What are fungi, and what do they have to do with . . . everything?

Every few years, Americans seem to collectively “discover” mushrooms — again. In the ’90s mycologist Paul Stamets began alerting us to mycoremediation, the power of fungi to clean up oil spills and pathogen-contaminated soils. There was Michael Pollan in 2006 in “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”, foraging for chanterelles and morels and explaining how fungi regenerate forests after fires. A swell of enthusiasm for mushrooms of the psychedelic variety that kicked off in the 1960s is currently renewed, with ongoing research teasing out the ways they might mitigate depression and anxiety, reduce OCD, and help smokers quit. Research continues, too, into medicinal and adaptogenic uses for mushrooms — ways that certain species may help the body fight off disease or adapt to stress. Each wave of interest is accompanied by a flurry of new books (see our roundup, below).

And yet, despite their rich, established history in non-Western cultures, and each new American wave of discovery about the power and relevance of mushrooms, most of us remain unaware of their essential functions to our planetary systems and habitats. While fungi can provide the basis for a tasty and nutritious foraged meal or get steeped into a beverage that may boost our immune systems, they thread together our ecosystems. This is where their true, critical, purpose lies.

Kingdom Fungi is made up of an estimated 3.5 million species — including molds, yeasts, lichens — that began evolving on Earth 1.3 billion years ago. Any farmer or botanist can tell you how important they are to building up soil; keeping plants that grow in that soil healthy; and breaking down all the plant-based (and some animal-based) dead matter that our planet’s various working systems generate. “Otherwise, we would be covered in trash and most other biological processes on Earth would stop,” says Jennifer Bhatnagar, an assistant biology professor at Boston University who studies decomposition. That rotted matter is then converted right back to soil, and to nutrients that feed the plants growing in it.

For a preliminary glimpse at what fungi do, and how, see our soil primer. Here, we delve deeper to elucidate the ways in which fungi are so critical to the way so many things work on our planet.

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Decomposers

First, there are the decomposers. These can take pretty much any material — even a manmade one like plastic, rubber, concrete, the nuclear reactor core at Chernobyl, says Bhatnagar — and break it down. “When you decompose dead stuff, that stuff releases elements,” says Bhatnagar. “Fungi are looking for carbon and they’ll take that up and put it into new molecules in their biomass” — basically, use it as food in order to grow themselves. Other released elements — mostly nitrogen and phosphorous — are converted by fungi to ammonium, sulfates, and phosphates. These are the forms that plant roots are able absorb and use. Says Bhatnagar, “Fungi are essentially providing plants with nutrients, recycling them from dead plants back to live plants.”

Decomposer fungi — and there are lots of different kinds of them, each with a special function with regards to a specific plant or other organisms — are found in the soil as well as on the surfaces of leaves, bark, stems. Some of them are waiting there for the plant to die before breaking down the specialized part — leaf, bark, stem — they’re associated with. Other decomposer fungi arrive on a plant after it has died and get to work on its heart wood or its largest branches, for example. Many decomposers also sometimes act as parasitic fungi, invading a plant and causing disease or even death.

Partners

Then there are the partner fungi. As far as we know, 90% of all plants, maybe more, have mutually beneficial relationships with fungi; the types of plants and fungi that partner with each other differ depending on soil, habitat, and so on. When they live in soil, these fungi — in this instance referred to as mycorrhizal fungi — create what’s known as the mycorrhizae, where they come together with a plant’s roots; through that connection, the plant funnels carbon and sugars to the fungus and in return, the fungus, says Bhatnagar, “extends its hyphae into the soil to explore it for decomposed dead matter” to supply nutrients and water to the plant.

However, there’s even more benefit that these and other “helper” fungi impart to plants. Some colonize the outer, above-ground surface of a plant — its phyllosphere; some, called endophytes, live inside plant tissue. They “stimulate plant hormones, to give them protection to fight off pathogens,” says Bhatnagar. “Or they can confer tolerance to different environmental conditions, like heat or salt stress. They are important to plant survival.”

There are also fungi that partner with mammals, living inside their guts and helping them to digest; and others that partner with algae and bacteria — including some that allow certain extremophile bacteria to live in hot springs and withstand scalding temperatures.

Fungi and climate

In addition to forging individual relationships with plants and keeping Earth tidy, fungi collectively have broader relevance to keeping our planet habitable. Fungi that live in soil are the “major conduits of carbon sequestration on land in our terrestrial ecosystem,” Bhatnagar says. This is a not insignificant function; land is the second-largest carbon sink on Earth, after the ocean, holding almost 30% of what we store for a massive climate benefit.

Fungi also contribute to keeping the temperature of our planet in balance. They do this by emitting CO2 — although, with climate change rapidly heating up our atmosphere, researchers are trying to better understand how fungi and climate might now be affecting each other.

In fact, not knowing permeates many aspects of mycology. As Bhatnagar explains, only a couple hundred fungal species have so far been scientifically described and although we are getting better at figuring out how they work — alone, in groups with other fungi, with plants, and so forth — there are still massive question marks regarding much of the Kingdom and how it operates.

Leaving these questions unanswered could have dire consequences for our planetary systems and our food supply. “We don’t know how redundant [groups of fungi] are, or exactly what they do,” says Bhatnagar, while pointing out that we might be unwittingly causing fungal, plant, and soil death when we move fungi out of their native ranges. For example, hyphae can remain alive in wood chips used for mulching, and the mulch you purchase at the nursery could have originated almost anywhere.

In parts of the global South, monocultures of pine trees planted in vast tracts for lumber are becoming invasive species — escaping their plantations to outcompete native trees, helped along, a study by one of Bhatnagar’s post-doctoral researchers shows, by their fungal partners, which are also behaving as invasive species.

Bhatnagar expresses apprehension at watching bulldozers stripping the soil to renovate a playground across the street from her house in Massachusetts: “They’re bringing in from who-knows-where who-knows-what organisms, and we have no idea how well they will survive there, or how they will interact with plants,” she says.

These are not just broad philosophical concerns. There are now 280 fungi on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species. The danger, says Bhatnagar, is that even as we’re learning more about the traits of fungi and what they do for soil and plants, “It’s possible we are losing things that are important to ecosystems and the ability of plants to survive the stresses of climate change.” Once fungi are gone, they may not come back and that makes it unlikely that we’ll recover the functionality they provide. “There’s a carelessness to our interactions with soil that is pretty detrimental to the plants we care about,” Bhatnagar says. She hopes that people will start to recognize that fungi are important, and fragile, and “not as resilient as we think.”

8 new books about mushrooms and fungi

However, one thing we’re not doing wrong with and for fungi is foraging; a long-term study of foragers in Switzerland shows that picking merely their fruiting bodies — that is, mushrooms — does not have a negative impact on future mushroom yields or species richness of mushrooms out in the forest. Still, we should behave respectfully to all living things and ecosystems while out there; here’s a handy guide to staying safe in the wild, and to ethical foraging. Meanwhile, the books below will get you up to speed on identifying fungi species, including those that are good to eat, as well as cooking and storing them, growing them, and thinking about their numerous uses to humans and our planet.

“The Beginner’s Guide to Mushrooms” by Britt Bunyard + Tavis Lynch

This field guide geared towards absolute beginners offers myriad photographs to help you locate and identify fungi in the wild. In addition to providing a reference to some North American species, two brief chapters cover cultivating fungi as well as cooking what you grow and find — with recipes.

“Entangled Life” by Merlin Sheldrake

“[A] fungal network laced out into the soil and around the roots of nearby trees,” Sheldrake, a British biologist, writes in his introduction.“Without this fungal web my tree would not exist. Without similar fungal webs no plant would exist anywhere. All life on land, including my own, depended on these networks.” It’s these webs that Sheldrake sets out to explore and elucidate in this natural history flecked with personal anecdotes. Interested in building on what you’ve just learned in a fungi primer? This is a great next step along your educational journey.

“Fungarium: Welcome to the Museum” by Ester Gaya

This latest in a series of large, vividly illustrated books that function as a cabinet of curiosities — other titles include “Animalium”, “Botanicum”, and “Historium” — is aimed at kids but is too gorgeous, intricate, and intriguing for them not to share it with their grownups. Together or individually, you can pore over the informative text to learn about mushroom habitats and ecosystems. Or just spend hours gazing at the intricate and mesmerizing illustrations.

“In Search of Mycotopia” by Doug Bierend

Food and science journalist Bierend tells some of the myriad stories of fungi and their functions in ecosystems through the people who study, cultivate, and wield them and their powers. From the Kew Gardens researchers cataloguing fungi for inclusion on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, to conservationists using fungi to clean water and other habitats, this is both a fun and educational readthat helps map the reach of this diverse and critical Kingdom.

“Mushroom Wanderland” by Jess Starwood

For those interested in identifying mushrooms for the distinct purpose of eating them, “Mushroom Wanderland” provides detailed instructions on how to identify 12 of the edible kind that are good for cooking with — think puffballs, morels, and porcini; six with purported medicinal uses, like reishi and turkey tail; and several that are toxic or poisonous. Punctuated with color photographs and descriptive text that passes along some of a forager’s best secrets about when/where/how, as well as storing tips and recipes, this book acts as both a practical and spiritual guide to appreciating mushrooms and caring for the landscapes that foster them.

“Peterson Field Guide to Mushrooms” by Marl B. McKnight, Joseph R. Rohrer, Kirsten McKnight + Kent H. McKnight

This uncommonly beautiful field guide to almost 700 mushrooms found across North America is a great starter tome for anyone who’s ever taken a hike after heavy rains and wondered what all those mysterious and colorful organisms proliferating over fields and tree trunks were. The illustrations are sharp and clear and provide good instructional accompaniment to the detailed descriptions. Sized to fit in a daypack.

“The Secret Life of Fungi” by Aliya Whiteley (Sept. 2021)

Whiteley, usually a novelist, here gives a personal account of her discovery of the wide and wild world of mushrooms. Part mycological history, part poetic guidebook, and part philosophical treatise — interspersed with bits of memoir — this is the sort of book you’ll want to read cover to cover, learning as you go without even trying.

“Wild Mushrooms: A Cookbook and Foraging Guide” by Kristen Blizzard + Trent Blizzard

This is a one-stop reference for anyone interested in foraging mushrooms — then figuring out to do with their haul. Covering everything from forest etiquette, to the various ways in which to preserve mushrooms, to 115 diverse and well-thought-out recipes for 15 different kinds of mushrooms, to tips for avoiding gastric upset and other undesired effects, this will you up your game, from novice enthusiast to connoisseur.

Billions of cicadas are about to take to the skies. Here’s what to expect

Doug Yanega studies insects for a living, yet he has repeatedly missed out on one of North America’s most awe-inspiring entomological events: the septdecennial (meaning once every 17 years) emergence of a swarms of cicadas known as Brood X.

Part of the reason for this is that Yanega, who works as senior scientist at the University of California Riverside’s Entomology Research Museum, grew up in Long Island. This is one of the few areas in the Northeast that does not experience billions of Brood X cicadas dramatically arise from the ground for a mass aerial orgy once every 17 years. Brood X cicadas have been gradually going extinct there — perhaps because mass suburbanization has thoroughly destroyed any habitat where they could survive, Yanega theorizes — and that is where he lived in 1970 and 1987. (He missed the 2004 event for unrelated reasons and won’t be on the East Coast in 2021.)

“I don’t know,” Yanega reflected somewhat ruefully. “I’ll be 77 years old or so when the next one comes out.”

It’s a shame, because even if you aren’t an entomologist, the Brood X cicadas put on a show that anyone would find spectacular.

The loud insects have blood-red eyes and orange-veined wings in stark contrast to their black bodies. When they emerge with a density up to 1.4 million cicadas per acre, they’ll sing to prospective mates in the loudest possible tones. To a poet, the volume might smack of desperation: they will die within a few weeks of reproducing.

Unlike most human parents, these winged insects will never have the opportunity to know for sure if their young make it through the preordained stages of their lives. They will not witness whether the eggs they place on trees will hatch into nymphs, fall to the ground, burrow into the soil and enjoy the same 17-year lifespan that they did. Somehow this just winds up working out, with the next generation knowing how to pick up where the last one left off.

This is going to happen in a large swath of the country, from the East Coast to the Midwest, in the warm months of 2021. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has created a detailed map of Brood X’s range, which covers just about all of Indiana; eastern rural Illinois and western Ohio; a portion of east Tennessee and neighboring counties in adjacent states; and a triangle that runs from Long Island to northeast West Virginia to south Delaware.

The last time the Brood X emerged was in an era before COVID-19 and great recessions, back when crunk was mainstream, “Shrek 2” was the highest grossing movie in America and Donald Trump was an ’80s tabloid fodder has-been trying his luck with a reality TV show. Given how climate change is transforming our world, the planet will likely be an even more radically different place when 2038 offers us another chance to see them.

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To appreciate the spectacle, though, you must first understand the science. Although the planet has nearly 3,400 species of cicadas, only the eastern United States has periodical cicadas that emerge from underground. (They are grouped into categories known as Broods.) Some make their appearance once every 13 years; others do so once every 17 years. The Brood X cicadas fall into the latter category, with three species — Magicicada cassinii, Magicicada septendecim, and Magicicada septendecula – synchronizing their breeding seasons to form that group.

Before they periodically swarm over the Northeast, Brood X cicadas spend their lives subsisting on plant sap, juices and water from roots underground. They grow very slowly, molting a few times along the way, and crawl up toward the surface as they get bigger. When they decide the temperature is just right, they shed their skin and fly off.

“Then they engage in what’s basically one of nature’s biggest orgies,” Yanega explained. “It’s just billions of these cicadas with the males calling for the females.” He later added that if you listen carefully, you can even notice that differences in the singing among the three species of males.

“The enigma is why this happens the way it does,” Yanega said. “Why is it 17 years and not some other number?” He also pointed out that the three species do not mate with each other, raising additional questions about how and why they behave as they do.

Israeli defense minister threatens “Gaza will burn.” Critics say it’s “evidence of war crimes”

Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz threatened that “Gaza will burn” as Israel’s military reportedly readied plans Thursday for a possible ground invasion of the occupied Palestinian territory, a major escalation that human rights advocates warned would lead to more destruction and civilian deaths.

In remarks dubbed as a message to the people of Gaza, Gantz—who served as chief of general staff for the IDF during Israel’s deadly 2014 invasion of the Gaza Strip—claimed that “Hamas leaders bear responsibility for your being hunkered down in your homes” amid Israeli airstrikes.

“If citizens of Israel have to sleep in shelters” due to Hamas rocket attacks, Gantz said late Wednesday, “then Gaza will burn.”

Observers viewed Gantz’s remarks as a direct threat to inflict mass civilian casualties on one of the most densely populated areas in the world, a territory considered by many to be an “open-air prison” crowded with around two million people.

Ali Abunimah, co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, tweeted that Gantz’s remarks “should be entered directly as evidence of war crimes to the International Criminal Court.”

