortly after Gohmert landed in the news for demanding to know if the U.S. Forest Service can change the Earth’s orbit to fight climate change.

Are Republicans setting a trap in the Senate to kill President Biden’s agenda?

Joe Biden’s focus on bipartisanship over public policy outcomes could be leading him into a trap.

“Senate Republicans are mulling support for a massive amount of new spending on infrastructure — in part because they think it’ll help kill President Joe Biden’s liberal agenda,” Politico reported Monday. “Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has yet to tip his hand on whether he supports the bipartisan negotiations on Biden’s plan for roads and bridges that are being led by Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and Rob Portman (R-OH). But a growing number of Senate Republicans are betting that if a deal is reached on that sort of physical infrastructure, Democrats won’t have the votes needed to pass the rest of Biden’s ‘soft infrastructure’ priorities, such as child care and clean energy.”

“Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-SD) surmised Monday that if a bipartisan package comes to fruition, the only remaining ways for Democrats to pay for a second bill on social spending programs are tax increases — too toxic to pursue. Democrats can pass a spending bill with only Democratic votes, but they need all 50 of their members to be on board,” Politico has explained.

Democrats failing to deliver could damper enthusiasm for the party during the 2022 midterm elections.

“What’s at stake is perhaps trillions of dollars in spending sought by Democrats to provide paid family leave, raise taxes on corporations and act on climate change. Those policies are more likely to fall by the wayside because, though there’s bipartisan hope for physical infrastructure, Democrats’ more progressive priorities have no chance of attracting GOP support,” Politico reported. “Progressives for weeks have urged Democrats to move swiftly and ditch Republicans in the hopes of getting the most ambitious package possible. A spokesperson for Senate Budget Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) confirmed he’d oppose a bipartisan package, increasing the number of Republicans needed to sign on. But as of now, it’s not clear that Biden’s party has the votes to proceed along party lines while sidestepping a filibuster through the so-called budget reconciliation process, regardless of what it includes.”

Read the full report.

 

John Oliver says this summer, we’re cooking prisoners to death in temps as high as 150 degrees

On Sunday’s episode of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight,” host John Oliver seemed chipper about our impending summer, but of course that was a bait and switch to address a serious situation that hasn’t been getting enough attention. While those of us who’ve emerged on the other side of COVID relatively unscathed may look forward to watching a movie in a theater, relaxing on a beach or possibly visiting loved ones, the prospects for prisoners during the summer is much more grim and possibly life-threatening.

In the segment below, Oliver presented the growing issue of overheating prisons across the country this summer – creating potentially fatal conditions – and the absurd lack of compassion officials have demonstrated.

“This is a deadly situation and it’s only going to get worse especially as summers are getting hotter and hotter,” he said.

According to Oliver, heat stroke injuries and deaths facing prisons isn’t just a side effect of summer, but a side effect of policies that do not seem to care at all. Depending on a prisoner’s age or physical and mental preexisting conditions, excessive heat could cause additional injury.

While these conditions clearly call for concern, Oliver cites Texas as one of the states where callous apathy, and not ignorance is at fault.  From lawsuits to lies, officials have actively fought initiatives to install air conditioning units for prisoners— instead installing them for prison staff and even prison animal farms. 

Yet Oliver’s frustration really boils down to one neither groundbreaking or complicated idea: that it is ridiculous how providing livable situations for the incarcerated can still be up for debate. 

“We’re not trying to make it lush, we’re trying to make it humane,” said a correction officer Oliver featured. “We’re supposed to run prisons, not concentration camps.”

It’s just that simple. Watch the full segment below:

The broken dream of “In the Heights”: Fans praising the film must also acknowledge its shortcomings

The film adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical “In the Heights” released in theaters and on HBO Max last week to overwhelmingly positive reviews, and with many celebrating its focus on telling the stories of a cast full of Latinx characters. A fun and quintessential American story, “In the Heights” centers around a humble group of people chasing their unique dreams for a better life in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City.

But two things can be true at the same time — namely, that the Jon M. Chu-directed movie is a powerful leap for representation and a joyous cultural victory, while also perpetuating colorism, which Chu and cast member Melissa Barrera have disappointingly defended. 

Colorism is a frequent and frustrating dimension of many movies that are simultaneously celebrated as representational victories, invoking complicated emotions for many audience members. The backlash and criticism “In the Heights” is facing now should actually be familiar to Chu, from his work on “Crazy Rich Asians.” Despite taking place primarily in Singapore, a Southeast Asian country where many people have darker skin tones, “Crazy Rich Asians” cast nearly all fair-skinned, East Asian actors.

Washington Heights is widely known a melting pot of Latinx cultures, and with residents from all over the diaspora, including plenty of Afro-Latinx residents, and with many residents from the Dominican Republic, in particular. The film doesn’t capture this reality, with only two Black actors (Leslie Grace, who is Afro-Latina, and Corey Hawkins) in leading roles (with Dascha Polanco who plays a supporting role identifying as Afro-Dominican), and boasting a cast that Refinery29 has pointed out is quite “white-passing.”

In an interview with The Root, Chu acknowledged the criticism of “In the Heights” for perpetuating colorism, but also defended the casting decisions, saying the actors they chose were ultimately “best for the role.” In a different interview, Barrera, who plays Vanessa in the movie, even notes that “there were a lot of Afro-Latinos” at the auditions, although this doesn’t exactly help the movie’s case against accusations of colorism, when these actors ultimately weren’t chosen. If anything, it makes the criticisms even more valid — there was plenty of talent to choose from, only for lighter-skinned actors to be deemed, in Chu’s words, as “best for the role.”

“I think they were looking for just the right people for the roles,” Barrera said, echoing Chu. “For the person that embodied each character in the fullest extent.”

Later on Monday, Miranda weighed in on Twitter and offered a more heartfelt apology. His statement, in part, reads: 

I started writing In The Heights because I didn’t feel seen. And over the past 20 years all I wanted was for us – ALL of us – to feel seen. I’m seeing the discussion around Afro-Latino representation in our film this weekend and it is clear that many in our dark-skinned Afro-Latino community don’t feel sufficiently represented within . . . 

In trying to paint a mosaic of this community, we fell short. I’m truly sorry. I’m learning from the feedback, I thank you for raising it, and I’m listening . . . I promise to do better in my future projects, and I’m dedicated to the learning and evolving we all have to do to make sure we are honoring our diverse and vibrant community.

“In the Heights” follows a long line of movies that offer powerful representational victories, while also leaving more to be desired, and plenty of room for improvement. Grace, one of the movie’s two main Black actors, expressed a desire to see this improvement: “I do hope to see my brothers and sisters that are darker than me lead these movies,” she said.

Communities of color who ask for more of the entertainment that’s created for them shouldn’t be dismissed or told to settle. The entertainment industry can always do better — especially when it’s had so much time, spent primarily creating for white audiences for years, to get it right. Of course movies about people of color face greater scrutiny, when there are unfortunately so few that the ones that do exist are asked to encompass so much. That, of course, isn’t to say there’s any excuse for the exclusion of Afro-Latinx or more darker-skinned characters in “In the Heights,” especially when many call Washington Heights home in real life. In addition to “In the Heights,” there should be many more movies centering Afro-Latinx and darker-skinned people, in general.

After all, the problem of colorism is all-too-familiar in nearly all communities of color, and forces darker-skinned people of color from all races to grapple not just with external racism, but also colorism from within their own communities. The last thing we need is stories that are meant to be a joyful, progressive victory for us, marred by reminding us of this everyday, unacceptable intolerance. 

“In the Heights” is ultimately an important reminder that movies and our reactions to them can be multidimensional, that we can celebrate the wins and productively discuss what can and must be improved to ensure more people feel seen, and more people’s stories are told. Once again, Chu’s own “Crazy Rich Asians” sparked important dialogue about the need for stories about Asian characters who aren’t “crazy rich,” and representation of Asian communities that defy white stereotypes and expectations about them, including that they’re all wealthy and traditionally successful. 

There are high standards for movies like “In the Heights,” or any storytelling that finally centers people of color, because, frankly, audiences of color have been waiting long enough. Of course our expectations are high, and of course we expect and demand for none of us to be left behind! When movies continue to play into colorism, no matter how diverse their cast is, they’re still, on some level, enabling white supremacy, and still trying to keep white audiences comfortable. The progress made by “In the Heights” is progress we’ve got to continue to build upon. 

“In the Heights” is in theaters and streaming on HBO Max.

Poll shows 83% of Americans believe so-called “war on drugs” an abject failure

New polling released Wednesday reveals that an overwhelming majority of Americans think the so-called “war on drugs” is a total failure, underscoring broad support for a new approach that puts public health over criminalization and a militarized response to the illegal narcotics trade that has lasted for decades.

The findings released by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) showed that 83% of Americans say the “war on drugs” has failed. That assessment is felt similarly across party lines; 83% of Democrats expressed that view, as did 85% of Independents and 82% of Republicans. Nearly two-thirds of respondents (65%) said it’s time to end the war on drugs.

The poll also found that 66% of voters support getting rid of “criminal penalties for drug possession and reinvesting drug enforcement resources into treatment and addiction services.”

Similar percentages were seen in support for eliminating mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes (64%) and for commuting or reducing the sentences of people incarcerated for drugs (61%).

A further finding was that 63% think drug use should be addressed as a public health issue compared to just 33% say it should be addressed as a criminal justice issue.

