Spring Sale: Get 1 Year, Save 58%

Robert Reich: How Biden can get Manchin and Sinema to fall in line

America is at a turning point on voting rights – one that’s almost as critical as the mid-1960s when the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts were passed. 

The present choice is whether to expand voting rights and strengthen our democracy, or allow the GOP to enact even more restrictive voting laws and partisan gerrymandering — cementing themselves in minority rule for years to come. 

Just as in the mid-1960s, presidential leadership will be a decisive factor.

Across the country, state Republicans have introduced over 250 bills restricting the right to vote. As a lawyer for the Arizona GOP recently admitted before the Supreme Court in seeking to defend the state’s voting restrictions, if they’re eliminated, “it puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats.”

Democrats in Congress are fighting back against this anti-democratic agenda with their For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. 

These bills would automatically register new voters, outlaw gerrymandering, expand early voting, ban restrictions on mail-in ballots, reform campaign finance laws, and restore the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Mitch McConnell calls it a “power grab.” It is a power grab – grabbing power back for the people.

Yet although Democrats now possess a razor-thin majority in the Senate, these efforts don’t stand a chance unless Democrats overcome two obstacles there.

The first is the filibuster, a rule requiring 60 votes to pass regular legislation. The filibuster is not in the Constitution and not even in law. It’s just a Senate rule, which Democrats can and must end with their 51-vote bare majority.

The filibuster has historically been used against civil rights and voting rights. So it’s appropriate that Democrats finally end it in order to protect and expand these rights in the face of state efforts to restrict them.

Which raises the second obstacle. Two Democratic senators – West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema – have said they won’t vote to end the filibuster, presumably because they want to preserve their centrist image and appeal to Republican voters in their states.

Well, I’m sorry. The stakes are too high. We are talking about the future of civil and voting rights — critical to fighting racism and preserving American democracy. There is no excuse for two Democratic senators to allow Republicans to stomp on our democracy and entrench their minority rule for generations.

And there is no reason President Joe Biden should let them. It’s time for him to assert the leadership that President Lyndon Baines Johnson asserted more than a half-century ago.

When someone tried to persuade LBJ not to waste his time on civil and voting rights, he replied, “Well, what the hell’s the presidency for?” Johnson worked to break the southern filibuster – lobbying recalcitrant senators and pressuring their colleagues to do the same. As Senator Hubert Humphrey later described it, “the president grabbed me by my shoulder and damn near broke my arm.”

Historians tell us that Johnson’s efforts may have shifted the votes of close to a dozen senators, breaking the longest filibuster in Senate history and clearing the way for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965.

We are once again at a crucial juncture for civil rights and voting rights, one that will shape our nation for decades to come. Joe Biden must learn from LBJ, and wield the power of the presidency to make senators fall in line with the larger goals of the nation. Otherwise, as LBJ asked, “what the hell’s the presidency for?”

Democrats say Republicans in Congress are “putting a bullseye on the back of Asian Americans”

Following the killings of eight people at three Atlanta-area day spas on Tuesday, Rep. Grace Meng, D-NY, called out Texas Rep. Chip Roy for “putting a bullseye on the back of Asian Americans.” Roy, a Republican, drew swift rebuke when he fondly reminisced about Texas lynchings, suggesting such tactics are justified in the name of justice.

Roy’s apparent cultural insensitivity toward the increase of Asian American hate crimes in the wake of Trump’s presidency left Meng impassioned to speak out. “Your president, and your party, and your colleagues can talk about issues with any other country that you want,” said Meng. “But you don’t have to do it by putting a bullseye on the back of Asian Americans across this country! On our grandparents! On our kids!”

Roy responded to the criticism by defending his previous account and adding anti-Chinese rhetoric on top of it. “We should restore order by tamping out evil actors, not turn America into an authoritarian state like the Chinese Communists who seek to destroy us. No apologies.”

The Texas Congressman went on to that he shouldn’t have to worry about his rhetoric being policed. “I’m not going to be ashamed of saying I oppose the Chi-Coms, I oppose the Chinese Communist party,” said Roy. “And when we say things like that, and we’re talking about that, we shouldn’t be worried about having a committee of members of Congress policing our rhetoric because some evil-doers go engage in some evil activity as occurred in Atlanta, Georgia.”

Meng fiercely slammed Roy’s comments and tearfully stated that his rhetoric puts a target on Asian Americans in the face of an already tumultuous time.

“This hearing was to address the hurt and pain of our community,” Meng said. “To find solutions. And we will not let you take our voice away from us!”

On Feb. 10 Meng tweeted a plea to stop spreading anti-Asian rhetoric, though the tweet still rings true today: “We must speak up and speak out. Our community has run out of ‘nice.'”

 

Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu, an immigrant from Taiwan called on Roy to apologize for his remarks. 

“I served in active duty so you can say whatever you want under the First Amendment, you can say racist stupid stuff if you want,” Lieu said in comments Thursday. “But I’m asking you to please stop using racist terms like ‘Kung flu,’ or ‘Wuhan virus’ or other ethnic identifiers in describing this virus. I am not a virus and when you say things like that, it hurts the Asian American community.”

 

Democratic Rep. Judy Chu, who chairs the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, extended her criticism to the Republican leader in the House, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, D-Calif.

“What started out last January as just dirty looks and verbal assault have escalated to physical attacks and violence against innocent Asian Americans,” she noted while speaking at Thursday’s hearing, adding the escalation was “stoked by the words of former President Donald Trump who sought to shift blame and anger away from his own flawed response to the pandemic.”

Joe Scarborough shreds Bill Barr after “perjury” exposed in new report: “He lied through his teeth”

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough bashed former attorney general William Barr for “lying through his teeth” about foreign election interference last year, and said he should have been charged with perjuring himself during congressional testimony.

A newly declassified intelligence report found Russia tried to undermine President Joe Biden’s campaign ahead of the 2020 election, Iran tried to “undercut” Donald Trump’s re-election bid and China did not engage in efforts to interfere — but that’s not what the previous administration told Americans.

“The lying and politicization of intel was just breathtakingly dangerous,” Scarborough said. “You have Bill Barr, [national security adviser Robert] O’Brien and [director of national intelligence John] Ratcliffe who all lied and said — this is Ratcliffe pre-election, quote, ‘China is using a massive and sophisticated influence campaign.’ He knew that was a lie, O’Brien knew that was a lie. Barr said, ‘Oh, I looked at the intelligence,’ and he lied through his teeth.”

“The attorney general of the United States, going out of his way to lie through his teeth about intel, all for political purposes, all for political purposes,” Scarborough added, “and now we find out this week that not only were they being liars at the time, but you had people in the intel community who were nervous about the fact that they were going to use their work, go out, twist it out of its proper context, and start spreading lies for Donald Trump’s re-election campaign — and that’s what the attorney general and the head of the intel community and trump’s national security adviser, all three, did. Deeply shameful, deeply dangerous.”

Scarborough still doesn’t understand why Barr never paid a price for lying to Congress and the public about a number of matters.

“He took the Mueller report, in the words of William Rehnquist, he wrenched their words from their proper context, he lied in front of the House and the Senate, committed perjury,” Scarborough said. “I never really figured out why they didn’t try to charge him for that.”

Scarborough said all of that made Barr the worst attorney general to ever serve.

“He claims to have seen intelligence and lied about it, spread lies about what the intel community had found along with Ratcliffe and O’Brien, saying that China was basically trying to do the same thing that Russia was doing,” Scarborough said. “We found out that Iran was doing it. Why did they feel like they had to lie about China? Here’s Bill Barr, again, Bill Barr again showing why he’s the worst attorney general ever. John Mitchell looks like Atticus Finch compared to Bill Barr.”

Armie Hammer is accused of rape and “other acts of violence”

Actor Armie Hammer has been accused of rape by a woman identified as Effie. The woman, who held a press conference on Thursday with her attorney Gloria Allred, said that the alleged sexual assault took place in 2017, during which the actor “violently raped [her] for over four hours in Los Angeles,” and that she thought Hammer was going to kill her. 

As IndieWire reported, Effie indicated that she had met Hammer in 2016 when she was 20, and the two engaged in an on-again, off-again relationship with him until 2020. 

“On April 24, 2017, Armie Hammer violently raped me for over four hours in Los Angeles,” Effie said during the press conference, “during which he repeatedly slapped my head against a wall, bruising my face. He also committed other acts of violence against me to which I did not consent.”

“I thought that he was going to kill me,” she said, adding that he then left “with no concern for my well-being . . . I have come to understand that the immense mental hold he had over me was very damaging on many levels.”

Allred said, “We look forward to learning if Mr. Hammer, rather than his representatives, will be willing to assist investigators in their search for the truth.”

In January, a social media account called House of Effie posted screengrabs of sexual text messages allegedly sent by Hammer between 2016 and 2020. Some of the fantasies described in the screenshots are graphic, including one in which Hammer said he wanted to “bite pieces off of” the recipient. In another, he said, “I am 100% a cannibal. I want to eat you. F**k. That’s scary to admit. I’ve never admitted that before.”

Allred did not comment on whether her client was behind the social media page. 

The salacious headlines about Hammer being a cannibal wrote themselves, and eventually the actor dropped out of two projects — “The Offer,” a Paramount+ series about the making of “The Godfather,” and “Shotgun Wedding,” a comedy with Jennifer Lopez. Hammer was then dropped by WME, his agency. 

Hammer issued a statement at the time: “I’m not responding to these bulls**t claims but in light of the vicious and spurious online attacks against me, I cannot in good conscience now leave my children for four months to shoot a film in the Dominican Republic. Lionsgate is supporting me in this and I’m grateful to them for that.”

On Thursday, his attorney, Andrew B. Brettler of Lavely & Singer, issued an additional statement to Variety. 

[Effie’s] own correspondence with Mr. Hammer undermines and refutes her outrageous allegations. As recently as July 18, 2020, [Effie] sent graphic texts to Mr. Hammer telling him what she wanted him to do to her.  Mr. Hammer responded, making it clear that he did not want to maintain that type of relationship with her.

It was never Mr. Hammer’s intention to embarrass or expose [Effie’s] fetishes or kinky sexual desires, but she has now escalated this matter to another level by hiring a civil lawyer to host a public press conference.  With the truth on his side, Mr. Hammer welcomes the opportunity to set the record straight. 

Brettler added that all of Hammer’s interactions with his sexual partners have been “completely consensual, discussed and agreed upon in advance, and mutually participatory. . . . [Effie’s] attention seeking and ill-advised legal bid will only make it more difficult for real victims of sexual violence to get the justice they deserve.”

Variety reported that Hammer is being investigated by the Los Angeles Police Department. “We can confirm that Armie Hammer is the main suspect in an alleged sexual assault investigation that was initiated Feb. 3 of this year,” a spokesperson for the LAPD told the publication. 

Effie hopes that Hammer will finally be held accountable for his actions. 

“I feel immense guilt for not speaking out sooner, because I feel that I might have been able to save others from becoming victims,” she said. “By speaking out today, I hope to prevent others from falling victim to him in the future. I want other survivors of sexual assault around the world to feel empowered and know that they are heard, believed, understood, supported, and loved.”

 

New research shows just how many fish are eating plastic

Each year the amount of plastic swirling in ocean gyres and surfing the tide toward coastal beaches seems to increase. So too does the amount of plastic particles being consumed by fish — including species that help feed billions of people around the world.

A new study published in the journal Global Change Biology revealed that the rate of plastic consumption by marine fish has doubled in the last decade and is increasing by more than 2% a year.

The study also revealed new information about what species are most affected and where the risks are greatest.

The researchers did a global analysis of mounting studies of plastic pollution in the ocean and found data on plastic ingestion for 555 species of marine and estuarine fish. Their results showed that 386 fish species — two-thirds of all species — had ingested plastic. And of those, 210 were species that are commercially fished.

Not surprisingly, places with an abundance of plastic in surface waters, such as East Asia, led to a higher likelihood of plastic ingestion by fish.

But fish type and behavior, researchers found, also plays a role. Active predators — those at the top of the food chain, like members of the Sphyrnidae family, which includes hammerhead and bonnethead sharks — ingested the most plastic. Grazers and filter‐feeders consumed the least.

“Overall, the likelihood of plastic ingestion decreases with depth,” the researchers found.

Although bioaccumulation of plastic and its associated chemicals can cause health problems, this isn’t causing noticeable fish population problems — yet. The research revealed that the majority of the species they found to have ingested plastic remain abundant.

But at the same time, 35 species were listed as threatened or near threatened. Another 26 species are vulnerable to overfishing. The authors identified the blue shark, Atlantic bluefin tuna and chinook salmon as “species of high concern due to their threatened status, vulnerability to overfishing and frequent plastic ingestion.”

Meanwhile the researchers found that three-quarters of commercially fished species ingested plastic, including ones common in recreational fisheries and aquaculture that “have the highest likelihood to be part of the supply chain.” Common sole was found to be “most worrisome.”