“Gantz said ‘Gaza will burn,'” Abunimah continued. “It’s direct evidence of premeditation to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity. No one can say ‘I didn’t know.’ Anyone who aids, abets, or justifies this criminal regime has blood on their hands.”

Gantz’s comments came as Israel intensified its devastating bombing campaign in Gaza, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowing to “hit them with strikes they have never dreamed of.”

Since Monday—when Hamas fired rockets in response to Israeli forces’ assault on worshipers at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem—Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip have leveled major residential buildings and killed more than 80 Palestinians, including more than a dozen children.

“Palestinian residents of Gaza Strip woke up on Thursday to mark Eid al-Fitr—one of the holiest occasions in the Islamic calendar—amid relentless aerial bombardment by Israel,” Al-Jazeera reported. “Heavy bombardment on the Gaza Strip continued early on Thursday as Israeli forces launched a series of air raids on various locations.”

Later Thursday, plans for a potential ground invasion of Gaza are expected to reach the IDF general staff for approval before heading to Israel’s political leadership, which has repeatedly rejected cease-fire offers from Hamas, the United Nations, and Egypt.

While it is unclear whether a ground invasion will take place, Human Rights Watch researcher Sophie McNeill said the possibility is “absolutely terrifying for civilians in Gaza trapped with nowhere to go.”

Umm Majed al-Rayyes, a 50-year-old mother of four who lives in Gaza City, told the Associated Press on Wednesday that “this whole territory is a tiny place.” Al-Rayyes said she was forced to flee to a neighbor’s house in the middle of the night after Israeli bombs struck her apartment building.

“It’s a prison,” said al-Rayyes. “Everywhere you go, you’re a target.”

New York experiments with new voting system in chaotic mayoral race: Breakthrough or disaster?

New York City is about to embark on an experiment that will determine its course for the next four years and could reshape elections across the country for the foreseeable future. But it won’t be pretty.

Facing one of the highest coronavirus death tolls in the country, a steep economic recovery and rising violent crime, the city is set to become the largest municipality to roll out ranked-choice voting in its highly consequential Democratic mayoral primary next month. (In practical terms, the Democratic nominee is almost certain to become the next mayor.)

New York voters will be able rank up to five candidates in order of preference, rather than choosing just one. If no candidate receives more than 50% of the votes in the first round (as seems nearly certain), then the last-place candidate is eliminated and the second choices of voters who supported that person are reallocated to other candidates. That process continues until one candidate exceeds 50% and is declared the winner.

Proponents of ranked-choice voting or RCV, which was overwhelmingly approved by voters in 2019, argue that this system allows voters to support the candidate they most prefer rather than “wasting” a vote on a candidate with little chance of winning or strategically voting for a candidate with a better chance of victory. It also requires candidates to reach broader audiences rather than stay in their “lane,” and is believed to discourage negative campaigning. But some candidates have raised concerns that the new system, absent a sustained effort at voter education, may disenfranchise voters of color and spark confusion at polling places. And, in a race like the crowded Democratic mayoral primary, a winner may not be determined for weeks.

“The New York City Board of Elections is not the most well-functioning organization. So the challenge with ranked-choice voting is that there needs to be some kind of centralized vote-counting operation,” David C. Kimball, a political science professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, said in an interview with Salon. “In San Francisco, which is the next biggest city that uses ranked-choice voting for elections, it can take them up to a week — but they’ve been doing this now for almost 20 years. You’ve got a lot of candidates running for mayor in New York, so it’s going to take several rounds of re-tabulation.”

New York’s elections have long been messy, most recently with more than 20% of mail-in ballots disqualified in last year’s presidential primary. And they often generate remarkably little interest, especially in primary campaigns, even though general elections are increasingly becoming afterthoughts in the Democratic-dominated city. Less than 25% of Democratic voters turned out for the primary that effectively re-elected Mayor Bill de Blasio four years ago, and that was one of the better turnouts the city has seen. Part of that is by design. New York’s elections are held in off-year cycles, which in itself tends to depress turnout by about 50%, and party registration deadlines often prevent newly interested voters from participating in the process at all. This year, the primary has also been moved up by three months, from September to June.

“I do not expect to see lots of voter turnout,” David Birdsell, dean of the school of public affairs at Baruch College, told Salon. “You still see most New Yorkers reporting that they’re not terribly engaged with the election, and that’s no surprise” in a situation where many ordinary people are confronting “literally matters of life and death.”

Birdsell added that “there’s just so much distraction” surrounding this year’s mayoral campaign, including “the unusual point in the calendar. It cannot be overstated how bad it is for turnout to keep moving the election season. It deprives people of the chance to get accustomed to voting in a particular place at a particular time. It’s going to have a depressing effect, and the lack of attention that people are paying in the campaign bodes ill for a turnout surge.”

Voters dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, economic recovery and political fallout from the presidential election have so far shown little interest in the mayoral race in America’s largest city. Former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who has pitched himself as something of a cheerleader for the city, has dominated headlines, likely because he is the only one of the eight top-tier candidates with name recognition above 50%, according to a recent Ipsos poll. Even among likely Democratic voters, only Yang, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer have name recognition above 50%.

As a result of the anemic level interest, many voters are not even aware that the city has a new voting method. City officials have launched a $15 million campaign this month to educate voters about the new ballots, but both candidates and lawmakers have raised concerns that the abrupt rollout of a new system may effectively disenfranchise Black and Latino voters.

Six members of the New York City Council and numerous advocacy groups filed a lawsuit last year arguing that the new system is stacked against minority voters and that the coronavirus pandemic has hampered voter education efforts.

“Physical and fiscal limitations resulting from the pandemic have severely hindered the City’s ability to put the new system into effect and prevent the disenfranchisement of New Yorkers of color, seniors, and limited English speakers,” the lawmakers said in a statement last year.

“I believe there is an impossibility to educate people in the amount of time necessary on what ranked-choice voting will mean,” Council Majority Leader Laurie Cumbo, one of the lawmakers who joined the suit, said at a hearing in December.

The New York Supreme Court rejected the complaint. The group of lawmakers filed another lawsuit arguing that the Board of Elections had not properly prepared voters for the new system but a judge rejected that suit last week, ruling that it was filed too late and that delaying the implementation of the new system would result in confusion.

Two of the Black candidates in the mayoral race have warned that the new system is being rushed.

“Eric Adams is deeply concerned that ranked choice voting will disenfranchise voters of color,” Madia Coleman, a spokesperson for Adams, said in a statement to Salon. “The election is a month away and a number of voters do not know what ranked choice voting is or how to navigate it. The city’s efforts to educate voters on ranked choice voting has not been sufficient, and it has failed to translate that education into the many different languages that New Yorkers speak. The Adams campaign has made it a mission to perform voter education on ranked choice voting in conjunction with the campaign’s voter outreach.”

Ray McGuire, a former Citigroup executive, has also said he is worried about the potential impact on voters of color. “Ray is still concerned about the implementation of RCV,” Lupe Todd-Medina, a spokesperson for Ray McGuire, said in a statement to Salon. “This major change requires education and understanding across the board to all New Yorkers. This is why Ray has incorporated voter education around RCV into every aspect of this campaign, including in our digital and arming volunteers with information to share on the phone and on the doors. Ray was encouraged to see the mayor recently invest more funding towards educating voters on the new process but with six weeks left till a major citywide election, it should have been done much sooner.”

Activists have also sounded the alarm.

“Some progressive white folks got together in a room and thought this would be good, but it’s not good for our community,” Hazel Dukes, president of the New York state chapter of the NAACP, told The New York Times.

Kirsten John Foy, president of the advocacy group Arc of Justice, also appeared to question the motives of ranked-choice advocates. “The primary argument for ranked-choice voting is that it expands access to elected office for Black and brown officials, but we don’t have that problem,” she said last year. “This is a solution in search of a problem.”

But Bertha Lewis, president of the Black Institute, argued at the time that there was “plenty of time for voters to learn to rank their vote.”

“Let me say it plainly: Black voters are not stupid,” she testified during a city council meeting last year. “It is insulting to say that they will not be able to understand.”

Maya Wiley, a former lawyer for the de Blasio administration and one of the other Black candidates in the race, has backed the system, arguing that the runoff elections previously used in the city dilute the votes of people of color, according to the Times.

“What the record suggests in other jurisdictions that have tried this,” Birdsell said, “is that you’re going to wind up with about half of the electorate familiar with the process, or who at least have heard of the process and know what to expect, even if they’ve never experienced it themselves before. The other half learn about it when they actually get to the polling place. People generally respond favorably to ranked-choice voting once they have been through the process. The record is mixed on whether they feel it makes their voices heard better than a single vote may, but some of that depends on the political dynamics.”

Research on whether ranked-choice voting negatively affects voters of color has been mixed as well. A report released by the nonpartisan voting rights group FairVote on Wednesday found that it may benefit candidates of color because winning candidates of color “grew their vote totals between the first and final ballot rounds at a higher rate than winning White candidates.” It also found that voters of color tend to rank more candidates than white voters.

“Ranked-choice voting does encourage more candidates to run for local office,” Kimball said. “Sometimes that’s a challenge, to get people to run for local office, and it seems to me to produce more women and candidates of color — and to some degree more success in winning seats.” But research has been limited, he added, and the trends observed so far have only been identified in city council races, not mayoral ones.

A study by Craig Burnett, a political science professor at Hofstra University, came up with different results. He found that voters in Black and Latino neighborhoods in San Francisco and Oakland were more likely to rank just one candidate, while voters in white neighborhoods were more likely to use every available choice.

“Ranked-choice voting has the potential to harm minority representation,” Burnett told Salon. “In my own research, I’ve seen an increase in the percentage of incomplete ballots — that is, they select fewer options than the ballot allows — in majority-minority voting precincts. In those contests, however, there was ‘no harm’ because exhaustion rates were at least as low as other voting groups.”

A 2016 study by Jason McDaniel, a political science professor at San Francisco State University, found that voter turnout declined among Black and Asian voters after the implementation of ranked-choice voting and that “RCV increased disparities in turnout between groups who are more likely to vote and those who are less likely to vote. The conclusion is that RCV tends to exacerbate differences between sophisticated voters and those that are less sophisticated.”

Dianne Morales, a former public school teacher and nonprofit executive who is viewed as the most progressive of the major mayoral candidates this year, has repeatedly expressed concerns about the city’s efforts to educate voters about the new system.

“It is a shame that the city is not doing more to educate the public on ranked-choice voting,” Bradley Stein, a spokesperson for Morales, said in a statement to Salon. “It is almost entirely contingent on campaigns to educate voters on how to use the new system. Luckily, polls so far indicate that voters find RCV easy to understand when filling out a sample ballot. Still, the city must ensure that poll workers are properly instructed in RCV and actively help voters on Election Day to make sure they know and understand how to properly fill out their ballots.”

Stein said that without voter education and voter registration efforts “it is unlikely that RCV alone will attract voters to participate in the election.” But Morales’ campaign has praised the ranked-choice system and Stein said its efforts have “always taken into account how RCV will change the political landscape of this election cycle.”

“RCV puts power back in the hands of people and makes it possible for non-establishment, grassroots campaigns to have a shot at winning municipal elections,” Stein said. “While our primary focus is getting voters to rank Dianne first, we fiercely encourage voters who are set in their first choice to mark Dianne second on their ballot. Additionally, until May our campaign’s voter outreach strategy was centered around educating New Yorkers about ranked-choice voting, in addition to Dianne’s background and platform.”

RCV can also help cities run smoother and less expensive elections, as compared to holding a runoff if no candidate wins a majority.

“It’s a huge advantage, whether you’re talking turnout, whether you’re talking about election management in a time of pandemic, whether you’re talking about public safety, to be able to do this all in one action rather than mounting those actions,” Birdsell said. “Every time you can make elections easier, less taxing, literally and figuratively citizen-friendly, you have better results at the end of the day.”

Ranked-choice voting also tends to disfavor “polarizing” candidates, he said, because they are unlikely to appear as second or third choices among voters who don’t already support them.

“That’s not to say that bland, approachable, mild-mannered candidates are always going to do well in these environments, but people who have relatively lower negatives with decent name recognition are disproportionately poised to benefit from RCV,” he said.

It’s not at all clear whether any of the candidates in the Democratic mayoral race fit that bill. The three apparent leaders have all been polarizing personalities on the campaign trail.

Yang, who gained national attention with his universal basic income proposal in the presidential primary, has never held political office or even voted in a New York City election. Multiple of his opponents have compared him to Donald Trump, a comparison Yang has not welcomed. More recently, The New York Times highlighted Yang’s nonprofit group Venture for America, which raised tens of millions to create 100,000 jobs in struggling cities and earned Yang recognition from the Obama administration, but ultimately created just 150 jobs. He also drew intra-party criticism this week after issuing a tweet backing Israel in its latest clash with Palestinians, though he later issued a statement admitting he “failed to acknowledge pain on both sides.”

Yang has also faced questions over his ties to Bradley Tusk, an ally of billionaire former Mayor Michael Bloomberg who has worked as a venture capitalist and political strategist for corporations like Uber and AT&T. Even Yang’s allies, like Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., who endorsed his candidacy, view him as a political blank slate they can shape “on every issue.” As a result, some are worried that in Yang, Tusk has “a vessel potentially for his own interests, whether it’s Uber, cryptocurrency, or gambling,” wrote New York Magazine’s Clare Malone.

Adams moved ahead of Yang for the first time in a recent poll but the former Republican and longtime police officer has drawn scrutiny for his decades in New York politics and his support from real estate developers, who have long been blamed for pushing out the city’s working class and jacking up the cost of living. As borough president in Brooklyn, Adams drew allegations of corruption by using his nonprofit to skirt campaign finance rules and raise tens of thousands of dollars from donors with business before the city, The New York Daily News reported in 2019.

Stringer, who has spent even more time in New York politics and is generally viewed as a progressive, has been among the top three in polls for months. But his campaign was rocked last month by a sexual misconduct allegation by lobbyist Jean Kim, who volunteered for one of his political campaigns two decades ago. Kim alleged that Stringer in 2001 made unwanted advances and forcibly kissed her on several occasions. Stringer has denied the misconduct claim, insisting that the two had a consensual relationship. That did not stop such progressive-oriented groups as the Working Families Party and Sunrise Movement from retracting their endorsements.

It seems conceivable that Stringer’s standing in the race while that of Kathryn Garcia, the former city sanitation commissioner, interim Housing Authority chief and COVID-19 “food czar,” rises. Garcia landed the coveted New York Times endorsement this week but has yet to gain any visible traction in opinion polls.

“I’m generally skeptical that endorsements make a great deal of difference,” Birdsell said. “But with five weeks of dash to the finish, he speculated, the Times endorsement could propel a low name-recognition candidate like Garcia.

