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Joe Biden is as popular as top Republicans in Texas: poll

Texas Democrats think Joe Biden is doing a good job as president, according to the latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll.

Texas Republicans don’t.

Overall, the president gets good grades from 44% of Texas voters and bad grades from 46% — numbers that are better or roughly the same as the state’s most popular Republican leaders. Underneath Biden’s overall numbers, as with other officeholders in Texas, are starker partisan grades: 88% of Democrats said Biden is doing a good job, and 86% of Republicans disapprove of the work he’s doing.

Biden does a little better — but still poorly — with Republicans on how he’s handled the response to the pandemic; 14% approve, and 67% disapprove. But 92% of Democrats approve. And overall, 49% of Texas voters give Biden good grades on the pandemic, while 35% think he’s done a bad job.

Overall, 38% approve of Biden’s handling of the economy and 46% disapprove. Only 23% of voters approve of his response to immigration and border security, while 59% disapprove.

A 55% majority of Texas voters disapprove of the job the U.S. Congress is doing; 24% said they approve, but only 4% strongly approve. It’s a Democratic Congress, getting good grades from 49% of Texas Democrats. Among Republicans, 82% disapprove of the work being done in the U.S. Capitol.

The state’s U.S. senators are getting better grades than Congress as a whole. John Cornyn gets approving notices from 31% of all voters and disapproving ones from 43%. Among his fellow Republicans, 57% approve and 18% disapprove of his work.

Ted Cruz, overall, has the approval of 43% and disapproval from 48%. He’s more popular with Texas Republicans than the senior senator, too, with 80% saying they approve of the job he’s doing — 57% strongly so.

Gov. Greg Abbott gets good marks from about as many Texas voters (43%) as give him bad marks (45%). He’s popular with Republicans, though: 77% approve of the way he’s doing his job. Those numbers are consistent with the way voters grade the governor on his response to the pandemic. Overall, 43% approve and 48% disapprove. Among Democrats, 87% disapprove, and among Republicans, 76% approve.

Just over a third of Texas voters (35%) approve of the way Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick is doing his job, while 39% disapprove. New House Speaker Dade Phelan, a Republican, still hasn’t made an impression on most voters — a condition he has in common with most of his predecessors in that post. While 20% of voters said he’s doing a good job, and 22% said he’s not, 57% of the voters either have no impression of him or no opinion.

Attorney General Ken Paxton, regularly in the news for legal actions involving the state and as the subject of an indictment on securities fraud and a federal investigation into allegedly using his public office to help a campaign donor, is doing a good job, according to 32% of Texas voters, and a bad one, according to 36%. The remaining 30% either had a neutral or no opinion. Among Republicans, 59% said he’s doing a good job, and among Democrats, 68% said he’s doing a bad job.

The University of Texas/Texas Tribune internet survey of 1,200 registered voters was conducted from April 16-22 and has an overall margin of error of +/- 2.83 percentage points. Numbers in charts might not add up to 100% because of rounding.

Disclosure: The University of Texas at Austin has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

Reference

UT/TT Poll, April 2021, Summary/Methodology

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Reference

UT/TT Poll, April 2021, Crosstabs

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The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

How to stop Republicans from stealing elections

Republican-controlled state legislatures have introduced over 361 voter suppression bills in 47 states, and some states, like Georgia, have already enacted them into law. 

There’s only one way to stop this assault on our democracy. It’s called the FOR THE PEOPLE ACT, and the window for Congress to pass it is closing.

These Republican voter suppression bills are egregious — they shrink early voting periods, add onerous voter ID requirements, limit eligibility for mail-in ballots, ban ballot drop boxes and drive-through voting, and even make it a crime to give voters in line water.

The FOR THE PEOPLE ACT, on the other hand, would prevent these tactics and make it easier to vote. In addition, gerrymandering would be reduced and the power of small political donors would be amplified.

It could not come at a more critical time.

The Republican assault on our democracy is based on the lie that there was widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. Multiple recounts in battleground states like Georgia found nothing. Investigations by the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department found nothing. 61 out of 62 courts found nothing.

Republicans claim they’re just listening to the concerns of their voters and restoring “trust” in our elections. Rubbish. The real purpose of these restrictions is to hamper voting by Black people, people of color, young people, and lower-income Americans. 

After Black voters and organizers in Georgia flipped the state blue for the first time in decades, the GOP is pulling out all the stops to prevent the same from happening in other states. The situation is even more dire given the upcoming once-in-a-decade redistricting process, allowing Republican-controlled states to further gerrymander congressional districts.

Their assault on the right to vote is a coordinated, national strategy led by top party leaders and outside dark-money advocacy groups like the Heritage Foundation. That group is working directly with state legislatures to provide them with “model legislation” and gearing up to spend $24 million in eight states to advance these bills ahead of the midterms.

Unless the FOR THE PEOPLE ACT becomes law, these restrictive state bills will go into effect before the upcoming 2022 midterm elections, and entrench Republican power for  years to come. So it’s essential we protect voting rights now, while we still can. 

This is not a partisan fight. It’s a battle between forces that want to go backward to an era of Jim Crow, and the majority of Americans who want to build a more inclusive democracy.

Yet the FOR THE PEOPLE ACT faces an uphill battle in the Senate because of the archaic filibuster rule that requires a 60-vote supermajority to pass legislation.

The good news is Senate Democrats have the power to end the filibuster and thereby allow the FOR THE PEOPLE ACT to become law. It’s time for Democrats to unite on this, without hesitation. 

The stakes could not be higher. Simply put, it’s democracy or authoritarianism.

The next frontier of warfare is online

Sometime in mid-2009 or early 2010 — no one really knows for sure — a brand new weapon of war burst into the world at the Natanz nuclear research facility in Iran. Unlike the debut of previous paradigm-shattering weapons such as the machine gun, airplane, or atomic bomb, however, this one wasn’t accompanied by a lot of noise and destruction. No one was killed or even wounded. But the weapon achieved its objective to temporarily cripple the Iranian nuclear weapon program, by destroying gas centrifuges used for uranium enrichment. Unfortunately, like those previous weapons, this one soon caused unanticipated consequences.

The use of that weapon, a piece of software called Stuxnet widely concluded to have been jointly developed by the United States and Israel, was arguably the first publicly known instance of full-scale cyberwarfare. The attack deployed a software vulnerability or exploit, called a zero-day, buried so deeply in computer code that it remains undetected until someone — a team of hackers, a criminal, an intelligence or law enforcement agency — activates it. We’ve all heard of, and perhaps even been victimized by, criminal hacks that may have pilfered our credit card numbers and passwords, or been spammed by suspicious emails that invite us to claim supposed Nigerian fortunes. But zero-days operate on a different level entirely.

“Zero-days offer digital superpowers,” New York Times cybersecurity reporter Nicole Perlroth writes in “This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race.”

“Exploiting a zero-day, hackers can break into any system — any company, government agency, or bank — that relies on the affected software or hardware and drop a payload to achieve their goal, whether it be espionage, financial theft, or sabotage. There are no patches for zero-days, until they are uncovered. It’s a little like having the spare key to a locked building.”

Such capabilities, says Perlroth, make zero-days “one of the most coveted tools in a spy or cybercriminal’s arsenal.”

As with any other highly coveted commodity, a vast covert global market has sprung up to meet the demand for zero-days. Perlroth explains that this invisible digital trade was nurtured and encouraged by the U.S. intelligence community. As former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden’s leaked documents revealed, the NSA not only developed its own zero-days and hacking tools, but beginning in the 1990s started to pay out first thousands, then eventually millions of dollars to the world’s most skilled hackers to ferret out security holes in widely used software packages, finding backdoors that could be used to overcome increasingly sophisticated security and encryption protections.

The vulnerabilities were cataloged, filed, and gathered into a closely held, superclassified stockpile — a digital arsenal that could be used for espionage, surveillance, and actual cyberwarfare, all without any oversight or outside control. Among many other things, the NSA could now easily track anyone’s iPhone at will, read their email, access their contacts, even tap into cameras and microphones.

The NSA truly began to exercise its digital superpowers during the post-9/11 war on terrorism. At first, many of the hackers laboring to develop those tools were kept mostly in the dark about how they were being used, but eventually that changed. “In the years following 9/11, the NSA decided to give its top analysts a glimpse into the fruits of their labors,” Perlroth explains. “In a secure room at Fort Meade, the officials projected more than a dozen faces onto a bright screen. Each man on the screen, the analysts were told, was dead — thanks to their digital exploits.”

Snowden’s revelations were only part of the story. As the U.S. sought to expand its stockpile to stay ahead of ever-changing technological upgrades and the capabilities of possible adversaries including Russia, China, and Iran, the American grip on the market began to slip away and other players began to get into the game. When Stuxnet inevitably spread from its narrow and carefully chosen Iranian target to work its way across the world’s computers via the internet, the potential advantages of zero-days became clear to everyone — and were available to any nation, any group, any organization willing to pay. Former NSA hackers set up shop, joining a burgeoning legion of international hackers looking to cash in, not all of them very picky about their clientele.

In effect, Perlroth explains, it has placed us in the midst of a new arms race, an ever-accelerating competition of offense vs. defense, move and countermove, nearly identical to the nuclear arms race of the Cold War. Former NSA director Michael Hayden noted in a 2013 speech at George Washington University that Stuxnet “has a whiff of August, 1945.” “Somebody just used a new weapon,” he continued, “and this weapon will not be put back in the box.”

He was alluding to the first use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, but zero-days have proliferated around the world far easier and faster than nukes. “The internet has no borders,” writes Perlroth. “No cyberattack can be confined to one nation’s citizens anymore.”

As with the atomic bomb, we’ve developed a weapon to protect ourselves which has now boomeranged back upon us. That’s been demonstrated in recent years by high-profile incidents such as Russia’s interference with the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Iranian attacks on Las Vegas casinos, North Korea’s assault on Sony Pictures, the SolarWinds attack that the U.S. is still yet to recover from, and others that Perlroth details — including a hacking attack on former First Lady Michelle Obama, and Russia’s outright cyberwarfare campaign against Ukraine’s power grid and infrastructure.

“Nations are now investing far more time and money in finding vulnerabilities than the commercial world, and the open-source community, is spending to fix them,” writes Perlroth. “Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran are stockpiling their own zero-days and laying their logic bombs. They know our digital topography well; in too many cases, they are already inside.”

“The world is on the precipice of a cyber catastrophe,” she concludes.

Perlroth has been covering the cybersecurity beat for a long time and clearly knows her subject extremely well, which may be the reason that “This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends” feels long and somewhat meandering. It’s a complex story with many players and parts, and she perhaps tries to cover a bit too much ground, to the extent that the book somewhat loses focus along the way. But it’s a vitally important topic that requires far more attention and concern, before the U.S. finds itself blindsided when an adversary decides to unleash full-scale cyberwar on us.

Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 film “The Conversation,” about a surveillance expert played by Gene Hackman, ends with Hackman’s character so consumed with paranoia that he literally tears apart his own apartment searching for a nonexistent listening device. After reading Perlroth’s book, I felt a little paranoid myself, eyeing my own laptop and iPhone. (Maybe that’s why her author bio notes that she “increasingly prefers life off the grid” in her family’s “cabin in the woods.”)

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

“They knew better”: Alex Gibney on Big Pharma & the opioid epidemic in “The Crime of the Century”

Academy award-winning director Alex Gibney typically dedicates years of effort and research to producing his powerful and often shocking documentaries about corporate greed and government corruption. His new two-part HBO series on how Big Pharma greed begat the casualties of the opioid epidemic, “The Crime of the Century,” is no exception.

The son of a journalist father, Gibney said he took lessons from how he saw his father become dispensable, a cog in large media organizations who was disposed of too soon – despite his hard work and intense curiosity. “He worked for a lot of big mainstream media outlets, print, like Time and Newsweek, and was fired from most of them,” Gibney said on “Salon Talks.” “He sucked down and kicked up, which didn’t end up being a good career path for longevity, but at the same time, it did teach me two things: an emotional resistance to authority . . . and what I got most from him was that rapacious sense of curiosity – keep digging, find out what’s really going on.” 

For “The Crime of the Century,” dig Gibney did. Much of his time was devoted to going through reams of data and corporate emails related to Purdue Pharma, in partnership with Washington Post reporters, following up on stories about the pharmaceutical industry’s intentional calculation of creating drug dependence in specific populations for profit. Supporting stories in the film come from in depth interviews with former employees, drug enforcement officials, and recovering opioid addicts themselves.

“A lot of people behaved terribly in this story, some of whom self-confess,” he said of his biggest takeaway from the work. “But I think the bigger problem here is a systemic problem,” Gibney said. 

“Our incentives are all wrong, and they are geared towards making money, rather than making people better. That’s what I came away with, and was the ‘a-ha moment’ for me. Not only did I realize that the crisis was something that was manufactured as a kind of a crime, but it was manufactured for profit over people.”

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

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

What made you want to dig deeper into the opioid crisis in particular and to do so differently when so much has been reported on it?

In having a conversation with a number of editors and reporters at The Washington Post, it became clear to me that the part of the story that was missing was the broad sense that this wasn’t something that just happened. It wasn’t like a cyclone or a hurricane or even a pandemic, a disease that was beyond our control. This was something that was manufactured by human beings and companies.

And also that it was a great crime. If you put the elements together, it was not just a crisis. It was a series of crimes. And that to me, gave me a reason to do it, that you could put together these details in a way and paint the big picture that was really missing from the sense of the opioid crisis because a lot of us hammering about it, it’s like, “Oh, isn’t it terrible? Surely there isn’t anything we can do.” Well, there is something we could do. We could hold those who committed the crimes accountable and also change the system that allowed the crimes to be committed. With that, I set off in motion, again with a theory but needing to report it out and to figure out whether or not I was right.

Let’s talk a little bit about the drugs that are featured in the film. From my watching of the film, these are essentially heroin pills. It was intentionally marketed to chronic pain suffers and not surgical patients. This ideology was actively promoted by the Big Pharma manufacturers. In the film, the idea that the coding on the pills has a delayed absorption is called a historic mistake by one of your subjects. Can you speak to that?

Sure. The drug that you’re talking about really is OxyContin. That’s the famous drug manufactured by Purdue Pharma, which has been owned for many years by the Sackler family and they become rather infamous. OxyContin is kind of a combo term that combines oxycodone, which is a narcotic that comes from opium which is two times as strong as morphine with a content system, which is a time-release system. That’s what was the inventiveness.

They had something called MS-Contin before, which was a time-release system for morphine. Then when the patent for that was running out, they came up with OxyContin where you had a numb, more powerful narcotic, but you were still going to use this time-released. And they believed, and I say, belief is an important thing because it ends up being actually in the package insert that the FDA allows them to use, but they believe that this time-released system would do two things. One, it would make it non-addictive and two, it would make it resistant to abuse. 

I think they knew better. Let’s just put it that way, they knew better because they knew based on the data that they were getting from MS-Contin, that people were abusing MS-Contin widely. And they did their own studies which showed that you could abuse these drugs. On the package it says, “do not crush” or I can’t remember the exact phrase, but it’s like, “do not crush, do not snort” etc. and it’s basically an instruction manual for how to abuse these drugs. Instead of just eating it as you’re supposed to, you crush it and you snort it or you put it in a spoon and mix it with water and you inject it. And people seeking a very powerful high discovered this very quickly.

And the Purdue executives knew all about it. We have emails that show that they knew. And yet when reports of abuse coming out of Maine and Western Virginia started to surface in 2000, the Purdue executives were all like, “Oh, I’m shocked. There’s abuse? Who knows?” And this is one of the original sins. They actually start working, they meaning Purdue, they started working with a guy named Curtis Wright, who is a medical officer at FDA. And he was supposed to review their drug. Well, they work with him to effectively write the review of their own drug.

