“Game of Thrones” writer defends showrunners from online haranguing

This month marks the 10-year anniversary of the series premiere of “Game of Thrones.” HBO is calling it the Iron Anniversary and doing lots to celebrate it. Others are getting in on the fun, too. Take “Game of Thrones” writer Bryan Cogman, the guy the scripts for episodes like “Kissed by Fire,” “The Laws of Gods and Men,” and “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.” He’s been making lists of episodes celebrating different characters. They’re a lot of fun, and I don’t think he’s quite finished.

So there’s a lot of good feeling going round. But there are also a lot of people bringing up their disappointment with the eighth and final season of the show, particularly after the official “Game of Thrones” Twitter account tweeted the phase “Winter is Coming” the other day. Twitter exploded with folks recounting all the ways season 8 let them down, calling for a remake, and sometimes disparaging showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss, who received a ton of backlash after the show ended.

Bryan Cogman pushes back against a “Game of Thrones” Season 8 narrative

Some of that made its way to Cogman, who cleared the air with a discussion about Benioff and Weiss’ contributions to the show . . . all of the show, from the series premiere to the series finale:

“Yep, the showrunners are ultimately responsible for the the stuff you hated,” Cogman writes, “But the showrunners (and I PROMISE you this is true, cuz I was there) are ultimately responsible for the stuff you loved.”

That performance you loved? The showrunner ultimately shaped it in the editing room. That brilliant stroke of casting? The showrunner makes the final call. The amazing artisans and dept heads that made the show look and sound and feel amazing? All hired by, empowered by and in constant creative collaboration WITH the showrunner. That amazing moment from the book you loved? Every last second of that moment from adaptation to execution painstakingly supervised by the showrunner. [A]nd that episode credited to another writer? Conceived with, edited by, often with entire scenes rewritten by… the showrunner.

Cogman seems to be pushing back here against a narrative I see sometimes among fans disappointed in the final season: that Benioff and Weiss were always bad at their jobs and season 8 represented their failings catching up to them. And to me that idea is just . . . ridiculous.

How the “Game of Thrones” sausage is made

On a movie set, the buck stops with the director. On a TV set, it stops with the showrunner. Cogman is right: on television, a showrunner is responsible for everything on the show. That means that Benioff and Weiss were responsible for Daenerys Targaryen’s abrupt turn to madness in “The Bells,” which I disliked as much as anyone. They were behind the lickety-split crowning of Bran Stark as King of Westeros. But they’re also responsible for Ned Stark’s execution, and the Battle of Blackwater, and the Red Wedding, and Tyrion’s trial, and the Massacre at Hardhome, and the Battle of the Bastards, and Cersei Lannister blowing up the Sept of Baelor, and the Loot Train Attack. They’re behind Robert and Cersei talking about their marriage, and Littlefinger explaining the climb, and Lady Olenna winning her own death scene, and Podrick Payne singing us into the Battle of Winterfell. They’re behind everything, and so much of it is really, really good.

A possible counter to this is that Benioff and Weiss only excelled when they had George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” to fall back on. Discounting the fact that the show had plenty of great moments even after it left the books behind (although I agree it was stronger when it had them as a roadmap), that doesn’t obscure their obvious talent, because adaptation is as hard as anything else. If you don’t believe me, just look at the huge number of terrible adaptations of good books. What about those awful “Hobbit” movies? What about the movies based on Alan Moore’s wonderful comics like “Watchmen,” “The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen” and “From Hell,” all of which are tired, uninspired and have none of the punch of the original works? What about Stephen King’s own adaptation of his book “The Shining” being miles worse than Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation despite sticking much closer to the text of the novel?

Adaptation is a tricky business and the show did a wonderful job at it, which means Benioff and Weiss did a wonderful job at it. So no, I don’t buy the idea that “Game of Thrones” was only good thanks to the source material, because good source material has never been a guarantee of quality; considering all the bad adaptations out there, I wouldn’t even call it an indicator of quality. And Cogman is sure that George R.R. Martin would agree:

And I say all this as someone who has a lot of problems with Season 8 — I’ve written about them before and probably will again — but there are ways to criticize it that take into account the reality of how television is made and that don’t resort to unfounded personal attacks on the hard-working people who poured their hearts and souls into its creation.

Anyway, happy Iron Anniversary! Please celebrate responsibly.

Another “Downton Abbey” movie is the Christmas gift you’re getting, but didn’t know you needed

If there’s anything the past year has shown us, it’s that there’s nothing like a period drama to offer the escapism we crave. With elaborate costumes, dated speech patterns, and social mores that feel simultaneously quaint and out-of-touch with our reality, it’s really no surprise that shows like Netflix’s randy Regency-era “Bridgerton,” the charmingly bucolic “All Creatures Great and Small” and even chess drama “The Queen’s Gambit” were smashing successes.

Riding this wave is “Downton Abbey.” Yes, the Crawleys and their beleaguered staff are back. Focus Features anounced Monday that a second film based on the wildly popular British drama will be hitting theaters this Christmas.

Even if you were a devoted “Downton” fan, the existence of the first movie may have come as a surprise, since its six seasons on TV wrapped up in a satisfactory manner for most of the characters. Nevertheless, the 2019 film not only made the examination of fading nobility larger than life on the big screen, but was a commercial success, bringing in over $194 million worldwide in its theatrical run.

As Salon critic Melanie McFarland wrote, “‘Downton Abbey’ is basically designed to take the edge off of 2019 life, the visual equivalent of half a Valium chased by a flute’s worth of champagne.” The film proved to be less focused on necessity and more focused on offering a much-needed fan service as a diversion.

The second film will no doubt double down on this strategy for a world hungry to escape our pandemic stress. “Downton Abbey 2” promises the return of all of the original cast members and a screenplay written by creator and Academy Award winner, Julian Fellowes. Returning heavy hitters include Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess, Michelle Dockery as Lady Mary Crawley, among the rest of the upstairs and downstairs denizens.

Joining the new “Downton Abbey” cinematic universe will be “Hannibal” star Hugh Dancy, Laura Haddock, Nathalie Baye, and Dominic West. Simon Curtis will direct.

Other than that casting announcement, the plot for “Downton Abbey 2” remains under wraps for now. The first film took place in 1927 with the Yorkshire country house in a tizzy preparing for a visit from the King and Queen. One can only speculate what this upcoming movie will bring, besides a slew of questions of course, such as:

How could “Downton 2” top a royal visit? When will this new film take place? Will it leap forward to the future and introduce a new decade? Or will it leave off exactly where the last film did? What new technological advances will the Crawleys have to contend with next? And why do we need another “Downton” film now?

It’s been two years since the last one, and five years since the series itself concluded. And while the characters didn’t end up dead in a giant natural disaster, their storylines felt fairly finished. Do we really need to hear about the new business venture that Tom (Allen Leech) pursued or see how much Lady Mary is morphing into the Dowager Countess? How many more children can be born – and summarily ignored?

There is one storyline that feels unresolved though, even if the film ended on a hopeful note for Thomas Barrow (Robert James-Collier), the servant known best for being a closeted man in the 1920s. While the series itself clunkily presented racial and social issues, the film made an effort to at least not to traumatize Thomas too much for storytelling purposes. In fact, he became aware of a world of other gay men, even if it was a world lived in the shadows.

Whether or not Thomas gets his happily ever after remains to be seen, but at least “Downton” fans ought to be pleased since the timing couldn’t be better. The film’s Christmas release could coincide with the new season of “Bridgerton” – which first debuted last Christmas to great success. Come December, fans of costume dramas could have a excess of bodices and British accents on the big and small screen.

“If Anything Happens I Love You” is an animated “distillation of grief” from a school shooting

The frontrunner for the Oscar for best animated short, “If Anything Happens I Love You,” is written and directed by Will McCormack and Michael Govier. The film, available on Netflix and elsewhere through Shorts.TV, is a poignant meditation on loss.

The story, told entirely without dialogue, recounts the emotions experienced by two parents whose daughter was killed in a school shooting. An all-female animation team captures the characters’ various moods, from love and sadness, protectiveness, and despair, using shadows, color, music, and sound. The filmmakers also artfully convey the passage of time as the narrative shows the child’s mother and father remembering their daughter as her shadow guides them on a night of reflection.

The short qualified for the Oscar after winning a top prize at the Edmonton International Film Festival. The writer/directors spent more than two years on the film from the script to the first screening, which took place four days before the pandemic shutdown.

McCormack and Govier, along with their producer Maryann Garger, spoke with Salon about “If Anything Happens I Love You,” which presents a pressing social issue in a powerful way.

Congratulations on your nomination. What has campaigning been like in this strange year?

Will McCormack: We just got a billboard on Santa Monica Boulevard, and that was really cool, because that’s pretty unusual for a 2-D animated short film about grief to have a billboard in LA. I don’t know much about campaigning, because I’ve never done it before, but we have a great team at Netflix. And we are excited to talk about the film and get it [seen] as much as possible. We were fortunate because we made a tiny, independent film and we got picked up by Netflix, and the film played around the world, and it went viral on Tik Tok and has nearly 70 million views, and people know about our film and it’s easy to find.

What prompted you to make this short, and make it animated?

Michael Govier: It was a story we felt could only be told in animation, and it was the only gateway to have this discussion and show the subject matter of a shooting and this kind of loss and what this grief looks like. We thought it was the perfect gateway to bring people in and amplify the characters and the emotions of the scene. Will and I have been huge animation fans forever. Will wrote for Pixar, and I wrote things for animation that have not launched. But we’re both storytellers. The medium doesn’t matter, it’s the medium that needs to be used.

You also had an all-female animation team. Can you talk about assembling that?

Govier: It was interesting. We went to Maija Burnett, a professor at Cal Arts. We wanted to provide an opportunity for up and coming artists that might not get this opportunity. Normally animation directors have to put in a decade plus before they get a shot. Youngran Nho, our animation director, had just graduated and Maija had suggested her. Will and I met with her and it was a perfect fit. As the film progresses, Youngran said she had two other friends who just graduated from Cal Arts, and she brought them on. We hired the best people for the job. Halfway through the project we realized that half of everyone here is female and found these shocking statistics, that in animation, that’s really rare. USC posted statistics that 16% of all films have female animators, it was shockingly low. I proud we can move the number in a healthy way.

I’m curious about how you conceived of the images and the animated format and elements that make this short so vivid?

McCormack: The shadows were the providence of the film. Michael pitched me this beautiful image of these shadow souls disconnected from their human hosts because they were in so much agony that they couldn’t reach one another. It was really a beautiful, Jungian distillation of what grief and loss felt like. That you have this disconnect. We wanted complete and total and stark minimalism; we were going for total parsimony. We were going for a look of loss and grief; it should feel barren and desolate. We had a cardinal rule that anything that didn’t need to be in frame, we had to remove it. We kept stripping the film, and in a film with a subject this tough and sensitive, we thought less was more. By committing to that minimalism, it would hang a lantern on the emotionality of the scene. Moreover, it seemed to work in the memory section of the film, when you go back in time, because I think implicit memory works that way. When you remember the past, you don’t remember everything that was in the room, but you do remember how you felt. In a film with no dialogue, and making something so sparse, it was daunting, but once we committed to it, it really started to pay dividends. We wanted it that unvarnished feel, we wanted it to feel raw and rough and float and feel like it was rough around the edges. A lot of credit to Youngran Nho.

Govier: We explored other [visual] options, and it was clear quickly that it wouldn’t look good. We wanted the story to dictate the style. How does this image help the story? We looked at turn-of- the-century drawing in newspapers. We got inspiration from that unfinished look.

It’s really effective. Can you discuss your approach to keep this as a film without dialogue?

McCormack: I’m a screenwriter by trade, that’s my background, and as a screenwriter, you are always trying to be economical. How can you be laconic and lean but also be poetic? This felt like a great challenge. The first incarnation of the script, we had a couple of lines, but like the rest of the film, we kept removing it. Could we tell a whole story with just images and music? It felt like a creative challenge. But we felt like we didn’t need it. Also, the film played very well around the world because there was no dialogue. Everyone could approach and embrace because it was art and music and story.

Time is always a key factor in short films; it supports the story. Can you describe your set up, suspense, payoff approach to the narrative?

McCormack: The film takes place in the course of one night. The shadow selves jump into the past, but in the real world, it happens in one night. The parents are in the bedroom having the conversation they have been unable to have. They are able to be there for one another during a hard time.

Govier: As for as the time and structure, we wanted the film to unfold in a very inquisitive way. At the beginning you feel this is a film about divorce, and it slowly unfolds, there’s actually a cause for this thing and it’s not about that. We really wanted to guide everyone to this moment but not force you to feel this at this moment. We did want to make the beats so hard that we’re pivoting to the next section. We talked about the film feeling like fog, where it just rolls in around you, and then you’re surrounded by it, as opposed to hitting you with these hard markers. We let shots hang, we let moments hang, to give space for what’s going to come next.

What motivated you to address the topical issue of school shootings in the way you did?

Govier: We wanted to show from the parents’ perspective what that loss looks like. The news cycle moves on to how many people were murdered, and who the shooter was, and these other narratives. We wanted to focus on what the parents look like, and what that life looks like, and what that grief and loss looks like. Those people are still there. We are older, and we grew up without active shooter drills. A lot of our animators are young, and we talked about that, and they experienced [active shooter drills] and said, “Yes, this is what you do.” We are in shock that this is a way of life you have to participate in.

McCormack: Gun violence is not indiscriminate. It’s not someone else’s problem, it’s everyone’s problem. It happens in schools, it happens in grocery stores, it happens everywhere. Two of our animators were at the Garlic festival in Gilroy, where there was a horrible shooting. They left just prior to the tragedy. This is something that effects everyone in all walks of life now, so we felt drawn to write about it.

I’m curious what this nomination means for you in terms of your careers, especially if you win?

McCormack: We’re ready for “Spiderman!” [Laughs] We’ll see. It was the best filmmaking experience of my life, working with Maryann, who is an incredible producer. Michael and I had this story we knew how we wanted it to look and needed a great producer. She put wind in the sails of this film. We’ve already written another short film. We love short film content, and we love that movies can be told in 12 minutes and not 120. We love that places like Netflix are taking chances on small independent films. It’s just a really cool time to be making short film. We do want to work in longer form. We are setting up a feature, but we’re amped to make another short. We loved being on the festival circuit, unfortunately it was virtual. We want to keep making stories that have something to say.

Govier: Maryann could teach a master class on how to be an outstanding producer. She gave so much confidence to us, and believed in us when other people said, “No, we don’t think you can do it, you haven’t done it before.” There was this Catch-22. She believed in us and said, “You have the story, you see the vision, and you can do it,” and that is the greatest producer you could ever have.

Maryann Garber: We really made it out of passion and sheer will. We had very little money. We had a great partnership and grant with Film Independent and we discovered their fiscal sponsorship program which helped us to raise the little money we did have. It was great overcoming the “No’s” and the countless obstacles. It was very satisfying to be at this unfathomable position where this movie has gone.