It’s unclear how endorsements will affect a race where most of the candidates are largely unknown to the electorate. Some groups have endorsed multiple candidates for the ranked-choice ballot. The Working Families Party is backing both Wiley and Morales, who is running on an ambitious platform of expanding low-income housing, providing a guaranteed income for the poor, desegregating schools, and cutting the police budget in half.

“We have two women candidates driving the progressive agenda in this race,” Sochie Nnaemeka, director of the New York Working Families Party, said in a statement to Salon, “and we recognize how strategically important it is for New Yorkers to rank Dianne Morales and Maya Wiley as their top two choices to stop a Wall Street-funded candidate from buying the election.”

“There’s no doubt that we’re in a new era of voting, and people are excited when they learn about the new changes. The city must do everything in its power to educate voters on the process ahead of the primary,” Nnaemeka added. “The WFP and our candidates are committed to educating voters so that people are fully prepared when they cast their ballots. Voter education is essential to making sure the reform delivers on its promise of an inclusive democracy.”

Very little money spent by the campaigns to date, with the exceptions of McGuire and former HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, whose campaign is backed by millions from a super PAC bankrolled almost entirely his wealthy father. Both were widely derided this week after guessing in separate interviews that the median home price in Brooklyn was between $80,000 and $100,000, when the real figure is around $900,000.

Until a few days ago, McGuire and Donovan had been the only candidates to spend money on television ads. “So many of these campaigns have gotten off to a dangerously late start,” Birdsell said. “Everybody seems to be holding on to their money, with precious few exceptions.”

The campaign has obviously also been upended by the coronavirus pandemic, which may have contributed to the lack of media attention, visibility or any tangible sense of momentum.

“Clearly, this is an unusual election,” Birdsell said. “People have been campaigning in pandemic mode, which means very little in the way of retail face-to-face campaigning. It means people aren’t gathering, it means you aren’t generating the kind of buzz from events that you might in a more traditional campaign cycle.”

All eight top-tier candidates faced off in the first mayoral debate on Thursday (after this article was finalized), which could lead to the first serious realignment of the field. No candidate has yet had a “breakthrough moment” or garnered serious national attention, all eyes will be on the new ranked-choice system on June 22.

New York joins at least 18 other municipalities that have already implemented or approved similar systems, and is by far the largest. (It only uses RCV in the party primaries, not the general election.) While RCV is primarily used in city elections, Maine has implemented ranked-choice voting for all state-level and congressional primaries and congressional general elections as well. (The population of Maine, however, is about 1.4 million, less than one-fifth the population of New York City.)

“Having bigger jurisdictions, more high-profile places using it, I think will prompt some other places to consider it,” Kimball predicted. “I don’t know if it’ll open the floodgates or anything. But there does seem to be greater interest in RCV now that places like New York have adopted it.”

“Real Time” suspended after host Bill Maher tests positive for COVID-19: report

On Thursday, TMZ reported that comedian and late-night talk show host Bill Maher has tested positive for COVID-19 — and will be suspending his “Real Time” show to allow himself time to clear the virus.

“The ‘Real Time’ host has little reason to be worried because a rep for HBO says Bill is fully vaccinated, and he’s feeling fine. The rep says, “Bill tested positive during weekly staff PCR testing for COVID” but says he’s totally asymptomatic,” said the report. “Remember, the COVID vaccines don’t guarantee you won’t get infected, but are highly effective in shielding you from serious illness and hospitalization. Bill’s a perfect example of that.”

According to the report, no other HBO support staff for the show have tested positive for the virus.

Rep. Chip Roy mounts last-minute campaign against Elise Stefanik for GOP conference chair

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, is officially launching a bid to replace Liz Cheney as Republican House conference chair, hoping to beat out New York Rep. Elise Stefanik for the role.

He told CNN “I’m running” Thursday while passing by a reporter on his way to hear Stefanik speak — though speculation about Roy entering the race had been circulating throughout the Capitol after he penned a letter to his House colleagues earlier this week expressing doubts about Stefanik’s candidacy.

The Trump ally and GOP firebrand had been running unopposed, and remains the heavy favorite to win — especially after Trump himself weighed in on the contest late Thursday.

“Can’t imagine Republican House Members would go with Chip Roy — he has not done a great job, and will probably be successfully primaried in his own district,” Trump wrote in a statement. “I support Elise, by far, over Chip!”

Cheney was ousted from the role Wednesday over what Republican critics say was insufficient loyalty to the former president. Cheney refused to endorse “The Big Lie,” which falsely states that Trump won November’s election due to widespread fraud.

“We must go forward based on truth. We cannot both embrace the big lie and the Constitution,” she said Wednesday after being voted out.

“I will do everything I can to ensure that the former president never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office. We have seen the danger that he continues to provoke with his language. We have seen his lack of commitment and dedication to the Constitution. And I think it is very important that we make sure whomever we elect is somebody who will be faithful to the Constitution,” Cheney added.

The election begins Friday at 8:30 a.m. ET

Project Veritas led wide-ranging campaign to tar “deep state” during Trump presidency: report

In their long-running plot to discredit so-called “deep state” actors within the federal government, loyalists of then-President Donald Trump enlisted the help of a British spy and a “network of conservative activists” to root out public officials they believed were insufficiently loyal to Trump, according to a bombshell report in The New York Times published Thursday.

The group’s wide-ranging operations allegedly targeted high-level officials, including Trump’s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, as well as FBI agents and other less prominent government employees.

It’s the most brazen example to be made public thus far of the lengths to which Trump’s most loyal supporters went to push out the government employees they saw as watering down the former president’s agenda — although, according to the Times reporting, it remains unclear whether Trump or anyone within the upper echelons of the White House was aware of these efforts.

Project Veritas, the conservative group known for its long run of failed sting operations against Democratic officials and news outlets, apparently played a central role in the schemes. The Times reports that one of the organization’s largest efforts involved a series of undercover missions against the FBI in which female recruits would arrange dates with bureau employees and attempt to record them making anti-Trump comments.

Erik Prince, the founder of shadowy military contractor Blackwater Worldwide and brother of Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos, plays an important role in the Times story for recruiting a former British spy, Richard Seddon, to train Project Veritas operatives to infiltrate trade unions and Democratic campaigns. Prince has a long history arranging intelligence training for the group, as The Intercept outlined in a 2019 investigation.

The scheme to tar McMaster, which also involved a woman surreptitiously recording her interactions with the retired three-star general, sputtered out when he resigned for unrelated reasons in 2018, the Times reports. And though there were several Project Veritas members involved in the plot, the Times notes that it is unclear whether the group itself was directing the operation.

Barbara Ledeen, a former staff member for the Senate Judiciary Committee, alleged that she was recruited to assist in the sting by someone “with access to McMaster’s calendar” — though it is not clear in context whether that meant the person she mentioned worked in the White House.

James O’Keefe, the founder of Project Veritas, responded to the Times in a defiant statement, calling the paper’s reporting a “smear piece” and attributing the Times’ interest in the story to a defamation lawsuit his group is currently litigating against the Gray Lady. He also released a video late Thursday in which he denied any involvement in the undercover plot against McMaster.

“Because The New York Times is losing to Project Veritas in a court of law, it is trying to smear Project Veritas in the court of public opinion,” he told the newspaper. “I think the court, like me, may well be appalled at The New York Times’s continued pattern of defamation of Project Veritas.”

Read the full report here.

In HBO Max’s new comedy “Hacks,” Jean Smart plays a role befitting of the showbiz legend that she is

Good comedies lighten life for a time. Great comedies like “Hacks” make you wish you could live in the world they create no matter how dispiriting they can be. Or maybe it’s a matter of its creators knowing the extraordinary talent they have in Jean Smart, lately the standout performer in any number of dramas – “Watchmen,” “Legion,” “Mare of Easttown” come to mind the quickest.

Here she has top billing in a 10-episode show pitching her as Deborah Vance, a Las Vegas legend meant to recall Joan Rivers. Smart has plenty of experience in the comedy side of the business, having become a household name starring “Designing Women.” Younger viewers probably recall that less readily than her operatic turn on “24.”

In “Hacks” Smart to works all sides of the emotional spectrum, utterly plausible in her stand-up scenes and even better in the transitional moments between being onstage and the curtain coming down.

Deborah never deflates before our eyes; that would be typical, and Smart can never be that. Instead she switches her character into pure business mode, always moving like a shark, never exposing her vulnerability to anyone but those closest to her.

She’s a woman who has worked enough performances on the Strip to set records and have a street named after her, and who plainly fears what would happen if she were to stop. Her gigs are on top of the enterprises that get her real money, including a home shopping network line, local business openings, any place that will have her and pay her handsomely.

Deborah has a mansion with a pool and a staff attending to all her needs, along with a manufactured lake she populates with live fish delivered directly to her estate. She’s hell on the local water company’s preservation efforts but from her perspective, she’s clawed her way to earning every obscene luxury.

Because of all of this – in spite of it – Deborah is never satisfied. Her confidence in herself is her weapon and shield, and she’s been swinging it around for such a long time than she doesn’t notice the edges have rusted.

When struggling 25-year-old comedy writer Ava (Hannah Einbinder) arrives on her doorstep from L.A., from which she’s been exiled, Deborah wants nothing to do with her. She’s just found out that her plum casino residency is on the verge of being downgraded to make room for the gimmicky pop group Pentatonix. Another reminder that younger performers are nipping at her heels is the last thing she needs.

Ava’s desperation moves Deborah even less, until they trade a series of crude insults. With that the experienced comedian decides the newcomer has something to offer, even if it’s just target practice, and an uneasy partnership is born.

Deborah isn’t the kind of woman who is easy to be around but “Hacks” creators Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs and Jen Statsky tailor the character to Smart in a way that makes it impossible not to love and understand her. And they do this without dimming everything Einbinder brings to the pair’s dynamic.

Aniello, Downs and Statsky are alumni of “Broad City,” a Millennial signature show whose reverence for comedy’s founding mothers is apparent; you just have to have seen enough of this world to notice that. Smart’s reverence takes the shape of recognizing the toll holding onto success and greatness takes on women who survive this industry, seen in moments when Deborah is alone and drops her satisfied grin and bright eyes. In those glimpses she dons her character’s exhausted refusal to concede she might be done.

And this lesson is what she imparts to Ava, or tries to, either out of spite or knowing or a bit of both. When the overly confident Ava complains that Deborah didn’t use any of what she believes to be good jokes in her act, Deborah takes the wind out of her sails with, “Good is the minimum. It’s the baseline. You have to be so much more than good.”

Einbinder meets Smart by tapping into her character’s cockiness without drowning the audience in overcompensation. A Los Angeles-based stand-up performer, Einbender lights up with the nervous hunger of someone whose ambition overdraws her abilities. As such, Ava’s “better than this” irritation shifts over time into an appreciation that’s grudging until Einbinder warms it into something genuine.

Some of the finest jabs within the six episodes made available for review feature her clashing against Deborah, who she wants to write off as a has-been, and being defeated by revelation after revelation as she learns exactly who Deborah Vance is. On her first day she realizes her new boss has her own private blackjack dealer – a kid like Ava – to whom Deborah gives all her best hand-me-downs.

Meanwhile Deborah makes a show of putting Ava in her place, roasting her alive with a chef’s precision. The legend is hell on young upstarts like Ava, who receives a cautionary vision as to where that could lead when she meets Deborah’s profoundly damaged daughter (Kaitlin Olson, ragged and wonderful in each of her scenes).

But that’s because Deborah understands the price of maintaining her life is a low-grade despondency at knowing what could have been. An early scene has her breezily calling her loved ones to dinner with elegantly plated suppers warmed in the microwave. Only her two dogs respond, scarfing down their meat and veggies as she downs a glass of wine by herself, her expression blank. She wears the same emotionlessness when she gets wind of a betrayal or, conversely, finally obtains an antique trifle long denied her.

“Hacks” writes a surfeit of generosity into everyone, especially Deborah, whose vulnerability Smart readily accesses. Her best parts are amplified by the quiet work of her loyal assistant Marcus (Carl Clemons-Hopkins, the show’s stealthiest delight). “Her s**t is ugly, but the quality is there,” Deborah’s card dealer explains, and she’s talking about a shirt, but she could be describing the comedian’s spirit.

Through it all “Hacks” steadily builds a real respect and friendship between these two women, expanding our view of what it means to secure and defend a throne at the banquet table, while appreciating the enormous struggle it takes to even get on the wait list. Watching and enjoying it is enough, but Smart and Einbinder make us want to sit with these two, Smart especially, as Deborah and Ava enrich each other’s existence.

“Hacks” premieres with two episodes Thursday, May 13 on HBO Max with two new episodes released every week until June 10.

Steve Kornacki will bring his “Big Board” skills to a new gig – game show host

NBC national political correspondent Steve Kornacki will be applying his "Big Board" skills to a new role: game show host.

NBC announced Thursday that the network will work with the journalist to produce and develop a show that taps into Kornacki's enthusiasm for statistics, sports and politics.

"Steve brings so much passion and genuine enthusiasm to his work, on top of his encyclopedic knowledge base, that it's just impossible as a viewer not to share his interest and excitement," said Cesar Conde, NBCUniversal News Group chairman.

Kornacki developed something of a cult following during the 2020 presidential election as election day stretched into an election week. Over the course of five days, Kornacki stood in front of a digitized Electoral College map and, as new data came in from each state, he methodically explained how it impacted the vote count and each candidate's chances to win.

Maybe it was his reassuring grasp of statistics or his "palomino brown" Gap khakis, but somewhere along the way Kornacki became America's bespectacled crush (or "Map Daddy" as some Twitter users put it). It was a development that, as Kornacki told TIME, "made me a little squeamish, but it was all coming from a good place."

And it seems that NBC is hoping some of his election week fans will make it a point to tune into his as of yet unnamed game show.

"We wanted to tap into that fanbase along with his natural talent and charisma," said Susan Rovner, NBCU TV and Streaming chairman for Entertainment. "Steve's passion for trivia and analytics is the perfect foray into entertainment and we can't wait to welcome him to our platforms."

But wait, there's even more places to watch Steve on your TVs!

Kornacki is also officially joining the NBC Sports team, where most of his coverage will center on the data behind sports performances. He will contribute to the network's Tokyo Olympics coverage this summer, as well as coverage of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. This fall, he will also return to Football Night in America and is slated to cover the Breeders' Cup World Championships in November.

Details about Kornacki's game show are scant at this point, but he has tested the concept before. In 2013, he hosted "Up Against the Clock with Steve Kornacki," a '70s-style game show bit on his MSNBC show. Contestants showed off their politics knowledge and competed for, among other things, food cart gift certificates.

It's unclear whether his new show will take on a similar format — but here's hoping he brings back the array of bright sports coats that were his signature on the show.

“I want people to be angry”: William Jackson Harper on viewers’ takeaway from “Underground Railroad”

When I was a kid, they would play the TV adaptation of Alex Haley’s “Roots” every year around February as some sort of Black History Month initiative, for us inner city kids in Baltimore. And many of us young fidgety viewers, including myself never really took a liking to the watered-down version of slavery –– we had nothing against the art, we just didn’t like seeing ourselves or people who look like us captured in chains and constantly beaten. The film never ended with us having deep conversations about the impact of slavery, just us wild kids joking around about LeVar Burton’s character Kunta Kinte, the way he had his foot chopped off, and how we would have fought our way out of that impossible situation.