Even more troubling is that there’s still a lot we don’t know because some areas are better studied than others.

Some nearshore areas are among those where research is lacking. “Only four studies were conducted within the continental United States’ Exclusive Economic Zone, despite more marine plastic originating from the United States than any other developed nation,” the researchers wrote.

Oceanic gyres, those swirling eddies of plastic in the open ocean, are also a black hole when it comes to research. “We uncovered no studies from the Indian, South Atlantic or western North Pacific gyres though there is extensive knowledge of surface debris accumulation in these regions,” they found. “Similarly, there was a paucity of data from high‐latitude seas and none from the Southern Ocean, even though the polar oceans are a sink for microplastic debris with new fisheries developing in these regions as ice retreats and climate changes.”

By comparison, coastal waters — including estuaries — are well studied, as are the seas surrounding Europe. And they found a “recent flurry of studies” from East Asia.

Even with a growing amount of research, the scope and severity of the problem is likely still underestimated.

Filling in these knowledge gaps will be crucial to better understand the extent of the problem, but the researchers say we’ll also need to study top predators more to learn how plastic bioaccumulates in the food chain and how these mobile predators may redistribute plastic across the ocean as they travel.

Little is known about how ingested plastic affects fish and marine ecosystems, and even less about how human health could be affected when plastic-eating fish end up on the dinner table.

“Current evidence for humans ingesting plastic directly from fish remains scant, but there is growing concern,” the researchers wrote.  “In particular, the continued aggregation and analysis of information on plastic ingestion by marine fish is vital as these data are inextricably linked to ecosystem and human health.”

The egg industry grapples with a grim practice: chick culling

Every year, up to 7 billion day-old male chicks are tossed into shredding machines, gassed, or suffocated in plastic bags — a process known as chick culling. This grim ritual is underpinned by both biology and economics: Male chicks don’t lay eggs, and they fatten up too slowly to be sold as meat. Across the globe, culling has become the default strategy for the egg industry to eliminate the unwanted hatchlings.

“It is horrible. You see these puffy, newly hatched chicks on a conveyor belt,” headed toward a large blade that slices them “into a gazillion pieces,” said Leah Garcés, president of Mercy for Animals, an animal rights advocacy group in the United States. In recent years, local and international animal rights groups, particularly in France, Germany, and the U.S., have been ramping up pressure on governments and the egg industry to commit to ending the practice — particularly given technological innovations that allow producers to identify the sex of a developing chick before it hatches. The process is called in-ovo sexing, and such technologies, versions of which are already deployed in some countries, can obviate the need for live chick culling.

Nearly five years ago, United Egg Producers, an agricultural co-operative whose members are responsible for producing more than 90 percent of all commercial eggs in the U.S., released a statement pledging to eliminate chick culling by 2020, or as soon as a “commercially available” and “economically feasible” technology became accessible. That pledge was negotiated with the Humane League, an animal rights nonprofit organization. But 2020 has come and gone, and while UEP’s pledge wasn’t legally binding, some egg industry leaders and scientists say there is little sign that the industry is anywhere near phasing in cull-free technologies that could still meet the colossal supply of more than 100 billion eggs produced every year in the U.S.

Part of the reason for the sluggish pace of change, critics say, is that the U.S. has been investing in and nurturing the development of sophisticated cull-free technologies that, while promising, remain expensive and could take several more years to develop, scale, and deploy across the nation — particularly given that the Covid-19 pandemic has shuttered labs and otherwise slowed the pace of innovation. Meanwhile, a method of in-ovo sexing of eggs is already being used in Europe — though some American stakeholders say that method, which involves creating a tiny hole in the eggshell with a laser, is sub-par, because it increases the risk of contamination. European developers dispute this, however, and as of this year, cull-free eggs are available in thousands of supermarkets in Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and France with only modest additional costs to consumers and hatcheries.

What’s clear is that as the hunt for a solution drags on, the U.S.-based culling continues apace. “I don’t like false promises,” said Michael Sencer, executive vice president for Hidden Villa Ranch, a California-based food company that owns egg and dairy subsidiaries. Sencer expressed support for UEP’s pledge, but he acknowledged, “They’ve supported a number of groups that said they could come up with the technology and nothing has happened.”

UEP declined to be interviewed by Undark and instead provided a press statement highlighting its continued commitment to end culling. “We remain hopeful a breakthrough is on the horizon,” Chad Gregory, president and CEO of UEP, said in the statement.

Whether U.S.-based producers could be nudged by critics to explore existing technologies rather than pursue new ones remains unclear, but both animal rights groups and industry leaders agree that chick culling is not only cruel — it is wasteful. “I mean, name another industry where 50 percent of the finished product immediately goes to the garbage can,” said Jonathan Hoopes, president of Ovabrite, a Texas-based startup developing an in-ovo sexing technique. Incubating male eggs also takes up unnecessary space, energy, and money, making a solution to culling in the interest of both animal rights activists and egg producers.

“Forgetting the ethics of not killing all those birds, look at the money saving,” said Sencer, who estimated that the industry could save billions of dollars with the right technology. “It’s mind-boggling.”

* * *

Since the 2016 statement, the largest funding initiative to eliminate chick culling has come from the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR), which launched the “Egg-Tech Prize” — a public-private research initiative that provides funding for scientists and startups seeking to develop in-ovo sexing technologies — with Open Philanthropy in 2019. Deploying such a technology would not only make chick culling obsolete, it would also allow the industry to repurpose unwanted male eggs for food, animal feed, or vaccine development.

In November of 2019, FFAR announced six finalists who received more than $2 million in total seed funding to develop sex identification technologies. Phase II of the competition will award up to $3.7 million for a single working prototype.

According to Tim Kurt, FFAR’s scientific program director, the deadline for submissions has been pushed back due to Covid-19 delays and is now scheduled for spring 2022. However, the foundation could also decide not to fund any of the teams if they are not satisfied with the timeline. That’s a prospect Tom Turpen, a contender for the prize, says is a real possibility, especially given that at least some of the teams — his included — have experienced setbacks since the start of the pandemic. With travel restrictions and university laboratories shut down, access to data, equipment, and supplies has made it harder for teams to make progress on particular aspects of their projects, says Kurt.

Finalists, who were awarded between $396,000 and $1.1 million dollars each include startups and research laboratories with big, out-of-the-box ideas. This includes Orbem, a German startup that sexes chicks by combining high-speed scanning of eggs with AI technology, and SensIT Ventures, Inc., a California-based company, which Turpen heads, that uses a microchip to sex chicks by identifying gases emitted by eggs early in development. The selection team specifically funded projects that could potentially upend the egg industry, says Kurt.

The technologies that were selected have “the potential to really transform the industry,” said Kurt, who was involved in the selection. “They might be a bit higher risk, but if they were successful, and our funding could help them become successful, they would really be the most ideal solution.”

Kurt and other industry leaders are optimistic that some of these technologies will help eliminate chick culling in the near future, but others are less hopeful. Changing current practices, Sencer said, would require “billions of dollars of investment in new equipment. And it’s just not going to happen [quickly], it’s happening slowly.” Sencer added that he predicts the technology may be scalable towards the end of the decade.

Even researchers competing in the Egg-Tech Prize themselves admit that, while a sexing technology may be on the horizon, cull-free eggs won’t be scalable for at least two more years. Turpen says the biggest obstacle lies in developing a technology that is not only capable of rapidly and accurately sexing chicks, but is also readily affordable to consumers and hatcheries across the nation.

“You could do a lot of things to identify the sex of the egg. That’s not the point. The point is: Can you do it and still have eggs people can afford to eat?”

To avoid a surge in costs that would inevitably arise from suddenly adopting a new mode of production, Turpen says a more likely and more reasonable path to scaling this nationally would be a slow and incremental process. “The adoption and replacement of existing equipment — that’s going to look more like making the coal industry go away.” That industry “is going away,” Turpen said, “but it’s going to be a long time.”

Other researchers in the Egg-Tech Prize have also made it clear that an all-encompassing solution to culling is not around the corner. Benjamin Schusser, whose research with colleagues at the Technical University of Munich turned into the spin-off company, Orbem, declined an interview, saying “we don’t want to awake[n] hope that there is a solution almost ready for market.” Pedro Gómez, the CEO and co-founder of Orbem said in a 2019 interview with Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, that they hope to “classify one billion eggs per year by 2025.”

Given the mismatch in expectations, some are baffled by UEP’s ambitious commitments to stamping out culling. Hoopes says the industry has made similar pledges in the past and they failed to yield tangible results.

But David Coman-Hidy, president of the Humane League, considers the progress in research and development since 2016 a “major win,” and credits the UEP pledge with heightening awareness about a cruel and largely unheard-of practice while bolstering innovation in in-ovo sexing technologies. In fact, the Humane League saw the 2020 goal as somewhat flexible, says Coman-Hidy. “Back then, it was such early days, we didn’t know how quickly or how many companies would get involved or what the research would look like.”

* * *

Meanwhile, commercially viable, in-ovo sexing technologies already exist in Germany and France. And Germany is poised to become the first country to ban industrial culling of male chicks, after the government approved a draft law to end the practice from 2022 onwards.

Currently, a company based in Germany and the Netherlands called respeggt GmbH uses in-ovo sexing by creating a tiny hole into the egg using a laser, extracting fluids, and sexing the chick by testing for specific hormones, explains Kristin Hoeller, head of business development and public affairs for respeggt. The technique, known as Seleggt, is based on research by scientists at the University of Leipzig and further developed in collaboration with REWE, a German supermarket chain, and HatchTech, a Dutch technology company specializing in incubation and hatchery equipment.

The method can sort chicks on the ninth day of development, when it is “exceptionally unlikely” that chick embryos experience any sensations whatsoever, David Mellor, professor emeritus of animal welfare science and bioethics at Massey University in New Zealand, wrote in an email. This is a crucial detail given that chick embryos have the capacity to experience pain at later stages of development. A procedure that might cause harm, such as using the male egg for food or vaccine development, may simply be shifting the cruel practice to an earlier stage, says Peter Singer, an animal rights advocate and professor of bioethics at Princeton University.

Using this method, respeggt now has cull-free eggs in more than 6,000 supermarkets across France, Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, with hopes to expand further. They have also devised a ready-to-implement business strategy for producing commercial cull-free eggs. Hatcheries won’t have to invest anything, Hoeller said. Instead, costs will be passed onto centers where eggs are packed into cartons for commercial distribution. These packing stations will have to pay a license fee of around 2 Euro cents, about the same in U.S. currency, per egg. While respeggt plays no role in how supermarkets price eggs, the cost to consumers ranges between 2 and 5 Euro cents more per respeggt egg than regular ones.

Many U.S. experts, however, are concerned that creating a hole in the eggs could pose a serious food safety risk, given that it increases the chances of contamination from external sources. “It’s a risk that I think the industry would rather not take,” said Turpen. Kurt echoes this, saying that all finalists explicitly use non-invasive techniques to avoid this possibility. Focusing on non-invasive techniques also means they can be more easily repurposed for other scientific endeavors, such as vaccine development, he adds.

Hoeller disputes the suggestion that their technology poses an infection risk. “The perforation of the eggshell with the laser has no negative results at all,” she said, adding that the hole is so small it actually closes itself naturally within 30 minutes.

To be sure, some animal rights groups suggest that quibbling over a technological solution distracts from what they see as the real problem at hand: the egg industry itself. “Instead of putting a Band-Aid on a Band-Aid on a Band-Aid and trying to fix all these problems with more technology and more technology, here’s another idea: Why don’t we do plant-based eggs?” said Garcés. She and other animal rights activists point to food waste, animal suffering, and health-associated costs as reasons to divest money away from the egg industry to support companies that produce plant-based alternatives.

Short of that, though, other non-invasive egg sexing technologies have also been developed in Europe. Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, and amid pressure by the French government to ban culling by the end of 2021, Carrefour supermarkets planned to launch their first round of cull-free eggs on May 1, 2020. However, experts note that this technology sexes chicks on the 13th day of development, a period where the chick fetus may experience pain. Anticipating these criticisms, the German company behind this technology, Agri Advanced Technologies GmbH, a subsidiary of EW Group, is currently developing another technology aimed at determining the sex of chicks on the fourth day of development.

While imperfect, Hoopes suggested that the existence of viable, up-and-running technologies in Europe raises questions about why the U.S. is taking a slower, more ambitious approach. But other experts speculate that the technologies being pursued in the U.S. may ultimately prove cheaper and more flexible in the long run. “You would think the simplest method of doing this would be the best,” said Singer. “But maybe for very large producers, the investment is worth it. Maybe it pays off in saving labor costs or other costs.”

At this point it’s not clear what the best strategy to eliminate culling is yet, says Singer, but he believes there is a moral imperative to at least try and stamp out the practice from hatcheries around the globe. It’s also important to continue to pressure the industry to change, he said, but change will require not only perseverance, but patience. “These things,” he said, “will take some time.”