The polling came just ahead of the 50th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s “war on drugs” declaration. On June 17, 1971, Nixon called drug abuse “public enemy number one” and said it must be met with an “all-out offensive.” Opponents of the approach say it’s spurred decades of widespread harms to people and communities both in the U.S. and worldwide.

As a senator, Joe Biden promoted the war on drugs but in his 2020 presidential campaign sounded a different note, calling instead for a public health approach to substance abuse. In January, just ahead of his inauguration, a coalition of more than 200 drug policy, healthcare, and other community-based organizations called on Biden to end the war on drugs, telling the then-incoming administration that “the time for urgent, bold change is now.”

Udi Ofer, director of the ACLU’s Justice Division, urged the president to make good on his campaign pledge in a statement pointing to the drug war’s fueling of the incarceration crisis.

“On this 50th anniversary of the drug war, President Biden must make good on his campaign promises and take steps to begin dismantling the system of over-policing and mass incarceration that is endemic to the war on drugs,” Ofer said. “Today, drug possession continues to be the number one arrest in the United States, with more than 1.35 million arrests per year. Every 25 seconds, a person is arrested for possessing drugs for personal use, with Black people disproportionately targeted by this over-policing.”

“It’s time to adopt a new approach that treats substance use as a public health issue rather than a criminal justice one,” Ofer continued.

Biden, he said, can “make headway in ending this harmful and racist war by commuting the sentences of people incarcerated in federal prison for drugs.”

According to DPA executive director Kassandra Frederique, the new poll shows “a different reality—one where we treat people who use drugs with dignity and respect, and one where drugs are no longer an excuse for law enforcement to surveil, harass, assault, and even kill Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people—is 100% possible.”

With the “devastation” of the drug war plain to see, Frederique said “it should come as no surprise that Americans are ready for a drastically different approach.”

“We deserve to live in a world where the health and safety of our communities is paramount,” she said, “and that means eliminating all the ways in which we are criminalized and building an alternative response to get the support and help we need.”

Even the best cop shows fall into “copaganda” – helping the real-life police more than survivors

Over the past year, once widely popular cop shows have fallen under increased scrutiny for their rosy portrayals of policing, at a time of far-too-frequent police killings of Black people in real life. This type of storytelling – dubbed “copaganda” because it amounts to millions of dollars in free PR for the police – has been linked to the negative and inaccurate perception of protesters, among others. Now, sexual assault survivors and their advocates are increasingly calling out the inaccuracies of how police officers treat survivors onscreen, and the dangers of telling victims and the general population that police will protect us.

Just last week, months after the tragic death of Sarah Everard in London, Wayne Couzens pleaded guilty to charges that he raped and kidnapped Everard, while he was still a police officer. Everard’s death in March sparked widespread protest and conversation about the everyday dangers women face just by stepping out onto the streets — including from the police officers that many were taught to believe would protect us. Couzens’ recent admission to assaulting Everard raises a question of how so many people have internalized the falsehood that reporting a sexual assault to police automatically results in justice and safety. The answer to this is complicated and multi-pronged, but this widespread misconception certainly relies heavily on copaganda.

Salon looks to a few of the police shows – from “Mare of Easttown” to “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” – that have dealt with the subject of assault. While the shows or episodes themselves could be praised for important and nuanced storytelling, they nevertheless are still projecting a false narrative that the public has internalized.

Telling survivors’ stories — but with counterproductive results

While episodes portraying cops and detectives believing and helping sexual assault victims have been the bread and butter of shows like “Law & Order” and “CSI,” other beloved cop shows have rarely waded into this territory. In 2018, amid the global rise of the #MeToo movement, NBC’s “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” showed detectives Amy Santiago (Melissa Fumero) and Jake Peralta (Andy Samberg) help a female investment banker prove she had only injured her male coworker from self-defense after he had assaulted her. Following a fierce debate with one of their fellow, female detectives, Rosa Diaz (Stephanie Beatriz), about whether pursuing the case would ultimately help or harm the survivor, Santiago reveals the case is personal to her, due to a similar experience she’d endured earlier in her career. 

The episode accurately represents the prevalence of workplace sexual misconduct and assault, and through Diaz’s commentary, even alludes to the truth of how law enforcement systems fundamentally aren’t built to support survivors. But its rosy portrayal of Santiago and Peralta’s support for the victim is, unfortunately, still copaganda — it tells audiences abusive cops are bad apples, and there remain good apples like the detectives of “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” who will help victims. But the issue of abuse of power, violence against women, and law enforcement systems dismissing or harming victims, isn’t about individuals — it’s about violent, patriarchal power structures that too many films and shows, including “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” fail to represent.

Sarah Everard’s story is just one of far too many that expose how the truth of what victims face from law enforcement is quite different from what we see onscreen. In reality, not only are police stations often intimidating, victim-blaming environments — to the extent that many victims who don’t report to police cite fear of intimidation from them — but in many cases, cops are the perpetrators of sexual and domestic violence, themselves. Two studies from the 1990s found at least 40% of police officers are domestic abusers, while other research has found 60% of prison rapes are committed by guards and staff. Furthermore, 90% of incarcerated women, who are more likely to be queer and women of color, are survivors. Sexual assault is also among the least likely crimes to lead to a conviction: One in four women in the US is believed to be a victim of sexual violence, and hundreds of thousands of rape kits across the country are backlogged. Yet, just five out of 1,000 rapists will ever be imprisoned. 

Our cultural imagination has long portrayed all incarcerated people as rapists, when they’re statistically more likely to be victims of sexual violence themselves. Copaganda, and the media-constructed fantasy of a safe, reliable and just law enforcement system that sides with survivors, has played a significant role in constructing this false and frankly dangerous narrative.

“Unbelievable,” a Netflix true crime miniseries, seems to challenge the notion of police stations as safe spaces for survivors. The show explores the real-life story of a teenager who reports her rape and recants her story after being picked apart by police, and is even charged with lying about having been raped. Through the tireless work of two female detectives, the teenage victim is eventually vindicated. The work of these female members of law enforcement is invaluable to clearing the young woman’s name. But sexual violence and injustice in law enforcement systems present a structural issue, rather than a simple matter of “good vs. bad individuals.”

HBO’s instant classic “Mare of Easttown,” while entirely fictional, tells a similar story: a female detective struggling through personal and professional hardship dedicates her life to solving a teenage mother’s murder case. Audiences who watch “Mare” or “Unbelievable” might find themselves thinking, “Maybe what we need is more female police officers as dedicated to supporting victims as these women onscreen.” But what we need is a changed system that invests more in preventing sexual violence and supporting survivors, rather than imprisoning them, as it currently does.

At the end of the day, both “Unbelievable” and “Mare” arguably share the same counterproductive impact as the aforementioned “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” episode on our culture, nodding to the bad apples and flaws in how police and the system treat survivors, but asserting that the right individuals could make it redeemable.

Does life imitate art, or art imitate life?

In the wake of Everard’s death this year, The Times reported that plain-clothes police officers would patrol London bars and clubs to “protect” women from violence. The report was widely met with a question that’s remained unanswered: Who will protect these women from the police?

In the 1970s, American women from all walks of life began organizing en masse to raise awareness about the prevalence of sexual violence, and the traumatizing conditions they faced upon reporting this violence. But because white women were regarded as the most visible, palatable faces of the original anti-rape movement, and they had the privilege of being able to place greater trust in policing, progress for survivor justice was immediately bound to law enforcement and the greater criminal justice system. While kidnappings and killings of young, middle-class or affluent white women often receive extensive media coverage and, often, their own “Dateline” episodes, thousands of Indigenous women and girls remain missing across the country, with little attention paid to the issue. Since the Violence Against Women Act was signed into law in the 1990s, it’s allocated much of its funding to police departments, even more so than resources for victims, Meiners and Levine report.

When policies and government funding dangerously task police with the role of protecting women from sexual violence, TV and movies similarly assign police this role, and solidify it in the cultural imagination. Today, the most popular defense of the institution of policing has been the retort, “What about rapists?” But perhaps if those who invoke this line actually cared about victims at all, they’d turn off “Law & Order” and look at the damning, real-life numbers.

Chaos at Arizona audit: OAN host snapped at local reporter in profane confrontation. What happened?

One America News host Christina Bobb snapped at an Arizona Republic reporter last week while both were covering the GOP-backed Maricopa County 2020 election audit in Phoenix, Arizona. The conservative network host and Trump team ally swore at Jen Fifield during a confrontation in Veterans Memorial Coliseum after Fifield asked her a question, prompting an outpouring of online support for the newspaper journalist. 

Fifield told Salon that the dust-up stemmed from a press gaggle earlier in the day with pro-Trump activist Vernon Jones, for which Bobb was also present. At the Q&A session, Fifield asked Jones if he would support a Democrat-led and fundraised audit, and Jones dismissed a question from Fifield regarding Republicans fundraising for the audit as fake news. Bobb — a fundraising force for the ongoing, baseless Trump ballot hunt — remained silent during the exchange. 

Following the Jones gaggle, Fifield approached Bobb and asked, “Why didn’t you say anything?” regarding the OAN host’s own participation in GOP fundraising efforts.

“Go talk to your peers who do this to me every f**king day. I don’t care,” Bobb fired back.

That clash caught the ire of other journalists on Twitter, who defended Fifield and criticized Bobb’s breach of professional behavior. 

Neither Bobb nor OAN returned Salon’s requests for comment. 

In addition to her work with OAN, Bobb, a former Trump administration official, also leads a group called Voices and Votes, as Salon’s Jon Skolnik writes, which raises money to support the audit:

Back in April, Bobb tweeted that Voices for Votes had set out to pump $150,000 into the recount effort in Arizona. Bobb told Buzzfeed that the dark money group is in no way connected to the news network, though the network and Bobb herself have repeatedly bandied false claims of election fraud. 