And then the pre-Civil War movies had magically disappeared as if the kidnapping, raping, enslavement and murdering of a whole people didn’t happen . . . until Steven Spielberg’s 1997 film “Amistad” came out, poured into our classrooms and in my opinion sparked a new era of documenting the darkest era of American history. Now we have a constant wave of films, television shows and books that capture that era from each and every angle –– some of these projects are so fragile that it downplays the pain slavery has caused for generations to come, and some so harsh that it gives you chills and you can feel the pain through the television screen. Amazon’s new series “The Underground Railroad” represents the latter.

“The Underground Railroad” – based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Colson Whitehead and directed by Oscar winner Barry Jenkins – reimagines the underground railroad in an alternate history brilliantly through the mind of Whitehead. The 10-part series stars Thuso Mbedu, Chase W. Dillon, Lily Rabe and “The Good Place” actor William Jackson Harper who plays Royal. Harper detailed the struggles of accurately capturing this era of American history on an recent episode of “Salon Talks.”

You can watch my “Salon Talks” episode with William Jackson Harper here, or read a Q&A of our conversation below.

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

I’m honored that I got a chance to see the show early. I love Colson’s novel. And I love the show, but in a different way. As a actor, do you run into this issue? Because people always say, no, you got to read the book, or you got to see the film, and vice versa. But do you run into that? Or is it a challenge to take on a role from a book that was so popular?

You can’t let yourself get too wrapped up in what everyone’s ideas or opinions of the book are, and try to play all of that. I read the book and I have my interpretation of the character that I play, and that’s what I have to adhere to. What are the things that I drew from reading the book about who Royal was, and what are his relationships, how do they manifest? How does he interact with people? And I just needed to hew close to what personally struck me, rather than trying to get too swept up in a larger idea of how people might have viewed the thing. Because everyone’s got an opinion, and I’m not going to be able to satisfy everybody’s ideas, you know?

How’d you get involved with the project?

It was an audition, man. I knew that the project was going to be happening, back in the day. It’s been in this sort of gestation phase for a long time, but it wasn’t anything that I was actively pursuing. I was just like, if I’m lucky enough to get an audition one day, cool. But if not, also I’m sure that Barry Jenkins has his people that he wants to use in this project, and that’s the way it is. And I will gladly watch it because I just want to see how this story gets told on the screen. But I just got an audition for it, and I read the audition material, and I just thought it was fantastic.

I just thought it was really nuanced and interesting, and I wanted to play the character. And there’s no guarantee you’re getting the part, obviously. So I guess, for me, it was like, I’m going to spend the time with the audition that I need to give the performance that I want to give. Because this may be all that I get with this project, and all that I get with this character, and then lo and behold, it actually went my way, and I got the opportunity to join this group of people to help tell this story.

How do you pick and choose the roles you go out for?

I don’t really pick and choose much. It’s usually a lot of, I audition, and then maybe I’m invited. I audition for things that I’m interested in, but there’s no guarantee that I’m going to get that part. Most likely, I’m not going to get that part. But it’s not like a whole thing where it’s like, there’s a lot of offers, and I’m reading things, and then talking like, ah, no, no, I don’t want to do that. Or, oh, this sounds good. It’s more just like, just waiting for the right things to come along, and giving yourself a chance with a decent audition, and then just hoping that the things that you’re interested in come your way. So, I’ve been really lucky in that a lot of the stuff that I’ve auditioned for has been varied, and I’ve found things really interesting, or really odd that I just wanted to experiment and see how they turned out.

In preparation for this, I watched a lot of different things that you’ve done. I binge watched “The Good Place,” and I watched “We Broke Up,” and then obviously, “The Underground Railroad.” And I know as an actor, your job is to take on these different roles, but they all seem so different. And it left me thinking, I wonder what is your prep work like? Or how much of you goes into the characters that you play?

My prep work actually varies from part to part. For “Underground Railroad” I had to do some reading, just to try to understand and get a more visceral feel for what the story is dealing with. Because I have ideas. We have plenty of stories that deal with slavery floating around out there, but there’s something about reading actual accounts of enslaved people that escaped, or fought their way out, or something, that it affected me differently. And then, also reading Colson Whitehead’s book affected how I approached the character.

With “The Good Place” it was like, “I am not a philosophy professor. I only understand so much of it.” And so, that was a lot of just focusing on the relationships with the other humans, and with everyone else, the entire cast. But really focusing on, we are four humans in this weird situation, and we’re leaning on each other in a very specific way. And then, we have Janet and Michael, who were these other beings that become part of our crew. And then when it came to the philosophy stuff, I would try to read these intellectual articles and stuff, and I would just find myself completely out of my depth, and I would just have to go to Wikipedia, and just be like, okay, I understand this. Let me just do this.

It’s good to understand how smart you are not. That’s what I learned. I was like, okay, I am of average intelligence, you know? I am right in the middle of everybody else. But it just depends on the piece. And I think that so many actors, the reason that I think that we get into it, is to try to see if we can play different parts, and have it work, and have it feel real and lived in, in some way. And so, that’s the joy of it, is just for things to be different.

A lot of my favorite actors, they play similar roles over and over again. You are extremely different, and bringing something different to the table every time, which is playing at a high level. You play Royal, who was a very, very, very important character. And just for our viewers and our readers who aren’t really familiar with the book, who are getting ready to check out this program, could you just tell us a little bit about Royal, and his context from where he enters the world, just without giving too much away?

Royal is a freeborn man that Cora encounters on her journey. Cora’s our main character, a central character, played by Thuso Mbedu, who’s amazing, and they strike up an interesting relationship. And he’s a man who has his own code in a time when that was not going to – where society didn’t want to afford that to a Black man. And so, it’s a really interesting dynamic. He represents, I guess, a paradigm shift in a lot of ways, from a lot of the things that Cora has experienced, to what her life will be going forward.

For me, the story, it’s less about endurance and more about resistance. Like entirely about Black resistance. And there are stories that go into this that exist in the zeitgeist as well, you know? It’s not the only one that does this. But I feel like the thing that really stuck out to me was that, at the heart of this story is resistance, rather than endurance and waiting for things to change. It’s about the agency of Black people resisting and changing their circumstances. That is what the story is about. And it is about a woman dealing with trauma in her past that has nothing to do with slavery, but just to do with her family situation, and the people that she’s dealing with every day. And so, there’s just a lot of levels to what’s happening, that I think distinguish this project from others.

It’s my hope that people will watch this and then see it the way that I see it. And also, I hope that this starts some really thorny, uncomfortable conversations about who we would have been in these times. I think it’s very easy for everyone to think that they would have just been an abolitionist. Everyone thinks that they would have, you know? And it’s like, no, a lot of times we deal with our circumstances and we just accept them. And I want people to ask themselves these tough questions, and start some really tough conversations, and hopefully we can push things forward a little bit.

What are some of the main things you do want people to take away?

Well, I think just that. I don’t have a thing that I want, specifically people to be like, I want you to feel this, or think this afterwards. If there’s anything, I want people to be angry. I do want people to be angry after watching this, because slavery was monstrous, and it should be as monstrous . . . It should be rendered as such. I think that it’s pretty brutal, some of the things that happen in this story, and I think that that is going to help us tell the truth about ourselves a little bit more as a country. And I want people to be angry, and then I want people to realize that it was a society where, again, people can have opinions about slavery and the institution, and disagree. But that doesn’t mean that you’re going to be an abolitionist.

That doesn’t mean that you’re that you’re going to lead a rebellion. It means that you have an opinion and you may do nothing about it, because that’s what the law of the land is. And I think about the ways in which I see injustices now, and I’m like, someone should do something about that.

But it’s not going to be me, you know? And I have to be honest about that. And I’ve had some moments with myself where I’m like, okay, I’m perfectly happy showing up at a protest, and lending my voice, and lending my body, but I am not going to be the person that leads it or starts it. Because I just don’t feel that I am capable. I don’t feel like I’m – that’s not in my skillset, and I don’t feel like I’d have the mental capacity to actually be effective. And so, it’s my hope that people realize, or think about who they would have been, who they are now, and what are the ways in which they can improve the world that we live in a little bit more. And what are the things that you can do that will push things forward? That’s what I hope people take away from this.

I feel like Hollywood has really been stepping up, in allowing a lot of content to be created. And I wanted to ask you, do you feel like with this explosion of content dealing with these issues, revolutionary leaders, different times in slavery, and so forth, do you feel like they’re starting to wake up and say, we got to tell these stories? Or do you feel like we’re just in a moment right now, and it’s just going to pass by, and the moment will shift to something else?

I don’t know. I feel like both the things you’re saying, they are true to an extent, right? I feel like it’s going to be – I think people are telling these stories right now, because they are really weighing on their hearts and minds in a way that perhaps it wasn’t a few years ago, right? But then, there will be, I think that there is a desire to get back to not having certain things in the forefront all the time. I think that it’s interesting. I feel like as a Black dude, people are acting as if everything that we’re experiencing right now, and all the upheaval is something that’s brand new. And I’m like, “We’ve been saying it.”

This is not new. Everybody else is shook, but we’re like, “This is the way it’s always been. This is not new stuff.” And so, there’s something about thinking about, we’re having this moment in Hollywood where a lot of these stories are coming to the fore, and like, we’re in a moment. And I’m like, well, yeah. I think more people that aren’t Black are looking and being like, hey, that’s messed up, and we should talk about this. But for Black folks, it’s like, we’ve been over here. This has been messed up a long time and no one’s ever dealt with it. And I think that there is a desire even for Black folks to maybe put away certain things for a second. Just to be like, “You know what? I know things are messed up. I know things are hard. But I have other things to do right now, and I don’t want to deal with this right now.” And I get that.

So, I think it’ll be a lot of ebbs and flows. We’ll have these moments where people will unpack some of this stuff, and perhaps investigate it and interrogate it a little bit, and then go off just for a second, because you don’t always want to deal with it. Sometimes it’s just hard. And so, yeah, I think to an extent both things that you’re saying are true and will happen as far as I know, as far as I think, you know?

Has your experience working on this show going to affect what you do next?

Yeah, I think so. There’s a lot of stuff in this story that’s triggering, and it was hard, and it was difficult. I found myself completely angry at times. Yeah, there’s certain aspects of this where I’m like, okay, I want to do something very, very different. And I’m getting to do something very different with “Love Life.” It’s weird. I wrote this play a few years ago, and a friend of mine came up afterwards, and she was like, “Really great. Really great work. But why do our stories have to be always rooted in trauma?” And I was like, “Well, I didn’t think it was about that.” I thought it was more of just an intellectual unpacking of certain things.

I thought about what she said, and it did affect me. And I actually sat down to write recently, and I realized that the thing that I was trying to react to what’s going on right now, and I was like, at the heart of it was trauma in some way. And I actually just stopped, because I’m like, you know what? I don’t want to do this. There’s a way in which just being a Black person and just being in a public space, in some way, can be interpreted as a political act.

And so, I was like, you know what, I don’t want to do this right now. I want to do something very different. And I keep going back to what she said after my play. And I was like, yeah, I think that I do want to see, what are the other ways in which I can unpack some of the nuances of interacting with people as a Black man that I have? How can I do that without putting trauma at the heart of the story? Because that’s not always my story. It’s not trauma all the time, you know?

“The Underground Railroad” premieres on Friday, May 14 on Amazon Prime.

Palm Beach officials prepare extradition plans ahead of possible Trump indictment: report

Law enforcement officials in Palm Beach County, Florida, have discussed contingency plans in the event former President Donald Trump is indicted on criminal charges, according to Politico.

Officers have “actively prepared” for the possibility that Trump is indicted by Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, according to the report. Vance has led a years-long probe into Trump and his businesses. Officials have discussed potential “thorny extradition issues” if Vance indicts Trump, who currently lives at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach.

But the report also noted an “obscure clause” in Florida law regarding interstate extradition that gives Gov. Ron DeSantis, a close Republican ally of the former president who is reportedly considering his own 2024 presidential bid, to intervene or investigate “the situation and circumstances of the person” in question “and whether the person ought to be surrendered” to law enforcement in a different state.

“The statute leaves room for interpretation that the governor has the power to order a review and potentially not comply with the extradition notice,” Joe Abruzzo, the Palm Beach County Circuit Court clerk who would be involved in any extradition process, told Politico. The report noted that Abruzzo is a former close associate of President Joe Biden’s brother Frank but the clerk insisted that “the full extent of the law will be followed and carried out appropriately, without bias.”

Trump, however, is planning to stay at his golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey, over the summer, meaning that DeSantis would have no power to intervene if the former president is indicted during that time.

New Jersey has a similar statute as Florida but Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, has no love lost for Trump. Murphy called for Trump to be removed from office after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and accused him of “inciting insurrection.”

Trump’s lawyers could also negotiate a voluntary surrender in the event of an indictment, which could head off any potential law enforcement involvement.

Vance’s office has intensified its investigation since a Supreme Court ruling allowed him to subpoena years of Trump’s tax returns. Prosecutors in recent weeks have focused on gaining the cooperation of Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, who has worked at the former president’s company for decades. Prosecutors recently subpoenaed information related to more than $500,000 in tuition payments for Weisselberg’s grandchildren’s prep school in Manhattan that were approved by him or by Trump himself, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

The subpoena is part of a wide-ranging probe into possible loan, bank or insurance fraud by the Trump Organization. Vance’s office has also subpoenaed Trump’s lenders, insurance providers and other companies for financial information related to Trump’s properties, according to the report. Prosecutors have also subpoenaed Weisselberg’s former daughter-in-law for tax records and financial information related to the Trump Organization and have interviewed former Trump attorney and Trump Organization vice president Michael Cohen more than a half-dozen times.

Vance, who is not running for re-election, recently hired Mark Pomerantz, a high-profile outside attorney, to assist with the Trump probe.

“As a lame duck, he’s done certain things, including hiring an outside forensic accounting firm, which is not super unusual but it’s not that common,” former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who was fired by Trump, said in a recent interview with Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick. “He’s done something else that is less common, which is hire an outside lawyer, Mark Pomerantz, who’s a very distinguished, well-respected lawyer in New York. I’m not going to put too much weight on it, but it seems like the kind of move you make when you believe that there’s going to be a charge or there’s a good likelihood of a charge, because it’s a pretty public thing to do.”

The investigation is expected to be completed before Vance’s term ends, according to The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer. Sources told Mayer that the pace of the grand jury probe has “picked up dramatically” this year.

“They mean business now,” one source said, adding that prosecutors’ questions have become “very pointed — they’re sharpshooting now, laser-beaming.”