* * *

Jonathan Moens is a freelance journalist based in Rome. His work has appeared in Yale Environment 360, Inside Climate News, and Spectrum.

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

Wisconsin GOP rejects Black History Month resolution, honors Rush Limbaugh instead

The Wisconsin State Senate refused this week to take up a resolution that would honor a number of Black figures in recognition of Black History Month, but within the same session also voted in favor of a resolution giving honors to the late talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

Ostensibly, Republicans said they did not want to pass the Black History Month resolution, authored by Black lawmakers in the Wisconsin legislature, because it was too specific and included figures they deemed to be controversial. 

“We asked them to do [a Black History Month resolution] that was more generic, like the ones we had done in the past,” State Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said. “They really didn’t want to. So we never reached consensus.”

Those same concerns, however, did not stop the Republican-led State Senate on Tuesday from passing a resolution for Limbaugh, who dispensed hatred and vitriol toward a number of groups on his radio program for decades, largely without remorse, prior to his death. In defending their vote, some Republicans even painted Limbaugh in a positive light, while ignoring his blatantly hostile and hate-filled history as a broadcaster.

“He was a bold conservative voice, he was a cultural phenomenon, but also very importantly, he was a philanthropist,” Republican State Sen. André Jacque said. 

The resolution on Limbaugh further described him as “a talk radio pioneer beloved by millions of loyal listeners for his ardent defense of conservative politics.”

Democratic lawmakers were fast to condemn their colleagues from across the political aisle. 

“The Republicans have issues with who we as a Black body choose to honor, but yet we have to sit in this body and honor somebody like Rush Limbaugh who was a homophobic, xenophobic racist,” State Sen. LaTonya Johnson, a Democrat, said.

“You own this. You own his rhetoric. You own his sentiment. The (GOP caucus) owns this — his racism,” Johnson added in other remarks.

Johnson made attempts to read some of the remarks from Limbaugh’s past that Republicans refused to recognize. However, as she was doing so, some members of the GOP State Senate caucus decided to leave the room instead.

Limbaugh, who died of lung cancer last month, attacked a number of groups on his radio program, including members of the LGBTQ community, feminists and people of color. 

The radio host promoted the racist “birtherism” conspiracy theory, which wrongly alleged that former President Barack Obama was not born in the U.S., and frequently played a racist parody song about the former chief executive that included a racial epithet in its title and lyrics. Limbaugh also mocked and openly celebrated the deaths of gay men on his show during the AIDS epidemic, and disparaged Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke by calling her a “slut” and a “prostitute” for testifying before Congress in 2012 about access to birth control.

Immediately after his death last month, Vos requested that Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, issue an order that all flags throughout the state be lowered to recognize Limbaugh’s life. Evers ignored the request, and instead ordered flags to be lowered to commemorate the 500,000 Americans who had perished at that point across the U.S. as a result of the coronavirus pandemic — another topic that Limbaugh often minimized and lied about to listeners of his radio program.

Copyright © Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

Matthew McConaughey is flirting with a run for governor. But his politics remain a mystery

The Austin-based actor Matthew McConaughey is again making headlines for flirting with a run for Texas governor — and this time he says he is serious about the possibility.

Belying the hubbub, though, is something activists have increasingly buzzed about: Little is known about McConaughey’s politics, or at least his partisanship.

State voting records show he hasn’t voted in a Texas primary election since at least 2012, which could give some inkling as to which party he supports. He has not made any campaign contributions. And he has declined to say whether he would run as a Democrat, a Republican or something else.

There, of course, could be appeal in the lack of political background, and McConaughey has spoken openly about being disillusioned with the current state of politics, suggesting last year that it is a “broken business.” He also has criticized the excesses of both the left and the right, and encouraged an “aggressively centric” mindset.

But for partisans looking to suss out McConaughey’s true leanings as the 2022 election cycle gets underway, there is not much to go off. That is especially true for Democrats, who are eager to challenge GOP Gov. Greg Abbott over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and winter weather crisis but lack a deep bench beyond Beto O’Rourke.

McConaughey has voted twice in Texas since 2012 — in the 2018 and 2020 general elections, according to his latest voter history file with the secretary of state’s office. He voted early both times — in person in 2018 and by mail ballot in 2020. His registration in Travis County goes back to Nov. 25, 2012, and does not preclude the possibility that he was previously registered in Texas and fell off the voter rolls.

When it comes to campaign contributions, there is no record of him giving at the state or federal levels.

He has spoken out against gun violence — and advocated for new laws to combat it — but otherwise does not often wade into policy debates.

He did not say much about the latest election — though he made headlines afterward, when he criticized the “illiberal left” for taking an arrogant view toward the “other 50%.” He suggested that view led some in Hollywood — a strongly Democratic constituency — to deny Donald Trump’s win in 2016, and now some Republicans were denying Trump’s reelection loss because “they’ve been fed fake news.”

McConaughey has been fielding questions about running for governor while promoting his memoir, “Greenlights,” which published in October. In the book, McConaughey did include a handful of glimpses at the politics he was around growing up. Early on in the memoir, McConaughey said he came “from a long line of rule breakers,” describing them as “outlaw libertarians who vote red down the line because they believe it’ll keep fewer outlaws from trespassin on their territory.”

But he steered clear of discussing politics — recent presidents and elections, for example — or including details about his personal political views.

A publicist for McConaughey did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

McConaughey’s’ recently released book is not the only thing keeping him in the public spotlight these days. He is organizing a virtual benefit concert for Texans affected by last month’s deadly winter storm, set to be broadcast Sunday on his YouTube channel.

McConaughey initially sparked rumors he could run for governor last year when he left open the possibility in a November interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. But a day later, after his Hewitt interview received wide media coverage, McConaughey seemed to dial back the speculation about a gubernatorial bid, telling late-night TV host Stephen Colbert that he has “no plans to do that right now.”

But McConaughey ramped up speculation once again last week, when he said in a podcast interview that running for governor is a “true consideration.” He followed it up with an interview with NBC News’ Al Roker, from the lawn of Texas Capitol, in which he reiterated he was thinking about a bid.

Some interviewers have specifically asked McConaughey if he would run as a Democrat or a Republican — or something else — and he has not played ball. Questioned Thursday about his partisan affiliation if he runs for governor, he told the Austin American-Statesman he has not “gotten that far yet.” In an interview published the same day by the Longview News-Journal — McConaughey partly grew up in the East Texas city — he also shrugged off a question about partisanship.

“I think, going in, to think Democrat or Republican or one of the other, is small thinking now and even becoming unconstitutional because you’re supposed to serve the American people or the people of your state,” McConaughey said.

Independent bids for governor are not unheard of in Texas. In 2006, former Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn and songwriter and humorist Kinky Friedman both ran as independents. They finished third and fourth in the race behind Republican Rick Perry and Democrat Chris Bell, but combined to bring in more than 30% of the vote.

So far, the biggest question hanging over the 2022 gubernatorial race involves a Democrat: O’Rourke, the former 2020 presidential candidate, El Paso congressman and 2018 U.S. Senate nominee. O’Rourke has said he is considering challenging Abbott, while offering harsh criticism of the governor’s responses to the pandemic and winter storm.

The McConaughey-O’Rourke relationship is one of growing fascination in political circles, if only because they are by far the two most recognizable names being discussed as potential gubernatorial candidates.

McConaughey was photographed posing with O’Rourke and two other people while O’Rourke was running for U.S. Senate. As early voting was underway in that race, he tweeted a video of himself in line at a polling place, encouraging people to get out and vote. And about a year later, McConaughey crossed paths with O’Rourke at a 2019 benefit concert for the victims of the El Paso Walmart massacre.

Then again, McConaughey has also teamed up with Republicans, albeit on causes that similarly are not overtly political. In 2018, he appeared alongside Attorney General Ken Paxton in a public service announcement about ending human trafficking. More recently, he lent his voice to another PSA, this one released by Abbott’s office, that urged Texans to stay home if they could as the pandemic escalated in the state last spring.

When it comes to more politically sensitive issues, McConaughey has treaded carefully. Take, for example, the push to “defund the police” last year after the death of George Floyd, the black Minnesota man who was killed after being pinned down by an officer. Asked about Austin’s response to the “defund the police” movement, McConaughey told podcast host Joe Rogan in October that it’s “almost like it should’ve been renamed because ‘defund the police’ does not sound anything like there’s been money reallocated to different areas.” He said the community and police “need to get back together” and better understand the unique challenges each face. And on police specifically, he said there are “a few of these bad apples [that] need to be removed, but we need to make sure we’re training them better.”

He ultimately landed on a skeptical position, saying his “first gut instinct [about defunding the police] was I don’t see how that repairs the relationship between the community and the police force.”

“We’ll see how it works, but I’m more for saying, OK, instead of taking away your money and your funds, which you can use to train better and work on the relationship of what your job is and what you expect and what communities expect from you — I’d rather have done that than pull money from ’em,” McConaughey said.

In the same interview, McConaughey offered a more direct position on another hot-button issue — gun control — saying it is “too easy to get a gun sometimes, that there should be that background check.”

McConaughey has a history of being more outspoken on gun violence than other politically charged issues. In 2018, he spoke at the March for Our Lives rally in Austin, calling for banning assault weapons for civilians, restricting high-capacity magazines and strengthening background checks.

“Those are the three main stipulations,” McConaughey said at the rally, “and to those three, I can say — if you can say it with me — all right, all right, all right.”

Cassi Pollock contributed reporting.

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

Biden says he doesn’t regret calling Putin a “killer”

Russian President Vladimir Putin clapped back at President Biden’s accusation last week that Putin is “a killer,” responding on Thursday that “it takes one to know one.”

Putin insisted that, despite the leaders’ brief spat, Moscow would not break ties with Washington, instead citing moral and cultural differences between the two countries. 

“Although they think we are the same as them, we are different people, we have a different genetic and cultural-moral code,” Putin said, in televised remarks, citing U.S. slavery and the country’s deployment of the nuclear bomb in World War II. “But we know how to defend our own interests, and we will work with them but in those areas in which we are interested and on terms we consider favorable for us. And they will have to reckon with that.”

“When I was a child, when we argued in the courtyard, we said the following: ‘If you call someone names, that’s really your name,'” Mr. Putin continued. “When we characterize other people, or even when we characterize other states, other people, it is always as though we are looking in the mirror.”

Putin added that he wishes good health. “I’m saying this without irony,” he said, “not as a joke.”

The exchange stemmed from an ABC News interview the President gave last Wednesday, in which Biden was pressed on whether he thought Putin had poisoned the Russian leader’s opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Asked whether he thinks Putin is a killer, Biden responded, “Yes, I do.”

Later that day, Russian Washington Ambassador Anatoly Antonov was sent to D.C. for “consultations” amid warnings from the Foreign Ministry that Russia and America may be headed toward “an irreversible deterioration in relations.”

“Putin’s initial reaction showed there is no desire to go along the path of escalation,” said the leader of the Russian International Affairs Council, Andrey Kortunov. “The Russian side is willing to put it behind it as long as there aren’t any more such inflammatory statements in the future.”

Konstantin Kosachyov, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Federation Council, demanded that Biden apologize for his remarks, which he called “boorish” allegations. Biden’s accusations, Kosachyov wrote in a Facebook statement, were “unacceptable in any circumstances.”

During Biden’s interview, the President also added that Russia will “pay the price” for meddling in the 2020 elections, a move which a U.S. intelligence report shows was designed to undermine Biden’s campaign. The report echoes claims from four years ago, when intelligence officials gathered that Russia may have also swayed the 2016 election in Donald Trump’s favor.

Earlier this month, President Biden announced sanctions against Russian officials after U.S. intelligence reports found that a Russian agency had carried out the attempted assassination of Navalny. 

“He said everything right,” a top aide to Mr. Navalny tweeted about Biden’s comments.  Asked if Biden had any regrets after his remarks ignited rage from Russian officials, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said he does not regret his calling Putin a “killer.”

 “Nope. The president gave a direct answer to a direct question.”

The spat comes as tensions run high between the U.S. and the Kremlin, which has in the past accused the U.S. of secretly backing Russian opposition leaders such as Navalny. Russia’s internet regulator, for example, warned that it is gearing up to block the country’s access to Twitter, an American company, next month. 

President told ABC that his administration would look for areas “where it’s in our mutual interest to work together” with Russia. 

Putin said, “We are going to work with them, but in those spheres in which we ourselves are interested, and on those terms that we think are beneficial for us.”

 

How the far right is turning meat eating into a culture war battle

To millions of Americans, how much meat one does or doesn’t consume is merely a dietary choice; to some far-right culture warriors, meat consumption is a political statement. And Colorado, according to Politico contributor Nick Bowlin, has become Ground Zero in the meat battle as right-wingers rail against Democratic Gov. Jared Polis for declaring March 20 MeatOut Day in the western state.

