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Revisiting the Pennsylvania “She Doctor” panic of 1869

As she handed the clerk her entry ticket, Ann Preston was excited, if a little apprehensive. It was Saturday, Nov. 6, 1869, and Preston, dean of the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, and her students, were about to attend a clinical medicine lecture at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia in a radical mixing of the sexes. Male medical students from Jefferson Medical College and the University of Pennsylvania had regularly attended these lectures for years; students from the women’s college were regularly refused admission. This was the second time Preston had brought students to a lecture there. After the first time, back in 1856, the women had been barred from returning. Until now.

Preston and her students were immediately reminded of their second-class citizen status when the clerk told them they would only be allowed to enter by way of the back stairs. Still, nothing could dim their enthusiasm. The determined dean and her 30 students began to file into the octagonal surgical amphitheater, gingerly squeezing their long puffy skirts through the tiered rows of seating that climbed the sides of the wall.

The day before the lecture, one female student had gotten hold of an ominous slip of paper that was being circulated among the male medical students. It read: “Go tomorrow to the hospital to see the She Doctors!” Clearly, the boys were planning some form of mayhem for this historic occasion. But what awaited the women students was worse than anything they could have imagined.

Preston, 55, was the first woman in America to become dean of a medical school. Nineteen years prior, she was one of the college’s very first students, back when it was called the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania. After a mere three years of schooling, she became its professor of physiology and hygiene. She was so petite that she often stood on a block while teaching. Preston had eight siblings, but neither of her two sisters survived to adulthood and her mother was prone to frequent bouts of illness. She decided women could improve their health if they knew more about their own physiology, so she studied the subject and started teaching classes to girls and women in her community of West Grove, Pennsylvania.

As a professor and administrator, Preston fervently advocated for her students to have the same educational opportunities as men, knowing they were lacking, in particular, clinical training. Back in 1855, she began petitioning local hospital managers to allow her students admission to clinical lectures. The following year, the hospital finally agreed to allow Preston and a few students to attend a lecture. That would be the first test of whether male and female students could learn together peacefully at Pennsylvania Hospital. The institution was the nation’s first public hospital, established in 1751 by Benjamin Franklin and Dr. Thomas Bond, and housed the nation’s first surgical amphitheater and medical library.

The test did not end well. Not everyone was elated about the prospect of women in the classroom. Professor David Hayes Agnew was livid that women were being permitted to invade the male sanctuary of his lecture hall. Hoping to scare them off, Agnew planned a case demonstration requiring a male patient to fully disrobe. When that didn’t work, he successfully appealed to the hospital board to deny women any further admittance. That blow was soon followed by another: in 1858, the Philadelphia County Medical Society formally ostracized the women’s college, preventing them from attending public teaching clinics or gaining membership in any medical society.

Preston remained unfazed. After another 13 years of persistence the hospital finally gave in again. Now, Ann and her students would test the waters a second time with a new crop of students. And the male students did their best to trouble that water.

Knowing that women were going to be in attendance, in the days leading up to the lecture the male students passed around the note warning about the impending “She-Doctors” in order to ensure the men made a forceful, territorial showing. They hoped their behavior and number would show the hospital managers how much they disapproved of their space being tainted by women. The men were also hoping to make a statement about how women were not suited to the medical profession in general.

“When we turned up at the clinic, pandemonium broke loose,” student Anna Broomall recalled. Awaiting them in the upper tiers of the amphitheater were nearly 300 male medical students — far more than were typically in attendance. The men began hurling epithets, catcalls, and other offensive language at the women. Some men insulted the women’s appearance while others spit tobacco juice on their dresses.

Elizabeth Keller, another student, said they entered the hall “amidst jeers and groanings, whistling and stamping of feet, by the men students, who had determined to make it so unpleasant for us that, from choice, we would not care to attend another.”

The clinical lecture would be delivered not by Agnew, but by two other doctors, William Hunt and Jacob Da Costa. During the first hour, mild medical cases were slated for presentation by Da Costa: victims of malaria, sunstroke, and dropsy (swelling of the soft tissue) would be paraded in front of the large student audience to be prodded, examined, and discussed. In the second hour, Hunt’s surgical procedures would take center stage. But no teaching could commence until the ruckus was squelched.

At the height of the uproar, hospital manager William Biddle came bursting into the amphitheater to try to calm things down. “Hat! Hat!” the male students yelled at Biddle’s dark, wide-brimmed orthodox Quaker hat. As a wealthy man of high public standing, this was likely one of the worst insults he’d ever experienced. The students either didn’t know or didn’t care that Quakers believed in keeping their head covered.

He told the men that the women were there with the hospital managers’ blessing and should not be subject to such insults. Biddle said any man who was found to be insulting the women would have his lecture ticket, which cost $2, withdrawn. His request for them to behave provoked even more outbursts. The men began to hiss loudly at Biddle’s rebuke.

“Oh, I don’t care for your hisses,” Biddle snapped back calmly.

The jeering continued, prompting a second hospital manager to rush in and command: “Boys, we will not have this.” Biddle entreated the students to remember their character as gentlemen, and declared that their continued poor behavior had forced him to stay and watch the rest of the lecture to monitor them.

Amid the swelling cacophony, in swept the surgery professor, Dr. Hunt, along with some assistants carrying a stretcher bearing his first patient. He bowed to the men only and addressed a greeting to the “gentlemen,” prompting the hissing to intensify yet again.

“What can you see today?” Dr. Hunt asked the patient as he sat up. This man’s eyesight had been harmed in a mining accident. Hoping to make an example of the women, he pointed toward the section of the audience where they were seated, and asked, “What do you see now?”

“Patrick,” the patient replied flatly, referring to the medical assistant standing nearby.

“Look up! Look higher, and tell me what you see,” Hunt prodded dramatically, unsatisfied with the result of his little exercise. The man strained and squinted.

“Light! I see light!” he proclaimed.

Later, a Philadelphia Evening Bulletin reporter decided this comment carried a much deeper, more poetic meaning: “Was there a signification in that blind man’s words? Was not light dawning upon bigotry and oppression when women were even thus allowed to avail themselves of an opportunity for acquiring knowledge that they would dispense for the alleviation of suffering?”

Another surgical patient presented at the lecture was a man with a fractured femur that was not healing well. The attendants brought the man in, placed him recumbent on a “revolving couch,” and pulled off his boots. The male students stamped and growled. The doctor provided the patient with a blanket to cover his private area, but at some point while the doctor measured the patient’s leg, his groin was briefly exposed.

This quick flash served yet another “signal for an explosion among the students,” a news report noted, provoking “mock applause, clapping, stamping, and shouts of laughter, mingled with hisses and jeers, in one wild uproar.”

During the last hour of the lecture, the male students rained down a barrage of tinfoil wads, paper missiles, spitballs, and tobacco wads upon the women. Throughout it all, the female students never flinched or retaliated, choosing instead to quietly listen and attempt to learn whatever they could amid such chaos. The women’s lack of reaction must have further incensed the men, for they surely hoped to show how fragile and emotional women were.

* * *

Though medical students were often characterized as a rather wild, roguish bunch, this type of behavior was not typically how men were expected to treat women of a similar class in public. “For any man with even a pretense of breeding to jeer, mock, perhaps even stone and spit upon women could hardly be imagined in mid-19th-century America,” according to medical historian Steven J. Peitzman.

One student, Sarah Hibbard, said she tried to remain unflappable for two hours “amid the groans and hisses of as ungentlemanly a set of fellows as one would care to meet, after paying just as much for our tickets of admission as they.” By the end of the clinic, Broomall said she too “had scarcely heard a word of what our preceptors had been trying to tell us.”

The harassment didn’t end there. “We were hustled and jostled into the hall,” Broomall remembered. When one of the hospital managers went to close the gates, the boys “burst the barriers open and knocked him over in the fracas. He raised his trembling hands in protest, saying ‘The Pennsylvania Hospital will not have this!'”

The men lined up along both sides of the pathway leading through the yard from the hospital so the women would have to run their gauntlet of intimidation as they left. But upon seeing the mob, the ladies took a different route.

“To get out, [we] had to take the road and walk to the street to the tune of ‘The Rogues March,'” Hall recalled. The tune is a taunt typically played when punishing or discharging military men. “Our students separated as soon as possible. All who could took the little antiquated horse cars in any direction they were going. The men separated also, and in groups of twos, threes, and fours, followed the women.”

“Borne along as on the crest of a wave we found ourselves in 8th street and went 20 different ways, still pursued by taunts and jeers,” Broomall said. One newspaper reported that the male students “followed them some distance, greatly to their annoyance, uttering various uncouth noises and indecent comments, and making other manifestations peculiar to this class of ‘gentleman.'”

Keller claimed that “on leaving the hospital we were actually stoned by these so-called gentlemen.”

Hibbard exasperatedly pointed to the deeper reason why most women sought to become physicians in the first place: “And yet we bore all this for what? Simply that we might be better fitted to minister at the bedside of our mothers, sisters, and friends throughout the land.”

* * *

The Philadelphia “Jeering Episode,” as it came to be known, went far from unnoticed. The press was all over it: “Blackguardism,” proclaimed The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, “Disgraceful,” “Female Students Assaulted by Their Male Brethren” read The York Free Democrat headlines. One Philadelphia reporter mused cheekily: “Why these sagacious youths object to female physicians we do not know, unless it is that they are conscious of intellectual deficiency, and are afraid of competition from persons whom they feel to be their superiors mentally as they are morally.”

One young man purporting to have been present at the event sent a letter to the editor of a local New Jersey newspaper attacking the very idea of women in medicine. His views reflected that of many medical men: “Who is this shameless herd of sexless beings who dishonor the garb of ladies?” the man insisted. “This neuter 34 who have shamed common decency by their unwelcome and uninvited presence to the disgust of every student and the loathing of the instructors! Who, by their immodest persistence have shamed all gentlemen from those clinics!”

News of the riot spread far beyond the local papers, and opinions abounded. The New York Citizen and Round Table was bewildered by these “Wild Women determined to witness the carving and cutting of the masculine form divine.” The New York World almost sounded impressed that such a riot would occur in “Philadelphia, the dullest village in America.”

Even The Scotsman covered the event, poking fun at the medical establishment’s pearl-clutching response to the idea of women doctors: “We know not which most to admire — the cool assumption that the medical profession exists only to fill the pockets of its members, or the serene assurance that no woman has a right to expect to be allowed the chance of earning a living till all male competitors are safely and sufficiently provided for!”

As for Dr. Agnew, he simply couldn’t bear the idea of teaching women. It was so unbearable, in fact, that when the board of contributors proclaimed that regardless of the riot, women would continue to be admitted to clinical lectures, he quit his job, despite being poised to become chairman of surgery at the medical school.

Ultimately, the episode failed to scare women away from attending clinical lectures. Actually, it did the opposite. By beginning to turn the tide of public opinion in favor of the women, who were now largely seen as undeserving victims of ungentlemanly brutes and simply seeking to obtain an equal education, the riot gave the women’s movement considerable momentum.

“The conduct of the male students needs no comments further than to say that their ‘loss was our gain,’ for certainly they did lose and certainly we did gain,” Hibbard declared in her diary a few years after the incident. “If these poor fellows had sought to do us a life-long favor, they could not have done it more effectively than they did in their conduct towards us during those sessions.”

Broomall, despite this harrowing experience, went on to transform women’s health in Philadelphia. After graduating from the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania (as the school’s name was spelled at the time), she studied obstetrics in Paris and Vienna, then returned to accept the chief resident position at her alma mater’s women’s hospital. Before long, she was chair of obstetrics. She was one of the first doctors in the nation to institute regular prenatal and postnatal care, and she also ensured that her nurses kept up with the latest medical advances coming out of Europe. These practices, in addition to her emphasis on the use of antiseptics and cesarean sections when medically necessary, ushered in an incredibly low maternal mortality rate.

“The present generation should know what such women have done for all other women,” Broomall once proclaimed of her fellow medical trailblazers. “More than one among us hold in her capable hands the lamp of Florence Nightingale, and the flame of it burns bright and clear.”

* * *

Olivia Campbell is a journalist and author focusing on women, science, and history. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Atlantic, New York Magazine, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Aeon, Scientific American, Smithsonian Magazine, and Literary Hub. Her first book, “Women in White Coats: How the First Women Doctors Changed the World of Medicine,” was published in March 2021 by HarperCollins/Park Row Books.

Most quotations come from archival documents held at the Drexel University College of Medicine’s Legacy Center Archives and Special Collections.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

How to get rid of gnats, once and for all

Gnats are the bane of my existence, truly. I swear they invade my home at least once a year, whether it’s because I forgot an old banana at the bottom of the fruit bowl, didn’t clean out the garbage disposal well enough, or even just brought home a new plant that had them hiding in the soil. I then, reluctantly, spend the next few weeks trying to banish them from every nook and cranny of my home.

In the grand scheme of things, gnats are pretty harmless — fruit flies and fungus gnats don’t bite (though some other varieties do), but they always seem to be hovering in your face or flying around your food. If you’re sick of seeing these little bugs all around your home, here are some tried-and-true methods to get rid of them, as well as ways you can prevent them from coming back.

* * *

Know your gnats

There are a few types of small flies and gnats commonly found in homes, and each of them is attracted to different things. If you figure out what kind are plaguing your home, you’ll be able to get rid of them more efficiently.

First of all, there are fruit flies, which are attracted to ripe, rotting, or decayed fruits and vegetables. They also like smelly trash, garbage disposals, and open bottles of alcohol. These little brown bugs can often be found hovering around your fruit bowl, and they’re more common in the summer.

Next up, there’s the fungus gnat, which I have personally battled many times as a houseplant lover. These obnoxious little flies lay their eggs in soil, and they’re quite common for nursery plants, meaning you can easily bring them home without knowing. These gnats are black, and you’ll typically see them hanging out on the soil of your plants or around the rim of planters.

Finally, there are drain flies, and as their name suggests, these bugs live in drains, sewers, and septic tanks — pretty much anywhere you might find stagnant water, as that’s where they lay their eggs. They have larger wings than the other two types of gnats, and their bodies are furry, similar to a moth.

* * *

How to prevent gnats them in the first place

It’s not too hard to get rid of gnats, but the tricky part is keeping them from coming back — all it takes is one overripe apple for them to make themselves at home again! In general, the cleaner you keep your home, the less likely you are to have gnats. This means storing food in sealed containers and getting rid of overripe produce. You’ll also want to invest in a tightly covered trash can, and clean out your sink, drains, and garbage disposal regularly.

For fungus gnats in particular, letting your plants dry out in between waterings can help to prevent the bugs from laying eggs. Some people also recommend sprinkling a layer of diatomaceous earth on top of soil to keep gnats away.

If you’re really serious about making your home a no-gnat zone, you may also want to seal cracks and crevices around your doors and windows, repair any ripped screens, and patch any cracks in your home’s foundations.

* * *

5 ways to get rid of gnats quickly

If you have a gnat infestation and don’t have the time or luxury of prevention, there are several ways you can eliminate these flying nuisances — many of which involve simple pantry ingredients. Of course, you’ll also want to figure out what attracted them in the first place and get rid of their source of food to stop them from reproducing.