New York Attorney General Letitia James is leading a separate civil investigation into Trump’s business practices and Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis has opened a criminal investigation into Trump’s pressure on Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to overturn his loss in the state. Willis said in a statement earlier this year that prosecutors are also looking at “potential violations of Georgia law prohibiting the solicitation of election fraud, the making of false statements to state and local governmental bodies, conspiracy, racketeering, violation of oath of office and any involvement in violence or threats related to the election’s administration.”

Hoaxers Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman hold bogus presser, are permanently banned from hotel

Blundering right-wing activists and smear merchants Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman held a press conference at the Hyatt Centric in Arlington, Virginia, on Thursday, where they launched meritless allegations against Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and Rep. Matt Gaetz, the embattled Florida Republican. Since both Gaetz and Giuliani face abundant legal difficulties in the real world, the fact that Wohl and Burkman had nothing to offer but spurious rumors was almost remarkable in itself. But that was not the duo’s only largest problem. Now Burkman and Wohl have been banned from holding press events at the Arlington Hyatt, a hotel official told Salon.

A manager of the Hyatt Centric property said that the venue’s operating team had no knowledge of Wohl and Burkman’s extensive past history of scams and schemes, and that the two right-wing operatives had told hotel staff they planned to hold a “book signing,” not a press conference. “I’m upset they lied to me,” the manager told Salon.

The manager said that Burkman “got into my face and demanded to rent a room” during a personal visit to the hotel several days earlier. According to the hotel employee, Burkman brought a bundle of cash with him and asked the manager to take it on the spot as payment for a conference room.

Asked why he and Wohl had lied to hotel staff about holding a “book signing,” Burkman told Salon: “I never lie. I only tell the truth,” before describing himself as a “beacon” for the truth. Burkman and Wohl currently face felony charges in several states for a robocall scheme apparently designed to discourage voting by mail and depress voter turnout in Black neighborhoods during the 2020 election.

During the roughly 50-minute press conference, Wohl and Burkman claimed to have damaging material on both Giuliani and Gaetz. But their muddy allegations could be interpreted as an effort to draw attention away from credible reporting on allegations of sexual misconduct stemming from Gaetz’s interactions with numerous women, some of them purportedly underage at the time.

“This is a sad day. It’s not the kind of thing we like to do,” Burkman said in his opening remarks. Given the number of times he and Wohl have held similar events, that claim seems implausible.

As the press conference wrapped up, a hotel manager told Salon that Wohl and Burkman would be permanently banned from holding events at the Hyatt Centric. “Today’s it,” that manager said, evidently frustrated.

This isn’t the first time Wohl and Burkman have run into the problem of where to host their press conferences. They have often hosted events at or outside Burkman’s home in Arlington, but neighbors have become increasingly unhappy with the noise and crowds those gatherings foster.

A furious neighbor yelled at protesters – especially the ones using blowhorns – for making noise. They blamed Burkman for putting on the event, which the neighbor defended as “free speech.”@ZTPetrizzo asked what he’d do next time.

“I will move to a fucking hotel” he said. pic.twitter.com/b50WNByiRy

— Ford Fischer (@FordFischer) October 21, 2019

“I will move to a fucking hotel,” an angry neighbor declared in October of 2019 after one of Wohl and Burkman’s press conferences.

Asked by Salon on Thursday why this press conference wasn’t held at his home, Burkman responded, “Safety reasons, you know. Just safety reasons. We don’t want our friends with the banjo, man, we don’t want our crazy friends with music.”

You can watch the entire dubious Thursday press conference below, via YouTube:

Elise Stefanik requested more earmarks than all of “The Squad” combined: conservative journalist

Conservatives are now questioning Rep. Elise Stefanik’s (R-NY) right-wing bonafides, and journalist Chris Pandolfo of The Blaze has found that Rep. Liz Cheney’s (R-WY) prospective replacement has tallied a high number of earmark spending requests.

In total, Pandolfo found that Stefanik this year has made $105 million in earmark spending requests for her district, which he notes is “15x more in earmark spending than Democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).”

In fact, The Blaze editor added up all of the earmark requests made this year by all four members of “The Squad” — Reps. Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) — and found that Stefanik’s earmark requests were more than twice theirs combined.

“It’s an amazing feat for someone endorsed for a leadership position in the party of ‘fiscal responsibility,'” Pandolfo commented.

House Republicans are set to vote on Friday on whether to make Stefanik their conference chair, after the party voted to dump Cheney from that position earlier this week for her refusal to stop condemning former President Donald Trump.

This beans & greens gratin is comfort in a pan (and has double the amount of cheese—you’re welcome)

When the odds and ends in the fridge are starting to look a little limp, when my desire to grocery shop is similarly flagging, that’s exactly when I wind up making my favorite meals. The formula doesn’t vary too much, and the results are consistently satisfying — a starchy thing, a vegetable and/or an allium thing, maybe a meaty thing. A cheesy thing, for sure. Stick it in the oven until everything is melty and crunchy and deeply flavored. It’s the magic combination that can produce that viral feta and tomato pasta or a cacio e pepe pie — in other words, a surefire hit.

So I knew I’d fall in love with David Kinch’s beautiful “At Home in the Kitchen” as soon as I skimmed the contents and saw not one, not two, but three different gratin recipes. The gratin, the pinnacle of cheesy baked dinner deliciousness, gets its due here with a Belgian endive version, an “ultimate” potato version and a rustic cavolo nero version that has entirely stolen my heart.

“Are you familiar with Richard Olney?” Kinch the acclaimed restauranteur behind Los Gatos’s beloved Manresa asks during a recent phone conversation. “Olney, for me, is the greatest American cookbook author about French cuisines. He lived in France all of his life. He wrote ‘The French Menu Cookbook,’ ‘Simple French Food.’ He also did the 28 volume Time-Life series ‘The Good Cook.’ He did a book called ‘Lulu’s Provencal Table’ with the Peyrauds from Domaine Tempier.”

“For me, he is the greatest. Really super uncompromising on many different levels, but he was a huge fan of the whole concept of gratin with leftovers,” Kinch continues. “You have a leftover roast from the night before or leftover vegetables. His whole thing was just to chop everything up, mix it together, dot it with butter, sprinkle some bread crumbs in there, pour a little bit of cream — or no cream at all — and just cheese on it. Just bake into the oven, and it just completely changes everything around.”

It doesn’t get simpler or more resourceful, and Kinch’s whole book reflects that relaxed, unfussy attitude — a philosophy of cooking that comes from a love of both the process and its most elemental of ingredients.

“I didn’t fall in love with the restaurant business. I fell in love with cooking,” he says. “And I still love to cook. It gives me a lot of great pleasure to this day, from when I was a young cook to this day working with my hands, creating something. I get lost in my own little world, and then I have something tasty at the end, or I have the satisfaction and pleasure of someone I’m sharing it with. Are there days that I’m tired, and I do takeout? Yes. Are there days that I really, really miss going to restaurants? Yes, of course. But for me, the act of cooking — the gestures that the hands make during the cooking are the thing.”

If you’re looking to put your own hands to purpose, you’d be hard-pressed to make something nicer for your family — or the newly vaccinated members of your expanding friend circle. I’ve tweaked Kinch’s recipe a bit here because I think collard greens deserve more love. And because I also have no restraint, I doubled the amount of cheese. You’re welcome.

You can assemble this ahead of time, and stick it in the oven, largely ignoring it, while you have deep conversations or dance around in the kitchen. (Kinch has some excellent musical suggestions in his book.) Take his advice, and invest in a kitchen scale and a gratin pan, but please don’t let a lack of either stop you from making this dish as soon as possible . . . and adapting it to your own taste and produce bin.

***

Recipe: Weeknight Beans and Greens Gratin

Inspired by David Kinch’s “At Home in the Kitchen”

Serves: 4 – 6

Ingredients:

1 big bunch of collard greens, cleaned with tough ribs removed*
1 can of cannellini beans, drained (or canned beans of your choice)
1 garlic clove, minced
Pinch of cayenne or chipotle powder
Salt and pepper to taste
3/4 cup of plain full-fat yogurt, sour cream or creme fraiche
1/2 cup of grated Gruyere, Swiss, Munster or other melting cheese of your choice
2 tablespoons of breadcrumbs, panko or crushed crackers

Directions:

Over medium-high heat, bring a large pot of water to boil. Generously salt the water.
While the water is boiling, preheat your oven to 425 degrees. Generously butter a gratin dish or 9″ baking dish.
Blanch your greens 2 minutes, or until just soft. Drain and squeeze out excess water. Chop coarsely.
Return your greens to the pot, and add beans, garlic, salt and pepper. Stir gently to mix.
Spread the mixture into your baking dish.
Dollop your yogurt on top of the mixture.
Top with your cheese, then breadcrumbs.
Bake about 30 minutes, until browned.
Remove baking dish from oven, and let sit about 10 minutes before serving.

Pro tip: Kinch suggests serving this with “Ride Me High” by J. J. Cale.

*You can use a big bunch of whatever greens you prefer, like Kinch’s suggested cavolo nero. I wouldn’t judge you in the least for using pre-washed stuff here. Don’t like leafy greens? Use your imagination and throw in 1 1/2 cups of cooked broccoli rabe, carrots, green beans — you get the gist.

More Quick & Dirty:

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

In the tension-filled “Profile,” a journalist goes catfishing online to get recruited by ISIS

Why do young European women join ISIS, and how are they being recruited through social media? This is the clickbait topic behind “Profile,” a 2018 thriller that is getting a theatrical release now. (Given that the film unfolds entirely on a computer screen, it can also be watched on a laptop by anyone who does not suffer from screen fatigue.)

Amy (Valene Kane) is an undercover reporter for Vick (Christine Adams). She creates a fake social media profile as Melody Nelson to “befriend” a Jihadist and learn (and report on) how terrorists seduce women online in weeks, encouraging them to marry, and come to Syria where they are likely to end up as sex slaves, suicide bombers, or be killed trying to escape.

It is a compelling topic, and “Profile” is engaging as Amy types and retypes information and messages, downloads images to upload on her account, and watches videos to learn how to make herself look younger, “become” Muslim, and wear a hijab. She also researches details about conversion, finding stories by young women who have joined ISIS, to make her fictional narrative believable.

And it is hard not to appreciate the details of all the texts, articles, and videos that must have gone into making this film. Director Timur Bekmambetov (“Wanted”) creates a very busy screen for viewers. (He produced two other 2018 films that are shot entirely “online” — “Searching,” which starred John Cho, and the horror flick “Unfriended: Dark Web.”) But he keeps the action nimble as Amy makes notes, records and edits calls and videos, and even pauses to chat with her boyfriend, Matt (Morgan Watkins), or her sister Kathy (Emma Cater). However, viewers must suspend their disbelief that Amy’s Wi-fi never goes down, she never forgets to record something, and never has any technical issues whatsoever.

After sharing a video on social media, Amy, well, Melody, is contacted by Abu Bilel Al-Britani (Shazad Latif in a thankless role), who wants to Skype with her. Vick sets Amy up with Lou Karim (Amis Rahimzadeh), a colleague who can help her record the call, but Amy is concerned that Lou, who is Muslim, may blow her cover. Instead, he is useful, advising Amy not to look Bilel in the eyes. As Melody and Bilel chat, a game of seduction begins. Amy is hoping Bilel will reveal his recruitment process, and Bilel is hoping to get Melody to become his wife. Is someone being catfished here?

“Profile” strings viewers along until the final frame. But it’s almost a spoiler to reveal that Bekmambetov, who co-wrote the script with Brittany Poulton and Olga Kharina), adapted Anna Érelle’s 2015 memoir, “In the Skin of a Jihadist,” which recounts the true story that inspired this film. Nevertheless, there is considerable tension as Amy tries to keep her identity as Melody compartmentalized. Viewers may worry that she will reveal her ruse accidentally as she shares her screen with Bilal or shifts in and out of character between Skype sessions. Meanwhile, Matt, Kathy, and Vick are all concerned that Amy is going too deep into her role. The danger mounts as she is pressured by Bilel to wed him online over Skype and come to Syria via Amsterdam.

Valene Kane is marvelous to watch as Amy juggles paying her overdue rent, assuring Vick she has a story, and managing her boyfriend’s needs (or not). But her high wire act as Melody is slightly less successful. While her fictional persona is meant to be pliable, her connection with Bilal never quite convinces. He may be “charming,” cooking with her over Skype, promising her everything she desires (including a Kalashnikov!), but the suggestion that Amy is losing focus and falling for Bilal is unpersuasive. There should be some real ambiguity here — is Bilal for real, naïve, or devious? Latif’s performance does not invite such complexity. Even when he reveals some personal details that intrigue Amy/Melody, he fails to entice. As Amy loses sight of things, and considers revealing her true identity to Bilal, audiences may have a disconnect. This crucial episode may come off as facile and contrived.

What is more, “Profile” also only scratches the murky ethics of the situations it presents. Because the “seduction” is so fast, and Amy is so determined (and deadline-driven), the bigger picture issues feel glossed over. More attention should have been paid to the loneliness and lack of belonging that young women (and young men) experience that lead them to join extremist groups, cults, Neo-Nazis, and other similar insidious organizations. Likewise, when Amy asks Bilal about online reports that recount sex slavery rings or suicide bombing, their conversations seem superficial. Given how strong the film’s setup is, one wishes it had explored these topics deeper to sustain the dramatic tension through the characters’ “courtship” and conversations.

However, this underdeveloped midsection does lead to an absorbing finale where Amy encounters some real danger. “Profile” may be manipulative, but it does create a thrill-ride vibe for viewers who fall under the film’s spell.

“Profile” opens in theaters on Friday, May 14.

Pelosi calls for investigation into Marjorie Taylor Greene’s history of harassment after AOC attack

Freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., was seen accosting Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. on Wednesday just outside the House chamber, erroneously berating the Squad member about her support of antifa “terrorists.”

As Greene and Ocasio-Cortez were leaving the House chamber on Wednesday afternoon, two Washington Post reporters saw Greene yell “Hey Alexandria” twice from behind Ocasio-Cortez, but the Democratic congresswoman did not stop walking. When Greene eventually caught up with Ocasio-Cortez, she leveled a spate of verbal attacks, accusing the Democrat of not standing by her “radical socialist” beliefs and supporting antifa, a decentralized anti-fascist group which Greene called “terrorists.”

“You don’t care about the American people,” Greene yelled. “Why do you support terrorists and antifa?”

The New York congresswoman did not appear to respond to Greene, according to an original account from The Washington Post.

Ocasio-Cortez spokeswoman Lauren Hitt said in a statement: “Representative Greene tried to begin an argument with Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez and when Rep. Ocasio-Cortez tried to walk away, Congresswoman Greene began screaming and called Rep. Ocasio-Cortez a terrorist sympathizer.”

Hitt added: “We hope leadership and the Sergeant at Arms will take real steps to make Congress a safe, civil place for all Members and staff — especially as many offices are discussing reopening. One Member has already been forced to relocate her office due to Congresswoman Greene’s attacks.”