Bobb has not only raised funds to support the Arizona audit, the OAN “Weekly Briefing” host has also reportedly passed information to the Republican Arizona Senate president to help advance GOP interests. 

“Audit-related documents requested and published by The Center for Public Integrity and We Are Oversight showed that Christina Bobb … was supplying Arizona Senate President Karen Fann with witness declarations, statements, and expert testimony in early December to help bolster the Republican-led effort to undermine the election results in Maricopa County, where President Joe Biden beat former President Donald Trump by 45,000 votes,” Business Insider reported earlier this month. 

Bobb has not hidden her fundraising activity. In early April, she wrote on Twitter: “This audit is crucial to know the truth about 2020. $5, $10, $20 will help the AZ senate finally complete the audit. Donate today! And thank you for fighting with us!” 

When asked if Fifield thinks there’s now bad blood between her and Bobb, the newspaper reporter believes it’s possibly nothing more than a “misunderstanding.”

“I think she misunderstood me as asking her to stand up for me. I think that’s what happened,” the Arizona Republic reporter told Salon. “I wish that exchange didn’t go the way that it did.”

Arizona Republic staffers took to Twitter in a show of support for their fellow journalist in the field.

Rebekah Sanders, a fellow Arizona Republic reporter and chair of the Arizona Republic Guild, told Salon that she stands by Fifield.

“Jen Fifield is one of the nicest, most polite, and most ethical journalists you will ever meet. She also is no pushover. She asks reasonable questions until she finds the truth. Anyone who can’t handle that must have something to hide,” Sanders told Salon. “No journalist deserves to be abused, cussed out, or threatened for doing their job. Our democracy is in debt to every local reporter providing accurate information about efforts to influence free and fair elections. It’s disturbing and foreboding for our country’s freedom that attacks on legitimate journalists are escalating and even celebrated among a small group of people.”

The Arizona Republic Guild also told Salon that the harassment Fifield faced is “unacceptable.”

“Jen is a dogged and well-respected journalist who has done an incredible job keeping the public informed about issues at the heart of our democracy,” the Arizona Republic Guild stated. “She should not be attacked for doing her job. Nor should she apologize. We stand with Jen and all our reporters who seek to report the truth equitably and honestly.” 

In knockout thriller “Catch the Fair One,” a boxer infiltrates a ring of human traffickers

“Catch the Fair One,” written and directed by Josef Kubota Wladyka, is a gripping thriller, and — to use its boxing metaphor — leaves viewers with the experience of having received some real body blows. The film, which received its World Premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, has Kaylee (Kali Reis), a boxer, infiltrating a ring of human traffickers to rescue her missing sister, Weeta (Mainaku Borrer). 

Kaylee, who sports cheek piercings and sleeps with a razor in her mouth, is down on her luck. She wraps up uneaten food in the diner where she works and hasn’t fought a match for two years. When she makes the difficult decision to find her sister, Kaylee risks everything. She agrees to meet with Danny (Michael Drayer) who passes her on to his client Bobby (Daniel Henshall). Before long, tables are turned, and bodies start piling up.  

Wladyka exerts total control over his stylish film, maximizing the tension as Kaylee metes out justice. In her screen debut, Reis, who developed the story with Wladyka, is both relentless and magnetic. The filmmaker spoke with Salon about his intense new drama.

How did you dive into these worlds — boxing, human trafficking? What can you say about the details you include in the film to bring (the fictional) Kaylee’s story to life?

It started four years ago, I was getting really into boxing myself and I’ve grown to love and appreciate the sport so much. Through my friend’s social media page, I found K.O. [the nickname for Kali] and was immediately drawn to her. Not only is she a world-class boxer — her skill set is incredible — but also because she’s an artist and activist who uses her platform and speaks on issues that she really cares about. As a filmmaker, I’m trying to do that as well. I reached out to her and asked if we could meet up and hang out. She was training for a championship fight and was going the gym three times a day. I asked if I could tag along and take pictures of her and she said OK. We went to a typical boxing gym — tough, hot, gritty, and full of sweaty dudes hitting the bags. And then there is K.O., doing her routine and blending in. Then it comes time to start sparring and one of the guys starts talking junk. She takes her cheek piercings out, puts her head gear on, jumps into the ring and starts going toe-to-toe with these guys. I was drawn to her grace and her power. I thought, we need to put this in a movie. Kali had been outspoken about the missing and Indigenous crisis in North America. I was reading about that, so we started talking about that, and collaborating as artists on a film that touches on these subjects. We both have very close relationships to our siblings and were raised by our older siblings, so we started with the initial idea of a woman searching for her sister. I invited her into the creative process to create the story and the characters together.

I appreciate that her character is Indigenous and Cape Verdian. Your film is not necessarily about race, but that topic does influence the story. Can you talk about that? 

We wanted to keep the film really simple. Kali has been travelling around the reservations, meeting people who lost loved ones and go out searching for them. She spoke at a 2018 powwow, so she is very integrated into that. But there is no way to make a film that answers or explains everything about this topic, so we wanted to take themes of pain, loss, and regret and put them on the characters’ shoulders in every frame and in her behavior and mannerisms. But not make it too heavy-handed. This stuff is going on, but we wanted it to be subtle, not on the nose. K.O. said this issue hearkens back to first contact and colonization and is deep-rooted in our history. We wanted the themes and ideas to be left to the imagination of the audience.

What can you say about creating the look of the film, which is palpable, seedy, and claustrophobic?

It was important for us to have a strong visual, cinematic language to pull the audience through a tough ride with tension and suspense and leave them in a place of thinking. We wanted to get into the psychology of the character. We shot with a wide lens, but closer on Kaylee to get in her space and in her mind and feel the environment of the worlds that she is entering. We wanted to have more of a “designed” film and use the genre elements to elevate the story as well as the feelings and emotion.

The scene in the motel between Kali and Danny is pretty incredible, as is later a sequence between Kali and Bobby. Can you talk about the gender and power dynamics at play here?

K.O. worked with at-risk girls for many years, and dealt with girls who have been trafficked, so a lot of that was insight from what she was telling me and researching and learning about how that whole world works. Talking with Michael Drayer, who plays Danny, his justification is that they are just cattle; he is not looking at them like they are humans. For Kaylee, one thing that was powerful about her presence is that she can be very strong, but she can also be very vulnerable. When people get trafficked; they are propelled into a world they are not expecting. We wanted to make a film that was unpredictable but inevitable, and make the audience really feel like they are not sure what’s going to happen. You are rooting for this character, and we give her a grounded [narrative] spine — she is looking for her sister, who has been gone for a while — but we are taking you on a ride and not explaining a lot. This stuff is ominous and ambiguous; we suggest not show.

The storyline even shifts at one point to make Bobby’s character the focus. There is a banality of evil with him. How did you develop his character in particular and human/sex traffickers in general?   

Daniel Henshall is a really great friend of mine. We were friends before we shot that. He’s in “Snowtown Murders,” and his performance in that film was mind-blowing. I knew he was a very special actor. Once I invited him to do the film — and he was the first known actor, not a non-actor — and the dynamics of the film really changed once he agreed. I collaborated with all the actors. We built this guy from ground up. We made him just a guy, a dad. Let’s not throw in any clichés. He is a banal guy who happens to be linked to something sinister. That’s real in a lot of ways. The people who do this are not what you would think. Also, I wanted viewers to get a quick glimpse into his world to see he has a family. 

As you mentioned, Kali developed the story. How did you work with her on the character and guide her in her screen debut? 

It was a two-year collaboration. We explored scenes, improvised scenes, and played off circumstances to build the character. Obviously, there was a lot of personal, real stuff we wanted to infuse in a scene to [enhance] her performance, but also, it is a fictious character, and she doesn’t talk a lot. We talked about conveying her emotion without words. It goes back to the guilt and regret she wears on her, there was a power to just putting the camera on her and just seeing her.

The film is brutally violent in places not just the grueling waterboarding scene, but the boxing scenes. What decisions did you make about depicting the violence? 

There’s a cycle of violence to how people behave in certain situations. For me, what’s most dramatic and interesting is when the characters are teetering on edge of doing something that is hard to look at — that’s great drama, because you’re conflicted. We wanted to make the audience feel that a lot of the time. How much danger is she willing to put herself in, even when she spars a heavyweight guy? We wanted to keep it matter of fact and as grounded as possible and in the reality of the circumstances. 

The film posits a moral conundrum — how far will one go to learn the truth; does killing someone justify the means; and are you willing to risk your life without closure? What are your thoughts on this? How would you behave? 

Man, you named five things that were themes of the film! I think the ending of the film sums all of this up; we wanted to take this strong, powerful warrior who can literally use her fists and put her on this crazy journey and the things she’s fighting against are greater than one person. It’s unpredictable and inevitable. It’s a genre film, but we tip it on its head, which hopefully makes it a unique film.

Empty skies over MyPillow Guy: Mike Lindell’s “Frank Speech” rally glorifies glitchy Jumbotron Trump

Trump ally and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s pro-MAGA “Frank Speech” rally in New Richmond, Wisconsin, got off to a rocky start last weekend, but ended on its highest possible note with a glitchy yet well-received keynote appearance via video feed from former President Donald Trump.