Polis isn’t demanding that Colorado residents give up meat entirely or even for a week. Rather, he is urging them to refrain from eating it for one day, and even that is a request — not a command. Restaurants in Colorado will still be free to sell beef, pork or chicken on March 20.

But to far-right Colorado talk radio hosts like Dan Caplis and Ross Kaminsky (both on Denver’s KHOW-AM 630), Polis isn’t merely making a request — he is assaulting Colorado’s core values. Caplis, Bowlin notes in an article published by Politico on March 17, has described the governor’s request as a “traitorous attack” that is “vicious and callous.”

Republican politicians are throwing a hissy fit as well. Colorado State Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg said of Polis, “We can’t have leadership in this state throw the number two industry in this state under the bus.” And U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, a QAnon supporter who was elected via Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District in 2020, is calling for a “statewide BBQ on March 20.”

Bowlin explains, “Food has long been a front in the culture wars, and no option on the menu has been more fraught over the past several decades than beef — which holds a singular spot in the iconography of the American diet and even the myth of frontier expansion. But a long-term slide in beef consumption has put the industry on the defensive. In Colorado, that perceived threat to one of its dominant economic sectors has been exacerbated by a rapidly shifting political landscape that features a widening divide between the rural, often red parts of the state and the bluer, booming metro areas on the Front Range of the Rockies, where economic and political power is increasingly concentrated.”

Despite his support for MeatOut Day, Polis is not a militant vegan. In fact, Polis himself eats meat, although his partner, Marlon Reis, is a vegan and an animal rights activist.

And Bowlin points out that that Colorado governor “has largely tried to move on from the Meatless Day ruckus, which he has framed as blown out of proportion.”

But Colorado’s right, according to Bowlin, will latch onto any Culture War issues it can find as the state continues to trend Democratic.

Kenneth Bickers, who teaches political science at the University of Colorado, Boulder, told Politico, “Colorado is increasingly a blue state….. The state as a whole has been trending in a blue direction for more than ten years.”

Bickers cited the MeatOut Day controversy as an example of Colorado Republicans turning to Culture War issues to rally their base.

“It’s a cultural symbol,” Bickers told Politico. “Both parties have symbols. Symbols are powerful.”

Sarah Everard and the Atlanta spa shootings show how victim blaming continues even after #MeToo

“Yesterday was a really bad day for him, and this is what he did.”

Only a few hours after arresting the 21-year-old suspected shooter alleged to have gunned down eight people near Atlanta, Cherokee County sheriff’s deputy Captain Jay Baker appeared to offer a sort of rationalization of the suspected motive for the murderous rampage. “He was pretty much fed up and had been kind of at the end of his rope,” Baker said Wednesday during a press conference. 

“He” is alleged killer Robert Aaron Long and “what he did” was murder eight innocent people in cold blood during a shooting rampage across three Atlanta-area spas on Tuesday. Long, according to Baker, claimed to be suffering “sex addiction,” and “sees these locations” as “a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate.” 

Baker framed his comments as merely passing along the information gathered in interviews with Long. Feminists, however, exploded in outrage, understandably seeing Baker’s talk about a “bad day” as lending sympathies to the struggles of Long. It was doubly troubling that Baker cited “sex addiction,” which is often what misogynists — see Harvey Weinstein — self-diagnosis themselves with to evade responsibility for predatory and violent behavior towards women. The officer’s comments expose the dangers of this “sex addiction” talk, showing how it often reduces women to mere objects or “temptations” to “get rid of,” as if they are bags of heroin or bottles of booze instead of human beings with lives and families of their own. 

Baker also added that, even though six of the eight victims were Asian women, Long insisted that the shootings were not “racially motivated,” another claim the officer was reasonably criticized for taking at face value. Asian women have been subject to generations of sexual objectification and demeaning stereotypes demanding compliant, submissive behavior from them. Sure enough, it was soon revealed that Baker had previously shared anti-Asian memes on social media, casting doubt on his ability to fairly suss out what is actually “racially motivated.”

Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics? Subscribe to her newsletter Standing Room Only.

The entire press conference was a chilling reminder that, despite everything that’s happened in the past few years — Donald Trump’s “grab ’em by the pussy” tape, the Women’s March and the #MeToo movement — women are still all too often the ones blamed when men commit violence against them. It brought to mind “The Ripper,” a recent Netflix documentary about the social and political fallout from the series of murders committed in the late 70s by Peter Sutcliffe, deemed the “Yorkshire Ripper” by the British press. The documentary gives air to long-standing criticisms of law enforcement for failing to catch Sutcliffe for five years, despite interviewing him as a potential suspect nine times. The documentary, quite reasonably, posits that victim blaming is the reason for police failures.

Detectives attached themselves early on to the idea that Sutcliffe was motivated by a moralistic vengeance against sex workers, causing them to pay less attention to evidence from cases where victims, many of whom survived, were not sex workers. Why? Because, frankly, it was easier to blame the victims for their supposed “bad” choices than to grapple honestly with the prevalence of misogynistic attitudes that the police themselves share. Indeed, police at the time shifted the responsibility for preventing murder onto the women, telling them to stay at home, instead of going out at night. Not only was this not a real solution — many women, including sex workers, have to go out at night to make a living — but it was also, quite reasonably, viewed by feminists as male authorities exploiting the situation to deprive women of their personal freedoms. 

That happened 40 years ago, but a similar situation again erupted in Great Britain just this month, this time in London.

Wayne Couzens, a 48-year-old Metropolitan police officer, has been charged with the kidnapping and murder of 33-year-old Sarah Everard, whose body was found earlier this month, a week after she disappeared while walking home at night. London police had reacted to Everard’s disappearance by going door to door to warn women not to go out at night, a direct echo of the paternalistic, victim-blaming response that drew so much criticism during the Sutcliffe murders. Women responded now as they did then, however, by protesting in the streets, holding nighttime vigils to mourn Everard and demand accountability from police. This is how the police reacted: 

The excuse for the crackdown was that the vigils were restricted because of COVID-19. Many feminists rejected this, however, insisting that it instead a matter of the male-dominated police force and government once again using male violence as an excuse to deprive women of basic freedom of movement. That impression was reinforced by a proposal offered by Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson to put plainclothes police officers in nightclubs and bars to “protect” women. While the majority of British poll respondents — especially older ones — like this idea, the grim reality is that this might turn out to just be another situation of using male violence against women as an excuse to increase male surveillance over women. Feminist politicians, in contrast, have suggested more male accountability is the right response, suggesting such reforms as classifying misogynist violence as a “hate crime.“

Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics? Subscribe to her newsletter Standing Room Only.

Sociologists often distinguish between “benevolent” sexism, which is often expressed in terms of “revering” and “protecting” women, and “hostile” sexism, commonly called “misogyny,” or the hatred of women. It’s important to understand, however, that they are two sides to the same coin. Women who accept and submit to male control are rewarded with the condescending “protection” of benevolent sexism, but women perceived to violate the strict rules of proper feminine behavior are all too often attacked for it. In both cases, when men hurt women, it’s the victims who are blamed — for going out at night, for being sex workers, for being “tempting,” you name it. Benevolent and hostile sexism work together in a good cop/bad cop routine, both aiming to keep women under male control. 

After Baker’s “bad day” comments during Wednesday’s press conference, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms pushed back, saying, “We are not about to get into victim blaming, victim shaming, here” and noting that the spas that were targeted “are legally operating businesses that have not been on” the radar of law enforcement. 

It’s a sticky problem because it shouldn’t matter if the victims of misogynist violence are sex workers or not. Even asking the question is a form of victim blaming, as it focuses attention on the victims and away from the actual cause of the violence, which is misogyny. The notion that women can even meaningfully decipher a set of rules and expectations to follow that will keep them safe is not only unfair, it’s a lie. Long appears to have lashed out at spa workers and was apparently considering moving onto workers at a porn shop, blaming them for supposedly being too available to his sexual desires. But recent “incel” murderers, such as Elliot Rodgers or Alek Minassian, blamed women for not being sexually available enough — a complaint that all too many right-wing pundits, like Ross Douthat of the New York Times or sexism guru Jordan Peterson, were happy to amplify. Women are told to stay at home to avoid violence, but, as philosopher Kate Manne reminded us in the Atlantic, the vast majority of violence women experience at male hands is from domestic partners or family members.

You can be sexually available or closed off, go out at night or stay in. It doesn’t matter. Male violence is everywhere. It is not caused by women being a “temptation.” It’s caused by men who want to dominate and control women. Unfortunately, as Baker’s ugly press conference Tuesday showed, the police all too often share a worldview with the men who are violent towards women. Baker came off as a person who saw the world from Long’s point of view, where spa workers are a “temptation” instead of women just trying to make a living, where sexual objectification of Asian women is somehow “not racist”, and where women are blamed for men developing distorted and violent sexual urges. Men still control our society and men don’t want to take responsibility for male violence. Until at least one part of that equation changes significantly, the scourge of misogynist violence is unlikely to go anywhere. 

Scientists created human tear glands in a dish — and then made them cry

The number of Americans who suffer from dry eyes is in the millions. As humans are vision-dependent organisms, the experience of having eyes that don’t stay moist can be severely uncomfortable. But a group of scientists believe they may have made a great stride in helping victims — curiously, by creating tiny tear glands in dishes and forcing them to cry.

As described in a study published in the journal Cell Stem Cell earlier this week, scientists manufactured tear gland organoids — that is, miniature versions of organs which are manufactured by scientists in laboratories — and figured out how to make them produce tears. Their research aspires to lay the foundation to treat various medical conditions that result in malfunctioning tear glands, such as the immune system disorder Sjögren’s syndrome.

“Tear gland organoids mostly have potential applications for people suffering from dry eye disease (which represents between 5 and 30% of the adult population, depending on the studies),” Marie Bannier-Hélaouët, a co-author of the paper, told Salon by email. Bannier-Hélaouët said that eyedrops with artificial tears are often not enough to relieve all of the symptoms of dry eyes. With their research, Bannier-Hélaouët added that “we now can use the tear gland organoids to probe new medications that could improve tear production.”

The production of tear gland organioids could also be used for transplantation, such as in those with malfunctioning tear glands, Bannier-Hélaouët added. 

But there are other applications to this research beyond transplantation of tear ducts. Yorick Post, another co-author of the paper, wrote to Salon that the tear gland organoids could also make it possible “to identify drugs that stimulate tear production without ever having to test this on a patient.” He added that, on an individual level, he was drawn to this project because “millions of people worldwide suffer from dry eye, yet the tear gland is a very understudied organ with much more to be learned. The goal was to create an accessible experimental model of the human tear gland in the lab: organoids.”

Bannier-Hélaouët explained that organoids are created with adult stem cells, which exist in most of our organs in order to regenerate damaged tissue. Since 2009, scientists have been able to use these stem cells to grow tiny versions of organs in dishes — starting with stem cells in our gut — and prompt them to perform activities similar to their real-life counterparts in our bodies. This has been a boon to scientific research.

Want more science stories in your inbox? Subscribe to Salon’s weekly newsletter The Vulgar Scientist.

To create these artificial tear glands, Bannier-Hélaouët added, scientists started by acquiring fresh tear gland samples from a hospital. After that, they cut them into small pieces and then treated the tear gland tissues in the same way that you or I might handle our houseplants — by nurturing them and helping them grow.

This meant that they had to “provide it with the correct food (nutrients, growth factors). After a few days, we could see tear gland organoids growing in the dish. When we are feeling pain, our brain secretes adrenaline and that’s what makes us cry. With the tear gland organoids, it is the same: we give them adrenaline and they start crying.”

Post described how, as the scientists gave the correct activating signals in the laboratory, “the organoids started to produce and secrete tears. The shedding of the tears happened on the inside of the organoids, making them swell like a balloon full of tears. With this experimental platform we learned what kind of cellular signals induce tearing.”

Republicans who tried to overturn election vote against medals for Capitol, D.C. police

A dozen House Republicans on Wednesday voted against awarding Congressional medals to police departments that protected them during the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

The House voted 413-12 to award Congressional Gold Medals to the Capitol Police and D.C. Metro Police, as well as a third medal for the Smithsonian Institution to display in honor of other law enforcement agencies that assisted in response to the Capitol attack. The bill was scheduled for a vote last week but some Republicans used procedural measures to delay the vote. The resolution now heads to the Senate, which already voted to award a Congressional Gold Medal to Officer Eugene Goodman, who led rioters away from the Senate chamber.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., lashed out at Republicans who opposed the bill, accusing them of trying to “erase the events of January 6 and deny the responsibility of a far-right, insurrectionist mob incited by former President Trump.”

The 12 GOP members who voted no featured an all-star cast of far-right Trump supporters: Andy Biggs of Arizona, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Thomas Massie of Kentucky., Matt Gaetz of Florida, Louie Gohmert of Texas, Andy Harris of Maryland, Lance Gooden of Texas, Michael Cloud of Texas, Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Greg Steube of Florida, Bob Good of Virginia and John Rose of Tennessee. Their opposition was largely framed in terms of what they described as partisan language.