On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said that Greene’s behavior may warrant an ethics investigation, calling Greene’s attacks “egregious.”

“This is beneath the dignity of a person serving in the Congress of the United States and is a cause for trauma and fear among members,” Pelosi said, “especially on the heels of an insurrection, on which the minority in the committee yesterday denied ever happened.”

Following the incident, Greene took to Twitter to again tar Ocasio-Cortez, whom she called “Ms. Defund The Police,” for wanting to “call the police for security bc she’s afraid of debating with me about her socialist [Green New Deal].” Greene also told reporters that Ocasio-Cortez is “a chicken.”

The incident is just the latest in Greene’s penchant for unprovoked verbal aggression.

Back in February, Greene hung a transphobic sign – which read “There are TWO genders: MALE & FEMALE” and “Trust the Science!” – outside the office of Rep. Marie Newman, D-Ill., who has a transgender daughter. The incident occurred just after Newman spoke in support of the Equality Act, which would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. A month prior, Greene made headlines again when she aggressively confronted Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo. after the Democrat encouraged her to put a mask on. The incident prompted Bush to permanently move her office.

In a similar incident back in 2019, Greene accosted gun reform activist David Hogg, an 18-year-old victim of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, for helping orchestrate what she baselessly alleged was a “false flag operation.”

Republicans have yet to seriously discipline the freshman representative. Back in January, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., vowed to have a “conversation” with Greene about her behavior. The House later voted to strip Greene of her committee assignments. A number of Democratic House members have called for Greene’s expulsion from Congress.

All olive bread is good — but this one is great

Castelvetrano olives are named after an eponymous town in Sicily, where they’re grown both for pressing into olive oil and simply for snacking (you might find one in your next martini, too!). Unlike the typical green olive you’d find in a salad or entrée, Castelvetranos’ mild flavor comes from being harvested at a younger stage, and because they’re typically packed in a brine that has less salt than other jarred olives. The flavor of these bright green gems leans subtly sweet and buttery, with a mellow tang. When compared to the ubiquitous little green olive in a can, the Castelvetrano is larger and substantially meatier, meaning it truly is an olive you can sink your teeth into.

All of these attributes make for an olive that is simply perfect for baking bread. The reduced salt content means less interference with your intended flavor profile (much like a baker who prefers to use unsalted butter so the salt content is completely under their control) and the thick, meaty olive flesh makes for a dramatic presentation in the loaf’s cross-sections — and a substantial bite with every slice of bread.

How many olives should I add to the dough?

I find adding a proportion of olives somewhere between 20 and 30% of the total flour to be a good starting point: Any lower and you end up with a loaf that lacks enough olive punch — a bread with olives as opposed to an olive bread. If you go the other direction, a higher than 30% olive-to-flour ratio starts to impact the dough’s structure and eating experience, resulting in a loaf that has less height and an overpoweringly olivey flavor.

Through several rounds of test-baking, I found 24% Castelvetranos to total flour weight to be just right. The flavor of the olives permeates the entire loaf even if you don’t catch a bite of the fruit. But when you do snag a piece of olive, and this happens often, the flavor is exuberant and rich, lighting up your palate.

If you can’t find Castelvetrano olives, swap them out for any pitted green olive you enjoy eating all on their own. Chances are, if you like them as a snacking olive, they’ll also be wonderful in a loaf of sourdough bread.

How do I prepare olives for baking?

Olives are typically jarred or canned in a brine, which tends to be rather salty (great for a snack plate and martinis, not so great for bread), so it’s best to thoroughly rinse the olives a few hours before you want to add them to your dough to remove the brine and excessive salt, then leave them out to dry on a layer or two of paper or kitchen towels to help wick away even more moisture.

After the olives are rinsed and totally dry, if they still contain their pits, it’s necessary to remove them. I find it’s easiest to use the side of a wide-bladed knife to smash the olive on a cutting board. Smashing splits the fruit open and exposes the pit, which can then easily be removed and discarded. While pitting olives is a bit of work, I actually prefer starting with olives that still have their pits, as I find the flavor is more intense than their pitted brethren. Additionally, smashing them leaves the fruit into convenient pieces which disperse easier throughout the dough during bulk fermentation.

You can choose to chop the pitted olives further if you’d like them to disperse more thoroughly through each loaf, leave them whole for a more striking presentation, or do a mixture of both.

Why is the salt percentage in the dough slightly lower?

For the vast majority of my lean sourdough bread baking (“lean” meaning doughs that don’t include enrichments like dairy, sugar, or eggs), I tend to peg salt to 1.8% of the total flour in a recipe. This is mostly a personal preference, as I find that amount of salt plenty for a tasty loaf of bread, but salt that’s anywhere in the range of 1.8 to 2.3% is common for a lean dough. But when adding in olives, which are already salty, it’s helpful to reduce the salt percentage slightly to offset the fruit.

For my latest sourdough bread recipe with Castelvetrano olives, I reduced the salt to 1.7% to ensure the final loaf isn’t excessively salty. On the surface, 0.1% (meaning only a gram or two less salt) might not seem like a drastic reduction, but I can assure you, the difference is profound.

Why add olive oil to the dough?

In my Olive Oil Sourdough With Castelvetranos, I added a bit of extra-virgin olive oil to the dough for both flavor and texture. Olive oil brings an undeniable fruitiness (which can be more or less pronounced depending on the variety), which certainly complements the olives in this dough, but it also affects the loaf’s overall texture. Olive oil, like any fat, inhibits gluten formation, resulting in a loaf that’s softer and more tender overall. The added flavor and modified texture make for bread that’s texturally a bit different from the classic sourdough boule you’d pick up at a bakery, and if I may say so, a quite deliciously different loaf.

Recipe: Olive Oil Sourdough With Castelvetranos

What is garlic mustard? (It’s not garlic mixed with mustard)

Every month, Melina Hammer, Food52’s very own Hudson Valley correspondent, is serving up all the bounty that upstate New York has to offer.

* * *

Now that it’s early spring, I am overjoyed to discover tender garlic mustard, one of the first wild ingredients to sprout from the still-dormant upstate New York landscape.

Garlic mustard, Alliaria petiolata, also known as poor man’s mustard or Jack-by-the-hedge, is a plant in the mustard (Brassicaceae) family, originally brought to the U.S. from Europe as a garden plant to help mitigate erosion. It is a biennial, sprouting vegetation in its first year, then after overwintering, it produces seeds in spring.

Garlic mustard is also an aggressively invasive species, suffocating the biodiversity of native plants. As The Nature Conservancy states, “Because the understory of a forest is so important for insects and other species at the bottom of the food chain, invaders like garlic mustard who emerge earlier than most native plants weaken the entire ecosystem.”

You simply cannot overharvest this plant, and in fact, you’re doing a service to native plants everywhere by picking it. I diligently do my part to hamper its spread by collecting it by the armful, and you can, too.

Where to find garlic mustard

Garlic mustard grows in many parts of the U.S. around forest edges, garden beds, disturbed woodlands, roadsides, and walking paths. It is one of the earliest spring plants, growing in squat bunches beginning in late March in the Hudson Valley, and reappearing in late fall. It is commonly found in parks, highway medians and shoulders, trails, urban areas, and gardens across the entire East Coast, Pacific Northwest, and Midwest. Unfortunately, garlic mustard has spread everywhere, save for ocean coastlines and the desert.

How to identify garlic mustard

Since it is one of the earliest green things to begin growing again in an otherwise brown landscape, it is fairly easy to identify — once you know what to look for. Garlic mustard’s tender foliage is a rich, deep green. Leaves have a wrinkly surface and a rounded, serrated edge. When plants mature, leaves become more heart-shaped, with leaf tips more similar to knife points.

But don’t just use your eyes: Crush a leaf in your hands — if it releases a strong garlicky, mustardy aroma, it is indeed garlic mustard. There are other plants sprouting at this time of year that marginally resemble garlic mustard (violets, which are a deeper green and do not have the serrated edge, and ground ivy, which is not wrinkly, and grows along the ground in a creeping fashion). None have the telltale aroma when their leaves are crushed either.

Garlic mustard, like other brassicas (broccoli, kale, cabbage, broccoli rabe) contains trace amounts of cyanide. Unless you’re consuming a huge quantity of it, however, there’s nothing to fear. If you want to be completely in the clear, know that the toxin is water soluble, so blanching, soaking, or boiling the greens prior to consuming will ensure safe enjoyment.

Photo by Melina Hammer.

How to pick and store it

When plants are young and present as clumps, harvest smaller leaves abundantly. As garlic mustard matures and sends up a juicy stem ending in a flower bud, cut or snap it off 4 to 7 inches down the stem — basically as long as you’d like, noting where the stem feels juicy, not fibrous. When garlic mustard is flowering, snap the uppermost part of the stem and flowers off between your fingers. If you’re game to pull plants up by their roots, harvest the whole thing and take from it what you plan to use, then discard the rest in the garbage.

Rinse leaves and shake or pat them dry, then store in a container, sealed in the fridge. If you bring young stems home, store them in a tidy bunch in a plastic bag. If you harvested flowers, store them in a container as you would the leaves, but don’t rinse them until just before using — flowers are delicate and will disintegrate if stored wet. Because these are picked at peak freshness, all but the flowers will last for up to 2 weeks, giving you ample time to devise many delicious ways to use this delicious ingredient.

What to do with it

When garlic mustard blooms, its sprays of white flowers give a wispy punch to salads, pizza, pasta, fish, and more. No need to cook them. Just sprinkle as a finishing touch.

One of my favorite times to harvest is when garlic mustard is still young. At this stage, it is excellent wilted in a cast-iron skillet and added to grains, beans, seared meats, pizzas, or toasts. Or, a quick and equally versatile preparation — and one of my favorites — is a pre-soaked raw, blitzed pesto sauce that also happens to be vegan.

Once the flower stem (petiole) shoots up from the bunch and flower buds have formed, the top 5 inches or so can be readily snapped off; they taste similar to broccoli rabe. Try chopping into bite-size pieces and sautéing.

Even garlic mustard roots are edible — they taste akin to horseradish. After scrubbing roots of their dirt, grate into salad dressings or marinades, or slice thinly to infuse vinegar or oils.

And their seeds? Yep, you guessed it: edible, too! Use seeds as you would mustard or black pepper, as a sprinkle to garnish pasta dishes, or, if you like to bake bread or crackers, as a sprinkle when finishing the dough, just prior to baking.

You can even use tiny garlic mustard sprouts as you would microgreens. They make an excellent topping to custardy eggs.

A couple recipes to get started

The green sauce is versatile: Toss it into pasta, slather it onto toast, or dip crispy roasted potatoes, as I have here. I sauté the tender stems similar to broccoli rabe, and pair them with grilled or seared fish or meats. This salmon dish is the epitome of spring.

Liz Cheney’s ouster is no isolated incident — Republicans are already back to defending Trump’s coup

After Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., was ousted from her role as third highest-ranking member of the GOP in the House on Wednesday, Republican leaders tried very hard to convince mainstream reporters it was for some other reason than what it obviously was: Cheney remains unwilling to go along with Donald Trump’s Big Lie.

“I don’t think anyone is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., blatantly lying about Trump’s claims that the election was stolen from him and that the Capitol insurrection was a good thing, told reporters Wednesday. Trump — who is clearly still the de facto leader of the GOP — also spoke out on Wednesday, raving on his blog: “If a thief robs a jewelry store of all of its diamonds (the 2020 Presidential Election), the diamonds must be returned.”

McCarthy’s little tapdance is meant to hoodwink mainstream political reporters into believing that Republicans aren’t actually an anti-democratic party lining up behind a fascist who literally tried to overthrow a democratic election. But it’s a lie so hamfisted that it’s not even getting by the notoriously credulous D.C. press corps. After all, everyone knows Cheney was a fierce ally of Trump’s until he incited a mob to storm the Capitol, threatening the lives of her and her colleagues. Remember, it was a bridge so far that even McCarthy was angry at the time, until his ambition caused him to slither back on his belly to the man who sent a violent mob to the Capitol.

But regardless of who McCarthy thinks he’s fooling, the reality of where the GOP is headed was made all too clear elsewhere on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

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House Republicans used a hearing about the Jan. 6 riot as an excuse to repeatedly defend the people who rioted to overthrow a legitimate election. Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., insisted that the people who stormed the Capitol and demanded to “hang Mike Pence” were merely “peaceful patriots” who are being persecuted by federal prosecutors. Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., described the attack — in which 140 police officers were injured, including one who died, one who had a heart attack, and one who had an eye gouged out — as “not an insurrection,” but a “normal tourist visit”. Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., threw his support to the “false flag” conspiracy theorists, saying, “I don’t know who did a poll to say that they were Trump supporters.”

GOP thematics at Jan. 6 hearing so far: Trump did nothing wrong, Trump supporters lost lives that day, was mostly a peaceful protest for free elections, law enforcement overly zealous investigating now. Some parallel universes are dangerous – to the truth and to democracy.

— John King (@JohnKingCNN) May 12, 2021

These claims are gaslighting, as they demand that audiences ignore the evidence of their own eyes. They’re nonsense and they contradict each other. But really, the point of this exercise is not to put forth rational claims that hold up under rigorous scrutiny. The point is to signal to the GOP faithful that it’s now canon that the insurrection was a good thing and that they should feel free to use whatever rhetorical gambits — no matter how trollish, dishonest, or idiotic — necessary in order to deflect criticism from the supposed patriots who tried to bring an end to democracy on Jan. 6.

McCarthy’s bewildering attempt to pretend the Cheney ouster is about anything but reinforcing Trump’s Big Lie was an act for the mainstream media, but the Republican performance in Wednesday’s hearing was all about the GOP base. These congressmen perform their antics for the camera with the knowledge that the videos will be edited and disseminated through social media outlets, where Republican voters increasingly go to get “news” from ever-shadier sources, unencumbered by inconvenient facts or reality.

During his misleading remarks Wednesday, McCarthy repeatedly tried to imply that Cheney’s ouster was merely an attempt to move on from the 2020 election, instead of what it actually was, a show of support for the Big Lie and a warning shot to other Republicans of the consequences for defending democracy. In reality, Republicans haven’t moved on at all. On the contrary, the entire party is organizing itself around Trump’s false claims that the election was “stolen,” and are focusing way more on trying to manufacture evidence for his claims and pass voter suppression laws based on his lies than they are, say, arguing against Joe Biden’s proposed infrastructure plan.

It’s not just in the House, either.

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On Tuesday, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex., spent a hearing about voting rights floating wild-eyed conspiracy theories about voter fraud, for the obvious purpose of propping up Trump’s Big Lie. He tried the “I know you are but what am I” style of argument, insisting that Democratic efforts to expand ballot access are “Jim Crow 2.0”. (In reality, Jim Crow was about denying people the ballot, not expanding it.) He repeatedly insisted that automatic voter registration leads to widespread voter fraud.

Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore. and Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga. got sick of it.