Govier: Maryann, where did we physically make the film?

Garger: We made it at one of three kitchen tables. Mine, Michael’s, or Will’s. We got together every week. Our definition of success is, of course, all about the message, but it was also just to finish. To be on Netflix and get 70 million views on Tik Tok, and Oscar nominated seems unreal.

McCormack: With indie film, no one’s told you that you can’t do it. We’re directing for the first time. This was Maryann’s first time producing a 2-D short. This was Youngran’s first job. So, there was a spirit, “We can do this,” because no one knows. You all believe in each other and the indie spirit of that bolstered us. It’s hard to duplicate. It’s all downhill from here.

“If Anything Happens I Love You” is streaming on Netflix or can be viewed in theaters with the other Oscar-nominated shorts. Ticket information can be found at Shorts.TV.

“I could’ve been a George Floyd yesterday”: Protester’s beating by Louisville police caught on tape

A Louisville, Kentucky police officer was seen punching a protester in the head during the protester’s arrest. The incident is just the latest in a string of videotaped acts of police brutality.

The man captured on video, 29-year-old Denorver Garrett, was protesting on Sunday near Jefferson Square Park, the site of many demonstrations around the death of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman who was fatally shot by police in her home in 2020.

Jamie Hendricks, who filmed the video of Garrett’s beating, told the Courier-Journal that Garrett was initially protesting in a crosswalk, holding a signature cross that made him a well-known protester from past demonstrations. According to WLKY, court records indicated that police claim Garrett was posing safety concerns to motorists on the roadway, which prompted several officers to intervene. Garrett’s police citation details that he “was causing a disturbance” for about 30 minutes prior to their intervention.

The citation also alleged that when officers intervened, Garrett “was told he was under arrest and to place his hands behind his back.” It continues, “He resisted the officer’s movements to put his hands together close enough to put handcuffs to the ground where he continued to disobey officers instructions to place his hands behind his back.” Hendricks, who witnessed the incident, told the Courier-Journal that she did not see any signs of resistance from Garrett. As the officers apprehend him, Garrett can be heard saying, “I’m not doing nothing.”

One officer repeatedly tells Garrett to “stop flexing,” and then forces Garrett to the ground with the help of several others before punching him in the head at least three times as onlookers plead for the officers to stop. Garrett’s glasses were reportedly broken during the violent struggle, according to CBS.

“It’s unreal to me that that just happened right in front of me,” Henricks told the Courier-Journal. “He was just making his voice heard, and he has a right to do that. It shouldn’t take 10 cops to come over and take care of that.”

“Regardless of what he did or didn’t do, we have this thing called the presumption of innocence in our constitution,” said Garrett’s attorney, David Mour. “When they’re taking him into custody, he’s innocent, and this is the way we treat an innocent Black man.”

Garrett, who was charged with a “misdemeanor disorderly conduct and resisting arrest,” has been released on his own recognizance.

Louisville Metro Police Chief Erika Shields acknowledged that the video “raises serious questions and is not consistent with LMPD training.” The department has not, however, released the names of any of the officers, nor have any of them been publicly put on leave.

Shields said that the department is opening a probe into the incident with the Professional Standards Unit, which conducts internal investigations over police misconduct. In the past, internal reviews of complaints made against police have not been shown to effectively hold police accountable.

Last week, Breonna Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, filed an internal affairs complaint against the six Louisville Metro police officers implicated in Taylor’s shooting. “We believe a thorough investigation of these allegations will expose the rotten underbelly of a rogue police division and the lengths that investigators went to protect the officers,” Palmer’s attorney, Sam Aguiar, said in her complaint. “And when it does, LMPD needs to show that it will clean house, get Tamika Palmer the answers she’s been owed for a year and honor the oaths sworn to protect our citizens. These officers can’t be allowed to lie and say it’s alright because they’re police.”

“Wrong and dangerous”: Taxpayers are still funding Trump’s defense against rape accuser

Attorneys for longtime magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll, who has accused former President Donald Trump of raping her more than 20 years ago, argued on Friday that it was “wrong and dangerous” for the Justice Department to defend him against her defamation lawsuit.

Carroll filed the lawsuit in 2019 after Trump denied her claim that he raped her in a department store fitting room in the mid-1990s. The Justice Department intervened last year to defend the then-president, arguing that Trump, who accused Carroll of “totally lying,” made the comment in his official capacity as the nation’s chief executive. A federal district judge last year rejected the DOJ’s attempt to intervene but the department appealed the ruling before Trump left office, potentially leaving taxpayers on the hook for his defense.

Carroll’s lawyers said in a court filing on Friday that the DOJ is trying to convince the court to “adopt a new rule that would create categorical immunity for any federal official who defames anyone while speaking to the press or responding to perceived critics.”

“This rule is both wrong and dangerous,” the filing said, adding that it “reflects a disturbing belief that federal officials should have free rein to destroy the reputations and livelihoods of any perceived critic — no matter how unrelated to the business of governance.”

Carroll’s attorneys asked the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals court to rule that “Trump did not act within the scope of his employment as President of the United States when he repeatedly, willfully defamed a private citizen to punish and retaliate against her after she revealed that he had sexually assaulted her decades before he took office.”

The DOJ in its appeal argued that Trump discussed a matter of public concern in denying the allegation, which lawyers said was “an issue potentially relevant to his ability to perform the duties of his office effectively.”

“The President … acts within the scope of his office when he responds to public critics,” the DOJ said in a court filing.

Carroll first alleged that Trump raped her during an encounter at a Bergdorf Goodman in her 2019 book “What Do We Need Men For?” Trump responded by accusing Carroll, best known as a columnist for Elle Magazine, of lying and told reporters, “She’s not my type.”

“Trump has tried and failed repeatedly to get my lawsuit booted,” Carroll said in a statement on Friday. “Last fall, he had his Justice Department intervene and try to get it dismissed in federal court. He lost. Then, just a week before President Biden’s inauguration, Trump’s private lawyers and the DOJ joined forces to argue on appeal that when Trump called me a liar who was too ugly to rape, he was somehow being presidential. This is offensive to me.”

Carroll added that she is “confident that the Second Circuit will make it clear that no president, including Donald Trump, can get away scot free with maliciously defaming a woman he sexually assaulted.”

In October, Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that the Federal Tort Claims Act, which protects federal employees from personal liability in lawsuits, “does not include presidents.” Kaplan said that if the DOJ got its way, Carroll “would be left with no remedy, even if the president’s statements were false and defamatory.”

“The undisputed facts demonstrate that President Trump was not acting in furtherance of any duties owed to any arguable employer when he made the statements at issue. His comments concerned an alleged sexual assault that took place several decades before he took office, and the allegations have no relationship to the official business of the United States,” Kaplan wrote. “To conclude otherwise would require the Court to adopt a view that virtually everything the president does is within the public interest by virtue of his office.”

Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan, who is not related to the judge, predicted that the 2nd Circuit would uphold the October ruling.

“As the district court properly recognized, while the facts in this case are unique, the legal principles are not,” she said in a statement. “In this country, no one, not even the president, is above the law.”

Carroll’s lawyers are also seeking a DNA sample from Trump to compare to the dress Carroll says she wore during the alleged assault.

“After Trump sexually assaulted me, I took the black dress I had been wearing and hung it in my closet,” she said last year.

A ruling upholding the previous decision to reject the DOJ intervention would likely clear the way for Trump to be deposed in the case.

Trump is facing a similar lawsuit from Summer Zervos, a former contestant on “The Apprentice” who in 2016 accused Trump of groping and kissing her without consent in 2007 and 2008. Zervos filed a defamation lawsuit in 2017 after Trump accused her of lying.

Last month, the New York State Court of Appeals granted Zervos’ motion to dismiss an appeal from Trump’s lawyers seeking to halt the suit on the argument that sitting presidents are protected from legal action, at least partly because Trump had left office. That ruling means that Trump can be compelled to testify under oath in the case.

“Now as a private citizen, the defendant has no further excuse to delay justice from Ms. Zervos and we are eager to get back to the trial court and prove her claims,” Zervos’ attorney Beth Wilkinson told The New York Times.

Trump is expected to face questions about other allegations against him if he is deposed. More than two dozen women have accused Trump of sexual assault or misconduct. Trump has denied several individual allegations while repeatedly issuing blanket denials of all the claims against him.

“There are many other similar allegations made against former President Trump and his responses to them would appropriately be the subject of questioning,” Kevin Mintzer, an attorney who has represented numerous women in sexual misconduct cases, told the Times. “I would expect he’s going to have to answer those questions.”

NASA just made history with the first aircraft to make a controlled flight on another planet

More than 117 years ago, Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first successful flight of a powered, controlled aircraft. Now humanity has achieved another flight milestone, albeit on another planet. For the first time ever, human beings have built an aircraft that was able to perform a controlled and powered flight on another world.

Although guided by computer rather than a human, NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter nevertheless made history shortly after half past three in the morning East Coast time. The solar-powered helicopter, which was transported to Mars as part of NASA’s Mars 2020 mission, managed to become airborne for just shy of 40 seconds — 28 seconds longer than the Wright brothers’ first flight. Ingenuity lifted off, hovered at a stable rate for roughly 30 seconds — its maximum altitude was 10 feet — and then safely touched back down on the planet’s surface.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California had to confirm all of this after it had happened — or more specifically, after their scientists received data from the helicopter — because its flight could not be observed in real time due to the limitations of the speed of light. The flight itself was actually controlled by an on-board computer with algorithms designed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s team.

To commemorate the historic nature of the achievement, NASA Associate Administrator for Science Thomas Zurbuchen announced that the airfield would be named after Orville and Wilbur Wright. (The helicopter, notably, contains a small piece of the fabric used to cover one of the wings of the Wright brothers’ pioneering aircraft.)

“Ingenuity is the latest in a long and storied tradition of NASA projects achieving a space exploration goal once thought impossible,” Acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk explained in a statement. “The X-15 was a pathfinder for the space shuttle. Mars Pathfinder and its Sojourner rover did the same for three generations of Mars rovers. We don’t know exactly where Ingenuity will lead us, but today’s results indicate the sky – at least on Mars – may not be the limit.”

Getting the helicopter to the point where it could fly on Mars was not as easy as simply guaranteeing that the aircraft made it to the planet’s surface intact. NASA scientists had to precisely position their machine in a location where there would not be any obstructions, which they did by placing it in a 33-by-33 foot square airfield. It took them several sols (the term for a Martian day, which is 39 minutes longer than an Earth day) to slowly disconnect the helicopter from the vehicles that brought it to the red planet, move it into the correct position and make sure its solar-paneled batteries were sufficiently charged.

One of the main purposes of the NASA rover Perseverance’s mission is to find whether life does, or at least used to, exist on Mars. Over the course of its multi-year mission, the Perseverance rover will study the Martian surface, drill into rock, and collect some samples of soil for a future sample-return mission.

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“60 Minutes” faces pushback for giving Oath Keepers a platform to push lies

A segment on CBS News’ “60 Minutes” segment about the Oath Keepers, which aired on Sunday evening, has attracted considerable pushback on Twitter and elsewhere from viewers who criticized its reporting on the far-right militia group’s role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The exposé from “60 Minutes” correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi highlighted the Oath Keepers’ role in organizing the Jan. 6 riot while also highlighting the apparent split between the largest chapter of the Oath Keepers and the group’s founder, Stewart Rhodes, who launched the organization in March of 2009.

Within the segment, one Oath Keepers member in Arizona, Jim Arroyo, told Alfonsi that the group works closely with law enforcement, since many of the paramilitary organization members are former police officers or ex-military personnel. “Our guys are very experienced. We have active-duty law enforcement in our organization that are helping to train us. We can blend in with our law enforcement, and in fact, in a lot of cases, our training is much more advanced because of our military backgrounds.” Arroyo declared during the segment.

According to FBI counterterrorism official Javed Ali, that claim made by Arroyo at least partly holds true: The Oath Keepers have a “large percentage” of members who “have tactical training and operational experience in either the military or law enforcement,” he said. “That at least gives them a capability that a lot of other people in this far-right space don’t have,” Ali added.

“Our guys are very experienced. We have active-duty law enforcement in our organization that are helping to train us. We can blend in with our law enforcement,” says a member of the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia group. https://t.co/7fOee4i1gd pic.twitter.com/JT2sGCMOIL

— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) April 18, 2021

Arroyo, the Arizona Oath Keepers leader, later in the interview attempted to distance himself from Rhodes, the founder of the group, who on Jan. 6 was spotted on the Capitol steps and was later found to have helped members of his militia group plot the siege.

Photos and phone records place Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the far-right militia group the Oath Keepers, on the Capitol steps on January 6, but no charges have been brought against him. Rhodes declined to speak with 60 Minutes. https://t.co/6Sblb6l44F pic.twitter.com/rLcYRCKFZl

— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) April 18, 2021

“I want to congratulate Stewart Rhodes and his 10 militia buddies for winning first place in the ultimate dumbass contest, because that’s what it was,” Arroyo said. “That goes against everything we have ever taught, everything we believe in. It was pre-planned; it was pre-staged. Ten guys go and do something stupid, and suddenly we’re the devil.”

Many on Twitter perceived the segment as allowing Arroyo and other members of the Oath Keepers to divert blame and minimize their role in the events of Jan. 6.

“This is the same group being dismantled at the moment for their role in 1/6, but sure, give them a massive platform and free media. Real fricking brilliant,” national security lawyer Bradley P. Moss, a partner at the law firm Mark S. Zaid, PC, wrote on Twitter. Former Yahoo News White House reporter Hunter Walker tweeted, “Not sure why the Oath Keepers are being given air time to downplay their role on 1/6.”

Mass media will give a large platform to white supremacists who are telling everyone of their collaboration with law enforcement but we can’t allow any platform for discussion of defunding & abolishing police. https://t.co/3Zh5gOKgtY

— DEFUND & ABOLISH POLICE (@BreeNewsome) April 19, 2021

Sophia Nelson, a contributing editor at the Grio, responded to the segment on Twitter writing, “Shame on CBS for giving this monster a platform and voice.”

The link between America’s rising maternal mortality rates and abortion

Last week was Black Maternal Health Week, which reproductive justice activists started in 2018 to raise awareness of the grim fact that maternal mortality rates for Black women are up to three times higher than they are for white women. For the first time ever, the White House also joined in, with President Joe Biden issuing a proclamation noting that “America’s maternal mortality rates are among the highest in the developed world” and calling on “all Americans to recognize the importance of addressing the crisis of Black maternal mortality and morbidity in this country.”

The reasons for this crisis are multifaceted. As Vice President Kamala Harris explained in an interview with STAT, “systemic disparities and implicit bias” in health care are major contributors. She also explained that the White House is committed to “investing in social determinants that we know influence maternal health, such as housing, transportation, and nutrition.” A new study published in the medical journal Contraception points to another factor that is often overlooked as a likely contributor to lack of health care access that is making maternal mortality outcomes worse: Abortion restrictions.