1. The classic apple cider vinegar trap

Apple cider vinegar’s sweet smell is appealing to gnats, so you can use it to make an easy trap. Pour a few tablespoons of apple cider vinegar into a bowl or jar, then stir in a few drops of dish soap. The bugs will be attracted to the sweet liquid, and the sticky soap will prevent them from being able to fly away. Some people also like to mix in a little sugar, as well, to really up the sweetness.

2. Lure them with ripe produce

If you’re dealing with fruit flies, you can use their favorite snack against them. Place a piece of ripe produce, like an apple slice or mashed banana piece, in a bowl and cover it with a plastic wrap. Poke a few small holes in the plastic, and once the flies crawl inside, they won’t be able to get back out.

3. Put empty wine bottles to good use

The next time you finish a bottle of red wine, leave it on the counter with dregs in the bottom to help trap gnats. They’ll crawl inside because they’re attracted to the smell and won’t be able to get back out. Some people also like to mix in a few drops of dish soap, but I’ve found the alcohol works pretty well on its own.

4. Flush drains with bleach

If fruit or drain flies are hanging out in your pipes, you can use a diluted bleach solution to kill them and any eggs. Mix ½ cup bleach with a gallon of water, then carefully pour it down the drain. Flush with plenty of hot water, and repeat as necessary.

5. When in doubt, use sticky traps

When I have a particularly bad fungus gnat infestation, I turn to sticky traps to capture the dozens of bugs flying around my plants. Gnats will get stuck to the yellow paper — just be prepared to be grossed out by how many you catch.

This post contains products independently chosen (and loved) by Food52 editors and writers. Food52 earns an affiliate commission on qualifying purchases of the products we link to.

How ultra-processed foods get us hooked — and how to resist

Remember that catchy Pringles jingle “Once you pop, the fun don’t stop?” Before that, processed food giant Kellogg’s used a more direct version to sell its salty, manufactured potato “crisps,” and it was much more accurate. The old slogan was, “Once you pop, you can’t stop.”

Many people have experienced that phenomenon with a variety of foods — from McDonald’s chicken nuggets to Oreos — and despite what diet sellers will try to tell you, it’s not a lack of willpower that drives it. “Once you fall hard for [processed foods], your entire body works against any efforts on your part to regain control,” says Michael Moss. “And companies have changed food so dramatically that our biology hasn’t had time to catch up. Maybe 500 years from now we’ll have some genetic changes that will allow us to recognize that we’re overeating junk food, but we don’t have that now.”

In his new book, “Hooked: Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions“, Moss digs deep into what research and expertise on evolutionary biology, brain chemistry and addiction can tell us about how and what we eat and how food companies use that science to formulate flavors and foods we can’t resist.

The book sheds new light on the role that “ultra-processed foods” play in contributing to the modern health crises like obesity and diabetes that are now a fixture of American life. And it provides clues as to the kinds of interventions that might enable people to adopt healthier habits that help them to resist the allure of cheap calories and make healthier choices in the future.

Are processed foods unhealthy?

For a long time, the dominant understanding of what makes a food healthy or unhealthy has come from a paradigm called “nutritionism.” Essentially, this way of thinking assumes a set of numbers that calculate metrics like calories, macronutrients (protein, carbs, and fat), and micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) provides an understanding of how nutritious any given food is.

Historically, food companies have leaned into this paradigm. Moss writes about a 1969 White House panel at which a VP of Monsanto (one of the world’s biggest food, agriculture and chemical companies, now owned by Bayer) suggested the idea of putting nutrition facts on packaging. Companies assumed, he says, that the mere presence of the information would ease concerns about what was in the package. “The majority of people don’t even look at that information and those who do are rather perplexed by it, except for one basic reaction, which is, ‘It’s a lot of data from the government. It must mean that this product has been studied and certified as being okay!'” he says. “That’s where the industry was coming from.”

But most of what research shows is wrong with processed foods won’t show up on a label. Individual hard-to-pronounce additives get lots of attention for being either dangerous or perfectly safe depending on who you talk to, but it’s the complicated sum of what’s being delivered that matters.

Past studies have looked at associations between eating processed foods and negative health outcomes. They’ve found that higher intake of processed foods is correlated to higher risks of cancer, heart disease, and death. But these kinds of studies do not show causality, and confounding factors can’t be ruled out.

Past studies have looked at associations between eating processed foods and negative health outcomes. They’ve found that higher intake of processed foods is correlated to higher risks of cancer, heart disease, and death. But these kinds of studies do not show causality, and confounding factors can’t be ruled out.

However, in 2019, researchers at the National Institutes of Health published the results from a clinical trial they designed to determine whether or not something about processed foods in particular — not just overeating in general — was leading to negative health outcomes. Experts in the field called the results striking, even with the study’s small sample size.

The researchers had 20 healthy adults live in a controlled environment for four weeks, where all of their meals were provided and every bite and health metric could be accounted for. Participants were split into groups on unprocessed (whole foods) or processed food diets, and they were presented with meals that were identical in terms of nutrition facts. While the meals put in front of them contained the exact same calories, macronutrients, sugar, salt, and fiber, participants ate significantly more when the food was processed and gained significant weight. On the ultra-processed diet, participants also had higher levels of a hormone that stokes hunger and lower levels of a hormone that signals fullness. Finally, they ate faster.

Why can’t we stop eating ultra-processed foods?

Speed is one of the factors Moss says led him to conclude that processed foods can be more addictive than drugs, depending on the individual. “Speed is a hallmark of addictive substances. And it turns out there’s nothing faster than food in the way that it hits the brain,” he says.

While it can take 10 seconds for a drag on a cigarette to fully engage the brain, experiments show sugar can register in less than a second. Processed foods ignite our desire quickly and then get into our stomach rapidly — their processed nature means we don’t have to cut or chew nearly as much. And those bites are usually more energy dense — they contain more calories per gram — so they deliver more food quickly. Think about how long it would take you to eat a whole apple compared to one of those snack-size bags of Doritos. The apple has 95 calories while that handful of chips has 140. “By the time the gut sends the signal for us to stop, it’s way too late,” Moss writes.

Then you layer on the other fascinating but frustrating parts of our biology that are designed for running down antelope and foraging for fruits, not strolling past packed shelves at Costco. Experiments show our bodies are designed to crave calories in any form, and evolutionary biologists say that’s because we needed to find as many as possible to survive. “We have sensors in the gut and possibly even in the mouth that detect calories when we’re eating or drinking, and the brain gets excited by calories almost as much as it gets excited about sugar. [Our ancestors] wanted more calories…because that meant our brains could grow and we could have more offspring and we could get through hard times,” Moss explains. “So what do companies do with that? They create snack foods with nutrient-empty calories densely packed in a way that gets the brain really excited and kind of overwhelms our ability to put the brake on overeating.”

Our brains also get excited by variety because we need a wide range of nutrients for good health, hence ever-changing new flavors and variety packs of cookies, chips, and cereals. And our bodies hold onto body fat because our hunter-gatherer ancestors needed it to get them through times when food was hard to find. “I knew that fat cells never went away. They just kind of shrivel up if you lose weight and then lay in wait for when you have another feast,” he says. “But I had no idea that body fat works to preserve itself by telling the brain that you’re hungry when you’re not and or even sort of slowing down your resting metabolism.”

Finally, Moss found that memory plays a huge role. Every time you eat, especially as a child, tracks are laid in your brain that connect the food we’re eating to memories. If you eat the same foods repeatedly, those tracks get deeper and deeper and impact your desire (or lack of desire) for certain foods, especially when exposed to a cue. Imagine a McDonald’s billboard as a cue, for example. “If you’ve eaten there before, and have deep channels carved in your brain by Big Macs, French fries, and milkshakes past, the sign will stir up the memory of those meals, which in turn might sweep you toward the restaurant in a flood of desire. But for someone else, who seldom eats at McDonald’s and thus lacks those channels, it will be like the sign isn’t even there,” he writes.

In today’s world, is it possible to skip ultra-processed foods?

The role of memory points towards an important point: To reduce addiction to and the overeating of processed foods, preventing those memories from being etched in the brains of children may be one of the most effective interventions. All of the other factors would remain, but at least kids would have a leg up. Moss said that his wife jokes that you have to feed kids broccoli 19 times and then the 20th time they’ll like it. While those numbers are random, multiple studies have shown having young children repeatedly taste vegetables can increase how much they like them.

To that end, Dan Giusti might have some of the answers. Giusti is the chef-founder of Brigaid and one of the founding directors of ScratchWorks, a new organization that brings together individuals and organizations who have been working for years to get more scratch cooking into schools all over the country.

Giusti is not driven specifically by a desire to keep kids away from processed foods, but his approach might achieve that aim regardless. “If you look at school food, it’s tackling two main things. It’s making sure kids are fed and then giving them proper nutrition,” he says. “With the nutrition piece, scratch cooking is paramount in the sense that you know exactly what you’re putting in your food. Otherwise, if you’re buying all processed foods, you’re just adding tons and tons of ingredients and there’s really no way to control that.”

And in the schools Brigaid has been cooking in for the past several years, Giusti has seen students forming healthy food memories over and over. “Kids are getting exposed to things that they otherwise wouldn’t have gotten exposed to, like a fresh prepared vegetable that maybe they wouldn’t have eaten at home that now they’ve eaten and they enjoy it, and that’s all it takes,” he says. “I’m a firm believer that if something tastes good, it doesn’t matter what it is. If it tastes good to the kids, then it’s a big win and they’re gonna want to eat it wherever they are.”

But what about other eaters who already have fully formed memories of Pop-Tarts and Burger King and have to contend with biological factors beyond their control?

While home cooking is an obvious solution, it’s often not a possible or equitable one in today’s modern world, where many families are struggling to get dinner on the table while juggling multiple jobs, childcare, and tight budgets. But now that Giusti is skilled at getting healthy, fresh meals to kids quickly, for just a few dollars a serving, in often ill-equipped kitchens, he’s more confident that more adults could make healthy, affordable meals for themselves more often.

“Cooking in schools is already challenging, but getting more engaged in terms of helping parents and giving parents the resources to find ways to cook at home, that’s something that I’m passionate about,” he says. “For example, how can you make a meal at home…within the same vein of how we approach school food, needing minimal equipment, not needing a crazy skill set, not needing too much time, and of course being cost-effective, even from a shopping perspective?” Giusti has started making videos in which he teaches home cooks to do just that; the first one features him using frozen foods to make four fast dishes that come in at under $3 per serving.

Moss, for his part, says he’s gotten his homemade spaghetti sauce recipe down to 93 seconds, and he frames this kind of convenient, fast cooking as “taking back what [food companies] took from us.” And he’s optimistic that more people will be able to do that armed with information on their own biology and how companies exploit it, even given how complex the problem is.

“Eating good, healthy food eventually can cause us to like and want more of that. The only problem is it takes time,” he says. “So if you have a lifetime of bad eating habits built up and the memories from that are dug deeply into your brain, you can’t expect to erase it and start over within a matter of days or weeks. It takes a long time…but convenience has been oversold to us by the processed food industry.”

The anti-vaccine movement is trying to co-opt Juneteenth

After promoting conspiracy theories and unfounded claims about the COVID-19 vaccines on social media, Naomi Wolf’s Twitter account was suspended. Once admired and embraced by third-wave feminists after publishing her first book, “The Beauty Myth,” Wolf has deviated over the years into a conspiracy theorist and a COVID truther. From repeatedly pushing the false claim that a vaccinated woman’s menstrual cycle can throw off an unvaccinated woman’s cycle to more recently suggesting that the sewage of vaccinated people needed to be separated from those who are unvaccinated, Wolf’s divergence exemplifies an ongoing trend in which the fringe left unites with the fringe right under the anti-vaccine umbrella.

This year, on Juneteenth — or June 19th, also known as Freedom Day — the latest variation of the anti-vaccine movement will be in peak form as it co-opts a celebration meant to commemorate the emancipation of those who were enslaved in the United States.

According to an event listing being promoted by the “medical freedom for all” organization Do We Need This, and first reported by Eoin Higgins in his newsletter, Wolf is headlining a fundraiser that day titled “Liberate Our Five Freedoms,” which will cost $25 at the door (cash only). The event, which will take place in a small town in Columbia County in upstate New York, seeks to appropriate a holiday honoring the end of slavery by focusing on the “five freedoms” that anti-vaxxers claim have been taken away from them.  Mask mandates and vaccine passports are among the policies that they say have infringed on their “freedoms.” 

Imran Ahmed, CEO of The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), told Salon this strategy to co-opt Emancipation Day is an attempt by the anti-vaccine movement to reach a new group of people while creating more divisiveness between the “fars and the not fars”: in other words, pairing up extremists on both ends of the political spectrum and pitting them against non-extremists via one very offensive event.

Ahmed said the appropriation of Juneteenth is symbolically reminiscent of the attempts by some figures, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), to analogize the gold Star of David patches that Jews were forced to wear during the Holocaust to vaccination logo patches meant to share one’s vaccination status.

“It creates divisiveness, and it helps them reach people . . . on both sides of the divide,” Ahmed said. “It is an attempt to show prima facie on the surface, an attempt to talk to African American audiences or to Jewish audiences and appropriate symbols of great historic atrocities.

“At the same time, it also allows them to access people who themselves have misappropriated these symbols for their own ulterior motives, often which are highly racist and offensive on their own level.”

Throughout the pandemic, anti-vaxxers have frequently wed alternative health views with far-right conspiracy theories. That has created a previously unimaginable union: New Age-y, Hippie-adjacent types, who oppose vaccines and embrace holistic health views, aligning themselves with far-right activists.

At first glance, it might seem like these two types have nothing in common. But when one takes a closer look, Ahmed said, they’re all opposed to “the existing order” in some “substantial way.”

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“Whether [that opposition] is to democracy, or to racial tolerance — it could even just be the way that our societies are structured to capitalism, for example — these are people who all agree that the system as it stands now [is] offensive for various reasons,” he said.  Ahmed noted that both groups are “anti-elist . . . conspiracists” who “use digital tools to simulate populism rather than actually being popular.” 

Unsurprisingly, the event Wolf is headlining on June 19 isn’t the only one promoting a dual anti-vaccine/far-right agenda in an attempt to co-opt Juneteenth.

In Tampa, Florida, a so-called Health & Freedom Conference runs from June 17 through June 19, 2021; the event is being advertised as a “3-day, mask free, freedom fighting festival,” and features prominent “Stop the Steal” figures with links to Donald Trump — including Roger Stone, Sidney Powell and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell. It also features prominent alternative health speakers who have been promoting COVID-19 and QAnon conspiracy theories. That includes Christiane Northrup, who positions herself as “a leading authority on women’s health and wellness.”

In April, a similar conference took place in Oklahoma, which largely centered around opposition to COVID-19 public health measures. Among the speakers were General Michael Flynn and discredited doctor Andrew Wakefield, whose scientific paper linking the MMR vaccine and autism was retracted by medical journal the Lancet yet famously paved the way for much of the modern anti-vaccination movement.

The role of social media in fomenting the modern anti-vaccination conspiracy movement cannot be underestimated, Ahmed said. 