“Do you have any studies you want to present for the record that document extensive mistakes being made, which people who are non-citizens are registered to vote?” Merkley demanded.

“I’d like to offer you the opportunity in good faith, Sen. Cruz, to present any evidence for the record to this committee that in any of the states where this policy exists, if there’s any widespread registration by people who should not be eligible to vote,” Ossoff asked.

Of course, Cruz didn’t have any evidence, as no such evidence exists. He’s just a big, fat liar. But, for his purposes, none of this matters. All that matters is being on camera, hyping the conspiracy theories about “fraud” and “stolen elections,” which in turn will be used to justify future Republican efforts to actually steal elections.

On Tuesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., tried to defend this fealty to Trump and his Big Lie on political grounds, saying that Trump is “the most popular Republican in the country by a lot. If you try to drive him out of the Republican Party, half the people will leave.”

On its surface, this logic doesn’t make a lot of sense. Trump lost the 2020 election, in no small part because, no matter how much the GOP base loves him, the rest of Americans hate him and will crawl over broken glass to vote against him. Trump’s strengths in rallying the base are wiped out by his ability to rally the opposition.

But, really, this defense of Trump and the Big Lie isn’t about winning elections at all. On the contrary, Republicans are sticking by Trump because, as embarrassing and frightening as the insurrection was, it ultimately pointed to a path forward for their party to hold power without winning elections, by stealing them instead. Even if Trump was taken off the map tomorrow — say, by getting arrested for one of his many crimes — he helped advance the “why win elections when you can steal them” mentality. And that, more than out of any loyalty to Trump-the-cult-leader, is why the GOP has decided to stand behind Trump and the Big Lie.

Over a dozen GOP governors plan to snatch back unemployment insurance early

An increasing number of Republican-led states are calling an end to unemployment insurance in an effort to bolster employment, despite lacking any clear evidence that the federal benefits are causing what much of the business sector has said is a “labor shortage.”

South Carolina and Montana were the first to nix the jobless benefits following the Department of Labor’s less-than-stellar jobs report, which evinced a sharp decline in jobs added from last month, as well as a slight increase in the unemployment rate.

Citing a “severe worker shortage,” Montana Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte said he’s spoken with several major employers in the state who confirmed the presence of steep hiring challenges. “Incentives matter, and the vast expansion of federal unemployment benefits is now doing more harm than good,” Gianforte said. “We need to incentivize Montanans to reenter the workforce.” Montana, however, will provide $1,200 return-to-work bonuses funded by the latest coronavirus relief package.

South Carolina soon joined the fold, with Gov. Henry McMaster saying they “turned into a dangerous federal entitlement.”

“These federal entitlements pose a clear and present danger to the health of our State’s businesses and to our economy,” he wrote in a letter to the state’s Department of Employment and Workforce. “Since the Biden administration and Congress appear to have little to no comprehension of the damage being done and no appetite to terminate the federal payments, the State of South Carolina must take action.”

South Carolina’s unemployment rate reached nearly 13% in April of last year, but has since plummeted to 5.1%, just 0.9% less than the national rate of 6%.

Last Friday, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, announced that the state would also be ending its jobless benefits, claiming that “employees are as scarce today as jobs were a year ago.”

“The $300 federal supplement helped thousands of Arkansans make it through this tough time, so it served a good purpose,” he said in a statement. “Now we need Arkansans back on the job so that we can get our economy back to full speed.”

Meanwhile, Arkansas’ unemployment rate hovers below South Carolina’s at just 4.4% as of March.

This week, both Mississippi and Iowa announced an end to benefits as well. “Regular unemployment benefits will remain available, as they did before the pandemic,” tweeted Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, “but it’s time for everyone who can to get back to work. This country needs to look to the future, and Iowa intends to lead the way.”

Other states like Indiana and Utah are mulling over similar moves as the pandemic wanes. Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb intends to conduct a “demographic analysis of unemployed Hoosiers over the past 16 months” before making any decisions. On Sunday, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox told CNN that the $300 weekly boost is “a disincentive” and argued that the program must be rolled back “at some point.”

In total, 13 GOP-led states — Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Montana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and Wyoming — have announced plans to slash benefits as unemployment claims nationwide drop to pandemic lows. As the Washington Post reports, nearly 900,000 Americans are under threat of being cut off, some completely:

A final group of about 340,000 workers who collect traditional unemployment benefits each week similarly may see their benefits reduced to zero. These Americans currently rely on a federal program that pays them extra weeks of jobless support even if they have exhausted their states’ annual allotments. Republican governors are cutting their participation in this effort as well, leaving workers who have been unemployed for prolonged periods with potentially no options remaining to obtain aid.

States like Vermont and Arizona reinstated work search requirements for the benefits that had otherwise been waived during the pandemic.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen argued that the economic data does not demonstrate any negative effects of benefits on employment. Yellen noted in fact a correlation between high benefits and high employment. On Monday, President Biden called the federal benefits “a lifeline” and dismissed the notion of rolling them back.

“I think the people who claim Americans won’t work, even if they find a good and fair opportunity, underestimate the American people,” said the president. “So we’ll insist that the law is followed with respect to benefits, but we’re not going to turn our backs on our fellow Americans.”

Several White House officials have speculated that the weak jobs report may have much more to do with a lack of child care and lingering fears about the pandemic.

Biden boasts about equitable senior vaccination rate by race without data to back it up

During May 3 remarks on the American Families Plan, President Joe Biden boasted that there was not much disparity in the vaccination rates for white Americans and Americans of color who are at least 65.

“And what’s happening now is all the talk about how people were not going to get shots, they were not going to be involved — look at what that was — we were told that was most likely to be among people over 65 years of age,” said Biden. “But now people over 65 years of age, over 80%, have now been vaccinated, and 66% fully vaccinated. And there’s virtually no difference between white, Black, Hispanic, Asian American.”

This isn’t the only time that Biden has made that claim.

He went even further on April 27 during remarks on the covid-19 response: “And, by the way, based on reported data, the proportion — the proportion of seniors who have been vaccinated is essentially equal between white and seniors of color. … As a matter of a fact, if I’m not mistaken, there are more Latinos and African American seniors that have been vaccinated, as a percentage, than white seniors.”

However, the national data that Biden keeps touting — vaccination statistics regarding both race and age — is not public. We asked the White House for the information underlying this claim, but officials did not provide specifics.

So, we moved on to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Spokesperson Chandra Zeikel told KHN-PolitiFact on May 6 that “unfortunately, we don’t have available a data breakdown of both racial demographics and age together.” Zeikel didn’t respond to a follow-up question asking when or if the CDC would be publishing this data, but current CDC vaccination data is broken down only by race/ethnicity and shows significant differences, with white Americans far outpacing the percentage of other groups getting a shot. It also shows that the rate of vaccinations among some groups, including Black and Latino Americans, does not match their share of the population, though new CDC data shows there has been some progress on this front in the past two weeks.

That made us wonder about the premise of Biden’s statement. We turned to experts for their take.

“As far as I know, there is no comprehensive publicly available data on vaccination rates by race/ethnicity and age,” Samantha Artiga, vice president and director of the racial equity and health policy program at KFF, wrote in an email. “As such, we are not able to assess whether there are racial disparities in vaccinations among people over 65 years of age.”

What about other state-level data or anecdotes that might support Biden’s claim? Let’s dive in and see.

A Small Number of States Report Both Age and Race Together

At least seven states track vaccination based on a combination of age and race, according to Artiga: Michigan, South Carolina, West Virginia, Kansas, Minnesota, Washington and Vermont. (Vermont tracks only two racial categories: non-Hispanic white and a combination of Black, Indigenous and people of color.)

The results from some of these states show that racial disparities do exist in the older age groups.

In Michigan, for instance, over 50% of non-Hispanic white people ages 65 to 74 had completed their vaccinations as of May 11. Other racial groups — non-Hispanic Black people; Asian American and Pacific Islanders; and Hispanics — all trailed by about 10 percentage points. The exception was the Native American and Alaska Natives category, which was within 4 percentage points of white people.

And as of May 11 in Kansas, the rate at which white people in that same age group were vaccinated was higher than the rates of Black people and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders.

In Vermont, for those 65 and up, about 79% of people of color had received at least one dose of the vaccine, compared with 85% of white people as of that date.

“With the exception of Vermont, which has the distinction of being the only state to target BIPOC [Black, Indigenous and people of color] populations by race explicitly, these are examples of states in which the numbers are not doing well in their equity efforts,” Dayna Bowen Matthew, dean of the George Washington University Law School and an expert in racial disparities in health care, wrote in an email.

Minnesota is one of the few states in which people of color are actually being vaccinated at higher rates than white people — with 93% of Asian/Pacific Islanders and 87.5% of Black/African Americans age 65 and over having received at least one shot, compared with 81.5% of white people as of May 11.

Some states are vaccinating similar percentages of their population of Black or Hispanic people, Matthew said, however that data does not distinguish by age group.

According to Bloomberg’s Covid-19 Vaccination Racial Gap tracker, New Mexico, Idaho, Oregon and Utah have vaccinated approximately the same percentage of Black Americans as are represented in each state’s population. Maine, Ohio, Alabama, Louisiana and Missouri have achieved similar population-based rates for the Hispanic population.

KFF provides weekly updates on national and state race/ethnicity data of those who have received vaccinations, which have consistently shown that Black and Hispanic people are receiving smaller shares of vaccinations compared with their shares of the total population, while white people are receiving a higher share. The May 5 weekly update, for instance, found that based on the 42 states that share race/ethnicity data, the percentage of white people who have received at least one covid vaccine dose (39%) was roughly 1.5 times higher than the rates for Black (25%) and Hispanic people (27%). (KHN is an editorially independent program of KFF.)

It’s also important to note that data on race and ethnicity information has not been gathered for many people who have been vaccinated. As of May 3, the CDC reported that race and ethnicity were known for only 55% of all people who had received at least one vaccine dose. And three states, Montana, New Hampshire and Wyoming, don’t report race/ethnicity data at all.

How to Approach Vaccine Equity, Experts Say

Nneka Sederstrom, chief health equity officer at Hennepin Healthcare in Minneapolis, said that her state has done an “excellent job” vaccinating the 65-and-older population but that there’s still a lot of work to be done to reach communities of color.

We “will need more direct tactics to reach” those who haven’t yet been vaccinated, “and help address any issues of hesitancy due to lack of knowledge or systemic barriers,” Sederstrom wrote in an email.

Ensuring that vaccines are available at primary care providers is also important, said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.

“The truth of the matter is, the more vaccinators that we can get that are placed where people are every day, where it becomes a routine part of your life, such as going … into your doctor’s office for a regular visit, that’s a winner,” said Benjamin.

But, Dr. Uché Blackstock, founder of Advancing Health Equity, an organization that advocates to end bias and racism in health care, said she would set the bar for vaccine equity success higher than just an equally proportionate share of a certain racial/ethnic population receiving their vaccine doses.

“What success in vaccine equity would look like would be if Black people or Hispanic people were overrepresented in terms of vaccine received since they have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic,” said Blackstock. So even though Biden quotes these statistics that lack data behind them, if the evidence did support them, it would still not be enough, she said.

In fact, the CDC does describe vaccine equity in those terms: “preferential access and administration to those who have been most affected by COVID-19.”

Our Ruling

Biden has repeatedly claimed that vaccination rates among white people and people of color age 65 and older are virtually the same — or even higher among people of color.

No public national data from the CDC or another database has been released to support this assertion.

For the few states that do report data on age and race/ethnicity combined, the numbers suggest that, for the most part, obvious disparities persist in the vaccination rates for white seniors and seniors of color. In several states, vaccine administration rates are more proportional to the percentage of the Black and Hispanic populations, but the data covers all age groups. National data for all age groups also shows that rates of vaccinations for Black and Hispanic people lag behind that of white people.

Existing data paints one story on vaccine equity, while Biden’s words paint another.

Without data to back it up, we rate Biden’s statement False.

Sources:

The Associated Press, “AP Fact check: Biden overstates how many Americans immunized,” May 3, 2021

Bloomberg News, Covid-19 Racial Gap Tracker, accessed May 5, 2021

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Demographic Characteristics of People Receiving COVID-19 Vaccinations in the United States,” accessed May 10, 2021

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “County-Level COVID-19 Vaccination Coverage and Social Vulnerability — United States, December 14, 2020-March 1, 2021,” March 26, 2021

Email exchange with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spokesperson Chandra Zeikel, May 6, 2021

Email exchange with White House administration official, May 6, 2021

Email interview with Manuel Pastor, director of the University of Southern California Equity Research Institute, May 5, 2021

Email interview with Nneka Sederstrom, chief health equity officer at Hennepin Healthcare in Minneapolis, May 5, 2021

Email interview with Samantha Artiga, vice president and director of the racial equity and health policy program at KFF, May 5-6, 2021

Kansas.gov, COVID-19 Demographics, accessed May 10, 2021

KFF, Latest Data on COVID-19 Vaccinations Race/Ethnicity, May 5, 2021

Michigan.gov, COVID-19 vaccine dashboard, accessed May 10, 2021

Minnesota.gov, “Vaccine Data,” accessed May 10, 2021

NBC News, “Biden Hails Progress on Vaccine Equity, but Some Local Leaders Paint a Different Picture,” May 3, 2021

Phone/email interview with Dayna Bowen Matthew, dean and Harold H. Greene Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School, May 6-7, 2021

Phone interview with Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, May 6, 2021

Phone interview with Dr. Uché Blackstock, founder of Advancing Health Equity, May 6, 2021

Vermont.gov, COVID-19 Vaccine Dashboard, accessed May 10, 2021

White House, “Remarks by President Biden on the American Families Plan,” May 3, 2021

White House, “Remarks by President Biden on the COVID-19 Response,” April 27, 2021

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

This story was produced in partnership with PolitiFact. It can be republished for free.

My family won’t get the vaccine because they say it hasn’t been “FDA approved”

Dear Pandemic Problems,

There’s a growing rift between me and my son-in-law, who says the COVID-19 vaccines are not safe because they have not been “FDA approved.” What makes our rift even more difficult? His wife and grown kids with families themselves will also not get the vaccine because of this FDA approval issue. What do I do?

Sincerely,

Ruffled by Rifts

Ruffled by Rifts, it does appear that rifts are all around you — or at the very least, you are in the minority of being willing to get vaccinated in your family. I know it’s frustrating, and rest assured that you are not alone. I’ve answered many questions now from people who find themselves in similar predicaments. Plus, it doesn’t help that families being divided on whether or not to get vaccinated is adding fuel to perhaps decades of family drama, and at the very least four years of the Trump era tearing families apart.

I have no idea if your family members are staunch anti-vaxxers, or to what extent political allegiances play a role here. But I do know that undermining their concerns won’t help if there is any hope of them getting vaccinated. The best approach is to listen to their concerns, and have empathy, which it sounds like you’ve done a little bit of already.