And in that review, it says, “it’s believed” again, back to that word, belief, it’s believed that this is effective, I can’t remember the exact phrasing, but that this content system will prevent abuse. And that’s just not true. It was easily foiled and they knew it and they also knew the damage that was being done. And they kept promoting this idea that you couldn’t get addicted and it was not subject to abuse and neither of these things were true.

In the film, and you just mentioned, you made a reference to West Virginia, to Maine, some of the communities across America that have been hit the hardest by this epidemic. Poor and hardworking manufacturing communities in rural areas have higher numbers of addicts and the fact that those areas have had those numbers is not an accident. Can you explain?

I mean, it’s not an accident in the sense that there is a great sense of despair in communities like that. And so people are prone to use these drugs as a result of that kind of economic despair. I think the other issue is that what ended up happening was when you start, after a while you need higher and higher doses to get the pain medication. You learn that you can’t really afford it and you end up going elsewhere, sometimes to heroin, and then ultimately to Fentanyl. And not just because of the pain, but also because you’re addicted now.

And I think that’s the one thing that was so terrifying in this epidemic was that, look at in economic terms, what OxyContin did was to create a new demand. We all talk about supply and demand. They had the supply and they created the new demand for opioids, which then had to be met either through OxyContin or later through heroin and Fentanyl. A lot of times companies like Purdue and others say, “Well, we don’t have anything to do with Fentanyl. That wasn’t our drug.” No, what Purdue did do was to get people addicted to opioids, and then they sought out alternatives that were more affordable.

In your research, working with The Washington Post reporters in the story, were you able to find reports of large trials showing percentages of people who do get addicted to opioids versus the number of prescribed? 

There were a number of studies that show that 8 to 12% of people using an opioid for chronic pain develop an opioid use disorder and close to 30% of patients misuse them. Ultimately you have an incentive by the manufacturers and the distributors and the distributors are some of America’s largest corporations, companies like McKesson, AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health to sell as many of these drugs as possible. And that’s what you want to do, right? Do you want to make as much money as possible to deliver a return to your shareholders? 

They have a tremendous amount of data about where these pills are going. Every pharmacy in every county in America. Once you have access to that information, you realize that in a small town in Western Virginia, they’re sending enough opioids to literally supply an opioid a day for every man, woman and child in that county. You know, it’s not just for back pain, you know that something’s going on, that these pills are being diverted.

You’re on the lookout for doctors who are either imbued with the belief that no dose is too high, that we’re under-medicating pain and so they’re going to sign up, or dirty doctors, doctors who are going to sell massive amounts because they’re making money. The motive of selling as many drugs as possible ends up encouraging a system of abuse.

When you talk about addiction to any kind of substances that the makers of these drugs, whether it’s Fentanyl, Subsys, Oxy, assert that the addict is the problem, not the drug and that these people are not victims of a huge corporate effort and the drug’s availability. What would you say to people who say that?

It’s just wrong in the face. The idea that there were two different kinds of people: there are addicts, and then there’s the rest of us who aren’t addicts. It flies in the face of what we understand about the nature of opioids. And one of the things we do in the film is to begin Part 1 with a condensed history of opioids, going all the way back to King Tut, to show that we have a long record of understanding just how addictive these drugs are. It shouldn’t be a mystery to us in the 21st century. There’s a danger of addiction with these drugs just as there was a danger of addiction with cigarettes. Not everybody becomes hopelessly addicted, but many people do. And there was certainly a danger of it.

The problem comes if you’re the manufacturer or you were the distributor when you pretend that there is no danger and you try to make believe that they’re perfectly safe. “You could take as many as you want. And if you stop using them, there’s no withdrawal symptoms.” It’s really intensely irresponsible. And that’s what leads to these problems. One of the things that Purdue did, which was then used as a kind of a model by other companies, was the focus on the doctor. And to basically pull the doctor into this world of needing, to treat pain with opioids and higher and higher doses of opioids. And the way they would do that is through a series of speaker programs. And over time, that has a kind of psychological impact. It’s a variation of what I call the MRI theory.

In other words, if you’re a doctor’s practice and you buy five MRI machines, right? Lo and behold, it’s likely that your prescriptions for MRIs are going to rise. Not because you’re a bad person, but because you now have an economic incentive to serve those MRI machines that you’ve already bought. Well, doctors are being paid to proselytize about OxyContin and lo and behold, they’re probably not as assiduous about seeking out the problems of OxyContin abuse or OxyContin addiction as they would be if they weren’t getting paid. That ends up being the commercial mechanism by which a huge medical crisis has cost.

There’s this sort of tremendous amount of persuasion that goes on and the power that these pharmaceutical companies wield became so amazing to me. And this has been allowed in America through classism and racism for as long as there have been drugs to test. And it’s almost always on poor or uneducated populations or those of color or both. How do we as a country change this horrible pattern of abuse?

Well, I think one thing that we can do, particularly when it comes to healthcare is to change the system. I mean, honestly the system is broken and the system is broken because it’s so full of bad economic incentives that reward profit takers and put at risk human beings and human lives. And that really is the sum of it. And obviously we can do a better job of educating people. And obviously we can do a much better job of rooting out systemic racism and income inequality. There’s a lot of problems to deal with but I think when it comes to healthcare, we’ve allowed a kind of crazy quilt system of colliding profit centers to distort what should be a simple relationship between patient and doctor. And that I think is a problem we should fix.

One of the reasons I wanted to make this film was because it really highlights how flawed our healthcare system is and I think that’s something that came up during the pandemic as well. In a pandemic, if you’re not caring for the poorest among us, then actually everyone ultimately is put at risk because everyone is contagious. The problem then becomes a systemic one that we’ve allowed profit takers, kind of turbo-charged 21st century capitalism to take over what should be a system of healthcare rather than return to investors.

What do you say to people, whether they’re doctors or not who are like, “But I need this or I can’t function,” after making this film? Is there a more measured approach to prescribing opioids on their horizon rather than getting rid of them altogether?

Yeah. I would not argue for getting rid of them altogether. I mean, a drug like oxycodone, not in its time release formula, but pure oxycodone can be a very valuable drug post-surgery for example, for three or four days. You’re not going to get addicted and it’s great for the relief of pain. We know that a drug like OxyContin can also be terribly valuable for end of life cancer pain.

And there are other patients for whom long-term OxyContin may be advisable but it was the marketing push. And by the way, those patients can still receive OxyContin. It’s not like it’s been made illegal but what happened here was a business maneuver to make people believe something that wasn’t true, which is that oxycodone and OxyContin is not addictive. That’s not true. And also to believe that no dose is too high. That’s just not true. And also to prescribe far more widely than is warranted, given the danger of these drugs. Those were all marketing tools that were used not to look out for the best health outcomes for the patient, but for the best return on investment for the corporation and that’s the problem.

What was the most important thing you learned from making this series and what is it that you’d like people to walk away with?

The most important thing that I learned was, you look at incentives in a story like this and it’s easy to say, “Okay, there’s white hats and there’s black hats.” And a lot of people behave terribly in this story. And we show many of them, some of them self-confessed, but I think the bigger problem here is a systemic problem. Our incentives are all wrong and they’re geared toward making money rather than making people better. That’s what I came away with.

And that’s the thing that was kind of the a-ha moment for me. I mean, not only did I realize that the crisis was something that was manufactured as a kind of a crime, but it was manufactured for profit over people. And that was really the scariest thing for me to understand. And for everybody out there who watches this I’ll hope they’ll agree that while we need to fix the opioid crisis, a bigger issue ahead for us is fixing our healthcare system in a way that the incentives are aligned with the well-being of citizens rather than the profit of corporations.

“The Crime of the Century” premieres Tuesday, May 10 at 9 p.m. on HBO and HBO Max.

How Trump’s Census will shift political power in Congress

New data from the 2020 U.S. census released April 26, 2021, indicates that starting in 2023 – after the next congressional elections – seven states will have fewer seats in Congress than they do now, and six will have more.

These calculations and changes are the primary purpose of the government’s efforts every 10 years to count all the people who live in the United States. It’s written into the U.S. Constitution. In addition, the number of House seats a state has helps determine the size of its delegation to the Electoral College, increasing or decreasing state residents’ power to pick the president.

The seven states that each lost one seat in the House as a result of the 2020 census are California, from 53 to 52; Illinois, from 18 to 17; Michigan, from 14 to 13; New York, from 27 to 26; Ohio, from 16 to 15; Pennsylvania, from 18 to 17; and West Virginia, from 3 to 2.

The six states that gained one or more seats after the 2020 count are Colorado, from 7 to 8; Florida, from 27 to 28; Montana, from 1 to 2; North Carolina, from 13 to 14; Oregon, from 5 to 6; and Texas, which gained two, from 36 to 38.

Who gets counted?

During the census, the U.S. Census Bureau counts the number of people who live in each state on census day of the census year – in this case, April 1, 2020.

The bureau also counts all military and U.S. government employees and their dependents who live overseas on that day – and determines which states they claim as their residences when in the U.S.

Any military personnel who are only temporarily deployed overseas are not counted where they live, but in the states where the military bases from which they were deployed are located.

Those numbers deliver a total number of people who live in each state, for apportionment purposes.

Doing the calculations

When determining how many seats a state gets, there are a few constraints.

First is that there are 435 seats and 50 states; the District of Columbia participates in the Electoral College, but gets only a nonvoting delegate in Congress.

In addition, states cannot get partial seats. Because every state must get at least one seat, the first 50 seats are assigned automatically, one per state.

The Constitution does not specify the specific method of apportioning the rest of the congressional seats, but the underlying assumption is best summarized as “one person, one vote” – every person residing in every state should be included, and no person should have more of a voice than any other.

After the first 50, the 385 remaining seats are assigned according to a system called the Method of Equal Proportions, first proposed in 1911 by a U.S. Census Bureau statistician named Joseph A. Hill. This method was first used in the apportionment based on the 1940 census, and has been used ever since. It is a statistical and mathematical series of calculations that determines the priority order in which states receive second seats, third seats and additional seats beyond that.

In states that have more than one congressional district, additional calculations will be necessary to determine the boundaries of each of those districts. Often that process is left up to state legislators. The data needed for that next step will be available by Sept. 30, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said during a virtual press conference announcing the apportionment results.

Dudley L. Poston Jr., Professor of Sociology, Texas A&M University

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

Arizona Republican admits GOP “audit” of Trump’s election loss “makes us look like idiots”

A GOP state senator in Arizona called the state’s recount of Maricopa County ballots “ridiculous” in a New York Times interview on Friday.

“It makes us look like idiots,” said state Sen. Paul Boyer, a Republican from Phoenix who originally supported the audit. “Looking back, I didn’t think it would be this ridiculous. It’s embarrassing to be a state senator at this point.”

Last month, the GOP wing of Arizona’s legislature advanced an audit of the 2020 presidential election in Maricopa County – a county won by President Joe Biden – which they have baselessly speculated was riddled with fraud at the ballots. 

President Biden won the state of Arizona by just over 11,000 votes total, according to The Hill. Following his defeat, President Trump repeatedly claimed that fraud in Arizona contributed to his loss in the election. 

The recount is currently being conducted by Florida-based tech company Cyber Ninjas, which has no apparent experience in election auditing. According to Politico, virtually no one in the Arizona state legislature had heard of the company prior to last month. Furthermore, Cyber Ninjas’ owner, Doug Logan, is a known QAnon conspiracy theorist and an ardent proponent of the “Stop the Steal” movement. 

According to the Times, election officials have exhumed 2.1 million votes, but only 250,000 have been counted by hand. Officials initially projected that the audit would be completed by May 14, but given its current pace, the date was pushed back to August. 

Last week, the Department of Justice issued a formal warning to the Republican-led Arizona Senate, suggesting that the recount could be in violation of federal voting and civil rights laws, according to CNN. “We have a concern that Maricopa County election records, which are required by federal law to be retained and preserved, are no longer under the ultimate control of elections officials, are not being adequately safeguarded by contractors, and are at risk of damage or loss,” the department wrote. 

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs recently aired concerns that her office found several “troubling” practices being carried out by Cyber Ninjas contractors, specifically pointing to the fact that ballots and computers were being left unattended, according to The Hill. “Though conspiracy theorists are undoubtedly cheering on these types of inspections — and perhaps providing financial support because of their use,” Hobbs wrote on Wednesday, “they do little other than further marginalize the professionalism and intent of this ‘audit.'”

Cyber Ninjas has repeatedly denied requests to provide more transparency on how it is handling the recount. Last week, Arizona Republicans said they plan on sending a letter to the DOJ dismissing its concerns. 

Meanwhile, the election auditors’ conspiracy theories already abound on how to root out the alleged fraud in Maricopa County.

“There are accusations that 40,000 ballots were flown into Arizona and it was stuffed into the box,” John Brakey, a progressive Democrat from Tucson, told 12News. “And it came from the southeast part of the world, Asia. And what they’re doing is to find out if there’s bamboo in the paper.” Brakey said a “forensic analysis” is being done to detect the potential existence of bamboo fibers in paper ballots.

More than a pie filling — here’s everything you need to know about cooking with rhubarb

As soon as spring hits, rhubarb starts popping up on bakery menus and in CSA boxes all over the country. The reddish, almost celery-like stalks are most often boiled down into jams or pie fillings, frequently alongside strawberries. But according to Celine Beitchman, the Institute of Culinary Education‘s director of nutrition, rhubarb is more versatile than you might think — you just need to know how to prepare it. 

Here’s what you need to know about picking out the best rhubarb at the supermarket, what parts are inedible and how to use it in savory dishes. 

Is rhubarb a fruit or a vegetable? 

Technically, rhubarb is a vegetable, but a New York court declared rhubarb a fruit in 1947 because it’s most often cooked as one in the U.S. This was because of a tariff loophole in which fresh rhubarb from Canada was either subject to a 35% duty as “fruits in their natural state” or a 50% duty as vegetables in their natural state. 

How do I pick the freshest rhubarb from the grocery store? 

Look for firm stalks that resemble good quality celery, according to Beitchman.

“You’re looking for the same weight, same sort of body, same weight,” she said. “The color will be lightly brown or red or a combination of those colors together.” 

She also said to avoid stalks that have any visible bruising, and if the leaves are attached, they’ll give a sign of the rhubarb’s quality. If they are dried out or bruised, that’s a sign that the whole vegetable may not be super fresh. 

How do you clean rhubarb? 

Run the stalks under cold water. If there’s any lingering dirt, gently clean it with a produce brush, then pat dry with a kitchen towel. 

Can I eat it raw? 

While the leaves are a good indicator of the health of the rhubarb, they are poisonous and should not be eaten. Go ahead and cut those off before you start cooking with it. However, the stalk of the rhubarb is totally edible raw. 

“We can chop it up or shave it, and then combine it into something like a nice bean salad,” Beitchman said. “It’s going to give you that crunch, and it’s going to have a sour, lemony bite. It’s not going to oxidize, so it’s going to stay really pretty.” 

How long can I store fresh rhubarb? 

According to Beitchman, fresh rhubarb can last for up to a month in your refrigerator — as long as its kept intact and in the crisper drawer. 

“Though I might wrap it in like damp paper towels and take a look at it every couple days to make sure it’s not bruising in any fashion,” she added.

How do you prepare rhubarb for cooking? 

Rhubarb doesn’t require a ton of preparation before eating it raw or cooking with it. Chop off and discard the leaves — again, these are poisonous and should not be eaten. Occasionally, farm-fresh rhubarb will have some coarse strings on its outer layer. These are visible and can be removed with a vegetable or potato peeler. 

What flavors pair well with rhubarb? 