As Amy Roeder explained in a 2019 piece for Harvard Public Health, “Following decades of decline, maternal deaths began to rise in the United States around 1990—a significant departure from the world’s other affluent countries.” Black women in the U.S. are so dispropotionately affected that their odds of “surviving childbirth are comparable to those of women in countries such as Mexico and Uzbekistan, where significant proportions of the population live in poverty.”

Dr. Mark Hoofnagle, assistant professor of surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, told Salon that he had a hunch that there was a reason that this rise started to happen around the same time as an infamous 1992 Supreme Court case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey. That case opened the door to a crush of abortion restrictions that slowly, over the decades, decimated abortion access, especially in red states. So he and a group of other doctors started comparing states based on their abortion restrictions and found a strong correlation to their maternal mortality rates.

“States that restrict abortion have higher maternal mortality than states that either protect or are neutral towards abortion,” the eventual paper in Contraception bluntly concluded.

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This is something that many people working in the field of reproductive health care have long suspected. As OB-GYN Dr. Jamila Perritt wrote last week at Rewire News Group, the failures of the nation’s maternal health care system are “intimately tied to Black women’s lack of access to comprehensive reproductive health care, including access to abortion care.”

The authors of the Contraception paper stressed to Salon that it’s not as simple as women dying because they wanted an abortion and couldn’t get one, though there is strong evidence that women in this situation suffer worse health outcomes than women who are able to abort unwanted pregnancies. It’s also likely that, as the paper explains, “states that restrict abortion may have broader hostility towards women’s health.”

Dr. Amy Addante, an OB-GYN and co-author of the paper, explained to Salon that “they are not prioritizing things that have been demonstrated to lower maternal mortality.” Instead of “improving access to care, not just, obstetrics care, but contraceptive care,” Addante noted, the legislatures are “really prioritizing passing anti-abortion legislation.”

Indeed, the same legislatures that are keen on gutting abortion access are also happy to make birth control harder to get, even though, as Addante noted, “unplanned pregnancies are at increased risk of adverse outcomes.” In Texas, for instance, the anti-abortion legislature has also spent years slashing family planning programs, and even redirected funds that used to go to birth control services to shady anti-contraception groups. Texas also happens to be one of the states that has rising maternal mortality rates.

As Dr. Hoofnagle pointed out, restrictions on abortion close down clinics that were part of the larger “safety net” offering affordable services like birth control and other reproductive health care. For instance, the Donald Trump administration cut funding to 900 reproductive health care clinics, using the fact that those clinics acknowledge that abortion is legitimate health care as an excuse. Similar assaults on abortion access have shuttered Planned Parenthood and other low-cost clinics across the country.

Of course “the women that rely on the safety net are going to be most affected,” Hoofnagle told Salon.

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Dr. Jennifer Leonard, another surgeon at Washington University School of Medicine and co-author of the paper, emphasized that the maternal health care problem affects doctors from all walks of life. For instance, treating gunshot victims has highlighted for her the high rate of severe domestic violence pregnant women experience. Indeed, pregnant women are at heightened risk of both homicide and suicide, which contributes to the maternal mortality problem in the U.S.

Dr. Addante emphasized that women themselves understand these dangers and “a lot of women who are seeking an abortion are doing so because they feel like it’s the best way to protect the family that they already have.” Being denied the ability to prevent or terminate an unwanted pregnancy can make it much harder for women to leave abusive partners, increasing the risk of death.

Unfortuantely, Trump’s ability to pack the federal courts and especially the Supreme Court with anti-choice hardliners has invited Republican-controlled state governments to double down on abortion restrictions. They’ve also become bolder about moving towards laws that would allow states to target women of color for direct discrimination. As NYU law professor Melissa Murray in the Washington Post wrote about on Monday, a “federal appeals court last week allowed an Ohio law to take effect that bars doctors from performing abortions on women” based on the presumed reason for the abortion.

While that law was specific to Down syndrome cases, Murray warned, it could lead to many similar laws that single out Black women and deny them wanted abortions based on right-wing conspiracy theories accusing Black women who get abortions of committing “eugenics” against their own families. It is true that Black women have higher abortion rates than white women, but that is due to higher unwanted pregnancy rates that stem from lack of health care. But of course, conservatives project their own racism onto Black women themselves, pretending that Black women who get abortions are the “real” racists and thus must be stopped.

But, as this research shows, abortion access cannot be meaningfully separated from other health care access, and taking it away has ramifications throughout the health care system that lead to poorer overall health outcomes. For all the bad faith claims by conservatives to want to restrict abortion access to protect Black people, the reality is that such restrictions are linked to poorer health outcomes that are hurting Black women especially. Much needs to be done to improve maternal health care, but one good place to start is by empowering women to choose for themselves when and if they give birth.

North Dakota governor signs law allowing Ten Commandments to be posted in public schools

North Dakota GOP Gov. Doug Burgum signed a bill on Thursday authorizing public school teachers to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms, protecting teachers from potential lawsuits that might arise from doing so.

According to AP News, the bill, SB 2308, was passed with broad support from both the GOP-majority state Senate and House. Last month, the measure came under scrutiny after an outcry from attorneys and school officials who warned lawmakers of its dubious Constitutionality. In response, the state House later amended the bill to mandate that historical texts must be displayed alongside the Ten Commandments in order to promote its “cultural” and “historical significance.”

As Burgum said in a statement, the bill “clarifies the existing authority in state law that allows a school to display a religious object or document of cultural, legal, or historical significance together with similar documents.”

“School boards are already required to develop a policy for the proper display of any religious objects or documents,” he continued. “This law supports local control and gives school districts full control over whether to display any religious objects or documents.”

The bill’s blanket immunity provision protects “school districts, schools, school boards and individual school board members, governing boards and individual governing board members, administrators, principals, teachers, and any other school district employed personnel […] from any liability for damages resulting from a school’s decision to display the ten commandments or permit students to recite the pledge of allegiance.”

Last month, state Sen. Janne Myrdal, R, one of the bill’s sponsors, told her colleagues in a floor speech that the bill hopes to address many of modern society’s ills, including “sex trafficking, child sex abuse and crowded jails.” It focuses, however, on “a local control” issue,” she added, arguing that “no religion is offended by the Ten Commandments.”

The bill has nevertheless drawn widespread criticism from lawmakers and lawyers alike. In February, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has been tracking the bill, sharply rebuked the bill in a letter to North Dakota’s state legislature: “SB 2308 is not only unconstitutional; it is also unnecessary to advance religious freedom in our public schools,” it wrote, “Students’ rights to engage in religious exercise and expression are already well-protected under current law.”

The ACLU also noted that courts have struck down similar measures in the past, arguing that it cannot “be reconciled with federal precedent in North Dakota.” Back in 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court found that the Ten Commandments “are undeniably a sacred text” and “the pre-eminent purpose for posting the Ten Commandments on schoolroom walls is plainly religious in nature.”

The bill does not legally require that teachers post the Ten Commandments in classrooms, but rather, protects teachers’ decision to do so, likening a similar bill passed in the Arkansas state legislature passed this month, which stipulates that science teachers “may teach creationism as a theory of how the earth came to exist,” as Salon reported last week.

According to AP News, proponents of the North Dakota bill speculate that if it is challenged at the federal level, it may see support from the judiciary, which made a marked rightward shift during the Trump administration.

“Unconscionable”: How progressive blowback moved Biden on refugees

President Joe Biden angered progressives so much when the White House announced week that it would keep former President Donald Trump’s historically low cap on refugee admissions despite vowing to increase the number by more than 400% after taking office that he was forced to walk it all back within hours.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken had formally notified Congress that the cap would be lifted for this year on February 12. But Biden, at first ignoring growing pressure from Democrats to lift the cap, signed an emergency presidential declaration on Friday keeping the number of refugees for the Trump-era refugee cap at 15,000 just two months after promising to raise it to 62,500. The U.S. accepted nearly 85,000 refugees the year before Trump’s election.

Friday’s declaration was meant to speed up the processing of refugees approved for admission but an administration official told CNN that Biden will not lift the cap at all this year despite repeated assurances from the White House that the president remains committed to his promise. The move comes as the United States is on pace to admit the fewest number of refugees in modern history despite Biden’s repeated vow to reverse his predecessor’s policies, which Democrats decried for years as racist and xenophobic.

“It is simply unacceptable and unconscionable that the Biden administration is not immediately repealing Donald Trump’s harmful, xenophobic, and racist refugee cap that cruelly restricts refugee admissions to a historic low,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in a statement on Friday. “By failing to sign an Emergency Presidential Declaration to lift Trump’s historically low refugee cap, President Biden has broken his promise to restore our humanity,” she added.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said Biden’s failure to keep his promise was “completely and utterly unacceptable.”

“Biden promised to welcome immigrants, and people voted for him based on that promise,” she tweeted. “Upholding the xenophobic and racist policies of the Trump admin, [including] the historically low + plummeted refugee cap, is flat out wrong.”

Biden’s former presidential primary foe Julian Castro called out Biden over reports that the decision was made due to political “optics” surrounding the border influx.

“This is a bad decision,” he said on Twitter. “Trump gutted our refugee program, a cornerstone of our global leadership and values. His polices can’t be the default we carry on—especially for the sake of ‘optics.'”

By Saturday, Biden was telling reporters: “We’re gonna increase the numbers.”

The White House had already backtracked late on Friday, announcing that Biden would set a “final, increased” refugee cap by mid-May. It’s unclear why Biden reversed his campaign position on the refugee cap within a matter of weeks after taking office but a senior administration official told The New York Times that the administration was concerned that the influx of unaccompanied minors at the border has “already overwhelmed the refugee branch of the Department of Health and Human Services.” Of course, asylum seekers at the border are processed through a wholly separate system than refugees fleeing persecution and violence overseas

An administration official told The Times that Friday’s executive action would reverse a Trump-era policy that disqualified most Muslim and African refugees and allow the administration to fill all 15,000 available refugee slots, though it will leave thousands of fully vetted refugees stranded at camps around the world. The U.S. was previously on pace to accept fewer than 5,000 refugees this fiscal year.

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Friday the refugee program needed to be rebuilt. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that Friday’s action was “just the beginning.”

“This step lifts the restrictions put in place by prior Administration on where refugees can come from,” she tweeted. “We need to rebuild resettlement program and we are committed to continuing to increase refugee numbers.”

But there are already “over 35,000 refugees have already been vetted and cleared for arrival, and over 100,000 are in the pipeline often waiting years to be reunited with their loved ones,” argued David Miliband, the head of the International Rescue Committee, an humanitarian aid group.

Friday’s reversal stunned refugee rights groups who expected the administration to follow through on its promise.

“We are reaching out to the White House to understand why this figure is a fraction of what the administration committed to in congressional consultations,” Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, who heads the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, which helps resettle refugees, told NPR. “We know we find ourselves in challenging times, but we pray President Biden will fulfill his pledge to return the U.S. to our position of global leadership on refugee resettlement.”

Biden’s directive came on the same day that a group of Democratic lawmakers led by Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., who came to the US as a refugee, called on Biden to immediately lift the cap.

“Having fought for four years against the Trump Administration’s full-scale assault on refugee resettlement in the United States, we were relieved to see you commit to increasing our refugee resettlement numbers so early in your Administration,” the letter said. “But until the Emergency Presidential Determination is finalized, our refugee policy remains unacceptably draconian and discriminatory.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., also urged the administration to “recognize [its] moral responsibility” in admitting refugees.

“I think right now we have, well, it’s a very few thousand, and we have to increase that number,” she said Thursday.

Biden similarly argued that restoring the refugee program was imperative when he entered office, vowing to quickly lift the cap for this year and double the number to 125,000 for the fiscal year beginning in October.

“The United States’ moral leadership on refugee issues was a point of bipartisan consensus for so many decades when I first got here,” he said in February. “It’s going to take time to rebuild what has been so badly damaged, but that’s precisely what we’re going to do.”

The International Rescue Committee released a report earlier this month detailing the decimation of the refugee program under Trump, who slashed the cap from 110,000 when he entered office to 45,000 in 2018, 30,000 in 2019, and 18,000 in 2020. Miliband, the group’s president, told CNN on Friday it was “deeply disappointing” that Biden chose to maintain one of Trump’s most controversial policies.

“The rightful erasure of discriminatory admissions categories does not dispense with the need for a higher number of refugees to be admitted,” he said.

Immigration groups also sounded the alarm over the Biden administration’s confiscation of land across the Southern border stemming from legal battles over Trump’s border wall.

Biden launched a 60-day federal review of resources used for the wall on his first day in office but the review has not been completed and there is no timeline for its conclusion despite the March 20 deadline. Mayorkas reportedly told DHS employees that Biden’s halt “leaves room to make decisions” on finishing some “gaps in the wall.” And the Justice Department has continued to seize land from families with about 140 pending eminent domain cases still active, Politico reported.

Biden vowed on the campaign trail that his administration would not build “another foot of wall” and vowed that he would “withdraw the lawsuits” and was “not going to confiscate the land.” But the DOJ said in a court filing last month that Biden’s first-day proclamation “left open the possibility that some aspects of the project may resume” and the department is still trying to seize private property. Just this week, the government seized six acres of land in Hidalgo County, Texas from one family.

“DOJ sought continuances in pending cases, including in this case, in which the government had previously filed motions for possession of land on the southwest border in light of President Biden’s proclamation terminating the national emergency at the southern border of the United States and directing ‘a careful review of all resources appropriated or redirected to construct a southern border wall,'” a DOJ official told Politico.

Jose Alfredo Cavazos, whose family’s land was seized in the case, told Politico he was “very disappointed” by the Biden administration’s reversal.

“I thought when he said no more wall that we would get no more wall. But apparently not,” he said.

“I’m … very, very disappointed in Joe Biden. I thought he was a man of his word but apparently he’s not keeping his word,” added Reynaldo Anzaldua Cavazos, another member of the family. “He said not one more foot of wall and no land forfeitures. We took him at his word and we want him to keep his word.”

Marjorie Taylor Greene is a problem Republicans want

If you had any doubts that the Republican Party had a full-blown white nationalist faction ready and willing to let their freak flags fly, the last few weeks have to have disabused you of them. From Fox News’ highest rated prime time host Tucker Carlson endorsing the far-right “great replacement” theory on national television to Kevin Williamson of the National Review, following in the tradition of its founder William F. Buckley, theorizing that we need “fewer — but better — voters,” it seems as if right-wing extremism is getting a whole lot of airtime.

Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene put the white icing on Republican’s racist cake last week when she floated the idea of the new Trump-supporting American First Caucus, which caused even House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to issue a mild rebuke for its obvious references to white power. Among those who said they were part of the project were far-right Reps. Paul Gosar of Arizona, Matt Gaetz of Florida and Louis Gohmert of Texas. The rock has been turned over and all the white supremacists are crawling out, eyes squinting, ready to seize their rightful place in the Republican Party.