So, you say that your son-in-law is saying the COVID-19 vaccines are not “safe” because they have not been approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA). While partly true, this is a classic example of how misinformation spreads. Technically, the COVID-19 vaccines haven’t been “approved” by the FDA. However, all three vaccines available in the U.S. have been granted an emergency use authorization, also known as an EUA.

EUAs, by the way, aren’t limited to vaccines — they sometimes are issued for medical devices, in vitro diagnostics, and some therapeutics. When it comes to passing an EUA, there are specific conditions that must be considered; they are likely to be granted in situations when “there are no adequate, approved, and available alternatives.”

That is certainly that case with COVID-19. The FDA usually takes years to formally approve a vaccine, but in the coronavirus pandemic, the priority was to get a safe vaccine in as many peoples’ arms as quickly as possible — hence the emergency use authorization.

But just because there’s a bureaucratic difference between an EUA and approval doesn’t mean that there isn’t a rigor to attaining an EUA. Specific criteria must be met. For example, clinical trials must be done on tens of thousands of study participants to generate at least two months of sufficient scientific data needed for the FDA to determine a vaccine’s safety and efficacy. You can read more about this process here.

In order to apply for full FDA approval, a company needs to show at least six months of data. Since Pfizer now has that, recently submitted an application for full approval. The FDA is expected to take at least a few weeks to review it, according to NBC News.

Now, what do you do? Well, I suggest expressing your concerns about their health and safety, and what the consequences are of not getting vaccinated. You could also note that attaining an emergency use authorization is a very rigorous process. And ask: Once the FDA formally approves the Pfizer vaccine, will you get it? While it’s not ideal for your family members to wait, it’s better than a straight-out refusal of getting vaccinated. Hopefully if they have more understanding into the EUA process, and perhaps speak with their doctors, they can be persuaded to be vaccinated.

Sincerely,

Pandemic Problems

Dear Pandemic Problems,

My husband is refusing to get the Covid vaccine. I will be fully vaccinated by the end of the week. Am I wrong to not want to be intimate with him for fear he could infect me?

Sincerely,

Hesitant about Intimacy

Dear Hesitant about Intimacy,

Congratulations on being fully vaccinated so soon. As someone who recently joined the fully-vaccinated club, I feel so grateful not having to worry (as much) about getting the coronavirus, potentially dying from it or spreading it to people. It seriously feels so good, and I’m excited for you to feel so good, too.

And yet, you are at a crossroads with your husband not getting vaccinated. I’m curious, why is he refusing the vaccine? The first step to understanding someone’s hesitancy is to better understand why they don’t want to be vaccinated. It could be due to misinformation they’ve consumed, a previous trauma or experience.

You ask: “Am I wrong to not want to be intimate with him for fear he could infect me?”

Unfortunately, I cannot answer this question for you. The CDC has not issued guidance on sex between vaccinated and unvaccinated people, and what the risk is. (Hopefully they will soon.) The CDC states that vaccinated people can still possibly get infected and spread the virus to others, but there is still much to be learned from this situation. I’m definitely not a marriage therapist, but here’s what I would tell my best friend: do not anything you’re uncomfortable with, as that won’t be good for your marriage.

I hope you and your spouse can talk about the implications of him not getting vaccinated, and how that might impact the future of your marriage. My hope is that he will listen, and carefully consider your concerns. If not, there’s always couple’s therapy. If you can’t afford to pay out of pocket, check with your insurance or look for free or low-cost counseling options.

Sincerely,

Pandemic Problems

“Pandemic Problems” is an advice column that answers readers’ pandemic questions — often with help from public health data, philosophy professors and therapists — who weigh in on how to “do the right thing.” Do you have a pandemic problem? Email Nicole Karlis at nkarlis@salon.com. Peace of mind and collective commiseration awaits.

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McConnell privately assures GOP that Kyrsten Sinema will kill Biden’s tax hike: report

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has privately assured his Republican colleagues that centrist Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., is likely to block President Joe Biden’s proposed tax hikes on the wealthy and corporations, according to The Washington Post.

Biden has introduced a $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan that would be paid for with tax increases on corporations and a $1.8 trillion “American Families Plan” that would be funded with higher taxes on the wealthy and investors and increased IRS enforcement. Republicans are pushing a much smaller infrastructure counterproposal that would shift the tax burden from corporations to workers, and have loudly objected to the proposed tax increases. McConnell, however, does not seem worried about the hikes clearing the 50-50 Senate where a single Democrat can block any party-line vote.

McConnell has privately “reassured allies of Democrats’ long odds in approving tax hikes, pointing in particular to the voting record of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema,” according to the Post.

That suggests McConnell sees Sinema as a bigger impediment to Biden’s proposals than Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who has called for raising taxes to pay for an infrastructure proposal as large as $4 trillion but wants a smaller increase on corporate taxes. Manchin has also rejected gas taxes and user fees proposed by Republicans as a tax on workers and commuters.

It’s not the first time McConnell has touted the record of Sinema, who has angered many Democrats by opposing Biden’s proposed minimum wage increase and calls from her party to eliminate the filibuster.

McConnell told Senate Republicans at a party meeting last month to “publicly praise” Sinema and Manchin for their opposition to Biden’s proposals, according to Politico. “It’s nice that there are Democrats left who respect the institution and don’t want to destroy the very essence of the Senate,” he told the outlet.

Economists have argued that Biden’s proposed corporate tax increases would ultimately help corporations by improving critical infrastructure. A group of five former IRS commissioners last week wrote an op-ed backing Biden’s proposal to boost IRS enforcement after the cash-strapped agency estimated it loses $1 trillion each year to unpaid taxes.

The IRS workforce has shrunk dramatically over the past decade due to repeated budget cuts and as a result “audit rates for millionaires have fallen more than 70 percent since 2011; audits of large corporations decreased from essentially 100 percent a decade ago to less than 50 percent,” the former commissioners wrote in a Washington Post editorial.

“President Biden’s proposal would restore our tax administration system to make it far fairer and more effective. This would benefit everyone who pays their taxes. It would produce a great deal of revenue by reducing the enormous gap between taxes legally owed and taxes actually paid,” they added.

In fact, Sinema and Manchin are not the only Democrats who may stand in the way of Biden’s tax proposals. Some Democrats worry that the IRS enforcement measure could result in “political backlash,” according to the Washington Post, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has privately warned that the tax plans could hurt vulnerable Democrats up for re-election next year. Although Democrats generally support a corporate tax increase, a “handful” of Democrats have balked at Biden’s proposed 28% rate even though that would not even fully reverse former President Trump’s 2017 tax bill, which cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%.

Senate Finance Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Senate Banking Chairman Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., have released their own plan to tax multinational corporations, which is at odds with Biden’s proposal. Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., has balked at Biden’s proposed tax increase on capital gains and investment income for those who earn more than $1 million per year. A group of about a dozen Democrats in farm states have expressed concerns about Biden’s proposed increase on assets passed down to heirs.

Meanwhile, a growing coalition of Democrats in high-tax states like New York, California and New Jersey have called for Biden to use the proposals to repeal the $10,000 cap on the State and Local Tax deduction, a move that research strongly suggests would primarily benefit the wealthy.

Biden has signaled that he is open to compromise and is scheduled to meet with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle this week, insisting he wants a bipartisan agreement — a prospect that seems out of reach. But the lack of a deadline on negotiations and numerous competing proposals show that Biden and his own party are also “worlds apart,” Republican economic adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin told the Post.

“Biden deserves some credit for trying to pay for permanent programs, but congressional Democrats do not want the politics of these tax hikes on their record in the midterms,” he said. “There’s a major disagreement here.”

Some Democrats have urged the administration not to fund the proposals completely and finance them instead through deficit spending, as with the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package passed in March.

“The whole point is that we are making generational investments that will provide value for 30 or 50 or 100 years,” Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, told the Post. “With interest rates at a historic low, it makes sense to pay for these initiatives over a longer period of time.”

But Biden insisted last week that he is “not willing to not pay for what we’re talking about. I’m not willing to deficit-spend.”

Anita Dunn, a senior White House adviser, sent a memo to fellow Democrats last month seeking to tamp down concerns that the party may face political backlash next November if it supports tax increases, pointing to polls showing that the public supports tax hikes on corporations and the wealthy. Some polls even show that voters are more likely to support the infrastructure package if it is funded with higher corporate taxes than without a tax increase.

“We need to restore basic fairness to the tax code, and in the process generate revenues to invest in our competitiveness, children, and economy,” Dunn wrote. “And, the American people agree.”

“If critics want to turn this into a debate over taxing the wealthy and big corporations to pay for investments in the middle class, we’re happy to have that fight,” a White House official told Politico, which obtained the memo. “The American public is squarely on our side — it’s not even close.”

Now it’s largely a matter of Biden convincing his own party.

“This is a puzzle, and it’s a very personal puzzle to a lot of people who have parochial investment agendas trying to get their own things stuffed into these plans,” Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness, told the Post. “Biden is full-throated with his endorsement of making the rich and corporations pay their fair share. Democrats need to come in behind him.”

America urgently needs a real investigation of the Trump regime — or it will all happen again

During Donald Trump’s time in office (and arguably beyond), he and the Republican Party inflicted many deep wounds on American democracy and the rule of law. President Biden and the Democrats have done an admirable job of slowing the bleeding. But for the victim’s life to be saved, the weapons must be seized, and the wounds treated and healed. For that to happen the full truth of the Trump regime’s crimes must be publicly revealed.

Unfortunately, such an outcome appears unlikely. In the most recent example of organized forgetting by a country that would rather look away from the truth than confront it, we learned last week that under Trump the Department of Justice obtained the phone records of reporters who were investigating the Trump-Russia collusion scandal. Then we immediately stopped talking about it.

At Politico, Josh Gerstein reports:

The Justice Department obtained call records for the phones of three Washington Post reporters last year in an apparent bid to discover the sources for a 2017 story detailing a sensitive aspect of the federal investigation into alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, the newspaper said Friday.

Federal investigators used court orders to obtain so-called toll records on phones used by a trio of Post reporters who worked on a July 2017 story about intelligence intercepts indicating that Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak told superiors he discussed issues related to Russia with then-Trump campaign adviser Jeff Sessions during the 2016 presidential race, according to the Post.

An editor at the Post, Cameron Barr, said in a statement that the newspaper is “deeply troubled by this use of government power to seek access to the communications of journalists,” but there was nothing close to widespread outrage at the news that an authoritarian president and regime and his flunkies apparently spied on journalists who were investigating crimes against democracy. This obvious abuse of power is largely being treated as a non-event of little public importance. That is precisely how authoritarianism is normalized — when the public no longer cares about the crimes committed by those who hold power.

These acts were committed under a president who repeatedly described the free press as “the enemy of the people” and “fake news,” in a Goebbels-like campaign to create an alternate reality in which the Great Leader is never to be challenged and free speech and other rights are to be crushed.

Moreover, the same president and regime repeatedly embraced, fawned over and admired foreign dictators and autocrats who imprison and kill journalists. In his book “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” former national security adviser John Bolton recalls Trump saying of journalists: “These people should be executed. They are scumbags.”

Given the Trump regime’s use of Border Patrol officers and other pseudo-police agents to seize protesters and reporters off the streets in Portland and other cities last year, it is terrifying to imagine how “enemies of the people” would have been detained had Trump’s coup succeeded and he remained in office.

The collective non-reaction to the Trump regime’s targeting of journalists is just another example of the way uncomfortable and dangerous truths about the Age of Trump are disappearing into the memory well. Congress needs to convene a truth commission and other public investigations before all such truths have vanished. There are many questions about the Trump presidency that must be asked and answered for the United States to move forward in a safe and responsible way.

Were the coup attempt and the Capitol attack directly planned by Donald Trump and his inner circle? What role did Republican members of Congress play in the assault? What was actually discussed in the Oval Office meeting where the coup attempt was allegedly discussed with Trump by disgraced former Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn and various others? Why were the military and law enforcement essentially ordered to stand down by the Trump administration? What figures in the Trump administration may have coordinated such orders and plans? How is the Trump-inspired right-wing extremist movement being funded and coordinated?

The people of Puerto Rico were basically abandoned to die after Hurricane Maria. What role did Trump himself play in that decision? What other Trump regime officials were involved?

What role did William Barr and the Justice Department play in concealing the Trump regime’s crimes, attacking his personal and political enemies and in other ways undermining the rule of law? And what specific role did Barr and other senior officials play in concealing and distorting the Mueller report’s findings about the Trump campaign’s collusion with Russia during the 2016 election?

Why did the Trump regime refuse to treat white supremacists and other right-wing hate groups and paramilitaries as serious threats to the country’s safety and security? How many such individuals and organizations have infiltrated the country’s military, police, law enforcement and national security apparatus more generally?

Beyond immigration policy, what role did Trump’s senior adviser Stephen Miller — who has shown himself to be an unrepentant white supremacist — play in policy-making more generally? Given the creation of concentration camps and an explicit policy of causing misery and hardship for brown and Black migrants and refugees, did the Trump regime commit crimes against humanity?

A new report from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation shows that at least 900,000 people have died from the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. That number is roughly 50 percent higher than the official death toll of almost 600,000.

Public health experts have estimated that the number of deaths might have been limited to 100,000, had the Trump regime and Republican Party acted responsibly during the early months of the pandemic. Do these actions rise to the level of criminality? Did Trump and his Republican supporters commit democide against the American people?

There are many other questions to be asked as well about financial crimes, corruption, election-rigging, voter suppression and attacks on civil rights, as well as the federal government’s response to last summer’s Black Lives Matter people’s uprising.

To this point, Republicans in Congress are blocking any attempt to hold a proper investigation of Trump’s coup attempt and the Capitol attack, very likely because they are implicated as co-conspirators.

Too many Democrats — including President Biden — are eager to move on, perceiving a public accounting for the crimes of Jan. 6 (and the Trump regime more generally) as a distraction from their broadly successful policy agenda.

The American people have short attention spans, are traumatized by the Age of Trump and the pandemic, and have been taught as a culture that ignoring bad things will make them go away. Confronting the truth about the Trump regime and American neofascism, how it came to be and the ongoing threat it poses requires a maturity, patience and dedication that too many Americans do not possess.

A truth commission could at least potentially provide a proper accounting for the Age of Trump, and help create a shared narrative for the American people. Such a commission would also quite likely uncover crimes committed by the Trump regime that to this point have remained hidden.

But there is no full and genuine public accounting for the crimes of the Trump regime, it is all but certain that Donald Trump will not be America’s last neofascist president but instead its first. To hold no serious investigation is also to grant permission for more right-wing terrorism and political violence. The Republican Party has already decided that free and fair elections are a priori illegitimate, and their outcomes are illegal if the Democrats win.

Today’s Republicans are obsessively working to create a type of one-party state and apartheid autocracy. If the Age of Trump is allowed to drain away down the memory well, they will probably succeed. America’s multiracial democracy will then exist only as a fading memory, until that too is forgotten.