“Extremisms are converging, hybridizing and creating new threats at an unprecedented pace. . . and the reason that’s able to happen is of course because social media brought them together,” he added. “It allows them to market to each other for free — and that’s happening because they’ve been tolerated on those platforms.”

Laughing at Trump’s “backward” pants won’t save us from the 21st-century gulag

Last Saturday, Donald Trump made the first stop on his 2021 revenge tour, making his first large-scale public appearance before his cult members since the January coup attempt and his followers’ attack on the U.S. Capitol.

During a speech at the North Carolina Republican Party convention, Trump continued telling the Big Lie about the 2020 election, claiming it was “stolen” from him (and therefore from the Republican Party and its voters). He claimed that the Biden administration has already “failed,” which is true only to the extent that Biden’s agenda has been blocked by Republican intransigence (enabled by misguided Democrats). 

Trump’s malignant narcissism was on full display as he took undeserved credit for the coronavirus vaccines and claimed he had saved the country from the pandemic. He rambled at times, bordering on incoherence. He made ignorant and racist attacks on “critical race theory.” In short, Donald Trump was his usual self, but a little worse. 

Trump experienced other “difficulties” during his speech, or so many Democrats, liberals and other Trump-haters convinced themselves.

On social media and elsewhere, many viewers indulged in elaborate “trutherism,” claiming that Trump was wearing his pants backward and that they were made of some material designed to absorb wetness caused by incontinence. Other viewers claimed they could see urine stains that had soaked through Trump’s purported adult diapers. The hashtag “#DiaperDon” would trend on Twitter over the weekend.

On Monday, “The View” — the daytime talk show popular precisely because of its vapid, overheated “debates” about politics — discussed the critical issue of Trump’s trousers and supposed incontinence. The resulting online frenzy introduced the innocent and uninitiated to the slang term “FUPA.”

For the record, the fact-checking website Snopes has debunked the claims about Trump’s pants. They had a zipper in the normal position and were not backward.

But millions of Americans, and no doubt others around the world, had a good laugh — supposedly at Trump’s expense. But this mockery was not a resistant act against power, similar to the jokes often told by Black human property about slave masters, and white people more generally, to affirm their own humanity in a society dominated by white supremacy. 

Nor was this anti-Trump derision akin to the way serfs and other common people in medieval or early modern Europe inverted power relations at carnivals by mocking the king, the church, the powerful and social hierarchy more generally.

Instead, this most recent liberal schadenfreude moment was just another example of the infantile culture that birthed the Age of Trump, a historical episode in which millions of Americans have almost literally amused themselves to death.

It is easier to mock and laugh at Donald Trump’s supposedly backward pants and rumored toilet challenges than to confront the reality that America’s democracy is in crisis, hanging by a thread against the onslaughts of the Jim Crow Republican Party, and that the country may now face its greatest existential threat since the Civil War.

Of course it’s possible to mock the former president and simultaneously comprehend the great perils America now faces. But when viewed in a larger context, these moments of hysterical laughter seem like manic reactions to the onward march of fascism.

Such laughter reflects the impotence and futility so many feel as the Democratic Party and other supporters of democracy face apparently inevitable defeat, while Republicans engage in a nationwide battle to prevent nonwhite people from voting and to lock down a fascist plutocracy or “managed democracy” designed to dominate the 21st century.

While liberals laughed, Trump’s audience in North Carolina and across the country was energized by seeing their Great Leader return to the public spotlight and hint at a possible return to the White House in 2024.

Public opinion and other research continues to show Trump’s powerful hold on the Republican Party and his followers. The Trump movement has been radicalized into terrorism and other forms of political violence, as seen not just on Jan. 6 but throughout his time in office. Law enforcement and national security experts continue to warn that white supremacist terrorists are the greatest threat to the domestic security of the United States. Trump’s followers and at least 25 percent of Republican voters profess a belief in the antisemitic QAnon conspiracy theory, which proposes that a great battle lies ahead in which Trump will defeat his “deep state” enemies and then return to power.

Indeed, a majority of Republicans actually believe that Donald Trump is still the legitimate president, and that Biden is a usurper. Trump and his allies have floated the bizarre and blatantly unconstitutional suggestion that he will resume the presidency in August after somehow removing Biden from office. In total, the Big Lie has completely taken over the Republican Party, which is now a puppet organization for Trump’s fascist movement.

This Americanized version of Joseph Goebbels’ Big Lie cannot be separated from decades of stochastic terrorism and incitements to political violence against liberals, progressives and other “enemies” by the right-wing propaganda media, right-wing churches and religious organizations, Republican leaders and the “conservative” movement more generally.

Laughter cannot drown out the warnings, as Max Boot observes in a recent op-ed at the Washington Post:

Former president Donald Trump’s secret weapon has always been that it is hard for educated people to take him seriously. He acts like a preening buffoon with pretensions of grandeur — doltish and delusional in equal measure. Everything about him, from his orange tan and bad combover to his insistence that he is a “very stable genius,” screams: Are you kidding me? …

If Trump runs again, he will easily win the Republican nomination. Despite his unpopularity with Democrats and independents, he might even win the presidency again — particularly if his opponent is not President Biden, a blue-collar White guy, but Vice President Harris, a woman of color who is a perfect target for his racist and sexist taunts. Even if he doesn’t return to the White House, Trump could provoke more political violence, as he did on Jan. 6.

I’m relieved that the news media are not covering Trump’s every inane and ignorant pronouncement, as they did in 2015 and 2016, because that only increased his appeal. But, please, don’t make the same mistake we made back then of assuming he is not a viable candidate for the presidency.

Steve Schmidt, a former Republican strategist and co-founder of the Lincoln Project (he has since resigned from the organization), was even more direct. Last Saturday, he sounded the alarm via Twitter:

Some have posited that Trump’s loss, social media bans, and inability to sustain a blog are evidence of his decline, irrelevance and diminishment. These people are fools and their delusions are dangerous for the survival of American democracy. We are at an hour that requires people to wake up. Trump is powerful and he is a clear and present danger to our democratic society and national stability.

Trump has the ability to kill and destroy with the spoken word. His words; his lies, delusions and conspiracy theories have caused bloodshed. That is what happened on January 6th. His words will surely kill again.

These are warnings from former Republicans, who understand all too well the monster that is today’s Republican Party and Trump’s neofascist movement. They helped to create the monster, after all, and made this moment possible. They must live with that — and the American people must heed their warnings if the country’s democracy is to be saved.

In a new essay at his website, historian Timothy Snyder — author of the bestselling book “On Tyranny” — also explores the impending disaster that awaits American democracy:

9/11 led us to the invasion of Iraq, the foreign policy disaster that marked our century. 1/6 leads us to a catastrophe on that scale, but inside our own country. It is not at all clear that the plan to take power undemocratically will work, but it is clear that it will generate a lot of resistance. African Americans are right now being told the absurd lie that the problem in America is that it is too easy for them to vote. As the scenario plays out, all Americans will face an open denial of everything they have been told about their country. 

In such a scenario, it is not clear what the armed forces or civil servants would do. Most likely they would fracture. An oath to defend the Constitution is hard to honor when it is unclear what it means. Both those who were stealing an election and those who were defending votes would claim that the Constitution was on their side. 

The Supreme Court would rule, but would anyone pay attention? Those who have decided to overthrow democracy believe that the Court is on their side, which is why they are proceeding as they are. If they were proven wrong in January 2025, it would be too late; they would not change course. Those who are defending voting rights expect the Court to rule against voting, since that is what it generally does. If the Court rules against voting in the setting of antidemocratic regime change, this will seem screamingly illegitimate to a very large number of Americans. No Court, no Constitution. No Constitution, no rule of law. No rule of law, widespread violence. The collapse of the United States follows. 

America is rapidly approaching the endgame of democracy. In this moment, the American people and their leaders will either decide to do the hard work necessary to be a true and representative multiracial democracy or instead surrender to fake populism and one-party white supremacist rule.

At this moment I am worried that the epitaph for America’s democracy will read, “We laughed — and when we stopped laughing all we could do was cry.”

Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk pay no taxes — but the right wrings its hands about “privacy”

A bombshell report published by ProPublica on Tuesday detailed leaked IRS filings suggesting that some of the wealthiest individuals in the U.S. pay next to nothing in federal taxes, despite reaping hundreds of millions or more in annual income. But now the report itself has become enmeshed in controversy over journalistic ethics and privacy concerns, especially the question of when it’s newsworthy to reveal personal financial information of private citizens.

ProPublica’s report, which relies on IRS records whose source remains unknown, provides a startling glimpse into the true extent of tax avoidance schemes among the richest one-tenth of the one percent.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, for example, paid zero federal income taxes for both 2007 and 2011. Tesla founder Elon Musk paid nothing for 2018. Investor and liberal philanthropist George Soros also paid zilch over the course of three years. 

Other billionaires detailed in the report include former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, who paid $70.7 million in federal income taxes in 2017, despite claiming $1.9 billion in personal income. (That represents roughly a 3.7% tax rate, when it arguably should have been around 52%.) 

Billionaire investor and businessman Carl Icahn deducted large interest payments on his companies’ debts, allowing him to avoid federal income tax payments in 2016 and 2017. That scheme involved taking out large bank loans to invest in the stock market, because the interest paid on those loans is tax-deductible, offsetting investment gains and other income.  

Other billionaires lowered their taxable income by claiming they had incurred net losses. In 2011, for example, Bezos alleged he had lost money, although that his wealth of roughly $18 billion held steady from the previous year. He paid no federal income taxes thanks to his “investment losses,” which in fact earned him a $4,000 family tax credit. 

ProPublica also reports that corporate taxes do not make up for the tax losses resulting from these billionaire tax-avoidance schemes, largely because the corporate tax rate has plummeted in recent years, in the wake of tax cuts enacted by the Republican Congress in 2017 and signed by then-President Trump. Additionally, many companies — such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple — can circumvent a large proportion corporate taxes by claiming that their profits were made abroad.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki told the Washington Post after the report’s release that “there is more to be done to ensure that corporations, individuals who are at the highest income are paying more of their fair share,” adding, “Hence, it’s in the president’s proposals. His budget and part of how he’s proposing to pay for his ideas will go ahead.”

Following the report’s release, however, numerous commentators rebuked ProPublica for publishing the leaked information, arguing that doing so was an unethical invasion of privacy, regardless of the wealth of the individuals involved.

The Wall Street Journal wrote in a Tuesday editorial that “the real scandal … is that someone leaked confidential IRS information about individuals to serve a political agenda.”

“It’s worth noting that we are also witnessing a massive assault on privacy and violation of federal law,” wrote Charlie Sykes, editor-at-large at The Bulwark, an anti-Trump conservative site. “So, we have to ask ourselves, do norms matter only [sic] they involve people we like? Do we uphold the rule of law, except when it is in our ideological interest to break it?”

Former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson, who has spent the past year or more downplaying the dangers of the coronavirus pandemic. joined the chorus of condemnation, arguing that “the same journalists who wouldn’t touch Hunter Biden’s laptop have no problem going to town on these documents.”

“This violation of individual privacy and confidentiality could easily happen to ordinary Americans and small businesses,” said Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., “and that is what concerns me.”

ProPublica issued a lengthy pre-emptive response in anticipation of exactly such criticism, contending that “the public interest in an informed debate outweighs privacy considerations.”

“Many will ask about the ethics of publishing such private data,” the statement continued. “We are doing so — quite selectively and carefully — because we believe it serves the public interest in fundamental ways, allowing readers to see patterns that were until now hidden.”

According to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig, federal authorities are already investigating the source of the leak.

Joe Manchin’s “highly suspicious” reversal on voting bill follows donation from corporate lobby

Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat famous for his vow to maintain the Senate filibuster and thereby scuttle much of President Biden’s agenda, recently published an op-ed opposing the For the People Act, Democrats’ whopping voting-rights bill. That article strongly echoed talking points from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — and appeared shortly after the influential pro-business lobby resumed donations to Manchin’s campaign after nearly a decade.

Manchin, who co-sponsored the sweeping voting rights legislation in 2019 and has supported filibuster reform in the past, became the first Senate Democrat to oppose the bill this week while reiterating his opposition to changing the filibuster, a key roadblock to voting reform. Skeptical members of Manchin’s party have questioned the reasons for his opposition, especially after after a recent poll found that a majority of West Virginia voters support changing the filibuster rules and that 79% of the state’s voters — including a large majority of Republicans — support the For the People Act.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., suggested that Manchin’s opposition to the proposal and filibuster reform may really be about measures in the bill aimed at cracking down on lobbyists and dark money.  

“This is probably just as much a part of Joe Manchin’s calculus than anything else,” she told MSNBC on Tuesday. “You look at the Koch brothers and you look at organizations like the Heritage Foundation and conservative lobby groups that are doing a victory lap … over the fact that Manchin refuses to change on the filibuster. And I think that these two things are very closely intertwined.”

Americans for Prosperity, a group backed by billionaire Republican donor Charles Koch, has explicitly targeted Manchin in its pressure campaign to defeat the legislation even though their own data shows that provisions cracking down on dark money are highly popular, including among Republican voters. Heritage Action, the advocacy arm of the Koch-backed Heritage Foundation, organized a rally earlier this year to pressure Manchin to oppose the bill. Heritage Action has also partnered with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to craft model voting-restriction laws for Republican state legislators. A Heritage Action organizer boasted in a video obtained by Mother Jones that the group was behind key provisions of the controversial law recently passed in Georgia.

“Joe Manchin isn’t moved by leaders who have spent decades organizing for civil rights,” Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., tweeted after Manchin that said his position on the For the People Act had not changed after meeting with civil rights leaders on Tuesday. “Manchin isn’t moved by the views of his constituents. Manchin isn’t moved by GOP voter suppression bills in 43 states. Because Manchin is only moved by corporate donors and their agenda.”

One group that has been a major cheerleader of Manchin’s staunch opposition is the aforementioned U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a powerful pro-business group that also receives Koch money and generally supports Republicans.

Manchin’s op-ed announcing his opposition echoed the Chamber’s talking points in a letter to senators alleging that “partisan” legislation would “undermine” public confidence in democracy, even though Republicans across the country have advanced and enacted overtly partisan bills aimed at restricting ballot access.

“When it comes to this ‘bipartisan’ argument, I gotta tell you, I don’t buy it,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Joe Manchin has voted for bills that have not been bipartisan before. Look at the American Rescue Plan. So this is not just about bipartisanship.”

The op-ed came after the Chamber, which has launched an expensive lobbying effort against the bill, resumed donations to Manchin’s campaign for the first time since 2012. Reuters described this flow of corporate dollars as a “reward” for Manchin’s opposition to numerous Biden administration’s initiatives, as well as his stalwart support for the filibuster, which has almost certainly doomed the For the People Act. 

“The timing of Sen. Manchin’s announcement is highly suspicious,” Kyle Herrig, president of the progressive government watchdog group Accountable.US, said in a statement to Salon. “Not long after the Chamber reopened their corporate checkbook for him, he made his opposition to voting rights known. Now millions of Americans may face significant roadblocks when they try to exercise their constitutional right to vote. Once again the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has found a way to stop any progress on voting rights from progressing on Capitol Hill.”

Manchin’s office and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce did not respond to questions from Salon.