Greene’s plan was reported by Punchbowl News last Friday as a new group dedicated to following in “President Trump’s footsteps, and potentially step on some toes and sacrifice sacred cows for the good of the American nation.” This is defined as preserving “Anglo-Saxon political traditions” with a goal of limiting legal immigration “to those that can contribute not only economically, but have demonstrated respect for this nation’s culture and rule of law.” It’s unclear exactly how such “respect” can be demonstrated but it’s not too hard to imagine. Being a huge Trump supporter certainly wouldn’t hurt. It’s also interesting that they have moved on from the “Judeo-Christian ethic” trope they used for the last few decades to this weird colonial throwback term “Anglo-Saxon culture,” but it’s no mystery as to why they would have done that, is it?

One aspect of the agenda that got a lot of attention was its support for infrastructure “that reflects the architectural, engineering and aesthetic value that befits the progeny of European architecture.” There were plenty of chuckles over that one, imagining what Greene and Gohmert would consider appropriate architecture. After wondering for a bit who they would consider to be their Albert Speer, I realized it was right in front of our nose: the great builder and designer of ostentatious, gold-plated kitsch himself: Donald Trump.

But really, it’s less hilarious than it sounds. Anyone who knows anything about the history of the Third Reich knows how much importance they attached to the “classical aesthetic” and in recent years there has been a movement among various alt-right types, including Neo-Nazis and Identity Evropa, to take up a new aesthetic as the perfect expression of white culture. Hettie O’Brien of The New Statesman wrote about the trend in 2018:

While the Nazis thought neoclassical architecture an authentic expression of German identity, today’s far right updates this doctrine for the social media age. As Stephan Trüby, an architectural historian at the University of Stuttgart, told me, right-wing populists have begun to sharpen their focus on architecture. In Germany, the Alternative für Deutschland party has spawned a revivalist movement of far-right isolationists who revere folk mythology and Saxon castles. Trüby writes that, “Filled with disgust at any kind of metropolitan multicultural way of life,” these settlers retreat to rural Germany to rehearse the “preservation of the German Volk“. […]

As Trüby noted, in Germany certain terms camouflage far-right identity politics. “Words like ‘tradition’ and ‘beauty’ are used to establish ideas of a unified people and nation, which excludes migrants and many parts of the population.” Beauty is infused with connotations of blood, soil and a Volk.

It’s not just a European thing. You may recall the marchers in Charlottesville in 2017 were chanting “blood and soil.”

Within 24 hours, Greene and Gosar had backtracked on their caucus plan, suddenly claiming that it wasn’t really their thing and that a staffer was responsible for an early draft they hadn’t approved of. Greene went hysterical on Twitter over the controversy:

We posted the whole document. https://t.co/9zwDOZHROp

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) April 17, 2021

On Friday, sick and evil POS in the media attacked me with phrases I never said or wrote.

They released a staff level draft proposal from an outside group that I hadn’t read.

The scum and liars in the media are calling me a racist by taking something out of context.

— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) April 17, 2021

Greene’s spokesman, Nick Dyer, had issued a statement on Friday saying to “be on the look out for the release of the America First Caucus platform when it’s announced to the public very soon.” By Saturday he was saying Greene would not be launching anything. In the interim, some members of the most far-right caucus in the House, the Freedom Caucus, which counts Greene and the others as members, had publicly expressed their disapproval.

It’s tempting to see that as a sign they were truly appalled by Greene’s overt white nationalism. But that’s unlikely. This is actually an old strategy by right-wingers that inexorably mainstreams their beliefs in a way that allows many of them to escape responsibility. They do it every few years. Some rump right-wing group organizes itself within the party, attracts some attention for its extremism and then ends up being the tail that wags the dog — at least until another even more right-wing rump group organizes itself and does the same thing, moving the previous group into the mainstream. They usually tend to gain steam when the Democrats are in power.

This goes way back but, as with so much else, it has accelerated since the early 1990s when Newt Gingrich and his backbench wrecking crew took over the GOP after rabble-rousing through the previous decade. They were once the loudmouthed extremists and then suddenly were the mainstream and elected their rabble-rousing leader to be the Speaker of the House. (Listening to former Speaker John Boehner bemoan the rightward surge of the GOP is laughable. He was among those original Gingrich revolutionaries.) Later came the Freedom Caucus, a group known for its obstructionism and “burn the house” down purity. Trump raised them up into the corridors of real power, spawning such GOP superstars as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Devin Nunes, R-CA, Jim Jordan, R-OH, and Matt Gaetz, R-FL all of whom are current or former Freedom Caucus members.

With the help of Fox News, Marjorie Taylor Greene is taking that same strategy to the next level. It works out well for all concerned. By parroting the emergent white nationalist rhetoric being mainstreamed by Tucker Carlson, she manages to raise a lot of money. And by delicately distancing themselves from her, the Freedom Caucus get to appear to be safe to establishment Republicans (just like John Boehner was when he became speaker) who can in turn appeal to the suburban voters who abandoned the party.

I think you can see the problem here.

This latest iteration of far-right wingnuttia is going in a very dangerous direction. I don’t think we’ll see Marjorie Taylor Greene elected speaker of the House but there’s every chance that at some point someone with her toxic ideology will be seen as such a mainstream Republican that he or she is a perfectly viable candidate. Trump already came very close. I honestly don’t know how much lower they can go from there.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story inaccurately quoted from a recent column by Kevin Williamson for National Review, mentioned in the first paragraph. The citation has been corrected.

Activist and Researcher Gregg Gonsalves on how to heal America after Trump’s COVID disaster

Joe Biden has been president for only three months. In that short time his administration has made remarkable strides in the fight against the COVID pandemic and the economic and social devastation it has caused to the United States and the American people. The Trump regime’s approach to the pandemic was one of incompetence, negligence, sabotage, lies, conspiracy theories, cruel indifference and outright democide, all filtered through political sadism and authoritarianism. By comparison, the Biden administration has responded to the plague with science, reason, expertise and genuine care and concern for the well-being of the country and its people.

Unfortunately, Biden’s leadership does not change the fact that more than 550,000 Americans are now dead from the coronavirus pandemic — and that many or most of those deaths did not need to occur. Even as this season of death begins to wind down — or so we hope — it has revealed the nation’s character in ways both spectacular and grotesque.

Americans often overlook or forget that the U.S. is part of a global community. Pandemics do not respect borders in an interconnected global economy and culture. The nativism and racism of Trumpism and his “America First” cadre did little if anything to protect America and the world from the coronavirus plague. Such regressive values and beliefs made the pandemic worse, in fact, by hindering America’s willingness to cooperate with its allies and international partners to defeat the disease.

The Republican Party and the contemporary conservative movement frequently claim to be “pro-life.” During the pandemic they have once again revealed their true nature as a death cult, where at almost every key moment Trump and other Republican leaders, as well as their followers, made decisions that caused more death, suffering and calamity from the coronavirus pandemic and its fallout across society.

American society is profoundly unequal in terms of race, class and gender. The coronavirus pandemic further revealed and exacerbated these fissures and divides, and has also accelerated the power and growth of the surveillance society and the corporate oligarchy.

Many of the worst traits of American society, including racism, nativism, gun culture, conspiratorial thinking, anti-intellectualism, irrationality, narcissism, hyper-individualism and other anti-social ideas and behaviors have also been made worse by the Age of Trump and the pandemic. These divides have become increasingly political and ideological as Trumpists, Jim Crow Republicans, and other members of the right wing have transformed basic questions of public health and the common good into battlefields for white identity politics and a culture-war struggle between “freedom” and “political correctness.”

To be fair, the pandemic has highlighted some of the American people’s strengths as well. Despite threats of right-wing terrorist violence, the attempt by Trump and his supporters to nullify the election, and the illness and death from the coronavirus pandemic, many tens of millions of Americans voted to defend America’s multiracial democracy in the 2020 election. The risks were especially great for Black and brown people, who — as at many other key points in America’s history — organized, voted and stood up against white supremacy at the polls and other areas of public life to save democracy for all people.

In their self-sacrifice, risk-taking, generosity of spirit, civic responsibility and true patriotism, many Americans expanded their circle of community, friends and family to help others survive the coronavirus pandemic and all the pain and suffering it has caused.

But where do we go from here? To explore that question, I recently spoke with Gregg Gonsalves, a leading expert on public health, social inequality and health outcomes. He is co-director of the Global Health Justice Partnership and assistant professor of epidemiology (specializing in microbial diseases) at the Yale School of Public Health. Gonsalves is also a leading HIV/AIDS activist, having worked for more than 30 years with such organizations as the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, the Treatment Action Group, Gay Men’s Health Crisis and the AIDS and Rights Alliance for Southern Africa.

In this conversation, Gonsalves reflects on the vast harm caused by the pandemic and the Age of Trump, and how it will require a broad approach to healing American society. He explains how full recovery from the coronavirus pandemic will require a national reckoning and steps towards substantive justice that should include a truth and reconciliation committee.

Gonsalves also warns that the coronavirus pandemic has caused intergenerational trauma and pain in terms of health, the economy, social capital and in other ways which will impact the United States and its people for decades to come.

Toward the end of this conversation, Gonsalves shares his hopeful vision of a more progressive American future, in which the Biden administration may be able to sustain the momentum and public support gained from its forceful efforts to defeat the coronavirus pandemic.

More than 550,000 Americans are dead from the coronavirus pandemic, and the real number is likely much higher. It appears that there will be no accountability for this disaster. The whole situation is enraging. How are you handling your emotions? What do we do with our collective anger and pain?

There are several elements at play here. This year, 2021, is quite different from last year. There are vaccines. Trump is no longer president. Last year I was a ball of anger, and rightly so. Every time I would think that I was overreacting to the situation I would realize that perhaps I was not reacting enough — and that the amount of rage the American people were feeling should have been greater. If so, many more lives could have been saved from the pandemic. To be fair, many people did the right thing and stayed at home at various points during the pandemic. It could have been a lot worse. However, we can look around the world and see how many other countries such as New Zealand and Australia did much better in terms of stomping down on the virus and putting systems in place to buffer the pain and suffering caused by the pandemic and efforts to stop it.

In retrospect it was not only Donald Trump, and it was not just Bolsonaro in Brazil. There are many countries that did not do what was best to stop the pandemic. There is so much anger, grief and sadness. The pandemic has caused a cataclysm of enormous proportions. More than half a million people have lost their lives so far to the pandemic here in the United States. What does it mean to go through a generational calamity like that? Few Americans have any experience with such a thing.

What does accountability look like? I believe that there should be a truth and reconciliation commission. There should be public hearings about the decisions made by the Trump regime, about the pandemic and other matters. How do we as a country and society move forward properly if there is no accountability?

We do need accountability. This is beyond putting people in the hot seat and bringing people to justice. If we cannot have an honest and transparent reckoning of what happened last year and what’s happening now with the pandemic, then there is no way we will be able to conduct a proper diagnosis which will reveal how to stop another pandemic disaster such as the one we as a society experienced last year.

Yes, we need a truth and reconciliation commission, which is the best way to go about this business so that it does not turn into some sort of witch hunt. The commission needs to be independent. There is a strong pressure to just move on from these events. The pressure is political and personal. People are just tired. People do not want to hear any more about how this all came to be, with Trump and the events last year. But we cannot just sweep it all under the carpet. A truth and reconciliation commission is not intended to drag people out into the public square for a flogging. It is to have an accounting and itemization of all the ways we went wrong, so as to figure out how to keep it from happening again.

If such a commission were ever convened, what are two questions you would contribute?

We need an independent inquiry on the Trump administration’s response to COVID-19 because the policies embraced by the former president resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans since the pandemic began. However, it’s the manner in which these policies were accomplished, silencing scientists, suppressing the data or manipulating it, spreading misinformation, interfering in the work of agencies, which all needs to be documented in detail. How did it happen? How did our systems of governance and accountability fail so terribly, to allow the entire U.S. government to be put in service of policies that led to so many deaths?

The Trump regime and its allies and enablers were engaged in acts of structural violence against the American people, in terms of the pandemic and other ways. See the abandonment of Puerto Rico after the hurricane and a general disregard for the lives of Americans who did not vote for Trump and the Republicans. But there are many Americans who because of their class background or skin color or other forms of privilege cannot even conceptualize the very idea of structural violence and state-sponsored violence being committed by Trump and his regime against the American people.

It is slightly worse than what you are describing. Of course, for people who have experienced structural violence, whether they are people of color or they are queer and trans people, those who are living with disabilities and other groups, they understand the dynamic.

There are in fact plenty of white people who have experienced structural violence, but they do not acknowledge or conceptualize it in those terms. The art of the con is distraction. In so many ways racism has been used to divert and distract people by focusing their pain on other groups. As Jonathan Metzl explains in his most recent book “Dying of Whiteness”, there are plenty of people who are dying of whiteness and they don’t even know it.

How will the trauma of the pandemic impact future generations?

There was recent research which shows that for everybody who dies from COVID-19, there are half a dozen or more people who are in that direct network of grief. Take 500,000 or more people here in the U.S. who have died from the pandemic and multiply that out by five, six, seven, eight, nine or more people. These are the people in the direct circle of grief, such as mothers and fathers, sisters, daughters, grandparents, etc. Extend it out another circle to people who were best friends or long-term co-workers, and you have a cascading effect of grief and trauma that is going to impact people for a long time. The pandemic and its effects have ripped apart the social fabric in so many ways. It is going to take a lot to stitch that back together.

America’s infrastructure impacts the country’s social fabric as well. Contrary to what many Republicans and other members of the white right would like to believe, racism and other forms of social inequality are in fact baked into the infrastructure of the United States. This is shown through disparate health impacts from the pandemic across different groups and communities.

Pete Buttigieg recently discussed how racism is built into American highways. Of course it is. Urban renewal, the American highway system, figures such as Robert Moses and others destroyed communities of color. If you read the interchange between Buttigieg and his critics, and you consider Robert Moses, it’s clear that he set up the parkways on Long Island to keep African Americans away from the suburbs and beaches and parks. But more importantly, this root shock of displacement and urban renewal fractures families and communities, and makes them vulnerable to many diseases, both psychological and physical. There are many ways in which social policy presents serious complications for health and well-being.

New research shows that Black children are more likely to lose a parent or other primary caregiver from the pandemic, compared to white children. In terms of stress and trauma how is that going to impact future generations?

We do not need to discuss epigenetics in order to understand how a person’s situation at present can have long-lasting effects on one’s genes. Children who face trauma pass things down through culture. The opportunities that kids have today are dependent on the wealth of their parents before them, for instance. Inheritances in their many forms are passed along, for good or for bad, across generations. This is the story of intergenerational social mobility and life chances.

What does all the anxiety, distrust and fear around the COVID vaccines reveal about American society?