Lindell’s rally faced an array of challenges, starting with its modest audience. The crowd eventually grew to a few thousand, but ultimately fell short of the bedding mogul’s prediction of 30,000-plus Trump supporters from all over the country convening in Wisconsin. (Liberals may have raised Lindell’s expectations by reserving an exorbitant number of tickets online with no plans to attend.)

Political rallies tend to attract attention-seeking performers even off-stage, and Frank Speech events are no exception. One such interloper who stole the pre-show was none other than a mini-Mike Lindell — what appeared to be a child dressed up as the real-life TrumpWorld character. The two Mikes eventually met, to the crowd’s delight.

From the massive stage, Lindell kicked things off with the Pledge of Allegiance, followed by the announcement of a surprise flyover. The jets Lindell expected, however, did not materialize on cue. Their absence grew more awkward as the wait dragged on.

And yet Lindell held out hope. “A surprise in the sky here in about a minute — 30 seconds,” he said, checking his watch. “You can’t time it … Can they see them? Are they here?” Lindell asked the people on stage with him. Confusion set in; phone calls were made. The planes eventually appeared hours later, well into the event’s programming. (Lindell didn’t return a request for comment on how he thought the rally went.)

From the stage, Lindell also expressed frustration with Fox News, as the conservative network did not attend or broadcast his rally, even though Trump was scheduled to speak. “Where is Fox News?” Lindell asked. The ardently pro-Trump crowd also chanted “Where is Fox?” at one point during the day’s festivities.

“This is part of our cancel culture, and our free speech being suppressed, when you got Fox who’s supposed to be conservative or whatever,” Lindell fumed. (“Hannity” deals for MyPillow merch, however, still abound on the bedding company’s website.)

Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, Newsmax hosts Diamond and Silk (Lynnette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson), and right wing author Dinesh D’Souza all made on-stage appearances ahead of Trump. Kirk, notably one of the more mainstream conservatives to speak at the rally, took the opportunity to plug his own custom MyPillow promo code, of which he presumably he gets a cut, immediately upon stepping up to the microphone.

After the TrumpWorld undercard appearances came the main event. The former president spoke to the fading group of supporters (remote, via large-screen video feed)  for approximately 15 minutes, slinging baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election and riffs on President Joe Biden’s approach to addressing immigration at the southern border.

“All Biden had to do — all he had to do was leave it alone,” Trump stated at one point. “So we went from the most successful, the safest border in the history of our country — think of that — to the worst and most dangerous border.”

At times, the Trump video feed would freeze. A/V glitches are nothing new for Lindell, whose team has a long history of struggling with technology.

After Trump spoke, most attendees booked it for the exit, leaving Lindell still on stage ranting about his election “documentaries” (which lack any proof of voter fraud) and the “censorship” of conservatives.

The Wisconsin rally marks the second such gathering the pillow maven has organized, following a South Dakota event in mid-May that featured the Proud Boys, Joe Piscopo, and enthusiastic promotion of an investment scheme. It remains unclear what the purpose of these rallies will morph into when August fails to reinstall Trump in the White House, a far-fetched conspiracy theory Lindell has touted as inevitable.

GOP congresswoman pushes QAnon conspiracy theory, suggests Clintons behind journalist’s death

Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., is returning to her QAnon roots to push a conspiracy theory suggesting that the Clintons may be behind the death of a journalist who is believed to have died by suicide.

Boebert suggested on Twitter that the “Clinton Crime Syndicate” may be behind the death of local Alabama news anchor Christopher Sign, who broke the story about former President Bill Clinton’s tarmac meeting with then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch during the 2016 presidential campaign and FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server, which itself has been the target of countless Republican conspiracy theories. Local police have given no indications of foul play in Sign’s death and told NBC News that the death is being investigated as a suicide.

“Why is it that so many who cross the Clinton Crime Syndicate end up dead?” Boebert tweeted along with a clip of Sign promoting his book about the meeting during a 2019 interview on Fox News. Sign said in the interview that he left his job in Phoenix to move back to Alabama because he and his family “received significant death threats shortly after breaking this story.”

It’s not the first time Boebert has pushed conspiracy theories about Clinton. Asked during a town hall in March about whether Hillary Clinton and the former heads of the CIA and FBI would be arrested, the freshman congresswoman echoed QAnon-style conspiracy theories claiming that “with that information that I have, I believe we will see resignations begin to take place and I think we can take back the majority in the House and the Senate before 2022 when all of this is ended.”

Boebert has previously expressed support for the QAnon conspiracy theory but denies being a follower. QAnon conspiracy theories have long targeted Clinton, baselessly alleging that she is part of a globalist child trafficking ring that cuts the faces off babies and wears them on video.

Donald Trump Jr., who has a long history of spreading conspiracy theories himself, also suggested that Sign’s suicide may be some nefarious plot.

“Has anyone ever seen so many suicide coincidences EVER???” he wrote on Instagram while sharing a screenshot of a headline about Sign’s death.

Trump Jr. similarly pushed long-debunked conspiracy theories about the murder of Seth Rich, a former Democratic National Committee staffer who was killed in Washington D.C. in what police suspected to be an attempted robbery. Conservatives pushed conspiracy theories that Rich was killed because he was somehow connected to the release of stolen Democratic emails during the 2016 campaign. The conspiracy theories were also promoted on Fox News, which ultimately retracted its reporting and settled out of court with Rich’s family.

Debunked conservative conspiracy theories about the Clintons’ “body count” date back to Bill Clinton’s days in the White House, when right-wingers claimed that many of those connected to the Clinton’s had died under “suspicious” circumstances even when they hadn’t. Many have focused on the suicide of Vince Foster, Clinton’s former deputy White House counsel who died of a self-inflicted gunshot to the head in 1993. Multiple investigations, including the infamous Ken Starr probe, concluded that the death was a suicide but Republicans like Trump Jr. have continued to refer to in the decades since. Former President Donald Trump and others renewed the conspiracy theory in 2019 after the suicide of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Trump shared tweets alleging that the Clintons, longtime associates of Epstein, were behind his death even though Trump also frequently hung out with the disgraced financier.

“This conspiracy just sort of hung around,” Joe Uscinski, a University of Miami professor and author of the book, “American Conspiracy Theories,” told NBC News. “Mainly because the Clintons have been in power for so long and because she’s the most recent face of the Democratic Party. She’s a good boogeyman for Republicans to use now still.”

Uscinski said the conspiracy theory has become especially popular with “QAnon” followers, who have gone even further than the nutty conservative claims in the 1990s.

“Q also absurdly implied that Hillary Clinton was somehow responsible for the tragic plane crash that killed JFK Jr. in 1999,” Travis View, a podcaster who tracks QAnon, told NBC. “A minority sect of QAnon followers believe that Clinton merely tried and failed to kill JFK Jr, and he is still alive today.”

Clinton recently responded to the decades-old conspiracy theories in a video with “Borat” star Sasha Baron Cohen.”It’s hurtful, I’ll be really honest with you,” she said. “It’s hurtful not just to me and my family, but, you know, to my friends, and other people who know that this is not just false, but you know, sometimes painfully false.”

Giada De Laurentiis’ “kid-approved” personal pizzas combine two Italian favorites

Whether you’re trying to please your family after a long workday or are cooking for an assorted group at a summer gathering, Giada De Laurentiis recommends giving yourself a break in the kitchen.

“Oftentimes, that means making semi homemade dinners for busy weeknights – which we’re 100% on board with,” she writes on her website. “Whether that means store-bought ravioli or tortellini, or creating a nourishing dinner out of a rotisserie chicken, we accept all the shortcuts we can get when we’re strapped for time.” 

Also on that list, is her “Kid-Approved” Meatball Pizza, which is an effortless way to satisfy everyone at the table.  

Taking inspiration from her own household, Giada’s recipe combines two Italian favorites, hearty meatballs and pizza — which also happen to be two of her daughter’s favorites dishes — as both an easy and efficient way to entertain. 

“The inspiration came from Jade’s fondness of pizza and meatballs, and the combination turned out so delicious, we decided to put it on the kids’ menu at my restaurant GIADA in Las Vegas, too,” De Laurentiss wrote. 

The pizza base itself uses simple ingredients that can easily be changed depending on your fridge’s contents for that week. Layer flatbread or naan with marinara sauce, followed by the toppings of your choice. Giada uses sliced meatballs, mozzarella and parmesan cheese, although with the freedom of a blank canvas, these personal pizzas can be customized with different ingredients. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/CQFCCj0s1-3/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

When Salon’s Joseph Neese spoke with James Beard award-winning cookbook author Ken Forkish about his book “Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza,” Forkish said that his favorite toppings were “just tomato sauce and cheese.” But feel free to get inventive: Add a swirl of pesto, shred some leftover barbecue chicken, enter the “does pineapple belong on pizza?” debate. 

For Giada’s pizzas, recommends cooking them on a rimmed baking sheet and drizzling with olive oil to get a nice crust, then flipping on the broiler for the last four minutes of cooking time in order to get the cheese just a little browned. For freshness, top with a little torn, fresh basil. 

Throw it all into the oven, and it’s an easy way to accommodate any preferences or restrictions without the hassle of multiple meals. Full recipe can be found here. 

 For more of our favorite recipes from Giada, check out: 

Salon Food writes about stuff we think you’ll like. Salon has affiliate partnerships, so we may get a share of the revenue from your purchase.




 

McConnell suggests Senate will not consider any Biden Supreme Court nominee if GOP wins in 2022

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., indicated on Monday that he would refuse to consider any Supreme Court nomination made by President Biden if the GOP reclaims control over the Senate next year. 

“I think in the middle of a presidential election, if you have a Senate of the opposite party of the president, you have to go back to the 1880s to find the last time a vacancy was filled. So I think it’s highly unlikely,” McConnell told right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt. “I don’t think either party, if it controlled, if it were different from the president, would confirm a Supreme Court nominee in the middle of an election.”

Last year, McConnell and other Republicans flouted the Thurmond rule, when they openly rushed to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, whose seat would later be taken by Justice Amy Coney Barrett – a Trump-appointed Catholic conservative – along a 52-48 Senate vote. 

The Thurmond rule is an informal dictum in politics that a Supreme Court justice should not be nominated during an election year – the logic being that voters should have the primary say in who should be added to the bench. 

McConnell did not provide any moral or legal defense of his decision to fill Ginsberg’s vacancy. He instead suggested that the move was made purely along strategic lines.

 “What was different in 2020 was we were of the same party as the president,” he insisted. He argued that blocking the Supreme Court confirmation of Merrick Garland, since appointed Attorney General by Joe Biden, was the “the single most consequential thing I’ve done in my time as majority leader of the Senate.”

McConnell took a victory lap for his 2016 power move: “I preserved the Scalia vacancy for the Gorsuch appointment.”

Asked if he’d support the confirmation of “normal mainstream liberal” if a spot on the bench presents itself in 2023, McConnell did little to rule out a GOP path of sabotage. “Well, we’d have to wait and see what happens,” the Kentucky senator slyly responded. 

McConnell’s remarks come as the 2022 Senate races come into greater focus and the Senate currently at an even 50-50 split. At least 20 Republican seats are up for grabs, while Democrats are defending only 14. 

Progressives have meanwhile vocalized strong support for the retirement of liberal Justice Stephen Breyer, the oldest sitting justice on the bench in the next several weeks. Progressives fear that if Breyer, who is 82, happens to pass away after the GOP reclaims the Senate, Republicans will be able to block any liberal appointee from filling his vacancy. McConnell’s comments on Monday seemed to confirm such fears.  

Boeing tested air purifiers like those widely used in schools. It decided not to use them in planes

Aerospace giant Boeing tested two kinds of ionization technologies — like those widely adopted in schools hoping to combat covid — to determine how well each killed germs on surfaces and decided that neither was effective enough to install on its commercial planes.

Boeing noted in its conclusion that “air ionization has not shown significant disinfection effectiveness.”

Companies that make the air purifiers say they emit charged ions, or “activated oxygen,” that are said to inactivate bacteria and viruses in the air. Boeing did not test the technology’s effectiveness in the air, only on surfaces. It also used a “surrogate” for the virus that causes covid-19.

The Boeing study has been cited in a federal lawsuit filed by a Maryland consumer against Global Plasma Solutions, maker of the “needlepoint bipolar ionization” technology that a Boeing spokesperson said its engineers tested.

The proposed class-action lawsuit says GPS makes “deceptive, misleading, and false” claims about its products based on company-funded studies that are “not applicable to real world conditions.”

A GPS spokesperson said the lawsuit is “baseless and misleading” and that the company will aggressively defend against it. He added that Boeing “researchers deemed the study ‘inconclusive.'”

“Plaintiff’s Complaint throws the proverbial kitchen sink at GPS in the hopes that something might stick,” the air purifier company says in court documents filed May 24 as part of its motion to dismiss the proposed class action. “But it is devoid of any concrete, specific allegations plausibly alleging that GPS made even a single false or deceptive statement about its products.”

The plaintiff’s case cites a KHN investigation that found that more than 2,000 U.S. schools had bought air-purifying technology, including ionizers. Many schools used federal funds to purchase the products. In April, a covid-19 commission task force from The Lancet, a leading medical journal, composed of top international health, education and air-quality experts, called various air-cleaning technologies — ionization, plasma and dry hydrogen peroxide — “often unproven.”

Boeing said in its report that with ionization there is “very little external peer reviewed research in comparison to other traditional disinfection technologies” such as chemical, UV and thermal disinfection and HEPA filters, all of which it relies on to sanitize its planes.

The controversy is getting the attention of school officials from coast to coast. They include one California superintendent who cited the lawsuit and switched off that district’s more than 400 GPS devices.

For worried parents and academic air-quality experts who regard industry-backed studies with skepticism, the Boeing report heightens their concerns.

“This [study] is totally damning,” said Delphine Farmer, a Colorado State University associate professor who specializes in atmospheric and indoor chemistry who reviewed the Boeing report. “It should just raise flags for absolutely everyone.”

‘No Reduction’ in Bacteria

GPS pointed to another study, one conducted in the weeks before Boeing began its study in September, by a third-party lab. It completed a study of two devices — powered by GPS technology — that another aviation company now markets to clean the air and surfaces in planes.

That study looked at the effect of the ionizers on the virus that causes covid-19 when used on aluminum, a type of plastic called Kydex and leather. The test report shows it was conducted in a sealed, 20-by-8-foot chamber, with airflow speeds of 2,133 feet per minute — or about 24 mph. At the end of 30 minutes, “the overall average decrease in active virus” was more than 99%.

“Given the specific environment this was tested in, the quality of the materials, and the method in which the virus was dispersed, it is safe to say that the bipolar ionization system used in this experiment has the ability to deactivate SARS-CoV-2 with the given ion counts,” the Aug. 7 report from the third-party lab says.

The following month, Boeing began its own testing of GPS devices and another kind of ionization technology.

The Boeing study cites a GPS white paper that says its device killed 99.68% of E. coli bacteria in one test in 15 minutes. GPS records show the test was done on bacteria suspended in the air. The Boeing engineers used the company’s technology to try to kill E. coli on surfaces in a lab but found “no observable reduction in viability” after an hour.

The Boeing study notes it “was unable to replicate supplier results in terms of antimicrobial effectiveness.”

GPS cautioned that the Boeing tests examined disinfection of surfaces, not the air: “While GPS products do have the ability to help reduce pathogens in air and on surfaces, GPS products are not chemical surface disinfectants.”

Yet surface tests comprise half of the test results the company lists on its “pathogen reduction” webpage, a GPS spokesperson confirmed.

Boeing researchers found another lab result they could not replicate: While the GPS white paper reported a 96.24% reduction in Staphylococcus aureus in 30 minutes, Boeing engineers found “no reductions” in the bacteria in an hourlong test.

Boeing found minimal or no reduction on surfaces in four other pathogens it tested with GPS ionizers for an hour in a Huntsville, Alabama, lab.

Notably, Boeing’s tests in Huntsville detected no hazardous ozone gas from the GPS unit, the report says. The “corona discharge” ionization technology from another vendor that Boeing also studied did emit ozone at levels that “exceeded regulatory standards.”

A University of Arizona lab test described in the Boeing study found that the GPS device showed a 66.7% inactivation of a common cold coronavirus on a surface after an hour of exposure at up to 62,000 negative ions per cubic centimeter. That ion level is far higher than the amount of ions company leaders have said the devices tend to deliver to a typical room. Those levels have ranged from 2,000 to 10,000 and even up to 30,000 ions per cubic centimeter when an HVAC system is running, according to records provided to KHN and statements made by company representatives.

In a presentation during a Berkeley Unified School District meeting in California, a physicist who appeared with executives said a level of more than 60,000 ions per cubic centimeter “has been shown to be not healthy.”

GPS noted that Boeing deemed the 66.7% effectiveness rate in killing the common cold virus “statistically significant.” A GPS spokesperson said the result validates needlepoint bipolar ionization’s “effectiveness against certain pathogens.” In its report, Boeing called the test results “inconclusive” due to “lack of experimental confirmation.”

A GPS spokesperson also highlighted a passage in the Boeing report’s conclusion that said: “There remains significant interest in air ionization due to lack of byproduct production, minimal risk to human health, minimum risk to airplane materials and systems, and the potential for persistent disinfection of air and surfaces under specific flow conditions.”

The Boeing study concluded in January. In April, GPS published the results of additional tests it funded at a third-party lab showing its technology “is highly effective in neutralizing the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen.”

Boeing engineers said their study highlights the need for those in the ionization business to standardize the evaluation of the technology “to allow comparison to other proven methods of disinfection.”

Ripple Effects of the Boeing Study

On May 7, law firms representing a man who spent over $750 on a GPS air cleaner in Texas filed the “fraudulent concealment” lawsuit against GPS in U.S. District Court in Delaware.

The lawsuit claims that the defendant’s “misrepresentations and false statements were woven into an extensive and long-term advertising campaign … accelerating during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“People are being victimized by these companies for profit,” said Mickey Mills, a Houston attorney for the plaintiff. “People are scared because of covid, and they capitalize on it.”

In filing a motion to dismiss the case, GPS told the court the lawsuit was an “attempt to distort the facts and assert baseless claims, doing grave damage to GPS’s business in the process.”

The GPS court document also says the disclaimers on its website “make it unreasonable for any consumers to believe that the efficacy demonstrated in GPS studies will necessarily be the same for their particular application.”

It asserts that most of the GPS statements identified in the plaintiff’s lawsuit — such as “safe to use” and “cleaner air” — amount to “non-actionable puffery” as they are “vague generalities and statements of opinion.”

The lawsuit spurred a Newark, California, school district to turn off its GPS devices, according to a May 18 memo from Superintendent Mark Triplett to district families. The district spent nearly $360,000 on the devices, an April board presentation shows.

The roughly 5,500-student district bought GPS units for every school HVAC system, Triplett said in a March school board meeting in which he noted the technology “arguably is much better than any filter.” By May, he said in the memo the district had become aware of the lawsuit “alleging the misrepresentation” of the devices and would continue to monitor the situation.

A company spokesperson noted GPS appreciates Newark’s concerns and has reached out to share additional data and answer questions, as well as extended “an offer to conduct onsite testing to verify the safety of this technology and the added benefits.”

Megan McMillen, vice president of the Newark Teachers Association and a special education preschool teacher, said it was disheartening to know the cash-strapped district in the Bay Area spent so much on the devices instead of other safety measures or services to mitigate learning loss after the chaotic pandemic year.

“For such a big chunk of that [money] going to something potentially ineffective … is really frustrating,” she said.

Some hospitals kept suing patients over medical debt through the pandemic

Last year as COVID-19 laid siege to the nation, many U.S. hospitals dramatically reduced their aggressive tactics to collect medical debt. Some ceased entirely. 

But not all.

There was a nearly 90% drop overall in legal actions between 2019 and the first seven months of 2020 by the nation’s largest hospitals and health systems, according to a new report by Johns Hopkins University. Still, researchers told ProPublica that they identified at least 16 institutions that pursued lawsuits, wage garnishments and liens against their patients in the first seven months of 2020.

The Johns Hopkins findings, released Monday in partnership with Axios, which first reported the results, are part of an ongoing series of state and national reports that look at debt collections by U.S. hospitals and health systems from 2018 to 2020.

During those years more than a quarter of the nation’s largest hospitals and health systems pursued nearly 39,000 legal actions seeking more than $72 million, according to data Johns Hopkins researchers obtained through state and county court records.

More than 65% of the institutions identified were nonprofit corporations, which means that in return for tax-exempt status they are supposed to serve the public rather than private interest.

The amount of medical debt individuals owe is often a small sliver of a hospital’s overall revenue — as little as 0.03% of annual receipts — but can “cause devastating financial burdens to working families,” the report said. The federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has estimated medical debt makes up 58% of all debt collection actions.

The poor or uninsured often bear the brunt of such actions, said Christi Walsh, clinical director of health care and research policy at Johns Hopkins University. “In times of crisis you start to see the huge disparities,” she said.

Researchers said they could not determine all of the amounts sought by the 16 institutions taking legal action in the first half of 2020, but of those they could, Froedtert Health, a Wisconsin health system, sought the most money from patients — more than $3 million.

Even after Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers declared a public health emergency on March 12, 2020, hospitals within the Froedtert Health system filed more than 100 cases from mid-March through July, researchers reported, and 96 of the actions were liens.

One lien was against Tyler Boll-Flaig, a 21-year-old uninsured pizza delivery driver from Twin Lakes, Wisconsin, who was severely injured June 3, 2020, when a speeding drag racer smashed into his car. Boll-Flaig’s jaw was shattered, and he had four vertebrae crushed and several ribs broken. His 14-year-old brother, Dominic Flaig, tagging along that night, was killed.

Days after the crash, their mother, Brandy Flaig, said she got a call from a hospital billing office asking for her surviving son’s contact information to set up a payment plan for his medical bills.

Then on July 30 — less than two months later — Froedtert Hospital in Milwaukee filed a $67,225 lien against Boll-Flaig. It was one of seven liens the hospital filed the same day, totaling nearly a quarter of a million dollars, according to the Wisconsin Circuit Court Access website used by researchers and reviewed by ProPublica.

“It’s during the pandemic, we’re still grieving, and they go after Tyler?” Flaig said. “It’s predatory.” Tyler Boll-Flaig declined to be interviewed.

Froedtert Hospital is the largest in the Froedtert Health system, which includes five full-service hospitals, two community hospitals and more than 40 clinics. The health care system reported more than $53 million in operating income during the quarter ending Sept. 30, 2020 — double the amount from the previous year, according to its financial filings. It has also received $90 million in federal CARES Act money to help with its COVID-19 response and operating costs, a spokesperson said.

Only Reedsburg Area Medical Center, a nonprofit hospital in Reedsburg, Wisconsin, pursued more legal actions in the spring and summer of 2020, with 139 lawsuits and 22 wage garnishments, the study showed. Medical center officials did not respond to a request for comment.

In contrast, Advocate Aurora Health, the top-suing health network in the state before the pandemic, dropped to zero court filings after February 2020, the report found.

Stephen Schoof, a Froedtert Health spokesperson, said in an email he could not comment on the Boll-Flaig case because of patient privacy laws. He also said the health system was unable to comment on the Johns Hopkins study because it had not yet reviewed all the findings. But Schoof disputed the numbers he was sent by ProPublica, calling them “inaccurate and misleading.”

Schoof objected to how researchers defined and counted legal actions. He said that Froedtert Hospital ceased filing small claims lawsuits in March 2020 but continued to pursue liens on patients involved in accidents that might result in settlements.

“The lien process does not impact a patient’s personal property and is intended to recoup expenses from settlement proceeds from the negligent party’s insurance company,” he said.

That is what happened in the Boll-Flaig case. Jason Abraham, Boll-Flaig’s lawyer, told ProPublica the lien is in the process of being settled with the hospital. He said the sum will be covered by the at-fault driver’s car insurance and workers’ compensation insurance since Boll-Flaig was on the job when the accident occurred.

Liens allow hospitals to get paid quickly and by state law must be filed within 60 days of hospital discharge. Because he was hospitalized during the pandemic, Boll-Flaig was released after about 24 hours, his mother said.

Abraham said the hospital was “trying to get to the front of the line because they think there is a pool of money available.”

Wisconsin Watch, a nonprofit news site, reported late last year that Froedtert Hospital filed 362 liens through Dec. 11, including 251 after May. That was more than the 300 liens it filed in all of 2019, the news investigation showed.

In New York, the Johns Hopkins researchers found 51 hospitals filed legal action against more than 1,800 patients between January 2018 and mid-December 2020. More than half came from just one health system: Northwell Health, a nonprofit that is the largest in the state, operating 19 hospitals with affiliations at four more across the state.

The most litigious in the Northwell system during that time was Long Island Jewish Medical Center, which filed a total of 2,011 court actions, with more than a quarter of those pursued last year, the research showed.

“During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, most hospitals substantially reduced or even ceased all medical debt lawsuits. However, as the pandemic’s first wave subsided, many New York hospitals resumed business as usual,” the study says.

Although he had not seen the Johns Hopkins report, Rich Miller, executive vice president of Northwell Health, said he was skeptical of its findings, in part because the health system stopped all legal action against patients from April through September of last year.

Northwell resumed filing cases for about two months in the fall of 2020, but has since stopped. Any case filed during the brief resumption has now been rescinded, he said.

Miller said his health system does not take legal action against Medicaid patients, those over 65, the unemployed, people with disabilities or military members. Patients are pursued legally only if they have ignored attempts to work out payment plans or if they have “a strong ability to pay,” he said.

All hospitals have specific guidelines and steps they must follow before taking any “last resort” collection actions, said Marie Johnson, vice president of media relations for the American Hospital Association.

Health care systems must balance the need to be adequately financed with “treating all people equitably, with dignity, respect and compassion,” Johnson said.

Still, the problem highlights the murkiness of the U.S. healthcare system, said Nicholas Bagley, a University of Michigan law professor specializing in health law. “Sometimes we treat it like a commodity, sometimes we treat it like a right,” he said. “In the eyes of the law, these are just personal debts.”

But he questioned the wisdom of equating unpaid medical bills, often incurred during emergencies or crisis, with an overdue credit card: “Is this really how we want to process payment disputes?”

 

Fallout for Trump’s political targeting: Top DOJ appointee to resign, AG Garland announces probe

The Justice Department’s top national security official, John Demers, is reportedly resigning amid the torrent of revelations surrounding the agency’s forceful seizure of phone data from House Democrats during the Trump administration. Demers, a Trump appointee, was the longest-serving official at the Department of Justice from the previous administration. 

On Thursday, the New York Times reported that the Trump Justice Department undertook an extensive investigation in 2017 and 2018 into at least a dozen members of the House Intelligence Committee, subpoenaing their computer and phone records from Apple and Microsoft, both of whom were put under a gag order, which prevented the companies from speaking out. According to CNN, the agency demanded metadata on 73 phone numbers and 36 email addresses specifically from Apple. 

The probes apparently sought to root out the source of confidential information leaks regarding potential communications between Trump officials and Russia in advance of the 2016 general election. Some have speculated that the probe aimed to snuff out lawmakers who may have fed information to the press regarding Trump-Russia collusion.

The slow trickle of truth surrounding the probe has sparked outrage amongst Democratic lawmakers. 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said on Tuesday that the aggressive seizure of House members’ records goes “even beyond Richard Nixon,” suggesting that DOJ’s investigation amounts to a constitutional violation that exceeds that of the Watergate scandal. 

“Richard Nixon had an enemies list,” the House Speaker said during a CNN interview. “This is about undermining the rule of law.”

Attorneys General Bill Barr and Jeff Sessions, who led the DOJ under Trump, have both denied any knowledge of the sweeping investigation. Barr told Politico on Friday that he was “not aware of any congressman’s records being sought in a leak case” during his time as attorney general, adding: “I never discussed the leak cases with Trump. He didn’t really ask me any of the specifics.”

Pelosi still demanded that they both testify under oath.

“How could it be that there could be an investigation of members in the other branch of government and the press and the rest too and the attorneys general did not know?” the House Speaker asked. “So who are these people and are they still in the Justice Department?”

Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., echoed Pelosi’s doubts.

“Don’t buy it,” he said during a Sunday CNN interview. “That’s not the way the department works. I know from my experience on the Intelligence Committee that for special matters — whether it involves the members of Congress or senior members, you know, in the press — this would go to the attorney general’s office.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., condemned the Trump DOJ’s behavior more broadly.

“This is a gross abuse of power and an assault on the separation of powers,” they wrote in a joint statement. “This appalling politicization of the Department of Justice by Donald Trump and his sycophants must be investigated by both the DOJ Inspector General and Congress.” 

The senators added: “Former Attorneys General Barr and Sessions and other officials who were involved must testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee under oath. If they refuse, they are subject to being subpoenaed and compelled to testify under oath.”

Other Democrats have called for a probe into the Justice Department itself, arguing that the seizures indicate a widespread breakdown of transparency and accountability. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., currently the chair of the House Intelligence Committee and one of the many lawmakers targeted in the probe, called on the agency’s inspector general to initiate an inquiry into Trump’s “weaponization of law enforcement.”

“Though we were informed by the Department in May that this investigation is closed, I believe more answers are needed, which is why I believe the Inspector General should investigate this and other cases that suggest the weaponization of law enforcement by a corrupt president,” Schiff wrote in a Thursday statement. 

The department’s Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, has already launched an investigation into the department’s conduct following a request from Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco. In a statement on Monday, Attorney General Merrick Garland said he has also directed Monaco to “evaluate and strengthen the department’s existing policies and procedures for obtaining records of the Legislative branch.”

The obscure, unelected Senate official whose rulings can help — or kill — Biden’s agenda

Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough raised the profile of her largely invisible role in February 2021 when she ruled that Senate Democrats could not include a hike in the minimum wage to $15 per hour in the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill ultimately passed in March. Democrats had aimed to pass the legislation via what’s called a budget reconciliation process. This crucial category consists of bills on taxes or spending – and MacDonough ruled the wage hike didn’t meet that requirement.

Progressive Democrats went through the roof. Sen. Bernie Sanders said, “I regard it as absurd that the parliamentarian, a Senate staffer elected by no one, can prevent a wage increase for 32 million workers.”

But MacDonough was just carrying out her procedural duties to advise the Senate leaders about what the body’s rules and precedents allow – and what they don’t. And as the author of two books about Congress – “Congressional Practice and Procedure” and “The Polarized Congress” – I know that the parliamentarian’s rulings can be key to passage of legislation.

Low-key office

A century ago, the Senate would informally assign a particular Senate “clerk” to specialize in advice on proper phrasing of rulings and motions.

The first Senate parliamentarian, Charles L. Watkins, began serving in the official position in 1935 and continued until 1964. Such a higher-status position was necessitated by the trend toward increasing complexity and formality of Senate floor action. This trend was the Senate developing from its classic era as a “gentleman’s club” governed by conservative Southern Democrats to the post-Watergate era of procedural reforms and party polarization. Filibusters gradually changed from virtually unknown to commonplace, and these required their own elaborate and formal procedures.

Since then, the parliamentarian role has expanded as a result of the increasing complexity and formality of action on the Senate floor, and the apparent unwillingness of most senators to study for themselves the nuances of often-obscure procedural precedents.

For example, when a bill like the Trump tax cut of December 2017 runs out of allocated time on the floor, the remaining amendments fly through with only two minutes each of consideration, and senators must defer to the parliamentarian to master the applicable procedure for each of those amendments.

The parliamentarian even ruled against naming that bill the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, since the provision did not influence spending or revenue, as each provision must under Senate budget rules.

The parliamentarian is a nonpartisan position; the office includes a chief parliamentarian and several assistant parliamentarians. When there is a vacancy, the chief parliamentarian is chosen by the Senate majority leader from the assistant parliamentarians.

In 2012, when she was appointed by Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, MacDonough broke the glass ceiling and became the first female parliamentarian.

Despite being nonpartisan, the parliamentarian can be fired by the Senate majority leader. Historically, though, parliamentarians are regularly retained despite changes in Senate majority party. MacDonough served a Democratic Senate, then a Republican Senate, and now a Democratic Senate.

In an isolated occasion in 2001, parliamentarian Robert Dove was fired by Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott for rulings on reconciliation that didn’t sit well with the GOP leadership. The post was then filled by Dove’s widely respected deputy, Alan Frumin, and the office continued to be nonpartisan.

When Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, called for MacDonough’s firing over her ruling against reconciliation for the minimum wage, she had no takers in the Senate.

Power over legislation’s prospects

As parliamentarian, MacDonough is charged with more than just ruling what can go into reconciliation bills.

In advising the Senate presiding officer, the parliamentarian rules on countless procedural issues, from what provisions can go in an appropriation bill to what amendments are relevant enough to be offered to a bill when debate has already ended.

During Senate floor sessions, the parliamentarian or an assistant parliamentarian is present, sitting near the presiding officer and answering questions about procedure.

The parliamentarian refers newly introduced bills to the committee that handles the bill’s main subject. Referral can greatly affect a bill’s prospects because different committees may be more or less favorable to the bill’s goals.

For example: A climate change bill may have one fate if drafted so that the parliamentarian sends it to the Commerce Committee. That could happen if the bill was written to emphasize regulation of commerce. The bill could take another course if written for referral to the Energy Committee.

Adding to bill-writers’ calculation: The Commerce Committee may have a majority to send its bill to passage before the full Senate, while the Energy Committee may not. So, whether a bill makes progress out of committee means its drafter must maneuver to land the bill before a particular committee.

Reconciliation’s rules

These days, MacDonough’s most striking rulings do concern reconciliation bills. In a polarized Senate, where the majority party cannot muster 60 votes to end a filibuster, one of the only ways to get legislation passed is to attach – or “ride” – controversial measures or provisions through the Senate on a reconciliation bill.

Although a minimum wage increase would have some indirect budget implications, MacDonough ruled that it would be only incidental to the COVID-19 relief bill. Conversely, she has ruled that an infrastructure bill could be considered as a reconciliation bill, although individual parts in an infrastructure bill might have to be stricken – depending on MacDonough’s rulings on them.

In 2017, when the Senate passed the Trump tax cut as a reconciliation bill, MacDonough allowed into the bill Republican provisions to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil drilling, and to eliminate the tax penalty for the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate. Both of these provisions affected the budget.

On the other hand, during the Senate’s 2017 debate over the American Health Care Act, also being considered as a reconciliation bill, she ruled that language eliminating funding for Planned Parenthood and language banning abortion coverage in insurance marketplaces were not appropriate for inclusion in the legislation.

Nuclear option

The Senate majority does have a way in the most extreme circumstances to bypass a parliamentarian’s ruling it doesn’t like. It’s called the “nuclear option” and in general, it means the majority can alter Senate procedure by changing the number of votes required to end debate and thereby get to approve a matter.

In 2013, the Senate Democratic majority did just that, allowing executive and lower-level judicial nominations to have debate cut off, and to be approved, by 51 votes, not the normal 60 votes to cut off debate.

In 2017, the Senate Republican majority did the same for Supreme Court nominations.

The parliamentarian advises on procedure for nominations because there are many points of overlap with consideration of legislation. In a 2018 speech, MacDonough called those two uses of the nuclear option in 2013 and 2017 a “stinging defeat that I tried not to take personally.” The parliamentarian stands for regular order, which these moves were not.

What may show up on the parliamentarian’s plate later this year or next?

One possibility: President Biden could try to pass a climate control bill by majority vote, as a reconciliation bill. From his decades of Senate experience, he knows the bill must fit the parliamentarian’s criteria to get through by 51 votes.

So his administration might offer the Senate a bill on climate in the form of a carbon tax. The bill would be proposed as a tax bill, hence a budget-related bill that gets through the Senate by the 51-vote reconciliation procedure.

Charles Tiefer, Professor of Law, University of Baltimore

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

Newsmax host Greg Kelly under network review over tweets on race, the military and “morale”

Newsmax host Greg Kelly found himself embroiled in controversy over the weekend after posting a series of tweets about race and the military, leaving the conservative network where he works investigating the matter. 

The host of “Greg Kelly Reports” and former Marine pilot would later delete his initial series of tweets, only to post follow-ups in an apparent attempt to dampen the outrage sparked by the first series. But the damage appears to have been done by that point.

“So that’s the USS America aircraft carrier that I’m ‘fixin’ to land on. Just knowing that President Clinton, who was in office at the time, was a Caucasian male made it ‘all worthwhile’ — ask any white male officer who served under him. So appreciative of his Race were we,” one of the now-deleted tweets read.

Kelly further tweeted that having a white secretary of defense when he served overseas in the military made a “big difference” when it came to “morale.” 

The host would later attempt to backtrack on his initial tweets, writing in part, “Now the TRUTH: being a MARINE had nothing to do with RACE. It didn’t matter.” 

While Kelly might have attempted to distance himself from his own tweets, the right-wing network that employs him apparently is investigating the matter. On Sunday night, Washington Post reporter Jeremy Barr, who obtained a comment from the network, shared the following: “We at Newsmax never countenance the posting of racist views or views that appeal to racists,” Newsmax told Barr. “We are currently reviewing the matter.”

Industry publication Mediaite billed the tweets as “almost certainly an attempt at ironically detached humor, albeit a failed one.” It’s certainly possible that Kelly is attempting to cultivate a comedic persona with his Twitter account. Yet it’s also worth noting this isn’t the first time Kelly has come under fire for public statements about race. As Salon reported in February, Kelly complained on-air that “there’s a racial component” to the Trump impeachment trial against “white folk[s].”

And regardless of whether his account in general is meant to be read as sarcastic, the most recent tweets from Kelly may have crossed a line with Newsmax, a network that has clawed out a niche in conservative TV by, as NPR puts it, “trying to outfox Fox News” from the right, particularly in the wake of Donald Trump’s loss to Joe Biden. 

Even when the conservative host is not being criticized for his comments on race, Kelly’s unfocused public persona — part news host, part cringe comic? — seems designed to prompt bemused headlines. He’s previously complained about his co-workers not inviting him on trips to vineyards, and once tried to impress freshman Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene — a Republican whose CrossFit affinity is as much a part of her brand as Qanon promotion and trolling stunts — by doing pull-ups. 

Newsmax didn’t immediately respond to a Salon request for comment on whether they plan to take any further action. 

Lara Trump calls on Texans and Arizonans to “get guns and be ready”

Lara Trump, the daughter-in-law of Donald Trump, urged Americans living on the Mexico-U.S. border to “arm up and get guns and be ready” to use potentially lethal force amid a recent surge in border crossings by people from Central America. 

“I don’t know what you tell the people that live at the southern border,” Trump ranted during a Saturday interview on Fox News. “I guess they better arm up and get guns and be ready, and maybe they’re gonna have to take matters into their own hands.”

“People should never make this dangerous journey here,” she continued. “It’s bad for Americans. It’s bad for the migrants. It’s bad all around.”

Trump’s remarks were widely rebuked online. 

Russell Foster, a Democrat currently running for Congress in Texas, called her comments “dangerous,” saying: “The former president’s daughter-in-law is calling for people to shoot immigrants. It’s worse after multiple mass shootings over the last few days in Texas and elsewhere. This could lead to an uptick in hate crimes across the country.”

Last year, a white nationalist shooter opened fire in an El Paso Walmart, killing 23 shoppers and injuring the same number. Law enforcement later learned that the gunman had specifically targeted Latinos because he felt that America was facing a migrant “invasion.”

Others on Twitter expressed a similar sentiment to Foster, noting that Trump’s comments sound like an explicit call for violence.

“Lara Trump can tell people to buy guns and shoot people at the border… no problem,” tweeted Pam Keith, a Democratic congressional candidate in 2020. “We are in the twilight zone, folks.”

David Weissman, a columnist for Demcast, echoed: “How are these people able to incite threats? This is not free speech and Lara Trump should be held accountable before some idiot follows through with her advice.”

“Just casually saying on a national broadcast that people should take up arms and start shooting immigrants,” chimed photojournalist Zach Roberts. “This is where we’re at.”

Trump’s comments come amid a record number of illegal crossings at the southern border. Last month saw 180,000 crossings – the highest its been in two decades, according to The Telegraph. 

Over the last several months, Republicans have demurred President Biden for instituting border policies they’ve deemed “too lax,” resulting in a record influx of immigrants that U.S. border facilities have struggled to contain.
Last week, Vice President Kamala Harris’ first trip to Guatemala, where she cautioned the country’s residents against illegally immigrating, telling them: “Do not come.” Her plea was widely castigated by lawmakers, immigration rights organizations, and members of left-wing media.

The balsamic break-down: Here’s what makes this Italian condiment so special

Standing in the harsh light of my refrigerator, I’ve enjoyed many an impromptu “meal” of just a large hunk of torn baguette positively bathed in balsamic, topped with shards of hastily sliced Parmigianino and maybe a sliver of fresh mozzarella. Prosciutto di Parma or braseola may also sometimes find its way into these delectable mini-sandwiches. I’d argue that there may be no better snack to hastily consume whilst standing in the kitchen. 

The confluence of Italian cured meats, Italian cheeses, good-quality bread, olives, and balsamic is like nothing else. (I’d throw some arugula, pesto, or even sundried tomato spread on it, too, but then we’re crossing into legitimate sandwich territory and I digress). 

Balsamic vinegar may be one of the most elusive ingredients in terms of identifying, and thereby writing about, its flavor profile. But that also provides a welcome writing challenge to chew on (forgive me for the pun). Syrupy, sweet, and acidic, it provides buoyancy and heft to anything it is added to, sometimes veering into an elixir that straddles the savory/sweet disparity more so than any other condiment. While the oft used “balsamic vinaigrette” has made the excellent vinegar ubiquitous, it is so much more than just that.

One of the first times I truly understood balsamic’s unique ability to bolster anything it is added to is when a childhood friend’s father drizzled a high-quality balsamic on some super crispy chicken cutlets. Since that day maybe 20 years ago, I still drizzle some balsamic on my chicken cutlets whenever I cook or eat cutlets — which, admittedly, is quite often. Something about the confluence of the reliable standby that is chicken cutlet, accentuated by the punchy, piquant flavors of balsamic, renders this absolutely irresistible. My 13-year-old palate has matured exponentially in the years since — but this is one flavor profile that resonates just as deeply as it did on that hot summer day.

Taste deems balsamic “the original vinegar,” and notes that balsamico means “curative.” SeriousEats notes that balsamic vinegar dates back as far as 1046 (woah), when a Roman Emperor was gifted a bottle. It originates in the Emilia-Romagna region  — as well as Modena — and is prized for its fruity, forward flavor. 

What’s Cooking America notes that balsamic was said to have been used in the Middle Ages as a disinfectant and a “miracle cure,” which reportedly helped to ease sore throats and labor pains. Nutritionally, balsamic is rich in manganese, iron, magnesium, phosphorus and polyphenols, which is said to reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer and boost immunology, according to The Spruce Eats.  

Today, some bottles can be incredibly costly, while others are immensely economical. “Traditional balsamic” is still only made in Reggio Emilia and Modena. It is made from grape must, usually only Lambruso or Trebbiano varieties, which is cooked, concentrated, pressed, and fermented before being “aged” for at least 12 years. 

The aging barrels are often made of oak, chestnut, cherry, juniper, or mulberry, and these flavors permeate the aging vinegar, further helping to deepen its complex, hard-to-identify flavors. Traditional balsamic is also thicker than “cheaper” varieties and can be more of a syrupy consistency. There are also expert judges and special commissions that rate and regulate the quality of the vinegar.

The varieties of balsamic can be broken down into three distinct categories: balsamic vinegar (can be purchased nearly anywhere), Aceto Balsamic di Modena IGP (the second tier), and the piece de resistance — Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena (or Reggio Emilia), according to The Spruce Eats.  Some bottles, like the ones labeled stravecchio, age for about 25 years. 

Regardless of variety, the flavor is deep, rich, and complex, but the traditional balsamic is on another level entirely. Similar to the revered Parmigiano Reggiano, balsamic also carries a D.O.P — or  Denominazione d’Origine Protetta — and its technical name is Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale. 

The high-quality, viscous variety shouldn’t be cooked as its flavor is too pure and complex, but instead, used as a flavoring agent at the end of cooking or perhaps even drunk as a tonic or palette cleanser. The IGP variety is less flavorful and less thick. IGP Balsamic is certified for being from a particular region in Italy.

There are also balsamic-inspired and balsamic imitations that run rampant on grocery store shelves throughout the states, such as glazes and syrups. White balsamic, while delicious, is also not a true balsamic. Again, all of these condiments are wonderful, but from a technical perspective, only a few qualify as “real” balsamic. 

The Spruce Eats also notes that balsamic has a “very long” shelf life, which is most pleasing to a balsamic gourmand such as myself. Of course, some of the flavors inherent within balsamic are very wine-forward, especially since many of the same grapes used to produce widely-renowned wines are also used to make balsamic.  The acidity of balsamic also tends to be a bit more balanced than other vinegars, while the flavors are still heady, astringent, and umami-forward. Some balsamics seem to have more in common with grape juice, wine, or soy sauce than generic vinegars like red wine. If you’re insistent on making a reduction or a syrup, feel free — but do not use the higher-quality, more expensive versions.

Traditional balsamic is really only sold in Italy and online (and it is EXPENSIVE), while the “second tier” vinegar can be found at higher-end grocery stores in the United States, where it began being sold in the late 1970s. Interestingly enough, there is actually a well-reviewed balsamic made in New Mexico! Called Traditional Aceto Balsamico of Monticello, it has received high marks from many chefs, writers, and food personalities. 

Simply Recipes notes that a balsamic that lists wine vinegar as its first ingredient will be tart, while a balsamic that lists grape must as its first ingredient will be sweet. 

Of course, any balsamic makes a superb vinaigrette. Combine it with some olive oil, shallots, herbs, salt and pepper and a touch of mustard or honey — for emulsification, viscosity, and flavor — and you’re set. Simplicity at its finest. Some finely minced garlic also certainly wouldn’t hurt! 

Taste also notes that balsamic can act as a tenderizer for meats and poultry, which explains why it’s often a customary marinade ingredient. Many balsamics also mix beautifully with fruit, such as strawberry, figs, or watermelon and then topped with torn basil or mint. 

America’s Test Kitchen has a recipe that is purportedly an approximation of “$300 balsamic,” which happens to include reducing balsamic, sugar, and port. The final step of the method is to “enjoy like a fancy pants.” Cute — but balsamic is stellar regardless of its cost and should be used with reckless abandon in kitchens across the land. 

So chop up some mozzarella and tomatoes, chiffonade some basil, and generously drizzle balsamic all over (and I mean generously) before eating with verve. Balsamic is an absolute treat — a balm, a curative, a condiment like no other — and it should be celebrated and enjoyed as such.