The Chamber is one of the most powerful trade groups in the country, spending more than $80 million on lobbying last year, second only to the National Association of Realtors. It is the single largest lobbying spender this year, dropping over $17 million to influence policy, nearly twice as much as the pharmaceutical trade group PhRMA. The group has been aggressively lobbying against the For the People Act since 2019, spending more than $129 million on opposing the bill and related issues since it was first introduced in the House, according to lobbying disclosures.

While the U.S. Chamber’s corporate members pay for its lobbying, its PAC donations come from the group’s executives, staff members and other affiliated individuals. The Chamber’s PAC made a contribution to Manchin in the first quarter of this year, its first since 2012. Shortly after, the Chamber issued an alert to all members of the Senate threatening to include “votes related to this bill in our annual How They Voted scorecard” and mentioning some of its specific provisions, including a requirement to disclose big donors and communications with candidates, a plan to strengthen the Federal Election Commission, and public financing of campaigns.

“The Chamber is deeply troubled by efforts at the state and federal level to enact election law changes on a partisan basis,” the letter said. “Changes enacted on a partisan basis are the most likely to erode access and security and undermine public confidence and the willingness of the American people to trust and accept future election outcomes.”

Manchin echoed that argument in his op-ed, writing that he believes “partisan voting legislation will destroy the already weakening binds of our democracy” and “partisan policymaking won’t instill confidence in our democracy — it will destroy it.”

Both the Chamber and Manchin have called for lawmakers to advance voting legislation on a “bipartisan” basis, although it’s inarguable that one party is seeking to expand voting rights while the other is actively trying to restrict them. Manchin has claimed there is bipartisan support for the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would require states to pre-clear voting changes with the Justice Department. That’s technically true: Exactly one Republican senator (Lisa Murkowski of Alaska) has expressed support for the bill. But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell declared on Tuesday that his party would not support the legislation and denied that there was any threat to voting rights.

Manchin, whose ties to the U.S. Chamber date back to at least 2010, when he was West Virginia governor, drew public praise from Chamber president and CEO Suzanne Clark earlier this year for his “principled stand” on preserving the filibuster, which is the most significant roadblock to the voting legislation.

Nick Vaugh, a lobbyist for the Chamber, presented Manchin with a “Spirit of Free Enterprise Award” in 2019, which the group says it gives to lawmakers who have supported its positions at least 70% of the time.

As it happens, Vaugh has been registered to lobby senators on the For the People Act and other issues since 2019, according to federal disclosure forms.

“It’s unfortunate Sen. Manchin has bought into the U.S. Chamber’s smears against the For The People Act,” Herrig told Salon. “And just like the Chamber, he is wrong — there is nothing ‘partisan’ about protecting the right to vote for all Americans. In carrying the Chamber’s water, Sen. Manchin is only inviting further voter suppression.”

The Chamber’s pressure on senators to oppose the voting rights legislation comes as many of its corporate members have joined forces to oppose Republican voting restrictions in state legislatures. 

Accountable.US has launched a six-figure “Drop the Chamber” campaign challenging corporations like Microsoft, Target and Salesforce to back up their public support of voting rights by cutting ties with the group, accusing it of “siding against millions of Americans who will be subject to these racist voter suppression laws.”

“It’s on Chamber members that claim to support voting rights to end their relationships and speak out against this assault on Americans’ rights to vote,” Herrig said, “because anything less makes them complicit.”

Trump DOJ waged secret, “highly unusual” court battle with CNN to obtain reporter’s email logs

CNN’s lead attorney revealed this Wednesday that the Trump administration battled with the network for half a year to obtain the email records of a reporter, and demanded that it all be done in secret.

In July of 2020, then-Attorney General William Barr demanded two months’ of CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr’s 2017 email logs. According to CNN, the pursuit represented “a highly unusual and unrelenting push for journalists’ records,” which included “putting CNN general counsel David Vigilante under a gag order prohibiting him from sharing any details about the government’s efforts with anyone beyond the network’s president, top attorneys at CNN’s corporate parent and attorneys at an outside law firm.”

While CNN acknowledges that it’s not uncommon for a media organization to be subpoenaed for a reporter’s records, what stands apart “is the total secrecy that surrounded the order, the months-long court proceeding and the Trump administration’s unwillingness to negotiate.”

Read the full report over at CNN.

Fox segment goes off the rails as hosts decry activists “trying to take down white culture”

The hosts of Fox & Friends on Wednesday claimed that white people are being “marginalized” by an effort to provide racial justice education in schools.

Hosts Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt and Brian Kilmeade expressed angst while discussing the possibility that schools are teaching “critical race theory,” a term that they did not define.

“They’re not acknowledging any improvement in our culture, the gains made, how we are more equal, even despite our faults, than any other country,” Kilmeade said. “The other thing is they are not only trying to raise up minorities and make sure the playing field is even, they’re trying to take down the white culture.”

“This generation of Americans wonders why aren’t we all Americans?” he continued. “Why are we being marginalized on a daily basis based on our gender, our sexuality, and the color of our skin. And it’s not even subtle! It is actually out there! It is written in black and white!”

Kilmeade went on to compare critical race theory with “other civil rights movements in our past.”

“We’ve seen the enemy and it’s white people and they wonder why people have a problem with it!” he exclaimed.

Earhardt argued that children should be taught Bible lessons instead of having discussions about race.

“It’s pretty simple what most families in America are teaching their kids and that’s the Golden Rule, to love others as yourself,” Earhardt opined. “Don’t see people for skin color. We look to the Bible in my house. We love everybody. Everyone was created by God and we live in this great country where you can be anything that you want to be and you can be an individual.”

“They’re trying to lump them in a group based on race,” she added. “I want my daughter to be autonomous. She can stand on her own two feet. She can be an individual and be exactly who she wants to be and using the desires that God has given her for a bright future.”

Doocy suggested that racism has been solved because former President Barack Obama is a Black man.

“It was just a couple of years ago where the United States of America elected an African-American as president of the United States,” he said. “You know, the biggest entertainers, the biggest sports stars are African-Americans.”

Watch the video below from Fox News:

Biden DOJ to “vigorously” defend religious schools’ right to discriminate against LGBTQ students

The Justice Department said in a court filing Wednesday that it plans to “vigorously” defend an exemption allowing religious schools to discriminate against LGBTQ students, a surprise announcement with phrasing that worried activists who saw it as promising action even beyond what the law currently requires.

It was the latest development in a First-Amendment lawsuit, Hunter v. Department of Education, in which 40 students at religious universities sued the government for providing funding to schools with discriminatory policies. The DOJ filing came in response to a motion from the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), a group of religious schools whose members were named in the suit, which argued that the Biden Administration “may be openly hostile” to the group’s beliefs and therefore not trustworthy enough to litigate the case.

In response, the DOJ said in a 12-page court filing that it will “vigorously” defend the religious exemption in federal civil rights law that allows religious schools that receive federal funding to discriminate against LGBTQ students, arguing that it “shares the same ultimate objective” as the Christian schools named in the case — “namely, to uphold the Religious Exemption as it is currently applied.”

CCCU President Shirley Hoogstra told The Washington Post, which first reported the news, that the organization was “pleased they want to defend religious exemption.”

But the motion shocked LGBTQ advocates who suggested that the filing “went further than just an obligation to defend an existing law,” according to the report.

“What this means is that the government is now aligning itself with anti-LGBTQ hate in order to vigorously defend an exemption that everyone knows causes severe harm to LGBTQ students using taxpayer money,” Paul Carlos Southwick, director of the Religious Exemption Accountability Project, which filed the lawsuit, told the Post. “It will make our case harder if the federal government plans to vigorously defend it like they have indicated.”

The schools in the lawsuit argue they have a First Amendment right to promote religious views about sexuality, while the lawsuit argues the federally-backed discrimination is unconstitutional.

“The Plaintiffs seek safety and justice for themselves and for the countless sexual and gender minority students whose oppression, fueled by government funding, and unrestrained by government intervention, persists with injurious consequences to mind, body and soul,” the lawsuit, which was filed in Oregon federal court, reads. “The Department’s inaction leaves students unprotected from the harms of conversion therapy, expulsion, denial of housing and healthcare, sexual and physical abuse and harassment, as well as the less visible, but no less damaging, consequences of institutionalized shame, fear, anxiety and loneliness.”

The religious exemption is part of Title IX, which bans sex-based discrimination at schools that receive federal funding. The Education Department is conducting a review of Title IX regulations but the DOJ said in its filing that “at this stage of the litigation, it is premature to conclude that the federal defendants would neglect to raise, or be ‘ill-equipped’ to develop, effective arguments in support of the religious exemption.”

The filing added to growing Democratic criticism of Attorney General Merrick Garland after the DOJ surprised many by backing former President Donald Trump and former Attorney General Bill Barr in multiple cases.

“Merrick Garland has so far been absolutely horrible,” wrote Ryan Cooper, a columnist at The Week.

During the presidential campaign, President Joe Biden slammed Trump for using the DOJ as his “own law firm.” But the DOJ on Monday filed a brief seeking to represent Trump in a defamation lawsuit filed by rape accuser E. Jean Carroll, arguing that he could not be sued for defamation because he made the comments in question as part of his official duties as president.

“Then-President Trump’s response to Ms. Carroll’s serious allegations of sexual assault included statements that questioned her credibility in terms that were crude and disrespectful,” the filing said, calling Trump’s actions “unnecessary and inappropriate” but arguing that he is immune from legal action under the Westfall Act, which shields federal employees.

The White House quickly sought to distance itself from the DOJ’s effort, saying in a statement that it “was not consulted by D.O.J. on the decision to file this brief or its contents.”

“President Biden and his team have utterly different standards from their predecessors for what qualify as acceptable statements,” said White House spokesman Andrew Bates.

Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan told The New York Times it was “truly shocking that the current Department of Justice would allow Donald Trump to get away with lying about it.”

The DOJ previously appealed the full release of a controversial department memo discussing why Trump should not have been charged with obstruction of justice in former special counsel Bob Mueller’s Russia investigation, which found strong evidence that Trump tried to impede the probe. The release was ordered by Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who excoriated the DOJ for lying to her about the contents of the memo to keep it secret, arguing that Barr had already decided not to charge Trump before the memo laying out legal reasoning for the decision.

The Garland DOJ previously backed Trump’s moves to restrict immigration and urged a federal judge to dismiss lawsuits against Trump and Barr over their alleged decision to tear gas Black Lives Matter protesters near the White House so Trump could hold a photo-op in front of a nearby church — an allegation that was proven false Wednesday by a watchdog report which found the DC Metropolitan Police, and not the U.S. Park Police under Trump and Barr’s control, were the ones who tear-gassed the crowd that day in Lafayette Square.

“Garland has quietly emerged as Donald Trump’s unwitting hatchet man, doing almost everything in his power to protect the lawless former president’s legacy,” Jeff Hauser and Max Moran of the progressive Revolving Door Project argued in a New Republic op-ed Tuesday. “Every day Biden keeps Garland in charge of his legal agenda is a day Trumpism is normalized, and the inevitable battle against it in 2024 gets that much harder.”

The DOJ has also come under fire after it was revealed that the DOJ under Trump secretly obtained the phone records of journalists at The New York Times, Washington Post, and CNN. After the reports, Biden vowed that he would not “let that happen” while he was president. But days later, a lawyer representing the Times’ journalists said the Biden administration had imposed a gag order on his clients to prevent the information from becoming public — and mounted an unsuccessful campaign to obtain their email logs as well. 

“The Biden Justice Department not only allowed these disturbing intrusions to continue — it intensified the government’s attack on First Amendment rights before finally backing down in the face of reporting about its conduct,” Fred Ryan, the publisher of the Washington Post, wrote in an op-ed last week. “This escalation, on Biden’s watch, represents an unprecedented assault on American news organizations and their efforts to inform the public about government wrongdoing.”

How “Kim’s Convenience” went from a beacon of representation to a lesson in racist storytelling

In a disappointing twist following positive reviews for the fifth and final season of beloved comedy “Kim’s Convenience,” two of its lead Asian Canadian stars have since spoken out about racism and problems with off-screen lack of representation.

“Kim’s Convenience,” created by Ins Choi and Kevin White and originally based on a play, follows the story of a Korean Canadian family that runs a convenience store, and explores the hilarious, relatable and at times poignant pieces of their everyday life. The New York Times has called the show “quietly revolutionary” for its lack of explanation for certain aspects of Korean culture, thus catering specifically to Korean and Asian audiences. 

That’s why recent revelations by two of the show’s lead stars of Asian descent reveal an important truth: representation isn’t just about what we see onscreen — it must also include what takes place off-screen, and who occupies seats of decision-making power.

In a lengthy Facebook post, Simu Liu, who plays eldest son Jung Kim on “Kim’s Convenience,” detailed examples of racism that included racist storylines, “overwhelmingly white” writers and producers, a lack of opportunity for the show’s Asian actors to grow or influence and shape the show’s direction, and “horsepoop” pay for the predominantly Asian actors compared with the cast of fellow CBC show “Schitt’s Creek,” among other complaints. Liu also noted how, upon the show’s ending, a spinoff show was offered to its sole white actor, rather than any of the other Asian cast members.

“Many of us in the cast were trained screenwriters with thoughts and ideas that only grew more seasoned with time,” Liu wrote. “But those doors were never opened to us in any meaningful way.”

Liu’s costar, Jean Yoon, who played Liu’s mother on the show, also spoke out this week, writing on Twitter that scripts for the fifth season included “overtly racist” storylines. Like Liu, Yoon also noted how “Kim’s Convenience” co-creator Choi had an increasingly “diminished presence on set” as the show progressed, while White stayed on as showrunner.

Yoon also wrote in a tweet replying to a since-deleted tweet criticizing Liu’s Facebook post, “the lack of Asian female, especially Korean writers in the writers room of Kims made my life VERY DIFFICULT & the experience of working on the show painful.”

The cast members’ revelations about how lack of behind-the-scenes representation or meaningful support for its Asian cast come at a time of growing dialogue about anti-Asian racism and violence in society. Yet sadly, their experience is universal among many shows and projects with diverse onscreen representation, without the off-screen diversity to back them up or provide growth opportunities and support to the people who are the faces of these projects.

A recent example of this unfortunate reality is the British spy thriller series “Killing Eve,” which received backlash last year for its predominantly white writers room, despite starring Korean Canadian Sandra Oh as one of its leads. Some have questioned the extent to which diversity on or off-screen can meaningfully “fix” racism on its own, especially following the Amazon series “Them,” an anthology that explores the expansive history of racial terrorism in the U.S. and consequently boasts a predominantly Black cast in its first season. 

“Them” has been widely criticized for serving primarily as racist trauma or torture “porn” for the white gaze, and white audiences who can actually be shocked by such graphic and dehumanizing displays of racist brutality. Vulture called the show “pure degradation porn,” and wrote, “It is a stunning refutation to Hollywood’s belief that representation behind and in front of the camera will fix its inherent racism.”

Other shows with leads of color or diverse casts have straightforwardly mirrored the complaints put forward by the “Kim’s Convenience” stars. Just last month, Maureen Ryan reported for Salon that a white, male showrunner on “All Rise,” a popular drama about a Black woman judge, had “exhibited troubling behavior around race and gender, and effectively drove away staffers, including a large number of people of color,” prior to his firing. The show was recently canceled.