Every Republican who opposed the bill, except Massie, had objected to the counting of electoral votes from certain states after the pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol. Five people were killed, including Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick. Two other officers died by suicide in the subsequent weeks. Biggs, the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, was accused by Ali Alexander, who organized the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the riot, of having “schemed up” the event along with Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., and Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala. Biggs and Brooks have denied their involvement, though Biggs unsuccessfully sought a pardon from former President Donald Trump related to his role in the riot, according to CNN.

Some members of the group took issue with the use of the term “insurrectionists” in the resolution.

“On January 6, 2021, a mob of insurrectionists forced its way into the U.S. Capitol building and congressional office buildings and engaged in acts of vandalism, looting, and violently attacked Capitol Police officers,” the resolution says.

“It’s just offensive that we literally logrolled recognition of the Capitol Police,” Gaetz told Roll Call, complaining that Democrats chose to “combine it with these editorial comments about the Jan. 6 sequence of events.”

Massie told the outlet he worried that using the term “insurrection” may come up in “somebody’s prosecution.”

Other Republicans complained that the resolution referred to the Capitol as a “temple.”

“The desecration of the U.S. Capitol, which is the temple of our American Democracy, and the violence targeting Congress are horrors that will forever stain our Nation’s history,” the resolution said.

“Calling this a temple is a little too sacrilegious for me,” Massie said. “This is not a religion here. This is a government. We separate our religion from our government.”

Harris said in a statement that he could not support “partisan charged language found in this bill.”

Gohmert even circulated a competing bill obtained by Politico that did not mention the Capitol riot or Jan. 6. Gohmert’s bill honored the three officers who “all passed in January 2021.” Gohmert said in a statement that his bill “removed the speaker’s false and politicized narrative.” Politico called it the latest “effort by some of Trump’s most hardcore backers to rewrite history” and described it as “totally bonkers and extremely dangerous.”

Greene said on Twitter that she co-sponsored Gohmert’s “PRO police bill.” Good also said he backed Gohmert’s bill, suggesting that Democrats only support police when it’s “politically convenient for Speaker Pelosi.”

Hoyer said in a statement that Gohmert’s bill “insults the memory of the officer who was killed defending the Capitol and the two others who died as a result of the attack in its immediate aftermath, using language implying that the three officers did not lose their lives in the line of duty.”

The statement added that “such disrespect for the heroes who courageously tried to protect the American people’s Capitol is disgusting.”

Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., chairman of the House Rules Committee, told Politico that Republican efforts to minimize the events of Jan. 6 are “not only wrong, unforgivable, but unconscionable.”

“There are a lot of raw feelings around here,” he said. “To try to make believe it’s something that it wasn’t only increases the likelihood that it happens again.”

McGovern also lashed out at members who delayed the vote.

“The fact that there is any member, I don’t care what their political party, would want to delay providing a gold medal to Capitol Police who protected us on Jan. 6, it really is kind of disgusting,” he told the outlet. “It shows the pettiness and the tone-deafness that’s really shocking.”

Atlanta mayor: Hate crime charges “would be appropriate” for Asian spas shooter

A man has been charged with murder following Tuesday’s shootings in three Atlanta-area massage parlors, which left eight dead and one injured. Now some are calling for the alleged shooter to be charged with a hate crime. 

The twenty-one-year-old suspect, Robert Aaron Long of Woodstock, Georgia, faces several counts of murder in addition to aggravated assault. Officials have not yet been able to confirm whether the attacks were racially motivated. However, Long reportedly confessed to the murders.

Cherokee County Sheriff Frank Reynolds said that Long may have been a patron of the spas and cited a supposed sex addition. “He apparently has an issue,” said the sheriff, “what he considers a sex addiction, and sees these locations as a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate.”

Massage parlors are known to occasionally offer prostitution services, but there is no indication that this is the case for any of the targeted spas. 

“These are legally operating businesses that have not been on our radar,” said Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. The city, she added, would not participate in any kind of “victim shaming, victim blaming.” 

Bottoms said that the shooter was en route to Florida to continue his killing spree. 

On Tuesday, Baker noted, “Yesterday was a really bad day for [Long] and this is what he did.” The Captain’s remarks drew widespread outrage over what appeared to be law enforcement lending a sympathetic ear to the killer. 

“Whether it’s senseless violence we’ve seen play out in our streets, or more targeted violence like we saw yesterday. A crime against any community is a crime against us all,” Bottoms said in a Thursday morning news conference. 

Authorities have identified four victims of the massacre so far: Ashley Yaun, 33; Paul Andre Michels, 54; Xiaojie Tan, 49; and Daoyou Feng, 44, and Elcias R Hernandez-Ortiz, who was left injured. 

The shootings unfolded at 5pm on Tuesday night in Acworth, just outside of Georgia, where Long targeted Young’s Asian Massage. Two victims were pronounced dead at the first location. One was injured, and three were rushed to the hospital, where two later died. Long later targeted Gold Spa in northeast Atlanta ––  where he shot three women –– as well as Aromatherapy spa, where he killed another. 

After a brief manhunt, Long was arrested around 8:30pm. WSB-TV confirmed that the weapon Long used in the shootings, a 9mm, was purchased on the day of the rampage.  

Six of the victims were Asian women, and the South Korean Foreign Ministry confirmed that four of them were Korean. 

The shooting comes as the Asian American community faces a wave of anti-Asian hate crimes in the wake of the pandemic, the first case of which was identified in Wuhan City, China. 

“When we learned about this last night, we were horrified and the sinking feeling that I had was this had to be a crime related to AAPI hate,” Georgia State Rep. Bee Nguyen, a Democrat, told CNN on Wednesday. “As we have learned details of the event unfold, I still believe that this is a racially-motivated crime. In this particular case, where the victims were Asian women, we see the intersections of racism, xenophobia, and gender-based violence.”

Mayor Bottoms suggested that it would be “it would be appropriate” if Long were charged with a hate crime. 

https://twitter.com/CNNSitRoom/status/1372315912410431489

 

“I think whatever the stiffest, most appropriate charges there are, this guy should face those charges,” Bottoms replied during the interview on the “Situation Room.”

“In Georgia, you can be charged with a hate crime. It covers a variety of areas, and I personally think it would be appropriate, but I will defer to the prosecutors to make that determination.”

Do not rage-cook mapo tofu, and other emotional kitchen lessons

In a recent state of ire about unfettered capitalism, I unsuccessfully rage-cooked a batch of mapo tofu — the intoxicating Sichuan dish of tofu and minced fatty meat suspended in thin, tingly spiced sauce. Though generally pretty forgiving in terms of ratios and substitutes, it requires some subtlety when applying the dried chiles and spices. In other words, blindly crushing and throwing in handful upon handful of numbing Sichuan peppercorns may result in a punishing (not in a good way) meal. As my husband and I crunched through the tingling pods in a silence made tenser by the fact that I was now also mad about ruining dinner, I made an important realization. You can’t just anger-cook any old dish. 

In this year-plus of quarantine cooking through isolation, sadness and monotony, I’ve made my share of emotionally charged meals. I know there’s something to the very immediate nature of cooking that’s supposed to jolt us out of our heads and back to the moment, but what if those heads are especially, stubbornly overloaded? This is where the more physical pounding, hacking, searing and whipping comes in — within limits, of course. Luckily, I’ve learned enough lessons the hard way, so maybe you won’t have to. 

For example, do not anger-knead bagels. The dough is far too stiff, which carries an added risk of making you feel physically weak (dare I say helpless?) as you fruitlessly attempt to develop the gluten. You’re far better off pummeling something stretchier and more yielding like pizza dough.  

I can confirm that stress-chopping vegetables for ratatouille is an excellent release (assuming your knife is sharp enough). After smashing fat garlic cloves to smithereens, you get to hack your way through a veritable garden of onions, peppers, spongy eggplant, squashes and tomatoes. Then there’s plenty of time to brood over, say, passive-aggressive door slamming while you sauté each component separately — splashing in generous glugs of white wine whenever the bottom of the pan looks too brown. (Though perhaps consider sipping it at a slightly, uh, gentler pace.) 

RELATED: Meera Sodha’s mushroom mapo tofu is a flavorful, vegan weeknight dinner

On that note, nothing beats a good angry meat-sear, sandwich-griddling or fried rice smush — caramelization likes a strong, heavy hand. This logic also applies to pounding out chicken or pork fillets to bread and fry in a skillet, as well as to furiously whipping cream. I’ll add one caveat to the latter, aside from starting with a cold bowl: The stabilized version of hand-whipped cream, made so with a late addition of softened cream cheese, stands up taller and holds up longer — which in turn can prop up unstable souls. In fact, I’m a huge proponent of any good, sweaty whisking as a deeply satisfying release; in one of life’s delightful contradictions, ferociously beating eggs just before pouring them into the pan both vents frustration and makes for fluffier scrambled eggs.

Tossing, on the other hand, is riskier. Omelets can and will flop out of the pan, noodles will stick to the hood and pine nuts tossed aggressively during toasting will ping across the counter and nestle irritatingly into the crevices between the stove and countertop. 

On a deeper level, all this hot-blooded meal prep has me thinking about the relationship between rage and agency, especially in family structures like mine where one person does most, if not all, the cooking. 

I, who’ve eked out a fulfilling, if meager, living these past dozen years as a food and drink journalist, on the whole find real joy and release in preparing a meal, despite the occasional rage-fail. But what about the women in my family who came before — for whom cooking partially represented their limitations? 

RELATED: A love letter to all the produce I haven’t picked

Take my mom, an artist who stayed home to raise my sister and me while my dad traveled much of each month for his job. She’s a terrific, naturally curious self-taught cook, but did she ever resent putting her painting career on the backburner to cook day in and day out for her family? 

“Well, you do that for your kids, you know?” she said. “And I liked it.”

I don’t have many rage-cooking memories of Mom, save for one especially visceral, rage-baking tradition—the painful annual ritual of making Christmas cookies using the same old-ass cookie-stamping gun Mom inherited from my grandma. Over and over, Mom would throw her whole body into jamming that old gun into the baking sheet as it slowly groaned out misshapen trees and snowflakes — ’til she was red in the face and, frankly, pretty pissed. Meanwhile, my sister and I looked on disinterestedly, stole bits of butter-cookie dough, then complained about having so many cookies to decorate. 

Why keep up this thankless tradition? Because it was her mom’s, she said.

“I always helped my mother in the kitchen, because she was always — um— driven,” she said. “Let’s face it: They were European immigrants.” 

My grandparents left Germany during World War II and followed my grandmother’s sister to Connecticut. My grandma — Oma to us — worked part-time in retail while raising three kids and maintaining possibly the most impressive backyard garden of all time (85 tomato plants!). A triple-threat cook, baker and preserver who loved and spoiled us grandkids, she was the dogged, suspicious sort who’d peel all our grapes (seriously) and thoroughly wash eggs before cracking them and meat before cooking it. I was five when she passed away, but memories loom large of stealing juicy raspberries from the bucket in her sweltering Connecticut kitchen while she fretfully boiled the rest into jam in the heat of summer and of the fear that permeated the house whenever she made bread — thundering at anyone who dared open the kitchen door to possibly deflate her proofing dough. 

Sometimes it was hard to tell whether Oma enjoyed it. So much depended on the perfection of the produce, the bread baking up just right or the roast not being dry — maybe because these were the elements she could control. That she’d set herself such a high bar might also explain why her rage never ruined our dinner. It always left us feeling loved and nourished, if slightly overfed. 

The financial hardship and loneliness my grandparents endured dealt easier hands to those of us who followed, though the same intensity and perfectionism burns just as bright. Maybe it’s just how we express love.

The thing is, whoever you’re feeding will almost never care as much as you did that you seared the meat a little too hard or accidentally over whipped the cream into sweet butter because, maybe, you flew into a rage about how your mayor redirected coronavirus funds or that 19 of your last 20 pitches were turned down. 

But perhaps save over-spicing the mapo tofu for when you want to dole out some real punishment.

More by this author:

All about pie birds, the whimsical Victorian-era baking tool

While you’ve likely heard the nursery rhyme “Sing a Song of Sixpence,” with its “four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie,” it would probably surprise you to find a bird’s head peeking out of your fresh-from-the-oven dessert, whether or not it “began to sing” upon being sliced.

Don’t worry, though — there aren’t live birds in most pies, let alone two dozen. While the rhyme possibly alludes to the trials and tribulations of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, it may have served as inspiration for pie birds: hollow ceramic figurines designed to vent steam from the pastries, according to Linda Fields, author of “Four & Twenty Blackbirds, Vol. 1 and 2,” an anthology about the avian kitchen helpers.