Rhubarb is typically paired with sweet flavors and fruits, which is one of the reasons that rhubarb cobblers and pies and jars of rhubarb-strawberry jam abound arrive every spring. However, Beitchman says she would encourage home cooks to consider incorporating some of the brightness of rhubarb in savory dishes, as well, like a quick chutney.

“Combine it with some spices, mustard seeds, yellow raisins, chili peppers, ginger and stewed tomatoes and give that a go,” she recommends. 

More ways to up your game in the kitchen:

“Hungry Like the Wolf” began a new era for Duran Duran and U.S. rock charts

Duran Duran released their second album, Rio, on May 10, 1982. The LP featured three future classics — “Hungry Like the Wolf,” “Rio” and “Save a Prayer” — but also moodier fare such as the aching “Lonely In Your Nightmare” and enigmatic “New Religion.” Although the album arrived less than a year after Duran Duran’s self-titled debut, which featured the striving “Planet Earth,” Rio was a cosmic sonic leap forward.

In the U.K., Duran Duran appeared on “Top of the Pops” the week of the album’s release, performing a buoyant version of “Hungry Like the Wolf.” The LP debuted at No. 4 on the album charts and peaked a week later at No. 2.

However, in the U.S., Rio took a while to connect with a large audience. In fact, multiple factors contributed to the LP’s eventual success. Among other things: MTV started spinning the groundbreaking videos for “Hungry Like the Wolf” and “Rio.” The four-song Carnival EP, featuring dance floor-friendly remixes, became a hit. Rio itself was also reissued with new remixes from David Kershenbaum. And “Hungry Like the Wolf” benefitted from a musical landscape that was starting to embrace new, fresh sounds. 

When the single finally took off in America, the ascent resembled a rocket ride: The song hit No. 1 on Billboard’s rock radio charts and crossed over to the Top 40, peaking at No. 3. Casey Kasem, the host of the syndicated radio countdown show “American Top 40,” delighted in referencing the song’s chuckling intro.

Duran Duran performed the song on “Saturday Night Live” in 1983, and the single was a highlight of 1984’s triumphant Sing Blue Silver tour. “Is anybody hungry?” Simon Le Bon would growl as banter, a rakish tone in his voice — causing an ecstatic response from the crowd.

With new music on the horizon from Duran Duran in 2021, it’s illuminating to look back to the exciting moment where the song that broke them in the U.S., “Hungry Like the Wolf,” started to happen.

Read an excerpt from Annie Zaleski’s “Duran Duran’s Rio ” (Bloomsbury, May 6) below:

In fall 1982, everything started coming together for Duran Duran. The Carnival EP started selling— for nine straight weeks starting in mid-October it actually ranked higher than Rio on the Billboard album charts — and MTV support remained strong. At some juncture after being reissued with Kershenbaum remixes on side one, Rio was rereleased in the United States again, with the “Night Version” of “Hungry Like the Wolf” swapped in for the Kershenbaum remix. (Trying to keep track of all of the available Rio LP pressings— not to mention the various Duran Duran single edits and remixes floating around — is a daunting, if not impossible, proposition; among other things, Capitol Records took over reissuing various releases by the end of 1982 and into 1983.) 

As the 1982 holiday season rolled around, rock radio went all-in on Duran Duran. Ten stations added the band the Friday after Thanksgiving; that figure tripled the next week. And in the “Radio & Records” issue dated December 10, 1982, Duran Duran were the most-added band at rock radio, with forty-three stations playlisting the group — placing them immediately ahead of the veteran arena act Foreigner and surging San Francisco hard rockers Night Ranger. 

For the week ending December 18, “Hungry Like the Wolf” also made a grand re-entrance on the Billboard Top Rock Tracks chart at a new high of No. 20. Three months after Duran Duran’s last appearance on the chart, the musical landscape looked quite different. The Australian pop troupe Men at Work and fellow ex-New Romantic Adam Ant had Top 10 hits; colorful synth-rock act Missing Persons, Duran Duran’s label mates, boasted two charting songs; moody rockers the Fixx and quirky rockers Wall of Voodoo made respectable showings. Even Duran Duran’s fellow former rehearsal space neighbors Dexy’s Midnight Runners were gaining an American foothold with “Come On Eileen,” a new entry at No. 32. 

To drummer Roger Taylor, Duran Duran’s guitar-based approach explains a lot about the band’s U.S. success. “We never went down the complete electro route, and that’s probably why America really took us to their heart,” he says, while also citing as crucial Andy Taylor for the way he “brought a rock edge to the band” as well. “I don’t know if we would have made it in America without that, actually. I think that was very important, that made that transition from England to America, because it really suited the rock radio.” Thanks to this burgeoning support, “Hungry Like the Wolf” finally debuted on Billboard’s Hot 100 at No. 77 for the issue dated on Christmas Day 1982, marking the start of what would become a wild ride. 

This turnaround was quite a pleasant surprise to Nick Rhodes. “Suddenly, we got a phone call saying it’s charted — you know, ‘Hungry Like the Wolf ‘ has gone back up. It seems to have risen like a phoenix from the ashes,” he laughs. “You know, it all went to a different gear from that point.”

Republicans are trying to bully a GOP lawmaker out of Congress for insufficient loyalty to Trump

Republican Congressman Anthony Gonzalez was censured by the Ohio Republican Party this past week, alongside another nine GOP lawmakers, over their role in voting in favor of former President Donald Trump’s impeachment. But the Ohio Republican Party isn’t stopping with merely censuring Gonzalez; now they want him to submit in his resignation letter. 

“On Friday, the party’s governing board called on Gonzalez, R-Rocky River, to resign in a divided vote. They also voted to censure Gonzalez and nine other members of Congress for “their votes to support the unconstitutional, politically motivated impeachment proceeding against President Donald J. Trump,” according to the resolution,” The Cincinnati Enquirer reported. 

While Ohio has long been considered a swing state, home to more moderate Republicans such as Senator Rob Portman and former Speaker of the House John Boehner, the modern-day Ohio GOP has taken steps to align themselves with the party of Trump, made ever so clear by the move to oust “RINO’s” (Republicans only in name) such as Gonzalez.  

Ohio State senator Shannon Burns, a member of the state’s central committee, has since called for Gonzalez to resign, stating that he “betrayed his constituents” and “demonstrated a hidden vendetta against” the former president. Burns went onto claim that Gonzalez “relied on his emotions rather than the will of his constituents and any credible facts” when considering the Trump impeachment charges.  

“Ohio Republicans had planned to vote on censuring Gonzalez and the other House Republicans on Friday, but a resolution to call for Gonzalez’s resignation was first introduced during the meeting, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Republican Party told CNN, and was then passed by the central committee,” CNN reported on Friday. 

In January, following his vote to impeach Trump, Gonzalez said in a statement that he took the measure to impeach over the president’s role to “incite a mob that attacked the United States Congress.” Gonzalez further argued that Trump “abandoned his post while many members asked for help, thus further endangering all present.”

Gonzalez’s primary challenger, Max Miller, who has been endorsed by Trump, also seized on the move to censure, tweeting, “The Ohio GOP has voted to hold Anthony Gonzalez accountable for abandoning his constituents, his promises, and the Republican Party. Regardless if he resigns or not, we are going to continue spreading our strong, pro-Trump, America First message to every corner of this district.”

While the vote to venture Gonzalez wasn’t a focal point of Cleveland conservative radio host Bob Frantz, the vote did receive the support of pro-Trump candidates in the state.

“From day one, I have strongly supported efforts to censure and expel traitor Congressmen like Anthony Gonzalez who voted to impeach President Trump,” said far-right Ohio Senate candidate Josh Mandel. 

The move to censure Gonzalez comes as GOP leaders back in Washinton, D.C. tussle with the prospects of ousting House Republican chairwoman Liz Cheney from her post over her staunch opposition to Trump as early as Wednesday. While Trump-friendly allies say Republican New York Rep. Elise Stefanik should take over Cheney’s role, many Trumpworld characters argue Stefanik might not be loyal enough to Trump. “Others, like pundits Ann Coulter and Raheem Kassam, editor in chief of the populist online outlet National Pulse, went on a retweeting spree, highlighting writer after writer, tweet after tweet, questioning Stefanik’s commitment to the Trump movement’s core tenets, particularly on immigration,” Politico noted on Friday. 

“It’s basically the Titanic”: Republican dissent grows louder as GOP preps for a NeverTrump purge

Anti-Trump detractors of the GOP are growing louder in their criticisms of Donald Trump, even as the party grows increasingly hostile toward anyone that breaks from absolute praise for the former president. 

On Sunday, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., likened the Republican Party to the Titanic amid the internal battle currently being waged against Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., for her anti-Trump record. Reports have speculated that the Republican Party is planning to oust Cheney as chairwoman of the House Republican Conference and replace her with budding GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y.

“Right now, it’s basically the Titanic,” Kinzinger warned in a CBS interview on “Face the Nation.”

“We’re like, you know, in the middle of this slow sink. We have a band playing on the deck telling everybody it’s fine. And meanwhile, as I’ve said, you know, Donald Trump’s running around trying to find women’s clothing and get on the first lifeboat.”

Kinzinger acknowledged that “there’s a few of us that are just saying, ‘Guys, this is not good,’ not just for the future of the party, but this is not good for the future of this country.”

The Illinois representative also took specific aim at House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who Kinzinger said quickly changed his tune about who is to blame for the Capitol riot.

“Liz Cheney is saying exactly what Kevin McCarthy said the day of the insurrection. She’s just consistently been saying it,” Kinzinger explained. “We have so many people including our leadership in the party that have not admitted that this is what it is, which was an insurrection led by the president of the United States, well-deserving of a full accounting from Republicans.”

The congressman concluded that his party must have “an internal look and a full accounting as to what led to Jan. 6” and “quit peddling in conspiracies.”

Kinzinger, one of the ten House Republicans that broke party ranks and voted to impeach Trump following the Capitol riot, has been a vocal apostate of the Republican Party since Trump’s departure from office. In March, Kinzinger launched a super PAC dedicated to supporting anti-Trump Republicans in the 2022 elections, called “Americans Keeping Country First.”

Kinzinger’s comments came just as Maryland GOP Gov. Larry Hogan drew upon yet another metaphor to describe the madness of his own party. On Sunday, Hogan called the GOP “a circular firing squad” hellbent on excommunicating any member who dares utter a modicum of criticism against the former president. 

In an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Hogan addressed Cheney’s potential ouster. “It just bothers me that you have to swear fealty to the dear leader or you get kicked out of the party, it just doesn’t make any sense,” Hogan lamented. “It’s sort of a circular firing squad where we’re just attacking members of our own party instead of focusing on solving problems or standing up and having an argument that we can debate the Democrats on some of the things that the Biden administration is pushing through.”

He concluded: “We had the worst four years we’ve had ever in the Republican Party losing the White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate.”

Echoing Kinzinger, Hogan shamed his colleagues for brushing the Capitol riot under the rug and not pinning enough blame on the former president. 

Many party veterans have argued that the GOP will need to let go of Trump in order to build a broader coalition for the next cycle of elections. Others have suggested that Trump’s effect on the American psyche will be extremely difficult to shake off.

“It’s becoming increasingly difficult, it seems, for people to go out on the stump and defend somebody like Liz Cheney or Mitt Romney,” said former Senator Jeff Flake, who was censured by the GOP this year. “About 70 percent of Republicans probably genuinely believe that the election was stolen, and that’s debilitating. It really is.”

Trump’s Big Lie is alienating to voters — Republicans just don’t care

It’s increasingly certain that Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., is going to get the big ol’ boot from her leadership positions in the House by a Republican caucus increasingly furious with her for refusing to cosign to Donald Trump’s Big Lie, that he is the “real” winner of the election and that the insurrection was a good thing. No one should cry for Cheney, who is sleeping in a bed she carefully made for herself, but the whole situation is nonetheless extremely concerning. It’s a sign that Republicans are going on all-in on Trump and the Big Lie, to the point where anyone who even shows signs of even feeling pangs of dissent is being subject to vicious smears and other tactics to bring them into line. To add to the concerns for democracy, the unspooling fake “audit” of votes in Arizona is continuing to feed a steady stream of pro-insurrection propaganda to the GOP base, continuing to reinforce the idea that they’re entitled to steal elections because imaginary Democrats in outlandish conspiracy theories did it first. 

But it’s not just liberals who are worried for our democracy who are expressing concerns.

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According to Allan Smith and Sahil Kapur of NBC News, many Republican political strategists are worried, too, because they see these pro-insurrection antics as alienating to some segments of voters. 

“Removing Liz Cheney from leadership will give a boatload of ammunition to the GOP’s critics,” Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, told NBC News. Ayers’ worry, Smith and Kapur wrote, is that such actions “could further antagonize suburban voters, particularly college-educated women, who ditched the party because of their opposition to Trump.”

Similarly, some Republicans in Arizona are having second thoughts about the clown show that is the Maricopa County vote “audit” being conducted to please Trump and bolster right-wing conspiracy theories. 

“It makes us look like idiots,” Republican state Sen. Paul Boyer, who represents the kind of suburban district Ayres is afraid of losing, told the New York Times. “Looking back, I didn’t think it would be this ridiculous. It’s embarrassing to be a state senator at this point.”

Trump and the Big Lie are both, to be clear, quite popular with the GOP base. Polling shows that 70% of Republican voters still refuse to accept that Joe Biden won the 2020 election and the majority of Republican voters cling to one kind of conspiracy theory or another to justify the insurrection Trump incited on January 6.

But there’s good reason to believe those voters could be persuaded to move on to some other shiny object of white grievance, if the leadership just quietly cut Trump loose to rave by himself on his fake “social media” site. These folks are addicted to grievance more than they are to Trump, and if Republicans just gave them something else to focus on — Disneyland getting rid of rape jokes or the term “birthing people” are some recent Fox News-generated contenders — they would move on surprisingly quickly.

So it’s the roughly quarter of Republicans who admit Biden won the election that Republican strategists are worried about. And those are just the ones who still admit they are Republican. As post-election analysis shows, in addition to suburban women, independent voters and even some male voters are getting fed up with the Trump circus. For those people, the insurrection was another inflection point proving Trump has gone too far. Republicans increasingly siding with the insurrection yahoos over ordinary Americans is not going to improve their standing with such voters. 

So why are House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and the rest of GOP leadership going along with a plan to fully rebrand themselves as the party of wild-eyed conspiracy theorists?

It’s not just fear of Tucker Carlson making gay jokes. It’s that the GOP’s strategy for “winning” elections is no longer the traditional democratic one of trying to attract and retain voters. Instead, the focus is shifting, quite rapidly, to making sure that Republicans “win” even when they lose. Voter suppression gets the lion’s share of the attention, but as Heather “Digby” Parton noted at Salon on Monday, outright theft is now on the table for most Republicans. 

“Trump made a serious run at getting the election overturned,” she writes, noting that he was stopped, in part, because “local officials and judges around the country refused to cooperate.” But now those folks are getting purged and Cheney is merely the most prominent example. As Parton notes, Republican leadership has set aside “misgivings” about openly trying to steal elections and next time it happens, they’re fully on board.

Law professor Joshua A. Douglas concurs in a piece in the Washington Post, noting that a combination of harassment and new laws that make it easier to threaten election officials with prison are being leveraged to squeeze out those who still defend the integrity of elections on a local and state level. Next time Trump — or other Republicans running for any office — makes a run at stealing an election, they’ll find a whole new cast of officials who think illegally throwing out votes or otherwise helping a fascist insurrectionist is very much to their liking. 