Surface-level representation for people of color and all marginalized people alone will never be enough, on its own, to meaningfully address systemic racism. We already knew that. Recent revelations from the “Kim’s Convenience” staff, as well as other disappointing case studies in asymmetrical on and off-screen representation, and stories of people of color but written for white people, add a new dimension to this issue. Representation is a layered, multifaceted issue — one that involves fundamental shifts and redistributions in power onscreen, behind the scenes, and perhaps even in who is centered as an audience.

GOP Rep. Louie Gohmert mocked after asking if National Forest Service can alter Earth’s orbit

Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, sought on Wednesday at a congressional hearing to understand whether or not the U.S. Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management can shift the moon’s orbit.

The question posed by Gohmert was thereafter quickly mocked by Twitter users, which made it a trending topic on the platform throughout the day.

“I understand from what’s been testified to, the Forest Service and BLM [Bureau of Land Management], you want very much to work on climate change,” Gohmert stated while questioning Forest Service Supervisor Jennifer Eberlien at the virtual hearing. “I was informed by the past director of NASA that they have found that the moon’s orbit is changing slightly, and so is the Earth’s orbit around the sun, and we know there’s been significant solar flare activity.”

“And so is there anything the National Forest Service or BLM can do to change the course of the moon’s orbit or the Earth’s orbit around the sun?” the congressman proceeded to ask. “Obviously, they would have profound effects on our climate.”

Eberlien responded, “I would have to follow up with you on that one, Mr. Gohmert!” 

In a slick Twitter response to Gohmert’s question of the Forest supervisor, Democratic California representative Ted Lieu replied, “I know the answer to the question by Rep. Louie Gohmert. Captain Marvel. She can alter planetary orbits with her superpowers. I’m going to work on a bipartisan resolution asking for her help.” 

This isn’t the first time Gohmert has been the subject of ridicule. At the end of May, the lawmaker said while speaking on the House floor that his Standardized Test score would likely “shock everyone that thinks he’s the dumbest guy in Congress.”

“Tigre Gente” director got into a boat chase with jaguar poachers while filming documentary

Elizabeth Unger is no stranger to the wilderness. The National Geographic Explorer and filmmaker has literally been to every continent on the globe, but as she spoke with Salon by email about her debut feature film, “Tigre Gente,” you could hear the wonder in her voice as she recalled the experience.

“I very fondly remember my director of photography, Edward Roqueta, and I staying for weeks on the fringe of Madidi National Park in a little jungle hostel – sharing a room since we were absolutely broke – waiting for something exciting to happen,” Unger recalled. “We spent a huge amount of time with the rangers. When we filmed them on patrol inside the park, we camped out with them on the riverbed under a stunning display of stars.”

She described Madidi National Park — a national park in Bolivia’s upper Amazon river basin noted for its biological diversity and being one of the largest protected areas in the world — as “one of the most breathtaking places on Earth.”

“Experiencing the rangers’ lives in that beautiful area with my director of photography, who is a good friend of mine, is something I will never forget,” Unger told Salon.

Yet in this vital and beautiful slice of nature, there is also ugliness. In “Tigre Gente,” Unger tells the story of the illegal jaguar trade that threatens to destroy the charismatic Bolivian animal and chronicles individual efforts to thwart it. They are met with frightening resistance, including a harrowing confrontation on a boat. The stories of Marcos Uzquiano, Director of the Madidi Park, and Hong Kong journalist Laurel Chor, at times seem like something out of a novel rather than real life.

In the post-“Tiger King” era, it is important to remember that big cats continue to be hunted down and otherwise endangered by human beings for reasons that would seem silly if the consequences weren’t so tragic. “Tigre Gente” has its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 11. 

I interviewed Unger about jaguar conservation, Western misconceptions about the wildlife trade, and the mysterious “aura” of these majestic big cats; as always, this interview has been lightly edited for clarity and context.

What inspired you to make this documentary?

In 2009, I volunteered at a wildlife refuge in Bolivia to help rehabilitate jaguars and other wild cats who were victims of the illegal wildlife trade. That experience stayed with me and eventually I was inspired to work on a project about wildlife trafficking in South America — especially since most of the stories in the media were focused on the poaching of African elephants and rhinos. When I learned about this new jaguar trade for the Chinese market from Bolivian contacts in 2015, I knew from my background in wildlife that no one in the conservation world was really talking about it. I decided that a creative project, such as a documentary, could make as much (or even more) of a difference than an academic paper on the subject. I began to teach myself how to direct and produce in 2015, and now, six years later, the film is finally debuting. 

Were there ever moments where you felt physically at danger while filming?

Yes. The boat chase scene in the film was actually filmed by me and that was a very, very risky moment for the rangers and myself. These types of chases are not common. When the poachers tried to ram the motor of the rangers’ boat, we could have easily capsized and gotten swept away in the river. The poachers were close to attacking us as well and, because the rangers are not allowed to be armed, that would have made for an extremely dangerous scenario. Unfortunately in these situations, the rangers are only able to rely on their words – the only weapon they have to curb illegal activity in the park.

What are your personal views on the subjects of your documentary?

Marcos [Uzquiano, director of the Madidi Park] and Laurel [Chor, a journalist] are two of the most impressive people I’ve met in my life, for very different reasons. 

Marcos grew up right outside Madidi National Park in a rural community. He was the valedictorian of his high school class and eventually rose through the ranks to become the director of the park. He is extremely passionate and determined to protect his home, Madidi, from any interests that seek to exploit it, at all cost. He risks his life every day doing his job. Marcos is a true hero.

Laurel is someone I know from the National Geographic Explorer community as we are both grantees. Not only is Laurel a legitimate badass and someone I consider fearless, she’s extremely intelligent. She speaks four languages (Cantonese, English, French, and Mandarin), and she’s currently in the midst of a Masters program at Oxford. Laurel is a serious journalist who is not afraid to tackle tough issues, even at risk to herself and her family in Hong Kong. I admire her a great deal.

What did you learn about jaguars as animals — their personalities, so to speak — while making this film?

Our team was not lucky enough to see a jaguar in the wild – this is rare – but when we filmed jaguars at a wildlife refuge in Brazil, being so close to them in that capacity was an incredible experience. They really are such powerful creatures, you can feel it emanating from them when you’re nearby. Even the baby jaguars that we filmed were compelling in that sense – they’re a force you just can’t look away from. To me, jaguars are endlessly curious and intelligent. Their gaze pierces through you. And I wanted to honor that intensity and power in this film.

What did you learn about the Chinese wildlife trade? What are your views on it?

There are a lot of Western misconceptions about the Chinese wildlife trade that we hoped to counter with this film. For one, there’s a big misconception that most Chinese people want these types of illegal wildlife products, which is simply not true. China is a country of over a billion people, and unfortunately, even if an extremely small fraction of the population is actively looking to buy these parts, it will cause a huge impact.

In the process of this film I learned about Chinese culture and tradition as it pertains to wildlife consumerism. Chinese demand does not stem from wanting to kill wildlife for the sake of destroying and consuming it. It really comes from a place of respect and appreciation for these animals, that by consuming or using a product from their body, they are honoring this animal. The issue, however, is the amount of misinformation on the demand side regarding how these wildlife products are sourced. Some Chinese people believe, as you saw in the film, that these animals die naturally and their parts are harvested as not to let them go to waste. Some are simply uninformed and honestly don’t think to ask these types of questions. In the film we bring up the concept of eating beef versus jaguar trafficking. In the West, eating beef is commonplace regardless of the devastating negative effects it’s having on the environment. Trafficking jaguars is also devastating for the environment, but if Chinese consumers don’t understand that, it’s going to be hard to curb the demand – just like folks in the West who eat beef multiple times a day. The cultural norms are different and, in order to make any progress at all, we need to better understand the mentality behind the demand for these types of products.

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“Loki” is an enjoyable, aesthetic romp that feels smaller than the God of Mischief deserves

Each new TV variant of Marvel’s Cinematic Universe becomes a little less extraordinary than the last and more overt in its role as a Bifrost between past films and future ones. This was always the plan, and as long as audiences understand that, they can easily accept these shows for what they are.

Still, it’s strange for “Loki,” a series about a god, to feel smaller and, though it pains me to say so, like an average-to-good TV story. Given Tom Hiddleston’s beloved status among “Avengers” fans and the introduction of Owen Wilson to the franchise, it should feel more creatively expansive than it does. Instead it is entirely about its central pair and moreover, their familiar personas.

Still, Hiddleston and Wilson are marvelous together. No question there. Series head writer Michael Waldron correctly takes every opportunity to exploit the duo’s chemistry by pairing them up as frequently as possible within the two episodes made available for review.

And Wilson’s lawful, straitlaced agent Mobius M. Mobius splendidly complements Loki’s God of Mischief, imposing order on the Asgardian trickster’s chaotic tendencies whenever he can. He’s also very much being an “Owen Wilson” guy  to Hiddleston’s snippy, arrogant Loki which is what people want, yes? Entertainment is all about giving the people what they want.

Nevertheless, “Loki” sparks markedly less of the level of curiosity and fascination that marks the start of “WandaVision,” and little of the essential excitement woven throughout the premiere of “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.” It’s less of an experiment or a classic adventure than . . . a highly expositional small screen fable.

And “Loki” really should feel larger and sleeker than its predecessors given the title character’s prominence in the MCU.  Sam Wilson and Wanda Maximoff are the focus of their own respective comic book series, but in the Avengers movies both occupied support roles. Loki was the team-up’s first major adversary and benefited from a character deepening redemption arc afterward.

Until, that is – and I assume that if you’re reading this, you’re caught up on the movies – his road ended when Thanos snapped his neck in “Infinity War.”

Next to nothing is permanent in the realm of comic books, death included. In “Endgame” Marvel tosses him a life preserver when Steve Rogers, Tony Stark and Scott Lang went back in time and accidently allowed one the Infinity Stones, the Tesseract, to get back into Loki’s hands. He immediately vanished with it in his hands . . . which is where “Loki” picks up.

Before the Norse trickster can do too much damage he’s captured by the Time Variance Authority, the highly bureaucratic keepers of our sacred timeline. They neuter his powers, slap him in a jumpsuit and would have been done with him, if not for Mobius swooping in and deciding he can be useful.

A common aspect to all MCU shows is that it is tough to judge where they’re going by the first or second episodes, which is all critics have to work with at the moment. From what “Loki” reveals in those segments, it’s enjoyable enough and aesthetically potent, borrowing design influences from the late ’60s and ’70s – which may remind some people of another Marvel-rrelated TV property, “Legion.” The similar visuals add breeziness to this show’s tone as well, aided by Hiddleston and Wilson’s combined appeal. However, that FX show was substantially weirder, immediately more perplexing but seductively so. “Loki” lacks this. If anything the plot is excessively plain.

Waldron is also tasked with explaining, in some fashion, how the Marvel multiverse works while establishing rules for time travel, a framework Stark and Bruce Banner could only begin to translate. That’s a huge task for anyone, whether we’re talking about real geniuses or fictional. Doing so in a TV series format inevitably leads a viewer to see a lot of other shows in “Loki” too, primarily “Doctor Who,” “Rick and Morty” (for which Waldron wrote) maybe a bit of “The X-Files,” “Voyagers” and . . . “Timecop”? . . . along with the inevitable slew of flicks concerning the nature of reality and time travel, like “The Adjustment Bureau” and, um . . . “Timecop” (yes, again, but as a film).

Reads like some kind of chunky mash-up, doesn’t it? Devouring it will likely prove to be as effortless. Marvel has its addictive formula down pat.

That’s the part about “Loki” that bothers me a little, as if I had bitten into a supposedly premium sweet treat that tastes very much like an equally enjoyable and cheaper bodega snack. The packaging differs, and it’s marketed at a higher price point, but empty calories are empty calories.  

Still, to keep this metaphor going, if I wanted an Oreo, I would’ve bought a box of Oreos. And that makes me wonder whether this particular sandwich cookie is worth the extra time and narrative flab. Only for a moment though,  because who are we kidding? We’re definitely going to finish this. Gotta keep up with the franchise.

“Loki” leads to “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” which also links to “WandaVision.” That show first presented itself as a careful and pleasing homage to the TV sitcom, bewitching and bewildering viewers in doing so. But then it did an about face, revealing itself to be a rumination on despair, denial and the urge to retreat brought on by massive loss.

“The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” has a simpler directive in that its makers were made to explain the rough burden Sam Wilson shoulders in his choice to take up the Captain America mantle.

“Loki” is a character-driven show about a character we already know that was slapped by a hard reset. OK, fine. This Loki never contended with his mother’s murder or was force to ally with the brother he hated for the common goal of saving their home. In the mind of this Loki, Ragnarok hasn’t happened yet. Potential morality conflicts abound.

But the main thematic concerns of these opening two segments are the nature of good and evil and predestination. The Time Variance Authority is obsessively by the book, assuming a level of authority over this reality for the sake of ensuring order. Some, like Wunmi Mosaku’s Hunter B-15, take pleasure in maintaining the status quo through direct action and sanctioned violence. Others, such as Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s Judge Ravonna Renslayer, operate under a simple faith that powers guiding the TVA are all-knowing and righteous.

This gives Waldron and the writers an opportunity to sink into deeper themes about free will and the necessity of chaos, which may happen. But I also fear that the scripts may take the simpler and more obvious quick-and-dirty TV storytelling path of using “Loki” to redeem a classic villain or make him into an antihero, recycling a move that cha-cha-cha’d through most the aughts and the 2010s.

That led to stunning TV, but at six episodes “Loki” doesn’t have adequate time to shoot for such complexity. However, that is enough time to take an reductive approach to the most basic of themes about villainy and whether “bad” people may actually have a few good sides.

These are hunches, really, ones based on previous shows, some more enjoyable than others. That’s beside the point with “Loki,” which exists almost expressly as fan service, offering its elbow to safely walk us across this bridge in the franchise. It’s a handsome escort, certainly. But I do wonder how long it can hold up its end of a deeper conversation.

The first episode of “Loki” premieres Wednesday, June 9 on Disney+.

Arizona election audit funded by Trump allies’ dark money groups: reports

The embattled Arizona election recount, which has grown into a bizarre spectacle over the last few months, is reportedly being bankrolled by a coterie of high-money donors in Donald Trump’s inner circle through dark money groups that have a history of spreading baseless claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election. 

According to a review by The Guardian and OpenSecrets, the Arizona state Senate has paid for just a fraction of the recount’s operating expenses — $150,000 — while the rest of the cost is being covered largely by anonymous donors. In fact, the state Senate apparently had enough funds to pay for the audit itself, but ultimately chose not to, according to another report from the Arizona Mirror. 

One prominent financial backer is Voices and Votes, a 501(c)(4) organization led by Christina Bobb, an anchor for One America News Network (OANN), who at one point worked with former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

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. 

The audit is also being funded by Patrick Byrne, the the former chief executive of Overstock.com, who spoke at a pro-Trump rally in D.C. on Jan. 6, just before a throng of violent protesters raided the Capitol. Back in April, Byrne, who has reportedly chewed out U.S. representatives for not throwing more support behind the effort to overturn the election, established a non-profit called the America Project designed to funnel $1 million into the Arizona recount, according to the Mirror. Byrne also served as the head of another dark money group, called Defending the Republic, that alleged without evidence that the vote-counting machines in Maricopa County suffered from a wide-scale glitch that allotted a false number of votes to President Biden. 