The precursor to pie birds, known as pie funnels (or vents, or whistles), were developed in the Victorian era in Britain as a tool intended to keep juicy fruit and meat pies from bubbling over, and to make for a crispier crust. Back then, bakers put small, ceramic, cylindrical or hourglass-shaped funnels in the center of double-crust pies, to release steam. Around the 1930s, ceramics companies in the U.S. started taking artistic liberties, likely drawing on the nursery rhyme, and the vents morphed into whimsical birds with open beaks. Fields notes that the first documented pie bird was “a rooster with an S-shaped neck, made by the Pearl China Company in Ohio,” adding that in the years that followed, thousands of different iterations were made. Some companies also made similarly styled elephants, giraffes, pigs, dragons, and mustached chefs, among others, but the most popular was the blackbird.

Pie birds are nestled into a filled pie’s center, then covered by the top sheet of dough around the critter’s neck. When baked, the bird appears to hatch from the center of the pie, steam shooting out of its beak (or head, or trunk).

While at one point the ceramic sous-chefs were common sights in bakeries, cooking shops, and home kitchens, pie funnels — animal-shaped or otherwise — fell out of fashion by the mid 20th century, which Fields credits to fewer people baking at home, as well as the invention of frozen pie crusts as a stand-alone retail product (patented in the 1950s and ubiquitous by the mid 1960s).

Plus, strictly speaking, pie birds are not necessary to bake a good pie.

When a double-crust pie is in the oven, the fruit (or meat, if you’re making something savory, like a chicken pot pie) filling juices start to boil — and when the water turns to steam, it looks for a way to escape, usually through the weakest part of the crust’s crimped edge. Frequently, pies without vents rupture and some of the filling spills over the side, making a mess. It can also render the top crust soggy and the filling soupy, instead of that sticky-thick texture you can drag a fork through. However, to avoid a sloppy, less-than-perfect bake doesn’t mean you must shove a ceramic funnel into your pie: It’s as simple as cutting slits or shapes into the top crust, doing a lattice-top crust instead, or using a crumble topping (or forgoing a top crust altogether!), which allows steam to escape without sacrificing the pie’s texture. It’s also not easy to cleanly remove the pie birds, which results in an unsightly crater in the center of the pie. (Though one could see this as a positive: another reason to pile on the whipped cream or a scoop of vanilla, perhaps?)

* * *

Some professional bakers have seen a resurgence in the popularity of pie birds just in the past couple years, as younger generations discover the tools on eBay, Etsy, and vintage shops, an increasingly popular way to shop for classic kitchen tools. “I definitely think they’re having a heyday right now, which might be due to more people baking because of the pandemic. But I feel like there’s a renewed interest in food traditions, so that could also be why we’re seeing them again,” said Kristen Daily, owner of Pie Bird Pies, a catering and pop-up pie company in Des Moines, Iowa.

Julie Albertson, owner of The Texas Pie Company in Kyle, Texas, argues that the newfound interest in the fanciful kitchen tool has more to do with how photogenic or, dare one say, Instagrammable it is.

“It’s really just a cute way to showcase the pie and present it on the table,” Albertson notes.

The marriage between vintage and Instagrammable when it comes to kitchen tools is clearly evident these days: When Samin Nosrat’s Netflix series “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” debuted in 2018, people on the internet began madly searching for her yellow vintage bean-cooking pot (a Dansk Kobenstyle casserole); popular direct-to-consumer cookware company Great Jones launched a baking tool set with items inspired by vintage Pyrex designs in late 2020.

Both Daily and Albertson have numerous pie birds, both noting that customers will gift them their thrift-store finds. While they do use them when making a pie at home, neither reaches for the gizmos when baking in a professional setting. Similarly, Fields has over 1,000 in her collection (her favorite being a mother bluebird with chicks in a yellow nest made by Artisan Galleries), but most of hers are just for show.

Still, for many home cooks, the birds add a touch of playfulness and are a way to bond with other bakers. For Pie Bird Pies, it’s certainly the latter. Their namesake has become a vehicle for connection with their customers. Many who visit Daily’s pie pop-ups will tell her about older family members using pie birds.

“A lot of people remember their grandmother using them and will tell us about how tasty her pies were,” Daily said. “It’s a fun way to connect and talk about a shared love of pie.”

Related recipes:

Putting down roots in a 221-year-old kitchen in Italy

Welcome to Real-Life Renos, where we’re pulling back the curtains to the home renos we just can’t get enough of. Tag along as our favorite designers, chefs, and cookbook authors welcome us inside their spaces and share the behind-the-scenes stories behind their transformations. We’ll explore their takes on sustainable living, how they express their identities through design, how they create beautiful spaces that center around accessibility — and so much more.

* * *

We bought a home in the midst of the lockdown. I’m not sure how we did it — we are still pinching ourselves — but it was probably a combination of the right timing and a bit of luck, with a lot of patience thrown in (these things in Italy can take months, even without a pandemic).

The apartment is in the historic center of the hilltop town of San Miniato, where my husband Marco was born — and a 40-minute drive from Florence, where I’ve lived for the past 16 years. We first saw the apartment last March, two days before we were all caught by surprise by what became a three-month lockdown, during which my daughters (who were eight and two) and I didn’t get past our front gate. During those long days, I spent a lot of time thinking about the apartment we saw, looking at the photographs I’d taken, and trying to imagine ourselves holed up in an apartment with no outdoor space, and in a new town.

The day the lockdown ended—the very first opportunity we got to travel farther than 200 yards from the front door — we went to do two things: visit my mother-in-law, who had been alone for three months, and view the apartment again. I wanted to see it with new, post-lockdown eyes.

The apartment's original patterned tiles.

The apartment’s original patterned tiles. Photo by Emiko Davies. 

View from the kitchen window.

View from the kitchen window. Photo by Emiko Davies.

It didn’t take very long for us to know that it was the one. Built in 1800, it came with old patterned tiles, high ceilings with frescoes and wooden beams, seven-foot-tall windows that let the light stream in, and a sunset view over the surrounding valley that had even my two-year-old mesmerized. For me, being able to see the changing seasons from those tall windows, and having a horizon to look at, made up for the lack of outdoor space. It felt good.

The apartment had another thing going for it: It was only a block or two from my favorite butcher in Tuscany, a little organic produce shop, a good pasticceria, a handful of great restaurants, and long-fermented sourdough pizza by the slice. Even one of those things would have been good, but having all of them nearby felt like we’d hit the jackpot! At the back of my mind, I kept thinking that if we ever went into another lockdown, where we couldn’t walk farther than 200 yards from home, at least we’d be eating well.

The writer's daughter, Mariù, on an early visit to the apartment.

The writer’s daughter, Mariù, on an early visit to the apartment. Photo by Emiko Davies.

The first thing I did when our offer was accepted was plan the kitchen. After years of living in shoebox-sized apartments in Florence, I finally had room for the kitchen of my dreams: not enormous, but roomy enough to have space to spread out when cooking, a dining table for the day when friends will be able to join us again (and for now where the girls can play, eat, or do their homework while I’m cooking), and light streaming in through the windows.

The main thing I hoped for was a kitchen that was practical, reliable, and sustainable. The pandemic had rattled us with so much uncertainty: from empty supermarket shelves to job losses, canceled trips, and separation from family. Knowing that we were putting our money toward something that would last — and not have to be replaced for years — was in many ways a cure for a lot of that uncertainty.

Little Luna calling attention to where the cooktop would go.

Little Luna calling attention to where the cooktop would go. Photo by Emiko Davies.

The other side of the kitchen, pre-breakdown.

The other side of the kitchen, pre-breakdown. Photo by Emiko Davies.

These were the priorities that led me to look at Very Simple Kitchen, a young, local kitchen design company in Bologna, about an hour and a half away from us. The lockdown-related loss of income for so many Italians made me want to spend my money close to home and support local businesses. Their kitchens are made of versatile modules inspired by vintage industrial workbenches — strong, sturdy stainless steel benches that are powder-coated in any color you can dream up, lending them personality and warmth. We chose a hue that I suppose you could describe as teal, although, depending on the light, it can look like a dark, smoky blue or a deep, warm green. It’s the perfect chameleon of a color for an indecisive person, but I also love that it recalls some of the colors in the original tiles in other rooms. The drawers hide a dishwasher (my first ever, so it feels like quite the luxury, but really, with the amount of washing up we do, it’s a more energy-efficient solution!), garbage bins, a deep drawer for heavy pots, and a double drawer for cutlery, where there is also a clever hidden drawer for our huge collection of kitchen knives (I love that they are hidden away from the kids yet still handy).

Industrial-style work benches, courtesy Very Simple Kitchen

Industrial-style work benches, courtesy Very Simple Kitchen. Photo by Emiko Davies.

I had already fallen in love with the idea of stone terrazzo — an ancient Italian technique where stone and marble offcuts are recycled into a new surface — as a sustainable material for the countertop. It is practical, too: easy to clean, and pretty stain-resistant! My previous kitchen counter was wood, and I vowed never to use it again: It was simply too much work to (make my family) keep it clean. For color, we went with green and rosy peach splatters for a modern yet cheerful palette.

Photo by Emiko Davies.

I hardly ever cook by myself, so we made sure we had a large, long section of counter by placing the stovetop on one end and moving the sink to the other, by the window. When Marco is around, we are often cooking side by side — he might be making bread, I might be recipe-testing or preparing a meal — and the competition for counter space is serious. And when he’s not around, I’ve often got a little kitchen assistant or two either wanting some attention or to be part of the action.

I also knew that we needed a larger, 35-inch cooktop, as Marco and I are constantly fighting for space to cook. We thought long and hard about the kind of cooking surface we wanted. I grew up with a gas cooktop and have never had anything else, but as much as I love cooking on a visible flame, I wanted a cooktop that wouldn’t be obsolete five or 10 years from now. We also wanted to be less reliant on nonrenewable energy, which, I’ll admit, we still use for our heating (something I’d like to change soon). After doing a lot of research on sustainable options, we chose another neighboring Italian company, Smeg, for our induction stovetop with multiple zones (for maximum flexibility). The change to induction did mean that I had to replace some pans that aren’t compatible, like copper and aluminum, but I consider it a positive upgrade.

Upper cabinets were sacrificed so the kitchen felt airy and open.

Upper cabinets were sacrificed so the kitchen felt airy and open. Photo by Emiko Davies.

Always a little helper, or two, at the ready

Always a little helper, or two, at the ready. Photo by Emiko Davies.

Without traditional shelves or cupboards above the counter, a big question was where we’d put our things. I had wanted to keep the kitchen looking airy and open, especially with those beautiful tall ceilings, but we were also running over budget. Eventually, we settled on rods that we could hang utensils, boards, and pans off of, to have them at arm’s reach. We are converting a small room off the side of the kitchen into a pantry and laundry room, where we will install shelving for all the dry goods, while plates and glasses are in a cupboard on the other side of the kitchen table.

Plates and glasses tucked away in a cupboard on the other side of the kitchen table.

Plates and glasses tucked away in a cupboard on the other side of the kitchen table. Photo by Emiko Davies.

We did away with the idea of a kitchen island, even if we did find it very useful in our last kitchen. In my heart I knew I wanted the space instead for a kitchen table, something I haven’t had in my many years of living in minuscule Florentine kitchens, and have long yearned for. In many older Italian cities, having a kitchen large enough to fit a dining table is less common, and apartments that do are advertised as having a cucina abitabile, literally an “inhabitable kitchen.” I may be romanticizing the idea of a kitchen table a bit, but to me, it would truly be the beating heart of the house.

Then one day, Marco mentioned there was a table in his mother’s attic that he thought we should look at. Her attic is larger than our entire apartment, and it likely lay underneath a mountain of books and nearly 40 years’ worth of dust. But when I heard it had a marble top, my interest was piqued! It wasn’t until we pulled it out, cleaned it up, and sanded it a bit that I realized its full potential.

A 100-year-old kitchen table that's a symbol of hope and resilience.

A 100-year-old kitchen table that’s a symbol of hope and resilience. Photo by Emiko Davies.

The table had belonged to Marco’s great-grandfather Angiolino, who recycled a piece of marble from the old bar he owned that was destroyed during the Second World War and rebuilt in the 1950s; he had a carpenter build a table around the marble slab, and that’s where the family ate until Marco was a baby and they upgraded the table. Aside from it being a family heirloom, I liked the idea of using something we already had and giving it a new life (the kitchen chairs, too, were bought from secondhand shops). The idea of watching my little girls grow up around their great-great-grandfather’s marble kitchen table feeds the roots we are trying to put down, and fills me with hope that the resilience of this 100-year-old table that has nourished five generations of the family will rub off on anyone who sits down around it.

* * *

Stepping outside the kitchen . . .

Photo by Emiko Davies.

Photo by Emiko Davies.

Photo by Emiko Davies.

Photo by Emiko Davies.