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That’s why Republicans are way more focused on serving the MAGA faithful than they are serving more moderate voters who think democracy is a good thing. As the Capitol riot showed, while the red hats are a minority of Americans, they are one that’s prepared to use whatever means necessary — including violence — to force their will on the rest of the country. That’s a bad thing for democracy, but, as Trump believed, a good thing to have on your side if your desire is to take power by force instead of winning elections. 

Which isn’t to say things are hopeless.

What Republicans forget about Trump’s coup is that it didn’t just fail because Trump hit a firewall of election officials who still had integrity. It failed because progressives saw the coup coming, took it seriously, and fought back. After witnessing a mob literally storm the Capitol, even more moderates and liberals are ready to admit that we’re in danger of a fascist takeover and will step up again to stop it. 

The bad news, however, is pro-democracy forces are not finding the support they need in the Democratic Party. To be certain, both President Biden and the majority of congressional Democrats whole-heartedly support bills that would reform our electoral systems to shield them against the kinds of theft Republicans are gearing up to perform. Unfortunately, those Democrats are still stymied by a couple of blinkered, obstructionist Democrats in the Senate — namely, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona — who would rather keep the filibuster in place than pass bills necessary to keep Republicans from outright stealing elections. Without that support, even the best efforts of ordinary progressives on the ground to save our democracy could very likely fail next time. 

Biden bolstered by Republican support for his pandemic response: poll

Nearly 50% of Republicans approve of President Biden’s handling of the pandemic, according to a new poll released by The Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Released on Monday, the poll found that 71% of all Americans currently approve of Biden’s handling of the pandemic, with his overall approval rating sitting at 63%. Among Republicans, in particular, researchers found that 47%, —a near majority — support Biden’s pandemic response. 

The poll also found that Americans are less worried about the pandemic than they’ve ever been since February of 2020, before lockdowns and quarantines took hold in the U.S. “About half of Americans say they are at least somewhat worried that they or a relative could be infected with the virus, down from about 7 in 10 just a month earlier,” the AP noted. 

“We’re getting there,” said Jeff Zients, the White House’s COVID-19 response czar, recently. “And the light at the end of the tunnel is brighter and brighter.”

More broadly, 54% of Americans say that the country is “on the right track,” which is higher than AP has reported since 2017. 

Nevertheless, a strong partisan divide remains surrounding the risk of infection. About 69% of Democrats reported being at least somewhat worried about becoming infected, while only 33% of Republicans had the same concern. 

According to CNBC, about a third of all Americans are vaccinated, with infection rates falling in thirty states throughout the country. However, vaccination rates have gone down from 3.4 million per day on April 13 to 2.1 million per day last week. With 45,000 new cases daily, the Biden administration still faces hurdles in encouraging the American public to get vaccinated despite public distrust around the shot, particularly amongst pro-Trump conservatives, according to the Washington Post. As the Post reported: “Among those who say they don’t plan to get the vaccine, half say they trust Trump’s advice a lot or somewhat — far more than the advice of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the country’s top infectious-disease expert Anthony S. Fauci.”

According to a Gallup poll from late March, those who are least interested in getting immunized are also least likely to follow public health guidelines, like social distancing.

The AP-NORC poll also found that a sharp partisan gap in public sentiment surrounding Biden’s recent handling of the economy. About 91 percent of Democrats back his economic policies, but only 19 percent of Republicans can say the same. 

The findings come on the heels of a recent jobs report, which revealed a marked bust from last month, as Salon reported. About 266,000 jobs were added to the economy and the unemployment rate rose from 6 to 6.1 percent. Economists from financial data provider Refinitiv otherwise expected the economy to add 978,000 jobs and the unemployment rate to fall to 5.8 percent. Many conservatives have speculated that unemployment insurance has engendered a lack of willingness amongst Americans to rejoin the workforce – guesswork that Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen disputed. 

The AP-NORC poll also surveyed Americans on issues like immigration, gun control, and foreign policy. About 43 percent of Americans approve of Biden’s immigration policies; 48 percent approve of his Biden’s approach to guns; and 54 percent say they back the President’s foreign policy.

“Stop the Steal” is becoming the GOP’s permanent rallying cry

Over the weekend, the Virginia Republican Party held its convention at which it was supposed to choose its candidates for the off-year election this fall. The three top candidates for governor have been described as “Trumpy, Trumpier and Trumpiest,” so you can easily see where Virginia Republicans are positioning themselves in the GOP circular firing squad. In their zeal to model their allegiance to their Ultimate Leader, Republicans went out of their way to restrict the voting process to assure “the integrity” of the vote. According to NBC News’ Alex Seitz-Wald, it didn’t go very well:

At issue is a decision to quietly allow voters to participate in their complicated primary process even if they left blank parts of the application, including required fields that asked for their state-issued voter ID number and a signature, according to documents and an audio recording of a call obtained exclusively by NBC News. Republicans in the state say the nominating contest has been a logistical nightmare.

Their own activists couldn’t traverse all of the GOP’s newly-imposed “voter integrity” verifications. Evidently, a whole bunch of people didn’t know how to do fill out the necessary paperwork so they left whole portions blank, which, under the new strict vote-counting rules the Republicans are pushing, should result in throwing out the ballot or registration form.

The right-wing gubernatorial candidate who calls herself “Trump in heels,” (and is widely considered the Trumpiest of the lot) Amanda Chase is not standing for it. She wrote this to her supporters:

“DO NOT TRUST THE PARTY TO DELIVER ACCURATE RESULTS. Who should you go to for the proper results? Me and my campaign! My campaign will be monitoring the voting and data entry on election night. If they are accurate, we will tell you. If they are not, I will be prepared to sue in court to force a public count.”

She means it:

They don’t expect the vote to be fully tabulated for some time and since it’s a ranked-choice voting process, there will undoubtedly be a runoff. Is there any doubt that Chase will deny the validity of the vote count if she doesn’t make the runoff? After all, she is the Trumpiest and we know what that means:

He won that year. And we all know what happened when, four years later, he didn’t.

So judging from what’s going on with election laws around the country and the lockstep belief among the faithful, I think it’s fair to assume that we can expect more of it. As you can see from the Virginia example, one problem with these draconian voting restrictions is that they will affect Republican voters the same way they will affect the Democrats. It’s possible they’ll affect them even more since the GOP has been pushing absentee voting for years for their older constituents, the very people who may be most confused by the changes. Perversely, that will provide even more fodder for the losers to contest the election results and further degrade their own voters’ faith in the system. After all, the last election results were certified by Republican officials and Republican judges all over the country, yet Republican voters still believe it was fraudulent. It won’t matter in 2022 and 2024 that it was Republicans who instituted the rules that disadvantage their own voters.

Keep in mind that the new voting restrictions are not where this ends.

Republicans are also doing their usual tricks of “purging” voters from the rolls and “caging.” But there are some newer very troubling moves, starting with the new expansive rules in 20 states for “poll watchers” which basically means that fanatical Republican extremists will be free to harass and intimidate voters as they are trying to cast a vote. This technique is thought to be more effective in precincts with more minority voters but Republicans may be surprised. Everyone knows what they’re up to now so Democrats are highly unlikely to be intimidated by MAGA yahoos at the ballot box.

Because we are also seeing the entire party from Ted Cruz, R-Tx., and Marjorie Taylor Green, R-Ga, to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., all buying into the notion that Trump’s Jan. 6th gambit to overturn the election was legitimate, it’s clear that’s become conventional wisdom in the GOP as well. At this point, it appears that they have all decided to treat the insurrection itself as a somewhat overzealous but nonetheless valid response to having had the election “stolen.”

Trump made a serious run at getting the election overturned. He cared nothing for legitimacy, openly and blatantly threatened, cajoled and intimidated state and local elections officials to refuse to certify the results based upon sloppily made-up evidence and conspiracy theories. For months he bellowed that mail-in votes were fraudulent and 6 weeks before the election he stated outright that he wanted Amy Coney Barrett confirmed because he expected the court to decide the election and he needed that extra vote just in case.

As it happened those local officials and judges around the country refused to cooperate. Today those officials are all being purged from the party. All these voter “integrity” bills will eventually be challenged and we’ll see if the courts are still independent or if conservative jurists are now on the Trump train as well. After all, it all seemed like a stunning assault on our tradition of a peaceful transfer of power at the time. Something like this had never happened before. Will they feel the same way if it happens again?

Even more unnerving is the growing perception that all this supposed “rigging” leaves the GOP with no choice but to refuse to vote to certify any more presidential elections if they have the power to do it. There is unfortunately a decent chance that McCarthy might just be the Speaker of the House in 2025 and if Trump is on the ballot, as he probably will be, does anyone believe he would dare defy him again?

It is almost inevitable that “stop the steal” will be an ongoing GOP rallying cry.

Whatever misgivings the Republican establishment may have had about Donald Trump’s strategy to usurp democracy, they have rapidly come around to being his servile minions once again. With three more years of banging this drum, the Trump cult will be thoroughly convinced that it is literally impossible for them to legitimately lose elections. And GOP officials will be happy to let them believe that as long it means they can stay in power. 

This is how we address America’s mental health crisis

The mental health toll of COVID-19 may prove to be as serious as the physical toll. One-third of virus survivors suffer neurological or mental disorders, according to a recent Oxford University study. Children, teens and young adults, Blacks and Hispanics, essential workers, and households with job loss or lower incomes are reporting high rates of anxiety, depression, and substance abuse. Even those who haven’t experienced health or economic problems this past year are struggling with the pandemic’s disruptions to daily life. The depth of the crisis was illustrated by recent news that drug overdose deaths, driven by opioids, are worse than ever—higher in some places even than deaths from COVID.

“We have a pandemic right now, and that is going to lead us to have a mental health syndemic,” says Vickie Mays, Ph.D., a professor in psychology and health services at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health, using a term that refer to two interrelated epidemics, or “synergistic epidemics.”

“We have to think about what’s necessary to get us back to a place where we’re opening, we’re vaccinated, but that, in addition to those two things, we’re healthy mentally as well,” explains Mays.

The U.S. mental health system, already difficult to access and navigate before the pandemic, is not prepared to handle this crisis. Lack of insurance or in-network coverage, or a shortage of mental health professionals, has prevented most adults who experienced serious psychological distress from seeing a mental health professional, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

“You cannot simply treat people one on one, and that is because we don’t have enough professionals to address everyone’s needs,” says Olya Glantsman, Ph.D., a community psychologist at DePaul University in Chicago. “But also those who need help the most typically get it the least, either because they are excluded from health care, they cannot afford it, or the type of jobs that they work, they can’t afford to take a vacation or day to decompress or do self-care.”

That’s compounded by a health and economic crisis that has seen millions lose insurance and paid time off, which makes taking a mental health day or seeing a therapist impossible.

However, the mental health system’s deficits represent not only a crisis but an opportunity to broaden how society approaches mental health, from individualized, brain-based, and “isolated … from the broader social context” to inextricably linked to the health of our communities and society.

A subset of psychologists, social workers, and community health workers have long advocated for this approach, supporting strategies beyond medication and standard therapy, to address what they call “social determinants of health.” The scale and collective experience of the pandemic, racial justice movement, and economic crisis, may be what pushes this approach into the mainstream.

Few people challenge the idea that stressful life situations like unemployment, abuse, hunger, or racism, might lead people to drink more, use more drugs, or feel depressed and anxious.  But the “biomedical model” of mental health that is predominant in the American health care system focuses on diagnosing and fixing an individual and not on addressing the factors that contribute to good mental health, like safe housing, reliable food sources, or physical safety from violence. 

As the British Psychological Society, the main representative body for psychologists in the U.K., recently wrote, “The pandemic has rendered visible that psychological functioning cannot be separated from the social conditions in which it takes place … If we only conceive of the impact of the pandemic at the level of the individuals’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviors then we will be likely to think of solutions at the individual level too.”

Psychosocial approaches to mental health get less funding and attention, but they can be just as impactful. Rochelle Burgess, Ph.D., a community health psychologist at the University College in London, has worked with colleagues in South Africa to pilot an approach, called COURRAGE-PLUS, that combines group therapy based on Ubuntu principles—an indigenous concept that recognizes the interconnectedness of individuals’ well-being—with several sessions that help participants develop skills and identify resources to challenge long-standing social adversity. This includes training in how to take collective action, getting connected with legal or financial aid groups, or entrepreneurship. A group of women who’d experienced poverty, violence, and trauma, who went through this training had significantly reduced symptoms of depression.

“The COURRAGE intervention’s ability to work within a non-clinical community facing high levels of social adversity, without over-emphasizing medicalized concepts of mental ill-health to the exclusion of social challenges faced within the community, is a novel approach in these settings,” the study concluded.

Community-oriented approaches can also fill a void when people don’t have access, or are hesitant to access, traditional mental health services. Leaders at Behavioral Health Systems Baltimore, a nonprofit that provides services for the city of Baltimore, realized last year the mental health of COVID would be significant. So the organization began partnering with faith leaders to reach people who might be mistrustful of the health system but needed support. They’ve led sessions in places of worship using a form of therapy called Sanctuary SELF, where participants process and identify past trauma and toxic stress in a safe communal setting.

“It’s a way to open people to an approach to mental health outside of just going to see the traditional therapist. We can have these conversations in a community. Why? Because there’s collective wisdom in a community. You’ve been through stuff, I’ve been through stuff. We can learn from each other,” says Terri Alexander, a project manager at Behavioral Health Systems Baltimore.

A benefit of community-oriented programs is that they draw on the collective wisdom and resilience of a group, which can be lost when we focus only on individual approaches. During the pandemic, Black and Hispanic people have had higher resilience than white people, particularly poor Black people compared to their poor white counterparts, according to a Brookings study. The study credits their resilience in part to belonging to strong communities that have overcome past adversity.

“These same communities have been surviving days like this for generations,” says Jaleel Abdul-Adil, Ph.D., a community psychology professor at University of Illinois-Chicago and director of the Urban Youth Trauma Center in Chicago. “We want to go in and look at, not only what are these communities’ needs, but also what are the strengths and how have they helped each other. This way, we can collaborate and supplement the work they do in our community-based outreach and partnership.” The Urban Youth Trauma Center recently helped organize a Youth Violence Prevention Week, which combined sports, meals, and activities with helping kids develop skills that could help prevent violence. They’re also involved in a restorative justice program in Park Ridge, Illinois, which keeps nonviolent youth offenders out of the criminal justice system through a program of conflict resolution, mentoring, and community service.

One of the main ideas of a socially-oriented psychology is that it’s difficult for people to have mental health if their basic needs, like safety and shelter, aren’t being met. This belief underlies Housing First. Unlike other programs, people who need it are provided housing without requirements that they deal with their behavioral problems. According to studies, Housing First “shows greater improvements in terms of sustaining housing and staying healthier, compared to places that only focus on mental health first but forget about basic needs,” says Glantsman.

Worries over how COVID-19 is impacting the mental health of teens and young adults—who are significantly more suicidal than all adults—has felt particularly divorced from the root causes of their depression and anxiety.Although concern about screen time and academic loss is valid, it ignores the context of a generation that faces crushing student debt, an awful job market, and a historic climate crisis.

Burgess found in a study last summer that unemployment significantly impacted the mental health of members of 18- to 24-year-olds. “These were young people who were already very aware that their success in life was that much harder. And they saw all of the pathways and roots to a brighter future drying up … It had a huge emotional toll,” she says.

Strategies to support mental health could include supporting the Green New Deal, which has strong support from Generation Z and would help address the jobs and climate issues. But it currently faces an uphill climb in Congress.

“Young people come up with suggestions, like ‘We need to have job training coming out of the pandemic, we need to build up local industries,’ and the recommendations come out about how to improve young people’s mental health, and it’s, ‘Get more counselors in school,'” says Burgess. “So there’s this real disconnect between treating the symptoms and ignoring what people identify as the cause.”