Last year was epic in terms of the mistrust and misinformation that was spawned across the United States. It does not matter which side of the political aisle one is on, there was this feeling that someone was deceiving and tricking you. It could be Trump or Pelosi, depending on one’s political values and beliefs. There was a huge campaign of disinformation from Trump’s White House. We saw this with “fake news,” for example. And now we’re in 2021, and there is skepticism about the vaccines and many people do not know what to believe. These are people who are otherwise sensible in many other aspects of their lives, but are very nervous about what it means to put a vaccine into their bodies, given all the mixed messaging. We need to build a culture of trust. Unfortunately, we have had the opposite of that over the past four years.

During this season of death, I have been thinking a great deal about the landmark docudrama about AIDS and HIV, “And The Band Played On.” In the near future, what do you think artists will focus on and reveal about the coronavirus plague?

These cataclysms have a tendency to capture artists’ imaginations. The artists are going to start to tell us what they saw. We are going to see a mirror up to ourselves about what this all meant.

What would sewing back together America’s social fabric look like, as a practical matter? What would you focus on repairing?

This is a task that will take a generation or more to accomplish. The legacy of white supremacy in the U.S. has a 400-year history, which has had a strong influence on how our health care and social welfare systems have been set up in the 20th and 21st centuries. Writers like Jim Downs, in his “Sick From Freedom: African American Sickness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction,” and the New York Times’ Jeneen Interlandi in her essay for the 1619 Project, “Why doesn’t the United States have universal health care? The answer has everything to do with race,” point to the ways in which universalizing care in the U.S. has been impossible because the exclusion of African Americans from these programs has been the not-so-secret motivation of many in power, and that is still true in the U.S. today.

Furthermore, since the 1980s we have been told that the market would provide, and in the words of Ronald Reagan, “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.'” That is, the state has no role in our lives, particularly in the realm of care, which is to be purchased or given away by charitable organizations. Democrats like Bill Clinton did us no favors by yoking the Democratic Party to this kind of thinking in his own pledge to end welfare as we know it, with his welfare reform bill that in the long run reduced the incomes of the poor and expanded extreme poverty in the U.S. The U.S. spends more on health care than our peer nations around the world, yet has worse health outcomes. Betsy Bradley at Vassar has suggested that some of this has to do with the weak nature of our social protections in the U.S., in that we cannot address the social determinants of health with a paltry welfare state. Unless we confront this legacy of Reaganism and its Clintonian appeasement, we will never even catch up to our peer nations, because we’ll never make the investments necessary to get there.

What would justice look like for the 550,000-plus dead from this disaster? For their families and communities?

This is a critical question. Many are dead because of the policies the Trump administration pursued. Tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands. What is justice in this context? There is clearly no appetite for holding President Trump accountable. Two attempts at impeachment resulted in acquittal in the Senate, and it’s unlikely that he will ever be held accountable for what he did to fuel the fires of the pandemic in the U.S. This is why a truth and reconciliation approach is vital — we need to know what happened in detail, and perhaps the best way to do that is to tell people to come forward to tell us what they did, without fear of retribution. Believe me, I am so angry about what happened over the past year or so. But I am more interested in knowing how it all happened, how it was allowed to happen. I want it to all come out into the open — the lies, the misinformation, the bullying, the corruption and graft — for all to see, to know who didn’t simply remain silent but actively assisted in pushing these policies along.

Given the myriad forces at work in this moment, one that feels truly transformative both in terms of possibilities for positive change and also great right-wing backlash and destruction, what do you see as opportunities for transformation in American society?

I came into 2021 with the idea that we were getting a middle-of-the-road, Clintonian Obama restoration. Instead, we have a president in the form of Joe Biden who wanted a $2 trillion COVID relief bill. Now he wants another multi-trillion-dollar bill for infrastructure and other issues. Biden is articulating a progressive vision that was probably last seen with President Johnson. We are witnessing what is potentially a generational shift by the oldest president in American history, where the United States could finally leave the Reagan era behind. But we must be aware of how incredibly powerful the reactionary forces are.

I’m more hopeful than ever over the past few months. I’m ready to fight for this more progressive vision being offered by Biden. We should all be ready to fight for it, because as a society we cannot go back to where we were last year, or anything like it.

GOP’s free speech problem: Republicans push anti-protest bills across the country

Amid the Republican-led push to crack down on protesters in the wake of the Georgia Floyd protests, state lawmakers throughout the country are now attempting to lessen penalties for drivers who unintentionally kill protestors blocking roadways.

In Oklahoma, Republican lawmakers approved a bill that grants civil and criminal immunity to motorists who kill or injure protesters “fleeing from a riot.” The bill, HB 1674, now headed to the Republican governor’s desk, states the following:

“A motor vehicle operator who unintentionally causes injury or death to an individual shall not be criminally or civilly liable for the injury or death, if […] the injury or death of the individual occurred while the motor vehicle operator was fleeing from a riot […] under a reasonable belief that fleeing was necessary to protect the motor vehicle operator from serious injury or death.”

The bill, just the state’s latest in a series of GOP-backed bills taking aim at protesters, according to The Oklahoman.

“Maybe the way to prevent something like this from ever happening again is to make reforms on the broader systemic issue,” Oklahoma Rep. Monroe Nichols said in a sharp rebuke of the bill in a floor debate, pointing to the undergirding biases within the criminal justice system. He added that he did not look forward to having to tell his son that Oklahoma “made it so that folks who may advocate for people who look like [his son] can be run over with immunity.”

State Republicans have countered that the bill merely attempts to protect drivers in harm’s way, as Rep. Kevin McDugle, the Republican who introduced the bill to the Oklahoma House, argued. “This bill simply says, ‘please stay to the peaceful protests. Don’t block roads. Don’t impede on the freedoms of others.”

A similar legislative effort is being mounted in Tennessee, where last month state legislatures proposed a bill that would grant immunity to drivers who hit protesters and allow the state to charge protesters who block roadways with a felony.

The bill, HB 0513, “provides that a person operating a motor vehicle who is exercising due care and unintentionally causes injury or death to another person […] will be immune from prosecution for the injury or death.” Tennessee tried to enact a similar bill in 2017, but the bill died in the Senate Judiciary Committee, according to CNN.

Brandon Tucker, the policy director of the ACLU’s Tennessee chapter, called HB 0513 “disturbing.”

“This legislation would suppress protest by turning obstruction of traffic into a felony offense, robbing individuals of their right to vote if they are convicted of these new felony charges,” he told CNN. “It also offers immunity to drivers who run over protesters in the road and criminalizes speech that causes ’emotional distress’ to or ‘frightens’ another person. This vague and troubling suppression of free speech can easily be abused, leading to the criminalization of protesters’ words and beliefs.”

“It’s the Republican response to the social justice protests a year ago, but nothing to the insurrection we saw in Washington D.C.,” NAACP Tennessee legal redress Van Turner echoed. “I shouldn’t lose my right to vote because I’m exercising my first amendment right to peacefully assemble in a protest,” he added, drawing on the fact that felons are stripped of their right to vote.

Controversial as they might be, anti-protest bills of this nature are nothing new. Although Republican state lawmakers have been emboldened by Democratic President Joe Biden’s election to pick fights at the state level, they were similarly activated by Trump’s election back in 2016.

As Salon’s Sophia Tesfaye noted, “In the week following Donald Trump’s stunning presidential victory, Republicans elected to lower-level offices across the nation have pushed forward some radically right-wing legislation, including a total ban on abortions and the sanctioning of protest as ‘economic terrorism.'” Washington state Republican Senator Doug Ericksen introduced a bill that would allow state authorities to charge protesters with “economic terrorism” if they participated in illegal demonstrations or coerced private citizens into doing so.

“We are not just going after the people who commit these acts of terrorism,” Ericksen explained. “We are going after the people who fund them. Wealthy donors should not feel safe in disrupting middle-class jobs.”

Back in 2017, states like North Dakota and Utah saw similar bills seeking to protect drivers against penalties for hitting protesters. Similarly, the Kentucky state Senate passed a bill just this year criminalizing the act of insulting a police officer. This week, a spate of four anti-protest bills were also introduced to the Ohio state legislature, all designed to protect citizens from the “lawlessness” seen during the Georgia Floyd protests. And Florida is on the cusp of passing an anti-protest bill that would similarly criminalize protesters for blocking roadways.

According to the International Center for Not-For-Profit Law, which tracks anti-protest bills around the country, 27 bills have been enacted that restrict the right to peaceful assembly, with 71 bills still pending. Just about every U.S. state legislature has considered a bill of this nature.

Protests against police killings spread across America as Chauvin trial wraps up

Racial justice advocates and critics of police violence took to the streets for protests in multiple U.S. cities Friday night and over the weekend as the trial of Derek Chauvin — the former officer accused of murdering George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, last year — neared its conclusion in Minnesota.

While jurors in the Chauvin trial have heard from seven witnesses for the defense and 38 for the prosecution, the ex-cop on Thursday invoked his Fifth Amendment right to not testify. Closing arguments are expected on Monday. The jury, which will be sequestered during deliberations, could deliver a verdict next week.

Chauvin has pleaded not guilty to second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. If convicted, he could face up to 40, 25 and 10 years in prison for the charges, respectively. CNN noted that the defense has used a “three-prong strategy for clearing the officer of culpability: Floyd died from drug and health problems; Chauvin’s use of force was ugly but appropriate; and a hostile crowd of bystanders distracted the former officer.”

"It is very hard to see how this man could be acquitted," @chrislhayes says on the Derek Chauvin trial. "But there is a history of police violence against unarmed Black people recorded on camera that has not led to convictions."https://t.co/XBDi0vQfYI

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) April 16, 2021

“Their goal was to throw a bunch of arguments out there and hope that something resonated with the jurors, but I just think it’s too much to overcome with that video,” said CNN legal analyst Jennifer Rodgers, referring to footage of Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck as he gasped that he couldn’t breathe. The video circulated on social media, sparking national protests and demands for not only justice but also reforms.

In the wake of recent police shootings, several cities have seen more demonstrations.

Thousands of people on Friday marched and rallied in Chicago, where police killed 13-year-old Adam Toledo in late March. Videos and other materials released Thursday revealed the boy had his empty hands raised when an officer fatally shot him. Further fueling outrage over Toledo’s death, the president of the city’s police union called the shooting “100% justified” and the officer’s actions “heroic.”

Chanting “We love you, we, we, love you” to members of Adam Toledo’s family.

#ChicagoProtests #AdamToledo pic.twitter.com/8izF7D87HX

— Vashon Jordan Jr. (@vashon_photo) April 17, 2021

By Friday evening, “several hundred people had gathered in Logan Square Park with plans to march to Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s house nearby, though police barricades kept them from getting too close,” reported ABC 7 Chicago. As the crowd grew, “many in attendance said they were there to protest a system of policing that simply isn’t working, and they wanted the mayor to hear that message.”

Andrea Popoca, who joined the demonstration, carrying a sign with Toledo’s name on it, told the Chicago Sun-Times that “this keeps happening and it simply needs to stop.”

“We’re here to show our support for the community in this unjustified murder,” the 26-year-old said. “That video was sickening and we were mortified when we saw it.”

Hundreds have gathered in Chicago to protest the police killing of 13-year-old Adam Toledo pic.twitter.com/53CVZK8MzG

— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) April 16, 2021

In Washington, demonstrators gathered Friday night at Black Lives Matter Plaza then marched through the nation’s capital, demanding an end to police brutality and calling out the names of people killed by police, including Toledo and 20-year-old Daunte Wright, who was fatally shot by an officer during a traffic stop in Minnesota last week, according to The Hill.

“I don’t wanna say another MF’n name”#DCProtests against Police Terror pic.twitter.com/DQ5XUBNBvJ

— #StopCopCity (@ChuckModi1) April 17, 2021

At least 100 people protesting Wright’s killing were arrested outside police headquarters in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, on Friday in the sixth straight night of demonstrations. Police declared the gathering — which grew to about 1,000 people, according to the Star Tribune — unlawful, and an 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew was set.

As the Tribune reported:

Earlier in the evening, Tiffany Burns, the sister of Jamar Clark, who was killed by Minneapolis police in 2015, and Toshira Garraway, founder of Families Supporting Families Against Police Violence, were among the demonstrators present.

“We want a federal investigation into all these departments — the ones that have murdered our loved ones, to be prosecuted and charged, cases reopened,” Garraway said when asked what justice means to her.

Kim Potter, the police officer who shot Wright, resigned from the force last Tuesday and was charged with second-degree manslaughter on Wednesday. If convicted, she could face up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $20,000.

This is the moment police charged the crowd in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, tonight. pic.twitter.com/XvMkhy0ZFz

— Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs (@NickAtNews) April 17, 2021

U.S. District Judge Wilhelmina M. Wright on Friday evening granted the ACLU-MN’s request for a temporary restraining order against the heads of the state Department of Public Safety, Minnesota State Patrol and their officers to stop law enforcement from arresting, threatening, seizing the equipment of or using chemical agents or physical force — including flash bangs, non-lethal projectiles and riot batons — against journalists covering the protests in Minnesota.

@AFPphoto journalist @EleonoreSens and another member of the press is maced by Minnesota Police after an unlawful assembly is declared in Brooklyn Center, MN pic.twitter.com/WD2fC0KwvO

— Alex Kent (@AlexKentTN) April 17, 2021

“The judge found evidence that state law enforcement is attacking and harassing journalists covering the Daunte Wright protests, and there’s danger of this behavior continuing with the upcoming Derek Chauvin verdict,” said ACLU-MN staff attorney Isabella Nascimento in a statement. “The troopers’ behavior is clearly intended to discourage journalists from documenting protests that are of great public importance and holding police and our government institutions accountable.”

Nascimento added that “although other law enforcement agencies aren’t part of the order, the judge makes it clear that this unconstitutional conduct designed to suppress free speech will not be tolerated, and we hope these other agencies will now willingly choose to change their behavior to conform with the order.”

In my 25 years as a reporter I have NEVER heard police in America actually say “journalists will be arrested” during a protests. But that happened in #BrooklynCenter last night. We stayed. The citizens are why we stay. I took this moments aft the announcement #DaunteWright pic.twitter.com/rMU0fEyJKU

— Sara Sidner (@sarasidnerCNN) April 14, 2021

Photojournalist Tim Evans reports that he just was tackled, hit in the face and arrested by troopers as they kettled protesters outside the Brooklyn center police department. He had his credentials clearly displayed around his neck. He is bruised but ok. pic.twitter.com/KoqVyMh6vW

— Ben Hovland (@benjovland) April 17, 2021

CNN reported that “police in Portland, Oregon, said they used pepper spray and smoke canisters to break up a crowd that gathered on Friday as they investigated the fatal shooting of a suspect by police in Lents Park.” By the afternoon, about 100 people had gathered at the park, according to KATU News.

The evening brought “a Black Lives Matter march and speech event along the downtown waterfront,” after which a crowd marched and chanted, “stand up, fight back!” reported Oregon Public Broadcasting.

There’s about 100 people listening to speeches on how to help Black people and dismantle white supremacy pic.twitter.com/mxHNNHo595

— Sergio Olmos (@MrOlmos) April 17, 2021

Later Friday, “activists seeking to abolish police caused damage to several buildings in downtown Portland,” according to OPB. Police declared the incident a riot and made several arrests.