 

It’s not just you: Why everyone is super exhausted right now

Besides being the year of the pandemic, 2020 was the year of keeping busy at home. Pandemic hobbies, as they’re commonly called, substituted much of the human socializing that occupied pre-pandemic weeknights and weekends. Some people became prolific at growing the natural yeast for sourdough. Others turned to learning a musical instrument, reading more, or just binging television.

But as the era of the great indoors stretches into 2021, many people are reckoning with a more dominant emotion: exhaustion. 

The experience of 62-year-old Lisa Johnson Mandell of Las Vegas epitomized this peculiar exhaustion.

“I don’t get just tired or sleepy, I find myself getting exhausted — bone tired, where I find it hard to place one foot in front of the other,” Mandell said. “My limbs ache from exhaustion.”

And many have anecdotally reported it on social media. 

“Anyone else finding it hard to catch a break these days? So many folks are just exhausted (including me),” Dr. Desmond Upton Patton, a social work professor at Columbia University, opined on Twitter. His remark prompted a long thread of agreement from the Twitterverse. “Global fatigue,” one person replied.  

This collective exhaustion arrives at an unusual moment, as the slow-but-steady vaccine roll-out inches us closer to some sense of normalcy. One might think that would lead to a feeling of collective excitement, now that there’s an end in sight. Yet it appears to be doing just the opposite.

So, what is going on?

Nathalie Theodore, JD, LCSW, a psychotherapist in Chicago, told Salon it could have to do with the fact that as a society, we’ve been living under the grip of chronic stress for one year now. From ongoing lockdowns to social distancing, many of the outlets that would usually alleviate a person’s stress have been taken away from us for an extended period of time.

“Living with this chronic underlying stress means we have less bandwidth to deal with the ups and downs of daily life, or other emotional triggers,” Theodore said, adding that “decision fatigue” could be causing excessive tiredness. “Due to the pandemic, any activity we choose to engage in requires a risk analysis, which is exhausting.”

Want more science stories in your inbox? Subscribe to Salon’s weekly newsletter The Vulgar Scientist.

Indeed, as more people get vaccinated, decisively analyzing the risk of leaving the house —  and mingling with other vaccinated or unvaccinated people — continues to be tiring. Only until recently did the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provide the public with guidelines on how vaccinated people can interact with other vaccinated people and unvaccinated people. Still, with this guidance, what’s safe and what isn’t remains a bit confusing during this transitional period. Trying to hash out the details isn’t the “normal” we’re used to.

Mental health experts say there are other variables at play causing unmanageable fatigue. Ansley Campbell, a licensed marriage and family therapist (LMFT) and Clinical Director of The Summit Wellness Group, told Salon the exhaustion could actually be a result of having an end in sight. Since our nervous systems have been in survival mode for an entire year, we are finally at a point where it feels a little more safe to relax. That’s led us to formally take in the challenges of the past year.

“Now that the infection rates have been decreasing, people are getting vaccinated, and some returning to more normal lives or feelings of safety, that space of feeling the need to constantly survive is also decreasing,” Campbell said. “This is causing many clients to now have the time and space to pause and realize the impacts of the past year, which is leading to greater exhaustion.”

Fatigue is common in delayed trauma responses, which could certainly be part of the extreme exhaustion many are experiencing. As researchers have noted, persistent fatigue, sleep disorders, nightmares, fear of recurrence, and anxiety are common delayed trauma responses among survivors.

Dr. Gail Saltz, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the NY Presbyterian Hospital Weill-Cornell School of medicine and host of the “How Can I Help?” podcast on iHeartRadio, told Salon it might not even be a delayed trauma response, but something called Pandemic Trauma and Stress Experience (PTSE). The term, which was coined by the American Psychoanalytic Association, is described as a type of “ongoing trauma response.”

“Part of that is the ongoing physiological and psychological effects of being in a pandemic — which is going to vary from person to person depending on the proximity of trauma for them — so trauma could be that you got COVID and were very sick or somebody close to you got COVID and was very sick or died,” Saltz said. “You had to abruptly, and in fear, entirely change your life in an ongoing, super-stressful way.

Another part of the exhaustion may relate to our routines being thrown off indefinitely. Dr. Aude Henin, co-Founder and co-Director of the Child Cognitive Behavior Program told Salon that lockdown is like being “perpetually jet-lagged.”

“Our daily routines — from the time we get up, to how we get ready for work or school, to when we eat lunch, when we exercise, or spend time with family and friends, to when and how we go to bed — are key to setting our body clocks and regulating our energy levels during the day,” Henin said. “The amount and timing of daylight also plays a key role; the sudden and dramatic changes in daily routines, and the lack of time outdoors because of quarantining and social distancing have interfered with our biorhythms and have greatly decreased our energy levels.”

For these reasons, mental health professionals emphasized it’s important to take care of ourselves during this time.

“It’s imperative we prioritize self-care and connect with others in pandemic-safe ways during this time in order to counteract the effects of isolation and get the support we need,” Campbell said.

And if you are experiencing extreme exhaustion in addition to other symptoms of clinical depression, mental health experts emphasize it’s best to get professional help from a therapist.

“Both poor sleep, and the experience of feeling incredibly exhausted and fatigued and low energy, are a significant part of clinical depression,” Saltz said. “I think people should be aware that this could be clinical depression, and they should be knowledgeable of the other symptoms; and if it turns out that they’re actually meeting criteria for a bunch of the other symptoms as well then that requires evaluation and treatment,” she added. 

What the newly-discovered Dead Sea Scrolls tell us about history

It was a dry day, like most days in the Judean Desert. It was the 1940s in the West Bank region of Qumran, where a group of Bedouin men were herding goats in the hills just west of the Dead Sea, so named because the water is so salty that very few organisms can survive in it. In the course of their day, the Bedouins noticed a nearby cave, in which they discovered clay jars filled with ancient leather scrolls. They had no idea they were about to forever change our understanding of Biblical history.

Over the following decade, fragments from more than 900 other scrolls were discovered in ten additional caves. Later dubbed the Dead Sea Scrolls, the documents contained passages from the Book of the Twelve Prophets, including the books of Zechariah and Nahum. These documents — versions of what Jews call the Tanakh, or what Christians would call the Old Testament — are mostly in Hebrew, although some were written in Aramaic, Greek and Nabataean-Aramaic. They are dated between the third century BCE and the first century CE.

And, as the world learned on Tuesday, new fragments from the scrolls were recently discovered. 

According to the Israel Antiquities Authority, which owns many of the scrolls, a four-year archaeological project in the West Bank yielded the first new Dead Sea Scroll discoveries in 60 years. Besides fragments from the Book of the Twelve Prophets, archaeologists also found a 10,500 year old basket — quite possibly the oldest in the world — and the 6,000-year-old remains of a partially mummified child.

Learning how religious texts were written

The Dead Sea Scrolls have always fascinated archaeologists and historians for their capacity to rewrite history. The scrolls have shown how biblical texts are actually fungible: a few words re-ordered, and in some cases whole passages excised or rewritten, give insights into the history of these religious documents and help historians reconstruct how they were written and compiled. 

“The new discoveries add a few more pieces to the puzzle that is the Dead Sea Scrolls,” Oren Ableman, researcher at the Dead Sea Scrolls Unit of the Israel Antiquities Authority, told Salon by email. He mentioned that, among other things, they have helped scholars better reconstruct the text of the Greek Minor Prophets Scroll, which are Ancient Greek manuscripts of revised version of the Septuagint (or Greek Old Testament).

“The new fragments also included some textual changes in comparison to other manuscripts,” Ableman added. “The most notable difference is that in Zechariah 8:16 instead of the word ‘gates’ — which appears in all other versions — one of the fragments has the word ‘streets.'”

In the New King James Version of that Biblical passage, the text reads:

These are the things you shall do:
Speak each man the truth to his neighbor;
Give judgment in your gates for truth, justice, and peace.

Andrew Lawler, author of the upcoming book “Under Jerusalem: The Buried History of the World’s Most Contested City” and contributing editor for Archaeology Magazine, told Salon that he was struck by how the fragments from the books of Zechariah and Nahum were written in Greek, even though most of the Dead Sea Scrolls are in Hebrew or Aramaic.

Lawler explained that the wording in the new fragments are very different from the wording of the same passages in the Greek Old Testament. That means that the sacred text “wasn’t ‘set in stone’ for a long time,” Lawler said. “The finds are a reminder of just how pervasive Hellenistic culture was in the Middle East even after the Romans came to dominate the region.”

“What’s also interesting is that the wording differs slightly from the Septuagint,” Lawler wrote to Salon. After explaining what the Septuagint is, he added that “we don’t yet know the age of the fragments, but they suggest the sacred text wasn’t ‘set in stone’ for a long time.

What about the scrolls we’ve already found?

The Dead Sea Scrolls, both as previously discovered and with the new versions, fall into three categories. There are biblical manuscripts, which include versions of roughly 200 books from the Hebrew Bible. These are the oldest known copies of texts of those documents — which helped influence the three Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) — in the history of the world. Fragments from all of the books from the Hebrew Bible were found there, except for the Book of Esther and the Book of Nehemiah.

There are also sectarian manuscripts, which include everything from apocalyptic proclamations and legal documents to commentary on the Bible. Finally there are the apocryphal manuscripts, which contain books that were not included in the Jewish Biblical canon and are either known only through translations or were previously undiscovered.

Taken together, they provide scholars with keen insights into how the foundational texts of many of the world’s major religions were perceived in the Near East roughly two millennia ago.

“This is a huge subject since the entire field of textual study of the Hebrew Bible and the early Greek translations was changed by these discoveries,” Ableman told Salon. “I think the best way to sum up the impact of the Dead Sea Scrolls in this regard is that they taught us that up to the early second century CE the text of the Bible was ‘fluid.’ A few different versions were in circulation at the time, although the differences between these versions was not too great and should not be exaggerated.”

According to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, there is one scroll that particularly stands out.

“The most outstanding of the Dead Sea Scrolls is undoubtedly the Isaiah Scroll (Manuscript A) – the only biblical scroll from Qumran that has been preserved in its entirety (it is 734 cm long),” the museum writes. “This scroll is also one of the oldest to have been preserved; scholars estimate that it was written around 100 BCE.”

Why were the Dead Sea Scrolls hidden?

There is actually considerable scholarly debate over the origins of the Dead Sea Scrolls. One of the most popular theories is that they were stored in these caves by the Essenes, a separatist group in ancient Israel that was more religious than many of their contemporaries. They are known to have left for the wilderness to practice their faith, and may have been responsible for stashing the scrolls in those caves.

But this is not the only hypothesis behind their origins.

Indeed, some scholars believe that the documents were left behind by Jewish priests who “retreated to the desert,” Lawler said. “Still others insist they were hidden by refugees fleeing the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE. It may be that the scrolls were secreted in the caves by a variety of people — both locals and refugees — during the tumultuous first and second centuries CE.”

Lawler noted that the recent discovery may support the idea that the scrolls were put in these caves by a number of groups over varying periods of time.

“They were apparently placed in the cave during the second Jewish revolt that began around 132 CE, some half century after most of the other scrolls were hidden,” Lawler told Salon. “Given that they also found a 10,000-year-old basket and a Roman sandal in this particular cave, there’s no doubt that lots of people used these shelters for a variety of purposes.”

“It’s so pervasive”: “Groomed” filmmaker on confronting the sickening commonalities of sexual abuse

Over the past several years, there have been numerous documentaries about high-profile men who allegedly groomed their victims of sexual abuse: “Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich,” “Surviving R. Kelly,” “Leaving Neverland” and “Allen v. Farrow.” 

According to documentarian Gwen van de Pas, those films are important in that they encouraged a broader understanding of how sexual assault and abuse takes place — especially when it involves men in positions of power or authority and minors. But her documentary “Groomed,” which debuts on Discovery+ on Thursday, March 18 tells a story that is unfortunately more common. 

“People seeing those documentaries may assume that there’s always an element of celebrity, and it feels a little bit far away,” van de Pas told Salon in an interview. “What we wanted to do was — and it’s also how we selected the survivors that we ended up working with — highlight the more common stories that people that you might know have gone through.” 

According to van de Pas 80% of sexual abuse cases involve grooming, which is the process of befriending and manipulating a potential victim, often children, with the intent to be sexually abusive. This can involve giving them gifts, spending quality time with them and their family, doing them favors so the intended victim feels indebted to them and otherwise treating them like an “adult.” The majority of these cases involve a family member, a family friend or a trusted authority figure. 

That was the case for van de Pas. “Groomed” chronicles her decision to return to her hometown in Holland — where she was abused — to grapple with the trauma and determine if there’s a way for her to receive both healing and justice. 

Van de Pas was 11 years old when her assistant swim coach began grooming her, telling her he viewed her as 18-year-old based on her maturity level. He would send her letters about how he wanted to wake up next to her in a single bed on Sunday mornings. He would go on to molest her twice a week — after their biweekly swim practices — for several years. 