There are parallels between COVID-19 and another crisis moment in U.S. history, the aftermath of World War II. Because of screenings of recruits and combat veterans, psychiatrists and politicians discovered “that mental illness was much more rampant in American society than previously thought,” according to Matthew Smith, PhD, professor of history at University of Strathclyde in Scotland. They connected these problems with poverty, class and race inequality, overcrowding in urban areas, violence, and poor education.

This led, in 1963, to President John F. Kennedy signing into law the Community Mental Health Care Act, which for the first time funded federal community mental health centers. The “strengthening of our fundamental community, social welfare, and educational programs … can do much to eliminate or correct the harsh environmental conditions,” Kennedy said at the time. A year later, President Lyndon Johnson declared the War on Poverty, which led to the passage of Medicare and Medicaid and significant investment in community health.

After years of cuts to such programs, there’s hope that the pendulum may finally be swinging back, especially with the election of President Joe Biden and the attention to social and structural issues in the last year.

“What we do as community psychologists is radically different but it’s also very natural,” says Glantsman. “We’re not saying that we were the first ones to create this. Individuals and communities have done this type of work for centuries. We just want to bring it back and make it more mainstream.”

Liz Cheney is no defender of democracy: She and her party created a monster

It is a compulsion. It may be an addiction. Whatever the cause, it reeks of desperation. Every day the problem is getting worse.

The American news media is obsessed with Liz Cheney. The hope peddlers and other happy pill-sellers have anointed the Wyoming congresswoman, along with Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, as valiant warriors, “responsible” and “traditional” Republicans who will somehow rehabilitate their party from the rise of neofascism and its assault on democracy.

This quest for respectable and honorable Republicans is a function of a profound, pathetic desire to return to a pre-Trump version of “normal,” a time before the standing norms and rules of American democracy were shattered by Trump and his political cult.

In reality, Liz Cheney and other “respectable” and “traditional” Republicans are wolves in sheep’s clothing. She supported almost all of Trump’s policies. She did not denounce or otherwise choose to leave the Republican Party out of protest or disgust or principle.

Cheney is no savior or defender of American democracy. Her “traditional” Republican performance is a political gambit, a means to secure more power in the future and perhaps even become the Republican presidential nominee in 2024 or beyond. In too many ways, Liz Cheney is best described as a “friendly fascist.”

In her much-praised recent Washington Post op-ed, Cheney wrote:

While embracing or ignoring Trump’s statements might seem attractive to some for fundraising and political purposes, that approach will do profound long-term damage to our party and our country. Trump has never expressed remorse or regret for the attack of Jan. 6 and now suggests that our elections, and our legal and constitutional system, cannot be trusted to do the will of the people. This is immensely harmful, especially as we now compete on the world stage against Communist China and its claims that democracy is a failed system.

Cheney concluded her op-ed by writing, “History is watching. Our children are watching. We must be brave enough to defend the basic principles that underpin and protect our freedom and our democratic process. I am committed to doing that, no matter what the short-term political consequences might be.”

Signaling to her right-wing political bonafides and motivations — using language purportedly meant to repudiate Trump’s coup attempt and his assault on democracy — Cheney chose to attack the Democrats for their “ridiculous wokeness.” Such language is a racial dog whistle, a coded message that the Democrats “caring too much” about social justice and human rights for Black and brown people.

Predictably, too many of the professional smart people in the mainstream commentariat took the bait.

At New York Magazine, Jonathan Chait offers an analysis of why other House Republicans are likely to oust Cheney from her leadership position:

What they want, in other words, is for Cheney to put aside her concern about the survival of democracy in America and instead focus on matters that unite the Republican party’s authoritarian and democratic wings. They’re demanding, in so many words, ideological collusion. She should cooperate with Trump for the benefit of their shared opposition to Biden’s agenda. Trump and his allies in the party and conservative media can continue propagating their big lie and organizing for the next assault on the system, and they can try to divert that energy to halt Biden’s plans to raise the capital gains tax, which after all, is the really important thing in their minds.

Cheney, of course, shares the party’s objectives on nearly every one of these issues. It is because she is such a partisan, conservative Republican that her dissent is so significant. There is no hidden agenda at work, no subtext of quiet sympathy for Biden’s policies. Cheney believes in right-wing policy and settling control of government at the ballot box.

The Republican party is sliding into authoritarianism at a terrifyingly rapid clip. To stand by is to let it happen. Republicans who have reservations about this trend have tried quiet hand-wringing for five years. It hasn’t worked. Somebody has to fight back, and Cheney has volunteered for the role.

The more complex (and depressing) truth is that the Republican Party’s slide into neofascism, white supremacy and racial authoritarianism has been a long process, one that occurred gradually over the course of several decades. Trumpism is not some aberrant outlier, separate and apart from the Republican Party’s agenda and orthodoxy. Trump’s presidency and his movement are the logical result of that party’s downward evolution, a type of endgame where friendly fascism and authoritarian impulses have been replaced with political sadism and outright contempt for democracy.

To elevate Cheney as a defender of American democracy is to fundamentally misinterpret Trumpism and the Republican embrace of neofascism and white supremacy, reducing it to a discrete moment in American political history.

Political scientists have shown that today’s Republican Party has more in common with far-right political parties in countries like Hungary and Poland than it does with mainstream democratic parties in Europe. It is also clear that the Republican Party has dragged the Democrats (and American politics more generally) further and further to the right through a process known as “asymmetrical polarization.” One obvious result is that the most “liberal” Republican is now far to the right of the most conservative Democrat, which was clearly not true in earlier eras.

As the Republican Party became more anti-democratic and pro-fascist, Liz Cheney actively enabled and contributed to that outcome. In short, she helped to create Trumpism, and should not be allowed to wash her hands of a mess that has stained her permanently.

Adam Serwer of the Atlantic offers a summary, writing that the Republicans’ “rejection of the rule of law is also an extension of a political logic that Cheney herself has cultivated for years”:

During the Obama administration, Cheney was a Fox News regular who, as was the fashion at the time, insisted that the president was secretly sympathetic to jihadists. She enthusiastically defended the use of torture, dismissed the constitutional right to due process as an inconvenience, and amplified the Obama-era campaign to portray American Muslims as a national-security threat.

Until the insurrection, she was a loyal Trumpist who frequently denounced the Democratic Party. “They’ve become the party of anti-Semitism; they’ve become the party of infanticide; they’ve become the party of socialism,” she said in 2019. Her critics now, such as Scalise and the buffoonish Representative Matt Gaetz, formerly gushed over her ability to bring, as the Times put it in 2019, “an edge to Republican messaging that was lacking.”

That “edge” was Cheney’s specialty from the moment she emerged as a rising star in the GOP. In 2010, Cheney launched a McCarthyite crusade against seven unnamed attorneys in the Obama-era Justice Department who had previously represented terrorism suspects held in the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay. The Bush administration’s assertions of imperial power in the War on Terror violated the Constitution many times over — the conservative majority on the Supreme Court agreed — and the lawyers who represented detainees were defending the fundamental constitutional right to counsel. They were affirming the integrity of the American legal system; Cheney smeared them as terrorist sympathizers, as The Enemy.

At the New York Times, Charles Blow also highlights Cheney’s culpability for the Age of Trump and ascendant American fascism:

Yes, it is better that Liz Cheney stands up for the truth about Trump and the election than to oppose it, which puts her at odds with a political party in which truth is the enemy.

But her present position does not expunge her past positions. The sword she’s falling on is one she has spent her political career brandishing.

If Cheney is punished by her own party, I will not applaud, but I also will not sob. I sit silently in acknowledgment, as one does, when karma swings low and performs its function.

At the end of President Biden’s speech to Congress last Wednesday, he and Cheney exchanged pleasantries with one another. When criticized by her fellow Republicans for this gesture toward political normalcy, Cheney responded on Twitter: “We’re different political parties. We’re not sworn enemies. We’re Americans.”

That statement is essentially false. Republicans increasingly view the Democratic Party and its supporters as existential enemies. Trump and his followers are so committed to their hatred of the Democrats and multiracial democracy that they launched a lethal assault on the Capitol as part of a coup attempt. The Republican Party as a whole aided, abetted and supported that criminal assault.

The sooner Democrats realize that it is they who are in a literal existential fight for the existence of American democracy, and that today’s Republicans have no limits in terms of how far they will go to achieve and keep power, the safer the future of our nation will be.

An old adage suggests that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. In the case of Liz Cheney, this is simply not true. For the most part, the hope peddlers in the news media will not tell the American people that painful truth. For the sake of American democracy, one can only hope that the leaders of the Democratic Party are not suckered by Liz Cheney’s friendly-fascist performance.

Hundreds of Palestinians injured in eviction protests as Jerusalem erupts in violence

More than 200 Palestinians were wounded and at least one partially blinded during weekend protests in East Jerusalem as Israeli police fired rubber-coated steel bullets and stun grenades at thousands of people who were protesting Israeli settlers and security forces’ ongoing effort to dispossess Palestinians of their land in the occupied territory.

Israel’s violent crackdown on Palestinian unrest, which has intensified in recent days, continued Saturday.

“What’s happening in Jerusalem and Palestine more broadly is not a ‘clash’ or a ‘scuffle,’ but a state-sanctioned campaign of Israeli violence against Palestinians,” the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) said Saturday. “To pretend otherwise is to minimize the horrors we are witnessing.”

As Al Jazeera reported, several hundred riot gear-clad Israeli police officers deployed to the Al-Aqsa mosque on Friday night, where 70,000 Muslims had gathered at Islam’s third-holiest site for the last Friday prayer of Ramadan. Thousands of worshippers stayed to demonstrate against Israel’s attempted expulsion of Palestinians from the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.

According to Al Jazeera, Israeli security forces opened fire on Palestinians at Al-Aqsa and throughout the city on Friday night, shooting people with rubber-coated steel bullets and using stun grenades on crowds that were armed with no more than shoes, chairs and rocks.

The Palestinian Red Crescent emergency service said Saturday that at least 205 Palestinians had been injured, mostly from rubber-coated rounds and shrapnel from stun grenades. Of the wounded, 88 were hospitalized, including one victim who lost an eye, two with serious head trauma, and two with fractured jaws.

While Israeli settlers, with state support, have been seizing property in East Jerusalem — which was conquered by Israeli troops during the 1967 Six Day War and has been unlawfully occupied ever since — for decades, their violent methods of displacement have recently come under increased scrutiny from a handful of U.S. lawmakers who have joined progressive advocates in calling for the defense of Palestinians’ human rights, as Common Dreams reported last week.

The Jerusalem municipality is planning to demolish 100 buildings, home to 1,550 Palestinians, in the neighborhood of Al-Bustan to build a biblical theme park. In Sheikh Jarrah, meanwhile, Israeli settlers are trying to push 169 Palestinians from a dozen families out of their homes. The United Nations on Friday described the forced evictions, ordered by an Israeli court, as a violation of international law and potential war crime.

Bashar Mahmoud, a 23-year-old protester from the nearby Palestinian neighborhood of Issawiya, told Al Jazeera that “if we don’t stand with this group of people here, [evictions] will [come] to my house, her house, his house and to every Palestinian who lives here.”

The news outlet noted that Israel’s Supreme Court will hold a hearing Monday on the eviction of four Palestinian families from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah by the Nahalat Shimon settler organization.

On Saturday, the IMEU shared a video depicting Israeli security forces blocking a major highway to prevent Palestinians from traveling to Al-Aqsa for Laylat al-Qadr, the holiest night of the year for Muslims. Undeterred, many began walking to the mosque, while others reportedly “forced the roads open.”

Later on, however, Israeli police once again began attacking Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah, according to a video shared by Mohammed el-Kurd, a Palestinian resident of the neighborhood. Additional footage shows Israeli security forces unleashing stun grenades on Palestinians in other parts of occupied East Jerusalem.

People “are bracing for more violence in the coming days,” Al Jazeera reported. As the news outlet explained:

Sunday night is “Laylat al-Qadr” or the “Night of Destiny,” the most sacred in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Worshippers will gather for intense nighttime prayers at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City.

Sunday night is also the start of Jerusalem Day, a national holiday in which Israel celebrates its annexation of East Jerusalem and religious nationalists hold parades and other celebrations in the city.

In addition, the Israeli Supreme Court’s verdict on the potential evictions of dozens of Palestinians is expected to be handed down Monday.

The IMEU on Friday said that “Israel’s violence has a clear purpose: ethnically cleanse Jerusalem of Palestinians to allow Israeli settlers to take over Palestinian homes.”

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich. — who is leading a petition calling on Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to “uphold international law and demand an end to Israel’s illegal evictions of Palestinians, demolitions of Palestinian homes, and theft of Palestinian land” in East Jerusalem — said Saturday that “this is apartheid, plain and simple.”

“Too many are silent or dismissive as our U.S. tax dollars continue to be used for this kind of inhumanity,” she added.

Trump spawned a new group of mega-donors who now hold sway over the GOP’s future

Wesley Barnett was just as surprised as anyone to learn from news reports that the Jan. 6 Trump rally that turned into a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol was funded by Julia Jenkins Fancelli, an heiress to the fortune of the popular Publix supermarket chain. But Barnett had extra cause for being startled: Fancelli is his aunt.

Barnett said he was at a loss to explain how his aunt — who isn’t on social media, lives part time in Italy and keeps a low profile in their central Florida town — got mixed up with the likes of Alex Jones and Ali Alexander, the right-wing provocateurs who were VIPs at the Jan. 6 rally in front of the White House.

Over the last five years, it has become clear that former President Donald Trump has activated a new set of mega-donors who were not previously big spenders in national politics. Some of the donors appear to share the more extreme views of many Trump supporters, based on social media posts promoting falsehoods about election fraud or masks and vaccines. Whether they will deepen their involvement or step back, and whether their giving will extend to candidates beyond Trump, will have an outsized role in steering the future of the Republican Party and even American democracy.

ProPublica identified 29 people and couples who increased their political contributions at least tenfold since 2015, based on an analysis of Federal Election Commission records compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. The donors in the table below gave at least $1 million to Trump and the GOP after previously having spent less than $1 million total. Most of the donations went to super PACs supporting Trump or to the Trump Victory joint fundraising vehicle that spread the money among his campaign and party committees.

In the current system of porous campaign finance rules and lax enforcement, a handful of ultra-rich people can have dramatic influence on national campaigns. Many of Trump’s biggest backers, such as the late casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam, or the Illinois packaging tycoons Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, aren’t shown in ProPublica’s analysis because they gave millions to Republicans even before Trump. But several of the biggest new donors — banking scion Timothy Mellon and his wife, Patricia; Marvel Entertainment chairman Ike Perlmutter and his wife, Laura; and Dallas pipeline billionaire Kelcy Warren and his wife, Amy — now rank among such better-known, longer-running donors as Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, professional wrestling founders Linda and Vince McMahon, and casino mogul Steve Wynn.

For some new donors, the sudden increase in their political contributions may have as much to do with newly acquired wealth as with the ascent of Trump and his grip on the Republican Party. But others inherited fortunes or made them long ago, yet never made a splash in campaign finance records until now. Several of the donors have not spoken publicly about their support for Trump or have not been extensively covered before. ProPublica requested interviews with everyone named in this article and included comments from those who responded.

“Things are diametrically different from when Trump was in office,” Marlyne Sexton, who has given more than $2 million since 2015 after giving less than $115,000 before, said in a phone interview. Sexton, whose husband runs an Indianapolis-based property management company, attended a dinner with Trump in 2019, Politico reported.

“People are afraid to walk down the street, it’s a joke,” Sexton continued. Asked why people were afraid, she said, “You can answer that for yourself, and if you can’t then we probably don’t agree. I can’t help you understand that.”