Also in the mix is former Trump attorney L. Lin Wood, who has supported Trump’s effort to overturn the election in myriad ways, with a spate of lawsuits alleging systemic fraud. Wood’s non-profit reportedly donated $50,000 to Voices and Votes, though it remains unclear precisely how that money was spent. 

Arizona state Rep. Mark Finchem, who attended the Jan. 6 protest at the Capitol that later turned into a riot, has also poured money into the audit by way of his personal 501(c)(4) called Guardian Defense Fund, which is funding additional security services at the site of the audit, according to an interview with former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon.

Many have pointed out the irony of the audit’s dark money backers, since Republicans have vociferously fought against the use of private funds in election financing. Back in April, the Arizona state GOP prohibited election officials from taking in private grant money to pay for election organization – money that was otherwise a lifeline during the pandemic. 

“Ironically, after outlawing transparent philanthropic funding of election administration, used to assist all voters, regardless of party, during a global pandemic, the Arizona Senate now relies upon secret funding for their ‘audit,'” David Becker, the executive director for the Center for Election Innovation and Research, told The Guardian. 

Adrian Fontes, a Democratic official in Maricopa County, echoed to the paper: “It is wholly inappropriate that the Arizona state senate is hiding the mechanisms by which their sanctioned activity is being funded. The lack of transparency there is just grotesque.”

According to the Guardian, individuals in Trump’s network have been using Telegram – an encrypted instant messaging service which saw an influx of users following the removal of Parler from various online marketplaces – to coordinate their support of the recount. 

Eric Bana on making Aussie thriller “The Dry” in his hometown and escaping “the comedy straitjacket”

It was 8:30 a.m. or so in actor Eric Bana‘s home town of Melbourne, Australia, where he, like so many, has mostly been hunkered down during the pandemic. He graciously appeared on “Salon Talks” before his morning coffee to discuss his starring role in the engrossing new thriller “The Dry.” Bana was a producer on the film as well and worked closely with his friend Robert Connolly, who directed the film. 

In “The Dry,” Bana plays Aaron Falk, a federal agent living in Melbourne, Australia, as he returns to the small town of Kiewarra to attend his childhood best friend’s funeral in the small town he left 20 years ago under suspicion for the murder of his then-girlfriend. It’s a fine, Australian-sourced and produced whodunit that will leave you questioning everyone.

Based on the international best seller of the same name by novelist Jane Harper, “The Dry” clearly made sense to be adapted as a film, and Harper told press she was excited to hear that the book had been optioned so early, years ago, especially given it was not yet in print. Bana learned about the project over lunch with director Connolly, with whom he shares office space but has not worked with for over a decade. He liked the idea of playing Aaron, a complex character who leaves the audience guessing about whether he was actually involved in the unsolved murder or not.  

For those who have eagerly followed Bana’s career since his early days in Australia as a stand-up comedian and actor, saw him in Judd Apatow’s “Funny People” in 2007, and wonder why he seldom does comedic roles anymore, Bana shrugs. “I started getting offered these really cool dramatic parts, and I figured I’d done this other stuff for the last 10 years, so I wasn’t about to spoil the party,” he recalls. “I think early on, that was the only rule I had when I started doing work overseas, was ‘Don’t stuff this up! Don’t start doing comedies now!’,” Bana laughed.  “I had just gotten out of the comedy straitjacket, and I didn’t even know I had it on!” 

You can watch the “Salon Talks” interview here or read a transcript of it below.

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

So we’re talking about “The Dry.” You’re not only starring in the film, but also you have been integral, as I understand, to the production process. What attracted you to this script and the original book that was a best seller and to your title character of Aaron?

I just really loved Jane Harper’s book, “The Dry.” It was a wonderful page-turning whodunit thriller, but it had this incredible cinematic presence to it in the sense that she had located the story in a fictitious town of Kiewarra here in Victoria, where I live. And she’d just done the most incredible job of painting the landscape and the kind of characters that inhabit that part of the world really well. So I felt an emotional connection to the story straight away. I just felt like, “Oh, this is the land that I’m from. I understand this country and the characters within it.” And I really love the story of Aaron Falk and felt that there was a really good cinematic opportunity to expand on his character and to elevate the story as much as we could using the tools of cinema.

And then of course, my dear friend, Robert Connolly was attached to direct it. And Bruna Papandrea was our producer who had acquired the source material. And it all came together quite quickly as a result of that shared energy that we had for the project.

Now, when were you in production? This was pre-COVID, I assume?

It was. So we shot here at the beginning of 2019, which was the height of the drought here in Australia, pre-COVID just as the terrible season of bush fires was getting underway. And yeah, it was extremely dry out there as you see in the film. Fortunately for that area, they did get some rain after we left that winter, middle of that year. They did get a pretty good season, but yeah, it really affects the characters, it affects the landscape, and it affects the psychology, I think, of the people in that region, those long running droughts.

Is there a lot of discussion, I assume, after the widespread wildfires that continually happen and how many people and animals have been displaced about climate change and how to address it in your very specific part of the world?

There is. Look all over Australia. There’s a lot of hate on a lot of political parties here in Australia to do more. And they’re trying to strike that difficult balance between jobs and climate. And yeah, it’s a very contentious – no, not contentious. It’s a very hot topic down here for sure.

Aaron is really complicated, your character. We see him returning to his hometown where he’s still widely sort of reviled by many for committing a crime he says he didn’t commit and was exonerated four years prior. The movie lets us wonder a bit, did he do it or didn’t he – like any whodunit. So how do you approach playing characters with this kind of duality?

I was quite happy for Aaron to never really be let off the hook with the audience, even though he becomes our kind of writer, for want of a better term, in terms of how we follow the story and whose eyes we view it through. At the same time, every main character, at some point, has suspicion cast upon them. And I really enjoyed that structure. And that enabled me to, I guess, leave room for Aaron to be a bit of a mystery as well for the audience. And it was fun just from a structural point of view, knowing that at any point we could kind of swing the lens in a particular direction, particularly when it came time for the edit, to highlight one character over another and play with the audience’s point of view in terms of who they thought the person may or may not be. And Aaron doesn’t escape that, nor does our other brilliant character of Gretchen played by Genevieve O’Reilly. And I think that’s part of what makes the story unique, that our main characters are also not free of suspicion.

So “The Dry,” which you’re also a producer on, is the first film I understand that you’ve shot in your homeland in about a decade. Was it an intentional hiatus? Were you drawn elsewhere? And if so, why did you go back for this particular project?

No intentional hiatus. I actually live here. So the Australian scripts are on the same pile as all the other scripts. And I just shoot what I fall in love with. And obviously the pile is a lot smaller because of just in terms of the output of how many films we make. But Robert Connolly, the director and I, had worked together previously on “Romulus, My Father” about 11 years ago and have been looking since then to find another project. And in some ways I’m surprised it’s taken us this long and in other ways, I’m not because both those projects are of such a standard that they just don’t come along every couple of years. I mean, in any country.

So I have been looking actively. Obviously, I’d love to do more projects here. It was a novel thing to drive four or five hours to start and relocate for a few months, rather than fly 24 hours. I could get used to that. But yeah, I don’t have a kind of hard and fast rule about that stuff. Every script has to compete with each other and whichever one’s the best is the one I’ll say yes to.

Well, it seems that you picked an excellent one here. It’s, I understand, one of the top 15 grossing films of Australia already of all time. What do you think that success is owed to? For what reason do you think?

I think it’s a combination of things. I think we really wanted to make sure that our depiction of regional Australia was truly authentic and didn’t contain any caricature or archetypal portrayals, and a lot of Australian cinema that plays with the Outback can tend to be more broad in its themes. And that can be very entertaining and interesting, but we were really, really hyper specific to make this feel like you had just spent two hours in Kiewarra, and even though Kiewarra is a fictitious town, the area we shot in is real. This is how people from the city in Australia relate to the country. They relate to the country through these small regional towns. They don’t necessarily always relate to the country by being in the middle of the Outback. It’s a different kind of a thing. These are country towns that we drive through in order to get from A to B. They’re places we spend time in growing up and we understand them.

And so I think there was a real sense of recognition of that by the Australian public, who both people from the bush and the city went, “This is us. This is the true country Australia.” On top of that, we had this incredible story by Jane Harper. Like this film, this book would have worked incredibly well in any landscape around the world. We were just gifted the fact that Jane chose to set this story in a fictitious town in Victoria that we were able to create. So I think its hyper-specific nature helped it. And for whatever reason, that thing that you can’t bottle or manufacture, they just took it under their wing and just went forward and championed the film and turned up in droves and tell 20 people afterwards. And the film just had a life of its own that we couldn’t manufacture. So we’re thrilled with the result. I think we’re one of the three top grossing independent films here of all time. And yeah, we’re just really excited by the energy and the goodwill around the film.

Now, your career has really covered a wide swath of types of roles, which I think, as an actor is a real blessing to have that opportunity to choose everything from sort of comedic, violent thrillers like “Chopper” and then to blockbusters like “Black Hawk Down” and “The Hulk.” So how do you choose film roles from that pile? 

I have no rules, but I have rules in the sense that I didn’t have a path mapped out for myself. So I don’t have a strong adherence to, “Oh, it must be this size film, and it must be this kind of role.” I really, I mean, essentially I’m a character actor and I’m looking for characters and they may be the lead. They may be a supporting part. They may be in a British film. They may be in a American film. I’m in search of that challenge and that thing that’s going to interest me.

So I guess my career, as you reflect in terms of the eclectic nature of it, is probably a reflection of that. I don’t have a strong sense of, “Oh, you must only be the leading man.” I don’t think in those terms, which gives me a lot of freedom, and it means that I can move around and hopefully be available to directors who might want to offer you different parts to the ones they think you might find appealing. And I think it just keeps my world interesting for myself. And it means that I’m open to more things hopefully.

I don’t know how aware Americans are that you’re really funny because a lot of the roles that we’ve seen you in, at least more widely available roles, are more serious or they’re crime dramas or they’re military dramas. And not a lot of people know you were known in some circles for your many impressions. Are you still known for impressions? Can you do any good ones?

In the household, I am, but you’re right. I mean, stand-up comedy was my world for 10 years. And sketch comedy was how I cut my teeth and how a majority of Australians still will relate to me as the guy from the “Sketch Comedy Show,” which was similar to “Saturday Night Live.” And then I made the switch over to drama overseas and kind of never looked back and then sort of burnt out of the comedy side of things. And I never really felt a great sense of, “Well, I must now do American comedies because I must prove, I can’t have these Americans not know that I have this comedic background.” I was like, “Okay, well, whatever. They were offering me these really cool dramatic parts. I’ve done this other stuff for the last 10 years. I’m not about to go and spoil the party.” I think early on, that was about the only rule I had when I started my career overseas was just like, “Don’t go start doing comedies now.”

I just got out of the comedy straitjacket. It took me 10 or 12 years, and I didn’t even know you had that jacket on. Just keep it in the cupboard. So that was most definitely deliberate. And to this day, it doesn’t really bother me that a lot of American audiences are unaware of that. It’s like, “Okay. That’s just the way it is.” So I don’t get offered a lot of comedies, obviously, because of my background, but occasionally I do, and I enjoy, I really enjoyed, like the Ricky Gervais comedy “Special Correspondents.” I had an absolute ball doing that, and Ricky’s one of my comedic heroes and I love the man. So that was a real treat. So there might be another one in the future.

Anything else you want to share about “The Dry,” how people can find it, and what you’re working on next?

Yeah. Well, I understand that we’re in quite a few theaters around the country, but I guess for most of your audience, we’re accessible pay-per-view and streaming services like iTunes and other avenues. So the film is there ready to be consumed. We’re excited by that model. We have a wonderful partner in IFC who are distributing the film in the states, but this idea that people can access it so readily, so quickly really excites us. And we can say that people are going to the movie in really great numbers already, which is really exciting and exciting for us here to think that so many people are wanting to spend a couple hours in Kiewarra.

Major newspaper calls for Donald Trump to be criminally prosecuted

A major newspaper’s editorial board called for the prosecution of former president Donald Trump.

The editorial board for the Boston Globe made the case this week for holding Trump criminally accountable for his obstruction of justice, efforts to overturn his election loss in Georgia and inciting an insurrection Jan. 6 aimed at stopping the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral win, arguing that prosecution was the only way to ensure future presidents conducted themselves honorably and lawfully.

“There is only one way left to restore deterrence and convey to future presidents that the rule of law applies to them,” the board argued. “The Justice Department must abandon two centuries of tradition by indicting and prosecuting Donald Trump for his conduct in office.”

The editors agreed the decision to prosecute a former president for crimes committed in office was a heavy responsibility, but they argued that it was necessary to preserve the rule of law — and other democracies had successfully charged former leaders.

“That’s not a recommendation made lightly,” they wrote. “The longstanding reluctance to prosecute former leaders is based on legitimate concerns about the justice system being used to settle political scores. But filing charges against former leaders is not a radical step, either: Foreign democracies, including South Korea, Italy, and France, routinely manage to prosecute crooked former leaders without starting down a slippery slope to authoritarianism. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France was recently found guilty of bribery, a decade after his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, was convicted of corruption. France’s democracy and its image around the world remain intact.”

Trump may face prosecution for a variety of crimes allegedly committed before he entered the White House, but the editorial board said the twice-impeached one-term president must be treated differently from other chief executives because no president has ever acted so badly in office.

“A commander in chief tried his very best to subvert democracy,” they argued. “He attacked his own country. Five people died. Allowing him to go unpunished would set a far more dangerous precedent than having Trump stand trial. To reform the presidency so that the last four years are never repeated, the country must go beyond passing laws: It must make clear through its actions that no person, not even the president, is above them.”

Anti-vax doctor, an adviser to Mike Lindell, claims COVID vaccine will “magnetize” you

Steadfast anti-vaccination doctor Sherri Tenpenny, a confidant and adviser to MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, aired a number of unfounded and seemingly unhinged conspiracy theories regarding coronavirus vaccines on Tuesday before a hearing held by a health committee in the Ohio state legislature.

Tenpenny’s claims, which rapidly went viral on Twitter, included the suggestion that COVID-19 vaccination can render individuals “magnetized.” Tenpenny acknowledged that bizarre allegation was not supported by peer-reviewed research, but said instead that she had seen such claims “all over the internet.” 

“I’m sure you’ve seen the pictures all over the internet of people who have had these shots, and now they’re magnetized,” Tenpenny said while voicing her support for Ohio’s House Bill 248, “which includes a wish-list of items sought by vaccine opponents,” according to The Columbus Dispatch. “They can put a key on their forehead. It sticks. They can put spoons and forks all over them, and they can stick because now we think that there’s a metal piece to that,” she added. 

Tenpenny didn’t stop there, recycling another debunked conspiracy theory that particles in COVID vaccines can connect to 5G cellular towers. “There’s been people who have long suspected that there’s been some sort of an interface, yet to be defined interface, between what’s being injected in these shots and all of the 5G towers,” Tenpenny stated.