At the time, van de Pas said, she enjoyed the attention and didn’t understand that she was being abused; it wasn’t until a few years later that she began having night terrors and vivid, terrifying dreams about her abuser. After visiting several therapists, she eventually learned about grooming, a term and concept that was new to her but matched her experience perfectly. 

“When I heard it the first time, I was shocked because I thought, ‘Holy moly, how can we not know about this? It’s so pervasive,'” she said. “And I think it would have really helped me because for the longest time. I thought my case didn’t count. I thought, ‘You know, it’s another gray zone,’ or ‘It isn’t really abuse because I never said ‘no.'” 

Throughout the filming of the documentary, van de Pas spoke with hundreds of survivors of sexual abuse who were groomed. She said that there are a number of striking commonalities across their stories. 

“It was scary to see how common some of these patterns were, both in terms of the type of victim that was picked,” she said. “So somebody who went through something difficult or was insecure, or for some reason had a gap for attention or love to be filled.” 

Additionally, she said, cars played an unexpected role in grooming; it was a relatively private, though socially acceptable place for an abuser to spend time with their victims and it also denoted maturity.

“I think at least in half [of the stories I heard] the concept of a car would come up,” she said. “Because every 11- or 12-year-old girl or guy looks at people with a car and looks up to them, right? That’s such a symbol of adulthood. And if they say, ‘Oh, you can drive my car,’ or ‘I can take you to matches without your parents in my car,’ that’s a big thing.” 

Van de Pas also said that age-inappropriate gifts were also a common part of grooming. 

“Very feminine gifts for the girl,” she said. “So makeup or perfume, things that also signal, ‘I don’t look at you as a child, I’m not giving you a toy, but I look at you as an adult.’ Almost like a rite of passage symbol.” 

But in filming “Groomed,” van de Pas realized that in order to tell the whole story, she would also need to speak with someone who had been the one doing the grooming. She ended up speaking with a convicted sex offender as a kind of proxy for her abuser. That, she said, was one of the most nerve-wracking parts of putting together the documentary. 

“I had two big concerns about doing that interview,” she said. “The first one was, ‘Do I really want to give somebody like that a voice?’ I found that a really tricky one. But also, he’s an expert groomer. Was I going fall victim to that? Not that I thought he would abuse me, but am I gonna be tricked again? Tricked into liking him or into believing him? I was really afraid of that.” 

Through the documentary, van de Pas said, she made the difficult decision to appeal a court’s decision to close a case against her abuser. She is still waiting for updates. 

“I talk in the film about how the healing process and the legal process can and should be different or separate, which I feel very strongly about,” she said. “And so I think at some point, I felt as healed as I might become. I don’t believe in 100% closure, but I think I’m doing much better.”

And she wondered if she really wanted to reopen some of those wounds again and go through what could be a yearslong legal process. 

“Then when my daughter was born, she’s now six months old, that really gave me the last push I needed because I thought, ‘Gosh, I want to be an example for her and I want to protect girls of her generation,’ van de Pas said. 

She continued: “But also I want to be the woman that she looks at and thinks, ‘She persevered — and she did it even though it was difficult.'” 

“Groomed” begins streaming on Discovery+ on March 18. 

Marjorie Taylor Greene accuses transgender community of “destroying God’s creation”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., on Wednesday accused transgender people of “destroying God’s creation.”

“Again Democrats want to violate girls and women’s rights by destroying God’s creation, male and female,” Greene wrote on Twitter in response to the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). “Putting biological men in women’s prisons, abuse shelters and extending them rights does NOT help biological women and girls who have been through hell.”

Greene also railed against the legislation on the House floor.

“Now that they have destroyed the family and the housing law, they want to push a progressive gender ideology,” she said of House Democrats. “Make no mistake, Democrats want to create an authoritarian woke state where neighbors, partners, citizens and employers are afraid to do anything in order to avoid the draconian policies imposed under the guise of protecting women.”

Greene said that she wanted to go after the “real abusers” instead of “trying to criminalize every church in America for not following the advice of the transgender coalition of gender dysphoria.”

You can watch the video below via Twitter:

How Southern Republicans found a white-power loophole in the Voting Rights Act

George White of North Carolina served two terms in Congress between 1897 and 1901. He was the only Black member during those years, and he would be the last Black person elected to the U.S. House for nearly another three decades. 

North Carolina Democrats made certain of that. A new state constitutional amendment, ratified in 1900, required passage of a literacy and education test before registering to vote, as well as pre-payment of a poll tax. By 1904, the number of registered Black voters in North Carolina had plummeted to nearly zero. 

But even when the Voting Rights Act put an end to such blatant racist voter suppression, whites kept control through more subtle, though no less insidious means. District lines were gerrymandered to prevent Black voters from becoming a powerful enough political force to have any meaningful voice in their own representation. 

That worked as well: It would be decades longer — not until Rep. Eva Clayton, in 1992 — until North Carolina would send another Black representative to Washington.

The 1982 reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act, which required the creation of majority-minority districts where possible, helped make Clayton’s victory possible. Yet it too would quickly be refashioned, this time by Southern Republicans, into a tool that favored white voters. Republican map makers quickly realized that the creation of new districts that placed a majority of Black voters — most of them Democratic voters — into one seat would hand the GOP an advantage in all the surrounding seats. 

The GOP had figured out a loophole: They could look like champions of inclusion and increase the number and representation of Blacks in Congress while decreasing the number of Democrats. 

Before the 1990s, Southern Democrats diluted the power of the Black vote by scattering us across many districts. Starting in 1991, Republicans packed Black voters into overwhelmingly Black districts, whether in North Carolina or others, like the 14th in Michigan, artfully designed via a thin line to link the poorest neighborhoods in Detroit with the city of Pontiac, 30 miles north, while boosting the GOP’s prospects in all the surrounding districts. 

Too often, the Black power structure, enticed by a permanently safe seat in Congress, went along.

Indeed, by 1994, the Congressional Black Caucus had more members than at any time since Reconstruction. And not coincidentally, Republicans took control of the House for the first time in five decades. 

Here’s what really made this brazen trickery possible: Single-member congressional districts. When representatives are elected in this fashion, the district lines determine winners and losers. It’s easy for Black voters — who already live close together after decades of racist banking and housing practices known as “redlining” — to be drawn into districts that are 80 or 85 percent Black. But this limits Black voting power. It puts a ceiling on the number of districts that might elect Black representatives, or where Black residents might have a greater voice. And at a time when so many Blacks align with the Democratic Party, it ends up handing Republicans an enduring advantage in the race for Congress.

It’s time for a reform that increases the political power of Black voters. The Fair Representation Act, which will be reintroduced by Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia later this month, would put an end to the single-member districts that so often segregate Black voters. Instead, we would elect members of Congress from somewhat larger districts of three, four and five members, using ranked choice voting.

The larger districts would take away the power of district lines to pack Blacks into a handful of seats. Ranked choice voting, meanwhile, would lower the percentage of votes needed to elect a member and create fairer and more representative congressional delegations in every state. Michigan, for example, is nearly 15 percent Black — but there is only one Black member of Congress, representing the 14th district, who tends to win with more than 80 percent of the vote. 

Indeed, if we had multi-member voters and ranked choice voting, studies show that minority representation would soar in all parts of the country.

We’ve seen two different futures for America in recent months. Last summer, millions of Americans marched for social justice and proclaimed that Black Lives Matter in the face of systemic racism and police violence. Then, on Jan. 6, insurrectionists mobbed the Capitol, halting the Electoral College count that symbolizes our peaceful transfer of power. 

As we look to 2021 as a year of promise and reform, we should remember George White and redouble our efforts to choose the vision that’s inclusive and promising. That America is within our grasp. We simply need elections that make a true multiracial democracy possible.

Omarosa Manigault Newman can’t force Trump to sit for deposition, federal judge rules

A federal judge has ruled that Omarosa Manigault Newman will not be allowed to force former President Donald Trump to sit for a deposition after the Justice Department sued her following her firing.

Newman’s attorneys have argued that they should be allowed to depose Trump and former chief of staff John Kelly because the lawsuit was filed against her in retaliation for speaking out about her time at the White House. The Justice Department’s lawsuit alleges that Newman failed to file a financial disclosure statement after leaving her job.

Judge Richard Leon ruled on Wednesday that Trump and Kelly have protection from depositions because of their former positions, CNN reported.

“The need to protect the integrity of the underlying decision-making process, and encourage public service by protecting officials from ‘indiscriminate depositions,’ continue to persist after the official leaves government service,” Leon wrote in his opinion.

“Defendant has not carried her burden of demonstrating that deposing former President Trump is appropriate. Unfortunately for defendant, even assuming former President Trump has first-hand knowledge about how this case was referred to the Department of Justice, this information is irrelevant to any claim or defense in this case,” the judge added.

Leon said that Newman’s attorneys would be permitted to depose a Justice Department lawyer who allegedly has knowledge about the situation.

Republicans are now working to sabotage Biden’s stimulus

Even though President Joe Biden just signed the American Rescue Plan, Republicans are not backing down in their fight against the $1.9 trillion Covid relief package. They are now looking for ways to reject the federal funds allotted to state and local governments. 

On Tuesday, twenty-one attorneys general penned a condemnatory missive protesting a stipulation in Biden’s relief package that imposes limits on states’ ability to lower taxes. The letter, a noteworthy counterpunch against Biden’s defining legislative victory, specifically takes issue with the $350 billion set aside for cities and counties struggling to front the cost of the pandemic. Congressional Democrats drafting the bill barred state officials from using this money to offset any losses of tax revenue that would come from local cuts. However, the attorneys general said in their letter to the Treasury Department that the provision prevents states that were already pursuing “such tax relief with or without the prospect of COVID-19 relief funds.”

The letter continued, “Absent a more sensible interpretation from your department, this provision would amount to an unprecedented and unconstitutional intrusion on the separate sovereignty of the states through federal usurpation of essentially one half of the state’s fiscal ledgers.”

If Biden does not allow states to carry out tax cuts on their own volition, then the relief law, the GOP letter argues, “would represent the greatest invasion of state sovereignty by Congress in the history of our Republic.” 

According to The Washington Post, whispers of impending lawsuits have circulated the White House. 

One official noted, however, that the relief bill does not explicitly restrict states from enacting cuts, but, rather, instructs them not to offset lost net revenue from tax cuts with the aid. The official explained that “if a state does cut taxes without replacing that revenue in some other way, then the state must pay back to the federal government pandemic relief funds up to the amount of the lost revenue.”

In Oklahoma –– a state which has already passed an earned income tax cut –– the state’s attorney general expressed dismay that the “the federal stimulus bill might prohibit Oklahoma from providing this economic relief without losing its share of federal funding.”

“We were planning on…reducing the sales tax on used cars, that is low-income and middle-income,” Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas said in a CBS interview. “And now we’re worried about whether that’s going to be prohibited under this bill. The language seems to indicate it is.”

The provision, which has drawn great confusion within the legal right, may prove a difficult hiccup in getting states run by Republicans the financial support their residents need. 

The state officials’ letter comes as another Republican-backed effor against the bill mounts in Mississippi. The Magnolia State Governor, Tate Reeves, R, signaled on Sunday that he would not expand the state’s Medicaid program, even though doing so would qualify the state for a 15 percent match in funding. 

Under the Affordable Care Act, states already receive 90% of the cost of Medicare expansion. However, as Vox notes: “[N]ewly expanding states would also receive a 5 percent bump in the federal funding match for their traditional Medicaid programs for two years. Because the traditional Medicaid population is significantly larger than the expansion population, the funding bump is projected to cover a state’s 10 percent match for expansion enrollees and then some over those two years.”

This means that Mississippi –– home to somewhere between 200,000 to 300,000 uninsured residents –– would qualify for an aggregated 105% match for the cost of coverage, effectively subjecting the state to a 5 percent loss if it opts out of the expansion. As Senate Public Health Committee Chair Hob Bryan, D, put in an interview with Mississippi Today, that there “will be more money in the state treasury if we expand Medicaid than if we don’t.”

“For a number of years, the federal government has been offering us $1 million a day to take care of sick people,” he added, “Now they are offering $1 million a day to take that other $1 million a day. You can’t make this stuff up.”

Asked whether he would expand Medicaid with the promise of additional funding, Reeves said in a press conference that his position had not changed. 

President Biden’s relief bill may prove to be a campaign flash point in the upcoming Senate races as Republicans and Democrats remain split over the bill’s political value. Many Democrats have vowed to campaign on the bill, now knowing that their negligence of this tactic contributed to widespread Democratic losses after Obamacare’s historic passage. “We didn’t adequately explain what we had done,” Biden told House Democrats after the relief bill’s passage. “Barack was so modest, he didn’t want to take, as he said, a ‘victory lap.'”

Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., told the New York Times that Democrats have “learned the lessons from 2009, we made sure we went back to our districts this weekend to tell people how much help they were going to get from this bill.”