Big Lie Believers: Julia Fancelli and Gregory Fancelli

In addition to pledging $300,000 to fund the Jan. 6 rally in Washington, Julia Fancelli actually had a hotel suite reserved, according to organizers who spoke on the condition of anonymity. But in the end she did not attend, according to Caroline Wren, a Trump fundraiser involved in the planning.

Fancelli did not respond to requests for an interview, including one placed through the office of her family’s foundation. Her estate manager, Schuyler Long, who also donated to Trump, declined to comment. In a statement to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported her involvement in the Jan. 6 rally, Fancelli said: “I am a proud conservative and have real concerns associated with election integrity, yet I would never support any violence, particularly the tragic and horrific events that unfolded.”

Publix distanced itself from Fancelli, whose father, George Jenkins, founded the chain. The company said she isn’t involved in operations and doesn’t “represent the company in any way.” Fancelli’s holdings in the privately held company aren’t known and she is not listed in financial disclosures as an owner of 5% or more of the company’s stock.

Forbes has estimated the entire Jenkins family’s wealth at $8.8 billion, ranking 39th in the country. Fancelli served as president of the family’s foundation as of 2019, according to the organization’s most recent tax filing. In addition to nonpolitical charities, the foundation also made a $30,000 grant to the Leadership Institute, which trains conservative activists.

Fancelli grew up with the rest of the Jenkins clan in Lakeland, Florida, and met her husband Mauro, a fruit and vegetable wholesaler, on a study abroad year in Florence, the local newspaper reported in 2018. Though the Jenkins family is prominent in Lakeland, Fancelli is not civically engaged and lives for much of the year in Italy.

In past elections, she generally gave a few thousand dollars at a time to the Republican National Committee and GOP congressional candidates, amounting to less than $200,000 total, according to FEC records. Her contributions took off starting in 2016. Since then she’s given more than $2 million. Besides backing Trump, she was the largest donor to a super PAC supporting Michigan Republican Eric Esshaki, who lost to Rep. Haley Stevens.

Fancelli’s donations to Trump drew some notice. But until the Jan. 6 rally, the most news she made was for being a theft victim: In December 2020, a murder suspect stole three pieces of a silver tea set through the window of Fancelli’s modest house.

Fancelli’s son, Gregory, accompanied her to a Trump campaign luncheon in Palm Beach in 2019 and donated in his own name. “My mother and I are big supporters of the president,” he told a local reporter in October.

Unlike his mom, Gregory Fancelli is active in the Lakeland community. He works on restoring local houses and mosaics, as well as a planetarium designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, the last with the help of a grant from the National Park Service in August 2020. He has donated money to a school board candidate through shell companiesnamed after fictional characters such as Tony Stark (better known as Iron Man) and a Ghostbuster, Peter Venkman.

He also occasionally posts online about politics, and in the months after Trump lost the election, his views appeared to harden. On Christmas Day in 2020, Fancelli said on Facebook that COVID-19 was a “fake pandemic” and argued with Facebook friends who referenced case numbers and people they personally knew who died of the coronavirus. “It doesn’t have the magnitude of a pandemic, unless you combine all the illnesses and flues and give it one name,” Fancelli wrote. “Definitely a very powerful scare tactic by the Chinese and the UN.”

In other posts, Fancelli appeared to embrace Trump’s rhetoric calling President Joe Biden soft on China and falsely claiming that the election was stolen. In March, Fancelli posted a video mocking Biden for tripping on the stairs to board Air Force One, mashing up the footage with video of Trump hitting a golf ball. To a friend who commented “Fore more years!” Fancelli replied, “Fore more years of chinese puppetry!”

Another friend commented, “80 million people voted for this?” Fancelli replied, “Some people voted for him, the rest is fraud.”

Gregory Fancelli declined to be interviewed.

Online Conspiracy Theorists: Leila Centner, Michael and Caryn Borland

David and Leila Centner have never spoken publicly about their support for Trump and hadn’t made a political donation (except two that were refunded in 2018) until they gave a combined $1 million to support Trump’s 2020 campaign. Come Jan. 6, the Miami couple were VIP guests at the rally on the Ellipse, according to organizers. The couple declined to comment through a spokesperson.

David Centner started and sold several successful web businesses, then made a fortune on a company that processed highway tolls. In 2019, taking advantage of a provision in Trump’s tax bill, the Centners reportedly invested $40 million in a fund to build affordable housing for teachers. The tax incentive, known as Opportunity Zones, was intended to entice investors into developing poorer neighborhoods. But many wealthy and well-connected people have foundwaysto use it to subsidize their preexisting projects.

After not being able to find a school that felt right for their daughter, the Centners started their own, the brightly colored Centner Academy in Miami’s Design District.

Some school parents objected when Leila Centner used the building to host a campaign event for a conservative mayoral candidate. According to emails quoted in the Miami New Times, Centner responded to their concerns by saying, “Please do not tell me what types of events I can host in my own building after hours.”

In January, the school hosted an event with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the prominent antivaccine activist. David Centner introduced him as his “hero” and “personal inspiration,” according to a video of Kennedy’s talk.

In April, Centner instructed school employees not to get the COVID-19 vaccine. In a message to faculty and staff, she falsely claimed the vaccines don’t prevent death or transmission of the disease, despite trials and research showing they do. She also cited a baseless conspiracy theory that merely being around other vaccinated people can cause reproductive problems in women.

“We cannot allow recently vaccinated people to be near our students until more information is known,” Centner said in the message to staff. She told employees who wished to get the vaccine that they should wait until the end of the school year and that they might not be allowed to return to their jobs.

Centner’s Facebook and Instagram posts are filled with misinformation urging people not to wear masks or get a COVID-19 vaccine. She falsely claimed that the media has covered up vaccine side effects ranging from rashes to death. She also has posted attacks on the nation’s top infectious disease adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, as well as drug companies and other doctors. She has cited debunked studies claiming masks harm children and compared face coverings to the yellow stars that the Nazis ordered Jews to wear. Years ago, she posted a video — now covered by a fact-checking warning — about testing bottled water for pH levels and fluoride.

Centner is slated to speak next month at a “mask-free, freedom-fighting” conference featuring Trump adviser Roger Stone, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.

Centner is not the only major new Trump donor who has promoted conspiracy theories. Michael and Caryn Borland of Newport Beach, California, have given a total of about $1.6 million since 2015. In the past they’d given less than $13,000. With their new high-roller status, they were guests at the 2020 GOP convention. Then-Vice President Mike Pence canceled a planned fundraiser at the Borlands’ Montana home after the Associated Press reported that the would-be hosts shared QAnon memes on Facebook and Twitter. The posts are no longer available.

“This is not a forum for politics,” Caryn Borland, a singer-songwriter of Christian music, later posted on her Facebook page. “Whether they be my opinions or anyone else’s. If you express any political opinions on this page they will be taken down immediately.” The couple didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The Borlands met while working in a grocery store and started a modest life together, according to David Wood, a film producer who worked with them on an ill-fated project. Then they inherited a fortune on Caryn’s side, Wood said. Her father was an executive of a California-based industrial materials company in the 1980s, according to corporate records, and court filings indicate that she has a multimillion-dollar trust in her maiden name. The trust’s holdings include land assessed at $1.6 million in Arizona, according to tax records.

“They were not even middle class, then they inherited a massive fortune,” said Wood, who received a $10 million check from the trust for the film project in 2019. Amid a lawsuit, he agreed to return $4 million, according to court papers. “I don’t think they were completely prepared for it,” Wood said. “I don’t know if anyone would be.”

Business Benefits: Kelcy Warren, Roger Norman, Palmer Luckey

Some of the biggest new donors are less outspoken about their ideologies but gained tangible benefits from Trump’s presidency.

Dallas billionaire Kelcy Warren welcomed the impact he anticipated Trump would have on his company, Energy Transfer Partners, which operates the Dakota Access Pipeline. Two days after the 2016 election, he told investors, “Having a government that actually backs up what they say, that we’re going to support infrastructure, we’re going to support job creation, we’re going to support growth in America, and then actually does it? My God, this is going to be refreshing.”

On Trump’s fourth full day in office, he signed an executive order to help clear the way for the Dakota Access Pipeline, a thousand-mile link to North Dakota’s oil fields. Energy Transfer’s stock price soared, and Warren’s wealth climbed from $2.8 billion to $4.5 billion, according to Forbes. The magazine said the percentage gain was bigger than that of any other American that year.

The Dakota Access Pipeline became a high-profile controversy in 2016 when environmentalists and Native Americans rallied to the support of the local Standing Rock Sioux, who raised concerns that the pipeline would endanger their drinking water. With Trump’s support, the pipeline was completed in April 2017 and started shipping oil the next month. But legal challenges continued, and a federal court in Washington eventually held that the Trump administration cut corners on the required environmental reviews.

Warren’s company is now trying to convince a judge not to shut down the pipeline, arguing in an April court filing that the company stands to lose as much as $4.28 million a day. Some Democrats are calling on Biden to close the pipeline, but the current White House hasn’t taken a position.

Warren and his wife are prominent philanthropists in Dallas (they developed a downtown park and named it after their son). But they were not major political donors until Trump came along, having spent less than $600,000 in total. Since 2015, however, they’ve given more than $17 million. Warren declined to comment through a company spokesperson.

Another first-time mega-donor who benefited from Trump’s actions was Roger Norman, a reclusive real estate investor in Reno, Nevada. In his first-ever interview, with a Reno TV news station in 2018, Norman recounted making and losing fortunes several times over, despite never learning to read or write.

Norman’s crown jewel is the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, 104,000 acres of desert that he and his partners bought for $20 million in 1998. Today it’s worth billions after becoming a hub for companies including Tesla, Google and Switch.

The site benefited from the Opportunity Zone program in Trump’s tax bill, thanks to some influential friends. As The Washington Post reported in 2018, Treasury officials originally decided the area was too prosperous to qualify for the benefit. But Norman’s business partner recruited Nevada Republicans, including the governor and a senator, to lobby for the designation.

Norman then gave more than $2 million to support Trump’s reelection, compared to the less than $100,000 in total political contributions he’d made in the past. “You’re a little late to that story, I’m not donating anything now,” Norman said in a brief phone conversation, declining to discuss the matter further.

Another new mega-donor turned a professional setback arising from his support for Trump into a new opportunity. Palmer Luckey built a prototype for a virtual reality headset as a teenager and sold his company, Oculus VR, to Facebook for $2 billion in 2014. Forbes estimated the 21-year-old’s cut at more than $500 million.

Luckey has credited Trump’s book “The Art of the Deal” with inspiring him at age 13, according to The Wall Street Journal, and he sent Trump a letter in 2011 encouraging him to run for president. During the 2016 campaign, Luckey donated $10,000 to Nimble America, a pro-Trump group associated with misogynistic and white-supremacist online posts. Luckey has given conflicting accounts of whether he wrote some of the messages under a pseudonym. After an internal uproar at Facebook, the company placed Luckey on leave and fired him in 2017, the Journal reported.

Luckey deepened his political activism, expanding his giving and hosting a fundraiser for Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. He started a new company, Anduril, that would cater directly to the Trump administration by making security technology for the southern border. The company raised $200 million from investors and won government contracts totaling almost $100 million.

Luckey didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Luckey’s sister, Ginger Luckey, is engaged to Matt Gaetz, the embattled Florida congressman and Trump ally. Their mother, Julie Luckey, who home-schooled Palmer, was slated to be a VIP guest for the Jan. 6 rally. It’s not clear if she attended. She didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Government Posts: Ike Perlmutter, Duke Buchan, Lynda Blanchard

Duke Buchan, a wealthy but little-known Wall Street investor, wasn’t shy about coveting an ambassadorship after he and his wife gave the Trump Victory fund almost $450,000 each, the maximum amount allowable by federal campaign finance laws in 2016. One of the last vestiges of the spoils system, cushy diplomatic posts routinely go to campaign patrons. Buchan and his wife, joint donor Hannah Flournoy Buchan, declined to comment.

Buchan told friends that he viewed Trump as a disrupter and cheered the candidate’s attacks on political correctness, looking forward to saying “Merry Christmas” again, The New York Times reported in 2017. Buchan was rewarded with an appointment as ambassador to Spain, where he had studied abroad decades earlier. He reportedly complained that European Union regulations scuttled his plans to bring his polo ponies along. While in office, Buchan took part in the Trump administration’s controversial efforts to oust Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro.

While ambassadorships are common rewards for big donors, Lynda Blanchard was unusually blunt about it. According to a person familiar with her appointment who asked not to be named in connection with the discussions, Blanchard explicitly reminded transition officials how much she donated. She and her husband gave more than $2 million to Republicans between 2015 and 2018, when Trump nominated her as ambassador to Slovenia, Melania Trump’s native country. Blanchard didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Blanchard, who founded a real estate investment firm, is now staking millions on her own candidacy for U.S. Senate in Alabama. She held a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago in March with a surprise appearance from Trump, but then he endorsed her rival: Rep. Mo Brooks, one of the leaders of the congressional effort to overturn the 2020 election results.

One new Trump-era mega-donor was rewarded with a less-conventional role in his administration. Ike Perlmutter, the Marvel Entertainment chairman who was one of Trump’s largest overall backers and belongs to his Mar-a-Lago club, became an unofficial yet influential adviser on veterans issues. As ProPublica first reported in 2018, Trump gave Perlmutter and two associates sweeping influence over the Department of Veterans Affairs. They had a hand in policy and personnel decisions, even reviewing budgets and contracts.

Perlmutter, who declined to be interviewed for this article, has said he had no formal authority and sought no personal gain.

A liberal veterans group, VoteVets, sued the VA over Perlmutter’s role, alleging that it violated a Watergate-era sunshine law. In March, an appeals court said the case could proceed.

Personal Ties: Anthony Lomangino, Steve Witkoff, Vernon Hill

Though Perlmutter, 78, was drawn in by his personal relationship with Trump, he has become a bigger force in Florida Republican politics. Before backing Trump, he and his wife gave $2 million to a super PAC supporting then-presidential candidate Marco Rubio, and more recently he’s become a major benefactor of Gov. Ron DeSantis, widely considered a leading contender for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination if Trump doesn’t run.

For other new mega-donors who got involved because of their personal ties to Trump, it’s less clear if their support will extend to other candidates.

Fellow Mar-a-Lago member Anthony Lomangino and his wife have given more than $3 million, plus $150,000 to help aides cover legal fees arising from the Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. They had previously given less than $40,000 total. Lomangino, whose wealth derives from selling a recycling-collection company to industry giant Waste Management, declined to comment.

Vernon Hill, Trump’s sometime banker and golf buddy, gave more than $2 million, 10 times more than he’d ever given before. In 2020 he praised the federal government’s small business relief program, which his bank, like many others, helped administer. Hill didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Steven Witkoff, a New York real estate friend, gave more than $2 million and served as an informal adviser on tax cuts, opioids and reopening businesses during the pandemic. He has also since become a DeSantis backer. Witkoff didn’t respond to requests for comment.

John McCall, the business partner of Trump’s friend and purported hairspray supplier Farouk Shami, gave $1.7 million to Trump and the GOP since 2015, versus less than $20,000 previously. McCall didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Biden’s jobs plan could build racial equity with one simple fix

The ambitious Biden-Harris infrastructure proposal, called the American Jobs Plan, is not yet law — not even a bill — but there’s already great enthusiasm about the millions of jobs it could bring. But who will fill those jobs is far from clear, and could make a difference in the success of the plan. If a coalition of advocates have their way, workers will come from local areas, not only to boost racial equity in hiring, but to feed money back into local economies.