Here’s how scientists calculated how many T. Rexes lived on Earth

The Tyrannosaurus rex is perhaps the most iconic of all the dinosaurs, immortalized in film, children’s toys and silly Halloween costumes. Its name translates into “king of the tyrant lizards,” and its fearsome profile makes it clear why: T. Rex had a massive head, powerful jaws, razor-sharp teeth and a whip-like tail. (Although its puny arms are a comic contrast to the rest of its visage.) The T. Rex is believed to have been one of the largest land carnivores of all time, more than 40 feet long and 12 feet tall at the hips.

But like many extinct animals, it is hard to know just how much of a threat the T. Rex was during its reign. (Notably, for years there was debate over whether T. Rex was a predator or scavenger, though recently the scientific consensus tilts towards predator.) Were they as common as rabbits, or highly dispersed predators like snow leopards?

A group of scientists led by University of California Museum of Paleontology director Charles R. Marshall set out to answer just that. They believe they can now roughly estimate how many T. Rexes roamed the planet.

Their estimate is roughly 2.5 billion specimens that roamed Earth collectively during their existence, which lasted a few million years. (They would likely have lived more generations if not for the extinction event likely caused by either a meteor or comet 66 million years ago.)

The researchers, who published their findings in Science Magazine, estimate that the abundances of T. Rexes at any given period was roughly 20,000 individuals, and that they lived for roughly 127,000 generations. To put that in context with today’s predator populations, that 20,000 number is comparable to today’s African lion population, which conservationists estimate at 25,000.

The scientists arrived at their estimate using a wide range of data. For one thing, they took into account a principle known as Damuth’s Law, which holds that species with larger body sizes will usually have lower average population densities. Because this formula includes individuals in a species that had not reached their maximum size, the scientists used an estimate for “postjuvenile individuals” — the T. Rex equivalent of an angsty teenager. (Now there is a sobering thought.) Once they had that information, they multiplied it by the estimated geographic area where paleontologists believe the monstrous beasts once roamed. They then incorporated what we know about when the T. Rex lived, although the scientists acknowledge that this figure is particularly unclear “because of the poor temporal control on most T. rex fossil localities and because there is a substantial dinosaur preservational gap below the oldest T. rex fossils.”

Since experts believe based on fossil evidence that they lived for anywhere from 1.2 million years to 3.6 million years, the team settled on the mean figure of 2.4 million years. From there, they plugged in other numbers until they eventually arrived at their estimates.

Despite their short reign over the planet — one regrettably cut short by the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary Extinction Event — the fact that another bipedal predator would perform a census of them 66 million years later speaks to their cultural immortality.

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11 strange stories from the national UFO reporting center

Since its founding in 1974, the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) has served as a non-judgmental hub where you can share — via hotline or written report — any potentially otherworldly experience you’ve had. The online archive contains thousands of these stories, which range from UFO and alien sightings to other unexplained phenomena. The NUFORC doesn’t question the veracity of the reports, and it doesn’t always speculate about possible causes, either. In fact, the organization encourages a healthy skepticism about what you read on its site.

Decide for yourself whether each eerie tale below is the result of extraterrestrial intervention, military experimentation, a scientific anomaly, or just a misunderstanding — that is, if you believe them at all.

1. Too much hair, too little time // 1969

On a weekend trip to Boulder, Colorado, in 1969, a young member of the Air Force was in bed when his motel room suddenly darkened, “followed by a bright flash of light.” The next day, he realized his half-inch-long hair was now almost two inches long, a mystery that his roommate “totally freaked out” about when he returned to the base in Aurora, Colorado. “He wasn’t sure what to think of my story, but did realize there was glaring physical evidence,” the airman recalled. Though he didn’t remember anything else from that night, he speculated in his report that he had been abducted (and presumably taken to a place where time passes more quickly than it does on Earth). “I still have trouble remembering many things, as it has always been very ‘foggy’ since that time,” he said.

2. The long-armed collector // 1971

At about 10 p.m. one summer night in 1971, two teenage girls crept from their houses in Sunnyvale, California, and met up for a neighborhood stroll. All was still and silent for an hour or so, until they came upon a 20- to 30-foot flying ship hovering as low as the streetlights “probably a full five-minute walk ahead” of them. The friends watched it drift toward some nearby apartment buildings and appear to survey them, bobbing slightly up and down. “It had these great enormous arms on the sides that slowly swiveled around and they had lines on the ends, like ropes, but they weren’t ropes,” one of the friends explained in her report.

It didn’t make noise or light up, and it looked more like wood than metal. She got the impression it was “collecting things,” though she couldn’t see what was inside. The girls fled in terror when the aircraft abruptly turned its attention on them, and they tried in vain to convince the one friend’s father that they had seen something truly extraordinary. “He dismissed it and said it was probably just a weather balloon,” the witness wrote. “If I am sure of anything, it is that that thing was no weather balloon.”

3. Cows gone wild // 1975

Two friends were driving along the quiet country roads of La Fontaine, Indiana, after a fishing trip one evening in 1975. About a quarter mile away, a flying disc “with white lights revolving around it” appeared and lowered itself gradually until it was completely obscured by a nearby house. They followed it behind the house, but found only “cows running all over the road, frightened and mooing.” The cows had apparently torn right through the electric fence, and a neighbor soon showed up to see what all the fuss was about. “He asked if we knew what had happened because cows just don’t break down an electric fence for nothing,” the witness said. “We didn’t say anything about what we had just seen.”

4. The vanishing silver ship // 1979

From his front step in Wenatchee, Washington, a man watched a silver triangular aircraft with “no discernible fuselage, no wings or other protruding control devices” coast slowly over the tops of 150-foot-tall poplar trees. “A jet liner could not have stayed airborne at such a sedate rate of speed,” he recalled, and this was significantly larger than a Boeing 747. There wasn’t much time to wonder about the physics that kept the craft in flight, because it was drifting straight toward Burch Mountain. “My immediate thought was that a monstrous crash was imminent,” the witness explained, but it never came to pass. Instead, the UFO just disappeared.

The NUFORC actually vouched for this particular onlooker. “One of two excellent reports from [the] same witness,” they wrote in a note below his report. “We know this witness, and have spoken with him on several occasions. He formerly served in the U.S. military, and held a high security clearance.”

5. The glowing gray nighttime visitor // 1982

A man in Leicester, England, awoke one night in 1982 to find a soft light illuminating his room. It was coming from the face of a 4-foot-tall gray creature that resembled the classic aliens from 1977’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” The witness, “overwhelmed with a feeling of calm and peace,” pinched himself several times to make sure he wasn’t simply dreaming and scanned the room in vain for some other explanation. Knowing he’d have a tough time convincing anyone he was telling the truth, he nudged his wife awake so she could bear witness, too. But as soon as she stirred, the room went completely black and the visitor vanished. “Did I imagine or dream the whole thing?” he wrote in his report. “Absolutely one million percent no.”

6. The disembodied search beam // 1988

Three friends were on their way home from an INXS concert in Pittsburgh when they encountered a ball of light sweeping a “very bright beam of light” over the dark road and its surroundings. They promptly pulled over, and two of them exited the car so they could get a better look. (The third friend “remained in the car, screaming.”) Though the light resembled a helicopter’s search beam, “there was no hint of any craft or body emitting the beam, even when it faced away from us.” Furthermore, the whole scene was completely silent. They quickly returned to the car when the beam drew closer, and it suddenly darted away and disappeared into the night. When they resumed their journey, the radio played static before cutting out completely. “We heard a commentator say ‘…further evidence that there is life on Mars . . .’ and then it went back to static,” the witness reported.

7. A fiery Hoberman Sphere // 1991

Late one evening in 1991, a young man and his girlfriend parked the car in a peaceful spot overlooking the port of Olympia, Washington, and passed about half an hour “talking about life and random things.” Suddenly, what they thought was one abnormally bright star split into a sphere comprising roughly 20 points of light — much like a Hoberman sphere expands (“I found out many years later what a Hoberman Sphere is, and just about crapped myself the first time I saw one in motion its movement looked so similar,” the witness noted) — and rotated rapidly before contracting back into a single bright light. That light then glowed red and spit out five identical red lights, one by one, which pulsated in a synchronized manner as they flew through the sky in a straight line and eventually vanished. The witness actually managed to capture video footage of the event, but the camera only showed “a blank screen with a few strange flickering whitish dots on it that seem to come and go.”

“I am (after seeing it) hard pressed to believe it to be anything of ‘known’ terrestrial technology,” he wrote. “I have resigned to the likelihood that I will never know what it was at all.”

8. The Ides of March sightings // 1995

On March 15, 1995, the NUFORC received an influx of calls across several states from witnesses who saw a bright object flying through the night sky. The first of these so-called “Ides of March sightings” was reported by two men in Florida, who described it as “luminous,” “white,” and “disc-shaped,” though subsequent descriptions from others varied. A Tennessee caller thought it was more of a “blue-green ‘cloud of light'” that emitted sparks before vanishing, and a Missouri State Highway Patrol sergeant said it was a green light that turned yellow and suddenly snuffed out “like a light being switched off.” He also explained that many people called the patrol’s 911 dispatch line to report their own sightings, and one person claimed his cell phone and car radio both died when the UFO got close. Other reports came from Virginia, West Virginia, and Missouri.

“In summary, it appears that one or more egg-shaped objects, radiating intensely bright green, blue-green, and yellow light, and periodically spewing out a cloud of sparks, streaked over at least seven states, stopping from time to time, and the whole event occurred in a matter of minutes,” the NUFORC summarized in a case brief.

9. The Phoenix Lights // 1997

In March 1997, Arizona played host to what the NUFORC dubbed “perhaps the most dramatic UFO sighting” reported in a few years. Dozens of people from all over the state phoned the hotline to report having seen a group of white or red lights in a V formation flying across the sky. One man with flight experience estimated that the lights were about 1000 feet from the ground, and multiple people claimed the display was totally silent — making it unlikely that airplanes were responsible. When that same observer phoned Luke Air Force Base about the event, the operator told him they had received calls from many other witnesses, too. But according to the NUFORC, the base later claimed that nobody had called them about it.

After these “Phoenix Lights” received national media attention several months later, the military finally offered an explanation: The lights were just leftover flares that the Maryland Air National Guard had dropped at the end of an operation in Arizona. But some people remain unconvinced.

10. Elk, abducted // 1999

Three foresters were planting seedlings in Washington’s mountains when a gently wobbly disc-shaped aircraft appeared and drifted toward a herd of elk. Nearly all the animals fled together, but one set off in a different direction. The UFO positioned itself over the lone elk and beamed it right off the ground, though the observers couldn’t discern any “visible means of support,” attached to it. The UFO wobbled more, seemingly struggling with the weight of its prey, and eventually rose so high that the witnesses couldn’t see it anymore. They assumed the elk had somehow ended up inside the aircraft.

When NUFORC director Peter Davenport traveled to Washington to conduct an investigation, he was shown the carcass of a pregnant elk that had been found dead just a few miles from the UFO sighting. As for whether that was the same sorry creature that the UFO had supposedly targeted, we’ll almost definitely never know.

11. High-flying real estate // 2000

Shortly after 4 a.m. one morning in January 2000, Ed Barton, a police officer in Lebanon, Illinois, heard a dispatch about a strange UFO sighting at a neighboring police station. He looked up and saw the object for himself: two extraordinarily bright lights that seemed to merge into one even brighter light. He sped off in the object’s direction until it was almost overhead, and ballparked its altitude somewhere between 1000 and 1500 feet. It was triangular, with a light on each corner and many more along one end. The object abruptly shot through the sky so fast that Barton concluded it couldn’t possibly have been created by humans.

Other Illinois residents witnessed it, too. A Millstadt police officer named Craig Stevens thought it was between one and two stories tall, and “perhaps three stories long.” Highland resident Melvern Noll also likened it to a house. “There were big windows, about two and a half feet wide and five or six feet high, two stories, one on top of each other,” he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2010. “I still believe it was something from another planet.”

Though a spokesman for the nearby Scott Air Force Base is said to have claimed that the base’s radar had been shut off at the time and nobody had seen the UFO, other reports allege that the government was involved. The NUFORC received one report from “a highly reliable source” who said the Air National Guard jets “may have been ‘scrambled” to take a look at the object,'” and several other people even told the NUFORC that federal government employees visited police departments and citizen witnesses to ask that they “curtail all their statements to the press.”

“Game of Thrones” creator George R.R. Martin opens up about his struggles

“A Song of Ice and Fire” author and “Game of Thrones” creator George R.R. Martin has written an emotional new entry on his Not a Blog. To start, he admits that the Not a Blog has indeed become a blog, whatever ideas about it he had at first. And it sounds like he’s going through an intense time. “My life has become one of extremes these past few months,” he writes. “Some days I do not know whether to laugh or cry, to shoot off fireworks and dance in the streets or crawl back into bed and pull the covers over my head. The good stuff that has been happening to me has been very very very good, the kind of thing that will make a year, or a career. But the bad stuff that is happening has been very very very bad, and it is hard to cherish the good and feel the joy when the shadows are all around.”

The good stuff involves Martin signing a (reportedly) very lucrative deal with HBO. He confirms that he will be creating “new ‘GOT’ successor shows (and some non-related series, like ‘ROADMARKS’) for both HBO and HBO Max.” When we heard about the deal, we guessed that Martin would be working on some of the many “Game of Thrones” spin-off series in development, but it’s good to have confirmation. Martin expects to blog about it, “but not today.”

So far as the “very very very bad” stuff goes, Martin has been losing a lot of friends lately, some to COVID and some to other ailments that come with old age. “Alas, I am old, and so are many of my friends,” writes the 72-year-old author. “Valar morghulis, I guess.” You can see why he’d have some mixed feelings about his life, even after signing what he calls “the deal of a lifetime.”

Is George R.R. Martin about to finish “The Winds of Winter”?

I’m sure a lot of fans are wondering what, if anything, this means for “The Winds of Winter,” the long-in-coming sixth book in Martin’s “Song of Ice and Fire” series. Well, Martin doesn’t mention the book by name, but he does say one thing I find intriguing: “I am going to be leaving my cabin in a couple of months.”

Of late, Martin has been pretty optimistic about his prospects for finishing his novel. “I wrote hundreds and hundreds of pages of ‘The Winds of Winter’ in 2020,” he wrote in February. “The best year I’ve had on ‘WOW’ since I began it. Why? I don’t know. Maybe the isolation. Or maybe I just got on a roll . . . I still have hundreds of more pages to write to bring the novel to a satisfactory conclusion. That’s what 2021 is for, I hope.”

So far as “the isolation” goes, Martin is likely referring to a cabin in an undisclosed location he’s been retreating to so he can work on his book. He described his life there in yet another blog post:

Every morning I wake up and go straight to the computer. Then I start to write. Sometimes I stay at it until dark. Other days I break off in late afternoon to answer emails or return urgent phone calls. My assistant brings me food and drink from time to time. When I finally break off for the day, usually around sunset, there’s dinner. Then we watch television or screen a movie…Some nights I read instead.

It sounds lonely, but Martin admits that it’s been “good for the writing.” If he’s leaving this cabin in “a couple of months,” I wonder if it’s because he’s close to turning in a manuscript for The Winds of Winter.

And how will Martin balance his new TV responsibilities with writing the next (and presumably final) book in the “Song of Ice and Fire” series, “A Dream of Spring”? As Tyrion once told Varys, “one game at a time, my friend.”

Is there a scientific case for literature? A neuroscientist novelist argues yes

You do something strange every day. You consume fictions. It’s such an omnipresent habit, shared by all, that we rarely consider the oddity of it. I’m a fiction writer myself, but I’m also a neuroscientist, so this activity fascinates me. What’s the cognitive utility of learning things that aren’t true? We’re evolved biological beings who need to understand the world to survive, and yet all facts we learn about Hogwarts are literally false. How can any of this information be useful?

Still, fictions surround us. I grew up in my mother’s independent bookstore and I’ve been a writer since I can remember. A significant change in my lifetime is that media, like TV channels, books, magazines, and films, have been condensed into a single one-stop shop: the screen. I call this the supersensorium. Screens are now supermarkets for entertaining experiences. Such easy access to fictions means we often binge watch, we stuff our faces. The average American adult spends about half their day consuming screen media.

The situation is not helped by the fact that talk of an objective aesthetic spectrum has become verboten. For decades the dominant intellectual view has been that elitist notions of art should be deconstructed. The view originates with Pierre Bourdieu, who in his 1974 book “Distinction” argued “highbrow art” is merely the elite signaling their class difference. If you think this is a fringe opinion, please try raising your hand in the average college classroom and vigorously defending that some things are good art, and worthy of attention, and some things are not. Martin Scorseses’ lament that Marvel movies are not art drew swift opprobrium. Pierre Bourdieu is the second most-cited scholar of all time. The first is Michel Foucault.

This dismissal of an objective aesthetic spectrum means we lack any natural immunity to the ever-improving technological supersensorium. How we consume media is not an academic exercise. It can be life or death in a very real way. There is a serious possibility that as a culture we will disappear up our brainstem without a separation between art and shlock. At minimum, an unchecked supersensorium leads to economic stagnation, psychological depression, and robs from both people and populations. Who among us does it not touch? There are people who destroy their lives with computer games as surely as if they were mainlining heroin.

Just like with our modern abundance of food, the solution is not to cut consumption but to replace it, to swap out cookies for kale. The solution to the modern supersensorium is not to swear off fictions, it is to offer concrete reasons to actually believe in an aesthetic spectrum. Reasons to attend to art.

But what could such an objective justification of art and fictions be? I offer that there is a hint buried deep in our biology. Evolution itself selected for fictions far before humans arrived on the scene. Millions of years ago animals began to dream. Mammalian brains come with a natural storyteller built in, the originator of your dog’s soft-throated whine, your kitten’s clutching paws. The same question emerges: why would evolution select for the creation of an inner fabulist to spin your own “1,001 Arabian Nights”?

A possible answer comes from artificial neural networks, which face a ubiquitous issue during learning: they can overfit to a particular data set. In overfitting the network learns too well, that is, it pays too much attention to the particular quirks of what it’s learning and creates stereotypes, assumptions, and biases. Solutions to overfitting in deep learning are often based on adding random noise to data. For example, the problem of overfitting can be solved by adding in sparse data (dropout) or hallucinatory data (domain randomization) as the network is learning.

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It’s notable that consciousness in dreams is structured a certain way. Dreams are sparse. Text is impossible to read in a dream, cellphones useless — the dream world is low resolution. Dreams are also hallucinatory, containing category-breaking elements and odd time shifts. I think it’s likely that in the daily life of animals they are under-sampling their environment, which makes their brains susceptible to overfitting. The brain can’t finesse its learning during the day, because injecting noise during waking life might cause an organism to jump off a cliff. So it does it when the body is asleep.

This is called the Overfitted Brain Hypothesis. It posits that the daily overfitting faced by smart learners like ourselves and other mammals is combatted by dreams. Thus it is precisely the randomness and weirdness of dreams, their disconnect from waking life, that gives them their purpose. The low-resolution fabulism of dreams is not a bug, but a feature.

The Overfitted Brain Hypothesis may explain more than just the function of dreams. After all, what are fictions but artificial dreams? Perhaps time spent reading novels, or watching TV, is not actually time off from learning, but rather a kind of post-hoc adjustment of our mental models.

How can we justify an objective aesthetic spectrum from the Overfitted Brain Hypothesis? It can at least tell us what art isn’t. Some fictions not only fail to combat overfitting, but actively contribute to it. When plots are stereotyped, when characters become caricatures, when artificiality and predictability rear their heads, that’s when our aesthetic impulse tells us something is bad, and that also seems to be when a fiction is furthest from doing its job.

While this idea is obviously speculative, it’s undeniable that we humans don’t stop learning when the TV powers on. So it’s not much of a leap to say that at the bottom of the aesthetic spectrum are fictions that make your model of the world simpler. More constrained, more fitted to the obvious — such things do nobody any cognitive favors. And this just happens to synch up nicely with widely-held notions of aesthetics. It provides a much needed scientifically-based justification of an objective aversion for works at the bottom of the aesthetic spectrum, seeing them as “mind candy” consisting of empty calories.

“Arrêter!” Pierre Bourdieu might yell from beyond the grave. It’s still the case that upper classes distinguish themselves via “elite activities,” like difficult novel reading, while TV watching is relegated to the lower class. First, such distinctions are rarely espoused anymore. But second, there are objective differences between media. Of course art is possible in any medium. Yet there are biases or abilities that different media exhibit that give them advantages for certain types of stories. In the case of literature, the novel’s inimitable power is its close connection to human consciousness.

In the real world, the contents of another’s consciousness are inferable only from their actions — encased behind bone, minds are invisible, and humans are forced to live looking at the “extrinsic perspective” of the world. However, characters in a novel can be splayed open, minds made viewable, in a way that is metaphysically impossible for a real person, or even a TV character. By taking the “intrinsic perspective” on the world, novels can refer to conscious experiences as directly as they can refer to physical events.

Any novelist worth their ink knows this implicitly. Writers in other media know it too. There’s a reason why the best TV shows or computer games try hard to get inside the minds of their characters, a feat novels accomplish so effortlessly. For example, in the consensus king of “Golden Age” TV shows, “The Sopranos,” episodes are often based around therapy sessions to compensate for the fact that we are looking at Tony Soprano from the extrinsic perspective. The most artful computer games, like “Planescape: Torment” or “Disco Elysium,” are so good precisely because their text-based nature allows them to take the intrinsic perspective. Novels are the best medium for showing what it is like to be someone, and therefore technologically irreplaceable. And yes, this probably means they are on average higher on the aesthetic spectrum, for what is a more important subject than human interiority?

It’s not a coincidence my own novel, “The Revelations,” out this month, takes place in the world of scientific research into consciousness. By following the murder of a neuroscientist, the writer side of myself got to show off what it is like to be a scientist. And I got to ask questions like: can a scientific theory of consciousness tell us what it is like to be someone? Or can only novels do that? The Overfitted Brain Hypothesis was also in the back of mind while writing the book. So while “The Revelations” contains aspects of genres like murder mystery, romance, and Lovecraftian horror, I was always trying to create chromatic variations that also broke free from them.

Of course, like any artist I can’t step outside myself to ultimately say if the product is any good. It’s impossible to scientifically design art from the top-down, and in the end the scientist in me had to fade off stage entirely. But I can at least say “The Revelations” won’t contribute to any overfitting. I don’t feel like I added just another icon to the supersensorium. And maybe that’s what we writers should strive for. Maybe that’s enough.

Here’s everything you need to know about making, buying and cooking with infused olive oil

I have a few strongly-held beliefs guiding my home cooking this spring. 1) A well-constructed snack plate is a complete and worthy dinner. 2) Green goddess dressing is due a renaissance. And 3) Everyone should make or buy one good bottle of infused olive oil.

Infused olive oil is sometimes made by steeping fresh or dried herbs, citrus peels or spices in olive oil until the flavor has completely absorbed. It can also be made by flash-frying herbs or spices in olive oil and straining the oil for later use.

And when I tell you that it can change your meals instantly, I’m being completely serious. I use olive oil a ton in my daily cooking, so using it also to lend more flavor to my food — especially for meals that are in steady rotation in my kitchen and have begun to verge on monotony — is an immediate win. Come warmer weather, I’m always ready to reach for my citrus-infused oils. But there are so many flavor options out there that there’s room for versatility.

It’s also really easy to make at home with items from your windowsill garden, those almost-wilted herbs languishing in your fridge or spices that have almost outlived their peak freshness. There are also some absolutely gorgeous store bought bottles if you’re past the point of pandemic-era DIY culinary projects.

Here’s your Saucy-approved guide to infused oils.

How do I infuse oil at home?

Cold infusion is probably the simplest way to start out making flavored oils at home. Use a food processor or spice mill to very finely mince fresh or small ingredients like tender herbs, fresh chili peppers, cloves of garlic, peppercorns or citrus peel. Combine with the oil, mixing until fully incorporated. For a stronger flavor, allow the mixture to rest for longer — up to four hours. Once you’re ready, completely strain the solids from the oil and store it in the refrigerator for up to one week.

Typically, you’ll want to add a half cup to a cup of loosely-packed unchopped herbs to a quart of oil, but you can adjust based on herb potency and personal preference.

Consider this an opportunity to get creative with flavor profiles you already like in other dishes. One of my favorite combinations has been a chive and black peppercorn-infused olive oil, which made for a killer salad dressing (my blood orange and rosemary-infused oil was just a touch too herbaceous).

If you plan on using dried ingredients — like preserved citrus peel or dried herbs and chiles — you can try heated infusion. Slowly heat a quart of oil to no higher than 150 degrees. Add the oil to a covered container (a Mason jar would be ideal) and add the ingredients to steep with the oil. Since this mixture does not have to be refrigerated, don’t use any fresh ingredients or you could risk contamination.

Can I buy infused oil?

Store-bought infused oils have some definite pros and cons. The biggest upsides is that most are shelf stable and you don’t have to worry about the food safety involved in making them at home. I’ve also purchased some infused oils that are absolutely magical; Brightland’s special edition ARDOR oil made with red chili peppers, chipotle peppers and paprika is a recent example, as is Fustini’s blood orange olive oil.

However, the issue with some store-bought olive oils is that, until you reach a certain price point, they can taste really artificial — like overwhelmingly pungent or even a little rancid. Nice infused olive oil starts at about $25 for 12 ounces, but it’s absolutely worth it to get the good stuff.

* * *

Once you make or buy infused olive oil, what do you do with it? Here are some suggestions:

Vinaigrettes and Dips

So, you can and should just straight up dip things (bread, pita, crudités) into good infused oil. It’s one of the easiest and most satisfying snacks — or snack-dinners when you just can’t bring yourself to turn on the oven, especially with sweltering temperatures on the horizon.

But flavored oils are also a shortcut to more flavorful dressings and dips. A standard vinaigrette has a basic ratio behind it: three parts oil to one part acid. With that in mind, give yourself permission to get creative. Try combining habanero-infused oil with lime juice and some finely-chopped cilantro. Go for garlic-infused oil with lemon juice and fresh dill and parsley.

Additionally, as I’ve written before, I’m a big fan of really simple homemade dips. Whisk together some chive oil with labneh and a handful of leftover herbs for a creamy vegetable dip, or use flavored oil to give some oomph to homemade hummus, pesto or romesco.

Pasta

Another place where you’ll notice an immediate difference from using flavored olive oil is when making pasta. Toss garlic-infused olive oil with spaghetti, red pepper flakes and some parmesan cheese for a quick play on spaghetti aglio e olio. Do the same with lemon-infused olive oil and a splash of heavy cream for a lazy spaghetti al limone.

For a simple, no-cook pasta sauce, combine fresh or canned crushed tomatoes with basil-infused olive oil and a generous (more generous than you think) pinch of salt. It’s perfect spooned over supermarket tortellini or frozen gnocchi for a dinner that comes together in about 15 minutes.

Also, next time you make lasagna, use rosemary-infused olive oil to finish your mushrooms or sausage before layering it in.

Greens, Beans and Proteins

Infused oils are also a great way to give pantry staples a lift, especially if you’re stuck in a dreaded flavor rut. Some preparations that have personally changed my at-home lunches: quickly fry an egg in chili-infused olive oil and toss it over some leftover rice and scallions; drizzle lemon-infused olive oil over a bowl of brothy white beans for some much-needed acid; quickly wilt greens in garlic-infused oil and pile them on a thick hunk of toast slathered with the aforementioned hummus.

Infused oil is also a great way to finish blanched or grilled vegetables. Mint-infused olive oil over sugar snap peas is the way to go for an easy spring side dish.

Baked Goods

While it’s easy to think of ways to riff with flavored oils in savory cooking, they’re also a great addition to your baking recipes. One of the most straightforward ways is by using citrus-infused olive oils to boost the flavor in olive oil cakes. For example, I love making Karen Tedesco’s orange flower olive oil cake from “Family Style” with blood orange-flavored oil.

If you want to go savory, focaccia is a bread that uses a hefty amount of olive oil and takes flavor — rosemary, garlic, basil — really, really well. After setting the bread in your pan and dimpling your dough, drizzle the infused olive oil on top before baking.

Read more Saucy:

Giada De Laurentiis’ marinated cherry tomato pasta will be your new weeknight favorite this summer

As it starts to warm up outside and the sky stays brighter longer into the evening, it’s clear that each day we’re one step closer to summer. And that means it’s the perfect time to make a dish that tastes just as good cold or room temperature as it does hot. That way, you can take your cues from the weather.

Giada De Laurentiis read our minds when she shared her recipe for Marinated Cherry Tomato Pasta on social media. The star of this dish is the marinade, and most of your time spent in the kitchen is inactive. That means you have time to either go outside for a long walk in the park or kick your feet back and enjoy a nice glass of Italian wine while you wait for the flavors to combine.

When the chef recently posted this warmer weather delight on Instagram, she emphasized that “the only thing you need to cook in this recipe are the noodles!” Seriously, your mixing bowl does all of the hard work for you. And who could possibly complain about that?

To get things started, add sweet cherry tomatoes and shallots to a large mixing bowl. Mix them until well coated with olive oil, lemon juice and zest, garlic, salt and pepper and red pepper flakes. Your end result will be a marinade that’s bright and sweet with a little bit of bite. Cover or wrap the bowl, and let it sit for the next two to four hours at room temperature.

When you’re ready to eat, stir your favorite pasta (cooked al dente, of course) into the bowl. Top with fresh basil and freshly grated Parm. And voilà, another easy weeknight meal that doesn’t sacrifice on flavor is ready thanks to Giada. Bonus: This dish is just as delicious for leftovers the next day (and possibly even better). Full recipe here.

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

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With HBO’s “Mare of Easttown,” come for the murder but stay for Kate Winslet and Jean Smart

“Mare of Easttown” announces the kind of drama it’s going to be with its earliest establishing shots. First comes a glimpse of a factory at dawn, then a saggy house, then a graveyard. Director Craig Zobel keeps going with this architectural misery parade in a way that sets the mood like poured concrete: A lingering gaze shows a street constipated with faded houses jammed shoulder to shoulder on one side, with a rotten-toothed sneer passing itself off as an old picket fence across the way.

A row of brick chimneys jut into the sky with the rudeness of middle fingers flipping off a sun that reserves its gold for other places, ensuring daylight looks sickly and gray here even when the sky is cloudless. The scenery says so much, setting up the first human vocalization we hear, which is a scream.

Zobel does not make the titular burg look or feel like any place you’d want to visit, or end up, or have a breakdown. But the way Kate Winslet realizes Detective Mare Sheehan persuades you to stick with it past its glum first hour. If you manage to do this, the show just might grow on you.

First, though, one must overlook the seven-part limited series’ resemblance to any number of working-class grim tales about murder in small towns, Sally Wainwright’s “Happy Valley” foremost among them. The parallels can’t be ignored, since both stories follow middle-aged cops in places where everybody knows her and everyone else, and nurse resentments with the same level of care and devotion they give to their own children.

Of the two series, “Happy Valley” is top-notch, whereas this is more of a muddle elevated by superb performances. That shouldn’t count out what Winslet, Jean Smart and the other women at the heart of “Mare of Easttown” offer.

The characters are the reason to stick with this show as opposed to the murder and missing persons cases, starting with Winslet’s performance. She gives Mare the spirit of a woman who spent years waking up swinging with all she’s got and doesn’t have time to grieve even though her life has given her many reasons to crumble.

Winslet doesn’t entirely engage in the Emmy bait tactic of putting her vanity into a drawer here, and it’s hard to decide whether the way she arches her Os against the roof of her mouth is the work of a regional dialect coach or accent slippage.

But she does an admirable job of wearing the town’s exhaustion on her body, trudging around with a slight hunch to her shoulders, sucking down her exasperation in endless clouds of vape smoke. She has a way of making the character’s anger sit there, an unexploded munition that’s still decidedly live. And while that should make her imposing, it has the opposite effect on the people around town who expect her to solve all of their problems.

Mare and her ex-husband Frank (David Denman) broke up, and although they get along enough to raise their grandson, their relationship is only slightly amicable for a slow reveal of reasons best left to viewing. He’s found a way to move on while she very purposefully stagnates.

Somehow, the way Winslet plays this draws you in and makes you hopeful for whatever shots at goodness comes her way like the fluttering fascination she inspires in Guy Pearce’s Richard, a literature professor sanguine about being past his prime.

Whatever fuel Winslet injects into Mare gets burned down each day by Smart’s Helen, Mare’s wise-ass and hilariously mean-spirited parent who theatrically treats their relationship as if it were some terrible duty she’s too lazy or tired to give up even though she never really signed on to the job.

Smart’s piquant gibes provide comedy meat in this sorrowful hero sandwich, and it’s a flavor that shouldn’t work here but it does. In fact, it gives the show a much-needed humor streak that carries over into Mare’s other interactions. In one scene when Mare calls a family meeting a genuinely perplexed and irritated Helen pops back at her with “What the hell’s a family meeting?” in a way so gloriously, quietly dismissive as to deserve a medal.

Series writer and producer Brad Ingelsby reserves the broadest development for Mare and her family, including daughter Siobhan (Angourie Rice), who gets a sweet teenage storyline constantly threatening to be buried under all the adult angst but somehow keeps on surfacing. Other characters receive less care and feeding in the script despite their importance, including Julianne Nicholson’s Lori Ross, Mare’s best friend, and Dawn Bailey (Enid Graham), another high school friend turned antagonist after Mare fails to bring her missing daughter home.

Generally a show like this takes pains to keep some small thunderclap hidden in its pocket by convincing us that we’re watching one kind of mystery only to cold cock us with an entirely different scenario but no, that slice of plot hums along in a completely typical fashion.

From the moment you meet the eventual victim of the murder that ensnares Mare, the scent of doom encircling her wafts right off the screen. Remember the graveyard? This is place where women disappear or are found dead, and when Mare can’t find the killer or the vanished right away the town brings down curses on her head.

That this is often treated as something beside the point can feel bewildering at times, particularly in the points where you find yourselves caring more about, say, Mare’s developing partnerships with a new hotshot detective played by Evan Peters or wondering what the deal is with another weird newcomer. There are a lot of small stories here jostling for attention crowded together like those houses, and at times it doesn’t quite work, or it shouldn’t, but a very tired Mare leads us through.

When “Mare of Easttown” lays in its shocks – some small and one that’s absolute – they can be stunning enough to lend value to its complacent pace.

Easttown, Pennsylvania is a real place, by the way and in a move one might interpret as a defense of the town, it posted a press release on its official website specifying that most of the scenes were filmed in Coatesville, Aston, and Drexel Hill. It’s as if they’re saying, “We are not actually like this!” Understandable, although they also point out that Ingelsby grew up there. But any burg’s pride of place rests in its people, not its exteriors; and in that regard the writer acquitted his hometown well enough.

“Mare of Easttown” premieres Sunday, April 18 at 10 p.m. on HBO.

Warren and Smith reintroduce “critical” bill to block U.S. from starting nuclear war

Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Adam Smith on Thursday reintroduced legislation to establish that “it is the policy of the United States to not use nuclear weapons first.”

“Threatening to use nuclear weapons first makes America less safe because it increases the chances of a miscalculation or an accident,” said Warren (D-Mass.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in a statement. “There are no winners in a nuclear war, and the U.S. should never start one.”

Smith (D-Wash.), chair of the House Armed Services Committee, concurred, saying that “the United States should never initiate a nuclear war.”

“This bill would strengthen deterrence while reducing the chance of nuclear use due to miscalculation or misunderstanding,” he explained. “Codifying that deterring nuclear use is the sole purpose of our nuclear arsenal strengthens U.S. national security and would renew U.S. leadership on nuclear nonproliferation and disbarment.”

Thank you @RepAdamSmith and @SenWarren! The US must commit itself to never beginning a nuclear war. Thrilled to see this critical bill re-introduced. https://t.co/gGcuhkmYBb

— FCNL (Quakers) (@FCNL) April 15, 2021

In addition to Warren and Smith, the bill is co-sponsored by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), and Ed Markey (D-Mass.).

Warren and Smith’s ongoing push for the No First Use Act was welcomed by arms experts and advocates for the elimination of nuclear weapons, some of whom pointed out that President Joe Biden has previously expressed support for such a policy.

Stephen Young, senior Washington representative and acting co-director of the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), highlighted Biden’s remarks when he served as vice president under former President Barack Obama.

Biden said in a January 2017 speech that “given our non-nuclear capabilities and the nature of today’s threats, it’s hard to envision a plausible scenario in which the first use of nuclear weapons by the United States would be necessary or would make sense in the view of the president and me.”

Young said Thursday that “indeed, initiating a nuclear strike would be an enormous strategic and humanitarian disaster, most likely leading to a counterattack against the United States. The resulting mass death and destruction is why a U.S. president should never choose or be allowed to start a nuclear war.”

“The legislation introduced today by Sen. Warren and Rep. Smith is strikingly short and simple,” Young noted. “In 14 words, it commits the United States to never launching nuclear weapons first. These lawmakers deserve huge thanks for continuing to push for this sensible policy change.”

“A no first use policy will reduce the likelihood of nuclear war in two ways,” he continued. “First, no president will be able to start a nuclear war based on faulty information, like the false warnings of incoming nuclear attacks that have happened too many times in the past. Also, adversaries will be less pressured to use their nuclear weapons first during a crisis if they are confident that the United States won’t attack them first and wipe out their nuclear arsenals.”

🚨Action Alert!!🚨 @RepAdamSmith and @ewarren have reintroduced #NoFirstUse to prohibit presidents from launching a nuclear weapon as a first strike option! Tell your representative to co-sponsor #NoFirstUse today! https://t.co/gfzlQlesLe ! pic.twitter.com/N0w6P9UsiS

— Global Zero Action (@GZ_Action) April 15, 2021

Young urged Congress to urgently pass and Biden to sign the bill—a call echoed by Derek Johnson, chief executive officer of Global Zero, an international movement for the elimination of nuclear weapons. Johnson endorsed the “common-sense” bill “in the strongest possible terms” and called its reintroduction “an important step to enhance American and global security by helping ensure nuclear weapons are never used again.”

“It is long past time for the United States to adopt a realistic policy that forgoes the possible first use of nuclear weapons,” he said. “The risks that nuclear weapons will be used are unacceptably and unnecessarily high. The major risk of nuclear use today comes from the danger that a small or accidental clash or conflict will escalate quickly through confusion or fear and cross the nuclear threshold. America’s decadeslong policy of threatening its own possible first use of nuclear weapons only adds to this danger.”

Johnson continued:

Codifying no first use into law is the most important and immediate step the U.S. can take to lower the risk of nuclear conflict, strengthen global stability, and create new opportunities to pursue reductions in these dangerous and expensive arsenals.

There is no plausible scenario in which the first use of nuclear weapons by the United States makes sense. Threatening to do so only makes it easier for others to do the same, adding to the pressure on all to escalate quickly. Any use of nuclear weapons would be horrific and catastrophic, and we must take decisive action to make this scenario less likely in parallel with our long-term efforts to eradicate them.

He also cited Biden’s 2017 speech, when the then-vice president expressed confidence that the U.S. can defend itself and its allies through non-nuclear means.

According to Johnson, “It is high time to act on that confidence, and for leaders in the U.S. and all nuclear-armed states to accept that true security cannot be built on threats of mass destruction.”

A new study digs into the science of making tweets go viral

If you use Twitter, the chances are that you’ve thought a lot about crafting the perfect tweet that’s bound to go viral. You know, that perfect combination of words — a dash of your personality, a spice of a catchy phrasing, all garnishing some substantive ideas. Yet far more often than not, your much-honed tweets don’t catch on with a wider audience.

If you want to delve into the sociology of Twitter virality, a new study in the scholarly journal “Royal Society Open Science” offers a little bit of insight into what can help you write a viral tweet. The authors analyzed tweets pertaining to the 2017 Catalan independence referendum in Spain. They discovered that tweets with negative sentiments were more likely to be retweeted.

Salud María Jiménez Zafra, a computer scientist at Jaén University who co-authored the paper, explained to Salon that they did not focus on the psychological reasons why this is the case; rather, they merely examined the question “from a computational and statistical point of view.”

“The technical reasons are related to a regression model,” Zafra told Salon by email. “A regression model allows us to determine which factors influence a given variable, in our case, the virality of a tweet.” Zafra said that the researchers used a novel regression model that had never been considered in previous studies.

Zafra even had advice for those who aspire to compose viral tweets: “Use sentiment words, hashtags, urls, and mentions since they have significant positive effects on the average number of retweets.” (Their paper also included information about wording specific to Spanish-speakers.)

This is not the first paper to explore the perfect tweet formula. Researchers at Cornell University in 2014 explained in a paper that the ideal tweet can be created by “adding more information, making one’s language align with both community norms and with one’s prior messages, and mimicking news headlines.” (Of course, in social media time, 2014 is a very, very long time ago indeed — and both the platform, and the algorithms that determine which tweets will be seen widely and which won’t, has changed dramatically in seven years.)

Salon reached out to co-author Lillian Lee, a professor at Cornell who co-authored the 2014 paper on the effect of wording on tweet virality, and Lee’s fellow co-author Chenhao Tan, a professor at University of Chicago who has also co-authored papers on whether negative information dissipates faster and the effect of wording on tweet virality. Lee and Tan also told Salon that they are unsure about why negative tweets tend to go viral more quickly, but pointed Salon in the direction of a paper called “Does Bad News Go Away Faster?,” of which Tan was a co-author, which explored whether positive or negative content on Twitter is likely to persist long after it has been posted.

“We find that rapidly-fading information contains significantly more words related to negative emotion, actions, and more complicated cognitive processes, whereas the persistent information contains more words related to positive emotion, leisure, and lifestyle,” the authors explained. They also told Salon that, for people who want their tweets to go viral, their research indicates that “tweets that are similar to general Twitter language and that reflect one’s personal style are more likely to be shared.”

Another possible way to make your tweets go viral — one that could explain why negative tweets tend to be more popular — is that people may associate negativity with intelligence. This involves a concept known as hypercriticism, or the idea confirmed by researchers at Harvard University and Carnegie Mellon University that people instinctively believe negative statements are more intelligent than positive ones. This means that they are more likely to perceive negative commentary as intellectually superior and are prone to being negative themselves when trying to come across as smart.

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Matt Gaetz’s dad may have called in favors to keep Florida lawmakers quiet on scandal

In a deep dive into the influence the father of Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., has had on his son’s political rise, a Florida political operative claimed that “Papa Gaetz” was using his considerable political influence to tamp down criticism of his embattled son.

According to Politico’s Gary Fineout, it is no secret in Florida political circles that state Sen. Don Gaetz — known as “Papa Gaetz” — has used his years lording over and wheeling and dealing in Panhandle politics, as well as his substantial wealth, to guide his son — referred to as “Baby Gaetz” — into the public eye and Congress.

“Matt Gaetz’s political trail was not just preceded but heavily influenced by his father, a Republican multi-millionaire businessman who had a reputation for rhetorical flourishes and drag-out political fights. Don Gaetz all but paved his son’s way into Florida’s political world, and some suggest that his father’s stature and influence is even helping his son as he faces a probe into potential sex trafficking,” Fineout wrote.

According to a former lawmaker colleague of the elder Gaetz, the father of the Republican House member has always been a force in the community.

“He was a force of nature,” explained former state Senate President Joe Negron, with Fineout reporting, “And Don Gaetz found himself in plenty of battles — and still is today. Last year, he went after a former legislator who once fired his son and who was seeking local office. Don Gaetz clashed enough times with former Gov. Rick Scott — now a senator — that the GOP governor lined up opposition to Don Gaetz’s bid to become president of the University of West Florida.”

According to one Florida political insider, while Don Gaetz has kept mostly in the background — for the time being — as his son is investigated over sex trafficking accusations, he is working behind the scenes to assist his son.

“Don has a lot of power and friends in Florida politics,” the political operative said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “There are a lot of people who owe him favors. They are repaying those favors by staying silent about his son.”

Ray Sansom, a former northwest Florida legislator, added, “There’s obviously people who respect Don. There’s obviously people who feel like they have been hurt by him. … Don’s very rough. If he’s against you, he’s against you in a very rough way.”

You can read more here.