Later in the hearing came an episode the Dispatch article described as “show-and-tell”:

Joanna Overholt, a registered nurse from Strongsville, defended Tenpenny’s testimony and placed a key and a hairpin against her chest and neck.

“Explain to me why the key sticks to me. It sticks to my neck too. So, yeah, if somebody could explain this, that would be great,” she said as the key failed to stick to her neck. 

Numerous Salon requests for comment to Tenpenny’s office went unreturned. 

State Rep. Beth Liston, a Democrat who is also a doctor, pushed back against the claims made by Tenpenny, as the Dispatch reported. “We are hearing testimony on a bill that will lead to outbreaks of disease, and our invited ‘vaccine experts’ include a known conspiracy theorist talking about magnets and cell towers along with her followers,” Liston said. “The only benefit of this testimony is that it exposes who exactly supports HB248: individuals with absurd, uninformed and dangerous beliefs.”

Tenpenny, is a known vaccine opponent who frequently appears alongside MyPillow founder Mike Lindell on his failed Frank Speech website to expound on various conspiracy theories about the pandemic and COVID vaccines. 

Tenpenny’s supposed medical claims have been widely debunked. Reuters Fact Check reported in May: “Vaccines for COVID-19 do not contain metals or microchips that make recipients magnetic at the site of injection, physics and medical experts have told Reuters.”

The 5G wireless claim has also been deemed false by medical experts, both because there are no mysterious electronic “particles” in any vaccine and because “there’s no evidence that wireless communications — whether 5G or earlier versions — harm the immune system,” as the Associated Press noted in April of 2020, attributing that statement to Swedish scientist Myrtill Simko, who has researched the issue for decades.

Cable news needs to stop treating abortion like a political horse race and causing more harm

In a New York Times op ed from this week called “The Sound of Silence on Abortion,” author Linda Greenhouse ponders why the same institutions and corporations that have taken a stand on issues like voting rights have often turned a blind eye to abortion rights — especially at this time of surging legislative attacks, and a Supreme Court case that could decimate Roe v. Wade. 

“It’s possible I’ve missed something, but I’ve been listening hard, and so far all I’ve heard is the sound of silence,” Greenhouse writes, of lack of action and solidarity from these institutions on the recent Texas abortion ban, and the existential threat at the Supreme Court.

Despite the silence from corporations who conditionally posture as advocates when they predict doing so is profitable, abortion is a popular, evergreen topic among cable media and political pundits. But the only thing as frustrating and predictable as corporate silence is mainstream media and commentators making a political game show out of the existential fight for bodily autonomy.

In a recent segment on how a key abortion case at the Supreme Court could affect the outcome of the 2022 midterms, NBC political reporter Sahil Gupta said, “We can be pretty confident the right is going to be happy about this, and if they are big rulings, this creates an opportunity for Democrats, because on the issue of Roe v Wade, polling shows as much as 70% of the public supports that decision.”

He continued, “This all creates an opportunity for Democrats to say, OK we’re going to lose at the Supreme Court to galvanize voters and the majority of the country who agree with them on these issues and say, ‘You may not be happy with what happened in court but you should show up and vote for politicians who are going to try to counteract these laws.'”

In other words, ahead of major rulings from the court, including Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, a case on a 15-week abortion ban in Mississippi that could devastate abortion access, this segment focused on one thing in particular that the case could affect: the 2022 midterm elections. Not women and pregnant people, not people of color and the poor, who are more impacted by bans and restrictions on reproductive care — instead, in the weeks since the Supreme Court announced it would hear the case, legacy media outlets from NBC and CBS to the New York Times have focused on how fear of the future of abortion rights might impact voter turnout.

A glimpse of the recent headlines since the Supreme Court announced it would take the case have been bleak and frustrating: “Supreme Court thrusts abortion into midterms fight with Mississippi case” (CBS News), “Supreme Court Case Throws Abortion Into 2022 Election Picture” (New York Times), “Supreme Court ruling in abortion-rights case expected ahead of 2022 midterms” (Fox New York), “Could Supreme Court supercharge midterms with abortion ruling?” (Roll Call), “Abortion Case Injects Supreme Court Into 2022 Election Fight” (Bloomberg), and others.

It’s a page out of the playbook of some liberal and progressive male advocates, and others with a bad case of toxic positivity, who have claimed the “silver lining” of dangerous, urgent attacks on reproductive rights is the mobilization of progressive voters. We certainly saw a lot of this messaging when alleged abuser and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the court, weeks before the 2018 midterm elections. The underlying message here is that women, pregnant people and their human rights are a worthy trade in exchange for a supposed bump in votes. 

And yet, what this thinking ignores is by that point, the damage will already be done — in 2018, Democratic politicians swept Congress and several state legislatures, with record-breaking voter turnout, especially among women voters. But Kavanaugh, a staunch abortion opponent, was already on the court, where he sits today, about to rule on a key abortion case with five other Justices who either share in his anti-abortion extremism, or have repeatedly been hostile to reproductive rights. And by the time the 2022 midterms roll around, Kavanaugh and his colleagues will already have ruled on a case that could decide the fate of the dozens of state abortion ban legislation proliferating across the country.

Pregnant people’s rights aren’t bargaining chips to be traded for hypothesized political victories, and the political systems and machinations that empower mostly white men to dictate our bodies, lives, families and futures, aren’t a game. They’re a manifestation of white supremacist, patriarchal oppression, with existential consequences for women and pregnant folks. Elections play a significant role in all of this, breeding the domination of anti-abortion extremists in state legislatures in the last decade that paved the way for today’s political realities. But when the most visible news media would rather fixate on the horse race aspect of things than the real people who will be denied autonomy, economic opportunity, and crucial health care, that’s a problem. It’s a problem because it reinforces the same dehumanization of people who seek and have abortions, which the anti-abortion movement relies on for its success.

If we want to win, we should empower women and pregnant voters — not prop up the supposed “pros” of their disenfranchisement.

Treating reproductive rights as a political game show isn’t the only mainstream media pitfall on this issue. For starters, seriously identifying a segment of American politicians and activists who militantly fight for forced pregnancies and births, but not gun safety or child care, as “pro-life,” is one. Selectively paying attention only to the most “extreme” abortion legislation and court cases, as if any policy that would force someone to be pregnant even a day longer than they wish to be isn’t extreme, is another problem. This is especially true as hundreds of medically unnecessary bills that are burdensome but fall short of being all-out abortion bans proliferate, and seldom get on the radar of legacy media. 

And then, of course, there’s the legitimizing of abortion bans and legislation that allow surface-level exceptions for rape, incest, or the safety of the pregnant person. The emphasis on these exceptions in most mainstream media ignores that no one should have to prove they were victimized to a sometimes hostile medical system, or hostile law enforcement, to be eligible for a basic health service. This emphasis also makes day-to-day abortion laws with these exceptions seem normal and humane. They’re not.

All of these frequent cable and legacy news pitfalls on abortion rights stem from the same problem. When we limit our societal discussions of safe, legal access to reproductive care to abstraction, and disproportionately offer platforms to those who lack lived experience, this results in a media ecosystem that’s more concerned with the political hypotheticals that arise from pregnant folks’ suffering, than with our actual suffering. The answer to this is simple: centering and listening to the voices of those for whom reproductive rights aren’t just an abstraction, those who have had abortions, those who can speak on the human toll of this legislation. One in four women has had an abortion — finding and listening to one over yet another cis-male pundit on whether or not advocates who fear the end of Roe are “overreacting,” isn’t hard.

My virtual life as a jam maker in “Stardew Valley,” where small-batch food takes down Big Business

At least a few nights a week, I’ll sign off from work and start what has basically become my second job: filling a pair of virtual refrigerators with jars of virtual jam. The flavors range from supermarket staples like blackberry, grape and strawberry to more fantastic varieties like starfruit and crystal fruit, an icy-blue plant that can be foraged from the snowy, pixelated forests of “Stardew Valley.”

Originally released in 2016, the virtual role-playing game arms players “with hand-me-down tools and a few coins” as they inherit their grandfather’s old farm plot in the titular town. There, my name is Maple. I have a dog named Moose, some chickens and cows, as well as a pair of goats who, no matter how much hay I feed them, are more often disgruntled than not. 

The game is divided into four 28-day seasons, and it opens in springtime. Though time moves at an accelerated pace, my first year in Stardew Valley was particularly languid. I’d rush into town at 6 a.m. to buy seeds at Pierre’s General Store only to realize it wasn’t open until 9 a.m. JojaMart, the town’s big-box store that’s essentially a dystopian Costco, was also closed, so I’d spend a few hours fishing in the river that winds through town and attempt to chat up the residents as soon as they made their way into the square. 

Eventually, Pierre’s would open, and I’d buy seeds, initially choosing whatever was cheapest (a lot of parsnips!) before I trotted back to my farm. 

The actual process of farming in the game is, depending on your persuasion, either meditative or monotonous. Players first have to clear their intended field of obstacles — boulders, patches of grass, sprawling oak trees — and then till the soil, square by square, before planting. From there, it’s a matter of “water and wait,” a form of quiet gameplay that largely underpins the wildly popular “Farming Simulator” franchise, which is now on its 20th release. 

Much like “Farming Simulator,” “Stardew Valley” found a new legion of fans as the pandemic dragged on and an unironic interest in urban homesteading swept the nation. I was swept up along with the rest of the country and rotated through the requisites: tending to a scallion nub in a glass of water, babying a sourdough starter and baking banana bread.

As the concept of work-life balance grew increasingly blurred during lockdown, I’d stay up late envisioning a career that was both more pastoral and more meaningful than my current existence, one where my day-to-day interactions with nature consisted of watering my wilting fire-escape herb garden and observing the labrador puppy that bounded across my apartment complex parking lot a few times a day. 

I had a Pinterest page labeled “Fruit Bat Farms,” a nod to my enduring fascination with the creatures, where I curated images of microfarms, a type of agricultural smallholding that I came to learn is stationed on five acres of land or less. Many existing microfarms center around specialty crops — like edible flowers, garlic, microgreens and organic berries — and have a secondary focus on value-added artisan goods like small-batch jams and pickles. 

They’re also typically located in or adjacent to urban areas, which was initially important to me. While this was a fantasy, I wanted it to be rooted in some semblance of reality. 

Was I likely to abandon the particular comforts of living in a city? No, but as I continued filing away photos of manicured raised garden beds and twee baskets filled with pea shoots, reality quickly became less important than whimsy. Blueprints of chicken coops were replaced with pictures of floppy straw hats, which gave way to links to billowy cottagecore dresses. 

I didn’t dream about the back-breaking slog that is actual farmwork. I dreamed about picking strawberries while wearing the internet-famous Strawberry Dress (lusting after the $490 frock by designer Lirika Matoshi was a lockdown trend in itself) and somehow make a living doing it. I think that’s why, when it came time to choose a virtual life, I ended up in Stardew Valley. Where “Farming Simulator” had an e-shed of shockingly realistic-looking John Deere tractors,”Stardew Valley” had the idealized domesticity I craved. 

After waking, watering my plants and feeding my livestock — activities that barely make a dent in Maple’s energy meter — the day is mine. I can do any number of things: forage on the nearby mountaintop, mine for precious metals in the caves on the edge of town or snoop around in the unlocked homes. Unless I’d taken on a special assignment, like signing up to grow and ship 100 pumpkins by month’s end, I had no real end-game. 

But when I became a level-four farmer, things suddenly started to shift. 

Once you reach that point in the game, the capability to craft a preserves jar is unlocked. “Turns vegetables into pickles and fruit into jam,” the description reads. “Why not?” I thought as I selected one. I had a random surplus of freshly-foraged blackberries and figured I could potentially woo one of the villagers in whom I was interested in dating (read as: most of them) with a jar or two. 

I plopped one down in the virtual kitchen expecting it to be the size of a piece of fruit, which are already rendered to be comically large, but it’s scaled more like a large wooden barrel than a jar. Players are instructed to place a piece of fruit — any fruit — inside and leave it alone until it’s ready, much like the “water and wait” crops process. There’s no mixing, no stirring, no additional ingredients. I know they’re ready when a little white text bubble with a jam icon floats above the jars. 

From there, players have a few options: They can sell the jam, they can give it to a fellow village resident or they can place it in their refrigerator for longer-term storage. I opted for the final choice, and as I hovered my mouse over the jar — prompting the simple text description “gooey” to appear — something clicked. 

I was going to become Stardew Valley’s resident jam artisan. 

As a result of this decision, my days in the Valley developed more structure. Wake up, attend to the animals, water and pick a rotation of seasonal fruit, fill my growing collection of preservation barrels with the fruit and eventually store the jam. There was still a hefty amount of whimsy — sometimes fruit bats would leave me gifts like ripe cherries or juicy peaches in the nearby cave, making my “Fruit Bat Farm” at least a virtual reality — but, at some point, it was no longer really a farm. It was a one-woman virtual jam operation. 

Throughout the process, my real-world pandemic fantasy shifted yet again — this time from strawberry dresses to days spent making strawberry jam. It wasn’t just the end product that was appealing — it’s what it stood for. As Suzanne Cope wrote in her 2014 book “Small Batch: Pickles, Cheese, Chocolate, Spirits, and the Return of Artisanal Foods,” the Slow Food movement and associated artisanal foods have always had ties in the U.S. to both the counterculture and times of societal uncertainty. 

“During tumultuous times, when change seemed hard to come by on systemic or political levels, food was seen as an arena where one could support a certain worldview three times a day,” Cope wrote. “Thus, choices that supported a nonindustrialized, nonconformist food system were soon a telltale sign of what had been dubbed the ‘counter-cuisine’ movement of the 1960s and 1970s.” 

In its design, “Stardew Valley” not-so-subtly teases the tensions between corporate greed and community values by casting JojaMart as a villainous harbinger of commercial homogenization, which would undoubtedly wipe out family-owned businesses like Pierre’s. While in real-life America mega-restaurant chains were receiving Paycheck Protection Program loans as local restaurants suffered, in Stardew Valley, players could vanquish JojaMart — and literally shift the destiny of the town — by crafting artisan food bundles. 

Underpinning this all is, of course, a fantasy of self-sufficiency. I spent many days reading about and reporting on unemployment in the food industry and massive disruptions in the already-precarious food supply chains that criss-cross the country. As Dr. Leni Sorensen, a culinary historian and home provisioning skills instructor, told me last year, people want to feel like they can have what they need when they need it. 

“Whether it’s working on accumulating a pantry, that’s just your basic pantry,” she said. “And then you add to things that you made on your own — your own canned goods, home-preserving food. It’s knowing that you’ll never be without stuff.” 

This is especially true in times of economic recession. As Cope wrote in “Small Batch,” seed sales surged in 2007 amid anxiety about the potential financial crisis, as did the number of food-based businesses. The same thing happened in 2020. 

In “Stardew Valley,” fans of the game have Reddit threads and Wiki-entries dedicated to breaking down the profit players will make when they finally sell their creations. Jam, for instance, is always double the base fruit price, plus 50 gold (the primary currency in the game). Though in reality, the market for small-batch goods can be mercurial. Once I started cashing in my jams at the end of each season, my in-game bank account swelled. 