One sentence casts a long shadow over the prospects of success for the American Jobs Plan: a prohibition against geographic-based hiring preferences in administering federal awards that is tucked away in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) regulations. The document, called the OMB uniform guidance, covers regulations for all federal agencies that give grants to local and state governments including the Department of Transportation (DoT). In that document is a sentence prohibiting local hiring for projects receiving federal funding.

The ban was inserted by the Reagan Administration’s DoT, was never voted on by Congress, and has barred cities and states from local hiring mandates or incentives on projects using federal funds, including water systems, broadband and power grid construction, and public transit lines — all likely products resulting from the infrastructure proposal.

The clause in the Federal Aid Highways Act says that government contracts must abide by “full and free competition,” and not create an undue burden on companies bidding for them. As interpreted by the Reagan-era Justice Department, it meant that cities couldn’t limit the number of companies bidding on a federally funded project, and that cities had to give the work to the lowest offer — regardless of the company’s stances on labor issues or human rights. This free market approach to competition, in force for more than 30 years, has prevented regions from imposing criteria that promote social equity, and made it difficult for municipalities to include not only local hire provisions, but to ensure LGBTQ protectionswhen using federal dollars.

According to Madeline Janis, co-founder and executive director of Jobs to Move America, a strategic policy center, removing the local hire prohibition would allow more businesses to win federally funded procurements. “Everything related to climate change, everything related to infrastructure, as well as COVID-19 recovery,” Janis said. “This could apply to millions, if not tens of millions, of jobs across the country.”

Janis added that a new report by Jobs to Move America refutes claims that hiring from the local community would increase contractor bid prices. The report concludes that local hiring impacts neither bid prices nor the number of bidders on construction projects, and that removing the ban would have a transformational impact on the U.S. economy.

The Obama administration tried to do an end run around the DoT prohibition, through a pilot program allowing local hiring for 14 major projects across 10 states. This pilot program was scrapped in 2017 by President Trump.

Now, with so many construction projects and jobs in the balance — with the possibility that the Biden/Harris $1 trillion-plus infrastructure proposal becomes law — there’s a renewed push to ensure that jobs generated from infrastructure investments stay in local communities. Last month, a coalition of mayors, employment advocates and academics sent a letter to President Biden and Vice President Harris urging the repeal of language prohibiting local hiring preferences, saying that not only would it help residents participate in the economic investments in their cities and towns, but it “can also increase opportunities for workers of color, women, veterans, returning community members, and others facing barriers to employment.”

* * *

Local hiring can build racial equity, advocates say

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. construction industry is overwhelmingly white and male. Advocates for local hiring say now is the time for historically underrepresented groups to have a shot at those jobs and careers.

Racial justice is at the heart of a $2 billion project in Syracuse, New York, according to Mayor Ben Walsh. The I-81 viaduct bisected a neighborhood of predominantly Black and brown people, but now has come to the end of its useful life and presents the city with a chance to right some wrongs, including redlining and displacement brought by “urban renewal” plans of the ’60s and ’70s.

“I and others advocated [a] community grid option for I-81, which brings local traffic from the viaduct to create community, not only reconnect communities living in the shadow of the viaduct,” Walsh told Capital & Main. “We want to protect [and] lift up those living there, in an inclusive way, not to create a different type of gentrification.”

But even though Syracuse is already partnering with trade unions to train a local workforce for the project, putting those people to work on a federal government project would currently be impossible, Walsh said.

“[Local hire] is a multifaceted problem, even without the DoT language. Many contractors hire workers who don’t live in Syracuse.” Walsh fears that, without changing the DoT language, large contractors from outside the community, typically with workers from outside, will get the contracts and the local benefits will be lost.

A recent study concluded that white adults between the ages of 20 and 59 in Onondaga County, where Syracuse resides, were 21 times more likely to be construction workers than were minority adults, although minorities make up nearly a quarter of the county’s population.

Dekah Dancil, president of the Urban Jobs Task Force, the Syracuse-based community advocacy coalition that compiled the report, said the history of exclusion in the trades is compounded by other barriers. “Beyond [the] local hiring [prohibition], people of color are more likely to have other barriers to jobs in the trades, including access to transportation and child care and getting licenses,” Dancil said, though she added that area trade unions are now part of the discussion to maximize local hiring.

Cities across the country trying to hire locally have been thwarted by political and regulatory challenges. State lawmakers in Ohio struck down a Cleveland law to hire city residents for construction projects and were backed up in 2019 by the state supreme court. New Orleans is one local hiring success story; hoping to stanch the city’s high unemployment in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, local lawmakers required at least 30% of work on construction contracts to be conducted by local residents.

Advocates for local hiring say they expect the end of the prohibition to be contested by state lawmakers concerned that contractors outside a city’s limits might be put at a disadvantage. Still, advocates will continue making their case to remove the federal ban and say they don’t care how it’s done: either by executive order, by Congress, or by having the DoT’s Office of Management and Budget delete the wording.

Copyright 2021 Capital & Main

Bill Barr nearly quit after Trump sought to fire FBI director Christopher Wray

Former Attorney General Bill Barr nearly quit when Donald Trump sought to fire another FBI director in four years, reported Business Insider Sunday.

FBI directors are appointed for 10-year terms by the president but when Trump came into office, he asked then-FBI director James Comey for his “loyalty,” according to Comey’s account. When Comey refused to pledge allegiance to Trump, he was shoved out, and replaced by Christopher Wray. But Trump nearly shoved out Wray in spring 2020 — just three years into his term.

“Ushered into the Roosevelt Room, Barr encountered Johnny McEntee, the former college quarterback who had become a top Trump aide,” the story said. “McEntee introduced Barr to Bill Evanina, a top counterintelligence official in the administration who had previously worked at the FBI.”

Barr asked what the point of the meeting was, but was then told that Evanina could be the replacement for Wray if Trump decided to fire him.

“Barr turned on his heels and left the room,” said the report. “The episode, which has not been previously reported and was described to Insider by a person briefed on the matter, was seen in some corners of the Trump administration as the closest Wray came to getting fired.”

The plot also involved firing Deputy FBI Director David Bowdich. That was when Barr threatened to resign, said the source briefed on the meetings.

Wray, a Trump nominee, is still heading up an FBI that is focusing on white supremacy, domestic terrorism and the attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump’s supporters.

6 historical figures who kept secret coded diaries

People throughout history have kept personal diaries, and some have even made their names primarily through working as diarists. More unusual, however, are those who penned their innermost thoughts in secret code. Here are some of the most notable people in history who wrote their journals using codes and ciphers.

1. Beatrix Potter

Beloved children’s author Beatrix Potter (1866–1943) was best known for her stories like “The Tale of Peter Rabbit.” But she also kept a series of diaries in a code of her own making from the age of 15 to 30. While Potter never discussed her reasons for creating the code, her biographer Linda Lear speculated that it stemmed from her constricted upbringing and a wish to express herself more freely in secret than she could in everyday life.

These codes would later prove extremely difficult for scholars to decipher. After Potter’s death, a long-time admirer of her work named Leslie Linder spent more than five years trying to decode them without success. He finally made a breakthrough after noticing a page that mentioned “1793” and the number 16 in Roman numerals (XVI), and realized these two numbers were connected through Louis XVI of France, who had been guillotined in 1793. This led him to decode a nearby word as “execution.” Linder was then able to unlock the rest of Potter’s secret code relatively quickly. Once deciphered, the diaries revealed detailed notes about her daily life, including transcriptions of conversations she observed between other people.

2. Franklin D. Roosevelt

As with all presidents, the details of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)’s life have been extensively gathered and recorded. But parts of his inner world remained a mystery, as sections of a private diary Roosevelt kept in his early twenties were written in a secret code.

Dr. Nona Ferndon discovered the coded diary in 1970 and shared it with several other cryptographers. She cracked the code by realizing Roosevelt substituted certain letters for others. The decryption of the contents was confirmed in January 1972, revealing various details about his life and love interests.

3. Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) is one of the best-known diarists in the history of English literature, although his diaries didn’t become public until more than a century after his own death. His chronicle of London in the late 17th century, including the plague of 1665–1666, has become an important source for historians of the period. But during his own lifetime, the contents of those pages remained extremely private.

Pepys wrote his diary using a form of shorthand invented by the stenographer Thomas Shelton. To most observers, the contents of the diary would have seemed a mysterious cipher or code, which helped keep the contents of his private life a secret. Pepys enjoyed using codes so much that he even invented some for others to use. He eventually stopped writing his journal when his eyesight began to decline, although he did not turn blind as he feared. The contents of his diary were transcribed from code into English in the early 19th century and were published for the first time in 1825.

4. Charles Wesley

Charles Wesley (1707–1788) was an English Methodist most commonly associated with the thousands of hymns he wrote. However, he also authored another work that totaled over 1000 pages of manuscript: his diaries, which were written in a secret code that remained unbroken for 270 years.

Professor Kenneth Newport, who had previously worked on Wesley’s religious writings, eventually deciphered the diaries. Wesley had transcribed four of the gospels into a code similar to the one used in his diaries. Newport spent nearly a decade transcribing Wesley’s diaries, and, thanks to his knowledge of the original gospels, was ultimately able to work out what the code represented.

Once the code was deciphered, Charles’s diary offered many insights into his relationship with his brother John, including their religious disagreements and Charles’s resentment over John reversing their agreement that neither of them would ever marry. (Codes were common in the Wesley family; John also kept a coded diary.)

5. Ludwig Wittgenstein

The idea of a secret language comprehensible only to the person who created it was a concept philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) wrestled with in his work. It was also something he had personal experience with.

Ludwig created his own clandestine code to use in a diary he first kept while serving in the Austrian Army in World War I [PDF]. He began using the code in August 1914 to prevent other soldiers from reading his private journals. During the 1960s, the diary was deciphered by two of his literary executors, Georg Henrik von Wright and Elizabeth Anscombe, who worked out that Wittgenstein had inverted the letters of the alphabet to create the code.

6. Olga Romanov

Olga Romanov (1895–1918) was the eldest daughter of Russia’s last Tsar, Nicholas II. She began writing a diary in 1905 and kept it for more than a decade. As a young woman, she sought ways to keep her most private thoughts secret, using codewords to refer to men on whom she had crushes. Romanov sometimes used an initial to refer to mens’ nicknames rather than their given names. She used code most prominently when discussing her feelings for Pavel Voronov, a man with whom she fell in love and dreamed of marrying, but who became engaged to someone else instead.

Romanov stopped writing her diary when her father was forced to abdicate in 1917. The following year, she and the rest of her family were murdered. After her death, her diaries were retrieved and preserved, along with other papers belonging to the family, and were eventually made available to scholars. A researcher named Maria Zemlyanichenko spotted the recurring use of initials to refer to different people and was able to work out some of their identities. The diary was later translated into English by Helen Azar and published in 2013.

“Jupiter’s Legacy” writer on the rise of superhero “autocrats” and looking a gift god in the mouth

“People will say this is a Trump allegory,” says comic book writer Mark Millar about the rise of a manipulative, power-mad villain in his new Netflix series “Jupiter’s Legacy.” “But that was actually just coincidence.” 

Millar is behind some of the most acclaimed superhero stories that have hit the big screen, from “Captain America: Civil War” to “Logan.” He’s made a name with his independent Millarworld titles as well, including the “Kick-Ass,” “Kingsman,” and “Wanted” films.

For his first collaboration with Netflix – which had acquired Millarworld – Millar settled on “Jupiter’s Legacy,” a title he had originally published in 2013. The first season traces the origins of a superhero group called the Union in 1929 and how those surviving members are struggling in the present day with their offspring abiding by a strict set of guidelines. To prevent the Union from abusing their superpowers, leader Sheldon Sampson known as The Utopian (Josh Duhamel), established the Code: they would neither govern nor use their powers to kill – not even the bad guys. 

Apparently, this Code had gone uncontested for 90 years except for one defector: Sheldon’s best friend George Hutchence, aka Skyfox (Matt Lanter), who had left the Union for whereabouts unknown. Over the course of the season’s eight episodes, however, signs emerge that Skyfox is behind a number of attacks that tests the Union, even causing one to break the Code, all while other members perish trying to abide by it. 

In the end, it’s revealed to the audience that the true evil mastermind has been Sheldon’s brother Walter, aka Brainwave (Ben Daniels), who not only felt hamstrung by the Code for decades, but has even killed his own daughter in order to continue his plan of driving a wedge between The Utopian and the new generation of superheroes.

“The idea of it was, just because you’re powerful doesn’t mean that you should step in . . .  it’s that idea of the role of having a superpower and what that means,” Millar told Salon in an interview. “It was timely in 2008, when I first started putting the notes together, because we just had the financial crash. It’s actually quite perennial, though. The mistake we make as human beings is to think that we’ve solved all the problems. What happens is the problems just keep coming back.”

Millar cites Tony Benn, a British politician who believed the world’s problems could be fought, but would always return in some form.

“This just goes on forever. There has to be people coming up behind you who continue to fight; nothing ends,” said Millar. “And I think history is exactly like that. The 90-year cycle of history, which I covered in the story, which was 1929 looking a hell of a lot like 2008. And now we’re coming out of a massive financial crash, and weirdly, we’ve had a pandemic as well, not unlike the 1918-1920 pandemic.

“But then there’s also the rise of nationalism around the world because that was starting to pop up as a result of the financial crash in 2008. People turned on the establishment, turned on the status quo, and started to look for extreme solutions to everything. In America that became Trump, in Scotland it was the SNP, in England it was UKIP, in France it’s Le Pen, it’s Bolsonaro in South America, Italy’s got Salvini. 

“So ‘Jupiter’s Legacy’ is about that. It’s about the idea that historically what happens after bad times is people turn to autocrats, and that’s what Season 2 would involve, if we’re lucky enough to have a Season 2.”

Continue reading Salon’s interview with Millar, who addresses creating the ultimate supervillain, why there are so many super-powered people, and the series’ big question: Who or what is behind granting the powers in the first place?

The following has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

The final battle we see turns out to be a misdirect. What went into that scene so that the audience is not tipped off right away who’s the actual mastermind?

We have what looks like the ultimate confrontation going on between Skyfox and Brainwave, but in reality, we know that’s a construct. That whole thing was a trap. The big villain is who we have been looking at all along, and yet from Episode 1 it’s so obvious, but you drop Skyfox in enough all the way through the season.

That takes us up to roughly Issue 2 of the comic where you realize Walter was going after his brother, he’s gonna take down his own family, and he’s already killed his daughter. You realize he’s capable of anything.  But why I like Walter though is at the same time as he’s doing it for actually quite ethical reasons. He knows there’s going to be a lot of bloodshed, but ultimately, it’s because [of the Code] these guys let World War II happen, they led the concentration camps happen, they let people starve in Africa, the bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. They should have been stepping in potentially. 

I think Walter hopefully is going to go down as one of those great television bad guys because he’s kinda charismatic and correct sometimes. You can see why the younger characters, the Millennial characters are going to fall in behind them. If Superman existed in real life, you’d be like, why are you over there fighting that robot? Why don’t you go and help some starving people in Africa? That’s the reality of the situation. So you can see why people would be a little ticked off with somebody who’s as powerful as the Utopian not acting.

You mentioned you’d be lucky to have a second season. I know the comics are still ongoing, more are coming in June. When you first thought of adapting this, you saw it as a film trilogy. So would you need three seasons on Netflix to do right by the full story?

The original idea was it was going to be a movie back in 2015. Lorenzo di Bonaventura and I were sitting in his house just drinking whiskey and talking about it. We were saying, this would be an amazing trilogy of films. And James Gunn, who did “Guardians of the Galaxy,” he said that this isn’t a trilogy; this needs to be a TV show. This is like a massive epic, it’s too big.

But, I mean, people can see from the books it’s six volumes in total. Four of them have been out already, and the last two volumes come out next month, which is really exciting. 


“Jupiter’s Landing” (Netflix)

Grace, who becomes Lady Liberty (Leslie Bibb) asks why they were granted these powers, which the other men in the Union gloss over pretty quickly, believing that somehow they were deemed worthy. But I’d like to go back to that. Who or what is behind granting their powers? Why were these superheroes created?

We’ve done so many interviews in the past month, and you’re the only person that’s caught onto that. Because that is exactly the big point of the story. You find out that this is going to be Vol. 5 of the books – so obviously much later down the line in the show, but that’s exactly the plot of this: What the hell was that island? Superhero origins are almost quite mythic – a journey to an island that gives you superpowers? What is that? Who are these people? 

So we’ll find out the secret of the island in the book. It is not what you think at all. This is going in a completely different direction from what you expected. As it builds up towards the book’s conclusion for Vol. 5 and 6, it goes in an entirely different direction again. 

After doing all the big things at Marvel, and doing my own big projects “Kick-Ass,” “Kingsman,” and “Wanted,” I wanted to do something that had everything in it. The show is a big superhero “Game of Thrones,” but it also explains everything about the universe, everything about mankind’s place in the universe. It goes completely Arthur C. Clarke “2001.” 

How much does the Roman god of Jupiter have to do with the mystery? The show’s title is  “Jupiter’s Legacy” and we see the planet Jupiter in space while the six are getting their powers. But the Roman gods are not necessarily benevolent. They’re highly fallible and selfish beings. Does that have anything to do with what we’ll be finding out?

In the books, you see a little bit of that. You find out Jupiter’s moon ties in with what this is all about. The legacy of the gods themselves is a huge issue in the storyline, the broader story. Like every superhero comic, really, you can trace back through the Roman gods, and further back through into the Greek and Egyptian gods as well. In Superman you can trace all the way back through to Zeus. So Jupiter, you know, is very much a part of this mythology, as this goes on and plays a bigger role and the story itself as it unfolds.

While the six original Union members got powers that they then handed down to their kids, where are all these other super-powered people coming from? They’re all over the place in the present. They can’t all be related to those original six.

In 1929, there was those six people who went onto the island, the godparents. But remember in Episode 7 there was also a dozen people on that boat who were caught in the same energy wave. What happens is they go out there and they have kids, and they have kids, sometimes with lots of different people. So eventually, within two or three generations, you have a pretty sizable number of super peoples. But everybody comes from that one trip to the island. 

I thought, if you’re creating a universe of characters, it keeps it nice and simple if we all have a common origin like that. It means that nobody’s confused when you find that this guy get bitten by a radioactive spider, this guy has got a magic green lantern sort of thing.

Speaking of offspring and mysteries, we learn through flashback that Dr. Richard Conrad, who becomes Blue Bolt (David Julian Hirsh), was the original recipient of that teleporting rod. But in the present, it’s Skyfox’s son Hutch (Ian Quinlan) who has it. When in the story would we expect to see that explained? Next season?

I think that would be after that – next one again. In the books that falls roughly around – if I remember right – Chapter 8 of the books. So I think that would be slightly beyond where we would go if we’re fortunate enough to get a second season.

It’s not what people think, the reason this rod is with somebody who’s not his son, it’s with someone else’s son. It’s a cute little idea. I think people will like it. And I love how great how great is Ian Quinlan who plays Hutch.

Bunny, the dog that can “talk,” starts asking existential questions

When Bunny, TikTok’s beloved talking Sheepadoodle, stared at herself in a mirror and asked “who this?” using her augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) device’s buttons, many believed she was having an existential crisis. Since then, the Internet-famous dog has seemingly only become more interested in her own — dare we say — sense of self.

More recently on April 24, Alexis Devine, Bunny’s human parent, posted a video of Bunny pressing a button for “dog,” then a second button for “what,” a third button for “dog” and a fourth one for “is.” “Dog what dog is?” Devine narrated.

“This is happening so frequently that I’m going to add the buttons ‘animal’ ‘same’ and ‘different,'” Devine wrote in the caption which accompanied the Instagram post. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/COIcnuzhFnn/

The canine Bunny, who has 6.5 million followers on TikTok, is one of nearly 2,600 dogs and 300 cats enrolled in a project called “They Can Talk.” The study’s aim is to understand if animals can communicate with humans through AAC systems. AAC systems, such as Bunny’s giant labeled buttons that speak a single word when pressed, were originally designed to help humans with communication disorders. Yet they have been adapted to be used in language experiments with animals, such as the study Bunny is enrolled in, which is led by Federico Rossano, director of the Comparative Cognition Lab at the University of California–San Diego.

In Rossano’s study, participants receive instructions on how to set up their AAC buttons for their pets; generally, pets begin with easy words like “outside” and “play.” Pet parents set up cameras to constantly monitor the animals when they are in front of their boards, data which is sent to the lab so that researchers examine what they say.

Now, Bunny’s followers have become obsessed with the notion that her language-learning is making her develop some kind of self-awareness. Is that possible? 

And if so, does learning language have something to do with it?

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“The question here is, is this a behavior that has been trained — like, look, I’m going to show you this individual here, this is ‘you’ or ‘dog,’ and don’t be afraid of it, and then over time the dog learns that,” Rossano told Salon. “Or to what degree is this spontaneous?”

If it is spontaneous, the research around the ethology for canines could get really interesting. Scientific evidence has previously suggested that dogs don’t recognize themselves in the mirror. The so-called mirror test is used to determine whether an animal has the ability of visual self-recognition, and is considered a marker of intelligence in animals. Elephants, chimpanzees, and dolphins are among the animals who have passed the test, but dogs typically don’t.

That might suggest dogs possess a lack of awareness of one’s own self. However, separate studies have shown that dogs can recognize their own scent, which hints at the opposite.

Péter Pongrácz, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Ethology at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, was curious if the standard mirror test was sufficient enough to determine whether or not dogs have “self-representation” — which, as Pongrácz explained, is what ethologists prefer to call “self-awareness” in animals. This curiosity led Pongrácz and a team of researchers to study dogs’ “self-representation” in a test called “the body as an obstacle.” As a behavioral test, the dogs were tasked with picking up an object and giving it to their owners while standing on a small mat. However, the object was attached to the mat, forcing the dogs to leave the mat in order to lift the object.

“Dogs came off the mat more frequently and sooner in the test condition, than in the main control condition, where the object was attached to the ground,” the researchers write in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Scientific Reports published by Nature. “This is the first convincing evidence of body awareness through the understanding of the consequence of own actions in a species where previously no higher-order self-representation capacity was found.”

Pongrácz told Salon via email that the “body as an obstacle test” is more suitable for dogs, and perhaps, theoretically, could be for more species because animals are then forced “to negotiate physical challenges where their bodies can impede their actions.” Pongrácz added that mental capacity is “complicated” and should be thought of as something that consists of “several building blocks.”

“Dogs are large bodied, fast moving animals that live in a complex environment and they have a well-developed cognitive capacity, therefore it was reasonable to hypothesize that they would benefit from being capable of understanding that they ‘have a body’ that can interact with the environment,” Pongrácz said.

“As our test proved this, yes, we can say that dogs are aware of their body, and as body-awareness is part of the complex self-representation system, yes, they can be considered as being self-aware,” he added.

As an online spectator observing her, it is hard to deny that Bunny isn’t becoming more curious about what “dogs” are, as she has been recorded wandering over to her word board pressing “dog” and then “what.” Another time, she asked “dog” and then “why,” which humans might interpret as her asking why she’s a dog. Devine says on Instagram that this line of questioning occurs “regularly” now.

But as Rossano said, the tricky part is sussing out what is learned behavior and what is Bunny’s own doing. And that’s a separate question from whether the AAC device has influenced her sense of self. After all, as Pongrácz said, mental capacity is comprised of building blocks; language may be just another block.

“I think there’s a good reason to believe that Bunny is probably capable of a sense of self and recognizing herself in the mirror, but to what degree is spontaneous versus learned over repeated exposures, I would say it’s more likely to be the latter than the former,” Rossano said, adding that “self-awareness” wasn’t something they were interested in measuring at first in the “They Can Talk” study. But now, that’s changed.

“We know that language helps not just communicate with others, but also helps us categorize and it also gives us some sense of consistency and continuity over time,” Rossano said. In other words, self-awareness and language could be connected, as language gives one an ability to communicate a sense of self. 

Rossano said a new, key interest of his study is whether or not dogs have a sense of past, present and future.

“The fact that Bunny asks some of these questions is interesting — but whether Bunny fully understands what ‘why’ means, that might be tested through phase three,” he said. “As of now I can say there’s good correlations that she might be understanding, but I would not want to bet my career on this.” 

Make a better chocolate sauce at home — and then use it for a delectable 4-ingredient mousse

Welcome to what promises to be one of the sweeter weeks here at “Saucy,” where we dive into chocolate sauce, which is, you know, the condiment of desserts.

Like many food items that are now soundly in the dessert realm — sprinkles’ predecessor, comfits, are a good example — chocolate sauce was once lauded for its medicinal properties. As Maya Wei-Hass wrote for Smithsonian Magazine, tucked in the December 1896 edition of “The Druggists Circular and Chemical Gazette” was an advertisement for Hershey’s cocoa powder.

Pharmacists would combine cocoa powder and sugar to brew a sticky syrup, which would then be mixed with the acrid liquid medicine of the day. At the turn of the century, however, chocolate syrup began to shift from treatment to treat. “It just seemed to naturally segue into all the ice cream [desserts] that pharmacists had to keep on hand just to stay afloat,” pastry chef and author Stella Parks told Wei-Hass said. 

This also dovetailed with the Hershey Chocolate Company turning their eye towards producing chocolate syrup for commercial use in 1926. According to the Hershey archives (which is a ton of fun to sift through, by the way), the company had been working on the ideal formula for more than four years. 

In an interview, long-time Hershey Chocolate employee Chance Philips said that Milton S. Hershey, the company’s founder, was exacting in his specifications for the final recipe. 

“He would come up and say, ‘Well, what have we done today? I want it done this way,'” Philips said.  “Sometimes he saw that I was discouraged. ‘Well,’ he would say, ‘that’s the way we do these things. You may make a hundred batches that don’t suit me. The next may be just the way I want. Don’t be discouraged.'” 

When Hershey Syrup, which is still one of the best-selling chocolate syrups in the world, was first introduced to commercial users — like bakers, soda fountain owners and restaurants — it was marketed in two strengths: single and double. Single-strength was marketed for use in soda fountain pumps for making carbonated beverages. Double-strength was used for use as a topping and in milk drinks.

Two years later, they also started selling a single-strength chocolate syrup for home use, and as a way to reach housewives with their product, developed a dozen recipes using the syrup which, were distributed to magazines including “Good Housekeeping Delineator,” “McCall’s Magazine,” “People’s Home Journal” and “Women’s Home Companion.” 

A later cookbook was published in the 1930s that included 55 recipes featuring Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup, ranging from “never-fail chocolate icing” to chocolate icebox cake. I stumbled upon a physical copy of this cookbook a couple of years ago when I was visiting Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks in New York. It made me realize that I hadn’t ever considered the versatility of chocolate syrup beyond an ice cream topping and chocolate milk mix. It also made me realize that I could probably amp up the chocolate sauce that I do use at home.

***

Chocolate sauce isn’t difficult to make in your own kitchen. A solid one only requires four ingredients, plus water, and about two minutes of stove time. Here’s my recipe: 

Recipe: Basic Chocolate Sauce 

Makes 1 3/4 cups 

  • 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
  • 1 cup white or brown sugar (I’m partial to brown because it adds a little extra richness) 
  • 1/4 teaspoon Kosher salt
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 2  teaspoons vanilla

1. In a small saucepan, combine all of the ingredients. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer, stirring until there are no lumps. Keep on heat for about 2 minutes, then take the pan off the heat. 

2. As it cools, the sauce will thicken slightly. Once cooled, place in an airtight container or jar. From there, it can keep in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks. 

***

There are also some really simple things you can to enhance the flavor of store-bought chocolate sauce. Without a doubt, the biggest thing is to heat it up for serving over ice cream. A lot of people seem to leave the “hot” part out of the hot fudge equation, and they’re missing out on a whole extra layer of deliciousness. 

From there, you can add a simple ingredient or two to make it really pop:

  • Flaky sea salt: Salt is the key to unlocking dessert perfection. It keeps dessert from falling into the “too sweet” category and renders chocolate and spices more aromatic. Add a pinch at a time until the flavor is just right. 
  • Hot honey: I absolutely love Mexican hot chocolate, which has a kick of spice from chiles. A shortcut to giving your chocolate sauce some of that same flavor is hot honey (which is another Saucy favorite). Mike’s Hot Honey is great, as is Bee’s Knees Spicy Honey. Just add a tablespoon or two to your chocolate sauce as it heats on the stove. 
  • Baking spices: You can also add a little extra coziness to your chocolate sauce by adding a few teaspoons of warm baking spices — cinnamon, allspice, ground ginger. 

***

Also inspired by the vintage Hershey cookbook, I hit upon a recipe for a simple chocolate mousse, where chocolate sauce — either store-bought or homemade — does most of the work for you. I like to top it with a fluffy cloud of homemade whipped cream, and in a nod to chocolate sundaes, chopped peanuts and miniature chocolate chips. 

Recipe: Simple Chocolate Mousse with Whipped Topping 

Serves 4 to 6

Mousse 

  • 2 cups of whipping cream 
  • 1/2 cup of confectioner’s sugar
  • 4 tablespoons of store-bought or homemade chocolate syrup
  • 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract

Whipped cream

  • 1 cup of whipping cream 
  • 1/4 cup of confectioner’s sugar 

Toppings 

  • 1/4 cup of chopped peanuts 
  • 1/4 cup of miniature chocolate chips

1. In a large mixing bowl, combine the mousse ingredients. Using a stand mixer with a whisk attachment, beat the mixture until fully combined and firm peaks form. Fold the chocolate mousse into either a large glass trifle bowl or into individual glasses, leaving room for toppings. 

2. Allow the mousse to chill in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours and up to overnight. 

3. Before serving, whisk — either by hand or using the standing mixer — the remaining whipping cream and confectioner’s sugar until it thickens and soft peaks form. Use the whipped cream to top the chocolate mousse. Top the entire dessert with chopped peanuts and miniature chocolate chips. 

Read more Saucy:

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell may attempt “insanity defense” after vilifying Dominion: ex-prosecutor

Controversial MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s legal strategy was questioned on Saturday after he made an appearance on Steve Bannon’s podcast.

“Either way Steve, I want to say this, I’ll give Dominion [Voting Systems] a little scare this morning. Dominion, we have machines now, I do. I have machines, we have ES&S [Election Systems & Software] machines, we got them all and we’re going to being putting out so much information over the next couple of weeks,” Lindell said.

Dominion is suing Lindell for $1.3 billion for defaming the company with his conspiracy theories that Trump won the election.The company has reportedly been building a “legal armada” for the lawsuit.

Lincoln Project senior advisor Jeff Timmer offered his analysis of where the case is headed.

“Lindell is doing his best to ensure Dominion’s lawsuit against him will be the first civil case ever to result in the death penalty,” he joked.

Former Southern District of New York prosecutor Richard Signorelli offered his own analysis.

“Lindell may be the first civil defendant to be able to successfully assert an insanity defense,” he said.

Of course, an insanity defense is not allowed in a civil trial, which also can not result in a death penalty. But the jokes highlight the how some are viewing Lindell choosing to continue to push the “Big Lie” of election fraud that incited the January 6th insurrection and resulted in Trump’s second impeachment.