I expanded my barn, spent a little frivolously at the annual night market, purchased some ducks and upgraded a fellow villager’s home — all from making jam. Along the way, JojaMart shuttered. I always have leisure time, and my refrigerators are never empty. If that’s not a fantasy, then I don’t know what is . . .

Armie Hammer’s substance abuse problems shouldn’t shield him from accountability

On Tuesday, Vanity Fair reported that disgraced actor Armie Hammer checked into a rehab facility last week for “drug, alcohol, and sex issues.” This latest news follows a string of deeply disturbing allegations against the “Call Me By Your Name” actor, which include allegedly raping an ex-girlfriend for “over four hours,” grooming and physically abusing several women, and more.

Since the allegations first emerged earlier in this already very long year, Hammer has been dropped by his talent agency and exited projects he was set to star in. And while things have been quiet in recent months, Hammer’s decision to check himself into an in-patient facility is already starting to be used as a stunt to rehabilitate the star’s image.

“Everyone looks at Armie thinking that he’s had some sort of privileged life — and that must mean there were no problems in his youth and everything was peachy keen,” a source identified as a close friend of Hammer’s reportedly told Vanity Fair. “But that’s not necessarily the way things go. Just because you come from an upbringing where financial resources are plentiful doesn’t mean life isn’t without problems.”

This “friend” of Hammer’s isn’t necessarily wrong to point out people of all social and economic statuses can have their problems, and struggle with their own traumas — apparently, even a grandson of an oil tycoon, like Hammer, doesn’t have it all figured out. But that’s not the point. 

Sure, trauma and mental health struggles and anything else Hammer may be privately dealing with, can impact our relationships and how we treat others. But this can’t be framed as a way to absolve a person accused of rape and physical and emotional abuse toward several alleged victims. 

We encounter some variant of this trope all the time, in (male-written) movies and television, and in this case, in real life — men’s violent and abusive behavior toward women written off as a byproduct of their inner demons. Abusive men struggling with their own personal problems become the sympathetic protagonists — the real victims — while the women they hurt are relegated to collateral damage.

In any case, sure, Hammer’s friend is right that everyone can have life or mental health problems, but you don’t see many if not most doing what he has been accused of. Someone struggling with mental illness, after all, is more likely to be the victim than perpetrator of violence. There’s no excuse for the irreparable harm and trauma Hammer has been accused of inflicting — not even “drug, alcohol, and sex issues.”

Biden returns to bipartisan talks after infrastructure negotiations with Republicans collapse

President Biden has stopped negotiating with the Senate GOP over his embattled infrastructure bill, instead setting his sights on a bipartisan group of 20 senators with whom he hopes to finally push the bill through Congress. 

The move comes after weeks of stalled negotiations between Biden and the Senate GOP over the size of the bill and what provisions it would entail. Republicans have repeatedly prodded the president to ratchet down the bill’s price tag from $1.7 trillion to $928 billion, scrap his proposed corporate tax hike from 21% to 28%, and use Covid relief funds from the American Rescue Plan to bankroll the infrastructure bill. Biden has largely refused to budge throughout the entire process.  

On Tuesday, the president spoke in a five-minute meeting with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., who has led Republicans in the infrastructure talks, but the two could not strike a deal, with Biden saying that her counter-proposals did not “meet the essential needs of our country.”

The president “offered his gratitude to her for her efforts and good faith conversations, but expressed his disappointment that, while he was willing to reduce his plan by more than $1 trillion, the Republican group had increased their proposed new investments by only $150 billion,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a Tuesday statement.

Capito also followed up: “While I appreciate President Biden’s willingness to devote so much time and effort to these negotiations, he ultimately chose not to accept the very robust and targeted infrastructure package, and instead, end our discussions. However, this does not mean bipartisanship isn’t feasible.”

Other Republicans have been more strident about Biden’s commitment to his own version of the bill. Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said that the president was trying “to satisfy an insatiable far-left agenda that demands massive tax hikes, and spending trillions of dollars on things unrelated to physical infrastructure.”

With the negotiations having ended, the president is now putting together an effort to recruit other senators to his side, including Sens. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and two conservative Democrats Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz. –– both of whom have earned a reputation for stonewalling Democratic-backed legislation. 

Other members of the group include Sens. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, Mitt Romney, R-Utah, and Susan Collins, R-Maine. 

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., a vocal proponent of Biden’s infrastructure proposals, said that the president’s moves were unexpected. “It kind of surprised me that this other group decided to try their luck at it. It’s got to be different than Capito,” Durbin told Politico. “We’re running out of time. We have seven weeks counting this week until we break in August…we’re running out of opportunities.”

Going forward, Biden will have to persuade a coalition of at least 10 GOP senators to get on board with his present vision for the bill unless he decides to kowtow to Republican demands.

On Tuesday, Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters that the Democrats would be using “a two-path approach.”

“It may well be that part of the bill that is passed will be bipartisan, and part of it will be in reconciliation,” he said. “But we’re not going to sacrifice bigness and boldness.”

Budget reconciliation – which was used by Democrats to pass the Covid relief bill back in March – would allow Senate Democrats to ram the bill through Congress with a simple majority vote.

Trump’s ballyhooed “comeback” is reality TV-style fakery — but a real danger

It might not seem that way to those of us who worry about how he can still control the Republican Party, but Donald Trump’s political power may be more tenuous than it seems on the surface.

The problem?

Trump’s ability to control the party stems directly from his almost miraculous ability to dominate both the mainstream media coverage and social media chatter. Keeping his name in headlines through crazy antics and fascistic maneuvers helps keep him popular with the GOP base, who are motivated mainly, if not exclusively, by a desire to troll the liberals. Make no mistake: Trump is still widely hated and dreaded on the left, which is why he continues to be a near god-like figure with the more hardcore Republican voters. Modern conservativism isn’t really about policy or even ideology, so much as it’s about the bottomless insecurities of conservative white people and their need too soothe their fragile egos by dunking on liberals who they fear are laughing at them. Imposing this monster on the country was just a long act of revenge on the rest of America for failing to give them the respect and deference conservatives think they’re owed.  

Still Trump’s main skill — trolling liberals — could also be his surprise weakness.

If Trump somehow loses his ability to outrage, terrify, or otherwise “trigger” liberals, then he loses all his value to the GOP base. They certainly don’t love him because of his charm, after all. His own fans would often seem bored at his rallies, and only white-knuckled their way through out of a conviction that rallying around Trump was the best way to “own the libs.” On that front, there are intriguing signs that Trump’s Svengali-like control over the public discourse has been fading. As I noted last week, there’s been a drastic decline in media mentions of Trump’s name and, perhaps even more tellingly, a 91% drop-off in social media chatter about him. Getting banned from Twitter and Facebook has hurt Trump’s ability to stir up attention by trolling. Even right-wing media shows signs of understanding that a Trumpism-without-Trump is possible, as long as they keep up a steady stream of B.S. stories about “cancel culture” and “replacement theory.” 

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Another sign that things might not be going as great for TrumpWorld as Trump claims is the seemingly delayed kick-off to the rally schedule he promised.

On May 21, Trump’s team successfully placed news stories across multiple outlets about these planned rallies, which Trump said they’ll “be announcing them very soon over the next week or two.” It has now been almost three weeks, and these announcements have yet to materialize. Instead, a series of events are being planned for December, and instead of rallies, they are “historical interviews” conducted by disgraced former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. 

The whole thing has a whiff of the same problem that drove Trump’s “social media” fiasco. The former president promised he would soon be releasing a social media platform to compete with the likes of Facebook and Twitter, only to unveil, with great fanfare, what turned out to be a blog. The blog didn’t make it an entire month before Trump self-canceled it, clearly embarrassed by how little traffic it was getting. 

Part of Trump’s problem is his own ego gets in the way of what his base loves about him, which is his trolling skills. The narcissistic injuries he suffered in the past year and a half — his utter failures on the COVID-19 pandemic (including contracting the disease himself) and his election loss — clearly obsess him to the point where he can’t focus on the shiny new objects of right-wing grievance being offered up by Fox News and the like. He keeps demanding that the GOP and right-wing media focus their ire on Dr. Anthony Fauci, even though the public health official is likely to revert from celebrity status to being another nameless (but heroic!) bureaucrat before the year is out. His 85-minute speech at a North Carolina GOP function over the weekend was just a litany of the same lies he’s been telling for months. Trump ended up getting more press interest over his ill-fitting pants than anything he said.

In light of all this, it’s no wonder that Trump’s team started to “leak” stories  claiming that Trump believes he’s going to be reinstated in August. He likely does not believe this, so much as he understands that pretending to be delusional was a good way to get a massive amount of media attention. As Alan Blotcky writes for Salon, “Trump is not detached from reality at all,” but is simply floating “a conspiracy theory that he thinks has gained the most traction with his millions of supporters.”

More importantly, doing so scared the crap out of liberals, for good reason. With the help of the likes of Mike Lindell and Michael Flynn, Trump is using this conspiracy theory as a vehicle to pump veiled but unsubtle violent threats into the discourse. The fear is that Trump and his cronies will use the fake audit in Arizona to reignite not just the Big Lie about the election being stolen, but all the right-wing outrage — and violence — that the Big Lie caused in January. Trump’s lie may very well cause another riot or terrorist attack. But even if that doesn’t happen, the mere threat of it certainly has focused media attention and caused that sweet, sweet liberal outrage that Trump thrives on. 

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Unfortunately, this new strategy of trolling for attention may work.

Trump’s media coverage has soared since he first started “leaking” claims to believe he would be reinstated. When the fake Arizona audit inevitably declares, falsely, that Trump should have won the state, there will be another round of intense media attention, driven by completely legitimate fears that Trump’s conspiracy theories are fueling violence and fascistic sentiment. No wonder Trump’s people are eager to get fake audits going in as many states as possible. Each one creates an opportunity to push conspiracy theories about the election and raise the specter of more violence, grabbing the kind of media attention Trump is failing to get in any other way. 

Of course, all of this illustrates the deep dangers of the situation. The fake audits and loony conspiracy theories may be reality TV-style stunts, designed to drive media attention and remind GOP voters of Trump’s trolling skills, but by putting this nonsense out there, Trump is driving a very real fascist movement. It’s one, as we saw on January 6, that is capable of very real violence. And as with “The Apprentice,” where Trump made a fortune off merely pretending to be a successful businessman, there’s a real fake-it-til-you-make-it quality with Trump’s anti-democracy stunts. As the GOP loyalty to Trump after the insurrection shows, there’s nothing Trump can do to lose the party — unless his name somehow starts slipping from headlines. So he will do anything and everything he can to make sure that doesn’t happen, even if it means more violence. 

Still, the fact that Trump shut down his blog and is desperately hyping conspiracy theories being fed to him by the MyPillow guy is a reminder that, while Trump’s ability to get attention is truly outstanding, he is not invincible. He’s now resorting to reality TV stunts because the blog-and-rally strategy doesn’t seem to be working quite the way that his team thought it would. His obsession with relitigating the past is harming his ability to generate news hooks that keep him in the headlines. This new strategy of fake audits and stoking unhinged elements in his party is a sour reminder that he’s unparalleled in his ability to get attention, if only because he’s unconstrainted by basic morality.

He has a long three years ahead of him to keep finding ways to make himself the center of the conversation — and he’s already resorting to unsubtle threats of violence. Trump 2024 is not inevitable, and progressives would be wise to find a way to balance taking the Trumpian danger seriously without giving into fears that there’s nothing that can be done to stop him. 

An expert pastry chef deconstructs the perfect strawberry shortcake

If there was a dish that could single-handedly signal the arrival of summer, it would have to be strawberry shortcake. It has all the right things: punchy, vibrant berries and light clouds of whipped cream piled on a sturdy but not too heavy round of cake. 

Even a “bad” strawberry shortcake is pretty great, but done right, the dessert has the potential to be the perfect balance of tartness, sweetness and a hit of creaminess. 

Penny Stankiewicz, a pastry and baking arts chef-instructor at the Institute of Culinary Education, is here to help us deconstruct the ideal strawberry shortcake. From the preparation of the berries themselves to a logical compromise in the longstanding “biscuit versus sponge cake” shortcake debate, this expert also provides tips for making a good dessert even better.

Strawberries 

While Stankiewicz says farm-fresh strawberries are delicious as is at the peak of seasonality, there are a few ways to coax even more flavor out of them. This is especially useful if you end up opting for supermarket berries that maybe aren’t as fresh. 

Macerating the fruit is the first process that she recommends. 

“Macerating basically means that you’re mixing the strawberries with sugar and maybe some other things — like lemon juice and vanilla extract, too — and then letting them sit on the counter,” she says. “You can cut them however you want to — so larger or smaller pieces — but you want to cut them so you have open membranes on the surface.” 

As the berries rest in the sugar, lemon juice and vanilla extract for about 15 minutes, the strawberry juice naturally thickens into a light, fragrant syrup. 

“For me, one of the real high points of a strawberry shortcake is that juice that sinks into the cake,” Stankiewicz says. 

If you want to mimic some of the flavors of a strawberry cobbler, Stankiewicz actually recommends roasting your strawberries. Slice and spread the strawberries inside a rimmed baking dish, sprinkle them with sugar and roast them on low heat (about 250 degrees) until they’re slightly softened, about 15 or 20 minutes. 

“What that’ll do is it’ll help some of the moisture evaporate out of the strawberry and concentrate those flavors,” she says. “And then I like to mix them with some fresh sliced strawberries so you get the best of both.” 

Whipped Cream 

According to Stankiewicz, there are two big mistakes home cooks make when making whipped cream: over-sweetening and they over-whipping. 

“You really want that sweetness to come from the natural sweetness in the strawberries,” she says.

For every cup of heavy whipping cream, Stankiewicz recommends that you only add about one scant tablespoon of sugar. Either plain white or confectioner’s sugar works. 

She also recommends that home cooks stop thinking about the whipped cream that comes in an aerosol can as the ideal. There are a couple of different ways to physically whip cream at home: a good ol’ whisk, a standing mixer with a whisk attachment or an immersion blender. Whatever you opt to use, stop whisking when soft peaks start to form. 

This gives you delicate, billowy spoonfuls of whipped cream as opposed to getting to the point where “little lumps of butter” start to form. 

If you do over-whipped your cream though, fear not. Stankiewicz reveals a simple pastry chef’s secret to us: “Just add a little bit more cold liquid cream and stir.” 

Shortcake 

Everybody does the “shortcake” portion of strawberry shortcake a little bit differently, typically ending up in either sweet biscuit or sponge cake territory. Both have their merits: The biscuits stand up really nicely to the moisture of the strawberry juice and the whipped cream, while the cake soaks up the syrup, making for really delicious bites. 

But Stankiewicz’s personal favorite option takes the best of both worlds, including the butter notes and sturdiness of the biscuit and the relative lightness of the sponge cake.

“My preference is a good, light butter cake,” she says. “You can do this a bunch of ways. You can take the batter and make a cupcake and have individual servings, or you can make a sheet can and then cut it in rounds. Then flip them over to expose the part that would have been touching the parchment because it will be more porous. Pile your ingredients on top of that, and it will really soak up the juices.” 

For more summer desserts, check out these favorites from Salon Food: